My Xbox360 center

Round-Up: Gamasutra Network Jobs, Week Of August 27

In a busy week for new job postings, Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles across the world and in every major discipline, including opportunities at Digital Chocolate, Arkane Studios and many .

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 .

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

Arkane Studios: Senior AI Programmer
“We currently have a AAA unannounced title in development (PS3, Xbox 360 and PC) and are looking for a Senior AI Programmer to join our unique and talented team.”

Digital Chocolate: Product Manager (Web and Platform Services)
“Inside Digital Chocolate, the San Mateo studio is the place where the magic of creation takes place. Our products are built on the cornerstones of quality, innovation and community. We hire the best and give them the freedom to learn and do their thing, and teamwork is the norm.”

Airtight Games: Senior Animator
“Airtight Games is a group of industry veterans that are in the early stages of production on an original AAA intellectual property with a top tier publisher. We are currently recruiting highly skilled talent for key positions. This is an opportunity to get on board a unique project with a quality focused development and publishing team.”

Armature Studio: Lighting Artist
“Armature Studio is located in Austin, Texas and was founded by the key developers of the Metroid Prime franchise. We currently employ a team of industry veterans with experience on numerous games including Kameo, Starfox Adventures, Star Wars Battlefront 1 & 2, the Wing Commander series, and many . We offer a fun, creative, and challenging environment with excellent compensation and a full range of benefits.”

Digital Extremes: Graphics Programmer
“Located in the heart of South-Western, Ontario, Digital Extremes is dedicated to making AAA quality, successful games, with the best and brightest talent available. With over 125 of the industry's most talented artists, designers and programmers, we provide a positive, purpose-filled work atmosphere that in turn, drives creativity and innovation into our games. We constantly push the limits of what can be accomplished through artistic style, sleek code design, and technical efficiency.”

To browse hundreds of similar jobs, and for 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.

Via worldsinmotion

The GameDev.net Daily

I am interested in most phases of data processing.

A neato single-player DLC pack, Minerva's Den, is coming out for Bioshock 2. I'm a huge fan of developers releasing single-player DLC, so this is great. And while Bioshock 2 wasn't quite the game its predecessor was, it had an absolutely amazing final quarter of gameplay. So good.

The Third Birthday is hitting PSPs some time next year. A character designer for the game is also hopeful that the other Parasite Eve games will be released a PS1 Classics before The Third Birthday is released. This is a thing I am wholly in favor of.

Best Buy is going to start accepting used games. The company has been testing the service for a while, but is now rolling out the service to over 600 stores nationwide.

Ubisoft's Red Storm Studio laid off 38 employees yesterday. Red Storm has been helming the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon franchise since 1996, but recently Ubisoft has apparently been spreading the development of those games across numerous studios worldwide. All of the unaffected employees at Red Storm will, according to an Ubisoft statement, continue to work on the multiplayer component of Tom Clancey's Ghost Recon Future Soldier in anticipation for the game's release early next year. Here's hoping anyone affected by the lay-offs lands on their feet.

And, uh, I guess Playboy is forming a game label. The “adult entertainment company” will initially be partnering with Bigpoint for the release of their free-to-play MMO Poisonville. According to a company statement, Playboy considers the video game industry a “a growing, mainstream area” and although they haven't unveiled much of their forthcoming business plan, the company is slated to target 18-35 year old males. Great. What an under-serviced demographic.

That's the week! I actually haven't done much video gaming lately, so I feel mighty ashamed about that. I do want to see Piranha 3D, though. I like [some of] Alexandre Aja's movies and was absolutely astonished to discover he directed the movie. I also like piranhas. In three-dee. I guess?

Via gamedev

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Avoiding the typical trappings of a licensed adaptation, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a stellar throwback to the 8- and 16-bit beat-em-up era that inspired both the original comic book and the recent movie. GamePro Score: 4.5

Autodesk Toronto Tour

Many of you enjoyed the tour of our 10 Duke headquarters in Montreal. As promised, here's a look inside our Toronto office. This is where a lot of the Maya and Mudbox magic happens.

This Week In Video Game Criticism: Autonomy, Game Worlds, When Mechanics Trump Story

[This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us Ben Abraham picking out fascinating bloggers on player autonomy, building successful game worlds, and when game elements alter our perception of the game world.]

Just a quick one this week, as my country heads to an election and I spent all day at a polling booth shilling for a grassroots organization unaffiliated with any party. But that's neither here nor there; it's time for This Week In Video Game Criticism.

First up, and right from the very tail end of last week, Ashelia at Hellmode looks at her 'darker competitive side'. A thing I'd like to see of: writing, analysis, and criticism of multiplayer gaming.

At The Last Metaphor, Benjamin Garratt writes about 'choices, entertainment, Pynchon' in a conversation with a friend. Garratt has an interesting back catalogue of posts you might also like to dip into, like say 'The Metaphysics of the Instance' or 'Spingtime for Helghan: the story of a Killzone clan'.

Featuring at GameSetWatch, Jamie Madigan writes about 'The Psychology of Immersion', a topic which has been getting a bit of a run again over the past few weeks. What sparks this re-interest in immersion?

Elsewhere, Jorge Albor at the Experience Points blog looks at player autonomy, what constitutes autonomy, and what prerequisites exist for making autonomous informed decisions as a player: “Accordingly, choices can be incredibly powerful, but they need not be. Morality systems (with a few exceptions), for example, undermine meaningful choice by offering player autonomy of actions but not over belief systems. What would it mean to offer a choice of various communion wafers to an atheist? More options do not equate to autonomy, and therefore meaning and immersion either.”

The pseudonymous author Spitfire at the Game-ism blog writes about 'A Narrative Trumping Mechanic' which returns to the highly regarded Batman: Arkham Asylum and looks at who really is the big bad, and how solving the Riddler's riddles made him feel like the Caped Crusader.

He notes: “Joker's men (and even Joker himself) were truly nothing than a nuisance, something for me to backfist while I wasn't even looking in their direction while I had my Bat-Visor turned on looking for Nigma's riddles to solve. That sensation felt like Batman. There's always something else going on in Batman's head; he's a cerebral detective, not just a pugilist who breaks bones but doesn't kill.”

From Checkers, to Chess, to Super Mario Bros. and Assassin's Creed Corvus Elrod looks at jumping on his blog the Semionaut's Notebook, looking at “what a few games communicate with the verb jump.” And G. Christopher Williams writes for PopMatters about 'Mountains of Men: The Mythology of the Male Body in Video Games' which comes highly recommended.

Chris Dahlen's got a pair of notable posts this week, looking at World Building for Edge Online and elaborating on the issue by looking at Crackdown 2 in particular on his personal blog: “All of this is played out against a large but weirdly empty city. The cool fortified structures and other mission locations from the first game come back, look wrecked, and have nothing to offer you. Hopping through so much disused space can make you blue, for all the wrong reasons: you don't feel like the city is dying, so much as that nobody bothered to bring it to life.”

At Bitmob, Pat O'Malley writes about 'How Square made Kingdom Hearts Work' and Isaiah Taylor laments the death of local coop.

Pippin Barr writes for his personal blog 'On the inability to “Stay Frosty”' in Modern Warfare 2: “Modern Warfare 2 actually isn't very realistic at all, but the state of mind this reasoning put me in during that early mission led to a striking experience. As I stood there at the ready on the turret I realized an important fact about myself relative to the dudes in Generation Kill and, by extension in this game and, theoretically, in reality: I had no idea of what I was supposed to be doing.”

And Sebastian Wuepper, writing for the Chronoludic blog, explains the German video game ratings system, Germany being notoriously strict about video game violence.

Lastly, Michael Abbott of The Brainy Gamer blog looks at how Portal got onto the course reading list for all freshmen students at a small liberal arts college.

Via gamesetwatch

Bullet Soul to show Japanese 360 owners what's shmup

We know the idea of a current-day shmup where the player spends time firing bullets than avoiding them is pretty crazy, but that's actually the gameplay mechanic of 5pb's Bullet Soul. The look of this retail Xbox 360 title is the work of Bakemonogatari character designer Akio Wantanabe (any anime fans guess that before reading this far?), while on the soundtrack side, the team of Kenji Ito (Romancing SaGa) and Kouta Takahashi (Klonoa) are composing and arranging the tunes, respectively.

Bullet Soul is due out in Japan this winter.
Via joystiq

GDC Online Announces Keynote From FrontierVille's Reynolds

GDC Online organizers have confirmed industry veteran and Zynga chief game designer Brian Reynolds to discuss smash hit title FrontierVille and the future of social game design in a keynote at October's show in Austin.

In his keynote address, 'Bears and Snakes! The Wild Frontier of Social Game Design,' Reynolds will explain how his Facebook title FrontierVille “treads new territory” by combining the classic techniques of traditional game design with the social gaming expertise that Zynga has gained from their FarmVille and Mafia Wars titles.

Reynolds, whose career has spanned than 20 years with companies such as Firaxis and Big Huge Games, and who has co-created titles including Civilization II, Alpha Centauri and Rise of Nations, will also confront the challenges of taking familiar social game models and making them entertaining for gamers and non-gamers.

With the massive gains and rapid progress of the social game space, Reynolds will offer his take on why games like FrontierVille — which currently has 30 million monthly unique users on Facebook alone, according to Appdata.com — are only the first step towards other exciting opportunities for the video game medium.

Autodesk Toronto Tour

Many of you enjoyed the tour of our 10 Duke headquarters in Montreal. As promised, here's a look inside our Toronto office. This is where a lot of the Maya and Mudbox magic happens.

Mega Man Online Trailer

If I found out that today that Mega Man Online was not a game and in fact a new anime that looked like the trailer, I would not complain one bit. The trailer is awesome. It’s mainly content from the first Mega Man game, but there are a few characters from later titles and the X series is represented in it as well. The trailer itself is after the bump, plus some screencaps of it’s sheer awesomeness.

And here’s a few still from the trailer:

Kotaku [Mega Man Online Trailer Isn't Screwing Around]

Via duelinganalogs

SOCOM: Special Forces gamescom Floor Demo

It’s a proud week for us here at Zipper Interactive as tomorrow marks the 8th birthday of our first-ever PS2 game and the title that started a huge multimillion-selling franchise, SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs. To celebrate the eight-year mark, we’ve put together a special video for our fans.

In it, you’ll experience the gamescom 2010 SOCOM: Special Forces demo in its entirety with commentary by lead designer, Travis Steiner. This is the first time anywhere that you’ll see the gamescom demo played all the way through and in high-definition, making it a “must watch” for anyone even remotely interested in what we have in store for 2011.

Let us know what you think below, and please accept our sincerest thanks for making the first eight years of SOCOM as great as they have been. Here’s to many to come!

Via playstation

Mafia 2

Jon 'Log' Blyth loves to play with Tommy… Tommy gun that is.

Illusion have taken seven years to develop this game. It started life being coded for the PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 2, before being transplanted into a completely new engine. That's
a development cycle from another era, one of patience and money rivers. So, what were you expecting?

GDC Europe 2010 Ends With Record Attendance, Confirms 2011 Return

The Game Developers Conference Europe 2010 has concluded a second successful year, confirming record overall attendance across paid attendees, media, speakers and exhibitors to the August 16th-18th show.

At the same time, organizers have revealed a return to Cologne, Germany for a third GDC Europe show — again opposite GamesCom — on August 15-17, 2011.

Produced by UBM TechWeb Game Network, organizers of the leading worldwide Game Developers Conference series, GDC Europe is the largest professionals-only game event in Europe, presenting the latest trends and technology in all aspects of the online gaming space for developers, consumers, publishers and trade professionals.

Highlights of day two and three major talks at the show, reported by sister website Gamasutra.com, include the following notable talks:

Day Two

-In the day's first keynote, Heiko Hubertz, CEO and founder of Bigpoint, advised attendees that to conduct business in America as a European company, the time to do it is “right now.” Throughout the talk, Hubertz elaborated on the differences between the U.S. and European markets and educated the audience about how to be successful in America as a European, based on Bigpoint's experience there. Hubert advised “There are only two existing markets in America, the console market and the Facebook market.”

-In his keynote, Killzone developer Guerrilla Games' managing director Hermen Hulst discussed his studio's genesis, and its successes and failures in evolving into a Sony-owned AAA console powerhouse. Hulst began with the mantra: “to survive and to grow… you need to consistently improve yourself. He took attendees through examples of how Guerrilla's experiences have informed their history and the key decisions made from the time Sony signed the title that would become Killzone through to today. Plus, he revealed the studio is expanding to work on a “game with a scope and a level of ambition that once again makes us nervous” — specifically a “brand new IP.”

Via gdconf

Browser Game Pick: Liferaft: Zero (Mikengreg)

Absolutely adore this one, up until the point where I got horribly stuck. Liferaft: Zero is set in a testing facility, where little girl clones are made to run, jump and swing their way around dangerous chambers.

It's all got an incredibly vibe to it, and there are lots of little details here and there that make it all the entertaining – the scientists watching you from behind glass, sipping on cups of tea every now and again; The dialogue changing depending on how many girls you've managed to kill; The blood-stained spikes which get and soiled as you fail that swing for the umpteenth time… it's lovely stuff.

I managed to get hopelessly stuck on Trial 21, which tells you to hold up to achieve enough speed to reach the bell, but I couldn't for the life of me work out how that particular mechanic works. Still, I'm sure you lot will manage to work it out in an instant, and I'm just being incredibly stoopid.

It's here! Go play.

Via indiegames

ZBrush 4 released

Pixologic, Inc., makers of the award winning ZBrush is pleased to announce the latest release software in the Pixologic line – ZBrush Version 4 for Win and Mac!

ZBrush is the leading 2D/3D digital sculpting application for artists today and is used…

GameSpot : LittleBigPlanet 2 Interview : Alex Evans

Gamespot chats up the technical director of Little Big Planet 2 at GamesCom 2010.

EU Nintendo Update – Furry Legends, Fatal Fury 3, Primrose And More

This week's WiiWare releases include Furry Legends, the rolling platformer from Gamelion for 1,000 Points, and A Monsteca Corral: Monsters Vs. Robots for 500 Points.

DSiWare consist of three releases — Hospital Havoc for 500 Points, the simple puzzle title Primrose for 200 Points, and 3D Mahjong for 500 Points.

And lastly, a new Virtual Console title! Fatal Fury 3 is now available for 900 Points.

Via gamerbytes

Hear some of Shank's tracks, and see Shank's tracksuit

It may seem strange to receive an update on Klei Entertainment's XBLA/PC/PSN action game Shank that doesn't have anything to do with brutal gun, knife, or gun/knife/knife/gun/chainsaw violence, but you'll like this anyway. In advance of next week's release (August 24 on PSN, August 25 on XBLA, “Fall” on PC), Klei has posted six songs from the game's soundtrack.

In addition, the company revealed a few of the unlockable costumes in which you'll be able to clothe Shank, including a Bruce Lee-inspired yellow jumpsuit (no Kareem Abdul-Jabbar footprint, though) and a shirtless “Red Ninja” getup.
Via joystiq

Three years ago developer RealTime Worlds appeared to be headed for stardom. The company’s first release, Crackdown, was a hit, and it also had an awesome open-world MMO in development, called APB, which promised relief from the genre’s fantasy obsession. What a difference three years can make

[ READ MORE ]

Do review scores matter? Does all the

If you had high hopes for Realtime Worlds’ online game APB, you might be disappointed. PC Gamer has just published their review of the cops ‘n robbers MMO, awarding it a lowly score of 55%. But the development team at Realtime Worlds were already prepared for ‘mixed’ reviews from critics… …

[ READ MORE ]

iOS 4 Software Update Released, Now Available as Free Download

Hey! Got an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad? Plug that sucker in. It’s time to update.

Apple’s free iOS 4 software update adds over 100 new features, including much-requested multitasking functionality for iPhone 3GS and third-generation iPod Touch devices.

All hardware generations will be able to enjoy other features such as iBooks, playlist creation, app gifting, spell checking, and Bluetooth wireless keyboard support.

A notable improvement for iPhone game fanatics is iOS 4’s new Folders functionality. Users can now sort up to 2,160 applications in customizable folders, making it far easier to find your favorite games and utilities.

Be warned that iOS 4’s many changes will likely result in unexpected bugs and glitches for existing applications. Any potential issues will likely be smoothed over as applications update over the next few weeks, but in the meantime, be aware that many popular games — including ngmoco’s Eliminate Pro and Touch Pets Dogs — may not work as expected.

Via fingergaming

Preview: Portal 2 (co-op)

Chis Grant: So, lucky us, after the first full day of E3, you and I were the only pair to play Portal 2 together, cooperatively, without Valve. Valve writer Erik Wolpaw has been giving the the demo while playing as the second player, but he said he thought we looked like we could handle it on our own.
Richard Mitchell: It was surprising to me how quickly we fell into step, actually. If you've played Portal before, it's kind of amazing how soon you start thinking cooperatively — figuring out how you need two people to solve a given puzzle. It's a different experience, but it's still Portal.
Via joystiq

Games with controversial scenes.

Terrorist hijackers are only the tip of this iceberg.Six Days in Fallujah – A game so controversial it never saw the light of day.Manhunt 2 – The first version was banned in the U.K. and AO in the U.S.Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – Asking someone over for coffee will never be the same.Resistance: Fall of Man – A cathedral shootout sparked a witchhunt by the Church.Resident Evil 5 – African zombies in skirts reignited a discussion on racism.Doom – First time we saw a game in headlines thanks to Columbine.

The Psychology Of Games: APB – Aggregated Payment Bias?

[Continuing his regular GameSetWatch column, psychologist and gamer Jamie Madigan looks at Realtime Worlds' APB to explain why people don't usually like paying by the hour for MMOs -- or other services.]

Back in April of this year, Realtime Worlds announced the pricing model for its soon to be released MMO, All Points Bulletin, or “APB” as the cool kids say. A lot of us are looking forward to the futuristic cops vs. robbers game, but the announcement about the pricing elicited a fair number of jeers from a lot of players. Here's how the press release broke down the two payment models in US dollars:

1. Buy the game for the MSRP of $50
2. Play 50 hours for “free.”
3. Buy additional game time using one of two options:
a) $6.99 for 20 hours
b) $9.99 for unlimited hours during the next 30 days (or you can also buy 60 or 90 day subscriptions)

Upon hearing this, the nerd rage was palpable on some forums. For sure, this was partially over the fact that APB was to have any monthly fee AT ALL, despite that being par for the MMO course. But there seemed to be two other targets of the virtual hand wringing.

First, the play time included with the retail product was doled out in hours (50 of them, to be precise) rather than the traditional 30 days of unlimited play. Second, the $6.99 for 20 hours of game time seemed a bitter pill to swallow, apparently because people didn't want to pay by the hour.

People seemed to willfully ignore the fact that the game DOES include traditional 30 days of unlimited play for one flat rate option, though. There was also some vague stuff in there about being able to earn game time in-game, but I'm going ignore that for now.

Now, I'm actually not 100% sure as of the time of this writing whether APB's pricing models will change by the time the game launches. I can't find anything on the official site, and Realtime World's designer Dave Jones told GamePro magazine said that “gamers won't have to commit to any kind of monthly subscription fee or utilize a traditional microtransaction system.”

I'm not sure what that means, but regardless I think it's still interesting to focus on people's reaction to that initial press release in April. Why were they so turned off by the pay by the hour options?

As it sometimes turns out, psychology holds the answer. But let's talk about cell phones for a second first.

Phones and MMOs

Last year I lost by Blackberry when I changed jobs. I wanted a new cell phone, but my wife forced me to admit that I didn't really need anything fancy. So I went shopping and, being a completely rational decision maker, I selected one of those cheap, pay-as-you-go phones where you buy prepaid minutes. The plan I selected essentially worked out like this:

1. Buy the phone for the MSRP of $50
2. Get $35 worth of air time included for “free.”
3. Pay $0.10 per minute for all calls, $0.20 per text message
4. Buy additional air time as needed

Does that look familiar? It's not too far off from APB's “$6.99 per 20 hours” option, but more on that in a minute.

I could have easily gone for a $60 a month plan that let me spend unlimited hours on the phone, only taking breaks to send unlimited text messages. Or I could have sought out a plan that gave me hundreds of minutes per month, which equates practically unlimited minutes for my purposes. And not only would I have had plenty of company, many of us would probably have been overpaying. An 2009 article in the LA Times reported on a study that surveyed 134 cell phone bills and found that the average user was paying over $3.00 a minute when you considered how much they paid and how many of their plan's minutes they actually used. But not me! Bravo! Hooray my precious rationality!

A Bias for Flat Rates

Only it still doesn't feel right. Because I know that every time I flip that thing open to make a call I have to pay $.10 a minute I'm actually loathe to use the phone. I keep calls as short as possible, I groan when people ask me to text them, and when I'm traveling I'll actually stalk my wife on Facebook until she comes online so I can ask her to call me on her phone.

The reason for my discomfort is something called “the flat rate bias.” Generally, people like flat rates and don't like being on a meter. But why does the flat rate bias exist? Well, as is often the case with psychology, it's turtles all the way down (click here if you need help with that reference) because that's just how people are.

But a bit of work by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky known as “prospect theory” does a pretty good job of taking us down ONE turtle and providing a good model. One thing that Kahneman and Tversky found was a “law of diminishing sensitivity.” Basically, this means that the amount we wince at any one reasonable losses eventually flattens out. If you graphed it for a random person, it may look something like this:

The idea is that our comparative displeasure at different losses ramps up quickly but then levels off. This is known as “diminishing sensitivity.” So, for example, we experience a bigger jump in aversion between a loss of $5 and a loss of $10 than we experience between losses of $1005 and $1010. It's related to the reason why we'll feel great about saving $.30 on a tube of toothpaste, but probably won't bother to drive across the street in order to save $30 –a hundred times as much!– on a flat screen TV. (The caveat here, though, is that we don't treat expenses from purchases in quite the same way as other losses, but that's another article.)

One implication of diminishing sensitivity is that we experience greater subjective pain from multiple losses than we do to one big loss of equal value. Answer honestly: implications for your insurance aside, would you be more pissed about three $30 parking tickets over three days or one $90 ticket? Researchers have posed exactly that kind of question, and found that people generally prefer the one big loss over multiple little ones. Why? Because of diminishing sensitivity to losses:

Pain of $30 loss = 100 “pain points”
Pain of $90 loss = 250 “pain points”
100 X 3 = 300
300 > 250

This is the same reason people buy unlimited or excessive minutes on their cell phone plans. We'd rather have one big cut that seems less painful overall than endure a thousand cuts (or 900 + unlimited mobile to mobile cuts) as the minutes fall away one by one. As a side note, it's also the reason that rent-by-mail services like GameFly are so appealing relative to renting games one at a time.

It's preferable to sweep all our losses into one big, monthly pile and feel like we have “unlimited” rentals for that price than it would be to rent by the day or even by the week. Ditto for Netflix and DVDs. Yet how many of us have let games or DVDs sit around for days or weeks before getting to them? Personally, I know that by my calculations renting “The Hangover” from Netflix just cost me over $11 because I held on to it for 5 weeks before finally watching it last night. Not exactly a great deal.

Flat Rate Bias and APB Revisited

So, armed now with this information about the flat rate bias and diminishing sensitivity, let's circle back to one of the APB pricing described in that April press release, particularly that “$6.99 for 20 hours” option. My guess is that most people won't go that route because of the flat rate bias. It'll just be too painful to feel every individual hour pass away and think that it's another one your prepaid hours gone forever. In contrast, people who paid just a little more can feel comparatively less pain because they experience just one loss instead of a parade of many smaller losses that feel like they add up to more.

The funny thing is, though, that like those people paying over $3.00 a minute for their cell phone calls and me with my rented copy of “The Hangover,” there will be some number of APB players who OVER pay by selecting the $9.99/month, unlimited hours plan. Because they play fewer than 20 hours in a month but think it's worth it not to have to feel like they're “wasting” limited minutes all the time.

In actuality, Realtime World should probably be commended for giving its players the option to save money with a metered plan, especially since it's in their financial interest to take advantage of the flat rate bias and encourage those people to over pay. Yet they're not. I asked MMO game designer Nik Davidson of The Amazing Society what he thought, since he had presented a pretty great talk at this year's Login conference, in part about this very topic.

“I think what they're doing is brilliant,” Nik said. “People love having options. Being able to choose between two ways of paying and feeling good about the choice they made makes it much more likely that they'll make a choice at all. I think a relatively small minority of their users will choose the rated plan, but simply having the rated plan will encourage more people overall to play and pay.”

I couldn't agree more. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go psych myself up to add $20 to my prepaid cell phone balance.

[Jamie Madigan, Ph.D. is a psychologist and gamer who explores why players and developers do what they do by studying the overlap between psychology and video games at The Psychology of Games website. He can be reached at jamie@psychologyofgames.com.]

Via gamesetwatch

Trailer: Norrland (cactus)

Norrland is a game made by cactus for an exhibition at Kulturbygden in Sollefteå this week, a project which he intends to release for free once all physical copies of it have been sold out. It'll be up on eBay to purchase soon, and fans of cactus' previous works shouldn't miss the chance to grab a copy since there are only ten of these printed.

We'll link you to the purchase page once one is made available.

Via indiegames

Green Day: Rock Band

On the surface, an entire game dedicated to Green Day doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But look closely and you'll see that the “punk trio” has a deep and catchy catalog of hits whose energy and vibe perfectly fits the Rock Band experience. Unless you absolutely cannot stand their songs, this is one case where we'll recommend you check your music pretensions at the door and just have fun, because after all, isn't that what music is all about? GamePro Score: 4.5

Square Enix: FF14 on track for 2010, at a “critical finishing stage” at the moment

Final Fantasy XIV Producer Hiromichi Tanaka has confirmed that the game is still on track for a 2010 release, stating the game is at a “critical finishing stage.”

Review: Super QuickHook

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Price: $1.99 (Download here)
Version: 1.0
Official Site: Rocketcat Games

Super QuickHook is the equivalent of Michelangelo sculpting the Statue of David out of Play-Doh. It’s like giving your long-standing girlfriend a cell-phone strap wrapped in a Tiffany’s ring box. It’s like serving cocktail wieners at a formal dinner party.

Sure, it can be done, but why the hell would you?

QuickHook is a tiny game outfitted in baggy clothes at the Big and Tall store. It definitely dresses the part of an action-platformer, but underneath its pomp and spectacle, it’s just a measly little timing game that’s been stretched way out of proportion to cover the scope of a bigger game. Like a midget on stilts, don’t be surprised if it falls flat.

Walking on stilts is a good way to describe how the game plays. Your character can’t jump, so instead, you rely on his prehensile, tentacle-like hookshot to get around.

Moving involves firing out your hookshot, latching onto a surface overhead, and swinging forward repeatedly. It feels a lot like walking on stilts — only upside-down — as you take long strides across stalactites and entablatures while keeping up your momentum to prevent yourself from falling.

The environments you swing through are rendered in painstaking detail, as is most of the non-essential aspects of the game, but they come across as superfluous rather than complementing the gameplay. Pretty much all there is to do in these levels is fall. There are coins to gather and the occasional hidden path, but most of your time will be spent swinging between identical looking pillars and falling off them.

The game removes any penalty for poor performance, motivating the player to improve through passive means such as speed-runs and leaderboards. These types of goals are fine, but tend to work best when they emerge naturally from a game, not when you’re expected to do them because they are the only source of mental stimulation provided.

The de-emphasis on punishment might have led to the lazy level design, or it could be a perfect storm of banality, but either way, what’s left after the smoke clears is a cute mechanic which is fine for a mini-game but fails to carry the implied weight of a full game.

QuickHook creates such an elaborate mirage of the game that it wants to be that it’s hard to appreciate it for what it really is. It’s an unfortunate victim of expectations — not expectations hoisted upon it by players, mind you, but expectations brought about by its own will to be more than it actually is. It’s a noble aspiration, if inherently flawed.

Via fingergaming

E3 2010 Wrap-up: Photo Gallery

What a week! With eight years of the E3 Expo under my belt, there’s no doubt in my mind that this year was an E3 high point and perhaps the most exciting, inspiring show I’ve personally attended. For me, the highlights included experiencing stereoscopic 3D in games like Killzone 3 and Mortal Kombat (seeing is believing), sampling the various PlayStation Move games (the precision and gameplay versatility were on full display), and the much-anticipated return of Twisted Metal from Eat Sleep Play. Oh, and Kevin Butler.

And of course, games, games, games: From heavyweights like MotorStorm Apocalypse, LittleBigPlanet 2, Gran Turismo 5, SOCOM 4, inFAMOUS 2, and God of War: Ghost of Sparta to head-turning PSN titles like Dead Nation, Journey, and PixelJunk Shooter 2 — this year, the games did all the talking. And don’t get me started on the third-party lineup, with Dead Space 2, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Medal of Honor, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Crysis 2, Mafia II, Portal 2, Scott Pilgrim…I could go on all day and I’d run out of breath before I named them all.

This is an excellent time to be a gamer. It’s also an excellent time to have access to a camera, as this year’s E3 booths were bigger and bolder than I’ve seen in years. I wanted to give PlayStation.Blog readers an inside look at some of the most inspired booth layouts we spotted on the show floor. It’s by no means a complete look, but I hope you enjoy the eye candy.

And if you were overwhelmed by the onslaught of E3 PlayStation news this week, no worries — I’ll be back tomorrow with a comprehensive PlayStation Recap column to get you up to speed. And trust me, it’s gonna be a doozy.

Enjoy the pics! And see more PlayStation E3 2010 photos on our Flickr Photostream.

Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 for PS3

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood for PS3

Homefront for PS3

Killzone 3 in stereoscopic 3D for PS3 (so popular it averaged a one-to-two hour line wait)

Left: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow for PS3; Right: Yakuza 4 for PS3

MAFIA II, coming to PS3 with exclusive bonus content

Mortal Kombat, coming to PS3 with Stereoscopic 3D

Red Faction Armageddon for PS3

Lord of the Rings: War in the North for PS3

TRON Evolution for PS3

Left: Marvel vs Capcom 3 for PS3; Right: DC Universe Online for PS3

Via playstation

E3 2010 Sonic Mega Round-up With Gameplay Footage!!!

ifmenhadwings writes “Ok folks we are into the final days of E3, and SEGA boy here has been trailing the net hard to bring all you wingnuts footage of all Sonics up and coming titles that have been announced. So to get things started hit the play button at the top to see footage of Sonic 4 Episode 1. For more surprises continue reading on.”

PlayDevil: Lost Planet 2 PS3 Review

Was PlayDevil lost in Lost Planet 2?

Here is a snippet:

“The single player is now basically removed for a Monster Hunter style co-op game, with only a basic story to hold together the levels. This sounds fine in theory, but in practice, Capcom have made some awful design decisions.

When I first started playing, its immediately noticeable that theres no drop-in/ drop-out co-op, which is annoying whilst you wait for a lobby to fill (you can only play as far as you have played before). “