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It's a pretty slim week on the PAL PlayStation Store, but then, looking at the stuff Europeans and Aussies are missing out on - like the Tester - maybe that's not such a bad thing. More »

In a video presentation at the Game Developers Choice Awards, White House chief technology officer Aneesh Chopra discussed the Apps for Healthy Kids project, a plan to encourage game developers to collaborate with government to work against childhood obesity.

The latest component, an Apps for Healthy Kids contest tasks game developers with creating games that help encourage good exercise and diet habits among kids and give parents information about what their children eat -- with $40,000 in prizes for the winning games. The apps, to be submitted in either "tool" or "game" categories, will integrate the data from MyFoodapedia.gov, a database of the caloric content of common food.

In a letter, First Lady Michelle Obama told game devs, "You know better than most the power of games to deeply engage our nation's youth. Today I'm asking you to dedicate your creative energy skills to address one of America's biggest challenges and help make healthy living fun, exciting and relevant for kids."

[Via Gamasutra]

White House courts devs to make healthy eating games originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to "a trusted source", IGN is reporting that Insomniac Games - creators of both Resistance and Ratchet & Clank - is about to abandon the land of PS3 exclusivity and become a multiplatform developer. More »

I may have liked Tetrisphere, but I am not a man who believes the puzzle games, like Mario games, can be as good in three dimensions as they are in two. More »

There's been a flood of information coming from Sony about the new PlayStation Move controller for the PS3, but Sony's technically inclined folks showed off some of the more technically capable members of GDC, getting down to the finer details. More »

Rhode Island bill S.2156 (PDF) is silly ... (How silly is it?) ... It's so silly that even Jack Thompson recognizes it as unconstitutional. As GamePolitics reports, it's one thing when the Entertainment Software Associate (ESA) calls a bill "the same as all the other legislative proposals found unconstitutional by numerous federal courts." It's a whole other ballgame when Jack Thompson chimes in with, "The Bill won't survive a court challenge, nor should it ... Think I'm not going to help the legislature get it right?"

Of course he is! Yes, Thompson did tell GP that he will attempt to advise Rhode Island legislators on how to amend the bill to pass legal muster. Hopefully the disbarred attorney won't cause the representative he assists to write an apology letter to his fellow House members when it's all over.

ESA says Rhode Island game bill is unconstitutional, Jack Thompson ... agrees? originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A deadly cocktail of nerd poisons, featuring the toxic element from EA's Command & Conquer series combined with a few equally sly Dune and Star Wars references, as seen in Lady Gaga's (slightly NSFW) "Telephone" video. Thanks, Matt & Charles! More »

When we discussed the iPad and whether it was worth giving in to the peer pressure and pre-ordering it, a commenter decided to remind us of his reason for resisting: No flash. And yes, it can make things look sad. More »

I ran into Will Wright yesterday just before the Game Developer Choice Awards kicked off. He was wearing a shiny suit and grabbing a drink. More »

As part of a graduate show at the Kyoto University of Art and Design, students built miniature cities out of common household objects—including this power strip. They're just missing mini-people. [Spoon Tamago via Crib Candy via Boing Boing] More »

Plenty of attention has been lavished on one nontraditional Japanese RPG this week -- but Sega sneaked out another one alongside Final Fantasy XIII. Luckily, enough reviewers remembered that Yakuza 3 exists to provide a decent swath of reviews.

While it's certain to be the best game this week about playing fictional arcade shooters, singing karaoke with dates from hostess clubs and hitting gangsters with street signs, how did Kazuma Kiryu's latest saga fare under more common rubrics?

• IGN (8.5/10): "You're getting this intense story about Japan's seedy underbelly that's set in an open world where you can take all sorts of side quests, but as you do so, random battles are popping up, you're earning experience points so you can level up your moves, and you can take stuff from your extensive inventory list and craft new weapons and armor. There are no cars or chocobos, but you see where I'm going with this -- one minute you're slamming a crowbar into a guy's face or tearing off a fingernail with pliers, and the next minute, you're taking photos to blog about or on a fetch quest to find a certain fish."
• GameSpot (8/10): "While the pace and events of the story are enough to propel you towards its conclusion, the non-story peripheral content gives Yakuza 3 a welcome sense of diversity. There are more than a hundred side and hitman quests that allow you to do everything from carrying ice cream for a father who has overpurchased, to playing UFO Catcher claw machines in the arcade, to chasing down a bag snatcher, to offering financial advice to a man deep in debt and precariously perched on the edge of a bridge."
• Eurogamer (8/10): "From the publisher that brought us Streets of Rage, Virtua Fighter and Shenmue, Yakuza is essentially a mashup of all three, which is hardly surprising but does mean it's the stuff of Segaphile fantasies. Liberally sprinkled with their genius, it's the grateful beneficiary of some of their most satisfying elements, in a context which delivers a uniquely Japanese -- and uniquely Sega -- flavour."

Metareview: Yakuza 3 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Almost lost amid the CCP booth loaded up with free kegs of beer, the PS3 Move set-up and Nintendo was the tiny Zombrex booth packed with faux syringes and a shotgun behind glass. More »

GDC 2010: Rob Pardo, Ray Muzyka, Jason Holtman join Zynga's Brian Reynolds and Nexon's Min Kim to advocate the importance of community in game design.

Who was there: "The Connected Future of Games" panel at the 2010 Game Developers Conference featured some of the biggest names in the online business. On hand to deliver their thoughts on the impact of the connected experience in games were Blizzard senior vice president of game design Rob Pardo; BioWare RPG/MMO group and senior vice president of EA Ray Muzyka; Zynga chief game designer Brian Reynolds; Valve director of business development Jason Holtman; and Nexon vice president of marketing Min Kim.

What they talked about: The moderator began the session by asking members of the illustrious panel to name the one thing that designers should have in mind when beginning the process of making a connected game. According to Pardo, designers need to have a clear idea of the game's audience and how the community will interact with that connectivity. Muzyka noted that it's important to approach these projects with the mindset of games as an ongoing service, one that doesn't end when a game ships.

For Reynolds, who is notable for creating such hits as Rise of Nations at Big Huge Games--and who now oversees development on the award-winning Facebook game Farmville--designers should focus on the social mechanics of the game, as much or even more so than gameplay mechanics. In a similar vein, Valve's Holtman noted that designers need to think as much about designing gameplay mechanics as how the community will experience these devices.

The moderator then brought up Valve's recent announcement of Steam Play, where gamers who purchase one of the company's products can use it on a PC or Mac. Holtman said that arbitrary barriers such as PC and Mac simply aren't important anymore, and that gamers want to be fans of the product, not of the platform. The moderator then asked whether this would extend to the Xbox 360, as well, to which Holtman replied, "You'll have to ask Microsoft."

Reynolds then field a question about people's inability to shelter certain sides of their behavior from their friends on Facebook, such as constant status updates from games on that service. The Farmville lead said that Facebook is largely at fault here, and that it is important to be able to limit the information to those who are interested in it.

The next question was for Pardo, and dealt with whether all game companies should invest in a connected service like Battle.net. The game executive said that it's a good idea, but the amount of work required is substantial. Ultimately, having their own dedicated service is far better than a generic platform like Xbox Live, because the company can more closely tailor the experience to their individual games.

To this point, Holtman said that Valve could not have done the kind of teaser campaign it executed with the recently announced Portal 2 on Xbox Live, due to the lengthy certification process. He advocated the PC in this regard, noting that it is an open platform that simply update on the fly.

Nexon's Kim then fielded a question about polishing an online game in the public eye, by way of a beta. Kim noted that it is a necessary evil to have players seeing an unfinished product through a beta, because the company can only really know whether they've been successful with their design when players actually respond to it. Responding to a follow-up question, Kim also noted that its pretty much impossible to call an online game complete, considering some of Nexon continually updates their games over the course of their life span, a point the panel concurred with.

The discussion then shifted toward how the designers approach old content, especially in light of new players. Reynolds noted that it's an ongoing struggle between baking up new features for veteran players while maintaining a low level of entry for newcomers. Pardo concurred, noting that the impetus behind World of Warcraft's upcoming expansion Cataclysm was to revisit the new-player experience. With WOW now in its fifth year, the team has gotten much better at creating content, and it is clear that some of the old-world stuff isn't as good as it could be.

As Nexon is a Korean gaming company, the moderator then asked Kim what lessons his home nation can offer to North America. Kim noted that the gaming environment is completely different in Korea, due to the immense popularity of Internet cafes. These are successful in Asia, because the gaming community is gathered together in one room, interacting with one another as they play. This type of experience isn't at all like the Western one, where online gaming is largely a solitary experience in people's homes.

Closing out the panel, Pardo addressed the idea of matchmaking in games, saying it's incredibly tricky to do. Namely, he said that it is difficult to really appraise someone's skill, but it is important to shelter new players from more experienced ones. One other problem that Blizzard is butting up against is that if a matchmaking system works really well, where players are of the same skill level, it leads to very intense play experiences. The thing is, players often can't play more than a couple of intense matches in a row before becoming frazzled and burnt out, so they are wondering if that kind of matchmaking is really what they even want.

Takeaway: The connected gaming experience, shockingly enough, is impacted largely by the community surrounding the game. With more and more games packing in online functionality, not to mention the rise of social gaming on platforms like Facebook, it is increasingly important for developers to cater to the community surrounding their products.

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

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Toshiba shows off a two-wheeled autonomous robot than can roll over ramps and balance a tray of food. Wheelie might make a decent waiter.

As the Web generation descends on the South by Southwest Interactive show in Austin, several location-based start-ups try to put themselves on the map.

Hunch, a buzzy start-up that answers questions using crowdsourced recommendations, has lined up at least $10 million in funding, according to sources.

We might never know if a Twitter feed purporting to be by a woman left behind on her anniversary weekend by her SXSW-bound husband is real. But it's very funny stuff.

When you've built a zillion-dollar video game brand, you're not going to be hurting for future opportunities no matter how hard your former employer fires you. That said, Call of Duty's creators have signed with Hollywood's biggest talent agency. More »

Several star commenter have noted recently that the troll factor is rising again. This post is reminder that all comments wasting words and the comment moderator's time wondering about such issues as "why does gizmodo love/hate/get paid by company XYZ?" may result in zero warnings and then a ban. And whatever happens to your comment account, remember: it's not my fault if you lose your account because you said something stupid. Black Ninja Monday is when the action goes down, so you've got two days to turn things around. The obvious choices: You can have fun in troll hell, or join the ranks of the thoughtful, starred, proud and clever commenters everyone appreciates. Again, Monday: that's when there'll be internet blood everywhere. But it won't be mine. More »

What if computers could be turned into a worldwide earthquake detecting network? With the Quake Catcher software and your laptop's built-in accelerometer, that might just be possible. More »

Saints Row 2 developer on the hassles of including cooperative mode in their game, and why it was worthwhile in the end.

Who was there: David Bowring, designer for Volition, the development team behind open-world games such as Red Faction: Guerilla and Saints Row 2.

What they talked about: Saints Row 2 was not only critically well received, it was also one of the few games in its genre to feature cooperative multiplayer. In his GDC 2010 talk titled "Co-Operative Design for Open World Games,", Volition designer David Bowring said any developer potentially looking at including co-op in their sandbox game needs to be aware that they’re in for "a lot of pain and suffering".

When it came to Saints Row 2’s QA process, almost 37 percent of bugs found were directly related to the co-op aspect of the game, Bowring said. "You have to bear in mind that every system you build has to be coop friendly, and that every system touched could break coop, and an enormous amounts of bugs were created," he said.

So why do it? Bowring said despite the hassles, the inclusion of co-op in Saints Row 2 was very gratifying, with Volition’s figures showing the people who played co-op generally played a lot more of the game. Bowring said most players also now had the expectation that games would feature some sort of multiplayer, and that providing social content helped make a game more relevant as well as extend its shelf life.

Takeaway: Untethered open world co-op is difficult to achieve, so Bowring’s advice to would-be open world co-op developers is to design everything with co-op in mind right from the beginning.

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

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You can be more powerful in next week's expansion to Dragon Age: Origins. More »

March is packed! Great game releases, with plenty of industry announcements and kerfuffles going on. With that said, if you missed any of our Game Developers Conference 2010 coverage this week, be sure to check it out -- a lot happened. We'll also be adding some more GDC coverage over the weekend. Once that's put to bed, we have about two weeks and then it's on to PAX East, the inaugural edition of the consumer conference.

We have plenty planned for PAX East, including the Blueberry Muffin Top breakfast and live Joystiq podcast recording. With half our staff just "hanging out" for once, we'll be looking for cool stuff to do just like everyone else. Be sure to follow our Twitters (noted after the break), we'll be sure to note if cool stuff is going on.

What's everyone playing?

Continue reading WRUP: Gee-Dee-See you at PAX East edition

WRUP: Gee-Dee-See you at PAX East edition originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski lays out a plan for 21st century digital access, citizenship, literacy, and safety.

It's been a long week and we could use a laugh. We've already started worrying about taxes and pre-ordering iPads, among other stresses. To sum it all up, here are some illustrations from a cartoon maestro called Lunchbreath. More »

Instead of harpooning a whale for samples, wouldn't it be easier to just collect their snot using an R/C helicopter? More »

We know, we know -- we've been desperately waiting for more new media on April's South Africa-themed FIFA release as well, and today we've finally got some more. Arriving care of GDC 2010, EA Sports released the trailer you see above and the smattering of new screens seen below (for Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 as well as the Wii).

The trailer urges players to take their own country's team to the World Cup, though we should issue a word of warning to those of you in the contiguous United States who choose to bring our fine nation to the top: it's just a game. Okay, okay, sorry -- we were just joshin' ya! We suppose it's possible. Maybe after the robots take over. Maybe.

More FIFA World Cup 2010 media than you can shake a red card at originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An effort to impose fines and even jail time for selling mature games to underage kids has reached Rhode Island's legislature. "The bill won't survive a court challenge, nor should it," says a certain disbarred Florida lawyer. More »

GDC 2010: Director Motomu Toriyama shares his experiences and offers a postmortem for the recently released Final Fantasy XIII.

Who was there: Director and scenario writer Motomu Toriyama from Square Enix went over the Crystal Mythos and shared his thoughts on the direction of Final Fantasy.

What they talked about: Motomu Toriyama began his 2010 Game Developers Conference session by introducing himself and then telling the audience that Final Fantasy XIII, which launched March 9, is selling well across North America and Europe. As a scenario writer for Square Enix, Toriyama joined the company in 1994, around the time when Final Fantasy VI was launched.

Shortly after he began, he remembered meeting with the entire development team of 40 people, including the founding fathers of Final Fantasy, creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, character designer Tetsuya Nomura, and producer Yoshinori Kitase.

Toriyama explained that at the time, it was a brainstorming session for Final Fantasy VII, and each member of the team would present their ideas to everyone. There were no story or battle-specific job titles to assign to anyone. It boiled down to whoever had the best idea and was able to present it with the most enthusiasm. The basic storyline was determined by Sakaguchi, Nomura, and Kitase and everyone else would provide their input.

As a new employee with no experience making games, he was assigned to work on Bahamut Lagoon and was in charge of scenarios and cut scenes. He reflected how things were more flexible back then, and that there was a lack of integrity. Square at the time helped employees learn the skills and techniques that they would need to grow. Once the number of developers reached 200, specific jobs were formed to establish order.

When Square merged with Enix, there were a lot of new employees to train and a lot more platforms to build on when the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable were released. Toriyama put together and directed a team of scenario writers and began to work on a number of projects, which included the Crystal Chronicles series and Dissidia Final Fantasy.

With the introduction of voice acting, Toriyama said that the scripts needed to be more sophisticated so they hired more professional writers and attempted to improve the overall scenario quality.

Before jumping into the next part of his presentation, Toriyama played the European and North American versions of the Final Fantasy XIII commercial.

The original purpose of the session was to go over the Crystal Mythos of Final Fantasy XIII, which he said, began five years ago. He explained the Crystal Mythos as a story that portrayed the history between gods and humans that is told from a human perspective. Even though the story is original, he compared it to Greek mythology and mentioned that there is a sequel that he can't quite talk about yet.

Fabula Nova Crystallis is the name that is given to the Crystal Mythos that serves as the backdrop for Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII. Toriyama stated that the mythology doesn't become an obstacle when working on a new game or sequel because the gameplay, characters, and story will be different each time.

The next part of his session went over the specifics of Final Fantasy XIII and the two worlds within, the primitive Gran Pulse and high-tech Cocoon. The two worlds are governed by gods that are at odds with each other. Toriyama explained that the theme of the game is about going against fate and that he wanted the players to be able to relate to the characters and their struggle.

He went on to explain that Final Fantasy XIII is like the television series Lost, with character flashbacks and unknown factors. This formula is different from a typical Japanese role-playing game in that it's more focused around a group dynamic.

The next part of the presentation was a postmortem, where Toriyama talked about how it took much too long for development because of the emphasis on cutscenes. He explained that the scenarios needed to have the highest quality and were treated like it was an animated film.

His power point presentation listed the level design methodology that he followed, which involved deciding the total number of in-game battles, then dividing the battles among game locations, followed by determining spacing between battles and finally inserting an event in every three to seven battles.

Priority is set for cutscene locations because the number of people involved with the art makes it difficult to go back and make the necessary changes. The intention was to make Final Fantasy XIII a cutscene-driven game.

Toriyama addressed the criticism on the lack of towns, saying that he wanted to prioritize monsters and main characters so that the extra non-player characters and text was reduced.

He went over some focus-group data that was collected in Japan and the United States, and it seemed that the Japanese audience liked the story and characters more than the American audience. He felt like the team made the right choice by focusing on cutscenes and the battle system because players in both regions responded well in those categories.

The scenario writer concluded his presentation by discussing the future of Final Fantasy and said that the team intends to use the best technology out there. He also indicated that there may be a shift to interactive cutscenes. As an example, he said that hopping along the backs of a thousand flying dragons would be "great fun."

Toriyama also compared Japanese RPGs to Western RPGs by using screenshots of Hit Man and Tomb Raider as an example. His point was that in Western games, the game is played through the player's perspective, not the character's. In Japanese RPGs, the view is from a third-party bird's eye view. He said that in Japan, people want to see a film and not necessarily identify with the character, but observe and enjoy the movement and emotions of the character. The Japanese feel comfortable as a third-party bystander.

As for the question of whether Final Fantasy should be an open world or story-driven experience, Toriyama said that open world does offer more freedom but it depends on the balance. In Final Fantasy XIII, the human drama was portrayed through cutscenes but if it were to be in a free, open world, it would increase the number of cutscenes, which in turn means more scheduling and more resources, and could mean a decline in quality. He said that for future games, it will be up to the scenario writers and designers to try to increase the freedom, but Final Fantasy will always focus on the story.

Quote: "It will continue to change for each product, but the ultimate technology will be pursued and it will remain a magnificent global story centered on human drama. This will be applied to every Final Fantasy story. I promise we will protect this trend but no one can predict the future."--Motomu Toriyama, scenario writer on the future of Final Fantasy.

Takeaway: Cutscenes and story are still the focus for the series and it doesn't look like Final Fantasy is going to change drastically anytime soon.

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

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The role-playing series that launched a million bad attempts at cosplay is back, with a new group of colorful characters carrying the fate of the world on their shoulders in Final Fantasy XIII. More »