Rockstar Games, popular child of parent company Take-Two Interactive, deals not in sandbox titles nor smut simulators, but in controversy. GamesIndustry.biz interview conducted with Take-Two CEO Ben Feder to discuss the controversial gaming landscape which the publisher's popular Grand Theft Auto games have decisively staked as its own territory, as well as the constantly changing topography of that landscape.

Now that many gamers have finished Grand Theft Auto IV's expansive campaign, the focus for many players looking for more storyline longevity from the title has shifted to the promised downloadable content. When asked how he feels about DLC's business model when (ostensibly) compared to other sales methods, Feder expressed his belief that the core GTA fans will be "screaming to buy it" when it becomes available.

Feder admitted that GTA software "just saturates hardware," but increased hardware sales are pivotal if GTA sales are to be increased. According to Feder, this holiday season's hardware sales will go a long way toward deciding which platform will receive more DLC. After all, noted Feder, it's financially wise for Take-Two to aim for the platform with the larger user base: more gamers equal more money.

The interview can be found on GamesIndustry.biz.

Following up on their amazing work on Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, Flashbang Studios is working on their newest Unity-powered browser game. Called Minotaur in a China Shop, it has you playing a minotaur whose goal is to destroy all the precious china and shelves in the shop. Once again, it's heavily physics based as well. The trailer (pictured above) shows off some of the physics gameplay with the untextured models. It looks very interesting, and will no doubt be incredibly fun, given Flashbang's pedigree.

[Via IndieGames]

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

This is a first for me. Over the past few months, I have espoused the virtues of a wide variety of freeware games, from shooters to strategy games. Never, however, have I talked about a browser game. This week marks the first, and definitely not last, time that I'll be showcasing a browser game. When a game is as good as Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, one must share it with everyone. Plus, with most of our staff at E3, Off-Road Velociraptor Safari is perfect for them! Just don't expect many browser games to make it onto Freeware Friday.

We've yet to run across a game with such a strange, yet oddly compelling art style as Office Smash. Featuring a strange, vivisected sort of art along with an interface reminiscent of an office workplace located somewhere in Salvador Dali's mind, this TOJam 2008 competitor easily wins over the part of us that loves the macabre and bizarre. Plus, there's no goal! We do love a good sandbox game.

Office Smash is a browser game that utilizes the Unity player to great effect. Taking your character, the diligent office worker, you must destroy as much of the cubicle as possible before your skinless alien overlord boss fires you. Everything is destructible, from the books down to the desk itself. It's a great little physics sandbox, and highly recommended to anyone with some time to waste. At least, anyone who isn't creeped out by the surreal.

During the assault of E3 festivities, GameTrailers.com was able to interview one of the designers working on Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, the oft-delayed but still anticipated action-oriented sandbox game due out later this year from Pandemic Studios. Designer Laura Paolilli walks GameTrailers through a mission entitled "Paint the Town," which highlights many features fans can look forward to in the Mercenaries sequel.

That was fast. The powers that be (also known as Tarn Adams) have buckled down to fix most of the glaring issues with version 39a that we reported on yesterday. While playing with the new world generation features was fun (a single human with one leg fighting off an entire horde of elves? Awesome!), it didn't sate us like the standard gameplay could. It is with great pleasure, then, that we may now play 39b.

Dwarves no longer sleep forever, you can travel around in adventurer mode without getting the annoying "You can be seen" message all the time, caves are once again appearing, the health care and hauling labors now appear on the labors list for each dwarf, and generated animals no longer start out drunk. There's many more fixes, but those are the major ones. This is purely a bugfix version, but it makes the game once again playable. You can download the new version from Bay 12 Games. Remember that you can use any worlds or saves from 32a onwards in a new version.

Big Download again thanks everyone for participating in the Spore Creature Creator Contest. Our judges picked their Top 10, all of whom with a free upgrade to the full version of the Spore Creature Creator. The readers have spoken, and there was a very close race for third place that came down to just one vote.

Without further ado, we're proud to announce the three grand prize winners of the Big Download Spore Creature Creator Contest!




Kyle from Minneapolis, MN wins the Wacom Intuos3 6x11 drawing tablet!




Roman from Mattawan, MI wins an EVGA NVIDIA e-GeForce 8800GT Superclocked video card!




Ian from Silver Spring, MD wins an EVGA NVIDIA e-GeForce 9600GT video card!

Congratulations to all the winners, and please be on the lookout for future contests hosted by Big Download.


Download the Spore Creature Creator Demo for Windows
Download the Spore Creature Creator Demo for Mac

Once every few months, the slumbering bear stirs and gives us a new version of Dwarf Fortress. Sandbox game lovers rejoice, as the new version of Dwarf Fortress is here! Version v0.28.181.39a (or just 39a to most) includes the brand new wars and armies system that maps in conflicts into the world generation. It may seem like something small, but it adds a huge amount of believability to the game world.

This new world generation feature is also the start of a series of enhancements to armies and battles called the "Army Arc". New features planned as a part of this arc are things like wars between civilizations occurring during Fortress mode, the ability for a player in Adventurer mode to run across a large-scale battle, and the ability for a Fortress to create its own army.

Note that this release has a crippling bug that causes all dwarves to stay asleep. So it's only good for the new world generation bits and Adventurer mode. A bugfix is planned soon.

How could we have missed this? Thank god for Alehkhs over at TIGSource, otherwise I would've never heard of Survival Crisis Z. A mixture of arcade action and traditional role-playing sensibilities, you play a man trying to survive the zombie apocalypse however he can. It has everything from sandbox gameplay to a living city. The city is even procedurally generated! Talk about replayability. There hasn't been a game that has drawn us in this much since Dwarf Fortress. It's an excellent game and well worth playing. You also might know the developer, James Silva, as the man behind one of XNA's stars, Dishwasher.

[Via TIGSource]

The Big Download Team thanks everyone who participated in the Spore Creature Creator Giveaway Contest. We got a ton of fantastic, creative, creatures and had a tough time choosing our favorites, but we managed to pick out 10 lucky winners who will each get a free upgrade to the full version of the Spore Creature Creator.

Now we turn the contest over to you, the Big Download readers. Check out the Top 10 Spore creatures and vote for your favorite by replying to this post (one vote per person, please). Grand prize winner gets a Wacom Intuos3 6x11 drawing tablet. Second Prize is a EVGA NVIDIA e-GeForce 8800GT Superclocked video card. Third prize winner will receive a EVGA NVIDIA e-GeForce 9600GT video card.

So, check out the Spore Creature Creator Contest Top 10 gallery and cast your vote today! We'll tally up all the votes on July 14 and announce the grand prize winners on the 15th.



Review Spore Creature Creator Contest Announcement
Review Official Rules for giveaway

Download the Spore Creature Creator Demo for Windows
Download the Spore Creature Creator Demo for Mac

We're about to talk about an application that isn't really a game. It's more of a toy that can be used as a game.. We just think that you'll absolutely love it. Universe Sandbox is an application that gives you celestial bodies and allows you to do absolutely anything with them. Want to see what it would be like if the Earth had no mass? Go for it. What about two galaxies colliding? Sure thing. There's no goals and just about infinite possibilities, so just let loose and have a ball puttering around with the laws of reality. The accurate simulation of every aspect, from mass to gravity to velocity, makes it that much more cool. Our personal favorite moment would have to be making 4 galaxies collide into a swirling mass of stars.

[Via IndieGames]

Last fall brought Maxis and EA's popular The Sims franchise to Nintendo's DS and Wii platform in the form of MySims, a casually-oriented title in which players could construct not only their avatar, but entire towns and communities as well. Today, EA has announced That MySims will make its way to PC this October, complete with online functionality so that players can share their creations with the world.

The PC version of MySims will feature fun community-based activities such as Hide-and-Seek, tag, trading cards, and safe chat for up to seven friends. Creations can be shared outside of the game via instant messaging and email.

"MySims, made for the PC, opens up the world of MySims for you to explore, play and share with up to seven other friends that are online with you," said Rod Humble, Head of Studio for The Sims Label. "For the first time, you can express the creativity of MySims with others in a collaborative way, as you create and live in a shared town with your friends online. With MySims, made for the PC, it's a whole new world of interaction with personalized creations, buildings and towns to share, along with furniture and other tailored creations that you and your friends can trade. Players who enjoyed MySims on the Wii and Nintendo DS will view this as a great way to connect with friends in an online PC game and those new to MySims will find this a fresh and exciting game."

Raph Koster knows a thing or three about gaming. Specifically, online virtual words. He should since he was the lead designer for Ultima Online, the creative director behind Star Wars Galaxies, and is the founder and president of Areae, where he's working on a platform for online games called Metaplace.

All that aside, Koster tallied up some very interesting comparative numbers on his personal blog today. With all the hullabaloo about how gaming is taking over Hollywood, how people want interactive entertainment instead of passively sitting in front of a boob tube and soaking up reality TV... one has to ask: what are the real numbers? After Sulake's announcement today that their virtual world Habbo hit the 100 million avatar mark, what does that really mean? Koster gave us some numbers:

• There are 20,000,000 Habbo users worldwide
• 28,800,000 viewers watched the #1 show on US television (sadly, that was American Idol)
• 2.4 million viewers watched the 150th ranked show (Gossip Girl)
• North American World of Warcraft users total 2.5 million
• 1.4 billion movie tickets were sold in the US in one year

That last one is billions... with a "b." And who said video games were taking over Hollywood again? There are several more intriguing numerations on his list so be sure to check it out. Thanks to Raph we now have a better understanding of where gaming ranks within the American entertainment landscape.

American McGee has been involved with some great games (Doom 1 & 2, Quake 1 & 2 and Alice) over the years. But the last game he laid hands on -- Bad Day LA -- was so bad it gave everyone pause. With Grimm, he's going back to his specialty -- tweaking the crap out of fairy tales in his own bizarre way.

McGee was interviewed by 2024.org at length about what he calls a "transformation game." There are no other games like it, thus by American's rule -- it defines its own genre. Grimm's NPCs and AI serve only two purposes: to communicate the story, and to stop Grimm from turning their fairly tale world dark. Whatever you do and wherever you go you'll have a direct impact on their world, and the world's inhabitants resist those actions by literally "cleaning" the darkness Grimm spreads. Oh boy... this definitely sounds like typical (in a good way!) American McGee!

Grimm is set to release on July 31exclusively on GameTap and will have 24 thirty minute episodes. Each new episode will be released once per week in the same pre-determined time slot -- just like a television series. According to McGee, it is the first "true" episodic game. We're anxious to find out how this all plays out and whether American has returned to his ingenious game making ways.

[via Blue's News]