Interviews

San Diego-based Psyonix is a full fledged professional game developer with lots of experience in using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 technology. Indeed the developer has collaborated directly with Epic on several of their games. However, the team also likes to experiment with new game prototypes and one of those efforts, the casual underwater-themed platformer Whizzle, has been turned into a full (and free) stand along game using Epic's now officially released Unreal Development Kit.

Big Download got a chance to ask some questions to the Psyonix team and its founder Dave.Hagewood to find out more about how Whizzle was made, what they think the release of UDK will mean for game development and more.

Futuremark has made its mark (pun intended) in the past with its benchmarking software, especially 3DMark which has become a defacto product to put high end PC hardware through its paces. However the company has also wanted to make games and in 2008 it announced its plans to start up Futuremark Games Studios.

Later today its first title, the multiplayer first person shooter Shattered Horizon, is scheduled to be released via Steam. As one might expect their first game is not the typical FPS as it takes place in Earth orbit with players as armed astronaunts shooting in zero gravity. Big Download got the game's lead designer Antti Summala to give us some more info on Shattered Horizon and get some hints about the future plans for the game.

Much like Dell's Alienware gaming PC division revamped their entire lineup of desktops last month, other gaming PC makers are doing the same with their products. Today Maingear announced a major revamp of their own desktop line which they have named Shift. Along with the new desktop line comes a new logo for the company and a new case design made specifically for the Shift brand. Inside the case Maingear plans to allow for a ton of high end hardware choices and with prices starting at $2.199.

Big Download got the skinny from Maingear founder and CEO Wallace Santos about Maingear's "shift" in direction, along with what he thinks about the newly launched Windows 7 and the future of gaming PCs.

Hey, do you remember any news about an upcoming RTS game called . . . StarCraft II? Why sure you do. Yes, we are all very upset that Blizzard won't deliver the long awaited sequel by the end of this year but that doesn't mean we should be bitter. Just think of it as an excuse to learn more about the game before it comes out.

And one of the ways to do just that is with the latest StarCraft II fan Q&A on the Battle.net message boards. The developers answer a few more of the fan questions like how many voice actors worked on the game (58), any word on additional map features (Nope) and a question about terrain sets (terrain sets are named after planets and there will be more flexibility to modify terrain sets in the final game). Now you know and knowing is . . well, you get the idea.

In just six years, the Penny Arcade Expo has grown from a small gathering of gamers and fans of the Penny Arcade web comic strip to the largest consumer video and PC game event in the US. And all of that growth has been done just with word of mouth and a desire for gamers just to have a lot of fun. Last year's event at Seattle's Washington State Convention and Trade Center brought in over 58,000 attendees. This year, despite the economic recession, the event sold out of all of its three day and single day tickets. And for those of you who couldn't make it to this year's event, PAX East in Boston will have its inaugural event in late March 2010 which is another testimony to the growth of the event.

Big Download contacted Penny Arcade's director of sales Mike Fehlauer to get more info about their plans for PAX 2009 and if they are ready for what will likely be the biggest Penny Arcade Expo yet

First, you guys made a decision to limit the amount of tickets this year for PAX 2009. Why did you decide to do that and has that been helpful for your planning of PAX 2009?

The cap was not our decision; after the enormous crowd last year, the convention center imposed a hard cap on badge sales. With the increased size of PAX 09--we've expanded to the 5th and 6th floors and now have the entire Center--we're confidant that the crowd will be more manageable since there's more room, and more stuff to do.

3D Realms is now a much smaller company thanks to the shut down of the Duke Nukem Forever development team but its head man Scott Miller is still on the job. In a new an extensive interview on Gamasutra that looks back on Miller's entire career, he reveals that 3D Realms still has "11 or 12 projects in the works". Some of those projects are iPhone titles but Miller says, "We have some major games in production still. So we're fine."

Miller also reveals that the revived Apogee label, which will release an all new Duke Nukem game for handheld consoles, are "also going to reboot the Rise of the Triad franchise". First released in 1994, the original game, developed by Apogee/3D Realms, was one of the first successful first person shooter games after id Software started the genre with Wolfenstein 3D (indeed Rise of the Triad used id's Wolfenstein graphics engine). There's no word if this revival will come to the PC or in what kind of form but we have our fingers crossed.

While Funcom is prepping up for the release of their next major MMO game The Secret World they are also planning to release a major commercial expansion pack for their 2008 fantasy MMO Age of Conan. Today Funcom revealed some of the first details of the expansion which is titled Rise of the Godslayer.

The expansion will add a new land to the game, the Empire of Khitai. The land, which is split up into five different zone, looks like it has an Asian design influence by the screenshots that accompany the announcement. The storyline deals with the consequences that were created by the action of a younger Conan Khitai. Players will also be able to replay the game as one of the Khitans themselves. There will also be new abilities, spells and combos added for players and naturally there will be a number of new monsters to slay, by Crom! The expasion does not yet have a release date.

The day after Big Download got to see the first playable demo for Rage (which attendees at QuakeCon 2009 will get to see later today) we got to sit down and chat with four members of the first person shooter's team at id Software; art director Stephan Martiniere, lead designer Matt Hooper, producer producer Jason Kim and creative director Tim Willits.

While Rage is still a first person shooter game it also incorporates all sorts of gameplay and features that have never been in a game created by id. Willits told us, "We knew that we didn't want to look like Quake or Wolfenstein." The actual idea behind Rage came as id's master programmer John Carmack checked out satellite data of the US. Willits told us that they thought it would be cool "if we could drive through that." From there they came up with setting the game in a post-apocalypse era and having drivable vehicles with guns.

As far as enemies, Willits said, "We were careful. We knew we didn't want to do Doom demons." While there are mutants to fight in Rage there are also plenty of actual humans to deal with and interact with in the game which is another first for id.

Check out more from the Rage chat after the jump:

A few years ago it was reported that Gearbox Software was going to create a game based on the terrific Michael Mann crime drama movie Heat. You can't much better than Al Pacino, Val Kilmer and Robert De Niro shooting each other in the streets of LA. Since then there's been little to no news on the project and now Gearbox head man Randy Pitchford, in a chat with Gamespot, states that for now they are done with the project.

Pitchford states, "Because of the situation, we're not keeping the IP locked down anymore. So if somebody else were in a spot where they could do it, and everybody was comfortable with that, then conceivably that could happen." He also goes into detail about meeting with Mann himself, the possibilities of signing up the movie leads for the game and the fact that in the end Gearbox got too busy with other project to continue to develop the Heat game.

Ken Levine is still not talking about what his team at 2K Boston is working on next. Let's get that out of the way right now. However he is more than willing to chat to Gamasutra about pretty much anything else in a lengthy interview (with interjections from 2 Boston's director of creative development Joe McDonagh and the studio's recruiter Ryan Oddey).

The interview talks about how 2K Boston hires the right people and creates the right culture to develop their games. However Levine does give a small hint about what their next project is trying to achieve. He states, "We needed a certain kind of length for the title, because we had a scope and ambition in mind which is more ambitious than anything we've ever done. Even more, substantially more ambitious than BioShock." Wow. That sounds promising.

The merger of Vivendi Games with Activision in 2008 to form Activision Blizzard left a ton of former Vivendi Games properties looking for new owners. Many of them found new homes with various publishers. One of them was UK-based developer Rebellion, best known for their work on the first PC Aliens Vs Predator game. Currently the developer is working on a new AVP game for publisher Sega along with the first person shooter Rogue Warrior for publisher Bethesda Softworks.

Last week, the DRM-free download site GoG.com revealed they were adding new games owned by Rebellion to their catalog. What wasn't mentioned at the time of the announcement was that the games were actually former Vivendi Games titles that were not previously owned or developed by Rebellion. That got our curiosity up and we decided to contact Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley to get more information.Kingsley confirmed to us that they now own the rights to release several former Vivendi Games titles. You can check out the breakdown after the jump:

Just a few years ago Microsoft was one of the most prolific first and third party publishers for PC games, releasing titles like the Age of Empires/Mythology series, the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, the Mechwarrior series, Freelancer, Impossible Creatures, Rise of Nations and many more. However Microsoft has been doing some cost cutting in the past 18 months as they have shut down a number of their internal PC developers such as ACES Studio and Ensemble Studios while cutting back their third party PC game publishing lineup.

At the same time, Microsoft has tried to work with third party publishers on their Games For Windows marketing push for PC games, They have also tried to improve their Games For Windows Live online service which got off to a rocky start just over two years ago but has made improvements since then. Big Download got a chance to chat with Michael Wolf, the Senior Marketing Manager for Games for Windows Live, to get an update on their PC game development and publishing plans and their future plans for Games For Windows Live.

The launch of the free multiplayer first person shooter America's Army 3 has been a success at least it terms of widespread interest and numbers of players downloading and signing onto the game's servers. However the game, developed and funded by the US Army, has run into some first week launch problems and most of them deal with the massive amount of players that have overloaded America's Army 3's authentication servers. In addition, the US Army has admitted that it has decided to close down one of the game's development studios located in Emeryville, CA.

Big Download contacted the public relations representative for America's Army 3 to get some answers about both the shutdown of the Emeryville office and the technical issues that have cropped up for the game. The PR rep promptly sent over the US Army's official answers to these questions.

(Full disclosure: Big Download is the exclusive site for the America's Army 3 Deploy Client)

By John Gaudiosi

When he's not battling CGI Decepticons, actor Shia Labeouf can be found playing PC games or Xbox 360 online. With his $200 million movie, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, opening June 24, LaBeouf pulled double duty, working with Activision to fine-tune the second Transformers videogame experience. In addition to adding his voice work and likeness to the new game (co-star Megan Fox also went virtual), LaBeouf told the game makers what he did and did not like about the original game. One new feature that resulted from these conversations was the new online gameplay. LaBeouf talks about his love of videogames, what he played on set, and why he prefers Civ IV to Wii in this exclusive interview.

Gallery: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

With E3 2009 officially just three days away (pre-E3 press events take place on Monday) the press buzz for the annual US PC-video game trade show in Los Angeles has hit much higher levels than the previous two years when the show was a much smaller invite only event. The new show is a return of sorts to the big exhibit trade show version that launched E3 until 2006 (although this year's version is still projected to be about 33 percent smaller in terms of attendance than the pre-2006 trade shows).

The Entertainment Software Association continues to own E3 (the actual day-to-day operations at the show are handled by the IDG Expo company). Big Download got the ESA's Dan Hewiit, their senior director of communications, to answer some questions for us about E3 2009.