EA Mythic's Barnett on Why He Doesn't Hit GDC

Some Infinity Ward Guy, Ladies Man

It's time to turn down the lights down real low. Set the mood, right. Previously, Microsoft exec and ladies man Aaron Greenberg talked up Bill Gates hot tub habits with two Penthouse Pets. This time it is Robert Bowling from Infinity Ward's turn. Robert Bowling? Yes, ROBERT BOWLING. He talks to the Pets about his part in Call of Duty 4:

Penthouse Lady: You are behind Call of Duty 4, right?
Robert Bowling: Uh, yeah. I'm the Community Manager for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warefare and Infinity Ward, which is the developer.
Penthouse Lady: Right on.

Phew. Good thing that wasn't all awkward. It sure could've been. These clips are from GDC and will never get old. Never.

In Bed With The Pets [Das Gamer via videogaming247]

World of Warcraft Was Originally Going To Be Ad Supported

Gears of War 2 Direct Feed Tech Demo

GDC Gears of War 2 Vids Available on XBLM

You may have noticed that in the Music Store, coming with the Rock Band update later this week, is a reference to albums. In fact albums have their own selection (with a Coming Soon next to it) on the front page of the Music Store. But still no official word about when albums may be coming. What gives?

When we sat down with the game to check out the new menu at GDC we asked our Harmonix guide just that. He said that albums were a very important goal for the game and that Harmonix was in the "process of finalizing albums."

It sounded to me like one of the hang-ups might have been figuring out pricing and how to deal with people who have already bought chunks of albums through Harmonix created music packs. But it's definitely on it's way and soon. So take heart.

Along with a slew of other updates, the latest patch for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 version of Rock Band includes a new in-game music store. The music store will let you preview and purchase songs from inside the game by selecting the option from the main menu.

The store lets you sort all of the games' music by a selection of categories, view original album art for the masters recordings, listen to song previews and check out some extended information about specific songs, like the difficulty rating for each instrument.

We had a chance to check it out in Harmonix suite during the Game Developers Conference earlier this year and were pretty impressed. The menu allowed you to sort by artist, song, genre, album, pack and the difficulty of the song.

Didn't make it to this year's Game Developers Conference? If you were particularly excited about attending some of Valve's various sessions, you can virtually attend through the power of the PDF. The house of Half-Life, Portal and Counter-Strike has released the slides from its four GDC presentations which cover all aspects of The Orange Box. The presentations "Integrating Narrative and Design: A Portal Post-Mortem" and "Stylization With a Purpose: The Illustrative World of Team Fortress 2" may be the most layman friendly, giving regular folk a look beyond The Orange Box's developer commentary. All four are worth a peek at the very least.

Valve Publications [Valve via GameSetWatch]

BioWare Weighs In On Sexuality In Games

With so much controversy around the sexuality in Mass Effect, I'm kind of surprised it was so long before Bioware provided their thoughts on the matter. But at GDC 08, BioWare's General Manager Ray Muzyka gave his opinion on how proud he was of the team at BioWare, and the game they've created.

We're proud of the mature plots that we build into our games. They're really appropriate for the type of story we're trying to convey. And romance is part of that. It's part of life. It's part of an interaction — a healthy relationship with other people.

Bioware Talks Video Game Romance In The Post-'SeXbox' Era [MTV Multiplayer]

Game Industry Turns Tables On The Press

One of the numerous panel discussions at GDC last month did things a little bit differently, setting up a panel of video game journalists, lead by Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, to answer some of the questions game industry professionals have for those that write about them and their work. The panel consisted of 1UP's Garnett Lee, MTV's Stephen Totilo, Game Informer's Andy McNamara, Geoff Keighly of GameTrailers.tv, and our very own Brian Crecente.

The group covers a variety of topics, including the responsibility of a game journalist, the role of the reporter versus that of a critic, the impact that the emerging casual game market is having on game journalism, and one question from an anonymous contributor about the pay structure of gaming sites. One of the most interesting discussions, though, surrounded the influence giving a score to a game has on not only the game, but whether people will read the article:

'The Power of Free to Play'

Adrian Crook had an interesting presentation at the GDC Worlds In Motion Summit on the issue of free to play games - where they've been, where they're heading, good things, bad things .... He's put up the slides and speech over at his website, and while the narrative redux is apparently not as zippy as the original presentation, it is an interesting listen.

Crook points out some growth challenges to free to play, though he notes these are definitely not deal-breakers for the business model. First, there are virtual property challenges. "At some point that's going to be decided by the courts. Hopefully we're out ahead of it," Crook said, pointing out Eric Bethke's forward-thinking endeavor to create an avatar bill of rights. Second, there are differing broadband speeds. And rising development costs will become an issue now with the advent of Electronic Arts' highly-polished Battlefield Heroes. Larger-scale F2P products are going to raise the quality bar, Crook says.

The talk clocks in at a little over half an hour, but if you're interested in the free to play model, it's definitely worth taking a look at.

The Slidecast from my F2P GDC Presentation [Free To Play]
Adrian Crook Talks Free To Play [Worlds In Motion]

Street Fighter IV Impressions From The Street Fighter III Perspective

Two days prior to my hands-on experience with Street Fighter IV, we held an impromptu Street Fighter III: Third Strike tournament at the offices of Massive Black. My Elena versus Crecente's Ryu wasn't so much a contest as it was a total bloodletting. (Ultimately, though, the Massive Black guys made the three Kotaku editors look like scrubs.) In Crecente's defense, he was more transfixed with Street Fighter II Champion Edition and largely ended his love affair there. I, on the other hand, latched on to every arcade release, through Super Street Fighter II, Street Fighter Alphas I-III and all three iterations of Street Fighter III. Hell, I was even pretty competitive in Super Gem Fighter: Mini Mix for a while there.

But the entry in the series that Street Fighter IV is largely modeled after, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, was the one that I actually spent the least amount of time with.

Warhawk's upcoming booster pack, Operation Broken Mirror, will feature an armored personnel carrier which can serve as a mobile spawning point and weapon producer and also create the "mother of all bubble shields," the game's producer, Dylan Jobe told me in a recent interview.

"You can roll this around a map and it's like this clean blank canvas for combat," he said. "When it's driving around it works as a mobile forward spawn point and when you spawn into it you get additional equipment."

Jobe said the APC will also be able to deploy a piece of equipment that is "like the mother of all bubble shields" and is a couple of hundred feet wide.

Let me start by saying that my love of Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition comes not from the perspective of an aficionado, or someone paid to study each nuanced piece of minutia that comes out about a game as it makes its way from concept to arcade.

My experience with Street Fighter 2 CE was born entirely in my time first hanging out at arcades and then running one in the 90s in Maryland. I loved the game so much that my time spent playing it is what likely lead to me being fired from the job. I slathered more attention on our big-screen SF2 box than I did every other machine in the place, combined. I regularly replaced the cherry switches and springs on a weekly basis.

But I couldn't have told you who the game's producer was, what sort of lore was buried in the creating of such an indelible franchise or how they came about with the idea of the characters in the game.

That being said, read on.

While Crecente and McWhertor will be flooding your consciousnesses with Street Fighter gameplay impressions later, I wanted to start things off with an amuse-bouche and just focus on one thing: just how freaking gorgeous SFIV is in person.

Because while I was initially skeptical about the 2.5D art direction, now I'm a total convert. SFIV's graphics dropped my jaw in a way that hasn't happened with a fighter since the original Virtual Fighter. Even when you don't have the pleasure of actually playing, the game is pure eye candy high fructose corn syrup concentrate.

Game Developers Choice Awards On Tonight

For those who didn't attend GDC last week, there's another chance to catch the Game Developers Choice Awards/Independent Games Festival Awards megashow. Condensed to a 30-minute segment for an X-Play time slot, to catch the event, set your DVRs for G4 at 8pm (eastern) tonight. (You could watch it in real time, but we were pretending you had plans or something.)

Not only is this the first developer-powered award show to make it to mainstream television, but everyone who attended was entertained by some extremely funny acceptance speeches. Tune in and enjoy.

G4 To Show Game Developers Choice Awards Tonight [Gamasutra]

GDC Attendance Hits Record High

The 2008 Game Developer's Conference saw an all-time high in attendance numbers, as the GDC team has announced that over 18,000 people walked through the convention hall's doors. The five day event featured 400 sessions, 300 exhibitors, and enough Force Unleashed coverage to keep Tori happy (okay, the GDC team didn't announce that, but it's still true).

Battlefield Heroes Impressions

You may think of EA's cartoon-influenced Battlefield Heroes as a poor man's Team Fortress 2. The thing is, you'd be fairly right to do so. The game will actually be free to play for anyone with a web browser and, yes, in person it looks just as much like TF2 as you'd think—but that's not a bad thing, necessarily.