“Hi, my name is McKinley, and I just want to thank you for making vampires cool.” While hearing fans like this one fawn over Castlevania mastermind Koji Igarashi was certainly entertaining, the lecture he gave before the Q&A began had some interesting tidbits as well. A look at the challenges and benefits behind developing 2D games in […]

Paper airplanes are fun to make, but they’re wasteful, difficult, and inevitably kill someone. Why not try a virtual paper airplane instead? Paper Pilot gives you all sorts of airplane options, from the sleek to the boxy, with options for putting those little rear flaps that you put on paper airplanes if you’re some sort […]

Man, there are a lot of artillery-style games. And what do you know, this is one of them! But as with many games having a live opponent makes a big difference. You get to match wits with your enemies, and watch them try to flirt when someone with a female-sounding name enters the room. Entertainment […]

So, I bet you’re wondering why I didn’t post anything yesterday, huh? Here’s the inside scoop. Right before my interview with Phil Harrison, I ran into a friend who shall remain nameless who looked like hell and said he’d come down with a case of food poisoning. As it turns out, I do not think it […]

You can’t really have any kind of gaming gathering and not have some kind of representation from I Am 8-Bit. The quality, variety, and creativity of the art displayed never ceases to impress and delight me. I don’t have an artistic bone in my body–stick figures are beyond my abilities–so I’m constantly in awe […]

It’s tough out there in the career pavilion–you really have to know how to attract the attention of the hot up and coming developers (not to mention woo the established folks away from your competition). Sure, Ubisoft could just rely on its well-known and successful cadre of titles to attract folks, but they’re smarter than […]

Second only to Miyamoto in making Nintendo fanboys swoon, Eiji Aonuma explained to developers at GDC why he chose the course he did with the past few Zelda titles. It was fairly interesting to learn how he juggled multiple projects and responded to feedback from both superiors and players. Aonuma also revealed the thinking behind the […]

The new Super Mario Galaxy trailer shown at Nintendo’s GDC Keynote. Published by Carlos BergfeldContinue reading: GDC: Super Mario Galaxy Trailer

Each year, the Game Design Challenge tasks willing developers with coming up with a game concept based on a somewhat wacky premise. Usually the challenge is a thematic one–make a licensed game based on the works of Emily Dickenson, for example–but this year, it was technical. The three competitors–David Jaffe (God of War), Alexey Pajitnov […]

I went to the keynote as well, and there are a few things I just have to mention. It was my first time seeing Shigeru Miyamoto speak, and I certainly wouldn’t call it a disappointment. I wasn’t near the front, but Tetsuya Mizuguchi of Q! Entertainment sat right by me, snapping pictures like any other […]

Waiting for the Miyamoto keynote to start, I’m sitting three rows from the front. Close enough to see Nintendo’s resident BMOC, Reggie Fils-Aime at the front of the crowd, working it with his trademark smile and good will. He poses for pictures, he signs Wiimotes, he presses the flesh with a goodnatured ease that would make even the most […]

Peter Molyneux wants you to make you feel something. And he’s using a dog to do it. In typical Molyneux form, he was very excited when talking about the very much still in progress Fable 2. He asked us, no begged us not to pay attention to the graphics (”I know they’re crap”), and just pay […]

Baseball season is almost upon us, and you know that means, right? Popcorn, green grass, and Wi-Fi, of course. We here at Wired HQ are lucky enough to be a long flyball away from AT&T Park, home of the Giants and one giant Coke bottle. But until the first pitch is thrown on the 2007 […]

Last night, at the Game Developers Choice Awards, Steve Chiavelli accepted an award for the game that he and four of his fellow DigiPen students designed, Toblo. Rather than go the typical acceptance route by thanking his mom, his teachers, or his dog, Steve pulled out an engagement ring and asked the beautiful Brittany Aubert, […]

You know that whole "What would you do for a Klondike bar?" thing? Well, substitute "a lighter laptop" for "Klondike bar," and my answer is "just about anything." Ow. Yesterday was the first day that GDC was in full swing, and there was a lot going on. Both Chris and I enjoyed the Sony keynote, despite […]

Seems to me that if you feel the need to put “Original, Fun, Addictive Flash Game” in your page title, you might be trying a wee bit too hard. Original? No, it’s essentially Kaboom for the Atari 2600 with a mouse instead of a paddle controller. Addictive? I can quit anytime I want, as […]

On my walk from the office to the Moscone Center, I noticed a peculiar thing. There’s gigantic queue, stretching a city block, of attendees waiting to see Shigeru Miyamoto’s keynote at 10:30 am. It looks like getting a seat might be as difficult as finding a Wii. That photo was snapped an hour and a […]

So what’s the key to staying innovative in the development world? According to Lasse Seppanen, production lead at Remedy Entertainment, it’s all about staying small. During this session at GDC, Seppanen talked about how the 31-person team at Remedy (Max Payne, Max Payne 2) has taken on its newest project, Alan Wake, coming out on PC […]

MJ already covered a lot of Warren Spector’s view on storytelling, but I wanted to add my two cents. ‘Cause I’m like that. First up, it says a lot about Warren and his impact on the industry that it was quite literally standing room only in the room in which he delivered his presentation. It […]

With 19:15 left on the clock Tuesday night, it was evident that teams were starting to fill the strain of constant coding. Josh Butterworth and Andre Furtado both managed to produce some form of playable build, while the two-man teams were struggling to implement a few basic features. But I have to say I’m awfully impressed […]

David Amor from Relentless Software understands the rest of the world. You know, the people that aren’t like you and me–the ones who don’t read gaming blogs, who couldn’t possibly name a game developer if you held a gun to their head, the ones who  are perversely both wooed and sneered at by the industry. […]

GDC security is on the ball. A commenter on my Big Brain Academy post pointed out that I left off the best part of that game demo. Also, he’s apparently stalking me because he was listening in on this whole conversation and never identified himself to me at the time. Anyway: So I’ve been hauling around the […]

I suppose if you’re talking about the “Tip of the Iceberg,” you’re allowed to be particularly vague with your details. Lars Buttler, former vice president of Electronic Arts Global Online and current CEO of Trion World Networks, hailed broadband as the next content platform. Trion World, for those who don’t know, is a “publisher and […]

I had to wait in a big-ass line (that’s about half of it in the picture) to get in, and was then kept waiting once we got inside. I got hit in the head–twice–with an oversized soccer ball. I had to go without internets access, which always gives me hives. So when I tell you […]

Aaaand that about wraps it up for the Game Boy Advance. I don’t know if you guys noticed already, but here is the complete list of Game Boy Advance software on the way for the second quarter of 2007, courtesy a Nintendo press release from this afternoon: Game Boy(R) Advance Summer Shrek the Third Activision Hey, I mean […]

I really, really want to play Tabula Rasa. I’d heard about it since a few E3s ago, but never really  checked it out in depth because it’s an MMO, and I don’t generally dig those because…well, you know all the things that can make an MMO suck, I don’t need to list them for you. […]

If you play City of Heroes, you’ll likely be pleased to know that the next expansion, Issue 9: Breakthrough, is on the way. If you don’t play City of Heroes…well, you’re just not going to care. It’s pretty much that simple. So what’s new this time around? The biggie is the invention system, which allows players […]

GDC gave Junction Point Studios president, Warren Spector, the chance to evangelize his favorite subject, storytelling. Despite the meandering nature of today’s speech, which spent far too much time recapping his 2004 talk than actually discussing “The Future of Storytelling in Next-Generation Game Development,” he made a few key observations. For one, game stories (obviously) […]

I suppose if you’re talking about the “Tip of the Iceberg,” you’re allowed to be particularly vague with your details. Lars Buttler, former vice president of Electronic Arts Global Online and current CEO of Trion World Networks, hailed broadband as the next content platform. Trion World, for those who don’t know, is a “publisher and […]

That’s not me in that picture, but if I were playing against him in Big Brain Academy for Wii, I’d have taken him down. I know this because I went up against a booth babe in this very game today, and destroyed her even though it was my first time playing and she’d been practicing […]