[Every week, IndieGames.com: The Weblog co-editor Tim W. will be summing up some of the top free-to-download and commercial indie games from the last seven days on his sister 'state of indie' weblog.]

This week on 'Best Of Indie Games', we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week.

The goodies in this edition include a 2D platformer with a clever copy and paste gimmick, a 2D action game where you attack enemies by commiting suicide, a one-button effort about the adventures of a fish with a human-like face, and an action RPG where the characters are depicted as circular dots.

Here's the highlights from the last seven days:

Game Pick: 'Jump, Copy, Paste' (Arvi Teikari, freeware)
"Jump, Copy, Paste is a 2D platformer in which you overcome obstacles by copy and pasting parts of a level to build new platforms or create a passage through a wall. Parts which are greyed out cannot be affected by your copy and paste ability, so players need to work around those areas as they collect all yellow pieces to unlock the exit door."

Game Pick: 'Siromaru' (Abaruzu, commercial indie - demo available)
"Shiromaru is a 2D action game in which you attack enemies by commiting suicide and causing a chain of explosions. The longer the chain reaction, the more extra life items appear for you to collect."

Game Pick: 'Tiny and Big' (Black Pants Studio, commercial indie - demo available)
"Tiny and Big tells the story of a thief who had stolen our hero's most valued possession - a pair of underpants. The game basically is about him trying to chase after Mr. Big who had escaped to the top of a tall mountain. Armed with a raygun and a grappling hook, you must cut pillars and solid rock to build yourself platforms to stand or jump on."

Game Pick: 'Fish Face' (Beau Blyth, freeware)
"Fish Face is a one-button arcade game with three levels to play, each taking roughly five to ten minutes to complete. Here you play as a fish that uses its buoyancy to move in and out of the water, avoiding walls or enemies that will hurt our aquatic friend on impact."

Game Pick: 'Dragondot' (Nathan McCoy, browser)
"Dragondot is an action RPG in which you play as a dragon that can only claw at its adversaries at first, but will gain new and improved abilities whenever it gains enough experience to level up."

If you don't already have plans to attend PAX East in Boston next weekend, consider a drive to Brookfield, WI instead for the Midwest Gaming Classic, a two-day "all-encompassing electronic gaming trade show" running from March 27-28.

Of course, the event will have hundreds of arcade and pinball machines to play and show off, but it also features lots of other entertaining attractions like the Classic Gaming and Computing Museum with its five display/play rooms devoted to vintage consoles, modern consoles, "underdog" consoles, family games, and versus games.

The show has a number of notable speakers booked to deliver presentations: Robotron and Defender co-creator Eugene Jarvis, High Voltage Software's Keith Hladik, console modder Benjamin Heckendorn (who will be bringing his Bill Paxton Pinball machine), Sword of Fargoal creator Jeff McCord, and many others.

There will be several film screenings (Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball, Pinball Passion, and Pinball 101), tournaments (e.g. Super Mario Wii, Space Invaders), and other events (e.g. The benheck.com Experience) at the Midwest Gaming Classic, too.

You can find more information on the show and ticketing details at the Midwest Gaming Classic's official site.

In our latest employment-specific round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from SCEA Santa Monica, WB Games and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

Gameloft: 3D Graphics Programmer
"As a member of our engineering team you will be part of the full development cycle of 3D video games for iPhone from start to finish, primarily focusing on 3D graphics. Duties could include: Analyze existing 3D functions in the engine and adapt them so they are compatible with current conventions; Support 3D functions and systems conceived for the production; Work with Game Developers, as well as Design teams to determine the different constraints of the game and put all the elements together."

Guerrilla Games: Senior Game Designer
"Guerrilla Games is looking to add a battle-hardened Senior Game Designer to its ranks for an upcoming project. If you're recruited, you will play a pivotal role in formulating the game design and guarding the game's vision. You will also act as a mentor, problem solver and source of bravery and inspiration for your fellow troops."

Rockstar North: Graphics Programmer
"Rockstar North, one of the world's leading video game developers, is a community of creative individuals from a variety of backgrounds. We are based in Scotland out of modern, spacious, purpose-built studios at the heart of Edinburgh. We develop original game titles and are proud to be the developer of the phenomenally successful Grand Theft Auto series. Rockstar North has been part of the Rockstar family since 1999."

Sony Computer Entertainment America Santa Monica: Senior Combat Designer
"Join the God of War team! Be a part of the most exciting and innovating computer entertainment in North America. Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) markets the PlayStation® family of products and develops, publishes, markets, and distributes software for the PS one™ console, the PlayStation®2 and PlayStation®3 computer entertainment systems and the PlayStation Portable (PSP™)."

WB Games: Art Development Director
"The Art Development Director develops art content staffing plans and monitors resource load and schedule for the external outsource teams as well as the insourced teams. In addition, he or she monitors content creation tasks in collaboration with production staff and art leads handling communication and feedback between the external partners and the internal game teams."

To browse hundreds of similar jobs, and for more information on searching, responding to, or posting game industry-relevant jobs to the top source for jobs in the business, please visit Gamasutra's job board now.

Cartoon Network Latin America ran this cute Aqua Teen Hunger Force promo years ago, but I hadn't seen the commercial until today! The 8-bit spot throws the Adult Swim cartoon's goateed star Frylock into Data East's classic (but terrifying) arcade game BurgerTime. Things seem to be going well for Peter Pepper, right until he runs into pepper-immune Frylock.

Unfortunately, this is just an advert and not an actual Taco Time game. Maybe someone will like this joke enough to turn into a playable thing, similar to what happened with Invaders! Possibly From Space! and Vinnie Vole's Existential Nightmare? In the meantime, you can settle for this Aqua Teen Hunger Force-themed BurgerTime Level created in LittleBigPlanet.

[‘Design Diversions’ is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Andrew Vanden Bossche. It looks at the unexpected moments when games take us behind the scenes, and the details of how game design engages us. This time -- how emotional design can make us think about not thinking about violence.]

Senseless violence in videogames is fun, but more importantly, it can also be intellectually stimulating and thought provoking. While designers and critics alike cry out for more depth in games, pathos is not the only path to artistic merit. For a medium that's constantly patronized, misunderstood, and derided even by its supporters, sometimes satire and irony is the best way to get a point across.

This is the philosophy of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, as the most unapologetic of that series so lambasted by those who were the target of the game’s satire. The ultraviolent and candy colored Vice City is an excessively pink world in which violence is comical and cartoonish. Violence in this game is already highly desensitized. Pedestrians die, but after their bodies despawn the world will be back to normal as if nothing happened, maintaining the status quo like a TV serial.

It's the worst possible environment for a serious engagement with issues of violence, but it's a great environment to engage with how we depict violence. Most games take the opposite position of Haunting Ground, and are designed to soften, justify, or excuse violent actions so that players feel like heroes instead of murderers.

It's the same treatment summer blockbusters get. But unlike most of these media, Vice City goes a step further. This is a game that mercilessly skewers the groups most opposed to its existence, freely leaps into self parody, and satirizes the cultural attitudes towards violence that ultimately gave it form. By the end of Vice City it's clear that everyone from the mob to the talking heads on the radio are guilty of the same violence as the protagonist. No one in Vice City is innocent, and neither is anyone in the world.

How to Take the Sense Out of Violence

While technology makes blood and gore more realistic, game designers continue to construct this violence to minimize its impact. In the goriest of games (like Mortal Kombat) violence is there to thrill or disgust, not to inspire existential terror. Designers (and gamers) get excited over realism, but we want it for specific reasons. Despite how much we clamor for realism in graphics and physics, emotional realism actually gets in the way of enjoying games like Grand Theft Auto.

For this reason GTA4 has actually been criticized for being too realistic. GTA4 succeeded in its attempt to be more serious and taken more seriously, but it resulted in a different game experience--one that many fans hadn't been looking for and subsequently found in the much less serious Saints Row 2.

GTA4’s Nico feels more like a person than the caricature that is Vice City’s Tommy Vercetti, and for that reason it can be hard for players to engage senseless violence. Even the normal missions feel a little odd considering the sheer number of people you kill, creating a scenario in which the gameplay and story don’t quite mesh.

Abstracting Emotion

Trauma Center is an interesting example of a game that uses abstraction to eliminate squeamishness. This is a game inspired heavily by medical dramas with surgery-based gameplay. Medical dramas have a wide appeal; exposed organs do not. Surgeons and other medical professionals have to get used to blood and guts, but most people are pretty squeamish about that. Even the bloody fantasy violence of the average videogame can be less intense than the exposed entrails of a living human. Because of this, the designers went to great lengths to create a representation of the human body that wouldn't be grotesque.

Naoya Maeda, the lead 3D and event designer said on the Trauma Team web site that he came up with this abstract approach while thinking of how a surgeon would see the entrails. What's interesting about this approach is that the more realistic option may be less "true." In the game, the player is a doctor and revulsion is not part of the experience. In the same way, Tommy Vercetti attitude towards human life is pretty obvious from the way pedestrians are depicted.

A World of Mannequins

In violent videogames, it’s common to dehumanize the enemy so that players can feel justified in killing them. Zombies, robots, and aliens all serve their roles. With human opponents, it’s common to make them as evil as possible, which may be why WWII is the favorite FPS genre and Nazis the favorite foe. Ultimately though, the greatest tool for removing humanity is simply to leave them undeveloped.

The civilians in GTA don’t mourn, cry, or express themselves. Because they don't exhibit sympathetic actions, it's hard to empathize with them. They exist only to run screaming like Godzilla was stomping through the city. Vice City is inhabited by crash test dummies that respawn endlessly no matter how many times they die. It’s similar to watching Bugs Bunny gets blasted point blank with a shotgun: the next second, he's up and chomping carrots.

No matter how many times the player dies in GTA, or however many generic citizens he wastes, everything in the world will be respawning and back to normal in minutes. In this way, actions that would normally appear reprehensible loose all their emotional impact. If GTA was an accurate murder simulator, depicting the horror of real-world violence and murder with unflinching accuracy, the nightly news stories would have been about kids getting PTSD.

Sensitive Violence

If there is a flaw in this form of violence in videogames, it’s that it isn’t violent enough. It’s emotionally casual, designed specifically to not challenge the player’s feelings of empathy or guilt. Although it takes a lot of design work to make sure the player won’t feel sorry for the extras, seeing how many pixilated crash-test dummies you can run over isn’t emotionally challenging for the player.

Haunting Ground has a near-opposite outcome, but the design is obviously quite intentional. Compare GTA to the visceral Manhunt, and you can see that Rockstar is quite capable of creating an experience uniquely tailored to inspiring certain emotions. That’s a game that really does make the player feel like a murderer.

So Vice City is engineered for players to be as violent as possible without thinking about it. This is where a lot of game stop, having accomplished their purpose, and just let the player have fun. But Vice City fills the game with relentless satire, and this cleverness works in part because it's so violent. The result is a game about thinking about not thinking about violence.

Whose America?

The talk radio blabbering about videogame violence is underscored by the incredible violence perpetuated by the player. With Tommy Vercetti chaining rows of exploding cars and fighting everything from SWAT to the US Army, the irony of legislating against bleeding pixels isn’t lost on the player.

The jingoistic ads run by the game's gun stores unsubtly implicate that GTA is not the cause of America's attitudes towards violence, but a product of it. The entrepreneurial rise of the main character reflects a certain pulling-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-attitude that, along with this construction of violence, satirically constructs Tommy Vercetti as an ideal American.

Vice City is violent videogame about America’s attitude towards violence. Vice City came out after GTA 3, and it was born while the immediate reaction to that game was fresh in the minds of its audience and opponents. As the in game talk show parody unfolds, extremists from all sides fight over which vision of America to cram down the rest of the country’s throat while the player is laughing at them and having a grand old time.

While the guests on talk radio worry about fictional violence, their world is being blown up by the player on a regular basis. After mowing down the city in a tank, players may wonder why they aren't the ones being discussed on the news. Shouldn't they be thinking about real violence? Shouldn't the player? It's fun to live the American Dream as Tommy Vercetti, but is this bitter satire worth bringing to reality?

Even though Vice City goes to great lengths to create emotionally uninvolved violence, it wants the player to be conscious of how different this is from real world violence. At the time, the charge levied against the playerbase and the industry was that videogames confused the two. With the pitch perfect satire of radio pundits and activists, Vice City invites the player to think about whether the game is more damaging to society than the people trying to ban it. Rockstar has a clear agenda, of course, and stacks the deck in their favor. Even so, that’s a lot to think about for a game that’s not supposed to be about thinking at all.

Pathos certainly has its place in videogames, and it's certainly something we need more of. A GTA like game that forced players to confront the realities of murder would be an interesting idea. It couldn't work as a satire, and it wouldn't really be fun, but that’s just fine as it’s another way to engage the player. One of the great things about survival horror games like Haunting Ground is that they've proven that games don't necessarily need to be fun to be compelling.

But let's not underestimate Vice City just because it makes us laugh.

[Andrew Vanden Bossche is a freelance writer and student. He has a blog called Mammon Machine, which is updated less often than this message, and can be reached at AndrewVandenB@gmail.com]

2K games was so pleased with its last downloadable set of BioShock 2 paper models the company commissioned Brooklyn artist Bryan Green to create another paper foldable, this time for the Rumbler, the game's new rocket-propelled grenade/turret-equipped Big Daddy.

Green created this DIY toy for the BioShock 2 soundtrack's release. Though it's a digital album, he made sure to design the foldable template to fit inside of a CD jewel case, in case you decide to burn a copy of the album. You can download the Rumbler PDF template and buy the soundtrack from 2K Games's site.

[Via Paper Foldables]

After showing off the project earlier this month with a promising trailer (above), Dylan "Steaky" Loney has released The Great Class Dash, his new Team Fortress 2 mod that turns the online first-person shooter into a Canabalt-styled single-player 2.5D sidescrolling platformer.

This first public release has players automatically running through four different stages: Canada, Egypt, Volcano, and Swamp. To make it through each level, players need to cycle through different classes while running, as each of the nine classes has a unique ability that allows players to pass through different obstacles.

The Scout, for example, can double jump over large gaps. The Heavy breaks through walls, the Sniper ("a notorious hunter") scares away animals in your path, the Pyro's suit protects him from steam and clouds of mostquitoes, the Spy can sneak past enemy sentry guns, and so on.

You can download The Great Class Dash mod for free from MOD DB.

It's astounding to think that more than 15 years has passed since Sega's ill-fated and over-priced 32x add-on crashed into our lives, but Japanese music label Wave Master wants to remind us of this recent anniversary with a tribute release: the Super 32X 15th Anniversary Album.

The three-disc album will include a total of 128 tracks from popular 32X releases in Japan: Space Harrier, Stellar Assault, Virtua Racing Deluxe, Parasquad (Zaxxon's Motherbase 2000), Metal Head, and Virtua Fighter, with all the songs recorded directly from the game hardware and nearly every track looped twice.

Wave Master will release the Super 32X 15th Anniversary Album in Japan for ¥3,625 ($40) on March 31st with this boastful text on the cover: "Its state-of-the-art 32-bit game technology combines high-speed, arcade-quality, 3D graphics and over 32,000 colors for a 32-bit experience." You can see the full tracklist here.

[Via @rdb_aaa]

[In a GameSetWatch-exclusive set of blog posts covering the week of GDC 2010, Magical Wasteland blogger and Game Developer magazine columnist Matthew Burns concludes his journey through the San Francisco-based show. Previously: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.]

For me, the 2010 Game Developers Conference was a little like standing in the center of a three-way collision between art, technology and business– three trains barreling into each other with the full weight of their cross-cultural inertia behind them, the impact releasing tremendous energy and particles of a new, unknown type.

The trend-spotters registered, of course, the noise around social media (most of it seemed little more than just that: noise) and the still-echoing boom of free-to-play with real money transactions.

Three-dimensional displays requiring glasses continued to confound me as to their worth, even though a man in a business suit I randomly encountered at the Intel booth told me he thought in no uncertain terms it was the future. Strange “virtual reality” peripherals, exhibited at shows like this year after year and to no subsequent momentum, persisted in their search for relevance.

Many of sessions had to do with going or being independent in a world dominated by increasingly monolithic publishers. There was also tangible worry about layoffs, accompanied by an unsubstantiated hope that casual games or serious games might magically pick up the slack in available openings. Cell phones were an accepted, legitimate platform that nobody thought once to deride. Game developers are still mostly white males.

I must remind myself, however, that the eighteen-thousand strong attendance was only a fraction of the total developer community. For everyone who was there, many more stayed at home for monetary reasons, or because were stuck at work, unable to come because all hands were needed on deck for an upcoming milestone.

Some companies are willing to accept only a limited number of “slots,” ensuring that only the most important or most desirous were able to get one. I’d even heard tales of studios discouraging their employees from going at all because they were afraid networking at the show could lead to their finding better jobs elsewhere.

Back home in a familiar bed, recovering from the flu I picked up, I have trouble falling sleep even though I’m exhausted. There’s simply too much for me to be spun up about from the last six days. I drift in between wakefulness and dreams of a type I’ve never had before, feverishly plotting my next steps towards the realization of ideas both new and old. Like a student in a martial arts class, I’m beaten up, but oddly invigorated by it.

“Video games.” Someone started saying the phrase to punctuate the end of conversations: conversations about Bayonetta’s addiction to lollipops, forum-organized Activision “boycotts,” or Sonic the Hedgehog fans. Video games. The usage spreads, because what else can you say about this wide-ranging, incomparable, baffling land, with its sublime peaks and dispiriting trenches, its rich veins and its unexplored territory?

For every promising, flag-waving triumph of there are ten facepalm moments, but we stick with it regardless. We know that despite every disappointment, that there is something special to be found here.

Even Senator Yee in his amicus brief wrote that “the interactive nature of video games is vastly different than passively listening to music, watching a movie, or reading a book.” In this case the video game advocates and their would-be censors agree: games are a medium apart, something uniquely powerful (and perhaps, due to that very power, dangerous).

The natural instinct is to try to take its reins, and steer it like a beast in the direction we want it to go: to wrestle it into a career, or into money, or into the approval of others. We want to take what we see in video games and make it about us; or try to sum it all up in a few easy words or split it into overly simplistic categories. Agendas are advanced, ulterior motives lurk, and everyone holds in his or her mind some kind of ideal state.

But the whole of the thing– this gigantic ball of ideas and expectations and initiative called the game industry– is much too big, too disparate and too absurd to understand in any rational way, except as a inexorable force of nature. So to believe one could somehow control it is nothing more than fantasy.

[Special thanks to Simon Carless and Darius Kazemi for making this series possible.]

parallel_prankster writes "Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a professor of politics at New York University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. In his new book, The Predictioneer (The Predictioneer's Game in the US), he describes a computer model based on game theory which he — and others — claim can predict the future with remarkable accuracy. The website also has a game page where he provides an online version of the game and information on how to play." The (semi-paywalled; may need to register) New Scientist has a story on de Mesquita, too; a snippet: "Over the past 30 years, Bueno de Mesquita has made thousands of predictions about hundreds of issues from geopolitics to personal problems. Overall, he claims, his hit rate is about 90 per cent."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[In this opinion piece, Game Developer EIC Brandon Sheffield takes Electronic Arts and Visceral to task for their competition asking fans to "design a kill" for Dead Space, calling it "incredibly regressive for our industry."]

Here we are in an era of video games coming under intense scrutiny for their violence, and for any hint of sexuality. This is an era in which the Australian and German governments are rejecting the sale of certain games by the handful, Venezuela has banned all “violent” video games with sweeping terms, and psychologists study the effects of violent games on behavior around the clock.

It’s in this climate that EA has chosen to launch its Design a Kill for Dead Space 2 contest, which to me runs second only to Acclaim’s attempt to buy ad space on tombstones in terms of irresponsibility.

Here’s the text from the press release, describing the contest:

"Have you ever played a video game and thought ‘wouldn’t it be cool if…’ Well, Visceral Games announced that fans of the critically-acclaimed Dead Space franchise can make their “what if” dreams a reality. This is their chance to design a kill and get it in the game. Players can submit ideas via text, video or still images.

Since the contest began last week, there are over 1,000 entries already, so the cooler the kill, the better chance it has of winning a place in the upcoming Dead Space 2 video game. To prove to the Visceral development team that they have the right stuff, players have to demonstrate Isaac Clarke defeating or dismembering various Necromorphs including the Slasher, Lurker, or Leaper using their own signature kill.

The grand prize winner will not only have an opportunity to have their dismemberment move recreated in the game but they’ll also win the opportunity to have their likeness modeled onto a non-player character in the game."

Where To Draw The Line?

I don’t believe we should shy away from violence in games – violence is a part of life, and can make for very interesting scenarios in games. And it’s no secret that a large majority of fun video games are based on conflict, much of which is combative. But I also believe that asking fans to think as hard as they can about an innovative way to kill someone is a very regressive thing for our industry.

Just think for a second about what EA is actually asking people to do. Yes, this is what many of us do every day – there are those of us who design combat and combat scenarios for a living. But asking fans to do it is just too much.

First, it’s acknowledging that games can inspire fans to think of ways to kill. Second, through promotion, the contest is saying this is a good thing to do, or that it would be fun, posing ‘wouldn’t it be cool if…’

Third, it’s implied that this is a proper way to enter the industry (that’s part of the implication, that this design will be your foot in the door). That really hammers home the misconception that all we do is think of ways for things to kill each other.

Fourth, it asks for documented evidence of this fan violence. EA must certainly have plenty at this point, with over 1,000 submissions, which anyone will be able to view once the competition is over at the official Facebook page.

Fuel For The Fire

Many in the mainstream media, parent-advocate groups, and in the public opinion at large consider the game-playing population to be mostly children. And for better or for worse, it’s likely that a number of children have in fact played the M-rated Dead Space. This kind of contest is amazing fodder for the groups that want to limit and restrict games, and it’s hard to believe EA or Visceral would not be aware of this.

If they are not aware of the regressive nature of this competition, as the video on the official page seems to suggest, that is incredibly unconscious, and certainly indicative of the immaturity of our industry. This seems like the sort of thing you should really think through. Perhaps we’re all so desensitized to violence in this industry that they did not think about it in this light.

If the intention is to get the contest to stir up controversy, well I suppose they may achieve their goal. If the mainstream media does get wind of the competition, and they get hold of even one video of a kid doing a “brutal kill” on his brother, the shitstorm begins. I do not think the results of this storm will be positive for anyone.

Little To Smile About

One of the images that accompanies the press release (above) shows a sample entry from an actual fan, in which all the descriptions of actions are accompanied by smiley faces, such as "knee in the head ^^." This description comes after the one that says "grabs the head and shoot in the neck."

You could argue that since the creatures you kill are not human, this is not so bad. I would disagree. They are humanoid enough, and asking fans to figure out a way to kill anything is enough to cause a horrified gut reaction in any parent or politician that may see it. A company as large as EA cannot simply make the “games are just fun” excuse. I do not believe this is an overreaction. I believe the reaction from those outside the game industry would be magnitudes above what I write here.

You could argue I’m bringing more attention to this contest by mentioning it here, and you’d be right. I think we have to take these things to task when we see them, and I can only hope that if an intrepid journalist is researching this “brutal kill” phenomenon they might see this article and pause before decrying the entire industry as actively breeding violence in its players.

Know that the assumptions and drives of one marketing campaign do not reflect the majority. There are those among us who recognize that this is regressive, and I would caution any game company against taking this sort of action in the future.

Australian iPhone developer and accessory manufacturer 22Moo posted an updated render of its GameBone, its accessory designed to attach to an iPhone/iPod Touch and add console-style controls with a physical directional pad and real buttons (the new photo now shows only four face buttons, leaving out the two shoulder buttons visible in the previous render).

The GameBone's new design also features a 2000mAh battery for additional power, an LED to show charging state and capcity, start/select buttons, built-in stereo speakers, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and an omni-directional microphone. The accessory now attaches to the handset instead of using a Bluetooth wireless controller setup.

The controller won't automatically work with every game, as developers will need to incorporate GameBone into their titles first, but developer Manomio has already pledged support for the pad. Manomio's releases include Flashback for iPhone, the Commodore 64 emulator app, and an upcoming Amiga emulator app.

22Moo plans to release the GameBone in the fourth quarter of 2010. The company plans to make the GameBone software development kit available for free to all iPhone SDK developers who want work with an alternative to cumbersome virtual joysticks in April 2010.

[Via FingerGaming]

Organizers of this May's GDC Canada event in Vancouver, BC have confirmed the first social game and iPhone lectures for the event, with speakers from Zynga (Farmville), iPhone experts IUGO, and Diner Dash creator Nick Fortugno discussing major emerging markets.

Registration is now open for the event at the Vancouver Convention Centre, which talkes place on May 6th and 7th -- with early, reduced-price passes only available until the end of March.

This year, new tracks will focus on more hot games industry topics including digital distribution, social games, and iPhone games.

Some of the initially announced highlights for these vital tracks, many of which are bringing major creators to speak to the Canadian market for the first time, are as follows:

- In 'Building Social Games: Games at the Speed of Light', Zynga VP and Farmville GM Bill Mooney discusses how "The social gaming market is exploding - viral propagation across the world, low barriers to entry which create agile competitors, and a rapidly changing and imperfectly understood marketplace." In this key lecture, Mooney "walks through key learnings from his time making [major] Zynga franchises Mafia Wars and FarmVille."

- A lectures called 'A Tale of 14 Apps: IUGO's App Store Journey' sees Sarah Thomson, business development director of the Toy Bot Diaries and Zombie Attack! iPhone game creator discuss "what is working on the App Store and what isn’t, what factors, internal and external, contribute to an app’s success or failure."

- Presenting a lecture called 'The Art of Conversion: How to Manage Players through Your Game Service', Playmatics co-founder Nick Fortugno (lead designer of casual smash Diner Dash) and Media Shifters' Andrew Mayer will discuss new digital models of monetizing game players, including "converting platform users into game players, converting players into viral advocates, and, most importantly, converting your user base into paying customers."

The event will also once again host tracks about game design, business and production, programming, and visual arts. GDC Canada, presented by Reboot Communications and this website's parent the UBM Techweb Game Network, will also host evening networking events, as well as an expo hall.

More information on the 2010 GDC Canada event, including pricing specifics, lectures announced to date and registration deadlines, are available on the official GDC Canada website.

If you're sick of waiting for Super Meat Boy to release on your platform of choice (WiiWare/XBLA/PC) so you can spend all day hanging out with its chunky characters, Team Meat has come up with a solution to cure your loneliness and simultaneously decorate your home's bare walls.

The developer has partnered with LTL Prints, which also sells those neat Jet Set Radio Future decals, to offer "peel and stick" wall graphics of Super Meat Boy's characters, including the titular hero, Bandage Girl, and Dr. Fetus.

You can even buy a graphic for Gish, the protagonist of another Edmund McMillen 2D platformer. The stickers are available in sizes as small as 10'' x 8'' (ideal for laptops) or as big as 66'' x 52''! You can see them all at the Super Meat Boy aisle in LTL Prints's site.

[Finishing up our GDC written coverage, we were going to pick just one lecture, but we decided to just go with all of the major ones, as well as the big announcements - lots of neat stuff to check through here.]

With Game Developers Conference 2010 now at an end, we've rounded up the top announcements, from Sony Move through OnLive's release specifics, and write-ups of the biggest talks into one handy news story.

The official GDC 2010 page on Gamasutra has more than 100 news stories on one of the biggest events of the gaming year, but we're now highlighting the biggest product-related announcements of the show.

This will be followed by our pick of the top ten most intriguing write-ups from the more than 450 sessions on display at this year's GDC in San Francisco - created by the UBM Techweb Game Network, as is this website.

Here are some of the top announcements and write-ups from last week's show:

The Announcements

GDC: Sony's Motion Controller Is 'PlayStation Move'
"At GDC on Wednesday, Sony revealed more details about its PS3 motion controller, which isn't called Arc or Gem, but 'PlayStation Move,' a product Sony says will bring on 'the next generation of motion gaming.'"

GDC: OnLive Gets Launch Date, Reveals Initial Publishers
"Cloud-based game streaming service OnLive has announced an official U.S. launch date of June 17, 2010, including games from Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, 2K Games, THQ and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment."

GDC: Microsoft Announces XNA Game Studio 4.0
"Microsoft has announced version 4.0 of its XNA Game Studio development package, which includes support for its new Windows Phone 7 Series, as well as enhancing features for Xbox 360 and PC game development."

GDC: InstantAction Reveals Platform For Instantly Playing Large-Download Games
"InstantAction unveiled its platform allowing users to play full PC games in their browser as they download titles, made possible with a delivery mechanism that CEO Louis Castle tells Gamasutra is superior to OnLive."

Valve Confirms Mac Versions Of Steam, Valve Games
"Valve will release its Steam digital distribution service for Mac along with Mac-native versions of its own games, the company confirmed today, calling the Mac a 'tier-1 platform.'"

Other notable GDC-timed announcements include: Bigpoint Announces Battlestar MMO, Unity Partnership, San Francisco Office; Unity Announces 3.0 Platform, Support For PS3, iPad, And Android; Palm to Debut webOS Plug-in Development Kit at GDC 2010; MySpace Launches New Games Experience, Tools.

The Top Lectures

GDC: Will Wright Peels Back Layers Of Entertainment, Games
"Will Wright (The Sims, SimCity) explained how 'perspectives are more valuable than solutions' in a fascinating talk during the closing hours of the Game Developers Conference 2010 on Saturday."

GDC: Jenova Chen's HeavenVille Wins Game Design Challenge
"HeavenVille, Jenova Chen (Flower), took this year's top prize at the GDC Game Design Challenge, which also featured games by designers Kim Swift, Heather Kelley, and Erin Robinson."

GDC: Sid Meier's Lessons On Gamer Psychology
"'Gameplay is a psychological experience,' according to legendary Civilization creator Sid Meier, who gave tips on taking advantage of player psychology during his GDC keynote Friday."

GDC: Hecker's Nightmare Scenario - A Future Of Rewarding Players For Dull Tasks
"It's possible that an over-reliance on metrics-driven design and extrinsic rewards for in-game actions could lead to a future of 'designing shitty games that you have to pay people to play,' warns independent developer Chris Hecker."

GDC: Blizzard's Core Game Design Concepts
"Blizzard EVP of game design Rob Pardo shares Blizzard's core design concepts, offering examples of places where the World of Warcraft developer succeeded and failed in creating compelling multiplayer experiences."

GDC: Nintendo's Sakamoto's Four Creative Tenets
"Nintendo's Yoshio Sakamoto explains the methodology that allows him to create two franchises as polar-opposite as Metroid and Wario Ware -- and drops hints on Other M."

GDC: Peter Molyneux On Simplifying And Enhancing Fable III
"Lionhead's Peter Molyneux talked about the 'angst' Lionhead went through on whether to de-RPG Fable III -- and why and how the team went through that process, from a design perspective."

GDC: ThatGameCompany's Santiago, Hunicke Talk Exploratory Development
"An exploratory development process can be a solution to the anxieties of game development, but only if it's managed with confidence and honesty, say Thatgamecompany's Kellee Santiago and Robin Hunicke."

GDC: Indie Keynote - Championing Immediacy And Depth
"Tiger Style co-founder Randy Smith (Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor) delivered the keynote of the Indie Games Summit, encouraging indie developers to embrace a philosophy of immediacy and depth to hasten their popular ascendancy."

GDC: 2D Boy's Carmel On A New Alternative For Indies
"At the 2010 Independent Gaming Summit at GDC, 2D Boy's Ron Carmel talked about why traditional publishing just doesn't work for indies -- and why the newly-unveiled Indie Fund hopes to offer alternatives."

Other notable GDC 2010 lecture write-ups include: Facebook Keynote Discusses True Multi-Platform Gaming; Taking Inspiration from EVE Online's Espionage Metagame; Creating Deus Ex Human Revolution's Cybernetic Renaissance; Refining The Real-Time Combat In Mass Effect 2; EA's Cousins Talks Social Gaming's Wal-Mart Parallel.

With nine months passed since its last issue, FORT90ZINE, the print rag from GameSetWatch NYC correspondent and Heavy.com blogger Matthew "Fort90" Hawkins, is making its return next month with a new issue and this capital cover from Mariel "Kinuko" Cartwright. It has Servbots, Solid Snake, and a reverse-handed Momohime; what's not to love?

Inside, the #3 issue includes a foreword by Life Meter's Dave Roman, a pin-up by Hilary Florido, and video game-related text from Hawkins and Brian Liloia. I've also contributed a little article for this release, so I guess you can take that either as an incentive or a warning if you're still undecided on whether to purchase the magazine.

Attract Mode, which offers a handsome collection of game zines like Raina Lee's 1-Up MegaZine and Mathew Kumar's exp., will sell the issue beginning next month. And while we're talking about Attract Mode, the video game culture shop will be at PAX East next weekend, selling its wares alongside 2 Player Productions in a shared booth.

schliz writes "Like in World of Warcraft, students of Indiana University's game design classes start as Level 1 avatars with 0 XP, and progress by completing quests solo, as guilds, or in 'pick up groups.' Course coordinator Lee Sheldon says students are responding with 'far greater enthusiasm,' and many specifics of game design could also be directly applied to the workforce. These included: clearly defining goals for workers; providing incremental rewards; and balancing effort and reward."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As modern DRM schemes get more annoying and invasive, the common wisdom is to vote with your wallet and avoid supporting developers and publishers who include such schemes with their games. Or, if you simply must play it, wait a while until outcry and complaints have caused the DRM restrictions to be loosened. But will any of that make game creators rethink their stance? An article at CNet argues that gamers are, in general, an impatient bunch, and that trait combined with the nature of the games industry means that progress fighting DRM will be slow or nonexistent. Quoting: "Increasingly so, the joke seems to be on the customers who end up buying this software when it first comes out. A simple look back at some controversial titles has shown us that after the initial sales come, the publisher later removes the vast majority of the DRM, leaving gamers to enjoy the software with fewer restrictions. ... Still, [waiting until later to purchase the game] isn't a good long-term solution. Early sales are often one of the big quantifiers in whether a studio will start working on a sequel, and if everyone were to wait to buy games once they hit the bargain price, publishers would simply stop making PC versions. There's also no promise that the really heavy bits of DRM will be stripped out at a later date, except for the fact that most publishers are unlikely to want to maintain the cost of running the activation, and/or online verification servers for older software."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[In his latest column for GameSetWatch, UK writer and journalist Fraser McMillan discusses Valve's seminal first-person action title Half-Life 2, examining and revisiting the smart design decisions behind the classic game.]

I've just finished Half-Life 2 for the first time. It has taken me three attempts - once on Xbox 360 and twice on PC - to see Valve's defining game to its conclusion. That this relatively minor feat took so long is entirely my fault, ironically a product of the impatient wish to blast through as quickly as possible.

Two and a half years after I initially booted it up, the end credits rolled. The final, completed playthrough attempt lasted less than a week, and I'm glad I bit the bullet and experienced it this way.

Not that it was anything like a chore; by taking things at my own, or, more accurately, Valve's pace, I had time to absorb the world and explore its nooks and crannies, my eyeline expertly guided by the seemingly omnipotent hand of City 17's creators.

I finally understand why everyone has waxed lyrical about Gordon Freeman's second adventure for the last half-decade or more. Conducive to this is the fact that my tastes have matured, and my thoughts on games delved into deeper, more analytical territory. Articulating why I liked X and disliked Y is no longer particularly hard in most cases.

When I can't explain these, it's usually because I was baffled by just how terrible each element of the design was. On a handful of occasions, though, it's a sign that what I played was so confoundingly fantastic that my critical brain didn't even attempt to kick in. This is the position I'm in now. Deconstructing Half-Life 2 feels wrong in a way, like teasing a dog with some food only to scoff it yourself. It shouldn't really be done because it's against the nature of the beast and could cheapen the experiences of all involved. It's not even entertaining; just perversely, cruelly compelling.

Half-Life 2 is designed so as to not appear designed. That's ostensibly odd, but makes a surprising amount of sense. A lot of effort has been poured in to create the impression of effortlessness. Most of what we do, see or hear in Half-Life 2 feels distinctly of our own volition. If not in the act itself, the mere observation of incidental detail off the critical path is a component of the illusion of presence and agency, even though each individual's journey will, in the end, be effectively identical to other players'.

This facet of its design makes itself known from the instant the G-Man's face fades out to reveal an unexceptional train car. As well as evoking the timeless introduction to its predecessor, this scene serves to create the illusion of reality; of an ambient world that exists beyond just our interfacing with it.

Airborne robots which we'll later come to despise fly by the carriage, inspiring curiosity. A fairly normal looking landscape passes increasingly slowly as the vehicle comes to a halt. Our two co-passengers occupy themselves, one waiting eagerly for the doors to open as the other sits opposite, dejectedly staring into nothingness. We can talk to the latter or leave him be. As we're let off, the former sighs; "Well, end of the line."

With this sequence, Valve instantly and very tangibly contend that though this remains a Half-Life game, it's one of an evolved character. They turned the first-person-shooter on its head with that first title, Citizen Kane-ing the genre to an extreme degree, but the setting allowed the team to concentrate on a specific goal without concerning themselves much with the outside world.

Forced to emerge from the secluded comfort zone of Black Mesa, the sequel establishes itself as both successor and pioneer from the off, and continues in this mould for much of its duration. It should be noted at this point that it's not perfect but - Freeman's basking in the adulation of every NPC notwithstanding - Half-Life 2's universe is absolutely convincing.

Not through the kind of emergent systems that make Far Cry 2's war-torn state so wonderfully plausible, but in an entirely different and equally valid manner, one that single-handedly authored a rigorous and, ultimately, highly successful template for linear video games that is still being ignored to this day.

It's all in creating an illusion of substance and openness and propelling the player through it at whatever pace is required. A lot of elements of Half-Life 2 feel dynamic in nature despite being at least somewhat intended or even heavily scripted.

The odd set-piece is obnoxiously predictable, but in a franchise that lives and breathes on these cues it's astounding how sparse these are. Allow yourself to be engulfed in the sly deception and these fade into such insignificance it's laughable. Many modern releases remain patronisingly transparent without anything close to such a sustained barrage of both subtle and overwhelming instances.

It's equally incredible when you realise just how paper thin the mirage is. Hang around too long in one spot or put on the blinkers and dash through and it's all too easy to break, but even when compelled to do so it's tough not to be rapidly, subconsciously re-immersed. We're the hapless cobras rising from the basket as Valve expertly play their tune, transitioning from staccato to legato when appropriate.

The reminders that this is a fully realised world continuously flow towards us, and by alternately sticking to convention and craftily subverting our expectations of what video games are, Half-Life 2 capitalises on our gullibility to this effect. How clever I thought I was by navigating over to the beach hut using painstakingly arranged miscellany and my trusty old gravity gun. Empty, besides some assorted junk and a small item crate. The ammunition it contained was already maxed out in my inventory.

At first I was scandalized; how dare you, Valve, how dare you so gratuitously undermine my efforts? Then I realized that my impression of this place as a cohesive, unified land that simply exists had been augmented. My irritation morphed into unabated admiration. Why does there have to be an explicit reward for venturing into a hidden or ostensibly unreachable spot? My prize was much more interesting.

Merely paying attention also pays dividends both in terms of the strength of the universe and the narrative. Peering through the view-box in the door you'll see something that often leads to far more questions than answers, but which also fleshes out the core experience. Keeping your eyes peeled means you can witness things that have the capacity to alter your perception of the City and its inhabitants or prepare you for a challenge ahead.

It's unlikely that many players have seen all of these, but both static and active environmental incidentals can frighten, inform, bait or warn. Some allow us to begin filling in the gaps ourselves in imagined ways. We begin to construct an image of who lived in this cell by its contents, what prompted that piece of graffiti or what unspeakable things must have befallen that rotting corpse in the viaduct. It happens infrequently enough to make the player feel special, as if they're the only one to have observed such details. Again, these can prompt the same reaction as a totally unscripted emergent event, but within a much more solid framing than any games of that particular propensity are likely to achieve any time soon.

I've noticed that actual examples of the virtues I've cited are somewhat lacking from this article. Perhaps, though, this stems from the broader effect of believability that Half-Life 2 so decisively realises. It already presents the most attractive science fiction setting yet seen in our medium, but the manner in which it shapes our experiences in such gentle and minor ways is its crowning achievement.

My failure to cherry pick the most impressive of these idiosyncrasies is indicative only of its intransigent formula. Memories of my time with the game are not necessarily of these individual pieces, but of the great chunks of the puzzle they gelled into. Firm authorial control in games, Valve have proven, can also relax when properly timed. The most important lesson we can extrapolate from Half-Life 2 is that if you're going to force us down a linear path, you should do your utmost to make it feel as far away from this reality as possible. Maybe it's obvious advice, but it's one that far too few have taken onboard over the years.

McBacon writes with this excerpt from Wired.co.uk: "Often dismissed as a failed venture, the Xbox Indie Games programme has earned successful man-and-his-dog developers tens of thousands of pounds from sales of their homebrew games. Wired explores the success stories of this hidden marketplace. ... now, more than a year since its launch, the Xbox Indie Games are seeing something of a revival. Microsoft has made huge strides to improve the service, games are beginning to be taken more seriously and success stories are becoming more and more common. Especially for [James] Silva, a New York-based developer, who became an impromptu Indie celebrity after his game The Dishwasher won Microsoft's Dream-Build-Play competition. He says he's 'absolutely thrilled' to have seen I Maed a Gam3 w1th Zomb1es!!!1 — his latest game — become a cult hit, for gamers to flock to it in record numbers and to have sold over 200,000 copies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.