Might and Magic also had no respawning creatures – one feature that’s always bugged me. Even in Metroid Prime, one of my all-time favorite games, it annoyed me to some extent. I put up with it, but I'll say that it wasn't "fun". It was a necessary design decision to make re-explorable areas become non-static. I get that. But if you can help it, make creatures stay dead. Or, have a system like Fallout or many others where when you're exploring, there's a random chance of an encounter. Even then, when you become more powerful, you should decrease the chance until it's eventually 0% that you encounter "challenges" for that area.

Who’d have thought that Gas Powered Games would follow up their dungeon crawling action RPG Dungeon Siege with a spaceship crawling action RPG called Space Siege? It certainly gets us more excited than a hot tub full of horny elves.

The human race is on the brink of destruction: only five ships have survived the annihilation of Earth. That’s some incentive for alien ass-kicking if ever we had it. Bring on the plasma rifles, cybernetic upgrades and tactical combat.

All Lodge wants is for his gaming group to finish their adventure.
Unfortunately, they're more interested in seducing barmaids, mooning their
enemies, and setting random villagers on fire. Can the group overcome their bickering to save the kingdom, or will the evil necromancer Mort Kemnon
triumph unopposed?

The major change from the original Diablo games to this new iteration seems to be the issue of health. Jay Wilson described the situation often encountered in the original game where, to win against a particularly vicious monster or group, a player would merely have to set up a drip-feed of potions to his character, rendering him neigh invulnerable. This has been replaced with a system of "health orbs" which are dropped by destroyed creatures. Those of you who have played the Devil May Cry series of games are thinking exactly the right thing. The most original thing about these orbs is that they heal the entire party, no matter who picks them up. This means that there will be no mad scrambles between bleeding friends, and no hogging by he with the fastest movement, lowest lag or best mouse hand. Jay Wilson mentioned at the WWI that they had tried the current FPS standard of regenerating health, but had decided that they massively preferred forcing the player into combat as much as possible, so health-dropping enemies seemed the right direction to go.

Just before the official Mythos forums went offline, Max Schaefer posted a personal thank you to all the fans and players of Mythos:

They say it’s not so much the destination as it is the journey that’s important. We’re really hoping that’s the case around here these days. I can’t really believe I’m writing a post like this, but here we are faced with the unpleasant task of taking a hiatus from this crazy project. Unlike most games, Mythos has been running with our testing community for almost its whole life. I really feel like we’ve all done this together. And despite this bump in the road, I think we’ve succeeded wildly. This is undoubtedly the best game community I’ve ever seen. This is the best game development team in the world, in both Seattle and San Francisco. The things we’ve learned here, and with you all, will be with us forever.

PC gaming is changing, and I believe we’ve had a sneak preview with Mythos. With any luck, this will not be a long hiatus, and Mythos will be back. But even if it’s not, and even if we all move on, we’ve taken a lot of important steps forward. Game development is in many ways a continuum, and we all build on what came before. I know neither Travis, the great Mythos dev team, nor myself are planning on doing anything but make games into the future. So no matter what, we’ll pick up where we left off and you’ll be hearing from us shortly. We may not be the best business people on the planet , but we know how to make games. And once the dust settles here, that’s what we hope to get right back to doing as soon as possible. So until then, aux revoir Mythos community! It’s truly been a privilege to have experienced this with you.

Max Schaefer, your humble executive producer

Travelers of Uld,

We, the ancient elders of Uld are issuing this warning to all citizens and travelers. Hurry! The great darkness that once plagued Uld is returning. Everyone is ordered to close down their shops and prepare. We predict the when night is at its peak the darkness will arrive. The ancient elders of Uld will be leaving immediately in order to preserve the lore of this wonderful world. Citizens please prepare thyself and know that the elders will be back from their travels some day.

From the team:

We regretfully announce that on Friday, July 18, 2008 at 11:59 CST the world of Uld known as Mythos will be going on hiatus. On behalf of all of the Devs and Community team we want to say thank you to everyone for their support and assistance with Mythos Alpha and Beta testing and we will see you soon.

The Mythos Team

You can also see your wife. Yes, you'll be able to marry in the game, something you actually choose to do in the game. In this case the wife provided a few extra inventory slots and, because she'd given birth to a child, granted an experience bonus. Kind of a cold, impersonal kind of relationship, but whatever.

We were also able to collect runes we could use to develop our character's talent trees. Because our hero was a paladin, all of his talents and skills had to do with leadership and magic. We also had a huge assortment of equipped items that boosted our stats. Now, your champion doesn't go into battle himself; rather, his attributes provide significant boosts to all the units under his command.

On Friday, July 18th at 11:59 PM(CST) the forums will be shutting down. We would like to thank everyone for being a part of this wonderful community and we hope to see you all again soon.

"We've got two of the most compelling MMOs in the industry in development," said Riccitiello. The first title, based on the Warhammer property, will launch soon. "And the one that people are dying for us to talk to them about -- in partnership with Lucas, coming out of BioWare, which is, I think, quite possibly the most anticipated game, full stop, for the industry at the point when we get closer to telling you about it."

Does Riccitiello mean the oft rumored Knights of the Old Republic Online? "Yes," he said.

HanbitSoft has lashed out against Flagship Studios in the Korean press, in the wake of the recent turbulence at the San Francisco-based game development studio calling them “selfish and irresponsible”. Details are as follows:

Bill Roper and Directors of Flagship Studios Bear Responsibility

- HanbitSoft making good progress in securing intellectual property rights for Hellgate: London
- HanbitSoft is preparing for a lawsuit against Bill Roper and the founding directors of Flagship Studios.

Last weekend, Flagship Studios announced that former employees were fired and HanbitSoft mentioned that all measures were proceeding as planned to the benefit of players (in Korea) to ensure that continued service of Hellgate: London would be seamless despite the current problems at its development studio. In addition, HanbitSoft holds the executives of Flagship Studios fully responsible for the incident towards the rights and interests of the users and stakeholders, including shareholders and other parties involved. HanbitSoft is considering taking strong legal action against Flagship Studios in order to take them to task for their responsibilities.

It sure as hell doesn't sound like much fun to me. I tried to roll with this nonsense when the original Neverwinter Nights was released; I played as a Half-Elf Arcane Archer, and while it seemed to go well enough I suspect I simply had a higher tolerance for lower standards thanks to the game's overall mediocrity. When the sequel arrived, I decided I'd get more enjoyment out of it if I played a "better" class, rather than just whatever seemed cool at first glance, so I put some serious effort into various race and class combinations, trying one exotic build after another in a search for the perfect fantasy hero.

San Francisco, CA (July 14, 2008) -- Flagship Studios has announced today that despite rumors to the contrary, the company is still operating.

“It is with deep regret that I must announce that Flagship Studios has laid off most employees. However, the core management and founding team members are still at Flagship.” said Bill Roper, CEO of Flagship Studios. “The past five years have been an incredible experience for us, but unfortunately, we couldn’t sustain the size of the company any longer.”

Todd Howard, game director at Bethesda reckons gamers love freedom. “They feel more like the character they’re playing.” he explains. “They’re doing what they want to do and not what you, the designer, wants them to do. The more open, the more reactive you can make it, the better the player experience.” Rather than presenting us with a thrilling, scripted rollercoaster ride, titles such as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and the forthcoming Fallout 3 present us with vast worlds that we can inhabit, and decide what kind of character we want to be – whether it’s a Redguard bard with a penchant for alchemy or a lone Jet addict and his dog battling mutants in a post-nuclear wasteland.

While combined systems have, seemingly, failed to make a lasting impression, there have been experiments in other ways to solve the problem of introducing dynamism to conversation without re-introducing the issues of keywords. Taking a page from more casual games, like the Sims, some designers have tried experimenting with symbolic communication. In games such as the Sims, you don't choose specific dialogue. You choose tones and actions. Since these are simple, symbolic concepts like "laugh", "insult" and "shun" instead of true language, it is easier for the designer to build rules for interactions which can be combined by players into more complex interactions than dialogue trees.

HanbitSoft said they have been preparing various business models, required game development and other improvements to compensate for Flagship Studios’ crisis.

According to Kim Ki-young of HanbitSoft, he said that ‘if we can take intellectual property rights of relevant products from Flagship Studios, we have confidence to develop the games ourselves based on T3 Entertainment’s advanced technology’ and ‘we believe we can service fresh and interesting games to online gamers by getting intellectual property rights and development. This crisis could be an opportunity for us’

LONDON – United Kingdom - July 11th, 2008 – SouthPeak Games today announced its open-world role-playing hit game will get a new release on PC with the upcoming Two Worlds: Epic Edition. The expanded game will be available in August 2008.

"Two Worlds has seen unprecedented popularity, not only upon its original release, but in the months since it has gained even more fans," said Melanie Mroz, CEO of SouthPeak Games. "Epic Edition collects everything available for the world of Antaloor into one package so those who have yet to explore its rich and vibrant lands can now do so in its entirety."

Two Worlds: Epic Edition will contain the original game and the add-ons "Tainted Blood" and "Curse of Souls", putting the massive world of Antaloor and countless hours of adventuring into one tremendous package. The original Two Worlds gave players a huge world and hundreds of adventures to undertake. The expanded content of Epic Edition adds over 70 online quests, eight new multiplayer maps, an innovative player-versus-player challenge where opponents battle to control magical orbs within a variety of arenas, and introduces the town of Tharnburg where players can train their warriors in various skills and challenge other players to combat in the Gladiator District's huge arena.

Two Worlds: Epic Edition is rated PEGI 16+. For more information about Two Worlds or SouthPeak Games, please visit http://www.2-worlds.com or http://www.southpeakgames.eu.

Flagships's Community Manager, Taylor Balbi, has revealed, through sources, that all Ping0 and Flagship Studios staff have been made redundant. Employees were notified at a company meeting and subsequently informed that the offices will be officially closed on Saturday. Balbi went on to reveal that three of the studio's top brass dug into their own pockets to provide 30 days of pay to all employees.

Word of the studio closure reached Korean distributor HanbitSoft, leading to the release of a statement regarding intellectual property control and the subsequent clarification by their American lawyers that included the following sentence: "It is unfortunate that Flagship turned down additional investments HanbitSoft offered to make that would have allowed it to keep its doors open."

What, for you, makes a good story?

Providing the player with interesting companions and characters who react to the player’s actions I think is more important than a linear storyline. In most cases, I feel the best way is to allow the player the pieces to build a story in their own mind as opposed to forcing a storyline on the player. If you give the player a great villain and some companions that serve as good sounding boards for the player’s actions, that can present a far more effective gaming story in the long run - players would prefer to explain to others how their character dealt with a certain situation or dealt with a certain NPC rather than have the exact same experience that was imposed on them as someone else who played the same title.

Also, one aspect to a good story (in games), is that the game needs to end and achieve some sort of resolution. Obviously, single-player RPGs hold the monopoly in this, but this is something I think MMOs have the potential to solve depending on how they structure their quest and story mechanics.

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (July 9, 2008) – Leading video game developer BioWare®, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced that its registered fan community is now over four million user accounts strong and still growing actively. With an average of 38,000 new accounts being created every month, the fan community is thriving with active, vocal members. While sites such as Friendster and Xanga host an audience of 1MM and 2MM respectively1, the BioWare community brings together 4MM2 people to chat, exchange ideas, discuss their favorite games, provide critical feedback to the BioWare development teams and more. BioWare continues to support and nurture its enthusiastic fan base through open communication with BioWare’s development team, and by providing exclusive content to registered community members.

Established in 1996 by co-founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk, BioWare began promoting the idea of creating and managing a community behind Baldur’s Gate™ on 3rd party newsgroups and chat rooms. Then in 2001, BioWare launched its own forums with the release of Neverwinter Nights™ and began formally collecting community registrations. By 2003, BioWare hit the 1 million user account mark and it has continued to support the community through meaningful communication, features and content. With the release of Mass Effect™ for the PC and Xbox 360™ videogame and entertainment system, and the highly anticipated upcoming release of Dragon Age™, an epic role-playing game in which BioWare returns to its roots to deliver a compelling Dark Heroic fantasy epic, as well as other exciting projects on the horizon such as an as-yet unannounced MMO from BioWare Austin, BioWare’s community usership has risen to over four million registered members.

The BioWare mission is to deliver the best narrative-driven, emotionally compelling games in the world and the studio family has been recognized for this achievement in award-winning games such as Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic™, Jade Empire™ and Mass Effect. With some of its fans now over a decade of community membership, the BioWare engaged community has been an integral part in achieving that goal.

“It’s great to be able to talk directly with our fans – this is a cornerstone of BioWare’s success, past, present and future,” said Ray Muzyka, BioWare CEO and co-founder, and EA General Manager and Vice President. “We are proud to have created such a comfortable environment for BioWare’s millions of fans from all over the world - and we truly value their feedback.”

For more information, visit http://www.bioware.com/4million. To become a BioWare community member, please visit http://forums.bioware.com.

GameSpy: Would it be possible for people to automatically get licenses for online features of D&D books and supplements that they've purchased in physical form?

Collins: We're not able to link purchase of a specific product to ownership of anything digital. We looked at it for a long time, we really wanted to make something like that work, but the realities of the technology and the retail world prevented that from being viable. The fraud that we were inviting from that, the dissatisfaction of players who buy a book from their retailer only to find out that somebody's swiped the code from that and taken the digital content... we were going to be driving retailers nuts. We ultimately realized that wasn't the best way to get customers the content they want.

Our goal right now is to be primarily a subscription-driven model, at least in the short run, but we will definitely be having separate digital objects for purchase. How, exactly, those are going to work for subscribers versus non-subscribers is still being worked on.

Game designers, who 20 years ago could rely simply on a fun gameplay mechanic, have been replaced by world-builders. Today's biggest games have unique architecture, precise physics, history, culture and creatures beyond imagination. Titles like Mass Effect and Halo have even spawned entire novels that take place in their unique game worlds.

On why “Diablo III” isn’t an MMO:

Sams: When we’re deciding what type of game we’re going to make, we look at what the gameplay experience is going to be. We talked to the team a lot and say, “What is it you want to play? What is it that you want to make?” And we really felt like “Diablo” is a franchise that is very cooperative in the manner in which you play it. We felt like the gameplay experience that we had delivered historically with being in a non-persistent world was the right way to do it for this particular product. I think a lot of people expected us to say that this is going to be an MMO — maybe an obvious choice in a lot of people’s minds. But really, the bottom line is we thought the right game to make was “Diablo III” in the way that we’ve announced it.

During a special meeting on Tuesday, stockholders approved the $18.9 billion Activision Blizzard deal. The business combination between Activision and Blizzard parent Vivendi Games is the biggest the industry has seen.

The combination is expected to close on July 9, and will be known as Activision Blizzard, putting under the same umbrella franchises including Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Diablo.

Considering the potential market for games that play like interactive television dramas or sitcoms, it is likely only a matter of time until the Western games industry hits upon a recipe for a wildly successful game based almost entirely around character interactions.

Games like Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic have proven that there is definitely an interest in extensive NPC interaction gameplay, and the surprise success of the Phoenix Wright series has shown that gamers are even ready for the visual novel.

By taking cues from past techniques, NPC relationships in the games of tomorrow have the opportunity to be deeper and more immersive than ever before.