dice-summit posts

The next MMO game from Blizzard Entertainment (which we know goes by the internal code name "Titan") is still a long ways off but during this week's DICE Summit the president of Blizzard Mike Morhaime gave some general hints about what the next MMO from the company behind World of Warcraft would be like.

According to Ars Technica, Morhaime repeated that the MMO won't be a World of Warcraft sequel but one that will take all of the lessons that Blizzard has learned from developing its first MMO title. He stated, "So we're kind of taking a step back with all that knowledge to make something that's completely new and fresh." He added, "To break the mold, sometimes you have to start over." Morhaime hints that the new MMO would have more of a social-friends aspect to it but then added, "That's probably all I can say."

Mass Effect 2 was the winner of the Game of the Year award at the 2011 edition of the Interactive Achievement Awards, held last night at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas. BioWare's sci-fi RPG sequel also won in the catagories of Outstanding Achievement in Story and RPG/MMO Game of the Year.

Blizzard's RTS sequel StarCraft II also picked up a couple of awards last night for Outstanding Achievement in Online Gameplay and Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year. FIFA 2011 also won for Sports Game of the Year. All of the other awards, sadly, were won by console exclusive game titles. The ceremonies will be shown on the G4 cable TV network this Saturday at 4 pm Eastern Time.

Battlefield 3 may have just been announced but developer Digital Illusions is also hyping up the new version of its in-house Frostbite game engine. Now a video from a Siggraph presentation has shown up on YouTube that shows off a little more of the engine,

The video, which doesn't show gameplay from Battlefield 3, does show off the real-time radiosity features of the new Frostbite Engine 3 through the use of a middleware program called Enlighten. DICE is still not talking about if Battlefield 3 will include an SDK for mod makers although previous games in the series have had such released. You can check out the video after the jump:

[Via VG247.com]

Usually the keynote address at the annual DICE Summit is handled by just one person. For the 2011 edition in mid-February the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences are doing something a little different. The opening keynote address on February 9 will have five major speakers. All of them have been past recipients of the AIAS's Hall of Fame award.

The speakers will be Mike Morhaime (co-founder and CEO of Blizzard), Bruce Shelley (co-founder of the now defunct Ensemble Studios), Mark Cerny (founder of Cerny Games), and Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk (the co-founders of BioWare). All five will participate in a "lively discussion, debate and predict the next frontier of interactive entertainment." The panel will apparently not have the AIAS's newest Hall of Fame member Peter Molyneux.

The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences will give out its second annual Pioneer Award to Bill Budge at the 2011 DICE Summit on February 10 This award differs from the AIAS's Hall of Fame honor in that the Pioneer Award is given to "men and women who helped to create the interactive entertainment industry."

That's certainly the case for Budge who created programs in the early 1980s like 3-D Game Tool and Pinball Construction Set which allowed anyone to make their own games without the need to know or understand programming codes. Will Wright is quoted in the press release as saying, "Pinball Construction Set was the first game that introduced me to the idea of constructive games and systemic thinking. I doubt SimCity would have existed without it."

Budge has worked for Apple, Electronic Arts, Sony Computer Entertainment and the now defunct 3DO in his long career. He currently works at Google "where he is helping to make the Web a better platform for games and game makers."

The second annual Indie Game Challenge has announced its finalist for the 2011 edition of the independent game competition sponsored by The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, GameStop and The Guildhall. Like last year, six finalists each were picked for the non-professional and professional categories. You can check out the finalist after the jump.

All of the nominated teams will be flown to the DICE Summit in Las Vegas where the winning game and team in each category will be announced on February 11. The winning team in both categories will get $100,000. All of the team will also be able to have meeting with top publishers. In addition the Indie Game Challenge will also name the winner of the Kongregate Award for best browser-based game.

It's awards season and we are not just talking about the movie industry. Today the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for its annual Interactive Achievement Awards. The winners, which are voted on by members of the game industry, will be held as part of the DICE Summit in Las Vegas on February 10. As we previously reported, comedian and actor Jay Mohr will return as its host and the G4 cable TV network will provide live streaming of the awards ceremony on its web site and show an edited version on the network itself on February 12.

Call of Duty Black Ops and Mass Effect 2 got the most nomination for a game released on the PC platform with five nods each including Game of the Year. StarCraft II got four nominations including one for Strategy/Simulation game of the year which it shared with Civilization V, Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II Chaos Rising and Supreme Commander 2. The full list of catagories and nominated games can be seen at this PDF page.

One of Electronic Arts' most influential former executives has been named as the fifth receipiant of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Science's Lifetime Achievement Award. Bing Gordon will receive the award during the annual DICE Summit in Las Vegas on February 10.

Gordon started at EA in 1982 and rose up the ranks, eventually becoming the Chief Creative Officer at the publisher where he would stay for 10 years. Bing helped to lead EA to become one of the biggest publishers in the industry. Gordon left EA in 2008 and currently is a partner with the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

One of the major game industry awards has found a new TV network to broadcast the event. The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences has announced that it has partnered with the G4 cable TV network to broadcast the 2011 edition of its Interactive Achievement Awards. The awards had been shown for the past two years on the IFC cable TV network.

This year's award ceremony will be held on February 10 during the AIAS's annual DICE Summit in Las Vegas. Actor and comedian Jay Mohr will be the host of the ceremony for the sixth year in a row. G4 will stream the awards ceremony live in its entirely on its G4TV.com web site along with online content from the DICE Summit session and its Indie Game Challenge. G4 will broadcast the awards on its network on February 12 at 4 pm Eastern time.

The PC players of the first person shooter Battlefield Bad Company 2 and its just released expansion pack Battlefield Bad Company 2 Vietnam have been busy since the call went out to unlock the fifth map in the expansion pack. Earlier this morning the PC players reached the 69 million team actions goal in the games and as a result unlocked the map, Operation Hastings.

The goal was reached in less than eight days as the race started to unlock Operation Hastings on December 22. At the moment the Xbox 360 and PS3 players of the game are still less than halfway to achieving the same goal as their PC counterparts.