Does reading Level Up sometimes feel like drinking water from a fire hose? Or surfing a tsunami? Does it ever give you the sensation that you've been buried under an avalanche of words, words, words? (Even the headline above is rather long, isn't it?) Yes, we know that the dizzying length of certain Level Up posts can read more like a manifesto or a jeremiad than a blog entry. For you, we offer the occasional feature "Things You May Have Missed," which will cull compelling excerpts from our more voluminous posts.

This entry comes from the September 17th-20th edition of our Vs. Mode exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, wherein we discussed the games BioShock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. During our email conversation, Totilo pointed out that the vast majority of videogames don't have memorable landmarks or locations, an observation that has already generated discussion among a couple of our fellow bloggers. We replied that most games also lack memorable openings, and suggested that perhaps the two problems were connected, which led to an interesting chat about the ways in which sequels manage the abilities and the gear that a player character had in the previous game.

To read our summary, click on the link below.

Does reading Level Up sometimes feel like drinking water from a fire hose? Or surfing a tsunami? Does it ever give you the sensation that you've been buried under an avalanche of words, words, words? Yes, we know that the dizzying length of certain Level Up posts can read more like a manifesto or a jeremiad than a blog entry. So for you, we're launching the occasional feature "Things You May Have Missed," which will cull compelling excerpts from our more voluminous posts. Today's entry comes from our September 24th post, titled "Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for August 2007." In it, we (Game Head host Geoff Keighley, Game Informer editor-in-chief Andy McNamara and Level Up blogger N'Gai Croal) discussed which console games might underperform during this year's overstuffed holiday season. Here, we distill that exchange to its essence for a quicker read. And as a bonus, we're including the list of the five games each participant believes are being "sent to die."

To read our summary, click on the link below.

1. NOA...Why, Reggie, why?
2. WSJ...catches a brick from VH1
3. XXX...360 webcam hijinks lead to arrest
4. VR!...More developers making virtual worlds
5. Wii...Zack and Wiki producer speaks
6. WOW...Two wives: one virtual, one real
7. HP!...demos new handheld concept
8. RND...'Leftie girls are easy.' Really? 

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved

Level Up has just confirmed with an Activision representative that Bizarre Creations does in fact own the intellectual property rights to the Geometry Wars series of games. "Bizarre owns Geometry Wars, so that's the property that comes with the deal," the rep told us. This means that whille Sierra will continue to publish Geometry Wars: Galaxies this fall, as previously agreed to, any subsequent Geometry Wars games will be owned and published by Activision as part of its acquisition of Bizarre Creations, which was announced earlier today. As for the other franchises that Bizarre has been working on in recent years—Project Gotham Racing (for Microsoft), The Club (for Sega) and Boom Boom Rocket (for Electronic Arts)—Level Up has separately confirmed that the rights to those games are not held by Bizarre, but rather by their respective publishers.

1. MP3...Retro speaks about Metroid Dread
2. GRR...Halo 3 wins some, loses some
3. VSM...Silicon Knights vs. Epic Games--fight!
4. RND...Red Ring of Death for Amsterdam? 

Bizarre Creations and Microsoft Game Studios' Project Gotham Racing 4

You want to get Capone? Here's how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way. And that's how you get Capone. Now, do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?
--Jim Malone to Elliott Ness in "The Untouchables"

Having just gotten word that U.K. developer Bizarre Creations has been acquired by Activision, we immediately asked ourselves, who wins and who loses? For the two companies involved, it's obviously a good marriage. Like Katharine Hepburn's oft-cited quote about the mutually beneficial relationship of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers--"Fred gave Ginger class, and Ginger gave Fred sex"--Bizarre gives Activision instant credibility in racing games, a genre where the Santa Monica-based company has been more or less absent (class), and Bizarre gets access to Activision's deep pockets, rather than continue the hand to mouth existence that plagues many independent developers (sex.)

For Bizarre's current publishing partners--Microsoft (Project Gotham Racing 4), Sega (The Club), Sierra (Geometry Wars Galaxies) and Electronic Arts (Boom Boom Rocket)--the impact is less clear. Bizarre has stated that it will finish and support those projects that began under its previous deals, so no-one will be left holding the bag. We doubt that Microsoft will continue the Project Gotham Racing series without Bizarre, given how under-marketed PGR4 has been. It's also worth noting that the franchise was greenlit before the original Xbox launched, back when Microsoft couldn't be assured of widespread third-party support. With third party support no longer in question, Microsoft Game Studios may well choose to either double down on Forza or put its eggs in another basket. With regards to Sega and Sierra, we'll have to wait until the smoke clears to offer any informed speculation on that.

The case of Electronic Arts, however, is considerably more interesting.

1. EGO...trip: scold us, diss us, love us
2. MIT..pranks Harvard using Master Chief
3. UMM...This name is just asking for trouble
4. SAD...Anti-game gadfly shoots self in foot
5. FCC...outs the Rock Band wireless guitar
6. RND...Why Nintendo was right after all

To see a larger version of the image shown above, click here. 

Recently, I was fortunate enough to ride N'Gai's coattails and sneak into a preview night for Halo 3--a choice invite that would make my fellow twelve-year-olds-at-heart quietly curse my name. To be honest, it was a bittersweet experience.

When you last heard from me, I described how my love for my Xbox 360 was sliding down from unconditional by Microsoft essentially admitting that something wasn't right with the design. It is remarkable that a leading DIY solution to fixing a 360 stricken with the red ring of death is to swaddle it in towels: swaddling is how you make a baby fall asleep, not how you should have to revive home electronics. Now that I had shot my mouth off here on the permalinks of Level Up, I feared my prediction of my Xbox shuffling off its digital coil would come to pass. It flat-lined, of course. At first I was resigned, mildly annoyed that I would have to wait to play the new Ayn-Rand-with-guns-and-creepy-little-vampire-girls epic BioShock--but looking at a calendar and seeing September 25th only weeks away was no-scope shot to the head: I was going to miss Halo 3.

1. EGO...trip: Level Up's play, posts attract attention
2. GBU...Halo 3: the good, the bad and the ugly
3. MTV...helps you correctly pronounce "Kratos"
4. NOA...drops the h.a.m.m.e.r. on NSFW blogger
5. BOL...locks! Sex Pistols in Guitar Hero III
6. RND...Voyeuristic J-pix, revisited 

One of the cherished traditions for people in and around the North American videogame industry is the mid-to-late month release of the previous month's sales figures for both hardware and software. Much like Hollywood with the weekend box office or the music industry with SoundScan, this data, compiled by the Port Washington, NY-based NPD Group, is the subject of much scrutiny, speculation and analysis as everyone tries to figure out What It All Means.Having engaged in many phone, email and IM back-and-forths with various people over the NPDs, as they're generally referred to, we decided to bring some of those often unheard discussions to light with our occasional feature, Monday Morning Quarterback. Our returning opponent is the prolific journalist and TV host Geoff Keighley, pitting his BlackBerry-fueled insights against our Palm-enabled observations. But this month, we not only have a special guest who joins us as a color comentator--who could it be?--we're also introducing a new concept, sparked by an offhand comment of Keighley's: the Dead Pool. Some excerpts:

Special Guest: Xbox 360 should be killing out there, but it isn't. Nintendo is making money for Nintendo like always, and Sony is still figuring out how to start the engine. Thankfully, this holiday season is going to bring lots of fantastic games to the market, but unless Sony does something quick, Microsoft and Nintendo will reap all the rewards. Which puts Sony in a bit of a pickle, because its games already feel slightly rushed to market (see: Lair and Heavenly Sword), and it has put itself in a position to hurry titles out this holiday season to try and stay competitive (which is never the right answer in my book; make the game great, then figure out which quarter it goes in, not the other way around).

Geoff Keighley: Actually we should talk about that phrase for a second--"sent to die." I read it on a forum a few months ago when gamers were discussing which games won't be getting a fair shake because of the overcrowded market. Let me ask you: which games do you think we might need to add to our death pool for the holidays? I'm particularly worried about EA's Army of Two and Midway's BlackSite: Area 51--two games that should be fun to play, but may get lost.  And what about Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed? Is it really going to post huge sales numbers? Given the awards and number of times the trailers have been downloaded there's huge interest in the game. But will that translate into a BioShock-sized month one for the game in November? Or will Assassin's suffer the same fate as many other Ubi games that are critical grand slams but only end up delivering solid doubles in terms of sales. I thought this would be a huge year for Ubisoft, but with Splinter Cell slipping to 2008 (and the quality of Haze an open question mark), a lot is resting on Assassin's.

N'Gai Croal: You're playing it safe with such obvious choices. I'm going to go out on a limb and nominate the console versions of Half-Life 2: The Orange Box. You might think I'm crazy, but hear me out. HL2:TOB might be the most value ever packed into a single case: Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. I bet if Valve could have figured out a way to toss in a gravity gun and a crowbar, they'd have done so. But by throwing so much into the package, HL2:TOB comes across as completely unfocused, especially compared to its chief competitors like Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, so positioning this product becomes a major challenge. Especially for a franchise that's still primarily identified as a PC game. I find myself wondering if Valve might have been better off removing Team Fortress 2 from the Orange Box and releasing it in January or February as a separate game, with a short "Dirty Dozen"-style campaign mode that would leverage the phenomenal character work that they've been doing in their Pixar-esque promotional trailers.

Click on the link below to uncover the identity of our first guest QB, and to read our exchange in its entirety.

 

Beyond3D: Nintendo released no information about the Wii beyond codenames for the chips (Broadway for the CPU and Hollywood for the GPU) and the process node that the chips were built on (90 nanometer, the same as their contemporaries). Through some lengthy investigations, we can now say for certain that there was no major leap in either performance or functionality compared to the GameCube. Instead, Nintendo decided to define the Wii entirely by the new controller....To summarize, while the PS3 and the Xbox 360 are both at least an order of magnitude faster than their predecessors, the Wii has the processing power of one-and-a-half GameCubes with no noteworthy increases in functionality. This was done for two reasons: backwards compatibility with the GameCube and, more importantly, the very low cost. Developers have even told us that the transition guide (for GameCube developers moving to the Wii) is ten pages long and contains only very minor changes.

To read Beyond3D's analysis in its entirety, please click on the link below.

 

Note: This email exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo originally ran on N'Gai Croal's Level Up and MTV's Multiplayer blog, in four separate installments, from September 17th-20th 2007. We now present it here in its entirety, under a single permalink, for easier printing, emailing and archival purposes.

1. EGO...trip: Will our heresy ever be forgiven?
2. OUT...Halo 3 reviews are streaming in
3. JAM...Fret Nice, the guitar-based platformer
4. HMM...Do games need landmarks?
5. BOO...Anti-game activist targets Halo 3
6. HAH...How to punish gold farming
7. RND...Free at last, free at last

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

In Round 3 of our Vs. Mode exchange on Bioshock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, which is also being posted on Totilo's blog MTV News: Multiplayer, Totilo sang the praises of Metroid Prime 3's new risk-and-reward Hyper Mode ability, and gave BioShock mixed marks for its handling of boss battles (thumbs up on the Big Daddies, thumbs down on the game's final boss.) We offered up some suggestions on how BioShock's excellent "moral choice" mechanic could been woven more fully into the fabric of the game. But towards the end of our reply, we decided to set up us the bomb, as the kids say, with our assertion that "The mechanics that are at the heart of Metroid, most notably backtracking and scouring the environment for hidden passages, don't translate well to first-person gaming." Surely that would get a rise out of the normally even-tempered Totilo.

Alas, Totilo is not only a scholar, but also a gentleman, and far too gracious to take our crude bait. In today's Final Round, he uses our statement as a jumping-off point ro reflect on what's been lost and what's been gained in the transition from 2-D gaming to 3-D gaming. But rest assured, Metroid Prime 3 lovers, he also takes the time to forcefully defend the game from our scurrilous charges--and get in a few digs at the end. We extend our thoughts on what's problematic about Metroid Prime as a 3-D first-person adventure; reveal our favorite boss battle of all time; and explain why BioShock's decision to handle the Rescuing and Harvesting of the Little Sisters in a menu screen rather through the game's more interactive mechanics was not only the wiser choice, but also the more artistic decision. Some excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: The backtracking [in Metroid Prime 3] has been fine. I just finished the game at 100% completion. I backtracked plenty. In fact, I chose to backtrack near the end when I didn't have to and am now made that I overwrote my save file and can't go back and re-visit parts of the game some more. To help me backtrack and find hidden passages I used the plentiful cues programmed into the game, including: strong art design that made most rooms uniquely memorable, a 3-D map that worked well enough for me to never get lost the way I did in Halo two weekends ago, a scan visor that marked all but one of the vulnerable areas I ever needed to bomb to find hidden stuff, a humming sound effect that played in any room where a power-up still lingered, and--BIG SPOILER WARNING!--a satellite station I activated late in the game that clearly marked any remaining items on my map as well as an x-ray visor that let me see through the architecture of any given room in order to spot power-ups and enemy weak points.

N'Gai Croal: The other challenge the Metroid Prime titles face is that first-person shooters have largely defined the first-person gaming experience, and they've done so in a way that's detrimental to the gameplay that Retro was translating from 2-D to 3-D. In a first-person shooter, much of the action takes place on the same plane as the player character, so my attention is primarily focused straight ahead. Enemies are rarely below me, unless I've taken the high ground; if I haven't, the high ground is where I'll find enemies armed with snipers rifles, rocket launchers and other ranged weapons. So in an FPS, whenever I'm looking up and off in the distance, I'm usually looking for enemy armed with one of those pieces of lethal hardware. In Metroid Prime, secret passageways and power-ups could be hidden anywhere. I might have to look high, low or in a corner. I might have to go to a room, realize I don't have something I need, complete a fetch quest, then go back to that room, aided only by a map that is as much foe as it is friend.

To read this Final Round in its entirety, click on the link below.

BioShock, from 2K Boston/Australia and 2K Games

In Round 2 of our Vs. Mode exchange on Bioshock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, which is also being posted on Totilo's blog MTV News: Multiplayer, Totilo explained why he finds Metroid more thrilling than BioShock: its well-paced approach to gradually empowering his character. For our part, we pouted over BioShock's almost-but-not-quite-subtle favoring of Little Sister Rescuers like Totilo over Little Sister Harvesters like ourselves (oh, the inhumanity!) and questioned why the game, despite its stated theme of servitude vs. free will, failed to give us a meaningful choice following the game's, uh, shocking revelation.

In today's installment, Totilo pokes fun at our temper tantrum before pointing out how BioShock's morality system could have gone much further, then swerves into an insightful discussion of how both games handle bosses. We similarly took a page from Totilo's book and seized the opportunity to play backseat game designer for a day, offering wholly unsolicited suggestions about how BioShock's moral choices could have been more firmly embedded in the game's DNA. And last but not least, we finally confessed our love-hate relationship with the entire concept of the Metroid Prime series as a 3-D first-person game. Some excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: Speaking of empowerment, one of the key abilities you gain early in Metroid Prime 3 is Hyper Mode. With the easily reachable press of the plus button, this allows the player to switch into a super-charged mode that displays the game world in black and white and multiplies the power of their weapon. The Hyper Mode boost is temporary. It is either exhausted after the player fires a few well-placed shots or it turns toxic, forcing the player to rapidly fire in any direction to expel the Hyper energy, lest the toxicity kill game's heroine Samus. This mechanic may well be a first for Nintendo games, which traditionally have allowed players to get a boost without worrying that such boost--a Fire Flower, a Donkey Kong hammer, a Master Sword--has a drawback. The Hyper Mode power comes with a price: potentially fatal overdose. (So maybe that's why Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto had a cool reaction to the FPS overdose game Haze at this year's E3.) I like the system. It adds a new strategic twist to Metroid Prime combat. Given how much we've been discussing game morality, I think you could also view it as a very light addition of moral gravity to the Metroid universe. It's a mild maturation of the common video game idea that every new pick-up is an instrument for good and that every new trick should be played without fear of consequence. It makes me think of my second-least favorite aspect of BioShock: the scene in the beginning of the game when the player-hero comes upon his first Plasmid updgrade. He spots a syringe sparkling with power and unquestioningly stabs it into his arm... and then gets a great power. Only in video games, people.

N'Gai Croal: Retro Studios deserves every bit of praise for its yeoman's work in transforming the Metroid experience into 3-D first-person. But for me--and I fully realize this is something of a minority opinion--I've always believed that there was something fundamentally misguided about the decision to rebirth Metroid in this manner. The mechanics that are at the heart of Metroid, most notably backtracking and scouring the environment for hidden passages, don't translate well to first-person gaming. I'm generally not a fan of backtracking in 3-D games, but that goes double for first-person shooters. (Yes, I know that the Metroid Prime series has been described as first-person adventures.) When I play an FPS, there are two cues I use to determine whether I'm headed in the right direction: if I see enemies ahead, or if I see a new area. It's all about forward movement, so having to backtrack throws me off completely. With the 2-D Metroids, I could much more easily maintain a mental map of where I'd been, so backtracking wasn't a problem. And if I ever got lost, there was a simple one-to-one visual correspondence with the games map. The 3-D Metroid Prime, unfortunately, compounds my backtracking difficulties with its 3-D map, which you yourself acknowledge is confusing in our first Vs. Mode Gaiden. And since Metroid is about steadily developing one's mastery over an environment that is not completely navigable at the start, Retro couldn't simply eliminate backtracking and design the game around a simple proceed from point A to point B. The end result is two great tastes that don't quite taste great together.

To read Round 3 in its entirety, click on the link below.

In the span of time during which Level Up and MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo conducted our Vs. Mode debate of BioShock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (which is also being posted on Totilo's blog MTV News: Multiplayer), we occasionally instant messaged each other to discuss some of the finer points of both titles. Two of those IM exchanges were interesting enough that we decided to present them to our readers as sidebars to the main event--hence the title Vs. Mode Gaiden. In our second and final installment of VMG, Totilo's question about the reflection of Samus Aran's face in Metroid Prime 3 spawned a back-and-forth meditation on how developers handle expressing the hero or heroine's personality in first-person games.

Totilo: Snap judgment: do you like the permanent reflection of her face when you're in scan mode?

Croal: I don't have a strong reaction to it one way or another. If I had to think about it, I'd say that I liked the more infrequent reflection of her face in previous Metroid Primes.

Totilo: Would have been funny if you could see her rolling her eyes during boring briefings. Or winking at some of the soldiers or something

Croal: It would. But like 2K Bostralia, they seem intent on Samus being transparent rather than clearly defined, more avatar than character. They might get away with it once or twice, but the idea is they want us to feel like we are she. Your idea is better suited to Duke Nukem Forever--if it ever ships--or Serious Sam.

Totilo: My idea was a joke, too

Croal: It's an interesting idea, though, having characters who are that devoid of personality as expressed through voice or facial expressions. I was thinking about it on the train to work, and debating whether it was a good idea or not. Even Master Chief has a voice, if not a face, but BioShock and Metroid Prime 3 have opted for the Half-Life 2 route, in which all you are is what you do and how you're animated. I personally don't find that makes a game more immersive, but the flip side is developers being encouraged to create stronger characterizations through dialogue and facial expressions, something that many developers--particularly those making FPS games--haven't shown themselves to be good at doing.

To read the rest of our dialogue, click on the link below.

1. EGO...trip: BioTroid Vs. Mode gets noticed 
2. MMO...Make your own online world, here
3. Wii...Super Smash Bros online, criticized
4. SUB...liminal messages in Mario box art?
5. PSN...PixelJunk Racers creator speaks
6. SDF...Sony Defense Force actually anti-Sony?
7. HMM...Mass Effect's bisextraterrestrial romance
8. WTF...Master Chief's ballet dance
9. PSP...this game will be ours, we swear
10. RND...Trying to avoid the sophomore slump

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption screenshot from Retro Studios and Nintendo

In Round 1 of our Vs. Mode exchange on Bioshock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, which is also being posted on Totilo's blog MTV News: Multiplayer, both Totilo and the Level Up staff praised Bioshock's central moral dilemma: whether to rescue or harvest the Little Sisters. In our second installment, Totilo disputes our claim that many videogames don't have memorable openings, then goes on to examine why sequels often rob players of the abilities and/or weapons they had in the prior game, forcing them to start levelling up all over again. For our part, we defend our assertion about game introductions and nitpick Totilo's reflections on game empowerment by pitting him against one of his game developer heroes before taking issue--at length--with the manner in which the makers of BioShock chose to privilege Rescuers over Harvesters. Some excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: Empowerment is not the top of every song or movie or book. But I'd wager that the majority of long-form single player video games are. Halo, Final Fantasy, Castlevania, Pokemon, Call of Duty...all these games present the empowerment fantasy. They advance the player through an experience that leaves the player-character more powerful and more capable than they began. Sometimes the improvement the player achieves comes from repeated action and gained skill. Sometimes the improvement comes from how the games are programmed: the more you do in the game, the more powerful the designers make you. For better or worse, and as shallow as it can be, I love this. In fact, despite my gut instinct that BioShock is the better game (it's more original, more thought-provoking, more heavily populated with awesome Big Daddies), I've been more thrilled playing Metroid Prime 3.

N'Gai Croal: Speaking of missed opportunities, another criticism I'd make of is BioShock that while it gave me a great deal of moment to moment choice and freedom, the only high level choice it offered me was whether to harvest or rescue the Little Sisters. That's understandable, because for a developer to create a proliferating series of choices that truly pay off is often prohibitive. But there was a perfect place in the game for a terrific choice or set of choices to happen: after the player kills Ryan. "A man chooses, a slave obeys," the game has just told us through Andrew Ryan's mid-martyrdom mantra₂. Yet from that moment forward, BioShock still gives us just one path to follow: hunt down and kill Fontaine. We don't have a choice. We're given no alternatives. How can we become men when the game continues to enslave us? In other words, BioShock's structure betrays its theme at a critical juncture, and while there are still high points to come, it never quite recovers sufficiently to properly fulfill the promise of its late-game revelation.

To read Round 2 in its entirety, follow the link below.

In the span of time during which Level Up and MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo conducted our Vs. Mode debate of BioShock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (which is also being posted on Totilo's blog MTV News: Multiplayer), we occasionally instant messaged each other to discuss some of the finer points of both titles. Two of those IM exchanges were interesting enough that we decided to present them to our readers as sidebars to the main event--hence the title Vs. Mode Gaiden. In today's installment, the Level Up staff's slow progress through Metroid Prime 3: Corruption prompts a discussion of the challenge of navigating Metroid Prime 3's 3-D environments--and its 3-D map.

Totilo: Full disclosure: backtracking is back!!!!!!!!

Croal: But will I ever track my way to the backtracking?

Totilo: I doubt it. I'm skeptical that you're going to get very far. When you get a chance, let me know where you're stuck

Croal: I'm stuck on the morph ball path on that same planet. Time keeps expiring before I can get to the end.

Croal: http://www.destructoid.com/big-daddy-day-care-provides-nothing-but-tlc-for-your-little-girls-40745.phtml

Croal: I've been playing lots of Jeanne d'Arc!

Totilo: At least you have your priorities in order

Croal: 2-D design > 3-D design

Totilo: Survey says: wrong!

Totilo: Or are Ken Levine and Retro both just bad at designing levels?

To read the rest of our exchange, click on the link below.

 

Having weighed in on the subject of whether or not videogames should be considered art on several occasions, we at Level Up are loath to do so again. But when we read the following story from the Washington Post--our sister publication, for those who like full disclosure--we felt compelled to return to the scene of the crime. In the article, Post tech columnist Mike Musgrove discusses the experience that his colleague, Pulitzer prize-winning book columnist and sci-fi fan Michael Dirda had playing 2K Boston/Australia's recently released BioShock. Implicit in the piece is that Musgrove wanted to see whether the 58-year-old Dirda would consider BioShock to be a work of art. As Musgrove writes:

Given that the game has been widely acclaimed for its stylish setting, its moral complications and its invoking of Ayn Rand, it's entirely understandable that Musgrove would use this game for his experiment. But when he returns to Dirda, having given his fellow Postie a couple of weeks to play the game, he finds that his plans have hit a snag. Dirda is stuck in Neptune's Bounty, the third section of the game, because he keeps getting killed by one of the enemies and he can't figure out how to use the first-aid kit to, uh, save his life.

1. OOH...Halo 3 conclusion, leaked? Boo.
2. GPU...Intel's purchase of Havok, explored
3. MTV...correct pronunciation of "Ubisoft," explained
4. WoW...Blizzard looks towards the future
5. RIP...Colin McRae, you will be missed
6. GOW...David Jaffe: thumbs down on "Kong"
7. VSM...Gamer vs. book critic on BioShock--fight!
8. RND...The world's only "normal" director speaks

Bioshock, from 2K Boston/Australia and 2K Games

Even though we sang the praises of short session games in our previous exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, late summer and early fall bring with them the interactive entertainment industry's heavy hitters, and Vs. Mode is always prepared to serve when duty calls. In this installment, which is also being posted on Totilo's blog MTV News: Multiplayer, we take aim at two of this year's most anticipated games: BioShock, developed by 2K Boston/Australia and published by 2K Games, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, developed by Retro Studios and published by Nintendo. Both games put a spin on the first-person shooter--BioShock with its role-playing game elements; Metroid Prime 3 with its emphasis on exploration and environmental navigation--so we thought it appropriate to compare and contrast as Totilo and Level Up combat one another. Some excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: It turns out there really weren't any other moral dilemmas in BioShock besides the choice to rescue or kill the Little Sisters. I was right to think Levine wasn't going to pose any other ethical challenges to the player. But I was wrong to think that would be a problem. Those big, hulking, lumbering, Big Daddies--the protectors of the Little Sisters that appear about two or three times per level--are the games' best characters. Garnett Lee on the 1Up Yours podcast even called them the best enemies ever in a videogame, a judgment we should probably weigh in on. Their rage is impressive, but so too is their interplay with the spooky little girls that beckon and guide them as if they're the family dog. To repeatedly witness those interactions and to, early on, know the calming influence a Little Sister has over the locomotive might of Big Daddy, makes the player's interaction with each Daddy-Sister pair feel not just like interaction but intrusion. To simply interfere with their walks and their scavenging feels like a moral choice. They weren't bothering me, and if not for the voice in my ear telling me to proceed through the game by attacking, I wouldn't be bothering them. That I will then kill the Big Daddy no matter what feels somewhat heinous. It is always unprovoked--a pre-emptive strike, at best. The fact that once I've caused one death (the Big Daddy's) I have to decide whether to cause a second (the Little Sister's) feels like a mock-moral choice. For the record, I always chose to save the Little Sisters.

N'Gai Croal: My finger was hovering over the X button, ready to harvest...and all of a sudden, I couldn't do it. There was a little girl, albeit virtual, cowering in front of my avatar, and I couldn't bring myself to harvest her, as she'd been presented far too sympathetically. At the same time, I couldn't bring myself to rescue her either, because I wanted that Adam. Yet there was another complicating factor, one which is the true mark of the brilliance of BioShock's fiendish conundrum: the promise of an unspecified reward from Tenenbaum for rescuing the Little Sister. What was puzzling me was the nature of Levine's game. He was pitting my basic humanity against my greedy self-interest and against my curiosity--a cruel hybrid of a moral dilemma fused with the Trust Game. This was a far more devilish problem than had it been a simple binary either/or, and it had completely paralyzed me. Should I treat this game as a Rorschach blot and do what I would do in real life: rescue the Little Sister? Or should I treat it solely as a fantasy and do precisely the opposite, explore the road I'd never take in the real world. I didn't know what to do.

To read Round 1 of our exchange in its entirety, click on the link below.

1. EGO...trip: praised and dissed in the same week 
2. RPG...Real-life Final Fantasy VII, examined
3. Wii...Zapper takes heat for its gun shape
4. CON...troversial game journalism, #6-10
5. WOO...World of Goo gets a trailer
6. RND...O.J. Simpson's mug shot, unretouched

Pac-Man Championship Edition screenshot

Note: This email exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo originally ran on N'Gai Croal's Level Up and MTV's Multiplayer blog, in four separate installments, from August 13th-20th 2007. We now present it here in its entirety, under a single permalink, for easier printing, emailing and archival purposes.

Hellgate: London screenshot

Note: This Q&A with Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper originally ran on N'Gai Croal's Level Up, in four separate installments, from September 10th-13th 2007. We now present it here in its entirety, under a single permalink, for easier printing, emailing and archival purposes.

1. HEH...The Halo TV ad--and the parody
2. NOD...Archetypes and sterotypes, examined
3. PSN...Q-Games' PixelJunk Racers released
4. Bio...Shocker: crusader's son, 15, buys copy
5. NDS...Lite, Fat, meet DS Jumbo
6. RND...Patriot-ism--last refuge of scoundrels?

Flagship CEO Bill Roper performing with his band Poxy Boggards

In Part III of our four-part Q&A with Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper, we talked about whether his company's first game merited the MMO label and the reasoning behind Hellgate: London's hybrid business model. In today's final installment, we discuss the relationship between Flagship, Namco and Electronic Arts; whether Roper is concerned about the amount of risk inherent in Hellgate's numerous innovations; and whether his real-world musical abilities are transferable to Guitar Hero.

As Flagship was developing the content model and business model for Hellgate: London, what role did EA and EA Partners play? I understand EA Partners is primarily distribution. It's not like you're an owned studio. You have a lot of freedom to determine your future. But what kind of guidance, advice, philosophy sharing--did you guys work together on this stuff at all, or did you just tell them, "Hey guys, here's what we're gonna do"?

It definitely was driven out of Flagship. Once EAP came on as a publishing partner with Namco, certainly we availed ourselves of all the knowledge that was there: the research they've done; all the things that EA definitely brings to the table. For example, when we were talking about pricing for the continuing content, the number, that $9.99, came out of Flagship; but then we talked with EA about it and said, "OK, here's what we think it should be. What do you guys think? We want your feedback on it." It wasn't like EA said, "OK, great. Now that we're doing the distribution and whole thing, here's the price, here's your model, here's your list of things." That was all driven internally by the team, by the company. But at the same time, we were very pleased to be able to have a wide breath of knowledge, and research, and experience to bounce those ideas off of and get very honest feedback. So there's been some good collaboration there.

From the previous conversation we had in January and then again now, it's clear that you guys are innovating in like a bunch of different directions. And innovation generally means risk. So, I mean, do you find yourself--other than being sort of up late working on the game--do you find yourself having sleepless nights worrying about the amount of risk that you've taken? Do you feel concerned about that level of innovation and risk-taking and do you ever wonder whether people will get it and get on board for it?

1. VSM...Halo meh-ers vs. Halo lovers. Round 1--fight!
2. VSM...Bully vs. Harry Potter. Round 1--fight! 
3. IEE...E Spectrum gets its own videogame blog
4. Wii...takes the lead; can Halo 3 reverse the trend
5. RND...Time to "Leave Britney Alone" alone?

Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper in San Francisco

In Part II of our four-part interview with Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper, we got to talking about the company's somewhat criticized two-tiered model for its debut game, Hellgate: London. Roper informed us that the paid subscribers would no longer be referred to as Elites, and went on to explain that in his opinion, the free experience, which includes online play, was still a terrific value that should not be looked at as downgraded compared to the paid subscription service. Today, in Part III, Roper tells us why Flagship chose a hybrid business model for Hellgate: London; how the company is structured to deliver regular content updates; and why people should think of the game as an MMO.

In some ways, there isn't really a model like what you're doing on Hellgate: London. You have MMOs where people pay a subscription fee for the service. There are item-driven, micro-transaction driven MMOs, primarily in Asia. The closest thing that I think of to this--but it would even be different from what you guys have done--is Phantasy Star online, where you could play the single-player experience for no additional charge, but then to play with up to three other friends online, you paid a monthly fee. What's interesting is that audiences accepted that, whereas there's been some criticism of your approach with both free online and a paid subscription model. When you guys were formulating how you wanted to approach Hellgate's business model, what was the process you went through? What were the models that you looked at? How did you decide, "Here's what we think has worked; here's what we think doesn't; here what we think is going to work for our audience?" What was the guiding philosophy?

Well, the guiding philosophy was what's gonna be the best for the game and for our players. We knew that players wanted the ability to go online and play for free. That was very, very evident. That was an expectation. And so even as a startup with our first game, we had to figure out a way to make that happen. We knew that that was gonna be, a big selling point in terms of reaching out to all the Diablo players around the world. That was their, you know, expectations. They wanted to be able to have that same experience. But then we also knew that there was a big outcry and a need for continuing content and so, for us it really is "How do we accomplish these goals? How do we make sure there's free multiplayer? And then, how do we also support ongoing, continuing content and the things that are encompassed in that?" We talked about all kinds of things. We looked at all the models that are there: everything from real money transactions and item purchases to auction-based systems. All kinds of stuff. And really we tried to come up with what we thought would be the cleanest division, "Here's where you can get this experience and it's free. And then when you want to go to ongoing content, that's where we do a subscription."

We worked very hard to also try to come up with a price point that was reflective of us trying to reach as many people as which is why we came out with--we decided on the $9.99 price [for monthly subscriptions]. It wasn't that we felt we were offering any less than games that cost $14.95 a month. It's just like with the game where we've done things like, for example, low-poly assets: low-poly versions of every graphic in the game so you can reach lower end video cards and older systems, 'cause we want to get it out to as many people as we can. Same thing with the pricing model. We want people to be excited about the potential of ongoing content from what's gonna be there; all the events we're gonna be having; these big content pushes every three months or so; and being on board with that and kind of sharing in that experience, and doing it in a way where we weren't busting the bank.

That was a lot of work not only from a development standpoint, but also with the online model: how we can do things so we can be more economical so we can actually offer it at that price?

1. EGO...trip: Level Up staff to judge indie games
2. BOO...Manhunt 2 changes, examined
3. PSP...Add different themes to your portable
4. YES...yes, oh god, yes: Rez to make a comeback
5. HEH...Team Fortress 2 highlights The Engineer 
6. RND...Hilarity, courtesy of the movie ratings board

Flagship Studios Ceo Bill Roper's Hellgate: London caricature

In Part I of our four-part Q&A with Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper, conducted at the January Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, we discussed the premise for the developer's first title, Hellgate: London, and its extensive plans for the use of randomly created content throughout the game. Parts II-IV come from a June phone conversation we had with Roper that took place after some grumbling began to brew as a result of Flagship's announcement of a two-tiered system for Hellgate, in which people who paid the "Elite" $9.95 monthly subscription fee would get not only regular content updates, but also additional character slots, extra item storage, visual distinctiveness from non-subscribers, and more.

Having long been curious about the potential of subscription-based online games like Phantasy Star Online whose structure deviates from that of traditional large-scale massively multiplayer online games, we decided to reconnect with Roper to discuss Hellgate's creative and financial model, which we think, should it become successful, will be one of the most influential developments in the industry in recent years.  In today's installment, Roper clears the air about Flagship's two-tiered system and explains why he believes non-subscribers will still get a great experience when Hellgate ships next month.

We last spoke in January. Give me an update on where things are with the game.

Sure. We actually, just yesterday, started our friends and family alpha, so we sent out about our first hundred invitations to people that are actually friends and family or people that we've done a lot of beta testing with over the years. It's kind of the first generalized acid test of the game: our downloader, our installer; the whole shebang. Now we are just working on finishing up a few things, a lot of polish, balance, tweaking; you know, making sure things work 'cause we are both single-player and then the multiplayer. So we've been content locked for quite a while and we're definitely on that push towards release.

There's been a lot of discussion online about the business model of the game. Going back to the genesis of Hellgate: London, at what point did you know that you wanted to go with a sort of hybrid model: a base game that would have standard PC game retail pricing, and then an optional premium subscription model on top of it as well.

1. DUH...BioShock becomes Take-Two's new pillar
2. NEW...GameTap Indies launches with two games
3. PSP...Castlevania creator discusses future plans
4. RND..."Iron Man" trailer hits web; fanboys rejoice 

Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper

This week, we once again dip into the Level Up Interview Vault to bring you our extensive multi-part Q&A with Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper. Roper's place in game history is already secure, having worked in various producer roles at Blizzard on a slew of products--Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Diablo, StarCraft, Diablo II, Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal and StarCraft: Brood War--ultimately rising to vice president of Blizzard North and a director of Blizzard Entertainment. For his second act, Roper and a handful of Blizzard vets formed Flagship Studios, and their first product, the Diablo-inspired action-RPG for PCs called Hellgate: London, arrives in stores next month courtesy of publishers Electronic Arts and Namco Bandai.

We spoke with Roper twice this year; first at January's Consumer Electronics Show, and subsequently in June after some fans had begun to grumble about Hellgate's tiered pricing model. Our first interview, conducted in the gaming area of Microsoft's CES booth, began inauspiciously when the PC running Roper's Hellgate demo overheated. So we began with some small talk, but by the end, we were engaged in a fascinating conversation about the extent to which Hellgate is breaking new ground with its pervasive use of randomization.

So you're here for the whole show, or are you just in for a couple of days?

No, I'm here for the whole show. I leave Thursday afternoon. There's a lot to see. I haven't been to CES in a long time.

Are you going to get some time to walk around and check stuff out on the show floor?

I think Thursday I have some time.

So what kind of gadgets are you personally into? There's some game stuff here, obviously, but this is pretty much a gadget show.

I'm a movie wonk, so of course it's like, "Ooh, a hundred and three inch TV--that's nice. How about I get one of those?" Which is insane. If it's next to a sixty five inch, I'm like, "Oh, look at that tiny little sixty-five inch television." [Laughs.] Which is bigger than mine; I've got a sixty-three. But I'm like "Oh my God, that's insane."

So when you see a hundred-and-three inch TV out there, does that motivate you to work even harder on Hellgate?

Oh yeah. I'm like "How do I even afford that?" Becaue that's what I want. And of course, then you always want have a place big enough to actually put that TV. So it kind of all goes together. I mean, I'm a big music and movie guy, so I need a full room. It's kind of funny, because this is the same time as Macworld's going on back home, right?

I'm just blown away when I just walk around and look at stuff. Even if it's not something I'm into, I'm just like "What is that thing?" "What is that doing?" And the eighteen thousand different types of speakers, which I thought was really funny too. Just walking by these things. I mean, we've got these Darth Vader, JBL speakers on here. And then I walked by some other thing and it was more of a kid's game; it had these little flower looking speakers. Everything is so customized, so long gone are the days of just a big, chunky, horrible, PC brown--you know, that nice, neutral tone, block speakers. I love the fact that you can come to this show and you see all this technology. It's obvious that the people here, they are motivated to make something that isn't just functional, that looks good in your house, and you feel good about having. It really shows stuff off. And that hundred and three inch TV. That's the really--that's the one I want. I'm sure my wife will kill me if I come home with it. But you know--

But if Hellgate does well, then everyone wins.

That's right. Yeah, my goal is to buy everybody in the company a hundred and three inch TV. That would be good. That's the new goal.

So in Hellgate: London, we have three different factions. The factions are--within the context of the game world of the story--the different philosophies and backgrounds of the characters. They also present the three different gameplay mechanics, base mechanics that are in the game. So we've got the Templars which are sword-wielding, shield-bashing, melee characters that get in there and do a lot of the physical damage up close and personal with the demons. There's the Cabalists, which are our magic users, turning the dark powers of the demons against them. They can summon demons as pets; they can transform parts of themselves into demons. They also can channel dark energies through these devices they have.

The Hunters are kind of the super high-tech, wetworks, black ops, Area 51 technology agents that are out there. Part of the idea behind the world is that we're in a 2038, near-future, post-demon apocalyptic London. A handful of survivors that have kind of been underground for about twenty years are now trying to reestablish a foothold against the demons that have pretty much taken over the vast majority of the city. The underground stations are our safe havens--I won't get too world background-wonk on you about it, but it all does tie into like how actually the underground stations were created and the Freemasons, all that kind of stuff. So we've done a lot of research to make sure the game actually has--even our strange alternative future has this basis in reality that kind of lend it a real--a real sense that you're there.

Between Resistance: Fall of Man, Hellgate: London, "28 Days Later" and "Children of Men," what is it about London and the apocalypse?

1. EGO...trip: Iwata Q&A makes the rounds, plural
2. 1ST...OXM editor finishes Halo 3 campaign
3. TIP..."Castle Wolfenstein" director opens up
4. WoW...episode nets "South Park" an Emmy
   
5. WAX...Madame Tussaud's does Master Chief
6. JAM...Rock Band gets a brand new trailer
7. RND...MTV to air bisexual dating show
   

Harmonix and Red Octane. Silicon Knights and Epic Games. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Sierra Entertainment. Yes, industry breakups are almost always painful, prompting one or both parties to curl up on a couch with cookie dough ice cream and crank up the Sad Songs Megamix playlist on their iPods until the hurt finally goes away. The latter pair of exes, WBIE and Sierra, had been partners on the 2005 horror-shooter F.E.A.R., aka First Encounter Assault Recon. The developer was Monolith, which WBIE acquired in 2004. But when WBIE and Sierra parted ways last year, WBIE coolly walked off with everything but the title, leading us to believe that like Tina Turner in "What's Love Got to Do With It?" Sierra must have felt that it worked too hard for the name F.E.A.R. in order to give it up. We won't speculate on who was Ike and who was Tina; suffice it to say that WBIE was now in search of a title for its hit property.

In this age of reality TV, it made perfect sense that WBIE would turn to the fans to help name the sequel. The company held a contest titled "Name Your Fear"; an internal panel whittled the choices down to three finalists--no trademark violations allowed, kids--then fans were permitted to vote on the winner. We semi-facetiously suggested the name Phobos & Deimos to a good friend at WBIE (in flagrant violation of the post-Deus Ex rule which states that a game's title should never be derived from a classical language); needless to say, it wasn't chosen.

The three finalists were Dark Signal, Dead Echo and Project Origin; of the three, only Dark Signal evinced the proper amount of mystery, while the others merely triggered our well-known loathing for unimaginative titling. So you can imagine our dismay when WBIE announced today that the most thoroughly uninspired of the three choices, Project Origin, emerged victorious. It's possible that the name might accrue some meaning once we start seeing trailers and gameplay footage, but as it stands now, Project Origin--not to be confused with Project IGI: I'm Going In (2000), Project Gotham Racing (2001) Project Justice (2001), Project Eden (2001), Project Earth: Starmageddon (2002), Project Entropia (2003), Project: Snowblind (2005), Project Sylpheed: Arc of Deception (2007) or Project H.A.M.M.E.R. (unreleased and possibly cancelled)--is rivaled perhaps only by They and Legendary: The Box for sheer banality. We can only hope that WBIE's brain trust--a Supreme court, if you will--overturns the will of the people and comes up with a title more befitting one of 2005's best-reviewed games.

1. UGH...HBCU football game drives Net insane
2. HOT...Coffee 2, courtesy of PS3 game Lair
3. Wii...mote game for the blind from academia
4. HMM...EA Sports boss Peter Moore sets goals
5. RND...The Jena Six case prompts retrospection

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata in his interview suite in Los Angeles

As the Wii continues its seemingly unstoppable march towards market dominance, and with the Tokyo Game Show just a few weeks away, we thought it appropriate to reach into our warehouse of as-yet-unpublished interviews for this conversation we had with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata during the July E3 Media and Business Summit in Los Angeles. During our interview, Iwata's slightly eager, schoolboyish persona was replaced by a more casually confident mien, displaying the quiet self-assurance of a man sitting on top of the world. We discussed the company's decision to focus on casual audiences with its press conference; why the Wii version of Zelda was a relative flop in his native Japan; and what it feels like to have the game industry now assume that Nintendo's initiatives will succeed rather than fail.

So the first question is what was the strategy behind the series of announcements at yesterday's press conference? Because it seemed that other than Wii Fit, Nintendo didn't introduce any new franchises or new intellectual property. So what was the thinking behind having Wii Fit as the only new IP introduced at the press conference?

This year is sort of a streamlined E3. We want to narrow down our focus a little bit. So we decided to mainly mention the franchise series that would be coming out this fall, mention several titles that players will be excited to hear about. And again, we just decided that, plus Wii Fit matched our expectations of what we wanted to do with the show. However, we are definitely working on new franchises and we just didn't choose to talk about them yesterday. We really wanted to see how people would react to Wii Fit and how they would, and well again, we wanted to see the reactions of the people to our selection, Wii Fit.

Now, if we didn't feel that we had gained a lot of popular momentum and with success that it's shown so far, we might have tried to get out a little more information and do an upcoming products, again, just to build some excitement, but since we do have that momentum right now, we chose not to do so. After all, if we show too much now, too early, when those products are actually ready to come out, they won't seem very fresh if we just re-announce them later on. You have probably noticed this trend too, but I believe that the patterns in the past, you were able to announce things much earlier and have this gradual buildup, but I think that there's a desensitification--that's not a word.

Desensitization.

Thank you--and people aren't as patient with that information, to the span over which you can feed them information. It gets shorter and shorter.

You've spoken publicly about the fact that Zelda Twilight Princess has not done as well in Japan as you had hoped, nor has it performed as well there as it has in North America. When you look back at the span of time from when Zelda Twilight Princess was first shown to when it finally shipped, was that part of your thought process about why you now want to compress the amount of time from when you first introduce a product, show a product publicly and release that that product to consumer?

1. EGO...trip: MMQB's Hail Mary lands in the end zone
   
2. GRR...Brand X Halo 3 story sends gamers into rage
3. MIL...Iraq war vets protest America's Army game
4. BOO...Sony Europe caught editing Halo 3 Wiki
5. RND...Bush's former legal counsel speaks out 

One of the cherished traditions for people in and around the North American videogame industry is the mid-to-late month release of the previous month's sales figures for both hardware and software. Much like Hollywood with the weekend box office or the music industry with SoundScan, this data, compiled by the Port Washington, NY-based NPD Group, is the subject of much scrutiny, speculation and analysis as everyone tries to figure out What It All Means.Having engaged in many phone, email and IM back-and-forths with various people over the NPDs, as they're generally referred to, we decided to bring some of those often unheard discussions to light with our occasional feature, Monday Morning Quarterback. Our returning opponent is the prolific journalist and TV host Geoff Keighley, pitting his BlackBerry-fueled insights against our Palm-enabled observations. Some excerpts:

N'Gai Croal: What's interesting is that a lot of our cohorts in the gaming press--an admittedly unrepresentative sample--aren't playing their Wiis much. Unless they have friends come to visit, they're pretty much forsaking their Wiis for Xbox 360, DS and some Playstation Network from time to time. Wii fans regularly complain that enthusiast outlets--most notably, the gang over at Ziff-Davis' 1UP Yours podcast--are paying insufficient attention to their console of choice, and in fact spend too much time mocking the Wii for what it's not (its lack of HD graphics; the fact that it's become a dumping ground for mini-games; the trend towards porting PSP games to Wii) rather than applauding what it is: a refreshing change from the way games used to be, which is attracting new people to this hobby. But with Guitar Hero III, Rock Band and SingStar PS3 coming this holiday--and, as you point out, a bizarre lack of new games to capitalize on the Wii Sports phenomenon (sorry, EA, but jamming those controls into your pro sports titles doesn't really count)--I wonder how many of us in the media will be playing Wii Sports and Wii Play when friends come to visit.

Geoff Keighley: Until third parties figure out a better Wii strategy, they will be caught in a precarious position. Let's use EA's NCAA football game, the #1 title of the month, as an example. This year the 360 version sold almost 400,000 units, up from 333,000 units last year. That's respectable growth. But the PS2 version dropped from 490,000 units last year to 236,000 this year. Without a Wii version, the PS3 sales of 156,000 (which obviously didn't exist last July) don't make up the difference. EA may have overcharged for the PS2 SKU this year ($49 when it should have been $39), but could there be a bigger issue at hand? Are PS2 gamers moving to the Wii? Or worse, are the PS2 gamers leaving the market as active consumers? They aren't buying PS2 games anymore and they aren't upgrading to new boxes either. If that is indeed the case, the Wii becomes even more vital as a lifeline for third parties. As of now, no one has cracked the code on what makes a hit Wii game.

Click on the link below to read our exchange in its entirety. 

1. FLY...Google Earth gets a flight simulator
2. HEH...Stop snitching: J.K. Rowling, failed designer
3. WOW...Play the PS3 game Lair on your PSP
4. HMM...Satoru Iwata on Shigeru Miyamoto's genius
5. ESA...Vs. The Washington Post: Round 1--Fight!
6. RND...Does the game industry need a Rick Rubin?