1. HAP...py holidays from Level Up--and some of our favorite elves
2. COD...Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat gets in the holiday spirit
3. NAU...ghty: commenters complain about gift of mods for UTIII
4. NIC...e: A look at how Valve Software handles customer service
5. HMM...Where are all the reindeer holiday-themed games?
6. WHY...won't Activision and Harmonix just stand under the mistletoe?
7. RND...gossips, bloggers and parents grapple with celeb's unexpected gift 

1. LAW...yer follies: Thompson suit tossed; NYC governor misinforms
2. RUM...or has it: PSP in unholy union with Sony Electronics' MYLO?
3. ZEN...of Rock: Guitar Hero III and Rock Band experiences, recounted
4. AND...the Wii's contribution to third parties' coffers is what?
5. MOO...Take-Two won't milk franchises; will gently coax forth their precious fluids
6. BOO...Gran Turismo PSP continues to ride the delay train...
7. HEH...but odds are that it will still be in stores before Duke. Nukem. Forever.
8. 000...Zero Punctuation turns his baleful eye towards Mass Effect
9. BUT...who watches the watchmen? IGN editor responds to "outing"
10. RND...Might Pop Culture Mom turn to "Juno" for answers?

 Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat, developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision

At Newsweek HQ, most of our colleagues are either boomers in name or boomers in spirit, which means there haven't been many serious gamers among our ranks. But from the increasing number of game-related conversations we've had with our office mates, it's clear that this is starting to change. Our de facto Xbox 360 correspondent Rolf Ebeling, who in his day job is the creative director for Newsweek.com, posted here back in October about how Electronic Arts' Skate triggered his boyhood memories of the birthplace of modern American skateboarding. In today's entry, Level Up's foremost Halo fanboy and online multiplayer aficionado explains why his uneasy reaction to the single-player experience of Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat has made it his Game of the Year for 2007.

I play games to vent. I feel weird admitting that, given that I'm an adult and should just gracefully accept life's real challenges and focus calmly on real solutions. Sometimes, though, firing a fake incendiary round into a group of fake goons and watching them fly into fake walls...well, there's a real satisfaction in that. Playing my own pop psychologist, the primary reason I've burned through two Xbox 360s is to keep a tenuous hold on my childhood and teenage years. It's the same reason I'm stupidly happy when I'm fish-tailing my mountain bike around curves, or how I can listen to "The Queen is Dead" over and over again and never really get tired of it. For that, I feel little or no guilt.

But another part of why I play is to have an experience that's insulated from the consequences or limitations of my current reality. For an hour or two, I'm can free myself of life's responsibilities (job, family, being a law-abiding citizen) and barriers (time, gravity, vulnerability to melee attacks) and put a serious hurt on somebody who deserves it (the Covenant, that sniper over flag three, whoever just ground their heel into my last nerve today). I can overreact spectacularly and get Achievement Points for it.

The very idea of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the franchise's first foray away from the well-trod World War II genre, has had me drooling for the past few months.

1. WHA...t do women girls want? 2-D games, according to a recent study
2. HMM...Casual sexism or a barely concealed S&M fetish?
3. BYE...Now is the winter of the booth babe's discontent
4. RND...A way with words? Sure. A way with the ladies? Not after these op-eds.
   
5. RND...What kind of reindeer game is this?
   

1. LEO...nardo DiCaprio, the great white whale of game devs?
2. Wii...reportedly overtakes Xbox 360 in the United Kingdom
3. PSP...update 3.80 adds Internet radio, RSS support for photos
4. PS3...update adds DivX support, remote play for PS1 games
5. WHO...weeps for soft sales of Unreal Tournament III and Crysis?
6. YOU...don't know Jack Tretton, but the San Jose Mercury News does
7. MTV...Does the "M" stand for "mini-games"? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps
8. MAN...hunt 2 not out of the woods yet as UK censors plan appeal
9. RND...A look at Facebook, thirty years into the future
10. RND...How far is too far for a cause, or, I am Jack's smirking revenge

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 October 29th-November 2nd 2007. We now present it here in its entirety, under a single permalink, for easier printing, emailing and archival purposes.

1. EGO...trip: This was a triumph/I'm making a note here: huge success
2. EGO...trip: I'm not even angry/I'm being so sincere right now
3. EGO...trip: Look at me still talking when there's science to do
4. AND...believe me I am still alive: Gerstmann starts a blog
5. HMM...I feel fantastic and I'm still alive: the power of positive feedback
6. WOW...While you're dying I'll be still alive: mother, gangster, snitch
7. RND...And when you're dead I will be still alive: Google vs. Microsoft

1. WHA...t's Beef? Beef is when your guitar ain't safe up in the street 
2. LUC...ifer. Beelzebub. Pajitnov? Chaplain explains why games are evil
3. SHI...gga what, Shigga who? Miyamoto disses Ratchet & Clank
4. Wii...would like to take your money now; product to follow later
5. MTV...series on women in gaming wraps up with last two Q&As
6. RND...MySpace: Where saving planet earth happens

In our second "Playing in the Dark' column for the U.K. magazine Edge, which appeared under the title "Halo 3.0: From Bungie's Lips to Phil Harrison's Ears," we explored the parallels between the approaches to user-created content in Halo 3 and LittleBigPlanet. Of the latter, we wrote:

The slogan for LittleBigPlanet is 'Play, Create, Share', and it captures not only precisely the right elements of where games must go in the future, it lists them in the correct evolutionary order. Because if the act of creation itself isn’t playful, if it isn’t entertaining, then only the most motivated of people will bother to actually make anything....From Media Molecule, I’m hoping that the company will release expansions that offer two other perspectives--top-down and isometric--thereby turning LittleBigPlanet into the complete 2-D game creation tool.

From the first moment we laid eyes on LittleBigPlanet, we've been mildly obsessed about where Media Molecule could and should take its inspired game. So when the developers let journalists go hands on at the E3 Media Festival and we got to see how easy, intuitive and powerful their tools were--right down to its bolt-based system for adding simple physics to the various objects that users could build--it dawned on us that Media Molecule was in the process of building the ultimate side-scrolling construction kit, a belief that was furthered when rumors began to circulate that the creators were also developing a system for enemy behaviors that users could integrate into their level designs. So we said to ourselves, if LittleBigPlanet can do all of this for side-scrollers, how difficult would it be for Media Molecule's engine to support the two other 2-D game perspectives: top-down and isometric?

  Burnout Paradise, by Criterion Studios and Electronic Arts 

As we said in our brief preview of Burnout Paradise, we're rather enjoying its fresh take on the racing genre. When we interviewed Criterion Studios creative director Alex Ward following the game's award for Best Racing Game from the Game Critics Association, he told us, "It's the first open world game we know of that runs at sixty [frames per second.]" Having achieved this goal without stinting in any way on the graphics, Criterion joins Infinity Ward as the third party developers which have extracted the most from the tricky-to-program Playstation 3. With the demo for PS3 and Xbox 360 going live today, we once again contacted Electronic Arts and Criterion to find out what gamers should expect from the demo and the finished title, which arrives in stores on January 22nd. Producer Nick Channon answered our questions via email; here's what he had to say:

The great thing about the demo is that we have packed loads of gameplay into a small area of the map. As such, users will be able to get a real feel for the game by exploring the open world, playing a great new game mode called Stunt Run, and also have the ability to connect online. It was really important for us to give a real flavor of playing Burnout Paradise and the demo really does that.

When did Criterion begin work on it?

We started work on it about 3 months ago and have put as much effort into getting the demo right as we have the main game.

The structure of an open world racing game, as implemented in Burnout Paradise, is very different from the event-by-event approach found in traditional racing titles. What kind of feedback did you get about the various aspects of Burnout Paradise's open world structure, and how did that evolve the design of the game?

  Burnout Paradise, by Criterion Studios and Electronic Arts

We respect Gran Turismo. We've enjoyed Ridge Racer, Midnight Club and Need For Speed. But when it comes to racing franchises, there's only one that's ever seeped into our dreams, and that's Burnout. If Burnout 3: Takedown was, as one writer aptly described it, "Tekken with cars," then based on our ongoing experiences with near-final code, Burnout Paradise would have to be the Grand Theft Auto of driving, so carefully has Criterion Studios built the game to become the first game to truly get open world racing right. Need to repair your car or get a new paint job? Just drive through the appropriate building. Looking to add a new car to your collection? Spot it on the open road, hunt it down, take it out, then swing by a junkyard to pick it up. Ready to jump into a racing or stunt event? Pull up to an intersection and hit both the gas and the brake to get your competition on. This is truly open world racing done right, running at a blistering 60 frames per second and spit polished within an inch of its life to boot.

As excited as we are about the game, we suspect that the Burnout Paradise will nevertheless be somewhat polarizing. Traditionalists may find it difficult to to accept the go-anywhere, do-anything freedom which has replaced the event-by-event structure that typifies the majority of racing games; it certainly took us a good half-hour or so before we could finally let go of what had been and open ourselves up to what could be. Nowhere is this more true than Paradise's Showtime Mode, which has taken the place of the much-loved Crash Mode from previous Burnouts. Rather than being a separate mode as it had been in the past, Criterion has integrated it right into the open world of Paradise City; at any time, you just hit R1 + L1 on the PS3 (for Xbox 360, it's the two bumpers) to trigger Showtime, where as long as you have boost, you can detonate your vehicle and propel it into other cars. Each car you hit adds a dollar value to your damage total and boost to your meter, while buses serve as damage multipliers. Your mission is to keep the chain of collisions going for as long as you possibly can.

1. HIT...'Em Up: Get out the way, yo/Get out the way, yo/Harmonix just got dropped
2. MTV...series on women in gaming still going, still flummoxing various commenters
3. Wii...remote used to create a slick multi-touch virtual whiteboard
4. YOU...are not only the Person of the Year, but also the Year's Best Character
   
5. RND...Blogger dresses in a niqab as an experiment, draws criticism
   

1. FRA...gtacular: GameStop plans series of tournament-focused stores 
2. HMM...Right-wing think tank gives thumbs up to ESRB ratings system
3. ODB...would be appalled: real Shaolin warriors don't apologize
4. MTV...News series on women in gaming continues, gets feedback
5. VSM...Kohnke Communications vs. Perpetual Entertainment. Round 1--fight!
6. NEX...t gen to gamers: Will no one rid of us of this troublesome console?
7. RND...A pair of pregnancy comedies, compared and discussed

 Devil May Cry 4

A few weeks ago, we spoke with Hiroyuki Kobayashi--the game producer, not the baseball player--about Devil May Cry 4, shipping next year for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. The first and third games were much-lauded, while the second was generally viewed as a disappointment. So with the fourth game in development, it was reasonable to wonder whether there could be a brewing every-other-game-is-mediocre problem (much like the Call of Duty games made by Treyarch rather than Infinity Ward.) But with Kobayashi having such games under his belt as the highly acclaimed Resident Evil 4 and the defiantly offbeat Killer 7--and based on what we saw recently--we think fans of the franchise will find themselves entertained. We asked him why Devil May Cry 4 features a new main character; what he thought of his chief competitors Ninja Gaiden and God of War; and how hard it was to develop for the PS3. Here's what Kobayashi had to say.

The first and the third Devil May Cry games were the best received in the series, and a lot of people particularly like the third one. What did you want to achieve with Devil May Cry 4?

One of the first things that we decided when we were just planning out the game was that we would definitely have a new main character in the game. We definitely wanted to have a new hero. We also wanted to have this kind of like, changing of the baton or passing the torch; that you would be able to switch between between Dante and Nero in the game. So how to be able to do that in the game and how to be able to do that in the story was something that we had to think quite a lot about.

Was the reasoning behind having Nero as a new character primarily story reasons or for gameplay reasons primarily?

Primarily it was for gameplay reasons. I mean, in [Devil May Cry] one, two and three, Dante got more and more moves. It was getting more and more complicated and it became a little bit difficult for people who had never played the series before to be able to control him. So in order to be able to attract both new fans and people who were fans of the series already; so they would both be at the same starting point and both be able to enjoy the game, we felt we had to change and have a new main character.

The relationship between Dante and Nero, seems like that between an older experienced person and a younger impetuous person. In some ways, it reminds me of the relationship between Han Solo and Luke Skywalker or perhaps Solid Snake and Raiden. Was that deliberate? Also, since Devil May Cry 3 was a prequel, Dante was younger than he was in Devil May Cry 1. So in a way, it's almost like Dante and Nero are akin to the older and younger Dantes of the previous games. Is that how you thought about Dante and Nero for Devil May Cry 4?

1. EGO...trip: Slate invites Level Up to its first-ever year end Gaming Club...
2. EGO...trip: ...and our appearance on Bonus Round draws notice...
3. EGO...trip: ...but what some want to know is, we can has editor?
4. OUT...of the past: why developers should seek inspiration in film noir
5. BOO...G4's Morgan Webb explains online reticence; commenters make her case
6. MAN...hunt 2 wins appeal against ban in the United Kingdom
7. Wii...No More Heroes' creator generates no more sales at launch event
8. CAS...ual games reviewer not so laid back after EA exec's comments
9. RND...NBA Live cover athlete Gilbert Arenas puts fellow ballers in check
10. RND...How long before this hyper-violent Japanese flick becomes a game?

The Rock, one of several enemy types in Q-Games' PixelJunk Monsters 

In Part I of our two-part Q&A with Q-Games founder Dylan Cuthbert, he explained why he wants to turn Japanese players on to the pleasure of RTS games with his forthcoming title PixelJunk Monsters (which debuted last week in Japan) and why PSN games haven't yet caught fire in his adopted Japan. In today's Part II, Cuthbert discusses why Q-Games wants to keep its development costs low and the number of shipped games high; what draws him to collaborating with artists who work in other media; and why he thinks Sony has become so interested in smaller games. And as a bonus, Cuthbert shares with us exclusively some details and insight into the direction of his next game, codenamed PixelJunk 1-3.

In an interview with God of War creator and Eat Sleep Play co-founder David Jaffe, he told me the following about the cartoony look of his first PSN game, Calling All Cars:

I've really been thinking about "What did I learn from that experience?" And one of the things I learned was that you have to design your game--and that includes mechanics and thematic--to speak to the audience that owns the system. I had made this assumption, which was an incorrect assumption, that because the game was $10 people would be like, "Ah, it's cartoony. I usually buy military hardcore stuff, but you know what? I'm going to give it a try. It's just ten bucks." It would be an impulse buy.

The reality of it is--and I know that this happened with a number of people who bought the game--but nowhere near as many people were able to get over the thematic hump being unappealing to them, because they're looking for games that are testosterone-fueled. The number of people who got over the hump because the price was so low was significantly lower than the number of people who responded to that game in exact same way they would if it had been a $60 game, which was "Thematically this just doesn't appeal to me."

My question is this: How concerned are you that the visual aesthetic of PixelJunk Monsters may not appeal to the largely hardcore audience that has bought the Playstation 3 thus far?

I am definitely concerned that the market is forcing us to make games that look very similar to each other and this is primarily because the cost of making a game is so high, i.e. the looks and styles have to be consumer-friendly in order to sell as many units as possible and break even.

This is one thing I am trying to avoid with PixelJunk--by keeping the development cost down, and keeping the number of games we produce high, for each game, we can go with the style that we want to play with at that time and give people a much larger range of visual styles than they are used to at the moment. A cool sub-set of people are beginning to understand our stance, and hopefully that sub-set will grow just large enough for us to earn enough money to fund more of our ideas. Of course, this doesn't mean we won't make a flashy, sparkly "consumer-friendly" game at some point--we most definitely will--but what it means is that we can give each of our games our fun, unique look without being subjected to pressure in the creative process to simply make something that is glitzy and sells in order to get the development cost back. At the end of the day it is the consumer that wins, because they get a greater choice.

1. EGO...trip: Is this the Fab Five of videogame journalism?
2. HUH...Level Up, cancerous? Doubly so, according to Tom Brokaw
3. HMM...Valve's vaginal Portal a critique of "phallic" shooters?
4. ODB....lives on: Gamecock rushes stage during BioShock honor at VGAs
5. SAD...The Old Gray Lady struggles with the basics of consoles
6. RND...Color-blind: The new face of Georgetown's NAACP

1. EGO...trip: We thought only Mom recognized our genius. Not so.
2. EGO...trip: Leave no Master Chief behind, or Halo 3, defended 
3. Wii...C.R.E.A.N.: Cash (Flow) Rules Everything Around Nintendo
4. WHO...will be next to Bungie-jump from their publisher's arms?
   
5. CUT...the cord: Nyko set to unveil a wireless nunchuk for Wii
6. SWE...ep the leg, Charles Huang! Sweep the leg!
7. HAV...e you ever danced with Miyamoto in the pale moonlight?
8. TIM...A controversial, hit-whoring, attention craving Mario review
9. HMM...Potential uses of simulated physics in game design, explored
   
10. RND...The premise for Sony's God of War III: Modern Conflict

  Q-Games co-founder Dylan Cuthbert

If there were a definitive encyclopedia of pop culture, Q-Games co-founder Dylan Cuthbert will be located somewhere between Kevin Bacon and Zelig for the way that he keeps popping up in videogame history. Starfox for the Super Nintendo? He worked on that, in Japan, under Shigeru Miyamoto's supervision. Blasto for the PS1? He worked on that for Playstation's American division. Ape Escape? Phil Harrison's beloved rubber duck demos? The Playstation 3's wavey background? Cuthbert, Cuthbert, Cuthbert. He hasn't neglected his Nintendo ties, though, having worked on both the Bit Generations game Digidrive and Starfox Command for the Kyoto giant, with an as-yet-untitled game currently in development as well.

In early 2007, Cuthbert initiated what he calls the PixelJunk Project in order to realize his dream of making 2-D games once again, reaching an agreement with Sony to produce three such games for the PS3. The first game, code-named PixelJunk 1-1, was a top-down slot racing game released under the name PixelJunk Racers in September, to mixed reviews. His newest title, code-named PixelJunk 1-2, is an isometric real-time strategy game that is being titled PixelJunk Monsters. As we said in our preview, it's a clever reworking of the tower defense sub-genre of RTS games for console players, and as such should appeal to both newcomers and anyone who's enjoyed such browser-based titles as Desktop Tower Defense or Vector TD. In Part I of our two-part Q&A with Cuthbert, which we conducted via email, he explains what the name PixelJunk means; why he wants to turn Japanese gamers on to the pleasure of RTS games; and why PSN games haven't yet caught fire in his adopted Japan. Read on.

What does the name PixelJunk mean?

PixelJunk is the nickname I use on the fumufumu-Q blog ("fumufumu" translates roughly from Japanese to the "sound" your brain makes when you are thinking about something). It is a primarily Japanese blog which collects together a mix of tech, culture and art-related articles; a lot of our staff applied for jobs here after reading our those articles. So when I wanted to create a name for this series it seemed like a fun choice--people who like PixelJunk games are destined to be called PixelJunkies. :-)

Where did the idea for PixelJunk Monsters come from?

The idea for PixelJunk Monsters came from a desire to introduce RTS games to Japan somehow. For some reason, RTSs simply do not sell over here, even though if you drag Japanese people screaming and kicking and actually get them to play games such as Starcraft, Command & Conquer, Company of Heroes, etc., they absolutely love them and won't stop playing them for years.

Here at Q we've been kicking ideas around for an RTS for years and even presented some of them to Nintendo and other publishers, but we just can't get a Japanese publisher to take the plunge with that genre, so in the end we had to go ahead and fund it ourselves.

What do you like about real-time strategy games so much that has made you so determined to bring them to Japan?

The Sycamore, one of several enemy types in Q-Games' PixelJunk Monsters for PS3

This generation it seems that publishers and developers are determined to make real-time strategy games a success on consoles. The past two years have already seen such games as Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II and Command & Conquer 3, both from Electronic Arts' Los Angeles studio, while next year is expected to bring with it both Halo Wars, from Ensemble Studios and Microsoft, and Tom Clancy's EndWar, from Ubisoft. And as any one of these developers will tell you, the challenge of successfully bringing an RTS game to consoles is largely one of interface. There's something about using an analog stick to move a cursor around that's vaguely but noticeably unsatisfying; almost no matter how good a job the developer does with the controls, it always manages to feel both slow and perceptibly imprecise, as though it's slightly out of your control

Q-Games' PixelJunk Monsters (see here for screenshots), for which we were granted an exclusive hands-on preview, gets around this problem in a couple of ways. First, its design inspiration is drawn primarily not from games like Command & Conquer or Warcraft, but rather from the RTS-lite browser-based games like Flash Element TD and Desktop Tower Defense, which are themselves stripped-down, simplified versions of the tower defense modes in "proper" RTS titles. Second, like its forebears, PixelJunk Monsters fits on a single screen, so players can take in the entire battlefield at once without being disoriented by having to scroll around a larger field of combat. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, players make their way around the battlefield not with a cursor, but with a forest defender who serves as their on-screen avatar, its short legs pumping furiously as it scrambles from one part of the screen to the next. It's a subtly elegant choice that both solves the nagging control issues and projects the player into the game world, like the third-person games with which consoles have long been identified.

To read the rest of our exclusive hands-on preview, click on the link below.

1. EGO...trip: Analyst Michael Pachter tries to goad us out of retirement...
2. HMM...but would MTV's game of the year pass muster with Jonathan Blow?
3. THE...Man World's largest videogame publisher can't stop the rawk
4. REW...ind, selectah: more context for the C|Net-Gerstmann kerfuffle
5. MMO...Tabula Rasa developer says too-early beta hurt post-launch interest
6. WEL...come to the politics of videogames, Rich Taylor
7. ECA...GamePolitics has a new sibling called GameCulture
8. RND...What Makes Sammy Run, Part II: Electric Boogaloo

Lester Bangs: Aw, man. You made friends with them. See, friendship is the booze they feed you. They want you to get drunk on feeling like you belong.
William Miller: Well, it was...fun.
Bangs: They make you feel cool. And hey, I met you. You are not cool.
Miller: I know. Even when I thought I was, I knew I wasn't.
Bangs: That's because we are uncool. And while women will always be a problem for guys like us, most of the great art in the world is about that very problem. I mean, good-looking people, they got no spine. Their art never lasts. They may get the girls, but we're smarter.
Miller: Yeah, I can really see that now.
Bangs: Yeah, 'cause that's what great art is about: conflict and pain and guilt and longing and love disguised as sex, and sex disguised as love...and hey, let's face it, you got a big head start.
Miller: I'm glad you were home.
Bangs: I'm always home. I'm uncool.
Miller: Me too.
Bangs: You're doing great. The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool. Listen, my advice to you--and I know you think those guys are your friends--if you want to be a true friend to them, be honest, and unmerciful.
--William Miller and Lester Bangs in "Almost Famous"

It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And You. Will. Atone. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?
--Arthur Jensen to Howard Beale in "Network"

The first time we realized the profound contempt with which videogame publishers regard the enthusiast press came in early in this millennium. We had noticed that over the course of several issues, a certain publication had repeatedly taken shots at several of a single company's titles--all of which had been very well received--in its short pieces and its reviews. Now no outlet is forced to like any particular game or games, but it had gotten to the point where we'd take a look at this publication and, like clockwork, a game from this publisher was being eviscerated. In the course of a conversation with a senior publicist with whom we were and remain friendly, we asked them whether they'd noticed this trend. No, but I'll look into it, we were told.

Not long thereafter, the publicist told us that they'd informed their marketing department of the offending copy; marketing then immediately pulled its advertising from the outlet in question, forcefully demonstrating that the publisher would not allow itself to be treated in this manner. From that point on, our close reading of the publication's contents showed that the reprisal had had the desired effect, because the relentless jabs at the company's games immediately ceased. And after several months, the publisher once again began running its ads therein, its point having been made loud and clear.

We'd be lying to you if we said that we immediately recognized this episode as a demonstration of the contempt publishers have for the enthusiast press. After all, we'd only been covering videogames seriously for a couple of years at the time. So while we certainly recognized that our employers at Newsweek wouldn't have the same vulnerability to videogame publishers as would enthusiast magazines, the matter-of-fact way in which the publicist shared the details of their company's scorched earth retaliation led us to presume that this was considered an acceptable way to deal with the specialist press, in a way it would not be with the mainstream media.

We've been thinking back to that incident a lot recently in the wake of the news of GameSpot editorial director Jeff Gerstmann's termination, allegedly over parent company C|Net's concern with publisher discontent over the substance, tone and scores in GameSpot's review of Eidos' Kane & Lynch.

1. WOT...A (War of the Acronyms): NIMF vs. ESRB. Round 1--fight!
2. CON...gressmen urge ESRB to create Gametrailers rival
3. MIZ...Free version of Lumines; 2x2 blocks now face our wrath
4. EVE...rything Zen? I don't think so.
5. HMM...Scrabble is a game. God of War? Not so much.
6. HEH...A long-suffering Halo 3 widow's cheat codes
7. RND...The nasty, brutish and short life of Gawker thus far

Amy Hennig, game director at Naughty Dog for the Playstation 3 game Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

When we're conducting an interview with a developer, the bulk of our time is spent discussing their current project. But after the voice recorder is turned off and the liquor is flowing, the conversation almost inevitably shifts to videogames made by other teams working in the same genre as that developer. For us, it's always fascinating to look at games through the eyes of those who make them, because they often see things through a different set of eyes than the typical gamer; the same can be said of reviewers who are particularly knowledgeable about a certain genre. As part of our ongoing quest to take the best conversations that are occurring in the shadows and bring them to light, we offer you the new occasional series Make or Break, which asks prominent developers and reviewers to share with us the five key features, details, methods or flaws that they look for from games in the same genre.

Our newest contributor is Naughty Dog creative director Amy Hennig, whose resume includes stints at Electronic Arts (as an artist/animator and game designer), Eidos (as director for several acclaimed titles like Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2, and Legacy of Kain: Defiance) before joining Naughty Dog in 2003, where she directed Jak 3. Her most recent title, the Playstation 3 game Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, launched last month to strong reviews. In today's installment, Hennig explains what she looks for in an action/adventure game.

The first adventure game I ever played was (appropriately) Adventure on the Atari 2600, almost thirty years ago. It completely hooked me, and I've been a fan of the genre ever since. As a gamer, I'm always looking for an immersive, story-driven action/adventure game--finding a good one is like losing yourself in a really great book. And as a developer, this is the kind of game I'm most passionate about making. There's no greater reward for a designer or storyteller than knowing that you've transported the player out of the mundane and into the world that you've created.

So all that being said, here are some of the features I look for in the action/adventure games I play--and the qualities I've hoped to achieve in the games I've worked on.

1. The Urge to Explore

From the moment the player steps into the game world, the environment should ignite the imagination and inspire our natural human instinct to investigate and explore. Obviously this urge is driven by a lot of factors, including story and character. But even in the absence of any plot motivations, the environment--taken all by itself--should inspire exploration.

This doesn't mean that an adventure game has to have wide-open levels like GTA or Assassin's Creed--in fact, some of the best adventure games are pretty linear, with only an illusion of open-endedness, but you still feel compelled to find your path through the space, figure out a way to reach a landmark in the distance, or just see what's around the next corner. So why do some games succeed at this, while other games fail to inspire?

1. IGF...The 10th Independent Games Festival's finalists, listed
2. MY!...precious: Andy "Gollum" Serkis founds East England gaming industry network
3. JUS...tify my love: game critic rationalizes his choice of alien *** sex
4. ITS...all about the rupees, what! The money-grubbing world of Tingle, explored
5. ADS...Sony unveils new ad agency, opens up Pain game to in-game ads
6. RND...You go, girl! Katherine Heigl shares her reservations on "Knocked Up"

On Sunday afternoon, following the news of the Vivendi-Activision merger, we spoke with several of the key players in the $18.9 billion venture. On the phone with us were Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime, Vivendi Games chairman René Penisson, and Activision CFO Thomas Tippl. We asked them to tell us when the talks began, why they thought this would be a good fit, and why governance goes to Vivendi and operational control to Activision. Here's what they had to say:

René Pennison: Hello, N'Gai

Bonjour, Jean-Bernard. Ca va bien? [Hello, Jean-Bernard. Are things going well?]

Jean-Bernard Levy: Looks like French is…[Drowned out by everyone's laughter.]

If only I spoke it well enough to conduct the interview in French. It's a bit rusty, but with ten years of learning French in Canada, it's not bad.

Levy: Where are you from?

I'm from Vancouver.

Levy: Oh, really. That's a big French-speaking community?

Pas vraiment, mais comme j'ai dit, j'ai étudié le francais en école pendant dix années…[Not really, but like I said, I studied French for ten years in school…]

Ah, formidable.

Merci beaucoup. The first question is, when and how did the talks begin between Vivendi and Activision?

Bobby Kotick: So I would say about a year ago, I got together with Bruce Hack who is the CEO of Vivendi Games to see if there was anything we might do together. About a month later, Jean-Bernard and Rene came to Santa Monica and we had a talk. Mike [Morhaime] and the Blizzard guys, as you can imagine, I've known for about 15 years or so. We started talking in January, and it was apparent pretty quickly that we had a great chemistry; that this business combination made a lot of sense and it really then became the mechanics, how you manage the opportunity. But it started earlier in the year.

You said "chemistry." What were the areas of commonality? What made you think that this would be a good cultural fit?

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4. RND...Superheroines, Superheroes and supervillains

Who says that Monday Morning Quarterback has to be tied to the NPD sales reports? Not us, not when there's news breaking of this magnitude. Yes, we know we haven't done an MMQB for the October sales numbers; our Thanksgiving travel schedule got in the way, so we're planning to fold it into the November sales analysis. But enough about us. When news came across the transom earlier today that Vivendi Games and Activision had announced their plans to merge, we quickly contacted our regular QB, Game Head host, Geoff Keighley, to pit his BlackBerry-fueled insights against our Palm-enabled observations. Not only did he agree to do so on the holiest day of football lovers around the world, after winning the coin toss, he volunteered to go on offense first. Some excerpts:

Geoff Keighley: It’s pretty monumental that the new company will be Activision Blizzard, not Activision Sierra. But here’s my open question to Mike Morhaime and the guys at Blizzard: Are you really going to put your name on the box for a game like Scarface II? Or even a derivative third-person action game like Wet? Blizzard has been so protective of its brand for years that I find it hard to believe their name/logo will go on all the game boxes. Or will Blizzard now have a say in the games the joint company publishes? If so, the quality standards are going to have to go way up. In fact I am beginning to wonder just how many Vivendi games are really going to make it through the star chamber at the combined company. Stay tuned.

N'Gai Croal: What this merger really says to me is that EA brought back CEO John Riccitiello later than it should have. Why? Because sometimes it's the deals you don't make that cause your downfall, and nowhere is that more true than in the videogame industry....When Vivendi was looking to sell its videogame unit back in 2003, the major publishers like EA all kicked the tires, but none of them wanted to pull the trigger on the reported $1 billion asking price when the only asset of any perceived value was a pre-World of Warcraft Blizzard. That's somewhat understandable, but how did EA let Red Octane and Harmonix slip through its fingers, long after it was clear that Guitar Hero was a phenomenon and with a former record label exec in worldwide music boss Steve Schnur in EA's own executive suite? I have to imagine that if Riccitiello had returned to EA sooner, there's no way that someone like him, who's been so aggressive on acquisitions, would have let both companies escape his grasp. Put all of this together, and it starts to look like a series of unfortunate events that has resulted in the creation of what could be EA's most formidable competitor yet.

To read our discussion in its entirety, click on the link below.

On Sunday morning, Vivendi announced its plans to combine its videogame unit with Activision announced their plans to merge, creating what the two companies say is the world's largest videogame publisher. Vivendi, which is contributing $1.7 billion in cash to the venture, will own 52 percent of the new company; however, Activision chairman and CEO Robert Kotick will emerge as the president and CEO of Activision Blizzard, while Bruce Hack, current CEO of Vivendi Games, will serve as vice-chairman and chief corporate officer of the combined company. Following the deal, Activision Blizzard will seek to repurchase up to 146.5 million of its shares, or a 31 percent premium on Activision's recent share price.

Activision is best known for its Guitar Hero, Call of Duty and Tony Hawk franchises, while Vivendi, which has had success of late with such games as Scarface: The Word Is Yours and F.E.A.R., has become known in recent years as the house that Blizzard kept afloat, thanks to the outlandish success of the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft. We expect to have more coverage of today's announcement in the days ahead.

To read the full press release, click on the link below.