Nvidia’s explanation for why the graphics hardware company — for the first time — passed up offers to develop chips for any game console basically ended with it talking crap about consoles in general. What Nvidia says may be true, but it also doesn’t really matter that much when you think about it.

Nvidia’s senior vice president went on about the power gap between the upcoming consoles and gaming PCs. That gap does exist — and this may actually be the first generation where, right out of the gate, game consoles are inferior to gaming PCs — but that in itself has never really mattered for the same reason that console-to-console comparisons have never mattered.

The obvious reason is that the games are what matter, what software actually runs on each console. We don’t live in a world yet where all gaming devices run the same games, and how well a game runs depends primarily on hardware. You may be able to compare one PC to another or one Android device to another, but cross-platform comparisons are really useless for the majority of people buying games. It’s not like comparing cars that all use the same fuel and drive on the same roads.

It doesn’t matter whether or not a gaming PC will be able to run Killzone: Shadow Fall better than the PlayStation 4. That game is never going to be available on PC. Journey, a PlayStation 3 exclusive of modest technical prowess, is equally inaccessible to gaming PCs.

Of course, those are just platform exclusives we’re talking about. In the world of multiplatform games, the power of each individual platform only matters to the extremely discerning gamer who wants to buy the best version of a game. The vast majority of mainstream gamers will each stick to their one preferred platform and buy that platform’s version of a game, regardless of how much better other versions might be. If this weren’t true, the PC versions of most games, which always look and run the best, wouldn’t be selling the least copies.

The only situation in which consoles would prove to be a hardware power threat to PCs is if they were so ahead of their time upon launch that the PC versions of multiplatform games required prohibitively expensive systems to look as good as the console versions. This may have happened around the launches of previous generation of game consoles, but we’re pretty sure it’s not gonna happen with the PS4 and next Xbox. You won’t need a $2,000 computer to run the PC versions of next-generation launch games.

And the only situation in which you could say consoles are “too weak” would be when a significant amount PC games come out that absolutely can’t run on consoles. That did start to happen toward the end of the PlayStation 2 era, but it didn’t really happen toward the end of the current console generation.

As we saw with current-generation games, most developers are probably going to develop for the lowest-common denominator in terms of hardware power in the next generation and then make slightly better versions for more powerful machines and never taking full advantage of the extra headroom. During this generation, the only truly stunning-looking PS3 games were all developed by Sony’s own studios. There are almost no PC games right now that are truly impossible to run on an Xbox 360 or PS3; although, there are quite a few that look significantly better on PC.

The only hardware aspect of consoles that looks truly impressive by all measures (including gaming PCs) is RAM. The PS4’s 8GB of unified GDDR5 RAM gives it more and faster memory than any PC graphics card has access to right now. This could theoretically give some serious advantages to PS4 games, but most likely only exclusives will explore those possibilities since multiplatform games will likely be optimized for the lowest-common denominator. Those exclusive PS4 games will be inaccessible to other platforms — 8GB of GDDR5 RAM or not. (We don’t know what the next generation Xbox is doing in that department as of this writing, though.)

Bottom line: If you get a PS4, it shouldn’t be for how powerful it is but for what games are on it that you can’t get on the PS3 or PC or Xbox. You should really look at it like making the decision to buy Mac OS instead of Windows 8.

Originally posted on MultiPlatform

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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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Sony started off the press demo of Rain with a PowerPoint presentation — usually not a good sign. Director Yuki Ikeda rattled off a bunch of feelings he hopes his upcoming PlayStation Network stealth/adventure game will capture: “lost,” “uncertainty,” “curiosity” … .

These words reminded me of the emotions I felt while playing another PSN adventure: Journey. That 2012 game of the year (contender for some, winner for others) is one of those “everyone will get something different out of it” experiences, and Rain certainly feels like that.

It does have a more structured story than Journey — at least initially. “One morning, he sees an invisible girl with a silhouette in the rain,” said Ikeda of the young, mute protagonist. “He sees that she’s been followed by an invisible creature. He chases after her to save her, and while following her, he somehow enters the mysterious world of Rain. He learns that he, too, has become invisible.” Throughout the demo, we saw glimpses of the girl in danger, and we continue to run after her in silence, never quite catching up, never quite understanding what’s going on. It’s very dreamlike and surreal — much like Journey.

Some people will see Rain simply for the stealthy gameplay: Our ghostly main character only becomes visible when directly under the ever-present (and slightly depressing) downpour. It helps him stay grounded as a physical presence in this supernatural story, but it also exposes him to danger, such as the demonish hounds who constantly stalk and kill him if they see or hear him. If the boy ducks under cover, the rain will stop outlining him, and he’ll vanish, leaving only wet footsteps as a trace of where he’s actually at.

He can use this water-based mechanic to lure the creatures to certain areas (to knock over scaffolding to create new sections to climb on, for example) or simply to get them to stop blocking the exit out of a street. He can also purposely step on large puddles to create noise to draw enemies to him. Think of the boy as Sam Fisher, the sneaky agent in the Splinter Cell series, using dry cover (shadows for Fisher) or splashing (sounds) to manipulate foes in order to get around them more easily.

Only Rain’s main character has no guns, spy cameras, flashbangs, or night-vision goggles. He’s armed with nothing, in fact, and those threatening him operate under the exact same rain-cover conditions. He can’t even run very quickly. This leaves players with a very vulnerable child character who’s at the mercy of the dark, dangerous, and foreign world around him. And that’s really what Rain is getting at.

“I remember the sadness and the fear I felt as a child getting lost,” said Ikeda. “But as an adult, if I go to a new place and get lost, I feel excitement. I wanted to combine those two emotions into Rain.”

Certainly it works, at least from the few minutes of live gameplay we’ve seen so far. The oppressive gray city, the relentless rain, and the haunting soundtrack may not initially remind anyone of the more whimsical and colorful Journey, but the feelings are the same: lost, uncertainty, curiosity … .

And similarly to how a mysterious second player from somewhere in the Internet may just suddenly join you in Journey, providing much-needed companionship in that otherwise isolated adventure, Ikeda is going for a similar effect: “Initially, when making the game, I only had the boy by himself. But when I was playing it, I noticed it was really lonely and sad, so I decided to add the little girl.”

Rain is due out later in 2013. See below for more screenshots and a gameplay video.

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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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One of the most beautiful games from last year was Journey from developer Thatgamecompany. And now that studio’s art director is off starting his own company.

Matt Nava launched developer Giant Squid yesterday, according to GamesIndustry. Nava previously acted as art director at Thatgamecompany. He’s working with Journey’s Grammy-winning composer, Austin Wintory, and Flow designer Nicholas Clark on the new venture.

“We plan to create innovative and deeply moving games that will inspire players, challenge convention, and push the boundaries of experiential and narrative interactive entertainment into new and unexpected areas,” said Nava.

The Santa Monica-based developer is currently hiring for its first project. According to Nava, the ideal candidate loves playing with Lego and the Angelina Jolie film Hackers.

Nava started at Thatgamecompany in 2008. He oversaw the visuals for both Flower and Journey.

Journey producer Kellee Santiago also left Thatgamecompany in March 2012. She now works on the Android console Ouya as the director of developer relations.

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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 October of last year, reader Edfire77 sent the above image to Kotaku. The photo shows Tommy Chong of comedy duo Cheech and Chong, and it was used to “celebrate” Hispanic culture. Not only was the choice to use a film about the misadventures of two stoners to observe Hispanic culture in poor taste, but the image did not even feature Cheech Marin, the only Hispanic member of the stoner duo (Tommy Chong is not Hispanic; he is of Chinese, Scottish-Irish, and French descent.)

The flub came and went without so much as an apology from Microsoft. Sure, chances are this was merely an oversight, but it was an insensitive move nonetheless. Hispanic gamers make up a large portion of Xbox owners. According to Microsoft, in an article posted on Viacom’s blog, Hispanic gamers contributed to 23 percent growth in sales while non-Hispanic gamers stood at 10 percent. The article also mentions that “Hispanics are 32 percent more likely to consider video games their main source of entertainment.” Considering these numbers, Microsoft should have been more careful about how it chose to portray this group. Rather than relegating Hispanic culture to a movie about potheads, the company could have used a positive film such as Stand and Deliver, the fantastic Pan’s Labyrinth, or the historically relevant Motorcycle Diaries.

Shifting paradigms in demographics plainly illustrate that Hispanics and other minorities are becoming a larger part of gaming culture. With such a significant number of minority gamers contributing to the growth of the market, one would think it would be a no-brainer to be sensitive to the nuances of these cultures. Unfortunately, as seen in the above image (and in many other instances I will discuss), this has not been the case.

Insensitivity towards minorities, as well as exaggerated and stereotypical depictions in video games, is nothing new. Anyone who has ever played Final Fantasy VII will remember the outspoken Barret Wallace. The only black character in Square’s epic role-playing game had the tongue of a sailor and spoke in an exaggerated Ebonics. No one else in the game was given this accent. Not the other denizens of the slums. Not Barret’s longtime friend Dyne. No one. Why would only one character speak in region-based slang? Because he’s black? It didn’t make sense to me in 1997, and doesn’t make sense now.

Localization standards have improved since then, and although Final Fantasy XIII’s black party member, Sazh Katzroy, has a few things in common Barrett (both single parents, both use guns, both begin as partner to an ex-soldier), he is not nearly the caricature Barret turned out to be. Whereas Barrett was loosely based on Mr. T, Sazh bears a closer resemblance to a different kind of television and movie stereotype: the funny black sidekick. Sazh’s “frocobo” didn’t help matters much either. Perhaps Square Enix should stop basing their black characters on problematic Hollywood tropes.

Another kind of stereotyping can be seen in fantasy titles where dark-skinned races are often depicted as being less intelligent, barbarous, prone to violence, and less civilized than their fair-skinned neighbors. The recently released Fire Emblem: Awakening’s Basilio and Flavia are two of the games few dark-skinned characters. They hail from the Kingdom of Regna Ferox, where brute strength is valued over all else. In one scene, Basilio tells another character to kiss his “big brown arse.” Another Japanese strategy RPG classic, Dragon Force (released on the Sega Saturn), featured a southern kingdom called the Bozack Nation, whose citizens were dark-skinned and beast-like and whose leader, Gongos, was considered less intelligent than the other rulers in the game.

Western RPGs haven’t fared much better in this regard. The Elder Scrolls series’ Redguard race, also dark of skin, has traditionally had lower intelligence stats and higher physical attributes than other races. This kind of depiction of dark-skinned races is not exclusive to games. The wildly popular Game of Thrones features the nomadic, barbaric Dothraki. Dark of hair, eyes, and skin, the Dothraki resemble Middle-Eastern peoples in both appearance and language. Compared to the “civilized” seven kingdoms of Westeros, the people across the Narrow Sea are seen as backward, exotic, brutish, and savage. Although these races are all fictional, their representation has a hint of real-world Orientalism that can inform notions about minorities and dark-skinned races and cultures.

The dearth of minorities as main characters is another issue worth noting. Many big-budget titles seem to feature a white male — an everyman — as their protagonist. While it may be argued that game developers who stick to this formulaic approach to character design are merely playing it safe and choosing not to use minority characters that may be construed as offensive or insensitive, it does not help the fact that the market is oversaturated with Nathan Drake lookalikes and sorely lacking in minorities as central figures.

But hope is not completely lost. Smaller developers such as Minority Media (which is comprised of a culturally diverse team and headed by lead designer Vander Caballero) may be the shot in the arm the medium needs. Minority’s first title, the PlayStation Network exclusive Papo & Yo, features Brazilian-inspired visuals and sounds as well as a dark-skinned young boy, Quico, as the protagonist.

Thatgamecompany’s highly praised Journey circumvented the problem of race altogether by making the main character completely nonspecific and ambiguous in not only race but gender and age as well. While these smaller, independent developers seem more inclined to deal with the problem of stereotyping in video games, Ubisoft — the creator of Assassin’s Creed — is also pushing for multicultural awareness in its titles. Its first PS Vita game, Assassin’s Creed: Liberation, featured a half-black female protagonist by the name of Aveline de Grandpré and proved it is not entirely impossible for developers to feature minorities in their titles without resorting to offensive cultural stereotypes.

Video games are becoming bigger than Hollywood. With yesterday’s announcement of the PlayStation 4 and the beginning of a new generation of games, developers — both independent and corporate — have a chance to start leaving behind the single-minded tropes and stereotypes that film and other mediums have held on to for so long. As creators and visionaries, they have an opportunity to challenge stereotypical notions, not reinforce them. With minorities becoming such a driving force behind the growth of video game culture, here’s hoping we begin to see more cultural diversity in in the medium.

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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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LAS VEGAS — Jenova Chen got a letter from a 15-year-old girl named Sophia last month. She said that she had played Journey with her father before he died from an illness, and the game had changed her life.

“That letter made it all worth it,” said Jenova Chen, the cofounder of Thatgamecompany, which won game of the year last night for Journey at the DICE Summit. It’s a PlayStation Network downloadable title that’s unique among video games for its poetic ambiance and lack of violence and dialogue.

Chen talked about Sophia’s letter (attached at the end of story) at the close of a talk on emotions in games.

Many participants, like Shuhei Yoshida, the head of Sony’s worldwide game studios, said that Chen’s talk was the highlight of the event and that it was more like an authentic confessional. Chen got a roar of applause when he was finished.

He and his team also got a roar of applause when they won “game of the year” at the game industry’s equivalent of the Oscars, the peer-voted DICE Awards.

Journey, like Thatgamecompany’s Flower before it, was a rarity in a game industry full of violent content. The game depicts a being’s lonely journey to the top of a mountain and the spiritual change that takes place along the way. I played the game with my three daughters several times all the way through — something they’ve never done with a PlayStation 3 game (except Flower). Journey has no weapons or words, but it is full of emotion.

Journey’s unique in a business that has every kind of shooter game, but very little content such as romantic comedies, which are so plentiful in movies. The game was all the more remarkable in that it was made in about three years with a team of 13 people; major game projects typically employee a hundred or more.

In his talk and a subsequent interview, Chen revealed that not only is Journey a metaphor for life and death, it is also an apt description of the struggle that Los Angeles-based Thatgamecompany went through. During the process of shipping Journey, Thatgamecompany went bankrupt and had to idle its staff. If the team had shipped on time, they wouldn’t have had a polished game. It was a tough decision to delay it.

Chen said that the team was supposed to ship a year earlier than it did, and it had run out of money. The staff got by on half salaries for six months. When they shipped to Sony in January, the coffers were dry. The company ran out of money, gave everyone three-week vacations, and no one expected to come back.

Chief exec Kellee Santiago (in red) and designer Robin Hunicke (in black) both left the company. Chen stayed on in a minimal capacity. Eight of the company’s 13 employees eventually moved on to do something else.

But the story has a happy ending. Journey went on to become the best-selling PlayStation Network game of all time. Chen doesn’t know for sure, but presumably it will earn royalties. And Mitch Lasky, a general partner at Benchmark Capital, was so moved when he played Journey that he started talks to invest. Thatgamecompany raised $5.5 million, and it committed itself to making cross-platform games that deliver human emotion to a wider audience.

Last night, Chen won the ultimate vindication for delaying the launch of Journey. The company won eight awards out of 11 nominations, including the Best Game Director award for Chen and Game of the Year. We talked to Chen in an interview, and here is an edited transcript of the talk.

GamesBeat: Maybe you want to start with the ending of your talk, with this letter from Sophia and what it made you feel when it arrived.

Jenova Chen: Over the course of last year, we’ve been getting this kind of mail pretty consistently. I was quite moved by it early on. I think there were more than five or six people who’ve lost their family members. They contacted us to talk about how they were reminded of their passed-away family members in the game. By traveling with them, they were able to settle with their grief. Most of the mail was just along the lines of “It’s a wonderful game! I just wanted to tell you how great it is.” But very so often there’s a message that touches me, and I have to write back. I have to share it with everyone who worked on Journey. This happened to be one of the most recent ones. It’s January, so I still remember it.

GamesBeat: Did you have a conversation with her then?

Chen: She’s 15. I wrote back to her. I think my e-mail was probably too theoretical, talking about how it’s not the worst thing, how life will be better. I didn’t hear back from her. I shared the e-mail with Sony, though. A lot of people were moved by it. They wanted to send her a poster or the collector’s edition of the game. I think that’s what happened.

GamesBeat: As you said, that’s exactly the kind of target that you had in mind for the emotional reaction to the game.

Chen: The mission statement of Thatgamecompany, after all these years, is that we want to create timeless interactive entertainment that makes positive changes to the human psyche. If our games can help people, that’s the best reward we can get. Hearing that girl saying the game helped make her life better is all the hard work paying off.

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StartupBus is a hack week with a twist: you board a bus filled with strangers, and 1800 miles later, you’re expected to demo a product to a roomful of influential investors and journalists.

No pressure or anything.

Participants will tell you that StartupBus is the mother of all hackathons. You’re not just assessed on building a product, but also on your market vision and the traction you can generate.

Imagine building a real startup in a compressed time capsule traveling at 60 miles per hour.

It’s physically exhausting, mentally consuming, and it’s definitely not the most glamorous thing in the world.  You’re constantly outside of your comfort zone, never alone, and the experience is filled with moments of ambiguity and uncertainty. These constraints are intentional — the goal is to create a unique kind of experience that only certain personality types can thrive in.

The organization is run by alumni, and the energy and passion that goes into executing this event is directly transferred to the participants. The application process is no joke. You have to be referred by someone from a previous StartupBus trip, then you write up an application and get interviewed.

When I explain StartupBus to other people, it occurs to me we’re all a little crazy to try it. The premise doesn’t make any sense: building a technology product on the road from San Francisco to Austin with intermittent wifi. Ladies might not love the idea of spending the night in hotels sharing beds with teammates you just met. Wake up calls at the crack of dawn? As if launching a startup wasn’t already a crazy enough thing to do!

So why did I do it?

I had been working with the wrong cofounder on my startup and was in the process of figuring out next steps.  The timing seemed perfect and I had never been to the Austin-based tech conference SXSW, which StartupBus coincides with.  I figured it was the most productive use of my time and that I’d learn a lot along the way.

What I found interesting was that most people were in a similar position as me — they were experiencing inflection points both personally and professionally and trying to figure out next steps.

I’ve outlined the top five takeaways from my StartupBus experience below:

1. Discover new skills: Any experience that puts you outside your comfort zone will help uncover new aspects of yourself that you may not be aware of. I learned for instance that I am extremely good at performing in high pressure situations, pitching to investors, and am comfortable interviewing on camera. Had I not participated in StartupBus, I would have never been exposed to interviewing with press from all over the world or pitching ideas under the gun.
2. Make new friends: It’s always great to gain more experience with different team dynamics and working with strong personalities. The interaction of the StartupBus Alumni community is testament to how powerful this experience is in creating new relationships, it really is a global family. I’ve made some lifelong friendships on the bus and some participants ended up starting companies together. The possibilities are endless, you just have to be open to it.
3. Test your product ideas: If you have a few ideas that you’ve been brewing for years, StartupBus is the perfect environment to test them. Pitch an idea to the bus, and if you are successful in recruiting a team that believes in your vision, you’ll get a chance to experience building an MVP for real investors.
4. Disrupt your outlook: I wanted to come back from this experience with a perspective on what I should do next. If you’re going through a transition period and are trying to figure out what you’re passionate about, this environment will help you figure it out.
5. Be Open to Serendipity: There were plenty of moments during the journey when I had no idea where I was, where we were going, when we were stopping, and what would happen the next day — you learn to go with the flow. The value of SXSW is meeting new people and you need to make sure you’re open to that, and actively putting yourself in a position to have that happen.

The StartupBus environment provides a glimpse of what entrepreneurship is like without any of the risk or negative consequences. And like any experience, you will get out of it as much as you put in.

If this sounds like like the perfect match for you, we are inviting the first 50 VentureBeat readers to apply here. I will be the West Coast conductor, and we’ll set off to Austin on March 3rd.

Falon spends her time advising and consulting startups on everything from product development to launch strategy and is passionate about taking life changing technology mainstream. She was most recently was a Partner at MkII Ventures, had a failed dating startup, and was Head of Business Development for Firespotter Labs.

Falon began her career at Google at 19 and graduated from Santa Clara University with a BS in Finance and emphasis in Computer Engineering and Entrepreneurship.

In her 6+ years at Google, she developed her love and talent for sales strategy, operations, and business development while holding variety of roles across syndication partnerships, Google.org, and YouTube. You can subscribe to follow her updates at facebook.com/falonfatemi or follow her on twitter @falonfatemi.

Startup Bus image via Facebook

I can, at any given moment, tell you how long before BioShock Infinite releases in months, hours, and minutes. I keep that figure in my head at all times.

No lie, people in the gaming industry get to see and play some of the coolest, most anticipated games long before anyone else does, but generally speaking, that really only applies to the games they’re working on. Unless their desk is in the same building as the development team — and sometimes not even then — they have to sit around and wait just like everybody else.

So we polled a few famous names in the game industry and asked what they were waiting for. Specifically, we asked this: Aside from any project you’re involved in, what game are you looking forward to the most in 2013 and why?

Edmund McMillen, Team Meat (Super Meat Boy, Mew-Genics)

I’m most looking forward to playing The Witness. I was part of beta testing early on and actually asked to no longer be a part because I really wanted to experience the game how it was meant to be played.

Andy Gavin, author (Untimed) and retired cofounder, Naughty Dog (Jak and Daxter)

The Last of Us. I’m not personally involved, but call me twisted — the idea of a teen girl in a postapocalyptic world is pretty cool. And I’m not just talking sticking a girl in there gratuitously; Naughty Dog can be counted on to write a good story and actually deal with the visceral/emotional experience.

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

BioShock Infinite, no doubt. Anyone who picks anything else for 2013 is simply crazy — don’t listen to any of the nonsense coming out of their mouths, ever. The original BioShock is one of the best games of all time, and I can’t wait to be immersed in another imaginative, dreamy (or nightmarish) world by the same developers.

Randy Pitchford, CEO, Gearbox Software (Borderlands 2, Aliens: Colonial Marines)

In just a few days, Ni no Kuni comes out, and I can’t wait! [Hey, Randy, it's out! --Ed.]

Jenova Chen, cofounder, Thatgamecompany (Journey)

I’m mostly looking forward to Grand Theft Auto V. I’ve seen some online in-game footage that really makes me fantasize about the things you can do in the game. I hope it delivers the fantasy.

Yoshinori Ono, producer, Capcom (Street Fighter IV)

I would have to go with Pikmin 3 for the Wii U! There hasn’t been a new release for this series in a while, so even if there aren’t many changes since the previous iteration, I am definitely looking forward to playing it. Nintendo must have some innovative ways to utilize the Wii U GamePad up their sleeves as well, so that is another thing I will be watching out for.

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Film buffs will tell you that nothing is quite like seeing a great movie in a theater on opening night. Hip Hop fans will tell you that seeing Wu Tang Clan perform live is an experience like no other. An art history major might shed a tear by simply being in the presence of his favorite Matisse. Literature enthusiasts will gush about how thrilled they were when they finished their favorite novels. While all of these examples can simply be considered entertainment, for those passionate about them, they can be a lot more. They are experiences. Unique and memorable events that leave a lasting impression and are not felt very often in our day-to-day lives.

Video games are, arguably, the most interactive form of entertainment we have, and yet, they have been slow to achieve the kind of experiential status that is often associated with art, music, literature, and film. Last year saw the release of many titles that challenged this notion. Among them was Thatgamecompany’s PlayStation 3 exclusive, Journey, which has received heaps of praise and made many video game enthusiasts’ Game-of-the-Year lists.

Those who have already played Journey already know that it has been hyped and lauded for good reason. Few games ever come close to accomplishing what Journey does so well: It delivers a true “experience.”

In a recent interview with Buddhist Geeks, designer Michaël Harboun discusses contemplative design and mentions how the medium is beginning to outgrow the term “video game.” “I consider video games as being product, not as being rudimentary video game,” he states. “I don’t like the video game anymore. I would just like to call them ‘experiences.’”  He continues on to cite Journey as an example of a game as an experience because of the way it allows players the freedom to just “go with the flow.”

Harboun also suggests that games have a greater potential than most give them credit for.  ”I think that video games have the potential to alter our state of consciousness the same way that music or cinema or literature does,” Harboun says. “I feel like if video games can adapt — can basically, like, help us alter our mindsets in a way which makes the positive side of things emerge.”

What makes Journey stand out so much as an experience can perhaps be linked to its inherent spirituality. Thatgamecompany’s director Jenova Chen has openly discussed the game’s religious themes many times and has said that “many religions share an affinity with Journey.” Reviewers like James Plafke agreed and said “the game doesn’t shove any kind of religion or specific religious ideals down players’ throats but encapsulates broad, basic themes of a higher power and the journey toward self-discovery and motivation to which most religions adhere.” Some players even created a blog where they could share their experiences with the game.

The religious experiences shared by those who play Journey is not an aberration. Its reputation even led to it being played by members of a church during a Sunday service at Exeter Cathedral in which the clergy called on Andy Robertson to test his ideas about the potential of games by including one in a “more meaningful context.” The first game he chose for this experiment was none other than Flower, Thatgamecompany’s second PS3 exclusive title and a game that shared praise similar to Journey for its contemplative design.

Granted, many of us who are long-time, passionate gaming enthusiasts will have a tale or two to tell about the “experiences” we have had playing games way before Journey came along. But the fact is that games like Journey are unlocking the potential of the medium. More than ever, video games are in conversation with art, film, and music. Austin Wintory, composer of Journey’s magnificent soundtrack, has even been nominated for a Grammy Award for his work on the game’s original score.

Games are being talked about in religious contexts from Buddhism to Catholicism. People are coming together to share their experiences, and Journey is only one example of the direction games can go. The awkward teenage years are over. The growing pains are just beginning to end. Games are finally starting to unlock their full potential, and it has nothing to do with lifelike visuals or billion dollar budgets. It has to do with their ability to let us experience.

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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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As Vice President Joe Biden contemplates regulations for gun control and possible curbs on video game violence, we should take note that one of the most successful games of 2012 was a peaceful title called Journey.

Journey might not have sold as much as Call of Duty: Black Ops II, but it was the top downloadable title on Sony’s PlayStation Network in 2012. In Journey, you play an other-worldly being who traverses desert sands and other treacherous landscapes to reach a high mountain peak. You don’t arm yourself with machine guns, rocket launchers, or other staples of violent games.

It was such a moving experience that it received 11 nominations (including Game of the Year) at the DICE Summit Awards (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) last night from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. That recognition is important as the industry tries to wade through the reactions to the tragic shooting in Newtown, Conn.

Journey advances the argument that games can be high art. And as such, they deserve the same free speech protections that other works — books, movies, paintings, or other established media — enjoy. The U.S. Supreme Court validated this line of thinking last year, saying that a California ban on selling violent games to minors was illegal in part because of the restrictions on free speech and because the state had not proved a connection between violent games and real-life violent behavior. I don’t believe we should relitigate this matter even after the latest shootings.

But we as critics could do more to inspire game artists to do the best possible work they can. We don’t have to draw attention to experiences that appeal to the lowest common denominator when it comes to sex or violence. Those games will do well on their own. But we can do a lot more to encourage developers to create the most consequential works of art — games that inspire us with great stories, animations, gameplay, and simple fun. If the administration wants to get involved in that, I would welcome it. President Barack Obama could host the creators of the most imaginative games at the White House.

The awards shows — Spike TV’s Video Game Awards, the Game Developers Choice Awards, and the DICE Summit Awards — offer recognition and a spotlight to the creative people who stand out. But wider publicity will help take the message deeper into the public awareness and maybe even spur sales of nonviolent titles. Acknowledgement of the best achievements is a way to steer developers in the direction of being more responsible. If we say to developers that they each might only get to make 10 games in a career, it might inspire them to make something more meaningful than those which only generate the next paycheck.

And I believe that recognizing the very best of the art will weed out many of the games that are considered too violent. I realize that this approach will only go so far. As a voluntary step, it will not be enforceable under the power of law. But that is as it should be in a free society.

But the strategy could be effective. Game developers are and should be free to create what they want. But they should also be responsible, and appealing to their consciences and inspiring them with positive rewards is the right thing to do. You could say that would be a “gamification” of the industry itself, inspiring developers to diversify beyond violent games toward providing different kinds of experiences, like those embodied in concrete, successful titles like Journey. Hell, you could give an “X Prize” with $10 million to the developer who makes the best nonviolent video game.

Some people have run out of patience. They want to use a stick. But I think that a carrot will work better than the stick when it comes to urging creativity in the game industry.

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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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At this years ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program) show at NYU, co-creator of the experimental video game The Buddhist, Bona Kim, said she wanted make people aware of their ”goal seeking behavior.”

At first glance, The Buddhist certainly looks like a game. You play it on a classic arcade cabinet with a joystick and several buttons. But judging by this video, most people at the show who tried The Buddhist seemed to be confused about what they were “supposed to do.”

While some would find it difficult to classify The Buddhist as an actual video game — especially by today’s standards, in which Hollywood-style linear narrative is becoming more prevalent — not having an immediately obvious goal is something that we have begun to see more of in a few recent releases. Journey, for example, does not have a traditional story. We don’t know much about the protagonist, and we have to piece everything together ourselves. In another PlayStation Network exclusive, The Unfinished Swan, the first stage is a completely white screen devoid of color or any text to guide the player.

The Buddhist succeeds in introducing elementary Buddhist concepts by making players aware that most of us are just too goal driven to be truly happy. Sakyamuni Buddha taught that we should not attach ourselves to the past or be anxious about the future but be fully present in this moment. Players with no knowledge of Buddhist teachings would likely keep tapping buttons and trying to move the monk avatar. As seen in the video, these attempts end in a “game over, try again” message.

The first time I played both Journey and The Unfinished Swan, I was overcome not by an urge to figure out what I was supposed to do but instead with a feeling of wonder. I took my time and explored; I enjoyed the music and the scenery; I figured out the controls and had a blast doing it.

Experiments like The Buddhist and lauded indie titles like Journey and The Unfinished Swan show that interactive media can also be tools for teaching players about their expectations and preconceived notions. Several reviewers have compared Journey to a religious experience, and if that has set any kind of precedent, I think we can expect to see more games that make players question their reactions, expectations, and values.

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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, GamesBeat celebrates the biggest games and news of 2012 with several retrospective features. Even though the year is almost over, that doesn’t mean we’re completely out of news yet, however. You’ll also find stories on Nintendo patenting a specific use for the Wii U’s dual-screen functionality, Microsoft releasing an iPhone and iPad game with Xbox Live Achievements, and where to buy the documentary Minecraft: The Story of Mojang without digital rights management.

Best of 2012:

The DeanBeat: Game industry predictions for 2013
Here’s the scorecard on our 2012 predictions for the game industry
The biggest gaming trends of 2012
The news that shook the game world in 2012
Kickstarter game projects raised $79M in 2012
GamesBeat’s 2012 Game of the Year: The Walking Dead
The best games of 2012 (GamesBeat staff picks)
The worst gaming trends of 2012
The best MMOs of 2012
12 of the best games for your new mobile device
The best video game trailers of 2012
The biggest gaming disappointments of 2012
The best video game soundtracks of 2012
The biggest gaming surprises of 2012
Top 15 mobile games of 2012
2012′s most innovative game ideas
Top gaming technologies of 2012
5 of the best original games of 2012
The best indie games of 2012
The video game industry’s 2012 holiday cards

News:
Blizzard: ‘We are going back to the drawing board’ for team deathmatch in Diablo III
International Game Developers Association appoints new executive director
This week in The Nintendo Download: Wii U discounts, Lost Levels, and Mega Man
Nintendo uploads tip videos for New Super Mario Bros. U to YouTube
Nintendo secures the patent for a specific use of the Wii U’s dual-screen functionality
How to gain early access to the Dead Space 3 demo
Microsoft launches first game for iPhone, iPad with Xbox Achievements
Where to buy Minecraft: The Story of Mojang documentary without DRM

Previews:
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct is an ambitious shooter that’s faithful to the show (preview)

Pieces of flair:
How Canada has become America’s mobile app guinea pig
A tale of two zombie games: The Walking Dead vs. The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct
5 worse BioShock Infinite covers
How major MMOs are celebrating Christmas in-game (gallery)
The many major missteps of Far Cry 3
Outlandish factoids from Street Fighter’s expanded universe (gallery)

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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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This was an outstanding year for video game music. Professional musicians from various genres all contributed pieces to very unusual places, and many up-and-coming indie composers stole our hearts with their emotional scores. In fact, it’s pretty difficult to find a game with a bad soundtrack these days.

Below is GamesBeat’s choices for the best soundtracks of 2012. It’s an eclectic mix of indie, dubstep, and classical composition that aptly reflects this year’s dynamic music scene.

But because this was such a big year for soundtracks, we also have a few honorable mentions, so be sure to check those out, too.

The Best Video Game Soundtracks of 2012

10. Max Payne 3
Composer: Health

Few songs are quite as lingering as “Tears” on the Max Payne 3 soundtrack. “Tears” lingered in the background of numerous commercials for the game, often playing while the down-and-out protagonist walked away from explosions. It’s an apt summation of the game’s sound and inspires thoughts of edgy spy dramas and sweaty action flicks.

Pairing “Tears” with other tracks from the album like 9 Circulos and Combat Drugs, the Max Payne 3 soundtrack expertly sets the scene of a scumbag ex-cop doing bad things in South America.

9. Mass Effect 3
Composers: Cris Velasco, Sascha Dikiciyan, Clint Mansell, Sam Hulick, Christopher Lennertz, Faunts

Mass Effect has always had a clean, space-age feel to its music, and Mass Effect 3 takes that to a new level. None of its music is overly bombastic, but you do feel a sense of urgency throughout. Melodic, determined pieces inspire us to take in-game decisions very seriously, and you can definitely feel the weight of your choices hanging in the air around you while listening to this score.

8. Skylanders Giants
Composer: Lorne Balfe

Lorne Balfe’s most notable compositions feature prominently in splashy action films like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Inception, but his transition to video games is where he really shines. Balfe scored both Skylanders games, but Giants is where his whimsical style really comes to life. Skylanders Giants owes its jaunty atmosphere to Balfe’s music, and it feels like a proper epic adventure because of it.

7) FTL: Faster Than Light
Composer: Ben Prunty

Is it possible to feel space? FTL is about exploration and space combat that’s also fiendishly difficult. Ben Prunty’s soundtrack amplifies the vastness and danger of space with spangly synth sounds that make you feel like you’re floating among the stars.

It’s also fantastic listening to both the exploration and battle variants of each song in the game. Afterward, you can also feel the expert sound mixing as you play FTL.

6. Borderlands 2
Composers: Cris Velasco, Sascha Dikiciyan, Jesper Kyd, Raison Varner

Borderlands 2 is a space Western, and its mix of airy, sometimes-mechanical tones bring that concept alive. While you scour Pandora for crazier weapons and combat ruthless enemies, the soundtrack is always there, sending out tension tendrils every time you trigger a fight or find a cool location.

Borderlands 2 actually shares two composers with Mass Effect 3, something that isn’t too surprising when you listen to the game’s more action-oriented songs. Velasco and Dikiciyan are masters of incidental tension.

5. Lone Survivor
Composer: Jasper Byrne

Silent Hill composer and creator Akira Yamaoka was on to something when he joined swirling, dreamy guitar sounds with metallic clangs. Lone Survivor’s soundtrack flirts with harsh, chaotic tones while wrapping the game in a melancholy melody. Listening to this soundtrack brings back very powerful Silent Hill memories, and it’s nice to hear that sound live on. The spooky score will unnerve you as you explore Lone Survivor’s gloomy environment.

4. Halo 4
Composers: Neil Davidge, Kazuma Jinnouchi

Few games have soundtracks as passionate as the Halo series. I liken them to Disney films such as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast for the emotional depth in the music alone. Halo doesn’t have discernible lyrics, but it inspires a wide spectrum of feelings. Halo 4 does this more competently than Halo 3 while sprinkling in a fair amount of easily dubstepped beats.

You should feel elated during some scenes in Halo 4, as well as very tense. This isn’t just because of the gameplay, but because the soundtrack plays well with the scenery to deepen your experience.

3. Fez
Composer: Disasterpiece

Fez’s soundtrack is a twinkly adventure all on its own, but pairing this with its sometime mind-bending gameplay creates a nostalgic feeling. Disasterpiece’s sound is best described as 8-bit epic and manipulates a similar electronic sound as Angelo Badalamenti’s work for the early ’90s TV cult hit Twin Peaks.

Fez’s score is inexplicably haunting at times, and many tracks would be just as effective if you played them over stock footage from an old lumber mill and a massive water fall.

2. Sound Shapes
Composers: I Am A Robot and Proud, Beck, Deadmau5, Jim Guthrie

Sound Shapes hit the pinnacle for interactive music. As you guide your musical blob through increasingly treacherous landscapes, your actions build the various parts of the song playing in the background. Building music as you play is an addictive holdover from rhythm games like Rez that works as you leap from precarious ledge to precarious ledge while avoiding baddies that want nothing more than to stop the music.

1. Journey
Composer: Austin Wintory

Game soundtracks exist to heighten emotion in any given scene. In Journey, Wintory’s music is often our only companion, a score drifting delicately on the breeze waving the character’s scarf. While sometimes mournful, Journey’s score urges us to embark on an epic quest fraught with danger and sometimes crushing loneliness.

Journey’s soundtrack is absolutely the most emotional and beautifully composed score for any game in 2012, and Austin Wintory definitely deserved the Grammy nomination he earned.

Next page: Honorable Mentions

Honorable Mentions

4. Silent Hill: Downpour
Can Silent Hill ever be the same without Akira Yamaoka’s soundtracks? Downpour does an excellent job standing apart from Yamaoka’s signature style while still invoking the disjointed musical universe surrounding the Silent Hill series. The only thing it’s missing is a song with Mary Elizabeth McGlynn on vocals.

3. Gravity Rush
If you’ve ever wondered what anime soundtracks influenced by French street music sprinkled with a dash of Star Wars composer John Williams sounds like, look no further than Gravity Rush. Each track amplifies its sometimes manic flying and world-bending platforming.

2. Persona 4 Arena
Most of the music in Persona 4 Arena first appeared in the PlayStation 2 role-playing game Persona 4, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome in 2012. Shoji Meguro’s score is incredibly energetic, lending itself perfectly to a fighting title.

1. Syndicate
Cyberpunk was once completely composed by Greek electronic and ambient musician Vangelis in my mind, but dubstep is taking over. Dubstep pioneer Skrillex’s contribution to Syndicate’s soundtrack is probably one of the most face-smashing sounds in 2012, but the rest of the music feels very inspired by it. If you want to feel like ripping out someone’s neural implant, I suggest taking Syndicate for a spin.

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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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Dishonored

This stylish steampunk action-stealth game borrows heavily from titles like Deus Ex, Thief, and BioShock, but manages to feel fresh thanks to its atmospheric setting. The fictional city of Dunwall — brought to life by a celebrity voice cast (Susan Sarandon, John Slattery, Brad Dourif, and Chloë Grace Moretz to name a few), a soundtrack from Dexter composer Daniel Licht, and the creative talents of industry veterans Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith — is as memorable as BioShock’s Rapture or Half-Life 2’s City 17. Toss in an intriguing mission-based storyline of politics and betrayal and an emphasis on player freedom, and you have the beginnings of a bold new franchise.

Read our Dishonored review

Dragon’s Dogma

Capcom’s attempt at a Western-style role-playing game was one of the sleeper hits of 2012. Its blend of punishing hack-n-slash combat and asynchronous multiplayer in an open fantasy world full of gigantic monsters proved popular with both players and critics. It debuted at the top of the Japanese software charts, selling over 300,000 units on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 at launch and making it the fastest-selling new IP of this console generation, according to MCV. A sequel is already in the works, and Capcom is teasing the possibility of a player-generated quest system.

Read our Dragon’s Dogma review

Dust: An Elysian Tail

It’s easy to look at Dust: An Elysian Tail’s Saturday morning cartoon art style and anthropomorphic characters and dismiss it as too childish or too “furry.” But those who do are missing out on a fun indie 2D platformer. Dust features a mature story about war and memory. The combat has depth without being overly complicated, and the game world is full of secret passages and hidden items waiting to be discovered. But what’s most amazing about this game is its background: Professional animator and illustrator Dean Dodrill taught himself to program and spent nearly four years of his life making the game a reality. His hard work paid off. Dust is a beautiful, charming game that’s sure to please anyone who gives it the chance.

Read our Dust: An Elysian Tail review

Journey

The joy of playing Journey isn’t in its length (it’s incredibly short) or its challenge (there is none) but in exploring a beautiful game world — set to a Grammy-nominated soundtrack — with an anonymous online companion. For years, Thatgamecompany has sought to push the boundaries of interactive entertainment, and Journey is its best attempt yet, proving that you don’t need guns, blood, or explosions to create an interesting and meaningful experience. Sometimes, simply jumping, running, and sliding down sand dunes with a friend is enough.

Read our Journey review

Mark of the Ninja

A “tribute to silent badassery,” according to GamesBeat reviewer Evan Killham, Mark of the Ninja is a masterclass in stealth gaming. Like Dust: An Elysian Tail, it’s a downloadable 2D sidescroller with a Saturday morning cartoon art style, but the similarity ends there. This game is all about avoiding detection, executing silent takedowns, manipulating darkness, and other feats of ninja-y goodness. Plenty of stealth titles are on the market, but a 2D one that pulls it off so well is a rare treat.

Read our Mark of the Ninja 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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Indie games are more than inexpensive alternatives to this year’s Assassin’s Creed and Halo; they’re mouthpieces for serious issues, bold experiments in game design, and canvases for discovering new artistic possibilities.

We sorted through 2012′s releases and chose the 15 strongest and most influential titles, in no particular order. Feel free to let us know which ones we missed in the comments. Or tell us we’re completely nuts. Whatever makes you as happy as these games made us.

Fez

Developer: Polytron Corporation
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Platform: Xbox Live Arcade
Release Date: April 13, 2012

We might as well get the elephant out of the room first: Fez is a smart and challenging puzzle-platformer with bad associations. Creator Phil Fish lashed out against gamers and Japanese developers in the spring, and he won few people over with his personality. Luckily, Fez’s charming style and engaging gameplay are as memorable as his antics, only better.

Fez puts a tiny, two-dimensional hero named Gomez in a world that you can rotate and explore three-dimensionally. The complexity of the space Gomez inhabits is what leads to the game’s many brainteasers, but the peaceful visuals and soundtrack encourage impatient players to slow down and reflect.

Although widely praised, Fez is the center of a big controversy — and host to criticism — because of the game’s glitches and the perhaps inadequate steps that Polytron and Microsoft took to fix them. Should we hold developers and publishers responsible when they fail to issue patches that improve the experience for everyone? Do we have the right to boast that Western games and development are superior to that of another country, especially one that’s contributed so much to the medium? Polytron delivered one of the best indie games of the year, but it also gave the industry something much more valuable: an attitude adjustment. Whether that’s made us better or worse is hard to say. The Japanese, at least, have made the most of the criticism — warranted or not.

Spelunky

Developer: Mossmouth
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360
Release Date: July 4, 2012

Before you yell that Spelunky is from 2009, take a look at the screenshot above. Or better yet, fire up your Xbox 360 and behold the differences. Spelunky on Xbox Live Arcade is a completely new model, not only graphically improved compared to its PC counterpart but also with more content. The action-platformer now has 1-to-4 player co-op and deathmatch, new music and zones, and additional enemies and traps.

The appeal remains the same: Explore and survive. Sometimes making it to the next area requires a careful balance of risk and reward, such as a decision to attack the shopkeeper and incite violence or leave the princess safely behind, for example. Sometimes it comes down to plain luck. And part of it depends on whether your friends are reliable or whether they’re all too happy to let you suffer.

Spelunky’s recipe is one of the most irresistible in game design. The promise of randomized adventure and secrets keeps players from setting down their controllers even though they’ve died countless times (and will many more). It’s a game that you’ll love to hate and an excellent case study of how to serve both PC and console crowds without losing what makes the experience exciting and original.

The Walking Dead: Episodes 1-5

Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games
Platforms: PC, Mac, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, iOS
Release Dates: April 24, 2012 through November 21, 2012

With how big Robert Kirkman’s zombie series The Walking Dead has become — leaping from comics, where it all started, to television and now video games — it’s easy to forget that so much of its success is in the hands of independent creators and developers.

Telltale Games has stirred the emotions of players for nearly a year, fascinating them with a surprisingly well-handled story and, better yet, bringing attention back to the point-and-click adventure genre. All five episodes have set a new standard for interactive storytelling. And the game could give the TV show a few pointers about how to create compelling character performances.

The Walking Dead is also a huge success for a relatively small independent company with a modest portfolio of games, including Sam & Max and Wallace & Gromit. Not all of them have been winners, like Jurassic Park: The Game. But this breakaway hit foretells good tidings for Telltale in the new year.

Retro/Grade

Developer: 24 Caret Games
Publisher: 24 Caret Games
Platform: PlayStation 3
Release Date: August 21, 2012

You could learn a lot from your mistakes if only you could rewind time.

That’s the challenge of rhythm-space game Retro/Grade, where you control a spaceship pilot bobbing his head to the music as you play events in reverse. You’ll need to pay attention to the beat as much as the colorful lasers streaking across your screen, which you “collect” so that when the action moves in real time again, you can dominate the battle. Each burst of energy within these lanes of light is your own ship fire, so when you suck up one of these, you’re also shooting it against the enemy in the present flow of time. You can also fast-forward using your rocket’s fuel to give yourself extra seconds to fix your mistakes.

It’s a clever side-scroller and twist on the shooter and music genres, and equally as engaging is Skyler McGlothlin’s (electronica music artist Nautilis) soundtrack and the zero-gravity, free-flying motions of the course you chart. Just keep an eye on the background as you spin and rotate your way through the awesome regions of space. It’s pretty cool.

The Unfinished Swan

Developer: Giant Sparrow
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Platform: PlayStation 3
Release Date: October 23, 2012

The Unfinished Swan is an abstract tale of loss and our need for closure. You play as Monroe, an orphan boy whose mother dies and leaves him one of her paintings, an illustration of a swan. When the bird escapes its picture, Monroe follows its orange footsteps through a world that you create one glob of paint at a time.

It’s a perpetual visual wonder, but as you progress, the game evolves and redefines the way you interact with it. What begins as paint becomes water, and so on. Discovering the unknown is the source of real magic here, not merely the acts themselves, and the things you find inspire your imagination as though you had stepped into a fairytale.

The Unfinished Swan’s fragmented images and themes might feel incomplete to some — almost like you’re touring Monroe’s mother’s unfinished paintings come to life. But as a whole, it’s one of the most original and artistic games of the year.

Click through for our next five picks.

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If 2012 has shown us one thing, it’s that video game development is truly in the “crossover era.” GamesBeat’s 2012 Game of the Year, The Walking Dead, was first available as a downloadable title, not a retail release. Other downloadables, such as indie-developed darlings Journey and Faster Than Light, garnered plenty of votes as well. And in our staff’s and contributor’s top games of the year lists, we even see mobile releases — like Fieldrunners 2.

Gaming has changed, and it’s nice to see that it’s more than just big-budget console and PC titles that have earned Game of the Year attention. Here are the top games as chosen by GamesBeat staffers and contributors. Let us know what you think about our picks in the comments — especially if you feel we’ve left something off our lists!

Editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu

XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Firaxis Games

Little green men — yesteryear’s poster boys for mysterious invaders from outer space — are about as menacing as Oompa Loompas armed with toy guns. XCOM’s little gray men, however, are scary as hell. It’s not the ashen skin, bulbous eyes, or creepy-crawly walk. It’s what these Sectoids represent: a greater threat that we are simply not equipped to handle.

In the strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown, we mere humans bring dull knives to plasma gunfights. And just when we start to catch up in weapon technology, the bug-eyed bastards bring bigger guns and meaner friends. These jerks even cheat with mysterious mind-control powers. Meanwhile, we’re barely keeping the checkbook balanced between research, manufacturing, facility construction, aircraft, and an ever-decreasing budget due to world nations pulling out of the program if you can’t keep them safe (and you can never keep them all safe).

It all adds up to an incredibly exciting and stressful experience. Each decision — whether it’s which tree to hide your assault trooper behind or which whiny country gets your last airspace-monitoring satellite — feels monumental and permanent. Humanity’s existence is at stake, and we just want to make it to the next month, when a few more pennies come rolling in and a few more traumatized soldiers get out of sick bay.

It’s a desperate fight. And boy will we celebrate when those little gray men are dead.

Shoe’s other picks for best games of 2012: Fieldrunners 2, Dishonored, Journey, Fez

Lead writer Dean Takahasi

The Unfinished Swan
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network)
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America
Developer: Giant Sparrow

The Unfinished Swan is one of the most creative titles yet for the PlayStation Network. It’s an interactive fairy tale where you lob blobs of black paint at a white screen. As you do so, you uncover part of a 3D space hidden within the white scene. Uncovering each scene is a mind-bending task, as you have to navigate perplexing puzzles. You explore the unknown, and as you do so, you uncover a new segment in a fairy tale about a boy who loses his mother. It is a touching story that will remind of you of the zany Alice in Wonderland. Ian Dallas, the game creator, feels that a child who is abandoned is like an unfinished work of art. But just when you think that the game has become predictable, it changes. In some ways, the story seems unfinished. But the title is a wonderful first effort for Giant Sparrow, a new studio bankrolled by Sony.

Dean’s other picks for the best games of 2012: Halo 4, Far Cry 3, Journey, Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Culture editor Sebastian Haley

Hotline Miami
Platform: PC
Publisher: Developer Digital
Developer: Dennaton Games

Indie sensation Hotline Miami is best described as the film Drive, but in a retro, pixelated and somehow even more violent form, with subtle hints of Rockstar’s Manhunt sprinkled on top. The short-but-sickeningly sweet levels allow you to carefully orchestrate your symphony of murder and mayhem, filling the floors with maimed corpses and spraying the walls with crimson, all while its surreal, Miami Vice-inspired soundtrack beats in the back of your mind. Basically, if you own a Wii or like looking at livestreams of kittens, this is not your kind of game.

Sebastian’s other picks for best games of 2012: Trials Evolution, Far Cry 3, The Darkness II, Final Fantasy XIII-2

Staff writer Jeff Grubb

Mark of the Ninja
Platform: Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade), PC
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Developer: Klei Entertainment

For these Game of the Year summaries, we’re supposed to look above and beyond the individual parts of a game. We’re supposed to write about why it is important, but in the case of Mark of the Ninja, it’s those parts that make it so special. Developer Klei’s 2D stealth action game for Xbox Live Arcade and PC is a master class in well-executed gameplay mechanics. Whether it’s a soundwave that ripples off your ninja’s feet to indicate how much noise he’s making or a vision cone that indicates where an enemy is looking, Mark of the Ninja is constantly communicating with the player. It then provides the player with a great controlling character to poke and prod the world with.

It’s not rare that a game makes you feel like a badass, but with Klei’s game it’s not about how powerful you are — it’s about how in tune with the environment your character is. You have so much visual and aural information that every moment is an opportunity for experimentation. You can spend 10 minutes laying out a detailed plan that involves deadly traps, or you can play the entire game without a sword.

In video games, we don’t usually get a lot of new ideas, we just get different takes on old ideas. Stealth is an old idea at this point, but Mark of the Ninja distinguishes itself by executing the concept better than any other game before it.

Jeff’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Trials Evolution, FTL: Faster Than Light

Copy editor Jason Wilson

FTL: Faster Than Light
Platform: PC, Mac, Linux
Publisher: Subset Games
Developer: Subset Games

I’m low on fuel. My crew raced around my starship like a colony of ants, hastily putting out fires as doors opened to the cold vacuum of space. The Rebels are closing in on me. Do I take a chance and see if I can gain more fuel in the next nebular cloud, or do I make a mad dash for the next sector and hope to find friendly forces instead of angry adversaries? These are just some of the choices the player faces in FTL: Faster Than Light, the indie roguelike that’s swept upon a number of Game of the Year lists in 2012 (including ours!). What makes FTL so compelling to players is that a take on Civilization’s “one more turn” addictive nature — but instead of furthering your game, you’re driven to see if your next attempt takes you closer to escaping the pursuing Rebel forces. And it’s this that makes FTL one of the most interesting, fascinating, and, yes, best games of 2012.

Jason’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, Crusader Kings II, Torchlight II, Dragon’s Dogma

Contributor Rus McLaughlin

Far Cry 3
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Something visceral. Something primal. Most shooters don’t have these. They settle you into a safe, comfortable role. Veteran soldier. Seasoned cop. Career criminal. A hero … or an antihero. But Far Cry 3 makes you run blind through the jungle while murderous pirates hunt you like a piece of prey. You’re just a terrified kid. Never held a gun before. Never seen anyone die before. Now you’re covered in your own brother’s blood and getting high off the giddy thrill of mere survival. Then you’re turned lose to roam two amazingly rich, open-world islands where you can really start enjoying yourself, slowly and cautiously picking your tormentors apart. Before you know it, the elation you get from destroying a criminal empire hardens into a different kind of drug: revenge.

That’s when Far Cry 3 surpasses the standard shooter fare. An aimless twentysomething becomes a killer of killers, as feared as the insane warlords he wants dead. Between coolly tense stealth play and straight-up gunfights, you become the predator, stalking intruders in your jungle and murdering them at will. It all culminates in a moment where you must decide just how much you enjoy that particular power fantasy. Enough to abandon your humanity? Maybe.

Far Cry 3 goes there. Solid gameplay — minus a weak-tea multiplayer — and incredibly detailed environments lift it far enough, but its secret weapon lies in how it takes you into that dark, primal place. And then it dares you to ignore your basic animal instincts.

Rus’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, Fez, Halo 4, Journey

Contributing editor Rob Savillo

Contributor Rob LeFebvre

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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 only caught Spike’s annual Video Game Awards on television, you may have noticed that the whole thing was pretty light on actual awards. That’s because Spike handed out many of the trophies before the actual broadcast started. One of those winners, Journey composer Austin Wintory, won Best Original Score without any warning while walking into the theater. “I was fully anticipating losing,” said Wintory. “I thought Jack Wall, the composer of [Call of Duty] Black Ops II would win. I saw him on the red carpet and told him that I was 100 percent sure I was going to lose to him.”

That’s not how it went down. In fact, Wintory quickly found out that the opposite was true. “It was really surprising to not only win, but to win two minutes after having that conversation with Jack while still on the red carpet.”

If you saw it happen — the preshow streamed live online and on Xbox Live — Wintory seemed flustered, but that was just due to spontaneity of it all. “I know they have a lot of trailers as part of their show,” said Wintory. “They’re putting on a full production that’s almost like an industry event, so I had anticipated that my category wouldn’t be part of the telecast — it’s not a sexy category like Game of the Year is — but I didn’t expect to get it on the red carpet.”

Wintory believes that Justine Ezarik, who presented him the award, was just as confused about everything as he was.

“I think they may have told her in that moment,” said Wintory. “We were both like: ‘Something is happening!’”

But the musician, who is working on the score for the next Leisure Suit Larry, didn’t mind getting his award in a rush before the show even started. “It was fun. It was all in the spirit of the VGAs,” said Wintory. “This was perfectly in line with [the big spectacle of it all]. I’ve had people ask me if it pissed me off, and I’m like, ‘Wait, you’re asking me if I’m pissed off to win an award?’”

The Journey soundtrack is up for a Grammy in the Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media.  When that show airs in February, it’s unlikely that whoever wins that award will find out from Joan Rivers on the red carpet.

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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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Soaring, moving, emotional — that’s how many players would describe the evocative PlayStation Network game Journey from developer Thatgamecompany. Dirty, sexy, seedy — that’s how many gamers would describe the point-and-click adventure game Leisure Suit Larry from creator Al Lowe.

They may seem very different, but both Journey and the upcoming Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded have something in common: Grammy-nominated composer Austin Wintory scored both games.

“Journey wasn’t the first thing I ever wrote, despite the fact that for most people it’s the first thing of mine that they ever heard,” said Wintory. “I’ve always really relished having musical diversity. It’s like having a diverse meal. If all you ever ate was steak, it wouldn’t be particularly special. And it’s amazing how a salad — not even a fancy salad but an actual mixed greens with some Italian dressing thrown on it — how amazing that can be.”

Wintory made history earlier this week when the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences nominated Journey for the Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media. This is the first time the music for a video game is up for this award.

Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded is an enhanced update of the original Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of Lounge Lizards. It’s a “mature” comedy game about a sex-obsessed 40-year-old virgin. Its creator, Lowe. returned to helm the production. He and the developers of Replay Games took the game to Kickstarter where over 14,000 backers contributed more than $650,000.

Doing something different after the Journey

“For me, jumping around to different genres has always been a musical obsession of mine,” said Wintory. He points to film composer Jerry Goldsmith (who wrote music for movies such as Star Trek, Alien, and Patton) as an inspiration of his.

“[Goldsmith] always explored different genres of music,” said Wintory. “In a six-month span, he’d do movies like Total Recall and Rudy.”

Those are very different films with very different music. Rudy is soaring and uplifting, while Total Recall is aggressive and adventurous.

“[Switching genres] is musically very important because it’s a palette cleanser,” said Wintory. “It’s jumping into the ice water after being in the hot tub … or maybe you should do that the other way around.”

That may make it sound like Wintory believes it is more important to do something new rather than have a familiar sound, but he insists the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

“I think we often use the terms ‘style’ and ‘genre’ interchangeably, but I think they mean two very different things,” said Wintory. “Everything that I write will always be in my style, because that’s no different than the way I speak or the way that I walk. You can learn behaviors, but there are certain coded, genetic traits about a person. That, to me, is style. Genre is like the outfit that you pick. You’re going to wear that outfit in a way that is you. I’m gonna look a certain way in a suit that doesn’t look like everybody else is a suit. You don’t suddenly lose the ability to identify me based on what I’m wearing.”

Wintory wants to apply his style to a different genre, and the genre gap between Journey and Leisure Suit Larry is yawning.

“I couldn’t have possibly dreamed up a harder left turn than this,” said the composer. “To me, that’s very exciting.”

Austin Wintory? Doesn’t he just write sad music?

That explains part of why Wintory is scoring Leisure Suit Larry. The other part is that he is a huge fan of the cult classic. But how did one of the biggest names in video game music end up working on this small Kickstarter project?

“It’s a huge credit to Paul, Al, Josh, and the rest of the team at Replay for even considering that I would do this,” said Wintory. “I’ve had this thing happen, where when talking with other teams about other projects, they’ve said, ‘the guy who did Journey? I thought that guy just wrote sad music? Which is hilarious, because hopefully that’s not the takeaway from Journey.”

But Replay, and specifically Replay Games’ chief executive officer Paul Trowe, didn’t think Wintory is a guy who just writes sad music.

“I had been looking forward to Journey for over a year before it launched,” Trowe told GamesBeat. “I had seen it at E3 and behind closed doors, and I’m a huge fan of Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago. I consider Flower to be in my all-time 10 favorite games. It has inspired me to make games outside of the box.”

When he finally got his hands on Journey, he fell in love with the game, its music, and its atmosphere.

“The musical score [of Journey], it is way more impressive than the music in any other game,” said Trowe.

Trowe and Al Lowe crossed Wintory’s path at the Video Games Live, a concert of game music where Wintory conducted the Journey score and Lowe played saxophone in a rendition of the Leisure Suit Larry theme. Trowe knew at that time that he wanted Wintory, but he talked himself out of asking him to do it right then and there.

“When we got the opportunity to meet Austin and hang out with him at Video Games Live during, I thought: ‘this is a ballsy move on my part, [asking him to score the game], because he’s probably going to say no. Who the hell do you think you are? I just did Journey. I’m not gonna score Leisure Suit Larry.’”

“Which shows how well you knew me at the time,” Wintory said through a laugh.

But Video Games Live passed with no talks of the composer coming to work on Leisure Suit Larry, but Trowe didn’t give up hope.

“I told Al that we have several people that would be good,” said Trowe. “I said, ‘I think Tommy Tallarico would be good, I think Austin Wintory would be amazing, but I don’t think we’re going to get him, especially for our budget.’”

And then there were tons of other suggestions from the development team. And up to 50 people who contributed to the Kickstarter volunteered to do the music. But in the end, Lowe agreed that Wintory would be the best.

According to Trowe, Lowe also thought that it would be difficult to get Wintory. The veteran developer believed Wintory wouldn’t want to follow up a “masterpiece” like Journey by slumming it with the boys at Replay Games.

But Lowe, who is a musician himself, approached Wintory and they hit it off and came to an agreement almost immediately. Importantly for the small studio, it is an agreement that fit the game’s budget.

“There is never a good excuse to do something entirely for the money,” said Wintory. “Creative work requires such a personal investment, that it’s actually immensely taxing if you don’t actually want to do it. And there are some projects you just can’t imagine saying no to, like Leisure Suit Larry, because of their creative potential and because of the wonderful people making them. Working out a budget after that is pure logistics.”

Now, Austin Wintory is the Grammy-nominated composer of Journey and Leisure Suit Larry. And sure, Journey is a powerful and moving score, but fans of Leisure Suit Larry have tons of love for the game’s classic theme. One of those fans is Wintory and he plans to use it and expand on it for Reloaded.

Replay intends to release Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded in March.

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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 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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For those of you who still purchase physical music, don’t stop believin’ and hold on to that feel – wait, wrong Journey.

Developer Thatgamecompany just updated its web store. Fans can now preorder the Journey score on CD for $15.98, or they can preorder the album and a T-shirt for $25.98. Composer Austin Wintory produced the music for Thatgamecompany’s beautiful PlayStation Network game. The studio will begin shipping out the preorders in mid-November.

Journey is a multiplayer exploration game released in March. Players guide a hooded figure through the desert and meet up with other players controlling similarly dressed characters. When you interact with another player, this charges special jumping and flying abilities that open up more of the world. The moody visuals, Wintory’s powerful music, and lead developer Jenova Chen’s clever mechanics together tell a story that doesn’t require dialogue or prepackaged video.

The Journey soundtrack is still available on Apple’s iTunes music store and the PlayStation Network.

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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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GamesBeat is giving away a signed copy of The Art of Journey, a book highlighting the visual wonders of PlayStation Network title Journey. Interested in winning our unsealed edition signed by Art Director Matt Nava and Game Director Jenova Chen from thatgamecompany? Then enter the giveaway by doing one of the following:

1. Leave a comment below stating your favorite thing about Journey.
2. Tweet the following message: Follow @GamesBeat and RT this for a chance to win The Art of Journey. Rules: http://wp.me/p1re2-2enn #GamesBeatGiveaways

You can enter twice: once in the comments and once via Twitter. Read these quick rules before entering:

• To enter via Twitter, you must follow @GamesBeat.
• This contest is limited to the continental U.S.
• Feel free to share on Twitter as often you like, but please only comment once. Duplicate entries on Twitter will only count as one vote.
• Our winner must supply his or her full name and mailing address (duh).
• The contest starts right now and ends in exactly one week (September 24, 9:59am PST).
• Void where prohibited.

You can read more about The Art of Journey here. The winner will receive The Art of Journey book signed by Matt Nava and Jenova Chen and a download code for the Journey original soundtrack.

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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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Journey, the best-selling Playstation Network title, is considered one of the most artistic games released this year. It’s the tale of a wandering vagabond traversing a magnificent desert and, through a unique multiplayer system, meeting with one other player at a time to harrow through the massive levels hand-in-hand. Sony is commemorating exactly that with an art book of Journey, and the company held an event in Los Angeles to show off the visuals from the game as well as the artists behind it. I had a chance to attend and see the art that helped create the game, its unique character and landscape, and the public reaction to it.

Oh, and we’ll also be giving away a signed copy of The Art of Journey, which you can read more about below.

The event, which highlighted the visual design of Journey from the artwork of Matt Nava, Art Director at thatgamecompany, featured dozens of different pieces, including screenshots, pre-game renders, drawings, and even live paintings courtesy of BlueCanvas, which co-hosted the event. You can see pictures from the event in the gallery below, which includes much of the artwork that is in the The Art of Journey book. The spectacle was completely open to the public in the heart of downtown, and anyone over 21 could come in and see the gallery or even play the game on one of three stations. Many patrons clearly demonstrated that they had no idea what the game was — some likely didn’t know what a Playstation 3 was — but even then, viewers exhibited a certain fascination with the sparkling desert, the strange armless character that always seemed to stare into the distance, and the odd portraits of creatures unknown.

The gallery was a success. Nava and Jenova were busy signing copies of The Art of Journey most of the night, and a constant stream of newcomers shuffled in to see what was happening or to purchase the first copies of the art book. You can learn more about the creation of the book in the video below.

The Art of Journey will release later this month for $60 through BlueCanvas and other retailers, but the publisher has not set a hard release date yet. The book includes over 150 pages of art from the game, most of which aren’t screenshots, as well as a number of 3D augmented-reality simulations through a free smartphone app. Some pictures of those in action are in the gallery below. Finally, every copy of The Art of Journey includes a free download of the Journey soundtrack through the Playstation Network.

Interested in winning a copy of The Art of Journey, signed by Art Director Matt Nava and Game Director Jenova Chen? Click here to learn more!

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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 third installment in Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead series lands on PlayStation Network today and PC, Mac, and Xbox Live Marketplace tomorrow.

Those looking to buy the episode on the App Store will have to wait a little longer. But this week, players can purchase Walking Dead: The Game for $4.99, which includes the first episode, A New Day. Buyers also have the option to preorder parts two through five as an in-app purchase for $14.99. Telltale will release those on a rolling basis.

The new Episode 3 — Long Road Ahead will deliver the most heartbreak so far, senior director of marketing Richard Iggo told GamesBeat earlier this month.

A New Day isn’t so easily forgotten, though. Telltale Games announced today that the debut release is a nominee for “Best Downloadable” in this year’s Golden Joystick Awards. The game is contending with the likes of Journey, Skullgirls, and Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition. Voting ends October 22.

Last year, Minecraft won “Best Downloadable,” with Limbo and Dead Nation following close behind.

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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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Some games are so pretty that they need to make a book about it. Such is the case with Thatgamecompany’s exploration-focused adventure title Journey.

Sony is collaborating with the developer to commemorate Journey’s evocative visual style in a new art book that will release in September. The game’s original art director, Matt Nava, is writing and designing what the team has dubbed The Art of Journey.

Nava littered the tome with pre-production character design, early location sketches, and many works of fan art produced by people who love the game. Additionally, Sony is working with a company call Daqri to produce an augmented reality companion app for the book.

Fans can point their tablets at certain pages to see fully rendered 3D manifestations of in-game models using Darqi’s 4D platform.

After releasing Flow and Flower, Thatgame company had its biggest success when Journey became the fastest-selling title on the PlayStation Network service.

Beginning August 28, Sony will begin selling Journey Collector’s Edition, which will collect all three of Thatgamecompany’s titles on a Blu-ray disc. This is the first time that Flow, Flower, or Journey will ever be available on a piece of physical media. Journey Collector’s Edition will be available at retail for $29.99.

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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, Microsoft dropped the price on the Kinect motion-sensing controller, we asked an artificial intelligence about its opinions on gaming news, and Zynga set aside a pile of stock for its employees.

You’ll also find previews for Harold, NBA Baller Beats, and Wild Blood.

News

• The DeanBeat: OnLive’s fall from grace shows the wrong way to fall apart
• Mixing politics & consoles: Xbox Live launches ‘Election 2012 Hub’ channel
• Kixeye steals a general manager from Zynga, rescuing him from the ‘dark side’
• Creators of Shoot Many Robots and Jack Lumber team up for new project
• Ubisoft wants Assassin’s Creed fans to stop virtual murdering long enough to vote
• Lumosity raises an additional $31.5M to study and improve cognitive abilities through games
• Microsoft’s Kinect motion controller gets a $40 price drop
• Social gaming startup Playdemic receives $3 million in funding from IBM founder’s family
• Goko pulls down online game portal after high-publicity launch
• Zynga sets aside a huge pile of low-priced stock for employees

Mobile news

• Obama and Romney duke it out in new iOS game from Infinity Blade developer
• Forget Facebook. Kabam is launching its next big game on iOS and Android
• Developers of Carcassonne for iOS release latest complicated card game adaptation: Lost Cities
• Rocklive pivots from iOS, Mike Tyson, and its garage to social games
• Fusing Silicon Valley and toys, Nukotoys finally launches its playing-card apps
• Discovery Bay Games nabs $15M from Logitech, Trilogy to improve iOS gaming with accessories

OnLive

• OnLive owed $30M to $40M to its creditors before insolvency (updated)
• Cloud-gaming service OnLive reveals details behind its asset sale and new investor
• Confirmed: OnLive’s assets sold to another company
• Breaking: OnLive confirms it will not be closing down, sells assets [update #4]

Developer layoffs

• Bad day for gaming continues as PopCap Games confirms layoffs
• Leaked memo reveals more THQ layoffs

Features

• How spoilers, bugs, and online play influence our buying decisions
• EBay gamifies the auction, with a little help from UC Santa Cruz students

Previews

• Gameloft’s Wild Blood is a brutal, Unreal-powered take on Arthurian legend (preview)
• Harold aspires to be the first game with the ‘quality’ of a Disney movie (preview)
• NBA Baller Beats reveals insecurities you never knew you had (hands-on preview)

Interviews

• Journey developer Robin Hunicke claims a more balanced postmortem than was reported
• MechWarrior Online publisher talks about the resurrection of the brand and the future of free-to-play (interview)
• Games get serious in education and corporate training

Pieces of Flare

• Pokéfans! Enjoy these stunning Pokémon watercolors
• Check out the monstrosities we made using Evil Controllers new create-a-joystick tool (gallery)
• An artificial intelligence program’s ‘opinions’ on gaming news
• Rare Pikachus: A look back at every Pokémon Center-exclusive handheld console
• Puzzler: Guess the games by their logo font (part 1)

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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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Choosing when to buy a new video game is a delicate balancing act. Story spoilers, fluctuating prices, and technical problems all factor into when we decide is the best time to make a purchase. But the right moment is sometimes difficult to foresee. As consumers, how do we know when to play to enjoy the fullest experience? What conditions make a game more suitable to play earlier or later in its lifetime?

The importance of preserving narrative

Harley Quinn’s Revenge, the downloadable follow-up to Batman: Arkham City, is in some ways a story spoiler that comes straight from the developers — not chatty gamers, discourteous Facebook friends, or rude forum members. So much as glance at screenshots for the extra content, and you can guess what supervillain Harley Quinn is upset about even if you aren’t familiar with the game or comics. It has a lot to do with the fate of a certain clown, and it’s arguably one of the all-time greatest moments involving comic-book characters in years.

“When we sat down to work on Batman: Arkham City, we knew where we wanted it to end,” says Paul Crocker, the lead narrative designer at Rocksteady Studios. “In fact, we were so sure of what the ending would be that we opened the game on a painting that showed exactly how the game would end. DC and Warner Bros. were behind us all the way, and our goal was to reach a conclusion that was right for both characters.”

Crocker says that Harley Quinn’s Revenge provides “more context and relevance” for those who have completed the main game and is still enjoyable for those who haven’t. Unfortunately, basic awareness of the DLC can spoil the ending for anyone who has yet to try either release – a result that contradicts Rocksteady’s goal with Batman: Arkham City.

“We work hard to blend old and new elements to create fresh versions of these characters,” says Crocker, adding that since Batman comes with years of backstory that anyone can easily discover, the studio had to find new ways to surprise players. “We really want players to be desperate to see what the ‘Rocksteady’ Robin or ‘Rocksteady’ Penguin looks or sounds like. But at the same time, [we don’t want to] spoil what will happen to these characters during the game.”

For some games, like Thatgamecompany’s Journey, the crux of the experience is story: the enjoyment of narrative from beginning to end. The sooner gamers can play, the more likely they are to avoid spoilers and other outside elements that would diminish the narrative. All it takes is as few words or screenshots to lessen the emotional resonance of a game. In the case of Mass Effect 3, a deluge of complaints tarnished the efforts and accomplishments of a whole trilogy.

Exposing flaws and strengths with time

Other games, such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Diablo III, improve with age. Story can still take priority (Skyrim contains so much lore that its devotees grouped its many in-game tomes into a single e-book), but much of the focus is also on gameplay…and how many patches are required to fix it. Postrelease updates add supplemental features like Kinect voice support and address serious issues, such as prevalent bugs. Developers struggle to play catch-up and maintain the massive worlds they’ve built, and before they can launch add-ons or introduce expansions, they have to get their game in working condition.

Bethesda still isn’t happy with Skyrim’s performance on the PlayStation 3, so it’s delayed the release of the Dawnguard DLC on the system. And Blizzard is only now implementing an update for Diablo III (patch 1.04) that will provide a more sustainable end-game experience than item hunting alone. Waiting until a game is stable and reliable can be smarter than slapping down $60 on its release day.

Blockbuster releases aren’t the only games that require time to mature. Polytron Corporation’s indie puzzle-platformer Fez on XBLA was host to a torrent of technical problems, and then its major patch failed, causing more headaches.  The developer pulled the patch on June 22, the same day it went public, and then brought it back on July 19.

Sometimes publishers will abandon problematic games completely, so even the most serious complaints will remain unresolved. Atlus might have promptly fixed the lag issues affecting the Xbox 360 version of its recently released Persona 4 Arena, but Konami disappointed its audience on the same platform by canceling an important patch for Silent Hill HD Collection.

Some genres are fussier than others. Fighting games take time to reveal their inner workings, and a good fighter will remain fun, playable, and well balanced years after its debut. Because these games thrive on player-versus-player dynamics, character matchups, and the depth of move combinations and possibilities, they’re more difficult to parse from the onset. A few rounds with another player won’t assess their real strengths, and these games reach their prime when their communities do. Dedicated players compete in tournaments for years after a game’s release.

Early expiration dates

Of course, sometimes a game’s true experience can erode fast, especially when it offers limited opportunities.

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Robin Hunicke (pictured below) gave a presentation at GDC Europe last week entitled “The Long Journey,” a postmortem on the making of Journey, the popular indie game for the PlayStation Network and developed by Thatgamecompany. Her presentation was reported by several high-profile websites as more negative than anything else, and GamesBeat thought it would be a good idea to check in with her to see if there was more to the story.

Hunicke’s talk illuminated some basic realities about making high-profile games — even short, affordable, downloadable ones like Journey. Hunicke was Journey’s executive producer, with a talented team of seven to 12 creative people working with her during development. Her talk covered the ups and downs that occured during the game’s production, starting with a green light from Sony and continuing through prototypes, slipping schedules, team personalities, inspirations, and reinvestment by the team. The process doesn’t sound easy, and Hunicke related many harrowing moments during production. It ends on a positive note, though, aimed at inspiring other indie game developers while keeping them grounded in the realities of production at the same time.

Journey is the best-selling game of all time on the PlayStation Network (PSN). It is a nonviolent story about a being who makes a journey through beautiful landscapes to the top of a mountain. It has no dialogue, and its uniqueness underscores the quality of the relatively small game development team that built it over several years.

GamesBeat: Your presentation had a good amount of counterbalance between positive points, and points of challenge. Why do you think the press focused so much on the negative? Do you think your presentation predisposed people to think that things went horribly wrong? Or is it more of a “bad news sells” situation? Or something totally different?

Robin Hunicke: Working on the talk, we knew it had to present both sides of the story. It would be easy to focus on our successes, and avoid discussing our struggles. But that would not be as helpful to other developers who wanted to try making experimental games themselves. Mistakes are how you learn!

In the end, the message of the talk is that making experimental games is worth it — even if the process is difficult at times. There are things you can avoid doing to remove obstacles, and others you can do to better your chances of success, such as playtesting regularly, focusing on the player’s experience, being open to the unknown, or asking hard questions about your designs. But more than anything, it takes determination. Sticking with it even when the problems are hard to solve.

Perhaps that’s just…too simple a message? Too undramatic?

GamesBeat: If you could go back and redo your presentation, would you? What, ideally, would you like audiences to know about your perspective on the process of making Journey?

Hunicke: I would not change it one bit. The talk was interesting to put together and very rewarding to give. Going over old notes, talking to the team about our struggles and triumphs — it was a chance to distill our experience into something singular. To express our belief that we can all work to build games, with passion, that push the medium forward.

I asked for a show of hands at the start of the talk — and nearly every person in the audience had played Journey. What’s more, most felt it was a meaningful experience. Afterward, many approached or wrote me to express their thanks and continued support of experimental development. What more could one ask for?

GamesBeat: Much of the talk focuses on specific solutions to challenges you faced as a team, such as “man dates” and enforced schedules, like a 10 a.m. start time. Do you think these could be implemented early on in the development of a new game? Should they become part of the process, or only used when needed?

Hunicke: Each team has its own beat, issues, and needs. If communication and coordination are among its issues, then regular 1-on-1 communication between leads and core hours are both really helpful tools for closing those gaps!

Ideally, though, a team evolves its process as problems arise. Change is the result of dialogue about which old habits need to change and which are cultural touchstones that give the team unique strengths. The most important thing is to have an open conversation, and an open mind, about the process and an unflinching focus on the ultimate goal of your game, day after day.

GamesBeat: At the end of the talk, you use the “5 Wrong, 5 Right” model. Do you think a “What went right during the making of Journey” piece would help set things straight? Or was the process a little more wrong than right? How would you characterize it to a stranger in an elevator?

Hunicke: Honestly, this talk was written for the people who attended it, and perhaps the video will inspire other perspectives. Who knows — perhaps we’ll reprise the talk at GDC in the spring, adding more technical detail; there’s plenty I couldn’t cram into this version. As for the takeaway — people who accomplish great, inspiring, or unexpected things often give the same, powerful advice: Choose your goal, and don’t give up till you get there.

Our goal was to redefine what online multiplayer game experiences could be, and we were dedicated to accomplishing that goal. It inspired our best ideas, carried us through dark times, and lead us to the light. And in the end, Journey’s production was exactly what it needed to be…and a mirror of the game itself. Often beautiful, challenging at times, ultimately transformative.

Isn’t that what life is really about?

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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 time is ripe for independent studios; they can make any beautiful, inspiring idea into a game and expect it to sell. Developer Thatgamecompany took players on a wordless adventure with Journey, and Playdead’s Limbo made us ponder what happens to us after death. An indie game that combines the rich culture of graffiti with a tale of overcoming abuse sounds like just the magic ticket. But even the most moving recollections can leave out a few key parts.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

A meaningful story
As far as contributing to the artistic side of the medium, developer Minority Media’s Papo & Yo deepens the collective pool and shows how powerful games can be as a means of expression. Creative director and writer Vander Caballero effectively captures the traumatic experiences of a young boy named Quico, who endures the ongoing abuse of an alcoholic father. When the boy escapes into a magical world, however, helplessness turns to empowerment. In the shifting city, which players can manipulate like a toy, we meet Monster, a seemingly gentle beast who turns into a demon when he ingests wild green frogs.

Visually powerful
Papo & Yo relies heavily on visuals to tell its story and emotionally invest players, and that means the game uses cues in the environment to point them in the right direction. It also takes the time to develop a complicated relationship between Quico and Monster through different visual narratives and scenes.

If players get stuck, the hint boxes located in convenient spots are a fun way of setting them on track again without spoiling the full experience. The way you use the boxes is cool, too. Quico puts one on his head, revealing a series of helpful child’s drawings on each of the inner sides. Exit this screen and you can run around wearing it for as long as you like.

Child’s play
The game’s five to seven hours of puzzles are short and relatively easy, but their simplicity doesn’t make them any less enjoyable. Like the architecture, the game twists on itself at every corner, and no puzzle feels the same. Each one is as distinct as the colorful graffiti strewn across the city walls.

The city itself resembles a living creature with humor and charm for its flesh and blood. You can pick up the fat frogs and splatter them on the wall, causing them to vanish. Small, box-like houses will sprout legs and wobble away to cartoony sound effects, and your chipper toy robot Lula boosts your jump with its jetpack. You can even use Monster’s giant belly as a trampoline when he’s sleeping. Little details — like losing a shoe or even finding stray soccer balls to kick around — give the game more personality and a genuine sense of change.

Finally, the minimal controls are friendly to gamers at any experience level, creating a prime opportunity for players to focus on the story as much as the gameplay.

WHAT YOU WON’T LIKE

One step back
Unfortunately, Papo & Yo suffers from a mess of technical shortcomings and problems that do impair progress and overall enjoyment of the game.

While the environment is a lovely sight to behold, the character models are outdated, and their lips don’t move when the characters speak. It’s a little strange, especially considering that they exhibit facial expressions plenty of other times.

Unnecessary handicaps
For a game that involves a lot of running and jumping from platform to platform, Papo & Yo would have benefitted greatly from the ability to grab ledges. This isn’t a game designed to test a player’s skill. Rather, it’s about communicating a message about a real-life issue and designing a game that immerses players in a fantastical and liberating world. Handicapping players isn’t necessary.

Neither is slapping a timer on one puzzle early in the game. This particular challenge gives players only so long to traverse a set distance and pass through a gate, but it’s the only instance of a timed challenge in the entire game.

Glitches and bugs
Another puzzle later on makes absolutely no sense, and to make matters worse, the area’s hint box is sitting on top of a nonexistent floor. Try to pick it up, and you’ll fall straight through the environment.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the game’s only serious glitch. You’ll deal with slowdown for the entire duration of Papo & Yo, but it worsens significantly toward the end. Occasionally, you’ll snag on the terrain when running, too. These two problems are annoying and frequent, but at least you won’t have to restart like with the game-breaking glitch mentioned above.

CONCLUSION

Papo & Yo is a welcome addition to the growing library of creative indie games whose purpose is greater than just engineering fun gameplay, but minor technical issues turn into major woes for Minority Media’s debut release. A little more polish could have saved players unnecessary grief, and it’s that kind of inattention that will keep some gamers away from an otherwise delightful game that’s full of lighthearted humor and dark monsters a little too real for comfort.

Score: 80/100

Papo & Yo was released for the PlayStation 3 on August 14, 2012. The publisher provided GamesBeat with a download code 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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Adam Boyes is the vice president of publisher relations at Sony Computer Entertainment America. His job is to convince developers to publish third-party games on Sony’s PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita game machines. Last week, he showed up on a panel at the Casual Connect game conference in Seattle, where he was recruiting casual game developers to Sony’s game platforms.

His presence shows that Sony is embracing the new social, mobile, and online side of the game industry. And that makes sense, considering that Boyes’ predecessor, Rob Dyer, is now the head of third-party publishing at Zynga.

Boyes used to be on the other side of the conversation. He is a 15-year veteran of the game business and former director of production at Capcom USA. He most recently served as president of Beefy Media, a video game production house he founded. He also worked in executive producer roles at Midway on titles like MLB Slugfest: Loaded, NHL Hitz: Pro, and Blitz: The League.

We caught up with Boyes in Seattle. Here’s an edited transcript of our talk.

GamesBeat: I’ve been coming to Casual Connect for a few years, and I’ve never seen a Sony person recruiting developers here — at least not on stage. That’s something new.

Adam Boyes: I’ve been coming here for many years. I don’t know if Sony has because I’m the new guy. I think it’s a new message, too. I’ve been with the company now for three months, and my background is more product development. I’ve worked with developers very closely, both at Capcom and previously. Getting to the roots and talking to the people who are making the content is always a big focus. And then also getting the word out on the fact that developers can publish their own content on the platform, which I don’t think a lot of people understand. Trying to get that word out, too.

GamesBeat: You get a different kind of developer here, too.

Boyes: Yeah.

GamesBeat: Not the kind that’s traditionally being recruited for console titles.

Boyes: Traditionally, yeah. But if we look at tradition, the traditional publishing model has changed quite a bit, too. Back in the PlayStation 2 days and the PlayStation Portable days, you had to be a full-blown publisher to get your content out to stores. Now we have the PlayStation Network and other digital destinations where people can purchase content.

GamesBeat: Is that a bigger priority, then?

Boyes: I think we see a lot of passion about development in different places, then. We’ve got some free-to-play games on Vita already, with MotorStorm RC and with Montezuma Blitz. We’re making a move into PlayStation Mobile too. I think, in general, getting out to speak with developers, whatever conference it is, is important for the PlayStation ecosystem.

GamesBeat: The one thing that seems like a big difference compared to iOS or Facebook is how frequently your developers can do updates and embrace the analytics model that works so well in social games — where people do their testing, tweak the design, and upload a change via a fast update process.

Boyes: I think we’re pretty open to being able to patch content and add content. As long as it’s data. The challenge is always when it’s an executable; then it’s a full submission. As far as patching small parts of data, we have some partners that patch multiple times through the life cycle. If they’ve installed the right sort of tools and tech on the back end to be able to monitor analytics, then they can patch data on a regular basis.

GamesBeat: That’s been a sticking point in the past with different platforms. Has that been freshly addressed?

Boyes: I think that’s part of the evolution. Originally, we had a different policy on free to play. Now we have free-to-play content and microtransactions. We used to have certain requirements for publishing. Now we have none for developers to publish other content. You have to go through the process of submitting for concept approval, but all of these things are things that have naturally evolved over the console life cycle. We’re evolving more than ever now because the industry is evolving.

GamesBeat: How many digital games are there now? Are you going to dramatically increase that?

Boyes: Obviously, PlayStation Store is newer than PlayStation as a brand. So the focus is to continually allow our partners to put their content out there, both digitally and at retail. We’ve seen great performance from digital downloads, both with PlayStation Store on Vita and with PlayStation Network. So it’s going to continue to be a focus.

GamesBeat: Isn’t there still a distinction between a curated platform and one where it’s published completely freely? Like the iPhone or Android?

Boyes: The PlayStation brand has become synonymous with high-quality content. But our concept approval process is very light in comparison to what it was in the PS one and PlayStation 2 days. Again, because it’s a different type of developer. If you look at Shawn McGrath and Dyad, those are the kinds of games we like. We weren’t able to tell that story 10 years ago on PS2. So it’s cool that we can work directly with developers and allow them the ability to put their content out there.

GamesBeat: Big Fish Games announced their cloud-gaming service with casual games at $8 a month. That’s getting interesting. 

Boyes: Interesting. For us, PlayStation Plus is a great example of something where people can get a bunch of great pieces of content on a rolling monthly basis. We see that as a big value proposition to gamers out there: to be able to play big, chunky, meaty games. Once you download them within that month, it’s on your system until you delete it. I think that’s a great differentiator for our platform.

GamesBeat: Do you look forward to Sony exploiting Gaikai in some way? Will that help your mission, as well?

Boyes: We haven’t really talked about anything to do with the Gaikai deal. We have cloud saves — we have cloud updates right now — but there’s nothing more to talk about.

GamesBeat: How much change do you want to embrace? You look at it and you say, “This is just not us,” or, “This is just not our place.” When people ask that, what is the answer?

Boyes: I think people’s perception of an open platform versus a very closed platform is definitely changing. If you look at back in the Genesis and SNES days, people forget that the PlayStation was the one that came along and allowed people to be a lot more free. I think it’s all come full circle now, as we come upon the sixth year of the PlayStation 3 console and we’re continuing to evolve our policies and improve the openness of the platform. I think we’ve done a great job of evolving policies and the platform and allowing these guys to have a direct path to the consumer.

I’m a big believer in allowing the consumer to have a direct conversation with the developer, so they can have a back-and-forth. What we’ve been doing around Pub Fund is a great example of that with Dyad and Papa & Yo, which is coming soon. And then even on the first party with Journey and Unfinished Swan. I think there are a lot of examples in the Sony ecosystem, both in the first-party and the third-party, where we’ve already been changing and evolving our platform quite a bit.

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Mitch Lasky has been on a roll lately. As general partner at Benchmark Capital, Lasky has been investing in a lot of game companies. And he has been doing it for so long that he has had some impressive payouts. Benchmark was a backer of Gaikai, which Sony recently bought for $380 million. The firm also invested in Riot Games, which Tencent bought for $400 million.

Lasky has also recently invested in Thatgamecompany, headed by Jenova Chen (creator of Journey and Flower); Meteor Entertainment, whose Adhesive Games division is making Hawken; and Natural Motion. These latest deals have given him insight into how free-to-play business models and cloud technology are disrupting traditional video games.

He has spent more than two decades in the mobile gaming, new media, and entertainment markets. Lasky previously was head of mobile and online at Electronic Arts and was chief executive of Jamdat Mobile, which EA bought for $688 million in 2006. I talked with Lasky about the changing nature of game publishing at our GamesBeat 2012 conference. Here’s an edited transcript of our fireside chat.

GamesBeat: Why is this such a disruptive time for game publishers?

Mitch Lasky: You have changes in digital distribution and business models. You have disruption of marketing channels. You have even broader audience disruption in terms of who you’re targeting as gamers. And it’s never really happened all together at the same time before in the business. I think we’re in a period right now where it is unclear what a publisher is or does.

We’ve come out of the packaged goods era, where publishing is a very obvious response to scarcity of shelf space, scarcity of users willing to pay $60 for a disc, [and] scarcity of development talent and production dollars that are able to fund $20 million to $30 million projects for consoles. All that has changed, and I think we’re still feeling our way through where we come out at the other end of that. I have some ideas about where it’s going, but I do think it’s quite uncertain where this ends up.

GamesBeat: So getting attention for a game — that seems like something that publishers can still do.

Lasky: It’s unclear. I think the value of what the incumbents offer isn’t clear. The incumbents, I think, still believe that they bring a lot of marketing reach to the table in terms of discovery. What we’ve found is that we’re in an era now where it’s so frictionless to find things that you want to find — the social media are amplifying hits to a higher degree.

We have Riot Games as an example. Here’s a game where we did zero acquisition marketing. We really did very little marketing of any kind for it. And in a period of two years, we have 42 million downloads. That’s the size of Xbox Live. That’s an enormous captive audience. A company can use that audience to launch new products that lower the cost of acquisition.

GamesBeat: I guess that game had as its hook the Defense of the Ancients mod.

Lasky: Yes. There was a very specific play where we said, there’s 10, 11, 12 million Defense of the Ancients players, playing a Warcraft III mod that was 10 years old at that time. We refreshed it — I believe we made it better — and the audience flocked to it. Then it had that kind of ring-the-bell effect, where it propagated well beyond that core 10 or 11 million users.

Natural Motion is another good example. CSR Racing launched 12 days ago. We’re on track to have around 8-and-a-half million downloads in the first 14 days. It’s sold more than 10 million cars. We’re selling more cars every day than all the car manufacturers in the world. And again, that’s with zero acquisition marketing. Everyone talks about discovery, but I really believe that great content finds its audience.

GamesBeat: You raised the question about the usefulness of publishers in this age, but you’ve also now just backed Meteor Entertainment, a new publisher. Can you talk about what your thinking is there?

Lasky: Sure. I think it’s two different questions. I think one question is the utility of traditional publishing, where the publisher is a provider of development capital, taking care of merchandising the product at retail, building physical inventory — the historical roles of a publisher. I’m backing companies which I believe are hopefully going to be the publishers of the future. So it’s not so much that I’m down on publishing as a practice — I just think that it’s mutating into something that we don’t know quite what it is yet.

GamesBeat: The definition of a store has also changed. I don’t know if publishers are also able to move into that store position as well, but what’s also happening on that front? There’s a store, a publisher, a developer — those are traditional divisions, but some things in the digital age get a little blurry there.

Lasky: You could make the argument, in the current environment, that the likes of Steam or the Apple App Store [or] the Android store are almost fulfilling a kind of publishing role. Certainly, they’re getting paid a much greater premium for aggregating an audience and facilitating discovery than historical distributors in the typical packaged-good reality. The distributor used to get 10, 12, 14 percent in most cases, but the App Store or Steam — they’re taking 30 points. So clearly, they’re viewing what they bring to the table in the digital environment to be more valuable than distribution. I’m not sure it quite raises to the level of publishing, but there’s an argument to be made there. I really think the app store is kind of the killer app for Apple and for Google.

GamesBeat: Cloud gaming, how did you get interested in that as well? Investing early in Gaikai — it looks like a pretty smart move right now.

Lasky: David [Perry] and I have known each other for 17 or 18 years. I was at Disney when he made Aladdin for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. We go way back. David and I have crossed paths many times.

He brought me, in the fall of 2009, this idea that you could stream games to a browser with a very low latency return channel. Actually, one of my partners at Benchmark at the time came out of the video processing world, and he looked at it. I showed it to him as part of the diligence process, and he said, this shouldn’t work, but it does, and so we should invest in it. So we did. I think it’s fulfilled its promise so far, and it’ll show its true promise in the hands of Sony.

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The battle of the press conferences at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is over. Now it’s time for Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to interpret the competing events and declare victory. The latest to do so is Sony’s head of digital games, Jack Buser. Buser says that while Sony showed some great new content, rivals “lost the plot” and forgot that  E3 should be about showing great games. Buser has been running Sony’s Home virtual world and social network for gamers and recently picked up responsibilities for the digital business. He is now senior director of PlayStation Digital Platforms for Sony Computer Entertainment America. We caught up with Buser at E3. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: What were your reactions to some of the other console press conferences here? Especially where it touches on your space, like in digital.

Jack Buser: I think we’ve had a fantastic E3. I’ve watched all of our competitors very closely. And I think we did a very good job of drawing a solid line in the sand here at E3, and standing up with our back straight as PlayStation and saying, “We’re for gamers.” We are for the gamer first and foremost. Everything we do at PlayStation, we ask ourselves first, “What’s right for the gamer?” The reaction to the press conference has been just amazingly positive. While some of our competitors, seemingly, are losing the plot, forgetting what built this industry. It was the gamer. And our press conference really drove that home. We showed amazing partnerships with our third parties. We showed incredible titles from our first parties. Last of Us, you saw that? Beyond: Two Souls. You see these titles and they represent some of the…I’m biased, but these are the best games I’ve ever seen, and they’re exclusive to our platform. These are the types of games that gamers want, and they’re pushing what a console game can be to the next level. It’s not yet another rehash of the same old thing; these are truly innovative, genre-breaking experiences that can only be found on PlayStation. So whether it be from PlayStation Plus, or titles like The Last of Us and Beyond, God of War Ascension, our partnership with Ubisoft, Assassin’s Creed…. Everything we’re doing is for the gamer first and foremost, and I think that…I was proud to be a PlayStation employee at this E3.

GamesBeat: Tell us more about your priorities.

Jack Buser: So, starting with Plus, you saw our announcement during the press conference the other day. I just wanted to take the time to do a little bit of a deeper dive through that. Because this is truly a revolutionary new way of giving gamers access to an instant game collection for less than five bucks a month. When we announced that there were going to be 12 fantastic titles coming to PlayStation Plus today, the reaction from the community has been absolutely overwhelming. Titles like Virtua Fighter 5, Saints Row 2, LittleBigPlanet 2, Infamous 2, Lara Croft: Guardian of Light…the titles go on and on. These are all highly-rated games, some of the best of breed available on the PlayStation Network, and available to PlayStation Plus members for less than five bucks a month. We’re going to be rotating in new games all the time, so that gamers always have something new and fantastic to play. We’re really looking to surprise and delight members on a very regular basis with PlayStation Plus.

GamesBeat: What did the five bucks a month get them before?

Buser: Everything that members have enjoyed with PlayStation Plus, including free games, huge discounts, exclusive access to betas, cloud saves, and automatic updates, will continue to be part of your PlayStation Plus membership. What we announced yesterday, and what members are seeing today, is a huge amplification of the free games aspect of PlayStation Plus. We are truly positioning this membership as an instant game collection. You’re going to see us bring incredible titles to PlayStation Plus. The kind of titles that you’ve always wanted to play, and maybe you just didn’t have access to. There’s 12 of them, so no matter what kind of gamer you are, you’re always going to find something that’s great for you. We think that this is a fantastic membership and not just for existing PlayStation 3 gamers. One of the best things when you pick up a new PS3 is a PlayStation Plus membership, because all of a sudden, you have an instant library of games, right when you take the console home. If you’re buying a gift for someone who plays PlayStation 3, or someone in your family, a relative you don’t know exactly what game to get them…PlayStation Plus is a fantastic gift. You can buy the cards at retail or you can purchase online through PlayStation Network, through your console, and you can give your family member or your friend an instant game collection that continues to give them new games as long as their membership stays active.

GamesBeat: And you haven’t talked about how many people you have subscribing.

Buser: We haven’t talked about that publicly, but we’ve seen massive growth on this platform. I think a lot of gamers are comparing our premium membership to those on competing platforms, and they’re realizing that while others charge you a fee just to play online, we’re actually offering, as part of our premium membership, an instant collection of fantastic games and more coming all the time. And as we rotate in new games you can keep the ones that you’ve already downloaded as long as you’re a member. These are going to be fantastic games. We’re seeing a lot of gamers out there doing a side-by-side comparison and saying, hey, wait a minute, how come with this one it just makes the console work and over here I’m getting all of these fantastic titles? The response has been absolutely, overwhelmingly positive.

GamesBeat: Have you thought about doing more free-to-play games on this as well? In some ways you’ve already paid for this, but it seems like free-to-play is gaining so much traction elsewhere that…

Buser: Yeah…

GamesBeat: It’s a good thing to get into? I don’t know exactly how many ways you’d want to get into it, but…

Buser: Absolutely. One of the things that we’re doing with PlayStation Plus is, we are now, and always have been actually, but we will continue to constantly be in a discussion with our community. Asking our community what types of things they’d like to see as part of the PlayStation Plus service. Really, you know, we’re open to anything. So if we see our community asking for any particular thing, whether it be some aspect of a free-to-play game, or whether it be DLC, or what have you, we are absolutely open to this. We have a community management team as part of our organization that is constantly in a dialogue with the community, both from a qualitative and a quantitative standpoint, gathering this data and feeding it back into the development teams.

GamesBeat: That hasn’t really yet manifested, except maybe on Home.

Buser: With free-to-play? Actually, free-to-play, as you rightly point out, we’ve been involved with free-to-play since ’08 with PlayStation Home. That’s really served as a laboratory for us, as we’ve talked about over the years. For us to really learn how to deploy the free-to-play model with core game types, specifically in the context of a PlayStation platform, and actually here at E3 we’re showing Dust 514, have you checked that out?

GamesBeat: No, not yet.

Buser: Ah, perfect. Okay. Definitely check this game out. It is a triple-A first-person shooter from CCP, the creators of EVE Online. It’s an exclusive for PlayStation 3, and free-to-play. We’re feeding all of the learnings from PlayStation Home into CCP to assist them with deployment of a huge FPS that’s free-to-play right there on the PlayStation platform. This is really representing the first large-scale core game type, an FPS, that is free-to-play on console. It’s a super excting notion for PlayStation. Truly a first in the industry.

PR: And on down to the indie games, you know, that were mentioned but not shown, the Dyads and the Journeys…

Buser: You’re absolutely right, that’s a good point. As you may know, we’ve invested very heavily in independent game development because so much of the innovation in the industry is coming from independent game developers right now. We’re spending a lot of time educating independent developers right now that if they’re interested in developing games for our audience, they should know that they can actually self-publish on PlayStation platforms. While other platforms force independent developers to go and publish with some huge large publisher that’s going to take all their money, [laughs] we actually allow them to stay independent and publish on our platform. One of the most exciting stories here at the show from an independent developer standpoint is a title called Dyad. Have you played this?

GamesBeat: Ah, no.

Buser: Definitely worth playing. Amazing game. Created by one guy. He’s self-publishing on our platform; we actually have gotten behind this title financially with our pub fund initiative. It’s on the show floor. And it’s one guy. This game is getting just amazing reactions in the press. And it shows how even the smallest possible development team, one person, can create truly ground-breaking experiences on the PlayStation platform. You’re seeing us get behind this game financially, you’re seeing us really deploy the full force of the PlayStation marketing machine behind this title, solving one of the biggest problems in independent game development. You can make a great game, but it doesn’t make any difference if nobody ever knows about it. So again, that’s one of the great thing about building an independent game fot the PlayStation platform. If you deliver a great game, you can rest assured that we’ll get behind that, as PlayStation. Unfinished Swan is another great example.

GamesBeat: I liked that one, I guess that was also incubation by Sony’s Santa Monica studios.

Buser: Right. Journey, as you know, recently went on to be the best-selling PlayStation Network game of all time, just showing how these games not only bring tremendous innovation, but commercial success. For everyone involved. For independent developers. Popo & Yo is another great title that received an extremely warm reaction at last year’s E3, and the game has come so far. It’s tackling subject matter that you wouldn’t normally see a video game tackle, really breaking boundaries in that regard. So much excitement on the independent development. We’re very fortunate to be in the position we’re in. And finally, I would be remiss in not talking about PlayStation Mobile, which we announced the new name of during our press conference. Never has developing for a PlayStation platform been more accessible for developers. With an extremely accessible development kit, for around a hundred dollars you can get the development kit, you can actually go get a consumer Vita, connect it to your PC and use it as a platform for development, right? Just go to Best Buy or GameStop, pick up a Vita, and you can start building PlayStation games using PlayStation Mobile. This is amazing stuff, enabling entirely new independent developers to get involved building PlayStation games in way never before possible.

GamesBeat: You think this is going to make a difference in the wider console business?

Buser: PlayStation Mobile specifically?

GamesBeat: And indie games in general.

Buser: Oh, absolutely. If you look at the mobile games market, the combination of the PlayStation brand with the mobile games market presents such an exciting future. Not just for us, but for third-party handset manufacturers like HTC. Who can use the PlayStation brand to truly differentiate out their handset to customers. That PlayStation brand carries so much cachet with customers. In many ways it’s the most authentic brand in the games industry. To have that associated with the mobile handset really underscores its ability to play games on the go. At the same time, for developers the ability to actually create titles for a PlayStation platform on mobile devices enables those titles to be viewed in the context of the PlayStation brand, which for developers is extremely exciting. We talked some about this at the LA Games Conference the other day, we had some developers on the panel say this is one of the greatest things to happen to the mobile games industry. To see that PlayStation brand deployed in this area. It’s so exciting for developers as well. It’s one of these everybody-wins propositions.

GamesBeat: Do you still feel like filtering of titles is still good and necessary to protect consumers from too many games?

Buser: Well, I can talk about that in the context of PlayStation Network as it exists on PS3 and Vita, specifically, insofar as these are managed platforms. So as a platform holder, one of the things we do is we make sure that we have the best possible games available to our audience. We want to make sure that we enable the best games to come to that audience. We are very much interested in making sure that the games available on our managed platform are such that not only are gamers going to be happy, but developers building great games aren’t lost in a sea of knockoffs and frankly bad games. That’s one of the biggest problems out there for a lot of developers, specifically indie developers, is you are competing with just a tremendous number of people who are cranking out not-so-great games. That’s one of the great things about a managed platform, you can help elevate those games and really filter out the truly bad stuff to make sure that the great games rise to the top. That’s something that we take a very active role in with PlayStation Network.

GamesBeat: There wasn’t any word at the press conference about next-gen consoles.You guys had said you aren’t going to say anything, but…. Why did you not say anything? [laughter]

Buser: Nothing to announce…

GamesBeat: Is there a reason why you don’t want to? Is it the usual reason, that if you say something and it’s not ready then you dry up your sales for whatever you’re selling today?

Buser: There’s just no announcement, really. That’s not really why…

GamesBeat: It sounds like there’s still, again, this benefit of not having a completely wide-open platform where you can have hundreds of thousands of titles.

Buser: Specifically with regards to PlayStation Network, having this managed platform is a huge differentiator for the platform as a whole. Understand, there are still a large number of titles available over the PlayStation Network. There’s over 1500 games currently available for PlayStation Network. But we do take an active role in making sure that these are good games, these are great games that we are proud to put under the PlayStation nation, and recommend as a platform. It helps developers on a managed platform, to make sure that if they’re going to build a great game, it’s going to get noticed. On platforms that are completely, totally wide open, oftentimes independent developers’ titles just get lost. I think that’s one of the biggest problems out there: There’s so many different game platforms. There are great games, but nobody can ever find them.

GamesBeat: There seems to be this generation of online or downloadable games that are making people wonder: “Do I really need to buy the 60-dollar product?” League of Legends on the PC is a big one, there’s this Hawken game coming soon as well, and I guess Crytek’s working on Warface. How do you look at those kinds of titles?

Buser: One of the things that’s really cool about working in the space that I do, especially at PlayStation, is that we’re very open to disruptive innovation in this industry. In fact, we often embrace it, with open arms. Make no mistake, the Blu-ray, triple-A, blockbuster experience, it’s not going anywhere. In fact they’re getting better and better, as evidenced by our press conference, with titles like Beyond and The Last of Us, God of War Ascension, there are truly blockbuster, triple-A games that are made possible by technologies like Blu-ray. As a digital platform, we tend to be very flexible and open. And we have done a lot of experimentation with different types of delivery for game content. Everything from free-to-play to membership-based discounts to membership-based free games, as you see with PlayStation Plus. We’ve seen ad-supported games that have been completely underwritten by a brand and made available for free to our audience, and you’ve seen us test a large number of different price points. That is the great thing about digital platforms, is that we are able to experiment, to try new things, to learn, to innovate, to pivot. And then react to the feedback that we’re getting from the customer. You’ll see a tremendous amount of innovation come from PlayStation Network specifically because we are so flexible with the platform. We are doing things with this platform that you won’t see anywhere else in this industry. Because we know that we are in revolutionary times right now. We very much want to be a part of that disruptive innovation. We’re doing everything we can to make sure that new models like free-to-play, ad-supported, membership-based services, that these are fully embraced by our platform. We’re leading the way in these regards.

GamesBeat: I guess you didn’t really give an update on the numbers, is there an update on the PSN members?

Buser: Sure, I can give them to you, here’s the update. We are announcing: Registered PSN accounts, more than 100 million worldwide. PS3, more than 64 million units worldwide. I gave you the stat on games, 1,578 downloadable games since the PSN launched, that’s a lot. Fastest-selling game on PlayStation Network was Journey. Here’s some cool new facts. You saw the press conference: 80 percent of PS3s connected to the Internet worldwide, very high. More than 70 percent of PSN members use PSN weekly or more often, so very high engagement. Average hours PSN is used per week is 7.1 hours. Very long session durations. Two-thirds of PlayStation Network members play online multiplayer on PSN weekly or more often, so highly engaged, playing a ton of games.

GamesBeat: How about these non-gaming audiences?

Buser: Non-gaming activity is actually extremely high on PlayStation 3 as well. PS3 was reported as the top device for streaming Netflix, accounting for more than 30 percent of total usage. That came from a report in June 2011. I could talk about non-gaming stuff all day long. The first to bring Amazon Instant Video, sports applications such as MLB TV, NHL Game Center, NFL Sunday Ticket. You see us really blazing trails in the area of non-game entertainment. The big reason why is because PlayStation Network is part of the larger Sony entertainment network. We’re able to provide a greater variety of entertainment applications, generally first to PlayStation, because we have the power of Sony behind us. We have our own music studios, we have our own music labels, we know the space quite well.

PR: Here’s a good PSN Vita stat. One-third of PS Vita owners in North America downloaded Netflix and users are spending about three hours per week watching TV and movies. And more than 4.3 million songs streamed globally to the PlayStation Vita since it was available.

Buser: You will see other companies really spend a lot of time and energy trying to legitimize themselves in the non-game entertainment space because it’s not part of their company’s DNA. Nor do customers trust that they can bring that type of entertainment to the living room or on the go. With the Sony brand behind a PlayStation, our customers intuitively know that non-game entertainment is a core part of our DNA. It allows us to see the kinds of usage metrics that we just rattled off to you out of the gate. You’ll see services deploy on PlayStation platform and their traffic will spike tremendously because users know that this is a PlayStation, I purchased it to play games, but because it’s a Sony product I know I have the best of the best when it comes to entertainment, from music, sports, movies. We’re there, and we’ve been there, this is our backyard, this is our heritage. We’re seeing other companies spend a lot of time and energy trying to legitimize themselves in the space, and unfortunately what happens is they can very quickly lose the plot with gamers. That’s quite dangerous. That’s why we at PlayStation very much put the gamer first and foremost. We are interested in bringing the kinds of non-game entertainment to the PlayStation that our gamers expect to see. That’s why you see services like Hulu and Amazon Instant Video deploying on PlayStation 3 first. I always use the example of Oprah. Maybe our audience isn’t so interested in that particular show. But Amazon Instant Video, absolutely. That’s why you’re going to see so much focus on the gamer from us.

GamesBeat: Nintendo seemed to be organizing the Miiverse by the interest graph: the interests people have. Is that somewhat interesting to you guys as well? It seems like Facebook has the friend graph, but this interest graph is also doing well in things like Pinterest. It’s another way to organize social networks.

Buser: Absolutely. Okay, from a digital platform’s perspective, we take many different approaches to ensuring that the needs of our customers are fed back into product development. And also, the recommendations from our customers are communicated to each other. Such that their interests not only guide each other, but they also guide the development of products themselves. I split those into two broad buckets, both quantitative, whether that be quantitative research or actual hard data coming in from usage of the various services, games, that make up the PlayStation Network, to qualitative. We actually have an entire community team on staff that is in that constant dialogue, directly with the end customer, and then brought back in. It feeds directly into the development teams for our services. We are very, very sophisticated in this regard, and we’re spending a ton of time to make sure both the quantitative and qualitative data are being brought back in in a very actionable way, so that will guide the development of our content and our services.

GamesBeat: This info that Call of Duty is coming out earlier with multiplayer stuff on Xbox Live… I don’t know if the Battlefield deal is kind of almost a way to deal with that, I guess, but it seems like that’s an important edge that Microsoft has.

Buser: I think that Call of Duty is an amazing title, an amazing franchise for our industry. The Call of Duty community on PlayStation 3 is absolutely enormous. And with our announcement of Call of Duty for PlayStation Vita, I think we’re offering some really exciting stuff that’s highly differentiated for the Call of Duty fans on the PlayStation. PlayStation Network is able to do some very, very amazing stuff for games in general. It has become the most powerful online game network. If you see what’s happening with things like cross play between Vita and PlayStation 3, when we were talking about PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, the ability for a Vita player to actually have a game synchronously play with a PlayStation 3 player, to cross saves, which you see in titles like MLB, it’s incredibly popular. You threw out a stat, right?

PR: 20 percent of MLB owners are using cross play.

Buser: To even the ability for PlayStation Network to communicate outside the PlayStation universe, to PC games, like Dust 514, where you see Dust 514 actually able to communicate to the world of EVE Online on PC. You’re seeing PlayStation Network become the most powerful online game platform, and so you can imagine that we are going to leverage with PlayStation Network very much, with all of our titles.

PR: I think all the titles we introduced at the press conference. We’re showing plenty of great games.

Buser: Absolutely.

PR: That our gamers can look forward to. Any final questions?

GamesBeat: EA mentioned that digital is a way to offset the console transition. I don’t know if you also see it as serving that kind of purpose. There’s a natural decline in sales, we’re at the end of a console cycle, so you have new markets opening up, new kinds of platforms that aren’t dependent on that cycle. It could maybe offset that. Is that something you see as important?

Buser: One of the great things about our digital platforms is that they exist independent of any individual piece of hardware. So to use the case of PlayStation Vita, we very much used our network offering, which was first deployed on the PlayStation 3, as a way for our installed base of 64 million PlayStation 3s worldwide to carry over their digital identity through PlayStation Network very seamlessly onto PlayStation Vita. The minute you log on to Vita, all of your trophies, your entire digital profile, is right there on day one the minute you fire up your Vita. All of those great accomplishments that you’ve invested in all that time seamlessly transfers over on to this new platform. As the PlayStation 3 continues through its lifecycle, you see new digital platforms come online, like PlayStation Plus, which offer entirely new ways for you to access your games. The idea that you would have 12 great games available to you for less than five bucks a month as an instant game collection, this is radically new. So our digital platforms allow us to do all kinds of really interesting, innovative things throughout the lifecycle of any individual piece of hardware, and actually very much enable to us to bridge between pieces of hardware the way we’re doing today with PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. Absolutely. We very much think of our digital platforms as platforms, it’s right there in the name.

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