Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Interview

Bit-tech.net got up close and personal with Josh Drescher, producer of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. The Warhammer based MMO being developed by EA Mythic. Here’s a snip from the interview:

BT: So you were specifically offered the rights to a Warhammer MMO without having to hunt it down?

JD: The head of our studio is actually very good friends with the guys at Warhammer and they’ve known each other for years. It was one of those things where we’d been offered it before, but the timing was never quite right because of this or that. Luckily though the star just aligned a few years ago and we got a chance at this idea we couldn’t say no to. Warhammer is something that everyone knows, everyone loves.

For example, every time you’ve ever seen a green Orc then that’s come from Warhammer. Traditionally Orcs weren’t green until Warhammer. So, part of our artistic approach was trying to capture that traditional feel of the franchise. We have a high level of detail and, though some proportions are exaggerated, we’re certainly less cartoony than you’ll find in some other games.

That said, we’re perhaps not as photorealistic as some other games. The whole thing is about finding the right balance and avoiding that uncanny valley where the character is looking almost too real and is weirdly abstracted as a result. We needed to find something immersive, detailed, fantastic and evocative. It helps when you have a great art director.

Ben Cousins on Battlefield: Heroes

Ben Cousins was at the recent EA games showcase in london. Bit-tech.net had a chance to chat up with him regarding their TF2-esque “casual” multiplayer shooter; Battlefield: Heroes. Here’s a snip:

BT: But the game is multiplayer only? No singleplayer?

BC: There’s an offline training and tutorial bit where you can go in where you can shoot targets, try the vehicles and get used to the controls, but there’s no actual singleplayer gameplay. We’ve found that a lot of people play singleplayer Battlefield games like 1942 because they can’t find a server or they’re scared they’ll be killed by people who are a lot more skilled than they are.

A BETA of Battlefield: Heroes is scheduled to arrive in few days.

Valve’s Doug Lombardi talks Portal 2, Left 4 Dead and future plans

At the recent EA games showcase in london, CVG sat down with Valve’s Dough Lombardi to discuss Valve’s upcoming game Left 4 Dead. Lombardi also talked about Portal 2, Source engine and Valve’s expansion into new genres. Here’s a snip:

How much has the Source engine been updated for L4D since Half-Life 2?

Lombardi: I would say that almost half the code has been developed since Half-Life 2 was released. We introduced new lighting effects, we did a lot of character animation work for HL2: Episode 2, added support for multi-core PCs, we worked on the physics for Portal and new AI added for L4D.

We look at Source as a set of tools, not necessarily as an engine that we’ve built that we’ll use until it expires and throw away. We see it as this organic thing that we’re constantly tweaking and building. It’s more of a toolkit than a set engine.

Rockstar Games VP: “Fuck casual gaming”

New York magazine interviewed Rockstar Games’s VP Dan Houser. Houser doesn’t like casual games, infact, he went as far as to say “Fuck casual gaming”. The interview also focuses on the release of GTA IV and the controversy surrounding it. Interesting interview and definitely worth a read. Here’s a snip:

NY Mag: So the gaming industry has changed a lot since the last GTA …
Houser: Yeah, fuck all this stuff about casual gaming. I think people still want games that are groundbreaking. The Wii is doing something totally different, which is fantastic. We’re hopefully going to prove that there’s also a very big audience for people who want entertainment in another form, who think of games as being a narrative device that can challenge movies. We always said: We’re not going release a large number of games. They’re going to have the production values of movies. They’re gonna be about themes that interest us whatever the medium, instead of the weird, special video game–only themes that too many people make — orcs and elves, or monsters, or space. We felt you could make a good game and have it be about something we could actually relate to. Or aspire to.

Valve talks Portal sequel; More Innovative than original

CVG scored an interview with Valve’s Doug Lombardi, Valve have revealed few details about how they’re going to go about Portal 2. Here’s a snip:

“It could have been one of those things that 20,000 people thought was really cool and everybody else just scratched their heads and thought ‘What the hell is this, I don’t get it’,” added Lombardi.

Of course, the game was huge, which makes a sequel crucial. “Now we’ve got this challenge of living up to what we did with that.

Madden NFL 09 Won’t Tackle PCs

 According to Peter Moore’s official blog, Madden NFL 09 won’t be coming to PCs. Here’s a snip:

We knew that our decision to not develop this year’s Madden for the PC would be an unpopular decision in some circles. But I’ll reiterate what I said a couple of weeks ago in this space…the PC presents some very serious business challenges to us in the sports category, particularly because so many of you all are playing your favorite sports games on the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. We are committed to shipping a limited number of our games on the PC this year, but we’ve also had to cut a few of our games from the platform. We do have ideas for how to revitalize the PC for sports games and the types of games that are best suited to the platform, and we’ll continue to explore those.

Following this critical piece of news, we did a internal survey and the results were quite surprising.

Link 

Aliens: Colonial Marines Preview

CVG has some juicy new details about the upcoming first person shooter Aliens: Colonial Marines. Here’s a snip:

All the Colonial Marines’ armoury seen in Aliens will appear in the game, including the pulse rifle, those cool automated gun turrets that appear in the extended Aliens: Special Edition, and Hicks’ favourite boom stick, the Remington shotgun - although to keep you immersed in the action, there’s no in-game HUD, with ammo counters appearing on the side of each weapon.

Get your face raped here!

Ben Cousins Interview

Gamasutra did a QnA session with Ben Cousins, the producer of upcoming browser based Battlefield: Heroes game. Here’s a snip:

Now, there are a couple questions that jump off from that, but the first one is: so, the business model for the game is microtransactions?

BC: The business model is advertising in the game’s website, and in the game’s menu, but not in the game itself. And revenue from micro-item sales.

Read the full interview here

PC Hardware Limitations Holding-back Supreme Commander 2

According to Supreme Commander creator Chris Taylor, current PC hardware specs are what keeping Gas Powered Games from delivering the sequel to their fantastic RTS. PC-Zone magazine interviewed Chris Taylor, here’s a snip:

“I’ve been told by my engineers that for Supreme Commander 2, I don’t have enough memory in a PC with 4GB of RAM to have more factions”.

“We’ll return to the SC universe again,” Taylor went on to reveal, “but we’ll just have to see when that day is. Maybe when everybody has 64-bit processors…”

A sad thing indeed. The full interview is available on the latest issue (no.193) of PC-Zone magazine.

Randy Pitchford Defends In-game Advertising Deal

Gearbox software’s CEO, Randy Pitchford has defended their decision to go the in-game adveritising route. Pitchford posted an entry on the Gearbox Community website, here’s a snip:

I’d like to take the time to shed more light on the announcement that Gearbox and Double Fusion are partnering to consider connecting advertising with our games. Some gamers have voiced their concern, and I want to set the record straight about this announcement.

We respect any contempt for exploitive advertising that negatively effects the integrity or the quality of the game because we, as hardcore gamers, share that same contempt. If anything, that’s a big understatement. I’ll say it again: We hate exploitive advertising that doesn’t offer value to the gamer.

We partnered with Double Fusion because we believe they approach this kind of thing with the right attitude and because we wanted to be in control of these kinds of decisions for some of our games. It is important for us to ensure that we’re able to keep our artistic interests in mind and that our gamer customers’ interests are cared for.

Read rest of the explanation Here

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