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The rumours have been around for months now, but Tuesday Sony Online Entertainment confirmed that they had purchased Vanguard and Sigil Games Online from its investors. Nearly everyone on the Sigil team was laid off with around 50% of the outfit slated to be hired back, so that work can continue on the Massively Multiplayer Online Game. The game will continue running under the auspices of SOE, as announced by company CEO John Smedley in a forum post on Tuesday. Rumours that Brad McQuaid (keeper of the Vision behind Vanguard) has not seen been in Sigil's offices since last year has only exacerbated fan reaction to this announcement. It remains to be seen if SOE can undo the damage that the last five months have done to the Saga of Heroes community, and the game itself.

moderatorrater writes "Nintendo's dominance of the Japanese sales charts continues, as Gamasutra reports on the top games for Japan's 'Golden Week' celebration. The top 21 titles sold in the country were all on Nintendo formats; most actually developed by Nintendo itself. FFXII: Revenant Wings topped the list at number one, and along with five other DS or Wii titles was the only sign of third-party competition in the Japanese best-sellers market. 'With the holiday period functioning somewhat like the Christmas period in the West, there were no new entries in the top thirty - although a number of family friendly titles did reappear in the top ten, with Yoshi's Island DS at number four with 58,948 units sold. New Super Mario Bros. on DS re-emerged at number eight with 51,681 units sold, with the second Brain Training game at number ten.'"

Gamasutra has on offer today an extremely honest interview with Feelplus president Ray Nakazato, a veteran of Capcom and Microsoft and an expert on the Japanese gaming market. Nakazato discusses a variety of topics with obvious candor, including struggle that western game companies have in Japan, the state of various in-development game titles (such as Lost Odyssey), and the history of the Japanese game market. "In the early days of the games market, Japanese games were pretty interesting back then, while many games from overseas were seen as being bad. Now, you'll find a lot of interesting and fun games coming from North America and Europe, but because of that experience that we have from the early 1990s, people tend to stay away from Western games.""

An anonymous reader writes "The online Java-based fantasy MMOG Runescape has reportedly surpassed 1 Million paying subscribers. Gamasutra has a Q&A article with the Jagex co-founder and lead developer Andrew Gower about the UK-based firm's success. 'Counting roughly 4.6 million who play the free version of the game, RuneScape has more than 5.6 million players, says Constant Tedder, managing director of Jagex. As such, it represents credible competition to the big kahuna, World of Warcraft, which has topped 8 million paying subscribers. Part of the secret, Tedder said in an interview, is that the game doesn't take itself so seriously. In one recent event, players could transform themselves into penguins and infiltrate the penguin army to see what they were up to in the penguin underworld. The game has been growing largely by word of mouth.'"

Gamasutra has up a rare article with founding Apple visionary Steve Wozniak about his love of games, and his history with the medium. The article discusses Woz's prototype for the title Breakout prior to his involvement with Apple, the gaming habits of Steve Jobs, and the influence that videogames have had on the personal computing industry. " The reason Atari wanted me to design [Breakout] is they were tired of their games taking 150, 200 chips, and they knew I designed things with very few chips, so we had incentives for getting it under 50 or under 40 chips. That was my forte. Now I designed it, but it was... To save parts, I'll make no part go to waste and have tricky little designs that are hard for just a simple engineer to follow. Once you understand it, it's very easy because there's so few parts, it's easier to understand. But they had trouble understanding it."

The book Halo Effect is an intriguing title that takes a look Bungie's best-selling Halo titles from a number of different angles. Each chapter includes coverage of specific elements; included are descriptions of pro events, a bit on the development process, and the making of the Red vs. Blue series. One of the most interesting chapters takes a look at the science behind the Halo world, talking about the physics and logic behind ringworlds and the hi-tech weaponry seen in the game. Thanks in part to a mini-review of the book on the GameSetWatch site, Gamasutra has been allowed to reprint the entire 'science of Halo' chapter on their website. "A 5,000 kilometer radius would yield a circumference of roughly 31,400 kilometers. If we assume a width-to-radius ratio similar to that of Niven's Ringworld, they would be approximately 5.37 kilometers wide. They are significantly wider, though, at 320 kilometers. The Halos, then, would have a surface area of 10 million square kilometers - slightly larger than the surface area of Canada, and approximately 2 percent of the surface area of Earth. Of course, since we know that there are lakes, seas, and rivers on the Halos, the livable surface area would be fractionally less." Update: 05/02 18:30 GMT by Z : The initial version of the article posted was from pre-production and contained some errors. They've been fixed in the article and now here in the post as well.

Just weeks after Too Human producer Denis Dyack confronted the folks at 1up, he's now talking to Gamasutra about many of the same topics, and seems to be pining for a very different games industry. Specifically, Dyack takes exception to the whole concept of incomplete games being seen by the press, the large and now-deceased glitz and glamour version of E3, and the enthusiast press in general. His big complaint seems to be that enthusiast press folks want things to be good. "I guess I'm really against the whole notion of the enthusiast press. Being so enthusiastic that they want things to be good. I think if our medium is going to become mainstream, and we're going to be considered an art form, we need true critics like the movie industry or even the music industry where people go up and literally critique something, and it's a profession to critique it. In order to critique something, it has to be done."

Just weeks after Too Human producer Denis Dyack confronted the folks at 1up, he's now talking to Gamasutra about many of the same topics, and seems to be pining for a very different games industry. Specifically, Dyack takes exception to the whole concept of incomplete games being seen by the press, the large and now-deceased glitz and glamour version of E3, and the enthusiast press in general. His big complaint seems to be that enthusiast press folks want things to be good. "I guess I'm really against the whole notion of the enthusiast press. Being so enthusiastic that they want things to be good. I think if our medium is going to become mainstream, and we're going to be considered an art form, we need true critics like the movie industry or even the music industry where people go up and literally critique something, and it's a profession to critique it. In order to critique something, it has to be done."

Even though sales are up on the operating system side of things, Microsoft's games division is still struggling. The Entertainment and Devices division lost $315 million, with sales slipping some 21 percent. That's 22 percent down from last year. The quarter overall saw $929 million, down 21 percent over last year during the same quarter. "Microsoft says the drop in sales came primarily because of decreases in the sale of Xbox 360s. During the quarter, the company shipped a half million consoles, as compared to 1.7 in the third quarter of 2006, that being the first full quarter in which Xbox 360s became available. Sales of Xbox and PC games decreased 44 percent over the company's first three quarters to $393 million, which the company puts hand in hand with the decrease in console sales."

Yesterday, Gamasutra reported the sad news that the offices of Human Head studios were destroyed in a fire. Based out of Madison, Wisconsin, the indie developer recently signed up to do the next Mark Ecko game, riding high on their success with Prey from last year. Today, thankfully, Next Generation has the news that the company has survived more or less intact. "[Office Manager Carol] Smith said, 'I work with an incredible group of guys, and as soon as we got over the shock of oh my gosh, we had a fire--what if we lost data, what if we lost art? ...the next words out of everybody's mouths were, What can we do to help?' An update on Human Head's website confirmed that there were no injuries in the blaze that occurred at 2:30 a.m. on Friday and that the Prey developer 'suffered no significant data loss.'"

simoniker writes "After being exposed in 2006 as 'the biggest game developer you've never heard of', with over 1,100 employees at the time, Executives from Tose have been speaking to Gamasutra about their recently 'blown cover'. The interview explores how this has affected their business working on 'stealth' game development for hundreds of titles (recently including Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime), in which the publisher takes the credit for the end product. They seem a little conflicted about it, to say the least, as Tose's Masa Agarida notes: 'Actually, I have tried to expose us more in the US than in Japan, but right now, everybody's getting to know us more than before. Right now I'm thinking of going back behind the scenes again.'"

Despite hopeful comments by analysts, Sony has gone on the record (again) saying that it has no plans to cut the PS3's pricetag any time soon. Next Generation reports: "'PS3 prices and shipment plans for the future should be determined by market trends and competition. Sony currently doesn't have any specific plan to cut the PlayStation 3's price.' Analysts believe a price cut is inevitable, as the company struggles to catch Microsoft's early lead with Xbox 360, and the $250 Wii continues to sell as many as can be produced. However, Sony's plan has generally been to hold tight and hope that demand for Blu-ray drives will increase, by the end of this year." Relatedly, the company has outlined releases for the second quarter of this year on the PS2, PS3, and PSP systems.

In what I can only see as good news, the Fallout IP has been sold to Bethesda Softworks. A long, long time ago simoniker posted that Bethesda was licensing the IP from Interplay; as of earlier this month, they now own it lock, stock, and barrel. Gamasutra reports: "According to the filing, first spotted by Fallout fansite No Mutants Allowed, the purchase of the Fallout license and accompanying IP was settled on April 9th of this year, with final payment installments expected to be delivered by the third quarter of this year ... In an interesting twist, as part of the agreement Interplay now acts as a licensee of the IP as it continues to ramp up production on its own Fallout-themed massively multiplayer game, first announced in 2004 alongside Bethesda's sequel, and shown via internal documents as recently as December to have a projected $75 million dollar budget and launch date of 2010."

Matt Barton writes "I've just posted my third (and final) installment on CRPG history at GamaSutra: The Platinum and Modern Ages. This article covers the many classics released between 1994 and 2004, including Fallout, Planescape: Torment, Ultima Underworld, and of course Baldur's Gate, Diablo, and The Elder Scrolls. It also discusses why WoW and other MMORPGs aren't descended from these CRPGs (but rather MUDs). The Platinum Age produced the finest CRPGs ever made — but the future of the stand-alone, single-player CRPG looks grim."

Earlier today we discussed the China/US Piracy clash, and it's worth noting that yesterday Nintendo came out in strong support of the US's position. Gamasutra reports that an estimated 7.7 million counterfeit gaming products have been seized in the last four years of piracy raids. "According to Nintendo, China has continued to be the leading production site and exporter for counterfeit Nintendo products, and has the largest domestic consumption, and in 2006 alone the company estimates that the overall industry lost $762 million due to piracy. Commented Nintendo in a statement: 'Despite the millions of counterfeit Nintendo products seized from retailers and manufacturing plants in China through the years, there has only been one criminal prosecution. Numerous factories, where tens of thousands of counterfeit Nintendo products were seized, escaped with only trivial fines or no penalty at all.'"

Sony is considering proposals from commercial distributed computing concerns, mulling over rolling out more Folding@Home-like clients to their PlayStation 3 consoles. Gamasutra reports on a Financial Times article, discussing the future of the system. Because they would be commercial and not charitable organizations, the company is considering some form of compensation for users who would participate. "Sony Computer Entertainment CTO Masa Chatani indicated in an interview that Sony had already received numerous inquiries. 'A start-up or a pharmaceutical company that lacks a super-computer could utilize this kind of infrastructure. We are discussing various options with companies and exploring commercial applications', he said."

Gamasutra is reporting on announced plans from EA to invest in The9, the Massive firm that currently runs World of Warcraft in the Chinese market (among several other properties). EA Mythic recently announced they would be sending Warhammer Online into Asia, and one could easily imagine The9 being an instrumental part of that endeavor. The WoW angle is another wrinkle to keep in mind, as well: "Shanghai-based MMO executive Bill Bishop points out in some detailed analysis on his weblog: 'EA and Vivendi Universal Games (owners of Blizzard, developer of World of Warcraft) are direct competitors. Perhaps the Blizzard-The9 contract does not have any protection for Vivendi in the event that a competitor takes a significant stake in The9, but that would be surprising.'"

adachan writes "It seems that Microsoft has decided to add Xvid playback into the upcoming Spring Xbox 360 dashboard update. Xbox.com has a list of all the upcoming enhancements to the dash. The playback of video using H.264 and mpeg4 codecs seems to be the biggest news for those using the system as a media extender. If this is indeed true, my Xbox Media Center will be used less and less." Update: 04/09 17:29 GMT by Z : MSN Messenger is kinda interesting as well. Several sites are reporting that instant messenging is being added to the Xbox Live experience, with a USB keyboard controller attachment to be offered sometime in the near future.

An anonymous reader writes "In the latest 'Analyze This' series of exclusive Gamasutra features, analysts from Screen Digest, ABI Research and DFC Intelligence look at what Sony and developers can do to improve the PSP platform, to generate more excitement for it among developers, gamers and the industry overall — or if they even need to. 'My feelings on the PSP are mixed: It has shown there is demand for a more high-end portable system. The portable market has room for two competing portable systems. We forecast that over the next five years dedicated portable systems will sell just as many units as the new console systems. However, the PSP could really use a new model. This has been the secret to Nintendo's success.'"

MrPinstripeCom writes "Take Two interactive is now officially under investigation by the SEC. They've agreed to allow regulators to subpoena and investigate their practices with current and former employees as it relates to stock options purchases and disbursements. 'The company was the subject of an informal, non-public, investigation into allegations of back-dating stock option grants last year, while a separate internal investigation by Take-Two also found evidence of improprieties. The scandal ultimately led to the departure of then chairman and CEO Ryan Brant, who was singled out by the SEC investigation and was forced to pay $7.3 million in "disgorgement, interest and penalties" at the New York State Supreme Court.'"

Gamasutra's Brandon Sheffield has a nice interview up today with Jeff Minter, 50% of the indie gaming force that is Llamasoft. He was the creative force behind the visualization for the Xbox 360, and is currently working on the title Space Giraffe for Live Arcade. They touch on Minter's work ethic, past projects, and a canceled GameCube project that never quite made it out the door. They also, of course, discuss Minter's plans for the future: "One thing I would like to explore in the future is making music more involved with the game, so that the type of music you put on would determine how the level played. Some music might create a more chilled level, whereas heavy metal and heavy techno might be more intense. I've got so many ideas, but we can't do them all on the first outing."

Gamasutra's annual game developer salary survey will be coming to subscribers of the magazine in the next issue. As always, it looks at the current trends in payment for folks in the games industry, and some of that info is now available online. "According to the new survey, conducted in association with Audience Insights, the average salary in 2006 over all American game programmers was $80,886 - basically flat on the year before, thanks to an influx of entry level coders to the game business, but with significant increases for veteran programmers. The 2006 average for artists was $65,107, again basically flat on 2005, though average salaries of experienced lead artists and animators rose the most. The game designers' average was $61,538, with salaries scaling within a $5,000 range over the last 3 years over all experience levels." The new survey also marks the kickoff of Game Developer Research, a division aimed at doing quantitative analysis of games and gaming trends.

Via Gamasutra, an article at TheStreet.com talking with the interim CEO of Take Two Interactive. In the wake of the chaos of the board overthrow, Strauss Zelnick is taking pains to reassure investors that stability and security are now the company's goals. He also pointed out that his position as CEO is a short-term situation: "Before we seek to fill the CEO slot we want to stabilize morale, develop our strategy and improve the structure of the company... So, I don't think we will have a new CEO right away but I would guess we have someone in the chair permanently within the next 12 months."

Gamasutra has the word that EA has the Lord of the Rings IP locked up through the end of next year. With the additional license for the books under their wing and no competition from Vivendi, they have big plans set for their next game inside the franchise world. "The announcement follows EA's previously announced The Lord of the Rings: The White Council, an open world RPG for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. However, with EA making plans for a new The Lord Of The Rings title, the fate of this project, once referred to as the cryptic Project Gray Company, remains uncertain. EA confirmed in early February that the game, while not canceled, had been put on hold." Relatedly, Game|Life notes that one million players will soon be traveling through Middle Earth as the open beta for Lord of the Rings Online gets underway. If you signed up to get in, you probably will. Update: 03/30 04:00 GMT by Z : The text referring to the White Council game was edited on the Gamasutra story, and here as well to reflect that.

Gamasutra is running a piece right now called Rethinking the MMO. Game designer Neil Sorens takes issue with some of the consistent blights on the traditional Massive gaming experience, like the phenomenon of the 'ordinary' hero, and the extremely large time investment required to 'get anywhere'. Though he doesn't offer a lot in the way of concrete solutions to these issues, his appraisal of the genre is sure to spark a few conversations: "As long as developers and publishers do nothing but copy what is successful, they--and gamers--will continue to miss out on these games' staggeringly awesome potential. And as long as [MMOGs] are designed by and for stat geeks (whom I know and love and sometimes am) with little regard for traditional game design fundamentals, they will continue to waste that potential."

Via Game|Life, an article on the Variety site that sees something rather novel: a film writer defending games. Unhappy reviews of the film 300 sometimes cite the film's 'game-like' nature as a measure of it's poor quality, and Variety writer Ben Fritz calls those authors out on their poor grasp of modern media. Ron Gilbert, at the Grumpy Gamer site, has a few words of commentary on this issue. Coincidentally Gamasutra chose today to post a discussion of games as art which begins with the phrase "here we go again".

Gamasutra has the NPD numbers for last month, which shows a continuation of Nintendo's sales dominance. Overall the new consoles have again meant that industry sales were up, some 28% over last year's same-month figures. Hardware sales were up some 98%, with much of that performance attributable to the DS and Wii. Here's the breakdown: "Turning to hardware, the DS headed overall hardware sell-through with an impressive 485,000 units, followed by Nintendo's Wii, which sold 335,000 units despite continued issues with shortages. The Xbox 360 sold through a reasonable, if not spectacular 228,000 copies, and the PlayStation 3 slumped to a disappointing 127,000 units, despite no apparent shortages. Elsewhere, the PlayStation 2 moved a still impressive 295,000 at its relatively cheap current price, and the PlayStation Portable sold 176,000, markedly behind the DS. Finally, the various varieties of the Game Boy Advance sold a not unreasonable 136,000 units."

Several outlets are carrying the news that Live for Windows is coming in May to a PC near you. The announcement carried confirmation of a similar pricetag for Xbox Live, as well as details on some new titles. Halo 2 will be releasing right around the launch of the service (slated to go up May 8th), and Shadowrun will follow quickly sometime in June. Gamasutra has an interview with Xbox Live general manager JJ Richards on the subject, and 1up offers a bit of commentary with the news. Though when asked about it last week Microsoft reps seemed extremely confident, it still remains to be seen whether PC gamers will pay for what they've always gotten for free.

Will Wright gave the keynote address at the Texas SXSW event, showing off Spore to a packed crowd and offering up hopes that 'Toys' will change the world. His hope is that offerings like Spore might force kids to rethink their understandings of nature. Likewise, non-linear storytelling via 'branching' gaming is what he sees as the future of the medium. He cites the movie Groundhog Day as an example, a movie which told the same story over and over again but never did it the same way twice. "'I think if we can teach the computer to listen to the story that players are telling,' Wright said, a game could detect patterns of what the player wants, and adjust music, lighting, and other immersive elements to reflect the story that a player wants to play. He thinks this modeling would best be accomplished by networks that constantly mine and refine player information." Alice, of the Wonderland blog, helpfully provides extensive notes, and Kotaku has a video of the demo the attendees saw.

Gamasutra is carrying the sad news that the second-oldest PC gaming magazine is to shut down. TheGlobe.com, owner of Computer Games Magazine and its sister, MMOG-specific magazine Massive, has apparently opted to shutter the outlets as a result of financial troubles. They were saddled with a judgement by a California court in connection to a series of spam messages that went out across the MySpace social site. An SEC filing stated that the company stood to lose at least $40 Million; these shutdowns appear to be the direct result. "Calls to TheGlobe.com's Florida-based publisher Jayson Dubin, also the publisher of CGM and Massive Magazine, were not returned as of press time, with more recent calls to his direct line getting an automated recording indicating that the number had been disconnected. Besides Computer Games Magazine, TheGlobe.com also operates two other wholly-owned subsidiaries: voice over IP solution prover Voiceglo, and online game retail outlet Chips & Bits."

Gamaustra's Soapbox this week touches on the lessons learned from Slamgate and the Super Columbine Massacre RPG!. Author Patrick Dugan explores the ways in which SCMRPG challenged the media and gamers alike to think about what the medium of games is all about. Covered by everyone from Newsweek to Game Informer, it opened the eyes of non-gamers to the possibilities of the format and forced gamers to rethink their assumptions. "Game Informer's benchmark of game-specialized print journalism may very well inspire other major publications to follow suit with their own coverage, and in the capacity of Game Informer's readership, paints a symbol of solidarity. The twelve year old kid who thinks Gears of War is the best thing going can take a look at these graphics, popular before his birth, and get a sense that his beloved past-time is part of something greater, something he can defend to non-gamers as being inherently valuable." This issue is also explored in the final part of N'Gai Croal's interview with Jamil Moledina, which we talked about last week.

Gamasutra's regular 'Analyze This' column (which gets answers to topical questions from industry analysts) today ponders the exclusivity of next-gen games. With the costs of developing a AAA title ever on the rise, the article seeks out the answer to whether truly exclusive titles (games that are only released on one platform) are a thing of the past. "I feel title exclusivity for [third-party] developers is less important then title differentiation. All three consoles have strengths, and I would advise [developers] to clearly develop with the console in mind, and I would stress differentiation within their titles. This clearly poses a problem for smaller, more financially strapped developers who don't have the budget to develop what is in essence three separate games. - Ben Bajarin, Creative Strategies"

Gamasutra is reporting on a panel put on by the folks at Media Molecule, just hours after Phil Harrison's keynote yesterday. There, they talked about the formation of their ambitious company. They began with just a lot of hopes, and knew hard work was in store for them. Just the same, using techniques they'd picked up in the mod community, they drew up a very successful game concept and got someone else to pay for it. "[Essentially], the company's sole mission at the start was to do the most ambitious game it could produce, asking 'how hard can we make it for ourselves.' 'If we were jumping into the abyss,' said Evans, 'we were going to do it with rockets on our back.'"

Last night, past the red carpet, under the swirling light and through thrumming bass, the Game Developer's Choice Awards and Independent Game Festival awards were handed out in front of an audience of some 3,500 people. The evening went by very quickly, for a nice change of pace, with few speeches lasting longer than 30 seconds or so. There was a marriage proposal (accepted), several humorous skits that were actually funny, and several moments of Shigeru Miyamoto awesomeness. The big winners of the night were Gears of War, which walked away with three GDCAs, and Aquaria, which won the Seamus McNally grand prize from the IGF. Later today Gamespot is going to be airing video of the awards, a first for the event. While there may not be much in the IGF event that captures your interest, definitely check out the GDCAs. The acceptance speeches from Greg Costikyan, The Fatman, Shigeru Miyamoto, and CliffyB should not be missed.

Gamasutra continued their extensive coverage of GDC Tuesday, with information on the second day of serious and indie gaming tracks. For those who have been following the One Laptop Per Child Project, one of that project's developers put out a call for serious games to support the device. With plans already in the works to get Sim City open sourced and on the machine, OLPC content manager SJ Klein hopes that more serious titles will enable children to learn through play. Other sessions on Tuesday included a look at the Gatekeepers of indie content, suggestions on prototyping for indie developers, and what sounds like a humorously interesting presentation from Eric Zimmerman about milking the casual games cash cow.

Gamasutra continued their extensive coverage of GDC Tuesday, with information on the second day of serious and indie gaming tracks. For those who have been following the One Laptop Per Child Project, one of that project's developers put out a call for serious games to support the device. With plans already in the works to get Sim City open sourced and on the machine, OLPC content manager SJ Klein hopes that more serious titles will enable children to learn through play. Other sessions on Tuesday included a look at the Gatekeepers of indie content, suggestions on prototyping for indie developers, and what sounds like a humorously interesting presentation from Eric Zimmerman about milking the casual games cash cow.

Gamasutra continued their extensive coverage of GDC Tuesday, with information on the second day of serious and indie gaming tracks. For those who have been following the One Laptop Per Child Project, one of that project's developers put out a call for serious games to support the device. With plans already in the works to get Sim City open sourced and on the machine, OLPC content manager SJ Klein hopes that more serious titles will enable children to learn through play. Other sessions on Tuesday included a look at the Gatekeepers of indie content, suggestions on prototyping for indie developers, and what sounds like a humorously interesting presentation from Eric Zimmerman about milking the casual games cash cow.

Gamasutra continued their extensive coverage of GDC Tuesday, with information on the second day of serious and indie gaming tracks. For those who have been following the One Laptop Per Child Project, one of that project's developers put out a call for serious games to support the device. With plans already in the works to get Sim City open sourced and on the machine, OLPC content manager SJ Klein hopes that more serious titles will enable children to learn through play. Other sessions on Tuesday included a look at the Gatekeepers of indie content, suggestions on prototyping for indie developers, and what sounds like a humorously interesting presentation from Eric Zimmerman about milking the casual games cash cow.

The first day of GDC is generally devoted to games just a bit off the beaten path. In recent years, serious games have vied with titles from the mobile and indie markets on the first two days of the Game Developer's Conference. Probably the most interesting serious discussion from Monday was word from Square/Enix's new serious games arm. Sessions like innovations in Indie games and how to get your Indie game published rounded out the independent games discussions for the day. The pirates at Three Rings also put on a good show, talking about how to make an indie MMOG. Meanwhile, on the mobile front, EA veteran Trip Hawkins talked about innovations on the smallest screen, while Nokia rolled out some new details on their next generation of N-Gage .

The first day of GDC is generally devoted to games just a bit off the beaten path. In recent years, serious games have vied with titles from the mobile and indie markets on the first two days of the Game Developer's Conference. Probably the most interesting serious discussion from Monday was word from Square/Enix's new serious games arm. Sessions like innovations in Indie games and how to get your Indie game published rounded out the independent games discussions for the day. The pirates at Three Rings also put on a good show, talking about how to make an indie MMOG. Meanwhile, on the mobile front, EA veteran Trip Hawkins talked about innovations on the smallest screen, while Nokia rolled out some new details on their next generation of N-Gage .

The first day of GDC is generally devoted to games just a bit off the beaten path. In recent years, serious games have vied with titles from the mobile and indie markets on the first two days of the Game Developer's Conference. Probably the most interesting serious discussion from Monday was word from Square/Enix's new serious games arm. Sessions like innovations in Indie games and how to get your Indie game published rounded out the independent games discussions for the day. The pirates at Three Rings also put on a good show, talking about how to make an indie MMOG. Meanwhile, on the mobile front, EA veteran Trip Hawkins talked about innovations on the smallest screen, while Nokia rolled out some new details on their next generation of N-Gage .

The first day of GDC is generally devoted to games just a bit off the beaten path. In recent years, serious games have vied with titles from the mobile and indie markets on the first two days of the Game Developer's Conference. Probably the most interesting serious discussion from Monday was word from Square/Enix's new serious games arm. Sessions like innovations in Indie games and how to get your Indie game published rounded out the independent games discussions for the day. The pirates at Three Rings also put on a good show, talking about how to make an indie MMOG. Meanwhile, on the mobile front, EA veteran Trip Hawkins talked about innovations on the smallest screen, while Nokia rolled out some new details on their next generation of N-Gage .

In our interview with the Warhammer Online team a while back, there were questions as to why we weren't going to be seeing a Warhammer 40K MMOG. Several people seemed quite keen on the idea. Well, for those people: your time is now. THQ has announced they'll be developing Warhammer 40K into a MMOG and mobile games. Gamasutra reports on comments from Kelly Flock, executive vice president of worldwide publishing for the company, about their plan to work with Austin startup Vigil games on the project. Says Flock, "We realized this is one of those few properties that has a high level of interest from the hardcore gaming community, which could be a great launching point to turning it into a great mainstream mass-market MMO ... We're not out to replace World of Warcraft, we think we have a unique offering in the same category that will get its own share of attention if we deliver properly on the gameplay mechanics we'll build our own audience." Flock demures from offering a timeframe for release of the game, saying they're not even going to try to pinpoint a development schedule yet.

nz17 writes "Gamasutra is carrying the story about GameTap's new indie games program. 'By enlisting in the program, GameTap assumes non-exclusive responsibility for the digital distribution of each selected game. In addition to being promoted alongside GameTap titles, GameTap Indies will be showcased in a special Independent Games content area within the service.' GameTap also plans to give out its own award at the Independent Games Festival to three recipients. These selected three will receive $5000 — $10000 for a non-exclusive five-year distribution contract through the GameTap service."

Gamasutra is running a series of articles about the history of CRPGs. The first piece covers the early years, from 1980 to 1983, and deals with with games like mainframe dnd, Wizardry, and Ultima. The follow-up, The Golden Years, touches on the gold box Dungeons and Dragons titles, as well as the Bard's Tale games. "The first Gold Box game is Pool of Radiance, a game which marked an important turning point in CRPG history. The game shipped in a distinctive gold-colored box (hence the nickname for the series), which sported artwork by celebrated fantasy illustrator Clyde Caldwell (Caldwell also designed the covers for Curse of the Azure Bonds and several other TSR-licensed games and books). It was initially available only on the Atari ST and Commodore 64 platforms, though soon ports were available for most major platforms, including the NES."

Gamasutra is running a series of articles about the history of CRPGs. The first piece covers the early years, from 1980 to 1983, and deals with with games like mainframe dnd, Wizardry, and Ultima. The follow-up, The Golden Years, touches on the gold box Dungeons and Dragons titles, as well as the Bard's Tale games. "The first Gold Box game is Pool of Radiance, a game which marked an important turning point in CRPG history. The game shipped in a distinctive gold-colored box (hence the nickname for the series), which sported artwork by celebrated fantasy illustrator Clyde Caldwell (Caldwell also designed the covers for Curse of the Azure Bonds and several other TSR-licensed games and books). It was initially available only on the Atari ST and Commodore 64 platforms, though soon ports were available for most major platforms, including the NES."

Gamasutra is running a follow-up to their annotated contract piece from last month. As you may recall, the contract became public knowledge because of a court case between Spark unlimited and Activision regarding the title Call of Duty : Finest Hour. The article also covers a legal dispute between Spark/Activision and EA during the formation of the troubled development house. Now, the site is running an in-depth look at their legal dispute. The article explores some of the problems that can face any developer/publisher relationship, and how the legal case has affected that already strained situation. "A constant source of friction was Activision's desire to see a fully functioning game early in the development process. 'At Electronic Arts', he wrote, 'the level vision was able to be constructed without the constraints of frame rate, or memory to get the body of the game in and working,' a process which left polish until the end of the development cycle. 'However, under the more risk-averse Activision system, polish happens through the entirety of the process and there is a consistent desire to have the game playable on disc and running at 30 fps.'"

Gamasutra's most recent Question of the Week feature deals with the extremely quotable final speech given by Doug Lowenstein at D.I.C.E.. The article queries individuals within the games industry for their opinions on the 'freedom' that the industry allows itself, and its convictions on fighting for that freedom. The article prompted numerous, polarized comments. Many of them followed the gist of this Anonymous submission: "With regards to censorship the biggest worry for me is developers and publishers self-censoring and avoiding any kind of contentious issue or subject matter in case they offend anyone. Video games for me are a powerful medium capable of equaling the emotive and informative weight of cinema if used correctly, but they rarely are. If we refuse to tackle issues and remain purely a thing of fluff and fizz then interactive entertainment will never have the gravitas of its cousins."

Gamasutra reports on the new position that former Bethesda designer Ken Rolston has taken with Big Huge Games. The lead designer for Bethesda's hit titles Morrowind and Oblivion, Rolston is now slated to be working on an unnamed title for the Rise of Nations developer. Rolston announced he was planning to retire early last year but ... apparently not. The designer characterizes his new project as 'a strikingly original and cunning concept for a console RPG'. No name or concept was included in the announcement.

Last week, the designers who used to head Capcom's Clover Studios (makers of Viewtiful Joe, Okami, and God Hand) announced that they were forming a new studio named SEEDS. Clover principles Atsushi Inaba, Hideki Kamiya, and Shinji Mikami are looking to make some 'preposterously amazing' games. People upset by Clover's closing, though, should know that most of the studio is back inside Capcom. In a Gamasutra article with Capcom Vice President of Marketing Charles Bellfield, he makes it a point to say: "Capcom, unlike most other developers, doesn't have dedicated strict boundaries between each of its development teams. We actually have one pool of development talent at Capcom and those individuals are basically assigned based on the timescales of each product we're working on ... the rest of the Clover team was just incorporated back into the rest of Capcom's development talent pool. So in fact, while three individuals left, Clover Studios as a separate entity was merged back into the rest of the Capcom teams and today, still, the talent we had, with the exception of three people, is still remaining at Capcom."