Gamespot hung out at GDC and interviewed a few people. Marcin Iwinski is interviewed on the future of his studio.

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CD Projekt Co-Founder Marcin Iwinski talks to GameSpot's Danny O'Dwyer about the success of The Witcher 3, the hype surrounding Cyberpunk 2077 and the future of their independent studio.

@Gamespot they interview Hideo Kojima and ask what he's working on.

Congratulations on getting out and starting your new company. It's been about two months since the new Kojima Productions studio was announced. What kind of progress has been made since the day of the announcement, in terms of hiring and getting off the ground?

Kojima: In theory--and ideally--you put together some staff, you look for facilities, and then you start working on a project, planning and testing, but...I'm doing all of this in parallel. Many people say, "Your games are great but they take a while to come out," so I'm trying to change that.

How do you decide what to work on first? You have the world in front of you: how do you choose the right project?

Originally, after working for 30 years in one company, I was thinking of taking a one-year hiatus. But if I don't keep creating, I will definitely get rusty. So I was thinking of making not a blockbuster, but something more edgy, maybe a small movie. That was my original thought process.

"Many people say, "Your games are great but they take a while to come out," so I'm trying to change that." -- Kojima

However, after talking with several friends and fans, a lot of people told me, "Everyone is expecting a lot from your next project, and it has to be a big one. Something that goes over a game that earned perfect scores; something that goes beyond that. Don't get derailed."

So I gathered my thoughts and considered the situation, and I decided that I would work on an edgy project. There are many things that I want to do, but I didn't have to think too much about which one I wanted to work on; it kind of came naturally, what I'm working on now.

@Gamespot they announce that the Writers Guild Award goes to Rise of the Tomb Raider. It beats out other nominees Witcher 3, Pillars of Eternity, Assassins Creed Syndicate.

And the winner is...Rise of the Tomb Raider. Square Enix's action-adventure game took home the "outstanding achievement" award for video game writing at last night's Writer's Guild Awards. It beat out The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, and Pillars of Eternity for the honor.

Games were judged by a panel of Video Game Writers Caucus members and/or Writers Guild members from the video game field. Below are the official writing credits for Rise of the Tomb Raider:

Rise of the Tomb Raider:

Lead narrative designer: John Stafford
Narrative designer: Cameron Suey
Lead writer: Rhianna Pratchett
Additional writer: Philip Gelatt

Last year's winner was Naughty Dog's The Last of Us: Left Behind, written by Neil Druckmann. It beat out Alien: Isolation, Assassin's Creed Unity, and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - Freedom Cry.

Rise of the Tomb Raider was released for Xbox One and Xbox 360 in November 2015. The PC edition arrived in January, while a PlayStation 4 version will come out later this year.

Beyond that, Square Enix has suggested a follow-up is also in the works.

GameSpot talks about picking stuff up in games.  Are weight limits a good system?

In a recent talk, Ken Levine said that his next game would be influenced by Fallout, Dark Souls, and System Shock.  It's also apparently not AAA.  Apparently.

Speaking tonight during a Take This charity livestream event, BioShock creator Ken Levine talked a little bit more about his upcoming game, which remains largely a mystery.

He was asked what his influences were and proceeded to list off a "broad range of influences." These include not only first-person franchises (his new game is first-person) but other genres, too.

 

He said the new game is inspired in part by Dark Souls, System Shock, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Civilization, and Dying Light (the game he was playing during the livestream). But don't necessarily expect Levine's next game to closely resemble any of those games. Instead, the game will be more "in the realm" of some of the earlier games that he worked on, the developer explained.

He also made it clear that naming influences for the new game is "complicated." That's because he's not yet sure how to best describe it. In addition, iteration on the project remains ongoing, so it's possible things will change before Levine and company talk about the game in a more official capacity.

Also during the stream, Levine made it clear that his new game is not not a huge AAA production. This tallies with what we heard before, as the game was initially described as a "smaller, more entrepreneurial" project.

More information.

Gamespot has an interesting video with the founder of the Museum of Arts and Digital Entertainment that shows the difficulties in preserving games over time and the reliance of games on online services.

Thanks jhwisner.

Gamespot has new interview with  EX-Director of Dragon Age Dan Tudge about his new studio n-Space, and try to get details about his new unannounced RPG game.

What is n-Space working on, exactly? Unfortunately, while I couldn't suss out exact details from n-Space President Dan Tudge or CEO Dan O'Leary (the full reveal is coming on Feb. 12), they're committed to the idea that this game, when it's finally unveiled, will wow people, both for the series that it's attached to and because of how it will satisfy hardcore RPG fans. "That's certainly my goal," said Tudge, "to fill a void in the market as a hardcore fan of RPGs. I love my RPGs, so I think that there are some things as a fan and a consumer that I haven't been able to do, and I think that we're really doing some unique things that will be really exciting."

O'Leary boasts that "we're doing this game for us, first and foremost. It's kind of the one that we've earned having done everything before it. It's only a possibility because we made a huge commitment to it."

The RPG in question has been in development for over two years and is n-Space's first independent project. Rather than being tied to a publisher for the sake of funding, n-Space has teamed up with Digital Extremes, a studio with experience in the BioShock and Unreal Tournament series. Warframe, it's most recent product, developed and distributed independently, is what lured n-Space into bed; that and a chunk of financial investment that's made n-Space's project a reality. Beyond funding, Digital Extreme will share its expertise as an independent, guiding n-Space along the way.

Have you ever wondered what you should give a person who likes independent games? Wonder no more, since Gamespot has made a gift guide. The first one is called Hohokum,
the second one is called Swapper where you're create copies of yourself and use them to solve puzzles etc.  You can watch all the games here.

Researchers from Oxford University have found, in a new study, that if children play videogames for an hour or less pr. day, it is actually good for them.

A new study from researchers at Oxford University found that video games can be good for children, but only if they play for around an hour or less per day. The study, published today in Pediatrics, found that children who played games for a few hours each week were better adjusted, had fewer conduct problems, and better empathized with others than those who played no games at all, according to a breakdown of the report from Today and BBC.

MCV brings news that Gamespot has been hit by a round of layoffs:

CBS-owned online gaming publication GameSpot has suffered an unspecified number of layoffs, former employees and the company itself have confirmed. Ex-GameSpot reviewer Carolyn Petit posted a series of posts on her Twitter account detailing her recent exit from the site. "Today was my last day at GameSpot. It was a dream to work there, and I'm very proud of the work I did," Petit said.

According to Gamespot, Oddworld's creator Lorne Lanning has this to say about losing the risk of losing net neutrality for games:

"These are multinational, enormous corporations and if they get their way, they could stifle this indie community in the media. They could start really clamping the dial and taking away the revenue that we've finally been able to find that we can get, that allows us to keep going... Today on a $10 product, we get $7. Well what if $2 of that has to start going to AT&T or Comcast? That could very easily happen."

Do you agree with mr. Lanning?

Gamespot announces that The Last of us has won its people's choice awards beating Bioshock Infinite:

The Last of Us wins the GameSpot People's Choice game of the year award with an overwhelming 27% of the vote. In a distant second was BioShock: Infinite with 15% and Grand Theft Auto V close behind with 14%.

From Gamespot comes the news that a man in New York has about 11,000 videogames.

He says this:

"I have games on cartridge, laser disc. I have VHS-based games, cassette-based games," Thomasson said. In addition to traditional consoles like Xboxes and PlayStations, Thomasson's collection includes rare systems like the Casio Loopy and Apple's Pippin console.

Link to original article, first featured in The Associated Press.

Kotaku also has the story.

Gamespot is giving readers the chance to nominate their top game from this year's E3 expo and so far The Witcher 2 is at the number one slot for PC games. You can also vote for Deus X 3: Human Revolution (coming in at a respectable  #9 right now) or any of a multitude of other games if you're into that sort of thing. You can find the Top Ten list here, as well a full alphabetical listing of games to nominate.

GameSpot covers a GDC panel that saw Obsidian, BioWare and Disney discussing developing licensed games, which turns out to be a fairly dry subject:

Urquhart has experience working with Dungeons & Dragons, Star Trek, and more, and told developers the best things they can do is ask lots of questions about the license. In working with Forgotten Realms, he said the developers made sure to ask about everything they could do with the world, from blowing up a city to having specific characters use one weapon or another.

Nicolai followed up on that point by urging developers of licensed games to still be creative, to try to do something new in the universe or push boundaries no matter how firmly established it is.

Well, we've had our "PC gaming is dying" story for the week, and next comes another report linking video games and violent behaviour. Gamespot  posts an article discussing the results of a study by a University of Michigan, U.S.A. professor that identifies violent video games as "a public health threat.": 

The most recent state laws [in the US] attempting to regulate the sale of violent games were overturned as unconstitutional, in large part because the states couldn't convince judges that exposure to violent games incited violent behavior in children. Had they been able to do so, a judge could have ruled that the government had a compelling interest in limiting the free speech protections afforded games, making such content-based laws constitutional.

But as long as politicians like Hillary Clinton and Sam Brownback continue to take the game industry to task for games like Manhunt 2, research on the effects of violent games on kids will be a hot-button topic for gaming advocates and detractors alike. The latest lightning rod in the debate is an article by University of Michigan professor L. Rowell Huesmann in a supplement to this month's Journal of Adolescent Health.

In a review of existing research titled "The Impact of Electronic Media Violence: Scientific Theory and Research," Huesmann presented findings from a variety of scientific papers published over the last 44 years (many of them his own). Ultimately, he concluded that there is compelling evidence to suggest exposure to violent TV programs, films, and video games increases the likelihood of a person acting violently, both in the short term and the long term...

...Finally, Huesmann compared the effect of media violence on aggressive behavior to the effects "of many other recognized threats to public health." He said the correlation between the two was nearly as strong as that between smoking and lung cancer, and stronger than the correlations between condom use and sexually transmitted HIV, exposure to lead and IQ scores in children, and homework and academic achievement.

Gamespot has a short article that talks about the intention of the Writer's Guild of America, an organization for screen and television writers, to offer it's first ever Videogame Writing Award at  its next annual awards program for outstanding achievements in film, TV, or radio writing:

Game developers have increasingly stressed the importance of having good stories to complement canny gameplay for years. And while those efforts might be appreciated by players of tautly scripted role-playing games or especially engaging action games, they've gone largely unheralded by the non-gaming world.

That's set to change, as the Writers Guild of America has announced plans to give out its first Videogame Writing Award at next year's Writers Guild Awards, scheduled for February 9 in Los Angeles. Championed by the guild's New Media Caucus, the award is intended "to encourage storytelling excellence in videogames, to improve the status of writers, and to begin to encourage uniform standards."

 

In a GameSpot feature titled Behind the Games, the legendary Richard Garriott has been interviewed.  I haven't had the time to watch it all but the series is intended to go "behind the games" and hopefully isn't all about his current MMO, Tabula Rasa.

Thanks, Alrik!

GameSpot has news of what seems a patently silly idea to me called Ambient Quest, an experimental game in development by an academic from Wales.  I'll let this paragraph speak for itself:

In Ambient Quest, players wear a pedometer attached to their belt or pocket, which counts the number of steps that they take. For every 300 steps, players get one move in the PC role-playing game. Each move opens up more squares on the map, and opportunities to find food, treasure, or fight monsters to gain experience. Eyles commented, "Players' real actions in the real world effect an avatar in a virtual world. You can either change your actions in the real world to help your avatar. Or not."