Video games inspire all kinds of peripheral art. Gamers love to build costumes, compose music, and paint original works. It’s only natural that cartographers would eventually get in on the action.

The mapmakers at City Prints art studio in Atlanta decided to take their skills at charting real-world locales and apply them to games like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Assassin’s Creed.

Each print goes for $40 on the company’s website. For a bit more, fans can get the work expertly framed. For more details or purchasing information, check City Prints’ official website.

Take a look at some of the studio’s work:

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Last year, Epic Games sold a 40 percent ownership stake to China’s Tencent, according to an interview with Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney. That makes the deal one of the biggest investments in games last year, and it values Epic Games at $825 million.

Tencent bought a minority stake in the Gears of War game studio last year, but didn’t disclose how much it paid. But Sweeney confirmed to Polygon that Tencent bought 48.4 percent of the outstanding shares of Epic in June. That amounts to 40 percent of the company when you consider employee stock options. Tencent has two representatives now on Epic’s board.

“As part of the investment, two Tencent representatives joined Epic’s board of directors, in addition to the three directors and two observers appointed by Epic,” Sweeney told Polygon. “We’re thrilled to have a world-leading partner in Tencent, who gives Epic unique access to the Chinese market as we head into the next chapter of our 21-year history as a leading independent developer.”

Tencent recently published financial documents reveal that the Chinese company, which has a market value of around $50 billion or so, paid $330 million for its stake in Epic. The move was part of the company’s strategy of working with and learning from the best game developers in the world.

After the deal was announced, Epic Games lost some of its veteran developers. Mike Capps retired as president. Design director Cliff Bleszinski also quit, and Rod Fergusson left to become an executive at BioShock Infinite creator Irrational Games.

Tencent also owns a majority stake in League of Legends developer Riot Games.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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I think we can all agree that Damon Baird is, for all intents and purposes, a sentient dick move.

The least meatheady member of Delta Squad in the billion-dollar Gears of War franchise, Baird somehow turned the voice of reason into a non-stop whine. He mixed a solid background in “complaining about everything” with a side of “brag up minor accomplishments” and threw in a hint of “make someone else do it, I’m too smart.” In the brutal, planet-wrecking war between humans and the ruthless subterranean Locust, Baird was the guy people put up with — usually — because they had to, not because they wanted to, and we laughed at his many frustrations. Baird might’ve been Mr. Fix-It to series heroes Marcus and Dom, but he was comic relief to us.

Gears of War: Judgment (releasing March 19 on the Xbox 360) casts him as the lead protagonist. Consider that something of a metaphor. For this entry in their powerhouse franchise, original developer Epic Games kicked things over to a subsidiary, People Can Fly, most recently known for 2011′s amusingly profane but unremarkable shooter Bulletstorm. From the outside, it’s an interesting fit. Two secondary players get some time in the spotlight to tell their story … something I generally approve of.

But y’know how “story” has never been Gears’ strong suit?

What you’ll like

Shooting things with big guns

Set years before the first Gears of War, Judgment is the heartwarming story of how Baird got his groove taken away. He and his command, Kilo Squad — made up of fan-favorite Augustus “Cole Train” Cole and newcomers Sofia Hendrick and Garron Paduk — arrive already in chains, on their way to an amusingly blunt kangaroo court. The game then flashes back to explain why the presiding judge, General Loomis, wants to put on this farce just so he can legally kill them.

So yes, it’s a flashback-within-a-prequel, and that largely applies to the gameplay as well. Judgment doesn’t stray one inch from the cover-based, grub-killing shenanigans from Gears of War 3, right down to the loading message pop-ups, menu navigation, and visual cues for nailing an active reload (thus boosting your firepower). It still works, and a few small tweaks even slims the controls down a bit. People Can Fly jettisoned the pistol sidearm nobody ever used in favor of a two-gun package and modified the controls accordingly, also making it far easier to use grenades on the fly without having to select them first. Good changes all around.

Less good? The always-reliable Hammerburst lost both its auto-fire and its iron sights aiming, flipping it from best to worst for no reason I can figure out. To make up for it, three new additions make it into the Gears arsenal, two of which are standouts. I enjoyed planting live grenades on enemy heads with Booshka, a down-and-dirty launcher, but the sniper-lite Markza became my go-to gun. It took me a bit to dial into Markza’s dark charms, but true love eventually blossomed.

And while you still take these beauties on an 8-hour campaign, I didn’t feel the need to hug cover 24/7 this time. Between easy grenade throws and hordes of charging enemies, I probably spent more time out in the open than in all the other Gears games combined, and that made a nice change, too. It also made it easier to earn the universal currency of video games: stars. That’s right, Gears now grades you section by section, awarding experience points towards unlocks and assigning stars based on executions, dismemberments, and awards earned. It takes 40 stars to unlock a sixth, hour-long chapter called Aftermath, which flashes-forward to a side-story during Gears 3 where we catch up with some of Judgment’s survivors. Naturally, the years have not been kind.

Of course, once you hit that 40-star threshold — which you can comfortably do by mid-game — the motivation for earning starts drops away fast, save for Achievement whores and perfectionists.

Rocking the multiplayer

Likewise, the latest update to Gears’ online carnage streamlines the game, but not without a few major changes.

Mainly, it’s what’s missing that will annoy fans most. Capture the Leader? King of the Hill? Warzone? Execution? Dedicated Beast and Horde modes? All gone. The new headliner is OverRun, which adapts Battlefield’s Rush mode to a Gearsy five-stage attack/defend scenario. Human players guard a capped emergence hole while Locust players breach fortifications to destroy that cap, and it’s great fun in both directions. All the different Locust classes return, and now COG soldiers get classes, too: medic, engineer, soldier, and sniper.

No, those roles and their special abilities don’t exactly stretch the bounds of innovation either, but the balance of those abilities with the preset loadouts plays very well, particularly when your defenses crumble (victory goes to the team that holds out the longest), all while adding Battlefield’s tactical edge to your Gears playstyle. It’s a lean, mean game.

People Can Fly also ported OverRun’s framework over to Survival, the “Horde 3.0″ mode where instead of merely surviving increasingly tough waves of enemies, you must defend the e-hole caps for ten rounds; getting pushed back starts the count over again. Much as I like objective-based games, this ruins the point of Horde, which was simply to survive as long as possible. Forget roaming the whole map. You’re stuck to that one spot. As-is, Survival simply repeats OverRun’s example without giving you a turn as the Locust.

Domination’s control-points fight make for sticky fun, and it must be noted that every non-OverRun map counts as a winner. Several let you hop aboard a mobile platform. In Rig’s case, you slip behind the mounted chaingun of a King Raven helicopter as it hops from one landing pad to the next; Gondola has map-traversing (you guessed it) gondolas. Even without those extras, I found a lot to enjoy in Library’s literary cover and long sight-lines, while Streets’ excellent verticality always kept me looking up when I wasn’t aiming downward. For team or solo deathmatches, you won’t want for good killing fields, but don’t be surprised if you find yourself sneaking back to Gears 3 to play the old-school modes the way you really want to.

And a warning: I detected a shocking amount of clipping where the target in my sights suddenly teleported to another part of the room. I hope that doesn’t bode ill when a few million players jump aboard.

It’s got some character

With Baird in charge and the Locust War just beginning, Judgment isn’t nearly so dark and depressing as previous installments. It still knows how to twist a knife, though. Baird leads his squad through a freshly-destroyed city still draped with bright blue “Victory!” banners … a victory against Paduk’s country, as it turns out.

The flashback setup gives each member of Kilo Squad their own chapter — Baird gets three, including Aftermath — suggesting a broken Rashomon where everyone remembers the same thing. Ah, but the great Akira Kurosawa and Ryunosuke Akutagawa didn’t have an interactive medium to play around in. Judgment changes things up by letting players activate “Declassified” variants before every section of the game. These expose off-the-record details that fundamentally alter the game you’re about to play … handicapping your weapons loadout, adding a blinding fog or aim-impairing wind, putting you on a timer to escape before the saturation bombing begins, or boxing you in with enemies on all sides.

One Declassified tasks you with destroying egg caches or getting hit with more enemies as a result. I only found nine of the 10 caches before I got bored and moved onward. Believe me, I felt that consequence. I wish more Declassified options had taken this approach.

Regardless, I cannot stress enough how much activating Declassifieds improves Judgment. They finally kick the game and the gamer out of their comfort zones. Without them, the game proves almost ridiculously easy on Normal difficulty, and that makes Aftermath — which doesn’t have Declassifieds — more of a distraction than a challenge.

And that’s the big problem with Judgment.

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At face value, the heroes of Gears of War aren’t all that likable. No one can relate to soldiers with Hulk-like muscles, bloody chainsaws, and a penchant for catchy one-liners like “Shit, yeah!” Some circles of the Internet (including former Gears designer Cliff Bleszinski) have affectionately pegged this exaggerated masculinity as being too “dude-bro.”

The problem, I think, isn’t with the excessive violence and humor on their own, but in the way they clash against the third-person-shooter franchise’s narrative tone. Developer Epic Games attempted to add some empathy and drama — such as the search for a character’s missing wife in Gears of War 2 — over the course of the last three games, all to varying levels of success.

I brought this up during my interview with Gears of War: Judgment writers Rob Auten and Tom Bissell last week in San Francisco, where we all found ourselves taking in an unusually warm afternoon as we stood on the third-floor landing of an outdoor staircase. It was a nice change of pace from the noisy room in the floor below us, which was full of journalists and Epic Games employees curb-stomping the crap out of each other in Judgment’s multiplayer modes.

“I think Gears’ reputation for that is not entirely earned,” said Bissell. “Because the fact is, when you have four characters killing stuff in a combat scenario, certain ‘dude-bro’ emotional insinuations are inevitable. What are they supposed to do? The kiln of combat forges these relationships.”

Bissell is an award-winning and prolific writer whose work encompasses a wide range of topics. He has written books about the Vietnam War, his experience as a member of the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan, and even video games.

“If anything, [Gears] is not afraid to acknowledge that more openly,” said Rob Auten, Bissell’s writing partner-in-crime. “I think the ‘dude-bro’ [image] is sort of a double-edged sword: People slag Gears for being sort of emo, and they slag it for being dude-bro. It’s like, ‘Look guys, you can’t have both!”

Auten is no stranger to working with video games, either. He’s been “in or around” the industry for the last 10 years in different jobs, including being an animator and a writer.

From our short chat, it was clear that Auten and Bissell (along with Epic Games and developer People Can Fly) were out to craft a decidedly different Gears tale that would remain true to the series’ roots while injecting some much-needed nuance and personality.

Making Kilo Squad more dynamic

The main characters of the first three Gears of War games were Delta Squad members Marcus Fenix, Augustus “Cole Train” Cole, Damon Baird, and Dominic Santiago. Since Judgment is a prequel to the trilogy, we have a different group in the form of Kilo Squad. Included in its ranks are younger versions of Baird and Cole, as well as new faces Sofia Hendrik and Garron Paduk.

“I think our goal was to make the characters a little bit more … jagged,” said Bissell. “Marcus and Dom love each other — they bicker a little bit — but they’re fundamentally old friends. Our characters are not old friends: They barely know each other. Baird and Cole have known each other for a month. Sophia and Paduk hate each other. Sofia doesn’t like Baird. Paduk hates everyone.”

I played about an hour of Judgment’s campaign, and in that time, seeing just how different Kilo Squad was in comparison to the trilogy’s Delta Squad surprised me. They’re still efficient killing machines when it comes to fighting off the invasion of the monstrous Locusts, but their disagreements and snide comments to one another gave the impression that they’re far from being a cohesive military unit.

“And to me, [that kind of interaction] automatically creates an interesting dynamic between these four squadmates,” Bissell continued. “And so right away, when I realized these are going to be our characters, I thought, ‘Well, this is gonna be really good. This is gonna create a kind of dynamic that I don’t think has really existed in the Gears [universe] … But I think the relationships between the four people in Judgment is a little bit subtler than it is in the other games.”

“We talked to some real military people a couple of times through the process,” said Auten. “There were some people who came by Epic, and they would tell us stories of, ‘We had this one guy in our fire team and we didn’t like him very much, so we all kind of decided we weren’t going to talk to him for a year’ [Laughs]. These kind of reactions — characters, people who work closely [together] — conflict does come up in intensive situations, and we just kind of want to enable that to happen. That’s drama, right?”

Paduk’s biggest fans

Garron Paduk seemed like an interesting, if volatile, choice as a member of Kilo Squad. He fought on the wrong side of the fence during Gears’ Pendulum Wars (kind of like the universe’s version of World War II) and joined the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) because he thought it was better to serve his former enemy than stay in jail. He definitely fights with a chip on his shoulder, much to the dismay of the other Kilo members.

Source: Microsoft

Garron Paduk

And the writers absolutely adore him.

“We’re probably Paduk’s biggest fans,” said Auten. “There have been points in the game where people have come up to us and were like, ‘Paduk is kind of a downer.’ For us, [the answer] was never ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ We’re like, ‘Look, let’s try this. Let’s take Paduk as we know and have ambivalent feelings about him in the Judgment part of the game, and let’s throw him umpteen years into the future and imagine who he would’ve become [Editor's note: Paduk also appears in Aftermath, a campaign that takes place in the same timeline as Gears of War 3. You unlock it after earning enough stars in Judgment's story mode].

“He’s taken his own direction. He’s not a Stranded. He’s not a soldier. He respects soldiers but doesn’t want to be part of the military unit…. And he’s traipsing around basically the last big battle he ever fought and the place that has a lot of emotional resonance for him [as he leads] this kind of rag-tag group of stragglers. All of a sudden, all of the Paduk-ness of Paduk really came rushing back into the character, and everybody was like, ‘Okay, Paduk’s pretty good.’”

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I’m tired of fighting Locusts. The subterranean monstrosities have been terrorizing the poor inhabitants of Sera for an entire console generation (almost 20 years in the planet’s fictional timeline) ever since the first Gears of War debuted in 2006. When developers Epic Games and People Can Fly announced last year that they were making a fourth blood-splattering entry in the Xbox 360-exclusive franchise, the only response I could muster was, “Why?”

That “why” turned into a more positive “hmm” after playing a few hours of Gears of War: Judgment (out March 19 for the Xbox 360) at a preview event held last week in San Francisco. This third-person shooter plays a lot like the other Gears: You still slam into cover, you still use rifles equipped with chainsaws, and you still blow up enemies into a potpourri of severed body parts.

It’s a formula that has worked well for Epic in the past, and Judgment doesn’t stray too far from it. I’m still not sure if this prequel can shake off some of that fatigue, but I found that the parts that were new did manage to reinvigorate (if only temporarily) my enthusiasm for mowing down Locusts.

Optional ‘declassify’ rules

Judgment’s campaign begins with a tribunal. Familiar Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) soldiers Damon Baird and Augustus “Cole Train” Cole are under arrest (along with new faces Sophia Hendrik and Garron Paduk) for disobeying orders. The narrative bounces from one flashback to another as each member of Kilo Squad gives his personal account of the events that led up to their alleged crimes.

But that isn’t the whole story. People Can Fly separated each level into four or five digestible chunks, short sections of gameplay that you can finish in a few minutes. Each of these has a large Crimson Omen (a red cog with a skull that also serves as the series’ recognizable logo) plastered on a wall, and when you examine it, you’re given the option to play with the new declassification system. If you accept, not only will the combat become more challenging but you’ll also hear different lines of dialogue that describe what really happened during these missions — details that were normally hidden away from the public eye.

The challenges vary. While playing a newly revealed level called “Onyx Point,” I saw several different examples of the declassification missions in action. One had me run through a series of bunkers in under four minutes, and if I failed that, an off-shore missile attack would kill me. Another forced me to fight with just a heavy shield and a Lancer rifle. The next challenge introduced a strong gust of wind that made it hard to move and shoot. And one of the last sets in this stage limited my visibility by shutting off the lights and temporarily slowing down my health regeneration.

The declassify rules felt like the most refreshing gameplay change to the franchise. I never knew what I was getting into when I switched them on. I not only had to worry about the Locusts but also focus on fighting them with these seemingly random restrictions in place. It made the combat feel tense and exciting, and for a while there, I almost forgot I was facing the same Locusts from the first three games.

Closing the loop

During the event, Epic also revealed Judgment’s Aftermath mode for the first time. It’s a story campaign set in the same timeline as Gears of War 3. You’re still with Baird and Cole, who reunite with Paduk after they split from fellow Delta Squad member Marcus Fenix to go on a separate mission. Think of it as like an epilogue to Judgment’s tale.

I spent around 20 minutes playing Aftermath, where I fought a large group of zombie-like creatures called Formers in the city of Halvo Bay. Except for the new control tweaks — Y to swap between your weapons and LB to toss or aim a grenade — this mode doesn’t have any of the new features from Judgment. According to Epic Games producer Alan Van Slyke, Aftermath is for fans who loved Gears of War 3 and “wanted more of it.”

The most exciting prospect about Aftermath for me, however, was getting the chance to see how Paduk has changed in the decades since his last meeting with Baird and Cole. Paduk fought on the losing side of the Pendulum Wars (Sera’s version of World of War II) and only joined Kilo Squad because it was better than wasting away in a COG prison. I could only gather small hints of his backstory — he clearly carries a chip on his shoulder and doesn’t care too much about his squadmates — but that was enough to make me think that he’s the most interesting addition to the Gears fiction in years.

Multiplayer: OverRun and Survival

Gears of War 2 from 2008 remains as one of my most memorable gaming experiences of this generation. At the time, I was in college and living with four roommates; we had two Xbox 360s and two copies of Gears of War 2 between us. Together, we played the hell out of Horde mode (where you try to survive against waves of increasingly challenging Locusts) for weeks on end, often staying up till 4 or 5 a.m.

For one reason or another, we couldn’t capture that same feeling of camaraderie and teamwork in Gears of War 3. But I have a feeling that Judgment’s Survival and OverRun multiplayer modes may rekindle that. In Survival, you and your five-man team — made up of classes such as Soldier, Engineer, Scout, and Medic — defend key points throughout a map (with barriers, turret guns, and traps) from waves of A.I.-controlled Locusts.

OverRun works the same way except this time, you’re up against real people — both teams take turns playing as Locusts and COGs. It was exhilarating to demolish my enemies with an all-powerful swing from the gargantuan Mauler, leaving room for my allies to swarm the COG’s defenses and destroy their generator. My team had way more losses than victories that day, but when we did win, it felt good.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Being tossed into the middle of Fuse is like diving head-first into the deep end of the pool when you don’t know how to swim. It’s basically a third-person cover-shooter, but it’s easy to get lost in all the wild details of alien technology, character-specific abilities, and the government conspiracy story that wraps it all together.

Out some time later this year for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Fuse is quite a departure from the inventive platforming and first-person shooter titles that developer Insomniac Games is known for (with franchises such as Ratchet & Clank and Resistance for the PS3). It’s also the first multiplatform game for the studio, with Electronic Arts handling publishing duties.

Though you can play alone, Fuse encourages you to play with others (up to three) in its cooperative-focused story campaign and multiplayer modes.

“[Fuse] is not a shooter that has co-op; it’s a co-op shooter,” said Insomniac brand development director Ryan Schneider to GamesBeat. “Our designers are adamant that they think this is the best four-player co-op game on the market.”

Before you can figure out why Insomniac thinks it’s the best, however, you’ll have to overcome a somewhat steep learning curve since it’s so different from typical shooters like Gears of War or Uncharted. Those games lay out a clear path of destruction for you, and their combat rarely deviates from the duck-and-cover mantra. But you can’t just blast your way through Fuse: Insomniac designed it in a way that forces you to think creatively about the characters’ roles and how you can combine their different weapons and strategies to ensure victory.

It’s a lot to take in, but I found that it all started to make sense after the first 10 or 20 minutes of playing.

Taking a leap of faith

I played an early version of Fuse (Schneider warned that it was 2-months-old) on an Xbox 360, and for the first few minutes, I had no idea what I was doing. I had a feeling that my partner, another journalist playing next to me, was in the same boat.

We were on a mission that took place about halfway through the story mode, where Fuse’sheroes from the covert Overstrike 9 agency — Dalton, Naya, Jacob, and Izzy — infiltrate a heavily guarded enemy compound in the middle of a jungle. Muscle memory from playing other third-person shooters clicked right away as I ran for cover and started blind-firing. But Fuse is about balancing the different abilities of your squadmates, and that’s where things became confusing.

To be fair, Schneider said Fuse has a tutorial to ease you in before it introduces you to the alien-powered weapons that all the characters wield. But in the heat of battle, it was hard to pinpoint who exactly had the invisibility cloak (Naya), the energy-based Mag Shield (Dalton), the crossbow that fired liquid mercury arrows (Jacob), or the grenade that can heal folks from long-range (Izzy).

After some trial-and-error and asking Schneider a ton of questions, my partner and I took out everyone in the area. This is when I learned about the importance of Fuse’s Leap: As long as you have at least one teammate still standing (and not already controlled by another player), you can switch to that character at any time. So you can use Dalton to throw up a shield that’ll absorb gun fire, “leap” to Izzy and use her Shattergun to crystallize enemies while under the shield’s protection, and then jump to Naya to sneak behind the battlefield to get rid of the survivors.

Once I realized that Fuse requires a bit more lateral thinking than other cover shooters, I started to think Insomniac may have something special here.

Four-player madness

Leaping is fun, but Fuse appeared to shine best when you have enough people to control all four members of Overstrike 9. Two other players joined us in the room for Echelon, a cooperative multiplayer mode where you have to complete a set of randomized objectives: One minute, you might have to defend a weapon cache against a wave of enemies, and the next you’ll face a soldier piloting a powerful missile-shooting robot.

Communication is key, especially as your allies start dropping one-by-one (you revive them with a button press before a timer runs out). And support roles like Dalton’s can make or break your team.

“Dalton’s the floor general if you’re a basketball fan,” said Schneider. “I’ve been comparing him to being like [Los Angeles Lakers point guard] Steve Nash of the group, where he just kind of has to sacrifice himself for the good of the team and just really be a stud support guy. … Otherwise you’re really gonna look like the Lakers — just totally disjointed.”

Due to a crushing difficulty and some game-related bugs, we weren’t able to survive Echelon all the way through. But the small glimpses of brilliance — shouting to one another for help and then rallying back with perfectly executed teamwork — makes me hopeful for Insomniac’s complicated but exhilarating take on the genre.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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In September 2010, Gears of War developer Epic Games released a tech demo for Apple’s iOS devices called Epic Citadel. The interactive app showed the power of Epic’s Unreal graphics engine on the iPhone.

Finally, more than two years later, Epic released the Epic Citadel tech demo on Android devices today as a free download.

Epic Citadel has full 3D graphics and can benchmark your device’s performance. You can see how many frames per second your phone or tablet gets while guiding a character around the visually intensive medieval town. Epic Citadel isn’t really a game, since it doesn’t have any interactive elements.

This isn’t the first app to use Unreal Engine on Android. Several other games, like Trendy Entertainment’s Dungeon Defenders, use Epic’s development tools to build their products.

Epic Citadel preceded the release of the developer’s well-received mobile game Infinity Blade and, eventually, its sequel. The release of this tech demo could signify that the studio is preparing to release those two games on the Android platform.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Video game designer Cliff Bleszinski always speaks his mind — except for this one time. A few years ago, when I asked the creator of Gears of War and Unreal Tournament to give his thoughts on his competition — other shooters like Halo or Call of Duty — he declined.

It was a business decision. His former employer, Epic, makes the Unreal Engine software toolset that developers use to make games, so some of his competitors in retail might also be potential clients on the development side. It’s not a good idea to talk shit about them.

Bleszinski recently left Epic after a 20-year stint, however, which now frees him up to say what he really thinks of other shooters. I took advantage and got a full download in the final part of our exclusive interview. Enjoy this blast of Bleszinski. Who knows if we’ll ever get him to open up this much in the future.

• Part one: Bleszinski’s past
• Part two: Bleszinski’s present and future

GamesBeat: A long time ago, I wanted to have this frank talk with you about all the shooters on the market. At the time, you were wary about that because some of these developers were potential or active clients with your company’s Unreal engine. Maybe …

Bleszinski: It’s possible to say anything about any franchise that you don’t like as long as you mention what you do like because then it comes from an honest place. It’s the same thing as, “Oh, hey, I like your hair, but I’m not so big on the boots,” and then she’s like, “Oh, man, he doesn’t like my boots, but he likes my hair.” It’s just basic communication, right? As opposed to just saying, “Your guns are shit!” and then people are like, “Wow, you’re an asshole.”

GamesBeat: Let’s do that, then. Let’s run through a few shooters and get your thoughts about what you liked and didn’t like. Not from Cliff Bleszinski the gamer but Cliff Bleszinski the game designer. Let’s start with any recent Call of Duty.

Bleszinski: I’ve always said that shooting your friends in the face at 60 frames per second through iron sights will always be fun, no matter what. One of the things that franchise has always nailed is the smoothness.

I have this little game design trick I’m going to give you. I only learned this in the last year. Fire up any shooter — a twin-stick shooter. Start turning and looking up and down. If you can easily control the shape of the parabolas that you’re doing — if you can say, “OK, I want to make a really tight parabola” or “I want to make a really wide one” — that’s basically balancing the “patting your head and rubbing your belly” of twin-stick shooters. You can do a very good job of that, always, in Call of Duty and in Halo as well.

The single-player [in Call of Duty: Black Ops II] … I started getting into it, and I heard that they made a lot of effort to get rid of the linearity, but I just couldn’t get past it. It still felt like there’s an infinite amount of enemies spawning at me, and I’m just trying to race to a checkpoint as opposed to clearing out the room. It’s not my thing. I can’t do those campaigns, especially when I have a campaign like Far Cry 3′s, where it’s really open and so many crazy emergent things happen.

The multiplayer in Call of Duty — it’s that great grind of unlocking all the perks and gizmos. I found a lot of multiplayer maps this time around to be extra small in the first batch. The one on the aircraft carrier, the one on the boat. Anytime you’re on something that’s on the water, most of the time it’s going to be too confined.

There are these kids who have an infinite amount of time to play, and if one or two bullets take you out, it comes down to who shoots first. When you introduce latency, a lot of the times it’s a roll of the dice in regards to who wins.

If I want to play a game that has a more back-and-forth cadence, that’s when I want to play Halo. When I play Halo multiplayer, I don’t feel that whoever acquires the other guy first is going to win. In Call of Duty, the guy who acquires the other guy first wins. In Halo, you have your shields. The guy may miss with the grenades. You may jump. You may have a chance to recharge. Your friends may show up. It feels like there’s a lot more trading paint back and forth.

It’s like boxing. You get two boxers who are trading back and forth, [and] it winds up being an entertaining match as opposed to when Mike Tyson used to box, and he’d knock a guy out with one shot. Halo feels like the former. Call of Duty feels like the latter. I guess it’s a matter of what you want as far as lethality and twitch gameplay.

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The man behind the popular Gears of War and Unreal Tournament series might have multiple personalities. In part one of our exclusive interview, game designer Cliff Bleszinski revealed how his wildly varying tastes (hardcore gangster rap and musicals, blood-soaked slasher flicks and romantic comedies) may have helped shape his products. Even his vacations reflect the two-headed nature of his vibrant personality as you’ll read below.

If you are familiar with the real Bleszinski, this all makes perfect sense. He went through a “trying way too hard” phase (discussed in part one) that turned off a lot of people. But if you take the time to get to know him, you’ll find a good-hearted (but still cocky) nerd who can hang in any conversations involving horror films, Transformers, and of course, video games.

Which side of Cliff Bleszinski will emerge from semiretirement if — no, it’s definitely when — the 20-year-veteran game designer returns to doing what he knows best? Part two of our interview reveals quite a bit about what he’s thinking about doing in his near future. (Hint: Pay particular attention to the way he talks about football … .)

• Part one: Bleszinski’s past
• Part three: Bleszinski’s thoughts on other shooters

GamesBeat: What are you up to these days? It feels like you’re doing a lot of un-relaxing, un-romantic traveling with your wife. You’ve been visiting the likes of Zynga, Double Fine, and other gamemakers.

Cliff Bleszinski: Well, let me just say, we just came back from a week in the Caribbean. [Laughs]

GamesBeat: It seems like you’re doing some work-related travel, but I can’t find a clear agenda there.

Bleszinski: Yeah. The thing is, over the years I’ve learned that I’m mentally the kind of guy who’s either dying to get from zero to 60 as fast as he can or just cruising along for a Sunday drive. I’m either all on or all off.

I’ve found the same thing in my semiretirement. There are some days where I sleep until 12:30, and I do absolutely nothing. I watch CNN and read Reddit and walk my dog and drink coffee and check on personal projects and investments and just hang out. There are other days when I’m on NeoGAF and Kotaku and writing down game design ideas and considering this or that other thing.

It’s the same thing when I’m on vacation. I’ll go to a nice vacation somewhere warm. One day I’ll just sit by a pool with piña coladas. Next day, I’ll have to do horseback riding and hang-gliding and all this crazy stuff.

I tend to alternate between those everywhere. It’s never the middle of the road for me. Whether or not that means I have some sort of bipolar problem, I don’t know. But as far as retirement goes, I was really not wanting to work anymore, and then I found myself getting bored after a while. Then I found that there are a lot of people who want to talk to me. Just talk and see if there could be a good potential fit in regards to possible professional future.

GamesBeat: Do you see yourself working for another company, or would you rather own your own studio?

Bleszinski: One of the main things I’ve been considering is opening my own studio. But the complication to that is, heavy is the head that wears the crown. If you have 150 people that you’re responsible for, with their families and their children and all that, that’s a lot of weight. The company depends on you. Being an employee of somebody else or being a consultant are also options.

At the end of the day, I just want to do something that motivates me, that gets me out of bed. I’ve been able to be financially successful enough that the only work I have to do is the work that I want to do. It’s a fortunate position.

Doing Unreal Tournament on PlayStation 2, porting our own fucking game, was absolute hell, and I don’t ever want to do that [sort of thing] again. That’s an example of something I never wanted to do. But by and large, at Epic, they kept us doing maybe 75 percent the stuff we wanted to do.

I also have other things going on. I have multiple investments. And just learning. The biggest thing that a lot of American kids aren’t taught is Finance 101 and Business 101. You don’t need an MBA or anything but just the basics of how a business is run: P and L, how loans work, mortgages … things like that.

I don’t know how it was for you. I went to public school in Boston — it was actually a very good public school — but none of that was ever taught to me. Granted, I dropped out of college after six months, but this is stuff that should be taught in high school or maybe even sooner. How to manage your money, as opposed to, “Here’s home ec; let’s learn how to make English muffin pizzas,” or “Here’s how to play dodgeball.” That’s great, but teach me about a five-year ARM [adjustable-rate mortgage], too. These are basic things.

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I recently complained on Twitter/Facebook that I had to trim a 10,000-word interview down to something a little more manageable for our readers. But once people learned who the interview subject was, the response was clear: Don’t cut any of it.

Turns out people want to hear what Cliff Bleszinski has to say. Every word. The brash and outspoken 37-year-old developer is certainly polarizing enough to warrant such attention. You might hate him for his pretty Barbie-doll wife and his hot-rod Lamborghini that costs more than most people’s annual salaries [update/correction: make that two Lamborghinis]. You’ve probably spent more than a few hours of your life, however, totally lost in games like Unreal Tournament and Gears of War. Games that he helped create.

But right this instant, Bleszinski isn’t creating anything. He recently left Epic Games, his employer for the last two decades — yes, he started there when he was 17 — back in October 2012. No doubt, he’s up to something (more on that in part two of our exclusive interview tomorrow — we didn’t cut much, don’t worry). For now, he’s content to talk to GamesBeat about his past career and persona, what went right and wrong with Gears of War, and kids these days.

• Part two: Bleszinski’s present and future
• Part three: Bleszinski’s thoughts on other shooters

GamesBeat: You mentioned on G4 that you didn’t want the Gears of War Lancer chainsaw gun to define your career. But in a way, hasn’t that helped? Very few developers get to have a gaming cultural icon attached to them.

Bleszinski: Yeah. It doesn’t hurt that I was mugging for photo ops for two or three years with the damned thing. [Laughs] There’s that one iconic photo that goes up there, and that becomes you. That’s fine and everything, but at some point you want to do something else and be something different.

People forget that I did a colorful platformer with a rabbit in it or that I did a colored-lighting shooter with goo guns in it. It’s the 10-year rule. Every 10 years, what’s old is new. The kids who love Twilight and True Blood, they don’t know that Buffy existed. Every 10 years, you can take an [old] idea and reintroduce it to a new group of 17-year-olds, kids who were seven when it first came out and never experienced it.

That’s true of game mechanics, right? My wife’s first learning of “double kill” was through a Counter-Strike mod on her server because she hadn’t played the original Unreal Tournament. When she played UT2004, she thought that UT had taken it from the Counter-Strike mod. It’s the same thing.

You remember when Alien Ant Farm remade “Smooth Criminal”? People were like, “Oh, I love this song! I love Alien Ant Farm!” And you’re like, “No, that was Michael Jackson.” Now that we’re in the era of Google, ignorance is inexcusable, by the way. You have the portal to infinite knowledge in your pocket at any time. You can look up almost anything.

GamesBeat: If not the chainsaw gun, then what do you want people to think of when they see your name or face?

Bleszinski: Geez. There was a Kotaku article where they said one of the best things I did for my career was be visible. I’ve never been shy about going out there, talking to people, and doing interviews. I hope that there’s somebody out there who saw what I did over the last 20 years and what I’m going to do next and says, “Here’s a guy who is proud of his work and proud of his industry. He doesn’t sit behind a desk. He goes out there, and he’s an evangelist for gaming as a cultural thing.” If that makes any sense.

You can make your impact by doing a cover shooter and creating chainsaw guns and all that, but being known as a person who makes great games and also isn’t afraid to evangelize them and be visible is kind of my whole mantra. I got into this business for three reasons: to make amazing products, to be visible doing it, and to get paid, of course, because I do like having a fancy car.

GamesBeat: Along those lines, you had this public persona that’s a little divisive at times. You obviously have your fans and Twitter followers. A lot of people love your games. Yet at the same time, there are some people who think you’re kind of a douche. Like you said, you put yourself out there. You drive a fancy car. You also went through this phase with the “CliffyB” nickname and the frosted hair. Some people haven’t forgotten about that.

Looking back now that you are older, are there some things you would’ve done differently? Or did it all work out for you?

Bleszinski: Oh no, I was clearly trying too hard for many years there, obviously. When you have a community that’s more the quiet Reddit type of crowd, and then you have this kid who comes in with flashy hair and earrings, talking shit … what is this guy doing?

Thankfully, I largely had the track record to back it up, but at the same time, I was clearly the small dog that was barking too much, as opposed to the big dog who sits in the corner and knows that he’s big. I’m not [Valve Software founder] Gabe [Newell]. Gabe’s an amazingly successful, brilliant guy, but Gabe has his own way of doing things. He’s opinionated, but he’s also kinda quiet. Nobody knows what Gabe drives. I don’t think Gabe has an earring — although I haven’t had one for years.

Each person has their own thing and what they represent. I always just wanted there to be some younger kid out there who looks up and sees how much fun I was having with what I was doing and says, “Hey, I want to make games like that someday,” as opposed to saying, “Hey, I want to be a football player or an astronaut.” That was what I wanted to go for.

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Our rundown of the funniest Xbox 360 Achievements and PlayStation Trophies continues. We’ve already looked at failure, murder, and meta stuff, and now we’re getting referential. People love it when things reference other things; that’s one of the only ways to explain why Family Guy is still on. It’s not surprising, then, that some designers can’t help but work some fan service into their awards.

I’ve collected some of the most amusing ones here. Some of them are clever, and some of them are completely unrelated to the games in which they appear, but all of them are charming in their own way. This isn’t a comprehensive list. If you want that, you’re gonna need a bigger boat.

It’s like that movie you like!

Fable: The Journey — “I Used to Be an Adventurer”
Value: 10G
“Then I took an arrow to the horse. She’s all better now, though.”

We’ll start out with an obvious one: Like Cats from Zero Wing (at top), the 2011 role-playing game Skyrim’s throwaway bit of dialogue about the unfortunate history between arrows and the knees of every guard in the land launched a thousand Internet jokes. Developer Lionhead Studios decided to get in on the fun. You unlock this Achievement by healing your in-game horse of three arrow wounds, which is probably a little harder to do while rolling your eyes.

F.E.A.R. 3 — “Head Crab Removal”
Value: 10G/Bronze Trophy
“Twenty kills with a crowbar.”

Did we even think twice about crowbars before Half-Life came out? I mean, they’ve always been cool, I guess. They have that curvy bit at the end and the straighter bit at the other end, and they come in pretty handy if you need to remove some nails or open a wooden crate. And hey, did you know that Friar Laurence called for a crowbar to break Juliet out of her tomb at the end of Romeo and Juliet? That was over 400 years ago. Gordon Freeman was totally ripping off Friar Laurence, you guys.

DJ Hero 2 — “Hot Swedish Action”
Value: 20G/Bronze Trophy
“In any Battle, get an A for Scratching, a B for Taps, a B for Crossfading, and an A for Freestyling.”

Give it a minute … do you see it? ABBA doesn’t even have any songs in DJ Hero 2, so I guess the developers are just big fans.

Dead Island — “How Many Days, Exactly?”
Value: 10G/Bronze
“Play Dead Island at least 28 days after starting it for the first time.”

The zombie genre loves to reference itself (see also the Achievement battle between Valve and Capcom). But this reward puts in a little extra effort in its nod to Danny Boyle’s kinda-sorta-undead film with a little patience and some console-clock wizardry.

Happy Action Theater — “I Know Now Why You Cry”
Value: 10G
“Submerge yourself in lava.”

Developer Double Fine designed this game specifically for younger children. But this Achievement is clearly for the parents playing along unless we have 2-year-olds running around who have seen Terminator 2. It’s just as well that I don’t have any kids – I don’t know how I’d explain to them why I suddenly crumpled into a heap of sad when this notification popped up.

Don’t judge me. That cyborg understood human emotions, and then he died.

Dead Rising 2: Off the Record — “Luggage Code”
Value: 20G/Bronze Trophy
“Kill 12,345 zombies.”

Cute Achievements about the number of zombies you’ve put back in the ground are a tradition in the Dead Rising series, but this is probably the most adorable of them all. Fans of Mel Brooks’ work will recognize the reference to his sci-fi spoof Spaceballs, in which Planet Druidia’s King Roland demonstrates that he is well overdue for a seminar on network security.

Grease Dance — “Master of Unlocking”
Value: 20/Bronze
“Unlock all the Classic Grease minigames.”

I have no idea how a reference to Capcom’s first Resident Evil game found its way into the Achievement list for a Kinect port of a Wii dance title based on director Randal Kleiser‘s fourth-best movie, but I’m glad it did.

The Darkness II — “Should Have Called 555-2368 …”
Value: 10G/Silver Trophy
“Survive the battle against the Hell Beast.”

Developer Digital Extremes could have gone the well-trod “Who you gonna call?” route on this one and made essentially the same joke, but that wouldn’t have earned them a place on this list. Defeating the final boss in The Darkness II’s Vendettas co-op mode unlocks this reward, which basically works as a test of how old and geeky you are. If you recognize the Ghostbusters’ phone number when you see it, you … well, maybe you don’t “win” so much, but this Achievement/Trophy is for you.

Gears of War — “My Love for You Is Like a Truck”
Value: 30G
“Defeat a Berserker on Hardcore Difficulty.”

I played Epic Games’ love letter to waist-high walls on Hardcore just so I could unlock this Achievement, which takes its name from this scene from Kevin Smith’s movie Clerks:

Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 — “Solid Snape”
Value: 15G/Bronze Trophy
“Hide in a barrel as Snape.”

The Lego games are full of silly references like this one, but “Solid Snape” is by far my favorite. I think it’s the image of a race of supersoldiers that are clones of actor Alan Rickman that does it. They’d just be so sardonic.

Tales of Monkey Island — “The Violet Beauregarde Memorial Trophy”
Value: Bronze Trophy
“Tried every piece of gum.”

Point-and-click adventure games like the Monkey Island series are about, well, pointing and clicking. On everything — including, in this case, the same wad of already-chewed gum that you need to make hero Guybrush Threepwood “nom” on nine times in a row to unlock the Trophy. It’s a gross idea, sure, but the award’s namesake (from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) chewed a piece of gum for three months straight, and you didn’t hear her complaining.

If you can’t get enough metagaming humor, be sure to check out the other articles in this series:

• Part One: Failures
• Part Two: Murder is fun(?)
• Part Three: That’s so meta
• Part Five: And the rest

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, the voice of GLaDOS from the Portal series shows up in the trailer for the movie Pacific Rim, Disney buys South Korean game developer Studio Ex, and Call of Duty: Black Ops II gets more zombies, now on the Nuketown map.

You’ll also find reviews for Uncharted: Fight for Fortune and Guardians of Middle-Earth.

News:

• The DeanBeat: The accelerated change of the game industry
• Black Ops II keeps players engaged with the start of League Play and more
• Endgame: Syria — a game that explores the nation’s civil war
• Journey composer is fine with winning a VGA on the red carpet
• This week in the Nintendo Download: Crimson Shroud, Batman, and Adventure Time
• How Gears of War toys are being marketed to children
• Contrary to popular belief, Call of Duty multiplayer engagement is still healthy (exclusive)
• Fight monsters, collect loot, and build a castle in Gree’s new role-playing game
• Miniclip and Univision target Spanish speakers with U.S. online game site (exclusive)
• Portal’s GLaDOS is a movie star — we’re not joking
• Funcom removes subscription requirement for The Secret World
• Everyone’s a winner: Zynga’s new Elite Slots Facebook game
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II developer Treyarch unleashes Zombies on its popular Nuketown map
• McDonald’s includes toys of Moshi Monsters’ virtual pets in Happy Meals
• Historic epic makes history: Assassin’s Creed III hits 7M sold in a month
• It’s dangerous for developers to go alone. Scopely offers help
• Angry Birds animated film to debut in 2016
• How a game design student in California brought Portal to a graphing calculator
• GameLaunched is the new gaming-only crowdfunding platform
• THQ giving away Metro 2033 to promote upcoming Metro: Last Light
• Nokia engineer hacks Windows 8 to get free games (and provides full instructions)
• Xbox 360 to get 40 new entertainment apps on Xbox Live
• The Humble THQ Bundle gets less humble with Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
• Disney pushes into Asia with purchase of South Korea’s Studio Ex
• PopRox Entertainment’s social game might let you pay off your mortgage
• Games Workshop to release video game adaptation of Space Hulk
• Backers successfully fund Sportsfriends — the bundle of JS Joust and other odd multiplayer games
• Meteor Entertainment taps Live Gamer to power virtual economy and payments for Hawken (exclusive)
• Prepare your controller-throwing hands: Dark Souls II is coming

Mobile News: 

• Apple names top free and paid apps of 2012
• Fit Brains expands its mind-training brand to mobile devices
• Corona Labs acquires cloud service provider Game Minion
• Fiksu introduces real-time bidding tracking to its user-acquisition tool
• Flurry says communication and news mobile apps hold our attention the longest
• After five No. 1 hits, Disney Mobile to launch three new holiday games and four big updates
• Test your knowledge: The first fully synchronous multiplayer trivia game for mobile devices
• OpenKit to release open-source social mobile gaming services with no lock-in for developers
• Block-builder Roblox goes mobile in time for the holidays
• Applifier raises $4M to for expansion into mobile game replays
• Jibe raises $8.3M to build rich, real-time communications for games and apps
• Nintendo releases official Pokédex for iOS — and it costs $5.99 apiece for each region
• A company other than Nintendo is launching its own ‘GamePad’ tablet

Previews:

• Dead Space 3 ain’t a walk in the park (hands-on preview)
• Insomniac’s Fuse promises some intense multiplayer co-op battles (hands-on preview)
• With Company of Heroes 2 multiplayer, ‘every battle tells a story’ (preview)
• Resident Evil 6′s new modes put an undead spin on competitive multiplayer (preview)

Interviews:

• Sony Online Entertainment chief says PlanetSide 2 online frag game is a smashing success (interview)
• Insomniac’s Ted Price says the industry’s malaise mandated drastic changes to Fuse sci-fi game (interview)
• How Journey’s composer ended up working on Leisure Suit Larry (exclusive interview)
• Why Company of Heroes 2 could warm the frozen real-time strategy market (interview)

Reviews:

• Uncharted: Fight for Fortune plays its cards right (review)
• Guardians of Middle-earth dispels the difficulty of online battle arenas (review)

Pieces of flair:

• 10 gorgeous custom game covers (gallery)
• BioShock Infinite’s generic protagonist fits into every game (gallery)
• Here are just the trailers from Spike’s Video Game Awards (you’re welcome)
• How a family of four remade the first Grand Theft Auto V trailer with Lego

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Gears of War is bombarding the childrens’ toy market this month. French toy manufacturer Meccano has created a range of construction sets based on the violent, Mature-rated third-person-shooter gaming franchise, and it is marketing them heavily at boys 8 and over. The sets are on sale at toy stores in the U.S. and the United Kingdom (one place you can find them is at Toys ‘R’ Us). Nickelodeon, Disney XD, and Cartoon Network have also been running advertising spots for the toys on U.K. television  in the lead up to Christmas despite a target demographic that should never have played the games.

Wandering around Toys ‘R’ Us with my two children last week, this marketing strategy and the in-store placement of the new Meccano range struck an odd chord. Nestled snugly alongside pictures of Sonic the Hedgehog and brightly colored constructable cars, Gears of War protagonist Marcus Fenix’s face staring out from its Meccano box looked strangely out-of-place. It made me wonder why such a range is being aimed at young children.

Aspiring gamers

I contacted Meccano (U.K.) to ask why it’s targeting such a young audience, and whether it’s concerned about cross-promoting Mature-rated games to that demographic. “The Gears of War range is targeted at 8+,” said a spokesperson for Meccano. “Our focus is on vehicles from the game as well as characters and weapons, which is not dissimilar to Mega Bloks’ Halo models. The ambition of the range is to broaden Meccano’s appeal to younger modelers as well as to older modelers who are also gamers and who will be familiar with the 18+ game.”

The Halo Mega Bloks range is a similar concept to Gears of War Meccano line. First released in 2009, Halo Mega Bloks — based on Microsoft’s series of first-person-shooter games — are found prominently displayed in most major toy stores. It’s easy to forget that Halo, too, is a gaming franchise aimed at a mature audience.

“It would seem a tenuous proposition to aim [Gears of War] toys at 8 year olds based on a license they ‘shouldn’t’ know,” said Sean McGowan, a toy industry expert and senior analyst at Needham & Company, via email. “But aspirational marketing is nothing new, is it?”

“The success of the Halo toys tells us two things,” said McGowan. “Firstly, that kids like what their older siblings  – or even parents — are doing, and a watered down toy version lets them participate. Secondly, that collectors who are ‘of age’ like to have toys depicting their favorite properties.

“I can tell you that the median age of buyers of Halo blocks from Mega is much older than the average for their blocks, so maybe it won’t actually be little kids buying Gears of War toys. But, still, you have to wonder how it could be a responsible idea.”

Epic Games: We don’t market Gears of War to children

I approached Microsoft to discuss the Gears of War and Halo toys and the implications of involving young children in the world of Mature-rated games. “Generally speaking, video game figures and collectibles are not necessarily created with a younger market in mind, so we would not look to comment on Halo-branded items,” said a Microsoft spokesman. It also declined to comment on Gears of War Meccano, leaving that to Gears developer and intellectual property [IP] owner Epic Games.

“It’s always been the stance of Epic Games that we don’t market the Gears of War series to children under the age of 18,” the studio said in a statement. “We do not condone the actions of Meccano, and we will do everything in our power to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

When asked for more details on the license negotiation, the studio issued an additional statement: “Epic Games owns the Gears of War IP and we advise our licensees on high-level branding for the franchise. We vigorously support the ESRB/PEGI ratings system. If a licensee comes in conflict with that, we make every effort to correct the situation.”

That is a strongly worded response, showing that Epic Games is not at all happy with Meccano’s use of its license. What it means for the future of Gears of War Meccano toys, though, is not totally clear.

A case for the ESRB?

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) provides video game age ratings for the benefit of consumers, helping keep unsuitable games away from minors. But its jurisdiction doesn’t extend to related products, meaning the sale and marketing of these toys do not contravene ESRB regulations.

“ESRB enforces guidelines that prohibit inappropriate target marketing of Mature-rated games to children,” Eliot Mizrachi, the ESRB’s director of communications, said in a statement. “These restrictions pertain to ads placed in media [in the U.S. or Canadian markets] whose audience is known to be composed of a certain proportion of children but do not apply to ancillary products that may be associated with or related to a Mature-rated game.”

The European equivalent of ESRB ratings is the PEGI system, overseen by the Video Standards Council. When asked about the Gears of War toys, the VSC was unconcerned . “There does not appear to be any attempt to directly use the toys as a means of selling the game which, in any case, is legally restricted to 18-year-olds and above,” VSC Communications Officer Gianni Zamo said.

Mega Call of Duty?

With no guidance from the ESRB or VSC on the sale of such toys, responsibility seems to fall on the shoulders of individual companies. Where there is a clear market, though, it will inevitably be targeted. Mega Bloks’ success with Halo has set an example for other mature gaming franchises to follow, and Needham and Company analyst Sean McGowan said he would “not be surprised to see MegaBrands do toys tied to Call of Duty, too, considering their link to Activision through Skylanders.”

For the time being, Gears of War seems set to continue its infiltration of the toy store, with blind-bagged figures joining the fray. Soon being traded in a schoolyard near you.

You can see the initial TV advertisement for Meccano Gears of War below. Meccano/Erector (U.S.) director Robert Grey told me there is no plan to run such television spots in any North American market.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Irrational Games (formerly 2K Boston) released the official cover art for the highly anticipated (and often delayed) BioShock Infinite earlier this month, and fans were mostly disappointed with the final look.

While previous games in the series proudly display the creepy and iconic Big Daddy and Little Sister characters, Infinite shows the star, Booker DeWitt, in a generic “hero” pose. For a game set in a steampunk flying city full of mechanical menaces and sorcery, you’d expect a more inspired box art.

DeWitt’s boring pose and general design are so banal that you could stick him in any action game and he wouldn’t seem out of place — something you could not do with a Big Daddy. Check out the gallery below and see for yourself.

What other games would Booker DeWitt fit in?

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The president of Epic Games stepped down today.

Mike Capps, who held the top position for a decade with the Gears of War developer, is moving into a more hands-off advisory role with the studio. He will hand off the majority of his duties to current vice president of development Paul Meegan and vice president of operations John Farnsworth.

Capps announced the retirement in a blog post on the Epic Games website:

“If you haven’t heard, I have a baby boy on the way. I’m fortunate that with Epic’s success and generosity, I can be a stay at home dad for a while. My wife, Julianne, and I are very happy in Raleigh, and other than cleaning up baby barf, I don’t have much planned. I might do some teaching, spend more time on creative writing, and maybe get more active with a few charities.”

He’s made his money, and now he’s off to be a dad. It’s an enviable position, but he’s not cutting ties completely.

“Epic founder and [chief executive officer] Tim Sweeney and other board members asked me to stay on the board, and I’m thrilled to do so as I’m truly excited about our future games and Unreal Engine 4.”

Mike Capps oversaw Epic Games’s rise to one of the most prominent positions in gaming. Besides creating critical and commercially successful franchises like Gears of War, Epic became a business-to-business software company by providing its Unreal Engine development tool to other studios.

The Unreal Engine 3 is the unofficial graphical platform of the current generation, with dozens of developers creating some of the biggest games on Epic’s technology — titles Mass Effect, Borderlands, and XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

In early October, star developer Cliff Bleszinski announced he was leaving Epic. This is a period of transition for the North Carolina-based business. Gears of War: Judgment, the fourth game in the third-person shooter series, will debut in March, but not much else is known about the studio’s upcoming games, although that may not matter. As Capps mentioned, the Epic is preparing to fully introduce Unreal Engine 4 to the market.

The beautiful Star Wars: 1313 (seen in the video above) runs on an enhanced version of Unreal Engine 3, which serves as a basis for Epic’s work with next evolution of the development kit. If something that looks as good as what LucasArts is doing with 1313, then Epic is well positioned to remain the tool of choice for many developers.

Capps is leaving during an industry-wide lull. Sales across the board have slipped while consumers wait for the next generation of consoles.

Capps (and Bleszinski) likely saw this as an opportunity to exit while causing the least amount of damage.

We’ll update this story as new information arises.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Never sue Epic Games. That’s the lesson we should all take away from Silicon Knights’ attempt to sue the Gears of War developer.

In addition to the $4.45 million in damages that Silicon Knights must pay Epic Games, the Eternal Darkness developer must now recall and destroy all the remaining unsold copies of Too Human, X-Men: Destiny, The Sandman, Siren in the Maelstrom, and The Box/Ritualyst.

Does that sound remarkable to you? That’s because it is.

“Destruction of products that infringe on a copyright or trademark is common, just not in the video game world,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. “If this involved rip-off Oakley sunglasses or rip-off Louis Vuitton handbags, they would have to be destroyed. But I’ve never seen a lawsuit like this in video game land.”

The order comes from a 47-page court document that found that each of the aforementioned Silicon Knights titles had at least 500 lines of code, some had thousands, lifted directly from Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 software development kit. Silicon Knights must also go through Too Human and remove any UE3 code to the satisfaction of Epic Games.

Naturally, Silicon Knights must pay for all of this.

In 2007, Silicon Knights filed the original lawsuit. The developer claimed that Epic used the payments Silicon Knights made to license Unreal  Engine 3 to fund the development of third-person shooter Gears of War and not to improve the UE3 software.

Epic Games countersued, claiming Silicon Knights violated its contract and infringed on Epic’s copyrights. The court found in favor of Epic.

Source: Eurogamer

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Zynga lays off 5 percent of its employees even though the company’s stock price rose, game developers think the iPad mini is promising, and German studio Bigpoint lets 120 people go.

You’ll also find a review for Just Dance 4 and an in-depth interview the developers behind one of the season’s most intriguing indie games, The Unfinished Swan.

News:

• The DeanBeat: The iPad mini brings out the imagination of game developers
• HTML5 developer Softgames looking to expand after first round of funding
• Tim Schafer to host Rock Band charity night
• 80M people play arcade bubble shooter games on Facebook
• Nintendo’s weekly download report features giant presidential robots, Professor Layton, and New Super Mario Bros. 2 DLC
• Assassin’s Creed III is the most preordered Ubisoft game ever
• Dishonored developer announces three add-on packs
• 2K Games enlists Lineage developer to design Civilization Online
• Utherverse nabs a patent on scalable virtual worlds that can host unlimited users
• Wing Commander creator’s Kickstarter reaches goal in less than a week
• Gree acquires developer Pokelabo for $173 million
• THQ releases newest Darksiders II downloadable content on October 30
• Resident Evil 6 to get improved in-game camera in mid-December patch
• Halo 4 to get 3 multiplayer map packs through April
• DICE Summit shakes up its format for game creator talks and renames industry awards
• Game ratings board creates a no-cost service for putting content labels on digital games
• Borderlands Legends is an isometric strategy game due October 31
• Final Fantasy publisher signs deal to use Gears of War developer’s latest graphics technology
• Aiming to head off Apple, Microsoft shows off Xbox SmartGlass mobile app and Xbox dashboard update
• AMD launches new set of 8-core processors for gamers
• Here’s the first Wii U commercial from Nintendo
• Fight Club, Daredevil studio to help produce Assassin’s Creed film
• GameStop to get exclusive The Walking Dead: Collector’s Edition from Telltale Games
• Shigeru Miyamoto is Nintendo’s other original intellectual property

Earnings:

• Analysts pore through Zynga’s numbers as the stock price rises
• Zynga stock surges as it slightly beats analysts’ reduced targets for third quarter
• Facebook’s Zuckerberg unhappy with Zynga’s 20% decline in payments

Mobile News:

• Founders leave DeNA’s Ngmoco mobile gaming division
• Majesco expands into mobile games with Legends of Loot
• Mobile is now 20 percent of Zynga’s business

Layoffs:

• German games maker Bigpoint lets go 120 employees
• Zynga CEO’s letter to employees: We’ve laid off 5 percent of our workforce
• Zynga lays off almost entire Austin studio

Interviews:

• The story behind the emotional center of The Unfinished Swan (in-depth interview)
• The explanation behind the ending of the Unfinished Swan (interview part 2)
• Playboy’s Miss October talks about gamer stereotypes and breaking into the game business
• Here’s how you become an app store millionaire (interview)

Tablet wars:

• Game developers say iPad mini will be good for gaming
• This week could determine the fate of the digital economy

Reviews:

• Just Dance 4 revels in absurdity even as it loses some of its mojo (review)

Pieces of flair:

• Exclusive images from The Art of Assassin’s Creed III
• GamesBeat’s massive Street Fighter tournament: The semifinals

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Epic Games may have lost Gears of War mastermind Cliff Bleszinski, but it just enlisted a big name from Microsoft to head its Unreal 4-focused development team.

Laura Fryer will take the general manager position at Epic Games Seattle. That West Coast studio will develop new game using Epic’s own cutting-edge Unreal 4 graphics engine.

“Laura Fryer is one of the brightest leaders of the game industry today, and we’re thrilled to have her guide our new Seattle studio,” Epic Games president Michael Capps said. “Laura was a key member of the Gears of War team, and we’ve long hoped to work with her again.”

In her time at Microsoft Game Studios, Laura Fryer acted as executive producer on Gears of War and Gears of War 2. Fryer was one of the first employees of Microsoft’s gaming initiative. In her time with that publisher, she helped bring developers from around the world to the Xbox platforms.

Epic Games is looking for more talent to join Fryer in Seattle. The company is hiring programmers and people with experience creating online game services.

Bleszinski, Epic Games’ former design director, left the company earlier this month after 20 years with the studio.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

I have never, ever played a Fable game. I always intended to throw on one of Peter Molyneux’s fantasy epics and take it for a spin, and hey, I still do. Someday. Really.

But the simple fact is this: If you game, you’ve got a pile of shame … that list of titles you haven’t played yet but fully intend to. Someday. Really.

Nobody likes to admit it, but few of us have the money and time to play everything we’re interested in. In fact, the number of missed opportunities just grows and grows as shiny distractions (work, family, newer games that look really cool) come into the picture. So as we come out of the summer doldrums and into a very busy gaming season, we asked some of most influential names in the industry to publicly humiliate themselves by telling us what’s still on their piles of shame.

And they didn’t all answer. But here’s who did.

Cliff Blezinski: former design director, Epic Games (Gears of War)

I’ve yet to go back to Batman: Arkham City because I can’t find the darned disc in my cluttered setup.

Jenova Chen: cofounder, Thatgamecompany (Journey, Flower)

I haven’t played Deus Ex: Human Revolution after the first boss. It’s the game of the year for our lead engineer, John Edwards, so that means a lot. But I haven’t got time to go back to it yet.

Dan “Shoe” Hsu: editor-in-chief, GamesBeat

Mass Effect 2. I don’t understand what all that hub-bub was about the ending to the Mass Effect storyline. We’re still not even halfway through the trilogy, right? Right?

Sigh … yes, this is my big shame game. I’m not even finished with Mass Effect 2 yet. I know it’s something I need to get through — Mass Effect is a major franchise in gaming, after all — but I just can’t seem to find the time. Actually, that’s not true. I somehow scraped together 188 hours for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

I honestly don’t know what it is about this series. I loved the first game, but it took me over a year and a half to beat it because I was constantly leaving it, then coming back, and then leaving it again. For all of 2012, ME2′s been sitting next to my TV, beaming subliminal messages to my brain: “Play me … play me. …” But it hasn’t worked. Now that Borderlands 2 is here, and all the other fall games are arriving soon, I’m afraid part two of this sci-fi trilogy will just have to wait a bit longer.

Morgan Webb: co-host, X-Play

Spec Ops: The Line. Everyone tells me it’s really good. Everyone tells me about the crazy tough choices you have to make. And I even bought it. It is still in the plastic and will likely remain so until about January. It’s not a very large pile. I try really hard to keep up with things. And seriously, Shoe needs to play Mass Effect.

Frank O’Connor: franchise development director, 343 Industries (Halo 4)

Working on Halo is a pretty  involved process. There’s the work, of course – story, universe building, endless meetings, travel … most developers know the score there. But you compound that work with home life, raising an angry 3-year-old, taking out the trash, fixing the sewer, making dinner – there just aren’t that many hours in the day. And so when I do play games in my downtime, they tend to be Halo. Take-home tests, matchmaking, just a ton of Halo stuff. So my pile of shame is almost limitless. And to prove that point, my main shameful miss is a couple of years old, and I still haven’t gotten around to it properly. It’s Red Dead Redemption.

Hardly unusual, but when I did finally put it in my drive, I immediately knew this was a place I wanted to inhabit. And I got as far as the first horse race, couldn’t beat Bonnie around her ranch, and that’s where I left it. Right back to Halo stuff. I also have a miserably small completion ratio of Forza, and in fact I have not unlocked the Halo Warthog that’s squirreled away in there. The least dusty, still-shrinkwrapped item on that pile is Borderlands 2.

I still haven’t seen the new Batman, either, and I only saw Cabin in the Woods because it was on my plane. I genuinely feel actual shame because part of my job is to understand why other games are cool and expose myself to new experiences. I feel like I should really just take a couple of months off to reengage and immerse myself in what’s new and what’s awesome.

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Gears of War maker Epic Games today announced the departure of design director Cliff Bleszinski. Known to many gamers simply as Cliffy B, the game-design giant is leaving the company “to chart the next stage of his career.”

Bleszinski has spent the past 20 years at Epic. Here is his note to colleagues:

I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager, and outside of my sabbatical last year, I have been going nonstop. I literally grew up in this business, as Mike [Capps, president of Epic Games] likes to say. And now that I’m grown up, it’s time for a much needed break.

I will miss the projects, the playtests, the debates, and most importantly, the people. Epic only hires the best of the best, and it has been a joy working with each and every one of you on a daily basis, whether you were hired weeks ago or decades ago. I have been fortunate enough to collaborate with a variety of disciplines, from code to art to marketing and PR – it’s been one big, rewarding learning experience. I’m confident that each project that is being built, whether at Epic, Chair, PCF, or Impossible, will be top-notch and will please gamers and critics alike.

When asked for comment, an Epic spokesperson directed us to the Epic Community story.

Many of his friends at Epic chimed in to bid the designer farewell.

Here’s what Tim Sweeney, Epic’s founder, CEO, and technical director said:

In 20 wonderful years with Epic, Cliff Bleszinski has grown into a true design luminary, and his contributions to the Unreal and Gears series have helped shape the game industry into what it is today. Cliff leaves Epic with our gratitude for his many contributions, and our wishes for continued success in the next chapter of his life!

From Mike Capps:

In my 10 years of working with Cliff, his passion for creating video games of the highest quality has been unflinching. We are grateful for all of his hard work and remain committed to making our fans happy and to always raising the bar in everything we do at Epic.

Bleszinski has not yet announced plans, but his name is trending on Twitter worldwide:

[Via Epic Games]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Twitter has over 500 million users. That’s a lot of potential eyeballs checking out your tweets. Now that Twitter lets you add a header image at the top of your profile, why not show your followers cool art from video game series that you enjoy?

We’re releasing seven days’ worth of artwork, each with a different theme:

• Monday: The modern era
• Tuesday: Popular franchises
• Wednesday: PC
• Thursday: It came from Japan
• Friday: Mobile
• Saturday: Retro arcade
• Sunday: Consoles

Today’s batch of headers features 10 entries from popular video game franchises. Right-click (or Ctrl-click for Macs) the picture you want and hit “save image as” to save to your computer. To add the header to your Twitter profile, please follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your account.
2. Go to “settings” and click on the “design” tab.
3. Scroll down to the “customize your own” section.
4. Click on “change header” and select the image you want to upload. No need to scale.
5. Click “save.”

Gears of War

Street Fighter

Castlevania

Grand Theft Auto

The Legend of Zelda

Mega Man

Mortal Kombat

God of War

Super Mario Bros.

Sonic the Hedgehog

For gaming-themed Timeline covers for your Facebook profile, click here.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The first Transformers toys came on the market almost 30 years ago, so why has this brand of toy robots captivated kids (and adult kids) for so long?

Because it changes.

Like the robots themselves, the Transformers brand has never turned away from doing something else. After the original toy line and cartoon started to lose popularity, Hasbro introduced new toys in slightly different colors. As people got tired of that, they created a new computer-generated cartoon where the robots turn into animals. Then came more cartoons, more toys, and finally Michael Bay’s series of awful movies. They all feature the same core similarities, but they are all different in some way. While being recognizable as something Transformers-related, they still changed things.

It is fitting, then, that the greatest strength of Transformers: Fall of Cybertron is the way that it embraces this desire for change. Almost every level in the campaign focuses on a different character, each character has distinct abilities that require you to constantly alter your playstyle, and each character has their own goals and motivations that drive the plot in several different directions.

Also, each character can literally change into a different thing at the press of a button. But that’s a pretty obvious one.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

The story

Set directly after the events of 2010′s War For Cybertron, the game opens with the Autobots’ fighting off a Decepticon attack on their ship as they approach a space portal of some kind that will, hopefully, transport them to a planet that is more suitable for sustaining life than their own. Just as things for the Autobots are looking hopelessly dire (Decepticon leader Megatron is pointing a giant gun at Autobot leader Optimus Prime), the game flashes back to a few days prior to illustrate how everyone got to that point.

From there, the game splits each of its chapters into a smaller subplot that detail how a different character spend their final days on the planet Cybertron. Optimus needs to destroy a series of Decepticon artillery guns with the help of city-sized robot Metroplex, Cliffjumper investigates what Decepticon scientist Shockwave is working on, and Starscream has to find a way to maintain command of an increasingly frustrated army that would rather kill him than follow him. Each of them views the same conflict from different angles, which — here’s that theme again — changes how you look at the war. It’s rare for a shooter to force you to see things from the point of view of an enemy faction you’ve spent half the game mowing down, but that’s what happens in Fall of Cybertron.

Also, the game embraces one of the most appealing (yet overlooked) aspects of the original cartoon: the careful balance between serious war story and the inherent ridiculousness in alien robots that are also cars. Oddly enough, it’s the Autobot side that seems to skew toward the grim and gritty this time around, with the traditionally cruel and evil Decepticons providing the occasional comic relief.

The gameplay

Fall of Cybertron is, at its heart, Gears of War without the cover mechanics — at least in terms of how the shooting works. It’s nothing special, but it’s perfectly functional. It has a few clever weapons that are fun to use (one that shoots electricity that is excellent for clearing out a room of insect robots), but it’s almost always a better idea to use the more straightforward options (shotguns, sniper rifles, and so on.).

However, what redeems the combat is the same thing that makes this a Transformers game: You can turn into a car/truck/jet/tank whenever you want. No other game out there gives you the mobility options available in Fall of Cybertron. In the middle of a big gunfight and need to run away to find some ammo? Transform. Need to get somewhere fast? Don’t use the Gears of War-esque roadie run. Just transform.

Then there’s the multiplayer mode, where the mobility options you have in the campaign are given to everyone. If that doesn’t seem like a big deal, just look at any other game ever and think about what would happen if you could turn into a jet and fly away at any moment. It has the potential to completely change every enemy encounter, whether you’re playing online or off.

Once again, the strength comes in the form of encouraging you to change at every opportunity.

The fan service 

If you don’t know the difference between Unicron and a unicorn, feel free to skip ahead to the next section. This is just for the nerds.

While the developers at High Moon were evidently very careful to make Fall of Cybertron a game that anyone could enjoy –  regardless of Transformers-related knowledge — they are still fans of the brand, and it shows. The devs included countless Easter eggs and nods to the original cartoon, not to mention several direct quotes lifted from the original animated Transformers movie. Basically, if you’ve ever accused someone of being full of cesium salami, you’ll get plenty of nostalgia-fueled smiles out of this game.

The Transformers’ three-decade history is one of the brand’s greatest assets. The characters that Hasbro created back in the ’80s are so simple and archetypal that it’s no wonder they’ve become iconic. When the same voice actor who portrays Optimus Prime in the cartoon returns for the game, or when Starscream demands to know who is disrupting his coronation ceremony,  it doesn’t feel like pandering. It feels like High Moon is proving how much it understands this franchise. This might not seem like a big deal to someone who isn’t already a Transformers fan, but it goes a long way toward explaining why so many people are.

WHAT YOU WON’T LIKE

It has a few hiccups

While I didn’t encounter anything that broke the game, a few technical glitches stuck out. Near the end of the game, I ran into a lot of situations where the game would prompt me to hit a button, but the text wouldn’t actually appear, or maybe the text would appear, but hitting the correct button would do nothing.

It also has a fair amount of texture pop-in, where a level would begin and my character would look like a muddy pile of clay for a few moments before everything had finished loading properly.

It can get a bit shallow

People prone to using clichés will remind you that “a rolling stone gathers no moss.” Now, let’s replace the stone with “a robot that is also a car” and the moss with “depth” and we’ll see the one big downside to the game’s penchant for constantly changing. Since you’re always doing different things, the game never spends enough time on any one thing to really elaborate on it.

A good example of this is in the level where you play as Grimlock, the space T-Rex. Unlike every other character, Grimlock’s combat is all melee-based, and he cannot transform whenever he wants, only when he has caused enough destruction to fill a special meter. The Grimlock stage is the most radical change in all of Fall of Cybertron, but once you get the hang of hitting guys with a sword or picking them up and throwing them, it starts to feel a little light. It’s still fun, and it would take a long time for the appeal of playing as a giant robot dinosaur to wear off, but after a while you’ll be wondering if that’s really all there is to it.

The problem is most pronounced in that specific level, but it does pop up in a lot of the others. It forces the game to rely on its plot and the hook of how fun it is to transform, but if the game were any longer than it is, this shallowness would bring it down more and more.

CONCLUSION

Aside from some minor technical problems, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron is a great game. The reason it is great is not despite its connection to the long-running toy line, but because of it. It’s great because it embraces the same idea that made Transformers popular back in 1984 and has kept them popular ever since: It changes.

The gameplay doesn’t stay in the same place for too long, different characters require different strategies, and the storyline necessitates a willingness on behalf of the player to embrace change along with it. Sure, since the game is constantly on the move in every possible way it means that any one aspect might be a little too shallow, but who cares? In a few minutes you’ll be doing something different…but just as fun.

If Fall of Cybertron has one lesson that it’s trying to convey, it’s the same thing that players will quickly learn upon trying out the multiplayer mode: Keep moving, adapt, and be willing to change. Otherwise, you’ll probably blow up.

Score: 89 /100

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron was released for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PC on August 24. The publisher provided GamesBeat with an Xbox 360 copy of the game for the purpose of this review.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Zynga has lots of veterans like Jim Veevaert, a general manager of the social game company’s studio in Seattle. An 18-year pro, Veevaert was previously cofounder and president of production at Jerry Bruckheimer Games and an executive producer at Microsoft. He led the production of of big budget games, such as Halo 3, Viva Pinata, and Gears of War. In 2011, he gave up hardcore games and joined casual game maker Zynga, which is often accused of being a copycat. Now he’s leading teams that create social games like Ruby Blast. Veevaert says now that he’s had a taste for designing games as a service, with daily updates and analytic feedback, there’s no going back. He has kissed the console development world goodbye. We caught up with him for a cup of coffee at the Casual Connect game conference in Seattle. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: Tell us about your early days.

Jim Veevaert: At Vivendi, I was the executive producer on the Half-Life franchise. We were starting this thing called the Mod Pack, which I wanted to do. I was a big proponent of it. [The company] said, “We don’t need to do a Mod Pack. They’re all free.” I said, “No, I think this is a really good idea. We could use Counter-Strike, and it would be really cool.” They said, “Nobody’s going to buy that.” I ended up having to convince Vivendi. They said, “Nobody in sales is interested in something like Counter-Strike.” I thought it was really going to catch on. I pushed it and pushed it. I had to shove it into the retail channel. They loaded in maybe 100,000 units, and it was just like, whoosh! Like that. Never looked back. It was amazing.

We even helped start Gearbox. When we did the first add-on pack for Half-Life, Opposing Force, that was the beginning of Gearbox. That’s how we got them started. It was pretty cool. Good days. What I like about this industry now — what’s so great — is that it’s so reminiscent of the way the industry felt back in the early ’90s: small teams and getting games done quickly. Being really close to the product. Making progress on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis. It’s amazing. We can sit down, brainstorm out a design, and have a prototype of that design in two to three days. On Halo, it would be like…. We had to have a meeting. We had to have a conversation, talking about design and environmental art. We’d have meetings about how we would execute pulling the systems together. It would take a lot longer. The results were great, but it was a huge operation pushing Halo 3 forward.

GamesBeat: Mark Pincus mentioned that they had more than 100 developers working on CityVille. I thought, “That sounds like the team for a console game to me.”

Veevaert: I know. We’re operating on a much smaller scale, but we’re looking at…. Ruby Blast — what we just did. We’ve already got a mobile version of it running right now. It’s working on iPhone. We’re going to be doing it on iPad and iPhone. We’re looking at how we’re sort of cross-developing. We’re doing a new IP, as well, the same way. We’re developing platforms and connectivity at the same time. That’s what’s really fun. Working with a handful of developers and just figuring out what’s the best way to make the game work. How fun can we make it? How will the PC connect with mobile? What is a unique experience or gameplay mechanic that we can apply in mobile that’s linked, in case somebody never connects to the web? We’re also finding that there’s not necessarily a great process for that. People who play one game don’t always go and play on mobile, as well. We need to make sure the experiences are stand-alone enough on mobile and the PC.

GamesBeat: Do you have the same developers on social and mobile?

Veevaert: Absolutely, absolutely. That’s what’s fun. Having to design for the smaller screen and make it more…. Like in Ruby Blast’s case, we had to collapse it, shrink it down, and experiment. How far can we push the visual effects on the iOS? If it’s not iOS, what if we start working with Adobe Air? So we work within the technology some way or another and see. That’s what’s been fun: leveraging technology.

GamesBeat: The Kixeye guy, Will Harbin, was getting really excited about Flash 11.4. It’s using more hardware acceleration to make really fast 3D games.

Veevaert: Oh, it’s incredible. It’s actually getting to the point where you can do that. You can bring in 3D games and start pushing it. But Flash 11 adoption isn’t as high just yet. Most of the audience is still on Flash 10. We’re being very mindful of that. We’re looking at it with Ruby. It was the case with Ruby Blast that we had to do two versions. We did a Flash 11 version and a Flash 10. Flash 11 is catching up, but Flash 10 is clearly the dominant one.

GamesBeat: Making two versions sounds difficult to do.

Veevaert: Well, what’s interesting is you have a certain amount of people who just have software renderers. No hardware acceleration in their computers. So we have to make the game fun for people who’ve got a 4-year-old computer and still want to play. They won’t have any hardware-accelerated effects, but for people who have great laptops and great computers, why not leverage all that technology? That’s the thing that’s interesting. In console, you had a unified platform. You knew exactly what you were developing to. Here we have to scale high and low. It’s like back in the PC days, when you had to support everybody. Windows 95 and 98, remember that?

GamesBeat: So does choice of technology also matter? Like when Mark did that demo of four players on the Bubble Safari game. If you start moving to synchronous multiplayer like that, then technology matters again?

Veevaert: Well, I think it does matter. It matters that you have a good chain. I think it will still work in software mode, but if you take advantage of hardware acceleration, then yeah, it’s absolutely going to be better. Loading times are still great, so that’s not the issue. It’s just a playable framerate. That’s what we can find out, depending on what people’s connection speeds or processors are like. It’s a matter of how it scales.

GamesBeat: Do you wish you had your Halo multiplayer developers to go to work on that?

Veevaert: I should! I should talk to Bungie and see if they want to do it. The thing that’s interesting to me is I’ve been thinking a lot about the casual gamer. What is a casual gamer anymore? Is this somebody who plays on their phone for a few minutes a day? You were talking about CityVille, where somebody can spend way more time playing a game like CityVille than they could a “hardcore” game. Up to 300 hours a year playing it — that’s far more than somebody might put into a game like even Oblivion or Halo 3, depending on how much they want to spend. So I’m curious as to your thoughts. What is a casual gamer? Is it someone who just plays for a short period of time? Or is it the style of game? And then what denotes a casual game?

GamesBeat: It seems like everybody has some kind of split personality these days.

Veevaert: I mean, aren’t you playing some games on your phone? I’m sure you are.

GamesBeat: Yeah. And if I don’t have enough time to play hardcore games, then I’m only playing these smaller games. So am I still a hardcore gamer?

Veevaert: Yeah! If you haven’t done your routine 14 hours a week, then you have to give up your status as a hardcore gamer. It’s funny because all the guys on my friends list who are core gamers, and all the guys I work and develop with — we’re all playing the same casual games together. I just think that now, the persistence of entertainment has spread so far with mobile that it’s sort of leveled the waters across the board.

GamesBeat: Do you see it as a question like, “If you had infinite time, what games would you play?” And you could sort people out better that way. I would go back to a lot of these console games if I had 60 hours to kill, but then there’s a lot of people who would never get there even if they had all that time. They’re only going to play casual titles.

Veevaert: So I’ll challenge you again because I like going back and forth. I don’t have the time I used to have five years ago to sit down in front of the TV, throw a game in a console, and get invested in it. Because I know, even in something like Dead Space 2, I had to finish that game. I had to go from start to finish. Or Red Dead Redemption. I had to put my 23 hours in and finish the game. I didn’t feel like playing it incrementally: half a level today and come back to it next week. You have to be on it every night to stay in the experience of it. I found that, as far as my own lifestyle, that just doesn’t fit anymore. I’m curious about you. Does that still work for you?

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Kicking off this week’s QuakeCon event in Dallas, Texas, Apogee Software (Duke Nukem 3D) finally made good on its talk of a modern reboot of its classic 1995 first-person shooter, Rise of the Triad.

The new game will utilize the Unreal 3 graphics engine (which powers the Gears of War series) to deliver plenty of visually stunning, technically-not-Nazi massacres. Rise of the Triad will be co-developed between Apogee and Interceptor Entertainment.

“We were seeking a strong, independent, hard-working development partner to herald the eagerly anticipated return of Rise of the Triad,” said Terry Nagy, co-founder and chief creative officer of Apogee. “We have indeed found that partner in Interceptor Entertainment.”

Apogee did not give an official release date, but Rise of the Triad is set to hit the Steam online store “late this year.” (Who wants to bet it gets delayed like every other major game that is supposed to come out in 2012?)

A representative for the title sent along the following features to GamesBeat:

• Step into the shoes of the H.U.N.T. (High-Risk United Nations Taskforce) with five unique characters, each with different play styles.
• Blast through over 20 of levels of explosive single-player action.
• Unique multiplayer maps bring back all the fun and excitement of classic ROTT.
• The full arsenal of over-the top weapons is back, including the Flamewall, Firebomb, Split Missile, Drunk Missile and, of course, the Excalibat!
• The maniacal modes return, too, with God mode, Elasto mode, Mercury mode, Shrooms mode and everyone’s favorite, Dog mode!
• Build your own levels, mods and share them with Valve’s Steamworks.
• Offline single-player and multiplayer allows for instant action.
• Find tons of secrets, collectables, special events and hidden areas to explore.
• Get more than 100 achievements to add to your score, which is tracked on our worldwide leaderboard and stat-tracking system.
• ROTT is bloodier and more ludicrous than ever, with full character and enemy dismemberment.
• The iconic original soundtrack has been completely re-forged in the fires of heavy metal!
• Nostalgia abounds with the option to play with all the original sounds and music.
• Built on fully licensed Unreal Engine 3 technology, ROTT will run on low-end PCs and push high-end PCs to their limits!

To get a feel for the original, you can check out plenty of playthroughs on YouTube. And for more information on the new game, visit the official site, Twitter (hashtag #ROTT), and Facebook.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The first thing I notice about Nick Marinelli (pictured above) as I shake his hand are the grey strands of hair developing in the messy, curly mop on his head. They’re usually the beginning indicator of stress-induced exhaustion, like the physical transformation a U.S. president undergoes in his first term.

But for Marinelli, affectionately adorned with “the newbie” title, they betray the incredible amount of energy he displays. As the director of press and public relations for Maryland-based MAGFest, the Music and Gaming Festival, he runs me through how this celebration of gaming culture is counter to all my expectations.

The fast-talking Marinelli enthusiastically shakes back, asking whether I’ve heard of MAGFest. I say no, which seems a little crazy in retrospect. MAGFest is now in its 11th year. I’ve lived in Maryland since 1999. How have I not heard of this before?

As we sit down together at Baltimore’s Gamescape, Marinelli asks the first question. “Would you like a Yuengling or a Natty Boh?” I take the Boh, of course, which is shorthand for National Bohemian, the beer of the city. This set the tone for our interview that afternoon, and offered a glimpse into what MAGFest is all about.

GamesBeat: What is MAGFest? I’ve lived in Maryland for 13 years, and I’ve somehow never heard of it. I imagine that most out-of-state readers will be scratching their heads.

Nick Marinelli: You know about Electronic Entertainment Expo. You know about Tokyo Game Summit. Consumer Electronics Show. They’re really cool events. You get to see all the newest stuff coming out. You get to see never before seen previews and that kind of thing. But they’re these giant media frenzies — just total press blitzes where you wait in line three hours to get 15 minutes to try out this new game. It’s crowded, it’s busy, and it’s just a marketing frenzy.

MAGFest was started in 2002 because there was no real large-scale event where instead of going and seeing whatever the latest thing was, people could just get together and play games with each other.

Forget all the new stuff that’s coming out. Think about what’s out now. Think what you enjoy. What you like playing. Maybe what just came out that’s starting to get popular. It’s for people to get together and just party, basically.

GamesBeat: That’s a refreshing change of pace as far as these things go. But how does music fit in?

Marinelli: At the same time [when MAGFest began], the video game music cover scene was really starting to pick up. And bands like the Minibosses, the NESkimos, [and] The OneUps were starting to get popular. And although they would play one-off shows, there was no place to come and see a bunch of video game cover bands.

Joe Yamine actually started the first one, and he wanted people to just come together, play games, and rock out to some great video game cover bands and drink heavily. After the first one, he — I think he just wanted to see if he could do it — he didn’t really want to do it anymore.

Brendan Becker, who loved it, didn’t want to see it go away. So he bought it from [Yamine]. And then he kind of built up an army over the next eight or so years to bring MAGFest from 250 up to 3,000 [attendees] at MAGFest 9. We sold out MAGFest 9. It was 6,000 the following year when we moved venues.

We grow slowly but somewhat predictably thanks to the fact that we’re not banking on having a big-name exhibitor to come and show something that nobody’s seen before. People come because they have friends there [and] they want to bring more friends there. They want to party, play games, and rock for the weekend with their friends, and they want to meet more friends. It’s not about seeing something no one’s ever seen more; it’s about getting together and celebrating what you love.

GamesBeat: What kind of stuff do you normally have on display since MAGFest is a celebration of existing culture?

Marinelli: When it comes to gaming, we try to run the gamut of every type of typical gaming: For consoles, we try to get from the Atari all the way up to the PlayStation 3.

GamesBeat: Impressive.

Marinelli: We’re not necessarily a for-children event, but we have something that people of all ages can enjoy. ‘Cause people — kids like their Naruto these days, so they can play that, but we also have the ColecoVision if anyone wants to play that.

Brendan [Becker] actually tries to do a museum every year because he has a bunch of weird, esoteric systems that no one’s ever seen before — maybe you’ve heard of but never seen, like the CD-i or the 3DO or things like that. Japanese stuff like the MSX or the X68000. So, for consoles, we basically have more or less every console you could imagine — at least domestically.

We have a network of arcade [cabinet] collectors who bring their collections. Just like how people bring their friends together to help MAGFest grow, arcade collectors tell other arcade collectors just how great MAGFest is.

We help them rent a truck, and they just build it [and] bring it in. We had 150 arcade machines last year all on free play. That X-Men machine there is ours [editor’s note: Marinelli points to a bulky X-Men: The Arcade Game cabinet sitting to our right, which features dual screens and has support for six simultaneous players. Pictured above]; we have another guy who has another six-player X-Men machine. That’s actually become a meme within MAGFest — “The Colossus.”

We have a PC area, a bring-your-own-computer land. We have tabletop games, which includes board games, card games, pen-and-paper role-playing games, [and] collectible card games.

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Not many Westerners realize it, but Tencent has become the largest gaming company in China. The integrated Internet-services company is the gateway to the online world for hundreds of millions of Chinese, and its market value is $52 billion, not far from Facebook’s value of $60 billion. Tencent is a little like what you would get if you combined Aol, Facebook, Skype, Yahoo, Gmail, Norton, and Twitter under one roof. And now the company is heading west.

China has a ton of online gamers, and its Internet penetration is only about 40 percent, compared to 70 or 80 percent in developed markets. Tencent could easily grow more in the China, but it has been investing in Western game companies in recent years.

The company bought majority control of Riot Games last year for about $400 million, and it recently invested an undisclosed amount in Epic Games, the maker of the Unreal Engine and the Gears of War series.

To understand Tencent better, we invited David Wallerstein, the company’s senior executive vice president, for a fireside chat at our recent GamesBeat 2012 conference. Wallerstein has been with Tencent since its early days and has watched it grow massively in the past decade. Here’s an edited transcript of our chat.

GamesBeat: Can you explain Tencent to our audience? It’s not an everyday company.

David Wallerstein: China now has more online gamers than the U.S. and, I believe, Japan combined. So you can run around crazy in the U.S. market, or you can take on China, and your results may be pretty darned similar at the end of the day. The size of the markets is pretty similar. I think this year, the Chinese online game market will be about $8 billion, and the global market for online games is about $15 billion. So it’s roughly half. It’s a very good market. Now, Tencent is a leading gaming company in the market by pretty much all the metrics. In Asia, people already know we’re very big, so we usually don’t talk about the company and try to provide a lot of data to establish our credibility. But here, I have to note that we are a $52 billion market-cap company. We’re actually one of the biggest Internet companies, bar none, in the world. But in the West, people don’t really hear about that.

GamesBeat: Facebook is around $57 billion [now $60 billion], last I checked.

Wallerstein: We’re not exactly the anything of…. We’re not the Facebook of China. As an American, I’ve worked with Tencent for 12 years.

GamesBeat:I was going to ask you if you were Chinese or not.

Wallerstein: No, I’m not. I’m from Santa Rosa. I grew up there. But I spent a lot of time in Asia when I was a teen. I’ve been with Tencent for 12 years. I’m just called senior executive vice president. We dropped the “international” title a while ago. I’ve been part of the executive team since when we were about 45 people. It was a much smaller operation. I’ve seen it grow into about 22,000 people today at Tencent.

It’s been a spectacular ride. In the beginning, for the first, say, three or four years of the company, gaming had nothing to do with what we did. That has really informed our development into gaming today. We started off with instant messaging, kind of how Google started off with search or Facebook started with their social networking services. We started with messaging and grew beyond that. For many years we thought about things like connectivity and social-networking services, how to provide richer media services, voice service.

What we found in 2003 was that online games started coming out, and our online games in China, the most popular type of online games to this day, are client based. They’re PC games, massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), where you play with other people. And we found that these experiences were going to become the richest way for people to interact together online. Tencent fundamentally, at the core, has been about using the power of the Internet to connect people, whether it’s through video or voice or anything else. But the magic that happens through the Internet, to us, was a whole new transition in telecom that was going from the very beginning when you could pick up and call someone. Now I could pick up the PC, and I could steal their stuff or attack them in a game. These clients just seemed to us to be the future of online interaction. So we felt like we could not afford to miss this transition on the Internet.

GamesBeat: How did you move into games?

We started investing our resources, developers, into building these kinds of gaming services. We started integrating them with our instant messaging service. We started with very simple, casual games like poker or three-in-a-row games where you’re actually competing with five or six people at a time. Everything was always about interaction. It was always about the joy of having an experience with someone else that was potentially thousands of miles away from you. And then we went into what are called advanced casual games, like racing games, or chasing guys around a map shooting at each other. And then we starting going for the big MMO-type worlds, like World of Warcraft and Lineage, that have been popular in the western world. And now we just do every kind of gaming in every kind of genre, including social games and mobile.

As we’ve moved along, we’ve gained a greater appreciation for game design for all the disciplines of gaming. But at the very beginning, it wasn’t really all about that. I think in this day, when we think of gaming, what we’re really going after is providing deeper, richer, more intelligent experiences with people in real time over the Internet. We have a very vibrant social-networking service. Our Qzone service is kind of the equivalent of Facebook in China. We absolutely understand what it is, and we do a lot of gaming services through that.

But at the end of the day, for the majority of our cash and revenues and profit and so on and so forth, it’s coming from these deep, immersive experiences that really parallel what’s happening with consoles in the U.S. The only difference in China is that everything’s online. Everything’s multiplayer. And these experiences, for the most part, are only on the PC. This kind of game is also growing in the U.S. as well. In recent years, other than, for example, World of Warcraft, I think Riot Games has done a lot to show what’s possible in this area with League of Legends.

GamesBeat: And you bought a majority stake in Riot….

Wallerstein: Yes, we acquired a majority stake in Riot.

GamesBeat: Did you notice a raise in your profile after that? It was a big deal…

Wallerstein: I think in the West we were noticed. It was just kind of hard for people to figure out what we do. It seems somewhat unrelated to a lot of game people. I’ll have to be honest with you. I think in my own personal interactions. I think Riot is still not extremely well-understood here in Silicon Valley. I think in the world of gaming they’re better understood. But I think, probably, the average comment I get is more on the PC side, like, hey, that was a good deal. The players get it. The players who play League of Legends, they get it.

GamesBeat: It seemed to me like it was a wake-up call. Then a lot of people thought that Chinese companies were going to come here by the busload and start buying a lot of companies here. That hasn’t really come to pass. I don’t know if that surprises you or not.

Wallerstein: The difference in what we do, certainly in our relationship with Riot, is that we didn’t buy them. We’re investors in Riot. We acquired a majority stake, but the founders and the staff and the management of Riot still maintain a very healthy ownership. I think after we’d done this deal, their ownership percentage of the pie grew. There were the VCs in the company and angel investors. But the actual people who work in the company, their shares will be growing even more over time. It’s very likely that they will have more of an ownership.

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Minecraft lovers should be happy to hear that the Xbox 360 Edition is getting a sizable bundle of new content. One of the aspects that makes the PC version more enjoyable are the fan-created customizable skins that anyone can download. While that’s still not a possibility on the Xbox 360, there will be over 40 skins released between the free 1.7.3 title update and the DLC “Skin Pack 1″, both of which are currently in certification and set to be released “soon.”

With the Skin Pack, you may choose from a number of familiar faces (albeit much more pixelated than they may be used to). The following characters have been announced so far:

• Creeper Man
• Clayton Carmine (Gears of War 3)
• Covenant Grunt (Halo)
• Trials Man (Trials HD)
• Banjo (Banjo N Kazooie)
• ‘Splosion Man
• Ms. ‘Splosion Man

Ms. ‘Splosion Man is semi-notable for being the first official female in Minecraft. Creator Markus “Notch” Persson explained at GDC 2012 that when he originally attempted to design female skins, the result was extremely “sexist” due to the blocky nature of the game’s visuals. I’m not sure Ms. ‘Splosion Man fully counts as a normal female counterpart to Steve or any of the other new skins, but it’s a step in the right direction.

In addition, the long-awaited 1.7.3 update adds pistons (among other things), also enables players to choose among the original eight Steve skins, instead of automatically distributing them only in multiplayer games.

Check out our gallery of images for the upcoming update and Skin Pack below. No release date for either has been announced. Next, bring on the texture packs and Adventure Update!

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best games stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Sega shut down several studios world-wide, Zynga held a press event in San Francisco revealing tons of new Facebook social games, and developer Radical Entertainment shuts its doors.

You’ll also find a review for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim expansion Dawnguard and Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes.

GamesBeat:

The DeanBeat: Zynga battles to dominate the red ocean, not the blue

The Last of Us’ “Truck Ambush” trailer: now with 100% more Sackboy (video)

Console game studio Radical Entertainment shuts its doors

Sega closes multiple offices worldwide and focuses on digital

Nintendo hires a networking chief to shore up a weak spot

Dawnguard finally brings a sense of urgency to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (review)

How we voted in the Game Critics Awards

Infinity Blade is more profitable than Gears of War

Valve releases the magically fiery ‘Meet the Pyro’ video

Halo 4′s free Spartan Ops content detailed: 50 missions spanning 12 hours

Past sales point to a ‘win’ for Nintendo with the 3DS XL

New Smart TV device allows game-streaming via OnLive

Sulake un-mutes Habbo Hotel in select countries for first time since sex scandal

CCP’s David Reid says Dust 514 heralds a new free-to-play era on consoles (interview)

Dragon Eternity lets iOS gamers play with Android users

4 games that should be in Kirby’s 20th Anniversary Collection

GamesBeat casts the Need for Speed movie

Lego Batman 2 tries to redefine the franchise but stumbles (review)

VentureBeat:

Delaware’s approval of online gambling will make social game companies perk up

Gaikai streams Bulletstorm console game in the Chrome browser

Meet the judges for our GamesBeat 2012 ‘Who’s Got Game’ game-startup competition

Lara Croft will invade your Chrome web browser this fall

Hello, Hero Academy: $2M deal helps mobile-platform Yodo1 bring Western games to China

New institute gets $10M to gamify education for kids

The new console war pits Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony in an Apple arena

Pocket Gems launches All Talk voice-based mobile game

Pamela Anderson takes on Zynga with BamPoker game

YoYo Games launches a series of Chrome games with the flip of a switch (exclusive)

Zynga’s big Unleashed event strikes out with investors

Earn real recipes while playing Zygna’s new game, ChefVille

Zynga confirms that FarmVille 2 is in the works

Zynga With Friends to feature live synchronous multiplayer

By the numbers: Zynga’s total words, drawings, users, and more

Take-Two aims big in China with free-to-play NBA online game with Tencent

Google transforms its homepage into a Turing machine minigame

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The gaming industry has frequently been dominated by expensive triple-A titles, but the continuing popularity of social and mobile gaming may change that. If you need proof, look no further than Epic Games, a developer famous for making popular shooters such as Gears of War and Unreal Tournament. These games are best-sellers, but the company’s most profitable game is an iOS title: Infinity Blade.

“The most profitable game we’ve ever made, in terms of man years invested versus revenue, is actually Infinity Blade,” said Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney in an interview with Gamasutra. “It’s more profitable than Gears of War. Nowadays, the high-end of the game business is in these console game. Activision invests almost $100 million per year in Call of Duty.”

Sweeney said that Epic was “very very surprised to see how fast smartphone and tablet devices are improving.” He also noted that Apple’s newest tablet, the iPad 3, is almost equal to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in terms of technical performance.

Originally conceived as a title for Microsoft’s motion-sensing Kinect device, Infinity Blade and its sequel have earned more than $30 million.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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China’s most valuable Internet company, Tencent, is continuing its invasion into the U.S. gaming market in a big way today. Epic Games, maker of popular titles like Gears of War, announced today that Tencent has made a strategic minority investment in the company.

Tencent already had a preexisting relationship with Epic as a licensee of its Unreal Engine, the most popular 3D gaming engine on the market.  The deal is expected to close within one month. Terms were not disclosed.

The investment follows Tencent’s $400 million investment in Riot Games last year, a U.S.-based online game company. With the Epic deal, it’s clear that Tencent is aiming to get its fingers into even more aspects of the gaming market. Epic recently showed off Unreal Engine 4, a stunning upgrade to its gaming engine meant for next-generation consoles and high-end PCs.

Epic says that it will continue to operate independently following the completion of the Tencent deal. At this point, it’s unclear how Tencent’s investment will help the U.S. gaming company, but I suspect we’ll hear more when the deal closes.