new-york posts

With the economic crisis hitting state budgets hard, some of them are trying hard to create new revenue. GamePolitics reports that the state of New York is looking into adding lots of new taxes, including downloadable content such as movies, music and of course games.

The budget, proposed by current governor David Patterson, would "...Imposes state and local sales tax on purchases of prewritten software, digital audio, audio-visual and text files, digital photographs, games, and other electronically delivered entertainment services to achieve tax parity." As Shacknews points out, a number of other states already impose taxes on downloadable content.

Radical Entertainment's Prototype is an intimidating and ambitious project, from a developer's perspective. That fact was arguably the theme of an almost-3,000-word interview Gamasutra conducted with Senior Producer Tim Bennison. Give it a read if you're interested in the game, which is due in 2008 2009.

In the interview, Bennison described and spun the game's incremental innovations -- a gradually transforming, open-world version of Manhattan, "adaptive parkour" movement mechanics, and alternation of direct combat and shape-shifting-based deception gameplay. The interview is laced with creative design buzzwords like "the metagame," "interacting ambient systems," and "deceive or destroy;" think of that what you will. Bennison also described his thematic vision for the game (it's about "finding out who you are and why you're here," presumably in some existential sense) and the challenge of getting approval for such an expensive game without a recognizable IP.

The most interesting feature discussed was "the web of intrigue." When players capture the DNA of foes, they are not only able to use their victims' appearances and abilities; they're also able to view some of their memories. Those memories form a web of clues that can be viewed in the quest for answers to the conspiracy at hand.