Alyssa Finley acknowledges that gamers have had to wait a long time for The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. But the vice president of product development at 2K Marin says it will be worth it. It’s been in the works for years, and Take-Two Interactive‘s 2K Games division finally announced last month that it would arrive in stores on Aug. 23 on the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.

2K Games showed off the game in June 2010 at the E3 trade show. At that time, it was a first-person shooter. Now it is a third-person shooter with strong squad combat elements. At any time in the action, you will have two squadmates fighting alongside you and taking your orders during the battle in real time. We recently saw a preview of one level of the game, where you play a federal agent who has to fight a clandestine war against aliens who invade the U.S. in the spring of 1962.

The Bureau’s setting, art work, and game style have all changed. It shows that a lot has been happening at 2K Marin, the maker of BioShock 2, in the past few years. We talked with Finley about the team’s design decisions and what the heart of the game is about. Here’s an edited version of our interview.

GamesBeat: How long have you been working on this?

Alyssa Finley: We announced the game back in 2010 at E3. We’ve been trying to iterate on the core ideas that we’ve shown ever since. You can see that there’s been a real evolution of the first-person shooter that we showed back then. We felt like the thing that an XCOM game really needed was the ability to use tactics, tools, and the team. We’ve been trying to bring the team aspect more and more every time we show the game.

GamesBeat: I only remember so much of what I played then, but yeah, it was more first-person shootery.

Finley: Yeah, exactly. It was a very investigative game. It hit a lot of the XCOM beats, but the one that it didn’t get was that notion of the interplay between you and your team. When you play XCOM, that’s a key part of the experience.

GamesBeat: What you’ve wound up with reminds me a lot of Mass Effect, the style that they have with the two companions and the wheel for commands.

Finley: Absolutely. It’s a great game. You see a lot of inspiration. We’re trying to provide the kind of narrative hub that you see in Mass Effect with our base, where you can go talk to people and see the progression of the war from the home front’s point of view. Also, from a gameplay perspective, you’re right. You have the command wheel where you can get a sense of everyone’s powers. The thing that we’re trying to push on is that notion of being the commander of your team and building fairly complicated plans that you can actually queue up and execute in the field, using those kinds of small team tactics. You really coordinate between the three of you.

GamesBeat: What do you notice about somebody who’s trying it out for the first time? I felt like I kept sending the two guys to the same place to do the same thing. I think I must not have noticed another way to separate them and send them off in different directions.

Finley: There are two different ways to control your team. There are the quick orders, which let you set a placement for both of your guys at once, and then there’s also battle focus, where you can select each guy on your team individually, choose a move order, and basically drive that pointer around to where you want him to go on the field. That lets you set up flanks, or you can take different positions and get very precise control of your guys. When you move them that way, they stay where you tell them to unless they’ve got a grenade in their face or something. They’ll try to execute the orders that you give them. Each of the agents is good by themselves – they have decent AI – but coordinating them as a team yourself is what takes it to the experience we’re looking for.

GamesBeat: The laser turret — that seemed very powerful. It’s good to either put it in front of the enemy, to hold their attention, or to just set it up behind them.

Finley: If you can get close enough. Each ability has a range, so you have to get a position on the battlefield that allows you to get behind their lines. If you can, it’s a huge advantage, but you can’t always do that.

GamesBeat: It also felt a bit like Brothers in Arms, with so much flanking going on. Except that game used a lot more soldiers. Is there a reason you have just two squad members?

Finley: A lot of it is to make you feel a connection to those guys on the battlefield. As you pointed out, that wheel can be tricky, especially if you don’t come in from the beginning of the game and learn to maneuver. We want the player to be balancing between enough power in the field to use small squad maneuvers, but without so many powers that it’s confusing to be out there. If you had six guys and you were trying to control them all in real-time, to keep track of them all in your head, that would be overwhelming. It’s one of the reasons that the isometric view in Enemy Unknown works so well. You can look at six guys – one over here, one up there – and thinking about their placement in relation to the enemies. In a realtime game where you’re tracking all that as it happens, that’s a lot of data.

GamesBeat: Do you draw from the last XCOM game as well? What have you been able to borrow from Enemy Unknown?

Finley: You can see some of those same UI elements. The blue shields and the red shields to show you when you’re in dangerous cover. We’ve tried to add to that as well. We’ve added the little ribbon so that you can not only see that a piece of cover is dangerous, but who is endangering it, so you can make plans around that. I would say that in general we take a lot of inspiration from Enemy Unknown. The one key difference between our games that there, you’re kind of like the coach of the team. You’re the commander sitting up there above everybody and you tell everyone exactly what to do, but you don’t really participate yourself. What we were trying to add to the XCOM experience was that feeling of having your stake in the battlefield as well. You have to plan for your team and be the field commander responsible for these two other guys, and you have some bullets in the game yourself. You can bring your own tactics and your own skill to the party.

GamesBeat: The art style does look different compared to what I remember from a couple of years ago. How did you change that?

Finley: In 2010, we were very Norman Rockwell-inspired. At that point the game was still set back in the ‘50s. We were trying to get that whole “2.5 kids, a dog, and a car in the driveway” vibe, that family Americana vibe. When we moved the setting to the ‘60s, we wanted to start playing more into the paranoia and the edginess of the Cold War era, where the government could be engaged in covering up incidents in small towns, because America must never know what almost happened to them. In order to keep up the façade of America being this strong country in the face of whatever’s happening—We certainly didn’t want to let the U.S.S.R. know what was going on, because that might give those guys the inspiration to come in and invade themselves, if they knew we were already weakened. So giving us that ‘60s setting turned the art style toward a bit more of a realistic vibe than the Norman Rockwell style. We were able to play with a different set of ideas and try to bring them to life.

GamesBeat: It has a lot of color. I seem to recall less color in the earlier demos. The aliens here seem more colorful, in an almost cartoonish way. How did you change that?

Finley: With the aliens, we take a lot of inspiration from Enemy Unknown and classic XCOM. The Muton wears his purple and green proudly. [laughs] We don’t want to take that away from him. As far as the overall architecture, you’re right. We had more muted colors going on in the Americana, Norman Rockwell style. There’s a ‘60s style of architecture called Googie. It’s things like the space-age-looking diner signs you see from that period — neon signs with big and bold outlines. It’s very colorful, and we think it really says “’60s.” We pulled a lot of inspiration from that in the way the palette works in general.

GamesBeat: What inspired that change in the first place? Was that a sort of pivot in some sense? To me it looks dramatically different, but I don’t know if that was a steady evolution for you guys, or if you went to a pretty far point and then threw it away to start over.

Finley: When you’re in it, it always feels like an evolution. I totally understand from your point of view, because we’ve only showed the game a couple of times. The biggest guiding light we’ve had has been, “How do we make this game feel more XCOM?” I think we hit that vibe in 2010 with things like the base and the notion of research. There were a lot of ideas there that were very XCOM. But we didn’t have a full XCOM experience. We’ve been trying to bring those ideas into the field as well.

That’s been the biggest driver of every change that we’ve made. How do we live up to the promise of this franchise? It’s a franchise that people are passionate about. They have strong beliefs about what it ought to be. Our biggest goal is to make a game that lives up to that, but opens it up to folks who maybe, for whatever reason, don’t like turn-based games. Or maybe they don’t think they like turn-based games. If we open up the XCOM franchise to those guys, maybe the experience they have in our game will lead them to take another look and check out the more classic versions.

GamesBeat: You guys came from BioShock 2. Do you have some heritage that came from that as well?

Finley: The big thing that’s a sort of through-line for 2K Marin is a strong belief that weaving a narrative alongside the gameplay is a really good way to tell a story. That’s why we went to the origin story and tried to make sure that—XCOM isn’t a game known for its story. “Look! There’s a global war! Aliens! Stop them!” That’s awesome. It makes for a great game. But we wanted to say, “What’s an interesting take on this universe that hasn’t been explored before?” So the narrative is one key thing for us.

The other is the notion of player customization and choice. In BioShock 2 we wanted to make sure that folks had the chance to play the game in a way that made them happy, in a way that made them feel like they customized it. For me, as a BioShock player, I like to have bees. I like to be a very passive player, sitting in the corner and letting my plasmids do all the work for me. I think it’s not a coincidence that I’m a big fan of the Engineer in XCOM. Placing those mines and those turrets works the flanks for me. I can work with my team and have a really good sense of a local battle, but use tools to help out on the edges without taking as much risk. I can play how I choose to play.

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Everybody hates an opportunistic terrorist. With every agency in America focused on radical group The Engineers and their resource-destroying agenda, somebody thought they could sneak into India and steal a nuke. Wrong. Fourth Echelon noticed. And they’ve got enough spare time to administer some correction to the offending parties.

So when the op comes up in conversation, Fourth Echelon director and lead agent Sam Fisher sets a course for South Asia. That’s how the co-op side missions work in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist (due Aug. 20 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PC). Wander the decks of the Paladin, your airborne mobile HQ, and chat up your 4E team Mass Effect-style, and opportunities for a little side work abound. The India job, appropriately dubbed Missile Plant, comes from ex-CIA operator Briggs, Sam’s backup out in the field. Pairing up with another player casts you as Sam or Briggs. Dealing with ancillary threats like this puts extra cash into Fourth Echelon’s budget, enabling you to upgrade Sam’s gear, your multiplayer loadouts, and the Paladin itself for even more in-mission advantages.

And if I take Missile Plant as representative of Blacklist’s co-op missions, it shows off a lot of smart choices … along with a few serious flaws.

Just passing through

Sam and Briggs start off outside the Indian missile base, where guards peacefully roam as if nobody’s stealing fissionable material under their noses. India is technically an ally, so the rules of engagement keep me and my co-op partner to strict nonlethal methods only, and the mission fails instantly if we’re spotted. We’ve got stun bolts, EPM grenades, and enough sticky noisemakers to lure every gullible solider around to some empty corner of the map.

The mission structure breaks down into five smallish areas, not unlike the recent Hitman: Absolution. Find the door, traverse the next section, find the next door, repeat. Missile Plant starts off simple enough, with an outer guard post to sneak around and a few human obstacles to beat down. The next area opens up to the inner parameter and barracks, guard towers with snipers, and more patrols. That leads to a tighter, fenced-in area with security drones we have to evade or disable. Destroying them alerts their controller. Mission failed.

Those all came off as classic Splinter Cell, if a little on the easy side. I strolled from shadow to shadow, took out some guys in my way, and tricked the rest into chasing decoys. But for a co-op game, there just wasn’t enough for two people to do.

The lone wolf pack

Indeed, my co-op partner — by his own admission — wasn’t terribly good at these games, so I ran point and cleaned house with only occasional support. It didn’t feel too taxing. The “no alerts” clause led to more restarts than anything, and that came down to stealth game trial-and-error rather than a proportional challenge. Mostly, threats lined up single file, and as the guy in front, I handled them. The exit doors required both players to activate, we found a shortcut via boosting each other up onto a ledge, and we had to evade those drones long enough to simultaneously flip switches, but a designer could remove those elements with a few mouse clicks. In every other way, this felt like a single-player mission.

And it’s a pretty decent one. The flow carried a good sense of escalation and varied the threats nicely from section to section. Finally, once we got inside the missile plant itself and found dead Indian soldiers, our handler took us off the leash. How and why a terrorist group left everyone outside unkilled and blissfully unaware struck me as odd, but let’s go with it for now. Lethal force: authorized. From there on in, our options opened up to any play style we cared to employ, and a heavy shootout and escape closed the mission.

We went from completely silent to thunderously loud over the course of 40 minutes, give or take with restarts. No area overstayed its welcome; possibly one or two could’ve been longer. It made for a great side-mission … minus the need for a sidekick.

Putting the ‘I’ in ‘team’

Now, no lie — two skilled players in constant communication could’ve played Missile Plant like a five-act opera, sweeping each area in glorious tandem. In fact, several opportunities exist to pair up on Splinter Cell’s mark-and-execute system, where tagged enemies instantly die in a hail of silenced gunfire. My partner frequently didn’t accept invitations to double-executions for whatever reason (a very large prompt appears onscreen), but the times we did sync up made for some very satisfying results. Also, a new, heavily armored enemy requires cooperation in order to take him down quietly. One gunner must pop off his armored helmet while the second pops off his skull. Pulling that off really gives you a strong sense of teamwork.

Only it turns out I didn’t really need a team. I hope later co-op missions put greater focus on two-man operations, objectives, and options, with scaled-up threats and multiple pathways for several players. Not coulda/woulda/shouda stuff, either. I’m talking about an approach that makes working together inherent and vital from the mission design upward.

Otherwise, me and Sam Fisher  work best alone.

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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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We toss around a lot of fancy words when talking about the future of the game industry. But now one of the biggest publishers around, Electronic Arts, is proving that when it comes to digital, it’s more than just buzz.

SuperData Research predicts that EA, the publisher of franchises like Dead Space and Mass Effect, will earn most of its revenue from digital games by the end of 2013. That means focusing more on streaming and downloadable content. Revenue from physical products has dropped below $500 million.

This trend isn’t just happening with EA. A January report indicated that the overall digital market improved 39 percent from the same time one year prior.

This quarter is the second-to-last period that physical content drives sales for EA, according to the online-games market research firm. A lot of revenue will come in from Battlefield 4, which is expected to release later this year and increase retail sales to an estimated $539 million. Then mobile revenue across consoles, PC, and mobile devices will overtake the physical side by Q3 2013, reaching roughly $2.1 billion.

Companies like EA, Sony, and Valve are now focusing on making digital more accessible through hardware — like with Nvidia’s Project Shield, the PlayStation 4, and Steam’s Big Picture. It’s all about enabling digital content to overtake the traditional console-based environment of the living room by introducing new technology, new platforms, and more ways to play.

“We do think there’s going to be more digital business and digital download business,” EA’s chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen told SuperData in a financial earnings call last week. “But a lot of it will depend on when we release titles, when Sony and Microsoft choose to release titles. And in no way do we want to see the retail channel disappear. We think that’s an important part of the overall industry, and we want to keep that a vibrant channel for us long term as well.”

It’s about balance, and with more digital business will come a wider availability and ease of digital gameplay components due to better storage capacity, Jorgensen added.

Joost van Dreunen, the chief executive officer of SuperData, told GamesBeat that Electronic Arts is coming into the “digital revolution” well prepared. So what does this mean for gaming?

“I think it’s positive when large incumbents adapt to a new environment,” he said. “Sure, there are critics, but the leaders in the game industry have moved a lot faster to accept new distribution and revenue models than, say, the music or film industry. Perhaps most importantly, this benefits gamers, who now have access to quality games on a platform of their choosing.”

EA hasn’t responded to our request for comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making Kilo Squad more dynamic

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

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

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

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

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

Paduk’s biggest fans

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

Source: Microsoft

Garron Paduk

And the writers absolutely adore him.

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

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

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Telltale Games have become one of my favorite and most respected developers literally overnight. Recently, against my own better judgement, I gripped my controller with mixed anticipation and anxiety late into the night when I knew I would have to walk out my front door for work in the morning. Yet, even with the threat of extreme tiredness almost guaranteed, I had to finish the final episode of Telltale’s award-winning Walking Dead series. Having joined the “walker” bandwagon late with the television series, I was reluctant to believe any meaningful story could come from a series centered on zombies. Little did I know how emotionally engrossing the universe based on Robert Kirkman’s graphic novels would be.

After obsessively watching the television series from the pilot all the way up to the third season in a little more than a week (yes, seriously), I realized that if a developer could create an experience as heart-wrenching as the TV series, then it would be something truly special.

What sets Lee and Clementine’s story apart from literally everything else I have ever played is not just the superbly written characters but also the emotional impact that comes from every player choice. These decisions don’t just feel superficial, they present real conundrums. For me, the choice mechanic was far more refined than similar systems featured in games like BioWare’s Mass Effect series. The key to The Walking Dead’s choices is the complete absence of a moral code. Ultimately, you only answer to your conscience after making your decisions.

Perhaps I have grown tired of the bloated role-playing titles and rehashed military shooters that have released in a period where the current console generation is on the verge of retirement. Maybe my feelings might simply be a case of cynicism from growing older. One thing I am sure of, though, is that I have begun to value strong narrative above everything else as a means of holding onto my attention. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is probably the best example I can use to explain my convoluted views more coherently. Treyarch’s latest iteration of the COD franchise is, by all means, a magnificent first-person shooter. Yet, it is the first one since I started playing the series that I have simply lost all desire to play.

This isn’t because the game is bad (it’s easily as good, if not better, than previous entries), but upon reaching the halfway mark of the single-player campaign, I realized that I was just playing without any motivation. The arsenal of guns felt punchy, the locales were exotic, and I had the mindset of a soldier. Yet, despite all of this, I still felt completely disconnected from the game’s world. The Call of Duty series isn’t renowned for its resonating narrative, and regardless of how action packed everything around me was, I just couldn’t find entertainment in killing large swathes of grunts with little more justification than “they work for the bad guy who wants to make the world burn.”

Mass Effect and Eidos Montreal’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution are superbly crafted games, but even such widely praised titles felt artificial in their climaxes with awkwardly presented, arbitrary choices. Above all, I think what makes Telltale’s efforts so unique and entertaining is the nature of the story that they are telling. The characters’ struggle for survival is emotionally familiar, and that creates brilliant entertainment value. Just like in Kirkman’s novels, the zombies are simply a means to an end in telling a story of how extreme situations can fundamentally change a person’s nature. The characters are struggling in a fictional world with very real, human problems.

Undoubtedly, everyone has different tastes, and I would never expect or want everyone to share this view. As I have conveyed in this article, I am by no means trying to detract from titles that prioritize action over narrative. Above all, the games industry is desperate to prove it is capable of telling mature stories, but I think it has already achieved this lofty goal. The question that remains on my lips is: Can a game truly have both an enthralling narrative combined with an equally stunning amount of spectacle?

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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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You’ve probably seen gaming-themed valentines before (like the digital cards we received from multiple developers and publishers), but the ones in the gallery below are special. Why? Because I made them! I originally drew most of these masterpieces back when I was an intern at Bitmob (which later turned into GamesBeat).

I included all of the old valentines and a few new ones. These lovely cards feature characters from games like Mass Effect, World of Warcraft, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man, and more. Please share them with your friends, and let them know how much you care! You must expose the world to my artistic genius!

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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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Good or bad? You’ve got to pick one, and you need to be consistent or else instead of smiting your enemies with holy fire or damning them to the pits of hell, you’re left warming them with a blessed match or scolding them with an evil looking pothole.

That’s how most morality systems work in games: You’re presented with the choices between good and evil, which tend to have options that leave you either a saint or the kind of monster who eats babies … not because he’s hungry but because he thinks it’s a really good time. And you had better commit to this choice because otherwise you’ll miss out on the all the truly powerful abilities which are always bound up with these moral choice systems.

The question, then, is: What’s a better way to implement a moral choice system?

Well, we certainly have exceptions to the above framework: Mass Effect, for instance, tends to do a pretty decent job of making the Paragon/Renegade dichotomy into something that, at its best, is really an interesting choice between two different philosophies. And the Renegade Shepard, to the best of my knowledge, never once eats a baby. We should laud this, as it is leagues ahead of many, but even the first Mass Effect falls into the trap of absolutely requiring a commitment to one philosophy or the other. If you aren’t committed enough, your reputation as a middle-of-the-road sort of fellow is liable to be insufficiently impressive and thus deny you access to the best conversation options and plot outcomes.

Even though the Paragon/Renegade dichotomy is more interesting than most, it still becomes incredibly formulaic and not helped by the conversation wheel. Playing as pure paragon or pure renegade is encouraged and requires no thought: simply select the top option for paragon and the bottom for renegade. You can even forgo reading them most of the time.

But this actually proves to be an advantage, occasionally. The formulaic nature of the vast majority of the choices — and their clear-cut nature — mean that the occasional complex and interesting option is effectively highlighted and brought out more strongly in the player’s consciousness. For instance, when Shepard in ME2 encounters a pair of looters, the formulaic paragon player is faced with the very strange option of either scolding them for looting, in precisely the same way Shepard does routinely (in that very same room, in fact), or leaving Paragon points ungained. The choice of what to do with the Heretic Geth in Legion’s loyalty mission has been covered ably elsewhere (specifically, by Extra Credits here), but I will point out that it is likewise made more effective by the formulaic background against which it stands.

Is this how you make a worthwhile moral choice system, then?

A lot of brute formalism serving to make the exceptions shine more brightly is certainly far better than some, and if those bright moments are bright enough, then they justify the whole endeavor. But at the same time, this is certainly a dangerous path to take since those breaks in formalism need to be interesting and exciting and beautiful; if they’re not, then the whole apparatus completely loses its purpose and becomes just another layer of pointless mechanism.

Looking at the problems we’ve catalogued so far, though,we can get an idea of the characteristics that would make a good moral choice system. The first problem we noted, which Mass Effect largely manages to avoid, is to make the dichotomy too simple: The moral choice cannot be between unmotivated good and unmotivated evil — a valid philosophical conflict is necessary for players to latch on to and explore.

Beyond that, the player must have room to navigate this conflict, which means that the consequences of the system can’t be tied to the extremes whether those consequences are rewards or punishments. Meaningful play requires feedback, and so to limit feedback to the extremes drastically limits the potential for the system to enable meaningful play.

Finally, this model system must avoid an overabundance of formalism and tedium: The Paragon option is not always listed above the Renegade, and it can’t always be coded blue, either. We can say something, perhaps, for clarity, but if you want the player to interact meaningfully with the dichotomy around which the moral choice system is based, then the player needs to interact with the choices themselves, not the color and spatial coding you have decided to give them.

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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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Robin Sachs, the popular character actor who voiced gruff, scarred mercenary Zaeed Massani in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, has died at the age of 61.

BBC America reports that London-born Sachs was found in his Los Angeles home on Tuesday, his birthday, having passed away four days earlier. Friends described his death as “unexpected,” but sources indicate natural causes. No official cause of death has been announced.

While Sachs also had voice roles in Resident Evil: Damnation, Rainbow Six: Lockdown, Maiijn and the Forsaken Kingdom, and The Bard’s Tale, his gravelly portrayal of Zaeed gained him the most fans. A downloadable character made available to first-time buyers through Electronic Arts’ online pass system, Zaeed co-founded the ruthless Blue Suns mercenary group before his partners betrayed him. He got his chance for revenge years later while working for Commander Shepard as part of his loyalty mission in Mass Effect 2. Zaeed’s bitter and acerbic style appealed to the Mass Effect fan base, leading to a brief appearance in a Mass Effect 3 side mission.

Sachs first became well known to sci-fi/fantasy fans on TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Ethan Rayne, the villainous counterpart to Buffy’s mentor, Rupert Giles (Anthony Head). His first on-camera role was in one of the classic Hammer horror films, Vampire Circus. Under heavy prosthetics, he also menaced fake space hero Tim Allen as the very real alien menace Sarris in Galaxy Quest. More recently, he took on guest roles in Castle, Torchwood, and NCIS.

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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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It’s the way things begin. Boot up, press start, go to the main menu. Nearly every video game ever made does this.

“My goal, and we’ll see if we’re able to do it,” says franchise creative director Maxime Beland, speaking about Splinter Cell: Blacklist, “I’d really like to ship the game with no main menu.”

He has plenty of time before Blacklist’s Aug. 20 release date (for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC) to make that goal a reality. Whether it’s too big a departure from comfortable, well-known tradition remains an open question. But Beland’s game already has the infrastructure in place to support a menu-free approach, and it’s called the SMI.

Series protagonist Sam Fisher — brought out of retirement to end a cataclysmic threat by a terrorist group calling itself the Engineers — now leads rapid-strike team Fourth Echelon from their airborne mobile HQ, the Paladin. Its command and control room houses the Strategic Mission Interface system, and the SMI puts the entire game at Sam’s — and your — fingertips.

The monitors in the C&C show leaderboards and active countdowns from the Blacklist — the Engineers’ announced targets. Accessing the central table brings up a world map that gives you a complete overview of the game and all the missions Sam can do. All of them.

“Instead of only showing you single-player stuff, it’s showing you single-player missions, multiplayer, co-op, and adversarial missions that are possible all at the same time,” says Beland. “It also shows your friends what they’re doing, what missions they’re in, if they’re in a co-op or adversarial mission. Some of our co-op missions are also playable in single-player. So you can see that a friend is in a co-op mission all by himself, and you’re one button away from joining his game.”

Why get rid of the main menu? Simple: It’s in the way. “This is a game about Sam Fisher,” says Beland. “You’re Sam Fisher. You’re in your plane, you’re in Fourth Echelon, you’re looking at the status of the world on your SMI, and you can jump in or out of anything.

“We’re blurring the lines between our game modes.”

From an immersion standpoint, it’s a very interesting approach. You never break character to go into a menu. You access everything exactly as Sam does, including something Beland doesn’t mention: side missions — a first for the series.

While on the Paladin, Sam can wander around and chat with his core team, Mass Effect-style. That includes buying upgrades through returning character Anna Grímsdóttir — like bumping up the C&C to help locate secondary objectives in the campaign levels, or building up Paladin’s crew quarters for more gear in the field — and picking up side missions to earn the cash you’ll need to pay for those improvements. Grim also offered me a opportunity to infiltrate a data hub off the European coast. Her description marked it as a pure stealth op; if anyone detected me, they’d wipe the servers.

A chat with Briggs, the ex-CIA operator who serves as Sam’s overwatch sniper, started with casual chit-chat about agency bulk versus agile-team expediency before moving on to loose nukes in Pakistan. I agreed to take a look.

Then a visit to Paladin’s forward deck gave me a cut-scene with annoying, standard issue hacker-in-a-hoodie Charlie, who assured me that he has his “peeps skimming where they can.” Instead of beating him to a pulp, Sam listened to Charlie’s story about a dead-drop in Yeman. “Let’s go get it,” shrugged Sam. Charlie looked just as surprised as me that somebody took him seriously.

All three side missions appeared on the SMI map, ready to play at any time … rather, they will be. None were available during my preview.

But if the SMI functions as seamlessly as Beland describes it, main menus will suddenly look that much more archaic. Of course, he still has to figure out where to put stuff like audio/visual controls — it’s not a working system until I can turn on subtitles and boost gunfire sound effects to 11 — but the SMI could turn out to be the opening salvo in a video-game user-interface revolution.

And extra Splinter Cell missions in a Splinter Cell game are always welcome.

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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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Games don’t have to be based on movies or sports teams to feature real humans. As 3D rendering technology advances, more and more developers turn to flesh-and-bone actors, and models to give life to their protagonists and antagonists.

In the case of Far Cry 3′s Vaas Montenegro (top image), Ubisoft hired Canadian actor Michael Mando to portray, voice, and provide motion capture for the sadistic madman as well as star in promotional material. Vaas’s appearance (combined with Mando’s performance) give the title an extra layer of realism.

I made a list of 20 celebrity sightings in modern video games with side-to-side images of their in-game models next to their real faces. Hover the cursor over the image below to launch the 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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A variety of  people compose the game-development community, but they all want something similar: the ability to make a decent living while making decent games.

The IGDA advocates on the behalf of developers to help them accomplish that goal, and today the organization appointed Katie Edwards as its new executive director to oversee its mission.

“Kate’s knowledge of the global game industry and local cultures make her ideal to lead the IGDA,” said IGDA chair Dustin Clingman. “Her long service to our organization and commitment to the global development community will lay a foundation for ongoing international growth.”

Edwards worked for years with Microsoft as its senior geopolitical strategist. She helped the company adapt its business for new markets around the world. Edwards joined the IGDA in 2004. Her international experience helped her when she founded and chaired the association’s localization special interest group in 2007.

Throughout her career, Edwards has consulted on games like Halo, Mass Effect, and Fallout 3.

“Game development is an artistic endeavor with mass appeal,” Edwards said. “Developers and fans alike are increasingly aware of the diversity of those who both create and play games. Today, we’re engaged in creating great games for a global audience, and the IGDA remains the relevant focal point for supporting developers in the broadest sense of the definition. I’m thrilled to be given the privilege to lead and nurture this awesome community.”

Edwards lives in Seattle where she will perform her duties as IGDA director.

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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 article contains spoilers about Mass Effect 3.

I’m going to guess that most of you probably don’t know that Mass Effect 3’s latest single-player downloadable-content pack, Omega, is coming out today, Nov. 27. That’s right, developer BioWare is giving you the chance to revisit the seedy, asteroid-based criminal wonderland made famous in the sci-fi role-playing-shooter series’ second installment.

And if you are aware of the DLC, it probably doesn’t matter … because most players don’t care about Mass Effect anymore.

Even though the franchise has blasted its way to a spot in video game Valhalla, protagonist Commander Shepard and his plucky crew of alien assassins have lost favor with their extremely fickle fan base.

Electronic Arts has come out in full support of the interplanetary saga, pledging a bright future filled with new releases and content. And, for the most part, the publisher has delivered, at least when it comes to ME DLC.

The third title’s already addictive multiplayer mode received a slew of free, and quite substantial, updates. We also got to do some stellar sleuthing in Leviathan, a single-player experience that helped answer more questions about the origins of the game’s primary antagonists, the mechanical and maniacal reapers.

I liked Leviathan. Hell, I got to go underwater in a giant mech. I would have never imagined doing that in a Mass Effect entry. Plus, as an enthusiast of the virtual space opera, I uncovered some fascinating context into the galaxy’s history.

That’s the problem, however. BioWare is focusing on the beginning of its star story instead of on the end. In essence, the Mass Effect maker is ignoring the 800-pound elcor in the room.

Yes, we got the downloadable equivalent of a “my bad” with the Extended Cut ending, but that just made the nebula even more nebulous.

I wrote an article before the Extended Cut launched where I basically admitted to being an Indoctrination Theory sympathizer. For those who don’t know, part of the ME community believes that the trilogy’s controversial conclusion never really happened. These patient and hopeful individuals think that those sketchy final sequences were part of the reapers’ indoctrination (read: brainwashing) of Shepard.

Granted, my faith in the theory has waned in recent months. But I still believe in its plausibility, and the Extended Cut did nothing to discredit the reapers’ potential mind-bending motives for Shepard.

In short, ME 3 needs a proper epilogue. If that means we get to wake up and finish the fight, wonderful. Or if that means we get to play through a few post-ending, the-Indoctrination-Theory-is-bogus-deal-with-it-but-everyone-who-survived-is-OK scenarios as some of the series’ beloved characters, that’s great, too.

As long as EA and BioWare pump out multiplayer and pre-ending content, the franchise will continue to drift aimlessly with no mass relay in sight.

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

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Video game publisher Electronic Arts is opening new online stores and changing its approach to e-commerce.

Back in August, EA worked with Treehouse Brand Stores to launch a new store for its subsidiary PopCap Games and one of the casual-game developer’s hottest properties, the tower-defense title Plants vs. Zombies. Now, that partnership continues as the two companies establish an official EA website that carries products from its individual stores. These include Mass Effect creator BioWare, American McGee’s dark twist on Alice in Wonderland, PopCap, and Dead Space studio Visceral Games. Treehouse also made stores for Microsoft’s popular first-person shooter Halo and Skyrim developer Bethesda (coming later this year).

Together, these companies are doing video game e-commerce right and putting the attention where it needs to be: on the brands and the people who love them.

A different kind of consumer

“Basically, the idea was there were lots of really cool brands — particularly in the video game space — that were not getting any love at retail,” Jed Seigle, the chief executive of Treehouse, told GamesBeat in a phone interview. “And if they were getting into Target or Hot Topic, it would just be a logo slapped on a shirt, and it was shitty quality. So we essentially went to these video game publishers and said, ‘We’d like to build your official store, and we’ll design products that are going to be targeted not at the lowest common denominator but more the fans who really play the game.’”

Brennan Townley, the director of brand licensing at PopCap, spoke to GamesBeat previously about the Plants vs. Zombies store. He more recently told us, “With the Treehouse model, we can react quickly to new trends, fan feedback, and developments within our game,” said  “Ultimately, it allows us to put out great product and reach our broad fan base in a meaningful way.”

Seigle explained that when game companies try to run their own online stores, they often don’t have the time to do them right. Treehouse relegates these efforts in a way that pays off and better serves the fans. These stores then become home to not only the publisher or developer’s products but also other licensees, allowing customers can find everything in one spot.

Selling brands in retail — at brick-and-mortar stores like Wal-Mart — works differently than e-commerce. “Those stores have very limited floor space, so if you’re willing to create an item, it’s gotta be really, really explicit about what that’s about,” he said. “Which is why you get Call of Duty or Mass Effect or Halo — basically a marketing logo and image or box art slapped on a T-shirt. There aren’t hoodies. There aren’t hats. There aren’t sort of cool, custom pieces.”

E-commerce stores weren’t always immune to this problem. “When you started getting some of these online stores up and running maybe six, seven years ago, it was basically logo-slapping,” said Andi Riordan, the president of Creative Minx Marketing, who is representing Treehouse on the Halo Waypoint Store. “A lot of them were unauthorized. There were a lot of cease-and-desist letters that went out. And so what happened is, what we liked [about] Treehouse — it wasn’t just T-shirts going up on a store. They really took their unique approach to come in and to make sure to work with the games teams and to become part of the community and address those consumers. Not to cannibalize the product that was going to go out on a retail level, but instead come up with different product that was addressing an additional consumer that was buying these games.”

“These fans invest so much time in these games,” said Seigle. “But they’re also fairly savvy. I would never wear a T-shirt that said Mass Effect across the chest, but I’d definitely wear my N7 hoodie with the N7 emblem and the stripe. And that type of stuff doesn’t work in traditional retail. Because we’re smaller, because we’re online, I don’t have to do 10,000 of a design. I can do 200 or 500 to see if it works. So we really cater to the most passionate fans, and I think that’s the reason why our stores have been successful and why it’s harder to do it in more traditional retail channels, particularly the apparel section.”

Getting the most out of online stores and communities

The benefits to e-commerce, besides putting more fan-oriented products (novels, statues, replicas, apparel, and so on) in one place, is to make sure the quality is high and that it’s priced correctly, said Seigle. It also allows companies like Treehouse to offer a greater range of products and act as a significant retail channel for other license partners. “And that allows them to take more risks and do more products,” he said.

“We’re always cognizant of having new and interesting product,” he said. “As it relates to the types of products and the designs that go in, we have a design team here, and almost everybody at the company plays games. … A lot of the ideas we come up with [are because] we spend a lot of time playing the game. Because if we’re going to folks who are really committed and themselves spending a lot of time, we have to do that, too. There’s no way to sort of get yourself immersed in the universe and in the lore around the game unless you spend a lot of time playing it.”

Ideas come from within the games — for example, items like a watch that Isaac Clarke wears in Dead Space — or from the communities. Siegle said they’ll engage with forum members and other gamers online to find out their favorite quotes, moments, iconography, and what they’d most like to see out of a product.

“The purchasers of online store products tend to buy higher price points,” said Riordan. “They’ll spend 40 or 50 bucks on a T-shirt, but they want it quality, they want it cooler, and they don’t want something that then 80,000 units are being shipped out to a midtier or big-box retailer.

“What the [development] teams tend to love — you have to also make sure to do that additional research and take those extra steps to know that that is in conjunction with what the consumers will actually buy and actually wear. There might be a team who thinks, ‘God, this is the greatest design ever.’ And this is their baby. But it might not sell at retail — ie., a brick and mortar shop — because they might not get it. It might be a more casual gamer.”

Appealing to a core consumer, who would shop online, means listening to what people are most highly anticipating and marrying that to what the team has in mind, said Riordan. It’s a balance between accessories, apparel, and cool, detailed products. “So it’s a very thoughtful and strategic process that you want to go to.”

Riordan believes this is a huge, untapped revenue stream, but it’s not something that replaces brick-and-mortar retail. “It complements it because it’s two difference audiences that you’re focusing on,” she said. Younger gamers might not want to spend $40 on a T-shirt online, but they’ll spend $14 on one at Wal-Mart and then spend the extra money on something else.

“Your online consumers and your PC gamers with certain games tend to have a little bit more money, and they’ll spend more money,” said Riordan. “You need both audiences.”

What the target audience thinks

One gamer we spoke to sees the situation somewhat differently. “As far as official brand stores go, I enjoy the products, but prices are so often far too high — as well as shipping costs — to justify anything but the best products being purchased,” said 32-year-old Jeff Yenzer, who we contacted via Twitter and email.

But his concerns did reflect the changes Treehouse is trying to make. “Merchandise sold by publishers is so often well designed but not always well executed, leaving the purchaser with a garment or product that erodes quickly or breaks easily,” said Yenzer. “If there was anything I could change, it would be merging the design ingenuity, product knowledge, and creativity of publishers with the efficient production and shipping methods that larger retailers can bring to the table.”

Yenzer has bought from online stores such as BioWare, Bungie, Jinx, and ThinkGeek, among others, but also likes to shop at brick-and-mortar retailers “if for only the ease of purchase that comes with finding products at a local store,” he said. “Trying clothes on before buying is always a plus, as well.” But the designs, he admits, do leave a lot to be desired.

One thing you can’t always find in video game stores, though, is equality in male and female apparel. Riordan said it’s critical — especially around launch — for companies to overindex the male design because a female can still wear it. But a male won’t wear a female’s design because of the difference in body style. We asked a couple female gamers via Twitter for their opinions.

Laura Klotz, a 36-year-old who’s been gaming since she was young, told us, “In general, I don’t mind buying unisex sizes of clothing mostly because it enables me to share my T-shirt collection with my husband. However, it would be nice if a greater range of options were presented if only because it would mean that the industry was recognizing that they have more of a female fan base than they have previously tended to acknowledge. The way things are now, it seems like they still think the majority of players are guys or dress like guys.”

Wendy Vermeers, 33, chooses to buy her gaming apparel at online stores “because they make me feel more comfortable being a female gamer” whereas local stores are more male-targeted.

“I usually buy my gamer-related clothing from places like Threadless, Shirt.Woot, [and] ThinkGeek,” she said. “Or if I do find something out and about, I can occasionally find stuff at Hot Topic. These companies seem to be a little more all-inclusive, and I feel comfortable and wanted as a female gamer and customer.”

So it seems that in both e-commerce and retail, a little more attention to the female consumers who are playing these games is needed as well. The new EA Gear store currently features 12 items in its apparel section that are made to fit females, like this ladies’ FemShep illustrated tee. Comparatively, it sells 37 apparel items for men. The Halo Waypoint store contains 10 articles of clothing in men’s sizes and none for women though it does display a gender category. The Plants vs. Zombies store is much more balanced, with eight for women and 12 for men.

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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 prepares for the Wii U launch Sunday with all the guides and reviews you’ll ever need, Call of Duty: Black Ops II goes on sale and gets reviewed, and Xbox Live turns 10.

You’ll also find reviews for When Vikings Attack, Angry Birds Star Wars, and a Threeview of Halo 4.

News:

• Sony’s PlayStation 3 hits 70M sold, good enough for third place
• YouTube rolls out new Wii app just in time for the Wii U launch
• Second Quest raises $70K to reimagine Zelda and games through art
• Gogamingo’s startup idea: Compete in tournaments, win real stuff
• Console-quality gaming without the console: OnLive is live in some LG TVs
• Valve cofounder Gabe Newell going to be a hall of famer
• This week in the Nintendo Download: Epic Mickey, Myst, and Hotel Transylvania
• Over 1 million players completed Halo 4′s campaign in the first five days
• Badgeville simplifies gamification for developers
• Rumble Entertainment seeks triple-A quality with Nightmare Guardians tablet game
• After a decade of service, Xbox Live usage hits an all-time high
• ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Bane signs on as Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell film
• Major League Gaming: Serving 11.7 million viewers in 2012
• ChangYou new free-to-play portal targets midcore and hardcore gamers
• New Grand Theft Auto V trailer balances comedy, drama, and skydiving out of jeeps (video)
• THQ says it is in talks about extending its credit line with bank
• Zynga juggles leadership team as CFO departs for Facebook
• Star Citizen Kickstarter reveals early piloting gameplay
• Sony launches ‘augmented reality’ title Wonderbook: Book of Spells from Harry Potter author
• No second chances: Treyarch will ban anyone caught hacking Call of Duty: Black Ops II
• Here’s what a $99.99 box of Tomb Raider stuff looks like
• PlayStation Plus launches on PS Vita next week
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II’s unlikely cameo: Former CIA chief David Petraeus
• Halo 4 sold a record-breaking $220M in its first 24 hours
• BioWare Montreal using the Battlefield 3 engine for the next Mass Effect
• Notch: Minecraft PC sales just passed 8 million

Mobile news:

• Glu Mobile lays off employees at two offices, closes a third
• Zynga brings its match-three gem game to mobile
• Mobile developer Intellijoy partners with YogiPlay to improve its educational apps (exclusive)
• Mobile game startup Pocket Gems appoints No. 2 exec as CEO
• After 400 million downloads, Storm8 releases new puzzle game to continue customer engagement
• Kixeye: Zynga is ‘desperate’ to get hands on its secrets
• New Kiip expands beyond mobile game rewards to other apps and platforms
• PlayHaven rounds up $8 million to finance international expansion
• Tapjoy runs into new drama over its app download incentives
• Time to get a bit fit: Fitbit One activity tracker now shipping
• Mobile-and-social app analytics firm Swrve raises $6.25M (exclusive)

Wii U:

• 10 things you don’t know about the Nintendo Wii U
• Wii U players could get an unfair advantage in Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer
• Wii U shortage will be severe during holidays, but new console may not outsell Wii in long run
• GamesBeat’s Wii U roundup: Everything you ever wanted to know
• Here is the Wii U menu music (and more)
• Nintendo’s Scott Moffitt gives us the latest on the Wii U launch (interview)

Reviews:

• Donuts and penguins are weapons of war When Vikings Attack (review)
• Nintendo Land: Where the amusement sometimes ends (review)
• New Super Mario Bros. U is far from new (review)
• What’s in the Box?! Call of Duty: Black Ops II Care Package edition (review)
• Breaking down the four different games in Call of Duty: Black Ops II (review)
• Threeview: Halo 4 reviewed by a critic, an analyst, and an academic
• Angry Birds Star Wars plays off of both franchise’s strengths (review)

Pieces of flair:

• New Skyrim: Dragonborn screens reveal expansion’s inner Morrowind (gallery)
• If Halo’s Master Chief had a dating site profile
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II debuts at midnight openings around the world (photo gallery)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer unlock guide
• All-new screenshots for Call of Duty: Black Ops II
• 2D game characters break into the real world

Are our favorite game characters actually good, or is that just a ploy to get us to like them? If you really think about it, they’re actually pretty awful. Consider just how many people they have to kill, how many awful things they do in the course of the game’s story. In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, players are mass-murdering thieves with the psychotic compulsion to take everything. Uncharted’s Nathan Drake kills hundreds of people around the world, generally locals, and blows up buildings and landmarks only to find some lost treasure.

And don’t even get me started on Pokémon.

This funny take on video game characters is cute, but it’s also thought provoking. Are all of our favorites really this bad?

Have any of your own? Share them in the comments and make us laugh.

Via Reddit, originally found on lolmyday.com (original author unknown)

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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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After seeing Cobie Smulder’s impressive turn as agent Maria Hill in The Avengers film, it’s hard not to imagine the How I Met Your Mother star stepping into Commander Shepard’s N7 armor should a live-action Mass Effect film ever come to fruition. Reddit user rasmusir felt the same way and provided the image above to make for an even more compelling argument.

Unfortunately, while Mass Effect is supposed to be about about creating and piloting your own Shepard, developer Bioware was quick to establish a generic male Shepard as the default and canonical player character. Luckily, we’ve got this Photoshop of Nicolas Cage, should anyone argue against Smulders as the go-to MovieShep. Although, she’d have to have red hair, glowing red scars, and be renegade as **** to match my own Shepard. But this is a good start.

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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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Developer BioWare is sharing the details about its upcoming trilogy bundle for its blockbuster science-fiction role-playing-game franchise, Mass Effect. According to BioWare’s official site, the Xbox 360 version will not include any of the paid downloadable content. Meanwhile, the PC release will only include select DLC for the first game.

The studio will release Mass Effect Trilogy for PC and Xbox 360 on November 6 — a PlayStation 3 release is due later. It includes all three retail games in a new package with exclusive box art.

The developer announced that all versions of the trilogy will include the original online-pass content. That means Mass Effect 2 will have the Cerberus Network. which comes with an exclusive character, a new mission, and special gear. Mass Effect 3′s online-pass grants players access to that game’s online co-op multiplayer.j

The issue is that the PC version will include $6 of content that won’t come with the 360 release and yet both versions will cost $59.99.

On the PC, the original Mass Effect disc will include the Bring Down The Sky and Pinnacle Station DLC missions. On the Xbox 360, users must purchase that content through the Xbox Live Marketplace. Bring Down The Sky is 80 Microsoft Points and Pinnacle Station is 400.

For Mass Effect 2, customers will need to buy the Overlord, Stolen Memory, and Lair of the Shadow Broker content packs separately on PC as well as Xbox 360. The same goes for the Mass Effect 3 Leviathan add-on.

BioWare hasn’t announced any details about the state of DLC for the PlayStation 3 release.

We’ve contacted publisher EA to determine the reasoning behind these pricing and DLC decisions.

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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 cofounders of BioWare, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, have both announced that they are leaving the company. This ground-shaking news spurred BioWare and EA into confirming that the Mass Effect team is working on a new game in that series as well as something new.

“Both Dragon Age and Mass Effect started as single games but grew into vast universes,” general manager of BioWare Edmonton and Montreal Aaryn Flynn wrote in a BioWare blog. “Executive producer [on the Mass Effect series] Casey Hudson and his team are coming off an amazing eight-year run with the Mass Effect trilogy. But they’re not done yet.”

Flynn referenced upcoming Mass Effect 3 downloadable content. That includes new multiplayer items and levels as well as new single-player story content called Omega, which is coming this fall.

“But the Mass Effect universe is vast, and Casey and our teams have plans for another full [Mass Effect] game,” Flynn wrote. He said the team is asking itself: “Where to go next with the sci-fi franchise?” He invited fans to submit their own ideas.

Flynn had more to announce.

“While Casey [Hudson] continues to oversee the development of our new Mass Effect project, he and his leads are putting together their vision for an all-new game set in a fictional universe, built from the bottom-up with all new gaming technology.”

No other details were provided about this mystery game, but it sounds like it could kick off on the next generation of systems that are due out as early as next year.

The doctors are gone, but BioWare still has a lot of games to come. Although some fans may doubt the studio’s capability to execute without Muzyka and Zeschuk.

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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 doctors are done at BioWare.

According to a blog on the official BioWare website, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk are retiring from the development company that produced some of the most beloved video games of the last two decades: Mass Effect, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age.

“After nearly two decades in video games, I’ve decided to move on to pursue an entirely different set of challenges,” Muzyka wrote in a personal blog. “This has been an incredibly difficult decision to make; after thinking about it for many months, I made the decision to retire from video games back in early April 2012 — at that time I provided six month’s notice to EA, to help enable a solid transition for my teams at BioWare.”

Zeschuk separately wrote in his blog: “After nearly 20 years working at BioWare, I’ve decided it’s time to move on and pursue something new. This decision isn’t without significant pain and regret, but it’s also something I know I need to do, for myself and my family.

“I’ve reached in unexpected point in my life where I no longer have the passion that I once did for the company, for the games, and for the challenge of creation.”

So what’s next for the BioWare cofounders? It doesn’t seem like either is eager to start something new in the game industry.

Zeschuk wants to spend a lot of time with his family and his friends, although he did say he would pursue his current passion project: homebrew beer. His initial project is a web-based interview program where he interviews notable brewers about their beers. It will be called The Beer Diaries.

“If things go well, I’ll work on other beer-related shows, apps, and projects,” Zeschuck wrote. “If not, I’ll have drunk a lot of tasty beers and may be back in games or even something else completely different. Ultimately, time will tell.”

Muzyka plans to follow his conviction for free enterprise into a different industry: impact investment and social entrepreneurship. This is an ethical take on investing in social issues in a way that also benefits typical business profit goals.

“To that end, I’ll also be spending time getting involved with more charities in education, health care, and animal rights, areas where my wife and I’ve typically focused our charitable donation in the past,” Muzyka wrote.

The two medical doctors founded BioWare in February of 1995. In 1998 the company put itself on the map with the PC role-playing game Baldur’s Gate. It followed that up Baldur’s Gate II in 2000, a game some consider among the best RPGs ever made, and Neverwinter Nights in 2002. BioWare took its first steps into a larger world with its sci-fi RPG, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, in 2003.

In 2007, BioWare released the third-person shooter and RPG Mass Effect for the PC and Xbox 360. That same year, publisher Electronic Arts purchased BioWare.

Since then, the studio released two sequels to Mass Effect. It also started a new fantasy-RPG series, Dragon Age. BioWare just announced that it is working on Dragon Age III: Inquisition.

In 2011, the developer released Star Wars: The Old Republic, its first massively multiplayer online role-playing game. It is a followup to the beloved Knights of the Old Republic games, but it reportedly suffered from a difficult development cycle and a massive budget. After months of losing subscribers, EA and BioWare announced The Old Republic will become free-to-play.

Fans, as they are wont to do, have voiced concerns over the influence that EA has had over BioWare. This lastest development is unlikely to renew anyone’s confidence in the relationship.

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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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Sci-fi author John Beiswenger recently filed a lawsuit against video-game publisher Ubisoft. He alleged that the French company stole the story for its blockbuster Assassin’s Creed video game series from his novel, Link. The 2002 book features a device that allows characters to relive their ancestors’ memories, which is similar to the function of the “animus” used by the main characters in the Assassin’s Creed universe.

Justice has yet to be served in this case, but a group of vigilante gamers have taken to their digital steeds to rustle up some ol’ fashioned internet justice. The punishment took the form of over 100 one-star reviews on Link’s Amazon product page from a group of what are apparently very devoted Assassin’s Creed fans.

Some of the reviews attempt to criticize the content of the book:

“This is the worst book I have ever read in my life! Do not buy this book! Never ever buy this product,” reads a review from Amazon user Katniss_Everdeen_65.

While others seem to have taken it a bit more personally:

“You sue one of my favorite game series[sic], you’re going to get payback. I hope that all of the fans do the same,” reads FatleBoo8′s thoughtful critique.

Angry fans continue in that vein in dozens of single-star reviews. Although, as Amazon user Robert Weinhold points out: “Ugh,unfortunately zero stars was not an option….”

This isn’t an isolated incident. Mobs of fans have rushed to the defense of other games that they perceived to be under attack from outside aggressors before. In 2008, self-help-book author Cooper Lawrence suffered a similar series of attacks for her remarks about the original Mass Effect. On Fox News, she inaccurately described that role-playing game’s sex scene as pornographic. Within a week, her book The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace with Your Inner Overachiever was slammed with over 400 negative reviews. Amazon tried to remove all of the customer comments that talked about Mass Effect, but that left 166 single-star reviews that live on today, compared to only six positive reviews.

It’s hard to blame people for defending something they love. Especially if they believe they’re protecting it from someone who is attempting to make a quick cash grab. This isn’t based on any deep understanding of copyright law, but it doesn’t seem like Beiswenger has much of a case against Ubisoft. In 1965, Dune featured Bene Gesserit characters who could access the memories of their predecessors. Quantum Leap is similar enough in structure that if Beiswenger wins, Ubi and the author will both owe Scott Bakula some cheddar.

Whether Beiswenger will prevail in court (or whether Ubi will settle just to put this behind them before Assassin’s Creed III comes out) is up to the lawyers. However, the mob will see to it that this author suffers financially for daring to exploit something that they love. Which is kind of scary.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.

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

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BioWare has a lot of explaining to do, and it knows it.

The developer’s Mass Effect 3 team sat with fans during PAX East game conference yesterday to talk about the title, which has been the target of copious Internet fan rage in the last month. First, there were grumblings over the use of a stock Getty image as an in-game picture of character Tali. Fans were also upset they had to pay for downloadable content (DLC) available on the day the game shipped. Then, of course, there was the major backlash over the game’s endings, which many felt failed to provide closure or meaningful choices for what had been, up until then, a stellar series.

“I know there’s a lot of fan love and affection for Mass Effect right now,” joked BioWare community manager Chris Priestly during a session at PAX East.

Yet, not a chair nor a cupcake was thrown as Priestly, Mass Effect producer Mike Gamble, Mass Effect senior combat designer Corey Gaspur, senior writers Patrick Weekes and John Dombrow, and quality assurance associate team lead Reid Buckmaster took to the dais to talk about all of that and more with what was, surprisingly, an enthusiastic and cheerful crowd. (SPOILER WARNING!)

On the ending and downloadable content:

“We’re going to be able to offer a lot in the next year,” said Mike Gamble.

BioWare, a division of Electronic Arts, showed off the trailer for the Resurgence Pack. This multiplayer add-on will feature new races (including the Geth and Krogan), new maps, and new weapons. It will be available for free on April 10.

More importantly, BioWare spoke about Mass Effect: Extended Cut, which will address the game’s lackluster ending. Despite Internet speculation to the contrary, the developer assures fans the DLC will not be a re-imagining of the ending or an entirely new one. “The dev team stands by what we released with the core product. We’re very proud of it,” said Gamble. The statement drew a big round of applause from the crowd.

However, Gamble added that BioWare wants to clarify a number of things for players. “We want to make sure we actually answer some of the questions that we’re seeing,” he said. “[We want to] fill some of the unknowns, and in general, we really wanted to give players a sense of personalization with the ending.”

“We want to make sure that when you see the ending of Mass Effect, you now have the information in context and can be satisfied.”

Mass Effect: Extended Cut will be available to download free of charge. BioWare is tentatively aiming for a summer release date.

On the indoctrination theory:

Born out of the confusion players felt after completing Mass Effect 3, the indoctrination theory is a popular bit of speculation amongst fans. It claims the game’s protagonist, Commander Shepard, is actually “indoctrinated” under Reaper control, and everything that occurs after being beamed up to the Citadel in the final minutes is a hallucination.

BioWare’s response? “We don’t want to comment either way. We want the content to speak for itself, and we’ll let it do so.”

On Tali’s face:

“In terms of what Tali’s face looked like and why it looked the way it was, we often use source art for many things within our game. In the case of Tali’s face, we wanted something to be photorealistic. We wanted the level of fidelity to be there. We wanted the color to be right,” Gamble said.

He says the team poured through thousands and thousands of pieces of source art to come up with what would become Tali’s face. Shepard, Liara, Miranda, and Samara’s faces were all based on real-life women, and BioWare says everyone’s favorite Quarian deserved the same treatment.

On how BioWare feels about fan response to ME3:

“Any time we receive constructive criticism, we always welcome it. There are always a few that are not as constructive as possible, but we honestly don’t let it make us jaded. We still understand that there’s a lot of valuable feedback to be provided. We still welcome it,” said Gamble.

“Whether it’s support or whether it’s anger — whether it’s love or rage — whatever it is — we get it from you fans because you care about the game,” Priestly added.

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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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Sometimes you’ve got to give it up for truth in advertising. A Shooter for 2 Bucks. Snakes on a Plane. I MAED A GAME W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1. And now, Shoot Many Robots, a turn-based, card-battle platformer that takes major cues from Myst.

OK, no. You shoot many robots. As a redneck named Pickles.

This marks Massachusetts-based Demiurge Studios’ first release as a headline developer, but they’ve quietly delivered subcontracted maps, assets, and ports to the big boys for years. You’ll find BioShock, Borderlands, Rock Band, and Mass Effect for PC on their resume. Maybe that’s why Shoot Many Robots doesn’t generally come across as a fledgling title from a no-name developer…even though technically, it is.

And while yet another side-scrolling, four-player co-op shooter doesn’t exactly stretch the imagination, Demiurge injected enough character to give its entry in the genre a bit more bite. At least, until a few limitations and balancing issues de-fang the experience slightly.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

It’s a four-player co-op game

Let us not understate the appeal of a party game with freeze guns, flame guns, ray guns, and gun guns. You star as P. Walter Tugnut, an ornery son-of-a-biscuit on a quest for vengeance after the robot apocalypse totals his beloved pickup. Here endeth the plot. Off you go to shoot many robots, and in this endeavor, Shoot Many Robots gleefully serves as your white-trash enabler, hurling armies of mechanical fodder directly into your line of fire.

And man, with a full four-player crew blazing away, things go from zero to super-insanity fast. Enemy numbers scale for the number of players (a two-player local co-op is also available), so no worries about running out of targets. Graphically, it’s appropriately cartoony with great depth of field. Six locations, each with two robot-killin’ maps and one challenge room, progressively unlock as you earn stars for — yep — killin’ robots. The levels aren’t complex but sport a decent length and a few hidden areas with goody chests. Power-ups (including a critical-hit boost and super-speed) drop with satisfying regularity.

If, on the other hand, euthanizing armies of soulless chainsaw fiends with assault rifles while indulging in the healing power of beer isn’t your bag…well, I really can’t help you. Perhaps no one can.

Entertaining upgrade-a-hick system

Not to detract from the whole “shoot robots” thing, but Shoot’s expansive upgrade system is the real star, fueling both your rampage and the game’s twisted redneck humor.

It’s fairly easy to scoop up bolts (the in-game currency) and build out the hillbilly of your dreams via two weapon slots (standard and heavy) and three gear slots (head, shirt, pants). Hundreds of items unlock at a steady clip. Cherry-pick the stats and attributes you want to boost, ignore others, or mix-n-match. Throw on some bat wings (Swoop Rating: 6), a propeller beanie (Gravity -30%), an infant carrier (+1 Baby), a beer hat (+2 Beers), or any number of goony options, all with descriptions (“It’s amazing what you can accomplish with duct tape and bad ideas”) you’ll actually read. When’s the last time that happened?

Your ultimate arsenal of ultimate destiny gets the same love and attention. Slow rate of fire with high penetration? Done. Eighteen-bullet burst fire? Done. Catastrophic gnome launcher? Done and done. You’ll find something that appeals, and a good team of Tugnuts can — and will — feature four wildly different approaches without anyone feeling underpowered. At least, not after a few runs through a challenge room to level up and rake in the bolts.

The system does hit one sour note: microtransactions. You can choose to shell out real-world cash for weapons in lieu of unlocking them normally. As shortcuts go, it feels too much like a cheat, particularly considering how fast you can level up in multiplayer alongside a high-rank amigo.

WHAT YOU WON’T LIKE

It’s a 4-player co-op game

Unfortunately, Shoot Many Robots suffers from the flaws of its genre. It’s fun to rank up alongside your trigger-happy friends and buy better guns, stat-boosting pants, jetpacks, tutus, etc. It’s less fun to rumble through the robocalypse on your own. Don’t have a good Internet connection? Didn’t buy a Gold membership on Xbox Live? Hate other people in general and 12-year-old online gamers in particular? Then you’ve got a problem. It feels staggeringly like you’re missing out on the real game without a few more P. Walter Tugnuts out there shootin’ and drinkin’ beer and shootin’.

Minus the camaraderie and competition, more flaws stand out. Checkpoint placement feels odd at times — before a major engagement but not after — and you won’t get two-thirds of the way through a rather short campaign before levels are recycled wholesale, right down to the end boss. A lot of love went into the look and flavor of this game, but these design slipups are exactly what I’d predict from a developer more used to dealing in high-quality pieces than cohesive wholes.

Bubba don’t balance

Right around the time you hit level 6 (out of 50), you gain access to weaponry that turns you into a southern-fried god of death. By level 25, no power in the universe can stop you…and that’s before three of your equally ranked friends join in.

I found my perfect recipe pretty early on: an infinite-use flamethrower that decimates all comers paired with Fluffy’s Revenge superbombs (toted around in a pet carrier with “R.I.P.” hearts scrawled on the side). Then I decked out in low-gravity, high-hang-time astronaut gear. Game over. Mostly, I just stood in place and hosed any threats trundling at me. If a robo-horde suddenly pounced, I simply took to the air. Boss battles lasted about 15 seconds…roughly the same time it took to deploy and detonate three Fluffies.

That broke things a bit. I dropped out of the game’s economy. I stopped visiting the store (until more powerful flamethrowers and Fluffies unlocked). I didn’t experiment with other weapons and gear once my winning formula was in place. Unless an insane number of robots suddenly charged from all directions in increasingly aggressive waves — not uncommon — my action-shooter became a tower-defense game. I found a spot to hunker down in and pressed X to win.

Difficulty does scale (particularly as you inch toward the level cap and in multiplayer) but plateaus onto Easy Street fairly often. A solo run through the early levels with a maxed-out redneck is simplicity itself. Jumping into an unbalanced co-op party also throws the challenge out of whack, though often with hysterical results.

CONCLUSION

Demiurge’s gonzo approach to the old formula and a ton of customization options make for a cool jump-in-and-play-with-friends arcade game. It ain’t deep, but if you’re looking for complexity out of something called “Shoot Many Robots,” odds are you’d also try to buy a slightly used continent off eBay. Regrettably, you’ve got to hit a narrow window of conditions to enjoy shooting all those robots over the long term. Too-powerful weapons acquired too soon can also neuter the challenge well before you get a party started.

That said, as team-carnage games go, you’ll get some mileage out of this one. Grab a few of your drinkin’ buddies, and have yourselves a fun (and cheap) night of gratuitous hillbilly firepower and richly deserved robo-death. Preferably with your beer goggles on. Score: 78/100

Shoot Many Robots released on March 13, 2012, on the PlayStation Network and on March 14, 2012, on Xbox Live. An Xbox Live download code was provided by the publisher 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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Mass Effect’s finale has been a long time in the making. Commander Shepard and developer BioWare have taken players on an interactive odyssey whose quality is rarely seen in video games, and impossible in any other entertainment medium. That alone infuses the third and final entry in this epic space saga with copious amounts of anticipation and nostalgia. But as George Lucas has taught us, high expectations and benefit of the doubt are two extremely dangerous practices.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

Graphics
The entire Mass Effect trilogy uses Unreal Engine 3 to fuel its visuals. BioWare has made particularly excellent use of the engine, creating stunning interplanetary vistas and some of the most fascinating alien races in science fiction. Mass Effect 3 is no different, only now the art team has really taken the opportunity to let the engine and all of their hard work shine in massive set-pieces. Shepard and company will travel to an assortment of worlds in the midst of an all-out Reaper invasion; at any given time it’s entirely likely that you’ll look to your right and see miles of destruction, collapsing skyscrapers, fighter ships soaring overhead, and 160-meter tall Destroyer-class Reapers annihilating everything in sight. There were a few instances that evoked a sense of war that I haven’t felt since Saving Private Ryan.

The asari and drell are highlights in a gallery of immaculately-designed alien species. If I cared more about art I would storm into the Museum of Modern Art, tear down all of the Jackson Pollocks, and put up a framed screenshot of Samara and Thane Krios. While human characters are not quite as masterfully realized, even after 30 hours of gameplay (or 90, if you count the entire trilogy), seeing my Renegade FemShep’s glowing red eyes piercing out of the darkness as she decided the fate of an entire galaxy never got old.

Hybrid gameplay
BioWare, renowned for its role-playing games, somehow does tactical squad-based shooting better than most traditional squad-based shooters. Mass Effect 3 employs an elegant simplicity in its gameplay, where a squad of three can be commanded easily and concisely with an Xbox 360 controller. Key powers are allocated to face buttons for instant use, while the game can also be slowed to a crawl at will, allowing you to plan out a series of squad actions before unfreezing time via the power wheel.

The third-person shooter element incorporates special powers that help distinguish Mass Effect 3 from other games featuring cover and similar weapon types. Biotic powers are especially distinctive, creating miniature blackholes that suck up any nearby unarmored enemies. A second biotic power shot into the middle of the blackhole will cause it to explode, damaging opposition in the vicinity and propelling their helpless bodies in all directions. Abilities such as Shockwave can pass through cover, allowing you to get to otherwise protected targets, while Pull can rip the shields out of Guardian class Cerberus units’ hands, rendering them vulnerable to weapons fire. It also seems BioWare was playing a lot of StarCraft 2 while developing Mass Effect 3, as each power now has multiple branching paths when leveling up, prompting some difficult decisions about how you want to evolve your abilities.

As with previous instalments, Shepard can choose between six different classes, mixing and matching weapon proficiency, survivability, and biotic and tech powers. Weapon limitations have been removed altogether (for Shepard only), so an Infiltrator can use assault rifles and shotguns if they so desire. However, each weapon now has a weight attribute, and the more weight Shepard is carrying, the slower powers will regenerate. I eventually just carried a single weapon into most missions, giving my Adept Shepard a 200 percent power regeneration bonus.

But no matter what Shepard build you come up with, you’ll need backup. That’s where your squadmates come in, as having comrades that compliment your strengths and limit your weaknesses is imperative. It would have been preferable to bring along three teammates rather than just two, a personal pet peeve throughout the entire trilogy (and most JRPGs), especially considering Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer allows for squads of four. Unfortunately, it’s almost a moot point now as Mass Effect 3 has less than half as many squad member choices as Mass Effect 2 did, but we’ll get to that momentarily.

Auto-fish-feeder
In Mass Effect 2, I spent a ton of money on fish. Why? They kept dying. I forgot to feed them between missions, or I filled their tank with a year’s worth of food knowing that I’d forget the next time I was on the Normandy. I was also super-mean to Kelly Chambers, so she didn’t want to do it for me. Either way, my exotic space fish became worm food (irony!). So I was quite happy to find an automatic fish feeder available for purchase at a Citadel shop in Mass Effect 3. But that’s really just a minor example signifying the extra little touches that BioWare put in to the game.

There are a few nods to memes spawned from previous games that longtime fans will undoubtedly find amusing, and Shepard seems to have become aware that he/she is a ridiculous dancer. I got a laugh out of that one, and appreciated BioWare making fun of themselves. I was particularly happy to find Mass Effect 2’s pre-order armor available for purchase at different weapon shops, and the ability to customize when helmets did or didn’t appear. They may be small things, but they can go a long way, especially when so few games take the time to add them in.

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Update (3/9/12): BioWare Community Coordinator Chris Priestly has acknowledged the face-code error in a post on the game’s official forum. In that thread, Priestly wrote that the development team is correcting the issue. In the meantime, he provided a link to a user-created tool that may solve the problem for PC players. Keep in mind that this is not the official fix, so BioWare won’t take any responsibility if it turns your lovely female Shepard into a repulsive abomination unfit for human or alien eyes. GamesBeat has contacted EA and BioWare to get a time frame on the fix’s release. We will update again once we have their response.

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Many gamers are reporting that Mass Effect 3 won’t import the Commander Shepard face data that they created in the previous games. The latest entry in BioWare’s science-fiction trilogy only just hit store shelves (or Origin servers, as the case may be), and fans are already taking to Twitter and the official forums to complain about their difficulties.

EA’s help page currently warns Xbox 360 users that importing from Microsoft’s cloud storage will result in failure. Many of the people having the face-code issue, however, claim they have never saved their game in the cloud, and a lot are playing on PC (which isn’t affected by the cloud-save error).

When fan Ian Chamberlin attempted a save-data transfer on his Origin Digital Deluxe edition of Mass Effect 3, he was met with this error: “Mass Effect 3 cannot successfully determine the custom face code used by this imported save game. Please update your character’s appearance.”

Xbox 360 user Jon Welles tweeted to the official Mass Effect account, “Wow, just got Mass Effect 3 for Xbox, and it won’t import the face of my Shep. No, it was never in the cloud. Please help!”

These aren’t the only two having this problem. The error seems to affect all players who customized their Commander Shepard in the first Mass Effect and then carried that same face through Mass Effect 2.

We’ve contacted BioWare for an official statement and are awaiting their response, which probably won’t come until tomorrow sometime.

For a series that the developer always knew would be a trilogy, it seems like a significant oversight that the protagonist’s face doesn’t work in some situations. The players who took the time to create their unique Shepards in Mass Effect 1 have been invested in this same facade over hours and hours of gameplay. Now, all they can do is hope to manipulate the character creator to approximate the Shep they had before or move on and accept a new face.

“Been playing since Mass Effect 1, so it’s a letdown,” Jon Welles told GamesBeat over Twitter. “It’s just a game, but it’s still a pain not getting what you pay for.”

If you are having troubles, or if you have a Mass Effect 1 save that worked flawlessly with the new game, please tell us all about it in the comments.

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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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72pins is made up of a small team of retro art makers who take modern games — such as Halo or God of War — and reimagine them as classic Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) carts.

Cleverly coined as “NEStalgia” and named as one of Time Magazine’s top holiday gift picks for geeks, the end result speaks for itself. The unique pixel art is applied to an actual working NES cart, meaning that copy of BioShock may actually be Faxanadu or Duck Hunt. The name itself, 72pins, comes from the circuitry that connects an NES cartridge to an NES console. Longtime gamers will remember these pins as the part you had to blow into in order to make your aging games work properly.

GamesBeat sat down to talk with 72pins Co-Founder and Creative Director Pauline Acalin to discuss the process from beginning to end, potential copyright issues, and when we’ll be seeing that Half-Life cart we’ve all been waiting for.

GamesBeat: What’s the elevator pitch for 72pins?
Pauline Acalin: 72pins is a very cool art project that uses vintage NES cartridges as a canvas for 8-bit redesigns of modern games. We also offer custom designs for product and self-promotion, birthdays, weddings, parties/special events, awards, etc.

GB: How did the idea come about?
Acalin: I believe the exact words were, “How cool would it be if …”

GB: Can you talk about your starting budget for 72pins?
Acalin: Our initial idea was to see if we could create and sell around 100 carts on a budget of $2,500. This included the domain, Big Cartel marketplace fees, carts, vinyl, shipping setup and marketing. After we made a few samples, the ideas just started flowing and we got caught up in things. 100 went to 200, then 300 then 500.

GB: What were some of the main concerns early on and how did you address them?
Acalin: The main concern was to have something as close to the look and feel of the original that would give us a vivid canvas. After a few months of trying out various print combinations, we found something which we thought would look great and also be durable for years. We knew creating limited edition art wouldn’t be cheap to produce because we weren’t going to get any volume discounts printing only a handful of each design. Everyone thinks that it is easy to find hundreds of super cheap 25-or-more-year-old NES carts consistently. That just isn’t the case at all, unless you are willing to spend ‘mint condition’ prices at game shops or drive from flea market to flea market hoping to find a handful of quality carts. We were trying to produce cool art pieces that anyone could afford. That was tough at first, considering that over 25 percent of the carts we would bulk order just didn’t meet the standards we wanted for our canvases. We even looked at injection molded carts but realized that what we were creating was more about the art than the canvas.

GB: How did you come to the $16 price point? Do you find most people see that as too high, a great deal, or just about right?
Acalin: Our intention was to have a low price point, and $16 is pretty low. By that, I mean it’s enough to cover cost of the product itself and still be able to support the artist for their design. We didn’t think that people would question buying original art as a high quality print for $15 to $20, so we chose to go the more labor intensive route and use cartridges as the canvas simply because we thought it would have a more nostalgic feel to it and probably be a better conversation starter. We are not out to make a lot of money by any means … we just wanted to have a neat product. I know it sounds weird, but it’s true. A common correction we have to make to the few price scoffs we do get is that, we are not printing these on a home printer, or at a volume where we are able to get a deal on cost. They are professional grade vinyl on actual working NES carts, with many, many hours of design work on them. Overall, we get tremendous support from most everyone, and that makes us happy. We also promote sales and coupons on our blog and Twitter.

“We are not out to make a lot of money, by any means…we just wanted to have a neat product. I know it sounds weird, but it’s true.“

GB: What is Big Cartel, and how do they factor into 72pins?
Acalin: During the phase of researching a marketplace to house our store, we decided to go with Big Cartel. All of our payment processing is done though them, and it really has made things much easier for us. While the default customization on Big Cartel might be a little limited (there are only two in-house theme styles to choose from and one would not work), the ease of use, price and reliability have been great.

GB: How does the art and manufacturing work?
Acalin: We currently have six artists working with us, and each has a different style. In the near future we will be releasing non-8bit designs to our store, which is exciting. As far as design goes, we have a template that each artist uses as a base. We basically have a hefty list of games, and the artist just chooses from that list. Whatever inspires. The NES original “black label” design has a very limited canvas, and so each game design is somewhat of a puzzle. But once that basic design is laid out, we fine-tune it to death … send it around, give each other feedback. We have a great team and all work incredibly well with constructive criticism. Once finalized, we send it to print in a limited quantity. Once we get them back, they are applied to refurbished cartridges, along with the accompanying customized vinyl for the back (which is different for each game).

GB: It seems like there would be some major copyright issues to overcome. Can you talk about that?
Acalin: There actually have not been any issues. We have received positive feedback from several of the publishers and developers, some having commissioned us to design additional game art, or create more of an existing design.

GB: What are some of the most popular carts you sell?
Acalin: Bioshock, Halo and Katamari sold out immediately upon release and are constantly being requested.

GB: What are some of the most common requests you get?
Acalin: We are in the process of getting to each request in turn, the most recent being a Blizzard Series, including World of Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo. In the works are Assassin’s Creed, Uncharted and Mass Effect … and several others.

GB: Which carts aren’t quite as popular as expected? 
Acalin: We really haven’t had any bad luck with any particular design. Some have sold out at the speed of light, others start out slower but then have a surge in sales. We have no idea what to attribute that to; we’ve just been fortunate.

GB: Who is your average client?
Acalin: Overall, we really have no way of knowing, since we don’t track that info or ask for any personal information. But the range of responses we get from our customers lead us to believe they range across the spectrum … from fans of a particular game, to diehard NES retro folk (such as myself) … and even a couple people who just want to collect every single design we release! Amazing.

GB: Will you be adding different types of cartridges (Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, etc.)?
Acalin: We are totally open for trying out a new canvas to design on. If the demand is there, who knows.

GB: Where do you see the site going in the long-term?
Acalin: We really want our focus to be custom design … birthdays, weddings, parties/special events, awards, etc…. We have already created several designs for clients wanting NES carts for product and self-promotion, awards and television programs … and those are a whole lot of fun to work on. It’s something we hoped would happen.

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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 new multiplayer mode drops you into a game with three other players. The Mass Effect series has traditionally been a single-player experience and the game has relied on compelling storytelling and creating a cinematic experience to draw gamers in. It’s a formula that’s worked exceptionally well so far, with the original Mass Effect game earning a score of 91 out of 100 across 74 reviews and its sequel earning a score of 96 out of 100 across 98 reviews.

Mass Effect puts players in control of Commander Shepherd as he tries to fend off an ancient alien race called the Reapers. In the final installment of the trilogy, the Reapers have taken control of earth and Shepherd has to rally the forces of the galaxy to take back the planet and destroy the reapers. It’s an over-the-shoulder shooting game that features role-playing game elements, such as earning experience for completing objectives and becoming more powerful over time with better skills.

When entering the game, you can choose your race (among others, there are the massive Krogan and the powerful, psychic Asari races) and class, like a Sentinel or a Soldier, each of which has different abilities. You then face off against waves of enemies while trying to defend strategic locations across the galaxy.

Successfully completing those missions contributes to Shepherd’s “war assets” in the main story line — the more assets you have means you get a better and more complete ending. BioWare added multiplayer to the game to make use of its new team in Montreal and to give players an alternative way to build up their war assets in the game, Mass Effect series executive producer Casey Hudson said. Players can still get the best ending by playing through the game in a single-player campaign, but now they have an alternative way to build up their war assets.

“This is really the best place to start playing the Mass Effect series, this is the beginning, middle and end of the whole galactic war,” he said. “You’ll be able to take control of characters you have never been able to play before — you’ll have access to all the different classes and many of the races.”

Hudson said it made the most sense to add multiplayer to this title, which tells the story of an all-out galactic war at a huge scale.

Mass Effect 3 will come out March 6 next year.

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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 really is not a good quarter for video game developers, which have faced a lot of security issues. BioWare marks the fourth high-profile game developer that has had its site hacked and information compromised. BioWare said the forum hackers broke into was for an older and less-used game, but that information could be related to current existing Electronic Arts online accounts. The company is sending out emails to the forum’s users, saying the information stored on the site might have been compromised.

The information compromised in the attack on BioWare’s Neverwinter Nights forum did not include credit card information, the company said. But it did include names, dates of birth and email addresses that the hackers could use for spam purposes or to sell on secondary markets.

Hacker group Lulz Security, or “LulzSec,” said it recently broke into Bethesda Softworks’ secure network and could have compromised information regarding 200,000 of the company’s game players, but chose not to do so. The group previously broke into Sony’s Sony Pictures site and invited readers to “plunder those 3.5 million music coupons while they can.”

Sega’s online network was also hacked and around 1.3 million accounts might have been compromised, the company said. Again, names, dates of birth and email addresses might have been up for grabs in the attack. LulzSec broke character for a short while to say that it “loved the Dreamcast,” Sega’s last home gaming console, and would help the company hunt down its attackers.

Sony was also forced to bring down its online gaming network, the PlayStation Network (PSN), and beef up security as a result of an earlier attack by an as-yet unidentified hacker group. That cyber attack on Sony led to hackers stealing sensitive information from potentially more than 100 million PSN and Station.com users. Sony said credit card information could have been compromised in that attack.

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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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EA just disclosed the latest details at at its E3 press conference in the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles. We got a first look at the game play and are looking forward to seeing more. This game could be that rare title that builds its fan base, stretches dramatic arc, and refines its game play so much that the third game could be a far better experience than the first game. It’s an important title for EA as it continues its bid to return to the top position in the video game industry in competition with rivals such as Activision Blizzard.

EA chief executive John Riccitiello has said the company is working to get this game right, which is one reason it delayed the title until 2012. The sneak peek we got in advance of E3 is the first indication of whether the games is on track. While I’m not so sure that EA’s Star Wars the Old Republic will be a hit, I’m convinced Mass Effect 3 will be. The game debuts March 6, 2012.

The first Mass Effect game established the franchise and introduced a great new story and universe to gamers on the Xbox 360 in 2007. The game presented you with interesting moral choices, like whether to save or shoot one of your friends who has learned a secret that could jeopardize a larger mission.

In Mass Effect 2, you could import your game data from the first title, so that choices you made had consequences for how the game proceeded. If you killed your friend, then that friend’s alien race would be really frosty at a time when you need help from them. Mass Effect 3 producer Casey Hudson, pictured above, says that the choices you made in the second game will also affect what happens in the third game. That’s a pretty cool hallmark in customizing a game to the player’s own experience of a game so that it becomes a unique storyline.

In Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, you can play the game as Commander Shepard, a human who has to enlist the help of various aliens to build a team that can survive some serious suicide missions that have to succeed in order to save the galaxy from some overzealous Reapers, a race of sentient machines that cleanse all life from the galaxy so that it can start anew. In Mass Effect 2, you collected as many as 10 comrades (I called them the 11 Samurai) to take into the final mission. If you lost some of them, they won’t come back in Mass Effect 3. But for the most part, you should see familiar faces from the friends of Mass Effect 2.

The story starts a few months after the end of Mass Effect 2. Mass Effect 3 opens with Commander Shepard on trial on Earth. Then the Earth is attacked by the Reapers and Shepard has to flee. He has to take off in the Normandy ship, gather support, and mount a counterattack. Shepard has to court entire civilizations like the Salarians, the Turians and Quarians to rid the galaxy of the Reapers. As with the first game, you collect intelligence along the way that changes your mission.

Hudson showed a level on the Salarian homeworld where the third-person combat was more refined than in the past games. You have to rescue a Krogan princess. The princess is key to reuniting a divided homeworld of the Krogan species. Of course, this rescue mission and the make-up of your team depend on what you decided to do with the Krogan character in Mass Effect and whether your full team survived Mass Effect 2.

In that battle, forces of Cerberus — a darker mercenary faction working for the Illusive Man — show up and fight against Shepard for some reason, and Shepard says, “every war has its traitors.” During the fight, you come across a vehicle called an “Atlas” that you can drive in the game.

Players no longer have to slide into cover and then hop over barriers. You can sprint, roll, and climb ladders. You can fire your weapons blindly around a corner and maneuver your allies to outflank enemies. Shepard can use a tech blade (the Omni Blade) around his wrist to kill enemies with a single blow. The artificial intelligence will be better and more enemies will attack at once. They will be tougher, more aggressive, and come in via rocket boosts. They can use shields, but you can rip those shields away with biotic (psycho-kinetic) powers.

“We are focused on improving the moment to moment game play, driving toward intense action,”  Hudson said. “We get a better feel for the weapon, new aiming and new weapons like hand grenades. You can fall, climb over ladders, and take advantage of vertical positions. Shepard can climb over cover while on the run.”

Shepard is a lot more agile and can fight in a more brutal fashion. The story will round out with an “epic conclusion,” Hudson said.

“Mass Effect 3 is about the galactic war,” he said. “You need to unify the forces of the galaxy as much as you can and take that fight back to the Reapers on Earth. You can build up your war assets. The more you build, the more success you can have in the final battle with the Reapers.”

You’ll be able to modify your weapons. You will also have to determine the sacrifices to be made in order to fight the Reapers. That means you may have to make moral choices about your friends again. If you fail, the whole galaxy dies. You have to figure out how to beat the Reapers. You can explore the galaxy while you’re at it, but you won’t have to stop and mine planets to get resources.

Hudson said the structure of this game isn’t like Mass Effect 2, which was like the Dirty Dozen. You knew what you had to do in that game and you had to collect what you needed for it. Here, the story unfolds over time, moving from Earth to the larger story about how you can unite the alien races. You have twists and turns in that story as you try to make progress.You deal with a smaller number of characters and have deeper relationships with them.

Hudson said that the developers liked the balance of story and game play in Mass Effect 2 and they did not consider moving to a first-person combat game. They knew people wanted a deeper role-playing game system and better fluidity in action. They built those changes into a new storyline that will wrap up the series.

The game arrives March 6, 2012, on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and the PC.

On stage at the E3 event, Hudson showed a scene where Shepard has to take on a Reaper — a giant mechanical creature — all by himself, using support from his friends at a distance.

We’ll be exploring the most disruptive game technologies and business models at our third annual GamesBeat 2011 conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the disruptive trends in the mobile games market. GamesBeat is co-located with our MobileBeat 2011 conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com. To participate in our Who’s Got Game? contest for the best game startup, click on this link.

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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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