I have never understood the acronym “MMORPG”, because it lies.

Role-playing games are what I played as a kid in high school. Combat tables, equipment, and loot only served as structure for the interactions between our player characters and the non-player characters (NPCs) portrayed by the Dungeon Master. The role-playing was the heart of the experience.

Nowadays, we drop the RPG altogether and refer to the genre as MMO. Combat mechanics and loot tables are all that computers are fit to replicate from the tabletop. Role-playing requires human beings, and writing and performing your own dialogue is a challenge for most people. MMO players often establish unofficial “roleplay servers” to make it easier to find one another, as they are so few in number.

When Bioware announced their focus on story in The Old Republic it sounded like a step in the right direction, but I couldn’t figure out how a focus on individual plot lines was going to support the group play that is so essential to a successful MMO. If all the players have their own, individual stories to pursue, what’s to keep them gaming together over time? When I sat down with Daniel Erickson after my hands-on demo of TOR at E3, this was the first question I asked him.

“The demo you played takes place on the origin worlds,” Erickson said. “Most of that is class specific content, but you can still work together to accomplish those goals.”

Why, I asked, would we stay together after that point?

“The great majority of our content is not class-specific,” Erickson said. “Each planet in the game has a world arc. They are giant, multi-quest stories that are designed for party play. Also, you get different dialogue options from NPCs for being in a party,” he added as an aside.

I raised an eyebrow.

“If I talk to an NPC by myself, I get a different set of dialogue options than if I was in a group?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“If I have different types of character classes in my group during different conversations with the same NPC, do I get different dialogue choices each time?” I asked. No MMO has ever given me a reason to repeat a quest other than loot runs.

“We had to prototype the multiplayer dialogue system before we even had an engine,” Erickson laughed. “Brad Prince, our lead world designer, only plays MMOs. He’s a strictly multiplayer gamer, so he always asks how groups work. What we wanted to do was recreate the pen-and-paper tabletop roleplaying experience that people have always wanted.”

In other words, Bioware wants to create the first MMORPG that lives up to the name.

Here’s roughly how it works: you and your party of three players are on a quest together and encounter an NPC. Someone from your party starts the dialogue from the familiar Bioware radial menu. The NPC speaks, and then each member of your party gets to select a response from their personal radial menu, and you all issue your “lines” to the NPC. Think the party dialogue in Dragon Age, where party members opine about the potential choices you might make while dealing with an NPC, but now that party dialogue is being generated by human beings.

“In pen-and-paper roleplaying games, groups tend to move toward the extremes,” Erickson said. “You have a small group of dominant personalities all trying to control the direction of the party.” He gave me an example of how The Old Republic replicates this. Let’s say that your group is composed of three Light Side characters and you’re a Dark Side character. Your party begins the interaction with the NPC, and your three compatriots select Light Side dialogue choices.

You decide to screw with your party and choose a Dark Side dialogue choice.  That gets the NPC riled up, and now your other party members have to try calming him down as the dialogue continues, while you continue messing with them.

NPCs in modern-day MMOs serve as little more than quest bookends. Bioware is not only turning these interactions into substantive content through full voice support, but where groups of players are concerned has turned them into roleplaying exercises.

Bioware has taken the onus off players to learn how to successfully roleplay. The Old Republic may not even require roleplay servers because the game turns everyone into a roleplayer. Groups will no longer be solely about 40-man raids into instances, but about playing characters creating a story.

This may not make roleplaying the heart of the experience, but even introducing it as part of the default experience returns the RPG to the genre’s acronym and may forever change what players expect from an MMO well beyond expecting their NPCs to speak to them.

Robert Hewson shares some details on the upcoming XBLA title Hydrophobia.

Stay tuned to Gamer Limit for further information on Hydrophobia.

Check out this interview between Chase Cook and the developers behind the highly anticipated XBLA title LIMBO.

Be sure to check out Chase’s impressions of the game over yonder.

Today our good friends over at the KritzKast, a Team Fortress 2 centric podcast, let us know that they recently got a hold of TF2‘s co-creator and software developer Robin Walker. Robin was kind enough to answer some questions about the history, current and future development of TF2.

It is important to note that this interview was conducted before the release of Steam on OSX. Despite this, Robin’s answers are still insightful and entertaining. Even if you don’t play TF2 this interview grants gamers a glimpse into the life of a game developer and the choices they face.
As an avid TF2, I found this interview extremely entertaining. The crew over at KritzKast ask some extremely good questions and Robin devilived even better answers.

At one point I, like most gamers, had aspirations of being a game developer. After several bombed programming classes, I found I was better and writing papers than I was at writing code. Despite this, my interest in game development remained. This is why I love these kind of interviews. Not only do we get to hear about the history of TF2‘s development, but Robin also touches on future plans for the game; giving gamers an idea of what kind of steps there are in the development process.

Source: KritzKast

I loved my local arcade. The cacophony of electronic sounds, the flashing lights that made ceiling lights redundant, the smoky haze upon entry and that real feeling of a like-minded community as everyone gathered around the Street Fighter machine. It all combined into something special. Sadly, my local arcade, just like the arcade industry, died long ago.

While the arcade in most countries is a thing of the past, its spirit does live on in a way. HMV’s Gamerbase stations in stores around the UK have proven to be extremely popular with gamers who gather together to play solo, competitively, and cooperatively.

First introduced into Glasgow in July 2009, Gamerbase has grown in popularity, hosting tournaments on a national scale. The areas themselves are well laid out, with gamers having ample space between one another, and the walls decorated with a plethora of gaming posters and memorabilia.

Graeme Loarridge is the manager of Gamerbase Glasgow, though this isn’t his first gamer hangout in the city.  “I started with Microplay and we had a loyal customer base.  When HMV asked me about doing Gamerbase then I wanted to bring these people over and grow the community, which we have done.

“On a good week we’ll have over 2,000 unique gamers passing through to play. In total we have around 11,000 accounts here and nationally it is about 40,000 accounts. So it’s doing well.”

Services such as these rely upon their communities, and engaging and encouraging its participation is something Gamerbase has embraced. Tournaments are a regular occurrence, and winners have their names and pictures featured on the site.

Graeme added, “We need the gamers here but if we don’t offer what they want then the interest will wane. Gaming is one of those odd things where, I think, about 90% of guys aged 10-30 play, but most will hide it and be ‘closet gamers’. So we try to show people that this is a social thing, it’s not all about sitting in your bedroom alone and hiding it.”

It isn’t just tournaments that the service uses to entice new and old customers. A very solid working relationship with games publishers has been forged, with Gamerbase locations now a regular fixture for the next big game launch. “A week before launch we had Super Street Fighter 4 on free play for our customers to come in and try out. During that time we had literally hundreds of people come in and play. We also held the UK launch party for the game down south.”

There’s also some attractive cash prizes on offer for those with the skills, “Our national Street Fighter 4 tournament had a £4,000 cash prize for the winner. We also had a nationwide Need For Speed racing tournament with the best lap times getting to contest the UK final in our Reading branch.”

In the arcades of old it was the fighting game that was king; the best way to earn bragging rights was to be simply better than everyone else at Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. Graeme thinks that Gamerbase goes beyond a reliance upon one genre however.

“There’s also a lot of play on (military games) Counter-strike and Modern Warfare 2. It’s not just the usual fighting and shooting though; World of Warcraft is always a top three game when it comes to hours played, and Heroes of Newerth was in our top 5 PC games last week. Considering the game hasn’t had its full release yet, it is surprising.”

While the true arcade experience will pretty much never come back to UK shores, there is certainly a feeling of nostalgia that permeates when walking around Gamerbase. Teenagers huddle around a single console playing the latest Street Fighter, solitary gamers try out the latest new experiences, and teams of players get together to practice.

The strong sense of an arcade isn’t lost on Gamerbase’s manager. Graeme feels the same way.

“Whenever I try to describe it to people I do use the phrase ‘a modern-day arcade’. Nowadays we give people the chance to play games they wouldn’t normally play or buy, in a way like the arcade did. There are so many games that the average person can’t afford to buy them all, so they can come in here and pay their £3 for an hour here without having to sink the £40 it would cost to buy the game.”

Since the demise of the arcade, there hasn’t really been anything that has filled that void. For those who miss the buzz of walking into a room full of machines and taking your pick, of both opponent and game, you might want to give Gamerbase a try.

For more pictures from my visit to Gamerbase, check out this blog post here.

Those of you that have played ‘Splosion Man, or The Maw, know that Twisted Pixel is a name that is synonymous with quality.

Keeping with that tradition, Mike Henry was awesome enough to sit down with us and talk about their superb puzzle/platformer, and their future endeavors.

GL: Thank you guys for giving us a chance to talk with you. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and the company?

Mike Henry: Twisted Pixel is an independent game company that was founded about four years ago by three battle-hardened industry veterans, who decided that it was time to use their talents to make the games that THEY wanted to make. I was hired on about a year later, just before work on The Maw started. As the company’s lead gameplay programmer, I get to take the designers’ crazy ideas and make them playable.

GL: Your most recent success, ‘Splosion Man, has received critical praise. Can you give us more insight into what inspired this zany title and its characters?

MH: We’re actually pretty overwhelmed by the response to ‘Splosion Man, because it actually started out as an inside joke. Our Lead Designer, Sean Riley, is known at the office for his love of “big ‘splosions” and breaking glass, and he tries to squeeze them into game designs whenever he can. One day while the company was sitting down and discussing ideas for what to do after The Maw was finished, Sean jokingly suggested a game called ‘Splosion Man in Glass World, “where you’re made out of ‘splosion, and that’s all you can do is ‘splode, and you’re walking around in a world made entirely of glass, and anytime you try to do anything, there’s just this huge ‘splosion and the entire level shatters!” Of course, we all laughed and moved on with the meeting, but that kind of stuck with us, and the more it bounced around in our heads, the more an actual game began to take form. Eventually we realized that it might even be a really fun game, and we made our CEO, Mike Wilford, pitch the idea to publishers. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall at those meetings.

‘Splosion Man himself took quite a few design revisions to get to a version we liked. A couple of them were normal dudes with explosive machinery strapped to them, but those were scrapped for obvious reasons. A few others were more alien-looking, with the ability to create fire. Eventually we decided that to get the maximum amount of personality and craziness out of him, he had to be made out of ‘splosions, just like in the original joke idea.

The scientists, perhaps less interestingly, are all based on people in the office.

GL: Was there anything you guys learned while making The Maw that benefited the development of ‘Splosion Man?

MH: On the technical side, we were making our own engine at the same time as we developed The Maw, so in a sense there was nothing we did during that project that didn’t directly benefit ‘Splosion Man‘s development. But in general, there were a lot of the things that we were trying out for the first time on The Maw – working with art outsourcing, having designer-generated levels, and playing with dynamic music are a few examples. We were definitely able to take our experience with those things and make them more streamlined in ‘Splosion Man because of it.

GL: The music and sound effects in ‘Splosion Man are fantastic. Did you assign a level of importance in developing both, and do you feel that sound and music can make or break a title?

MH: Absolutely. Sound and music both dramatically affect the way a game feels. We actually hired different composers (Joshua Mosley and John DeBorde) for our single player and multiplayer levels in order to give them a different feel from each other, and we even created two different methods of changing up the music as you play. In the single player levels, there’s an electric guitar track that gets played over the top of the music whenever you ‘splode, and in the multiplayer levels, we separated the music into 4 layers of instrumentation that each correspond to one of the players. Whenever one of those players dies, their instrument goes away, and hopefully you subconsciously miss their presence that much more. A company called Gl33k has handled all of our sound effects so far, and we couldn’t be happier with their work. Matt “Chainsaw” Chaney over there is responsible for the Donut Song that everyone loves so much.

GL: The downloadable market is flourishing, how do you feel this is affecting both independent and larger developers?

MH: At first XBLA seemed to me like it was going to be a way for independent developers to find a place to get their games in front of an audience without being crowded out by the bigger devs. It’s possible that if it hadn’t been for XBLA and its ecosystem at the time The Maw was released, Twisted Pixel might not exist, at least in the form it is today. Now it looks as though publishers have realized how much of an opportunity there is in the downloadable space for their “smaller” games, and the fight for virtual shelf space is beginning again. Fortunately, Microsoft has responded to this with the creation of XBLIG, which seems to be fostering a lot of cool indie creativity.

GL: Are there any cons when developing a download only title?

MH: I read somewhere that the majority of console owners still aren’t even aware that such a thing as XBLA exists, either because they don’t have their systems hooked up to the internet, or because they don’t really go looking for that kind of thing. I’m sure that will correct itself as time goes on, but in the meantime we have to rely on word of mouth, internet press coverage, and our presence at conventions like PAX for the bulk of our advertising.

GL: So, how about telling us what you guys have planned in the future? Maybe developing a title for another console’s virtual market, or perhaps joining Onlive? What about that retail title to be announced this weekend at PAX?

MH: We’re definitely open to developing for other platforms, it’s just a matter of what makes the most sense for each game, in addition to how our manpower and scheduling work out.

Our next game will be another XBLA title, and it’s called Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley. We’ve got more info available on our web site, http://www.twistedpixelgames.com. Everyone who enjoyed either of our previous games should definitely check it out. We’ll also be showing a demo of the first 10 minutes of gameplay 3 times a day at PAX East, so swing by our booth if you’re going to be there!

GL: Thank you guys for your time!

MH: Anytime!

Many thanks to Mike Henry and the rest of Twisted Pixel!  Gamer Limit can’t wait for Comic Jumper’s release; you can bet we will have a review ready for you when it does.

After playing one of 2010′s more solid titles, Bayonetta, from SEGA earlier this year, I was extremely impressed (as were a lot of people) with the slick presentation and incredibly fluid and fun combat system.  As we reported last month,  gamers in Japan agreed, with the game selling 1.1 million copies within a very small exclusive window in the Land of the Rising Sun.  This was followed by surprising critical and commercial success in the States.

Well, it appears that SEGA took notice.  In a recent interview with CVG, SEGA’s Mike Hayes, after speaking about things like Sony’s ‘Move’ and Microsofts ‘Natal’ motion technologies and the markets SEGA has never conquered (in the MMO department), spoke on the possible franchising of their recent exciting IP’s and successes.

“We’ve got our shooter with AvP and our RPG with Alpha Protocol – we really want to make that into a franchise. That’s the area where we need some success, to sequel-ise that.

If you think about it, we can sequel-ise Bayonetta, AVP, Alpha Protocol – if we can make a hit of something like Vanquish – then you add that to Football Manager and Virtua Tennis – we actually have a broad portfolio.”

If, like me, you enjoyed the hell out of Bayonetta, and are super disappointed with all the delays surrounding Alpha Protocol (because it looks so darn awesome!), then this could potentially be awesome.  I want to see more from the sultry Bayonetta (as does any male/female worth his/her hormone count), and Alpha Protocol has the potential to be a Bourne/KOTOR/Mission Impossible hybrid that will rock all facets of my world.  Fingers crossed that things pan out as well as they potentially could.

Agree with me?  Or did AvP burn your face off Raiders of the Lost Ark style?  Let us know!

In a recent interview with Game Informer, Sony Senior Vice President of Product Development Shuhei Yoshida talked about a number of things.  One of these topics pertained to the fact that God of War II, a best-selling and critically acclaimed title considered by many to be one of the last great PS2 games, almost ended up on the PS3.

According to Yoshida, certain departments within the team believed it to be a good idea to put Kratos’ second adventure on their new platform, while others wanted to make one final splash on the PS2.

“We had a lot of debates about it, actually. I always firmly stood by keeping it on PS2. Many people, including marketing, suggested that maybe it should be moved to PS3. What I believed was that God of War II would be the best-selling and best game of the year. We had always seen that, at the launch of a platform, the developer has to spend a lot of time becoming familiar with the platform and software tools. Technical issues take up a lot of the development, perhaps leaving less time for really polishing the game. Towards the end of a platform is when you see really great games, after developers really begin to understand the hardware.”

It’s tough to argue that logic.  After all, God of War II featured something like four times as much content as the original, and executed it all with incredible presentation, epic scale and heaps of gore.  Had the team been forced to work with the relatively new tech associated with the PS3, things might not have turned out so well.  As Yoshida points out, it was only fair to the team that they get to finish what they started on the platform they started on.

“In the God of War franchise,” he continued, “I saw an opportunity for the Santa Monica team to complete their vision for the second game on a platform they totally understood. That was my argument and the company and team supported it. I’m very happy with the result. So to your question, I have never regretted the fact that we released God of War II on PS2.”

Seems like things worked out in the end, as God of War II is considered by many to be one of the best action games ever made, and I believe that’s largely due to the fact that it was made with very familiar technology, and not as a semi-tech demo for a new console.  Good call Sony.

Source: Game Informer

With Mass Effect 2 in its final stages of production, BioWare is hard at work applying the finishing touches that we’ve come to love and expect. Gamer Limit was fortunate enough to sit in on a roundtable interview with Project Director Casey Hudson, where many details pertaining to the combat system, dialogue options, and many other important aspects were revealed.

In addition to serving as Project Director to both installments of Mass Effect and the original Knights of the Old Republic, Casey has also worked on BioWare hits such as MDK2, Baldur’s Gate II: Shadow of Amn, and Neverwinter Nights. Come join us as we sit down with Casey Hudson and delve deeper into the inner workings of Mass Effect 2.

In what ways has combat substantially changed since Mass Effect?

We probably improved every single aspect of combat. To go through some of them, it really starts with the feel of combat, the way weapons feel in your hand and the way aiming feels. We really did a lot of work in the area, and fundamental to that is frame rate. On the first game we were trying to create a really ambitious universe and a non linear play style, which made it very difficult for us to find a final texture and memory budget and everything, but now that we have the first game that served as to what our final budget was, we were able to be a lot more strict about performance so that we could make sure we were always running at a smooth, fast frame rate, and that probably is one of the biggest things you will feel as a difference in combat.

Now it’s so much smoother, it’s easier to control the characters, it’s easier to aim: it just feels really good because the frame rate is a lot faster. But we’ve also done a lot of work to the camera and the aiming system. It’s a lot easier, it feels a lot better as you’re zooming in and targeting enemies.

Related to that is the weapons, we still have a very much RPG style approach to weapons and items. You’re buying things, you’re selling them at the stores, you’re upgrading and modding. The thing that I think people will find, you choose your weapons by feel because they each feel very different. We have more weapon classess in this game, and you start to choose your weapons just by how good they feel and what your preference is.

With the pistol category, we have a hand canon, a heavier pistol, we have a sub machine gun, and you might really like the feel of a Desert Eagle-style heavy caliber pistol if you like one shot weapons. You might also like the feel of the sub machine gun where you can do a spray of many rounds and but less accuracy, with more area damage. You feel these things, and that’s one of the big things that people find when they’re playing, they’ll switch to a weapon, and they’ll fire it, and they’ll love the weapon. It’s nothing we can put on a bullet point, but I think it’s probably the biggest thing people will notice, it feels really good.

In Mass Effect 1, part of the problem with it, because the weapon was a skill, your character might have a low skill in a given weapon, and that means you as a player might be able to get the reticule on an enemy, but your character would be unable to hit them because a character has a low skill or the weapon is a poor weapon. We’ve moved those things onto different kinds of powers, and so now the character is able to fire as well as you can, and just really adds to the precision of the combat. But at the same time, all the same depth is there in terms of your character progression. We put those things more into powers that really get to the fantasy fulfillment of each class, so each class feels deeper and more varied.

One of the favorites is Vanguard. As a Vanguard, you are good at shotguns and you have some biotic powers. One of them is “Charge,” it’s a new power where you can launch yourself across the level, you launch yourself using Biotic powers at a tremendous speed so you can physically hit another enemy, and when you do that, the higher end version of the power actually slows down time when you hit them, so they get launched into the air and then, in slow motion, you’re right there with your shotgun. It creates this really high risk, high reward type of combat. Its a unique type of play style.

But then you have other kinds of classes like the Adept, which can essentially remotely command the battle field. You’re looking around at all the different enemies, and you’re able to do Pull and Throw and all these amazing abilities, but, beyond that, we’ve advanced those powers so that when you do a power like Pull, it’s not just some that pulls the enemies towards you. It’s an actual projectile that you throw into the world, and it guides towards the enemy. Depending on which angle you throw it, it’ll yank that enemy in that direction. So, if you’re on a bridge, you won’t just pull the enemy towards you, you can yank them left or right on either side of the bridge. You can really control what you’re doing and where people are going.

Soldiers, for example, you’re able to have skill in all the weapons and unlike other characters, you’ve got the heavy weapons system, which basically replaces grenades from the first game, for some extra firepower. The Soldier can also do all the different weapon mods too, so you’re feezing people solid, you’re incinerating them, it’s very much about the weapon experience.

So that’s one thing we’ve done, in terms of just really deepening the classes and making them different from one another. We’ve made a lot of improvements to the AI. There’s mounting objects and if you command your squad up ahead, and there’s an object in the way, they’ll leap over it on their way to the enemy. There’s a lot better use of cover between your squad, and the enemy, as well.

There’s been some talk about whether or not we’ve added ammo to Mass Effect 2. Because we had essentially unlimited ammo in Mass Effect 1, it kind of took away some of the tension that there is in combat, that makes you consider your weapon use a little bit more. Without abandoning the idea of ammo, or of overheat, we had to create the concept of overheat into an ammo-style system. Your weapons overheat like they do in Mass Effect 1, but they overheat into cells that are part of an overall clip, and you can find these universal clips of thermal heat sinks. It’s similar to an ammo system; it kind of limits the number of shots you an do before you rund out of thermal heat sinks. There difference is, it’s something that can add tension to combat without you actually having bullets that can be expended.

As you run around the environment, you’re picking up these thermal clips. It kind of ties into the location system of damage that we’ve added. Now, headshots matter, you can shoot the limbs off of androids and mechs. Because these things really matter and weapons are much better, like the sniper rifle is a lot better, it’s very smooth and very precise. So, now, if you draw your sniper rifle, you’ve got a limited number of rounds before you’re gonna need to reload or get a new clip. Now you’re starting to really think, because headshots matter and ammo is relatively limited, I’m really think about getting this headshot. It just makes you consider combat a bit more, and get a bit more of the overall feel of it.

There’s a lot of change, there’s a lot of improvements, and each one of them is relatively minor. Much of the way you play combat in Mass Effect 2 is the same way you played in Mass Effect 1, but it just adds up to a revolution in the way that it feels and how much better it plays.

The inclusion of characters from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2 was done as previously mentioned both to continue the story and because of the fans liking some of these characters. Which of these characters were your favorite and least favorite?

The great thing about the way we do our cast of characters is that we try to make sure that they’re all different from one another, and, to us, a success is if a character is loved and hated. Then, it presents a choice. If there are people that love a certain character, and other people hate that character, then we know that have a pretty unique character and it’s kind of inspiring some controversy, or at least decision making as a player you decide whether you like a certain character.

I think the ones that were more universally liked were characters like Wrex, Garrus was kind of a surprise. He’s a fairly laid back and cool, by the book guy. He wasn’t necessarily someone we expected to be a standout, but he’s pretty universally liked. Liara was well liked. Probably the most debated character, as to whether people like him or not, was Kaiden. I think a lot of people left Kaiden to die on the nuke decision on Virmire. I think that was an easy decision for a lot of people, between Kaiden and Ashley. As a character, there are a lot of people who loved Kaiden, andnas a love interest, I know there are a lot of people who have expressed a real interest in having Kaiden back, they really want to see Kaiden come back and be a part of the story.

The other one that was interesting was Tali. Tali is kind of an alternative character, she’s an alien, she’s mysterious, you can’t really see what she looks like. At one point I think we were considering whether she should be a love interest in Mass Effect 1, and I remember people saying, “no, people aren’t gonna wanna have a romance with a girl with chicken feet.” But, chicken feet didn’t really bother anyone.

Does Mass Effect 2 allow you to pick which play through you want as a reference point, or does it just default to the most recent playthrough data?

Every time you finish Mass Effect 1, it makes a special save game that is the end-state for that playthrough. Then, when you have Mass Effect 2 and you run the import utility, it will look at all your ending save games from Mass Effect 2. Then, it lists them out and it lists some of the relevant data, so you can remember which one was which, like when you made the save game and some of the key decisions, and when you import that save game, it gives you a full rundown of what happened in that, so that you can do a final double check, like a paragon playthrough, Ashley survived, and Wrex died, and all these things. Then you can make that final confirmation that is the save game that you remember and that you want to continue from into Mass Effect 2.

Also, you can import that game and play Mass Effect 2, but you could also import that same game and then play Mass Effect 2 a different way. So, you could have multiple playsthroughs of Mass Effect 2 coming off of one import from an end-game of Mass Effect 1.

What sort of improvements have been made to the planets? Will there be more variation in the terrain and the layout this time?

In regards to the vehicle, the Mako, we’re doing some cool things with the vehicle, though we’re not ready to announce them just yet. In another month or so we’ll probably be talking about the vehicle.

In terms of the overall exploration, one of the things that we had feedback on, people really loved the idea of a larger galaxy and being able to go out and explore stuff. What they really wanted us to improve was the variety and the different things that you got to do when you were out on these missions. So we did two things. First of all, we improved the galaxy map experience. It’s very much the same kind of galaxy map, but this time there are a few differences. You’re actually moving the position of the Normandy versus a target crosshair. And when you arrive at a planet, you have an actual minigame for scanning the planet. It’s really cool, you actually see the planet spinning below you, you turn it around, and you can scan for resources and the controller will rumble, and hear different sounds. You can kind of close in on resources. This part basically replaces the less interesting aspects of resource gather from Mass Effect 1 and puts it into a minigame thats really cool and a lot more interactive. This is how you pull up a lot of the resources that then tie into the economy of the game for getting upgrades and stuff like that.

The other thing that happens is, when you’re scanning planets, in addition to finding resources than you can pull out of using space probes, you can also find signals and radio anomalies that you can close in on, and through the minigames, actually find the location on the planet where something is going on. We call these N7 Missions. You can send a probe down to come back and do basic stuff like getting resources, but sometimes you find something that only Commander Shepard can do in person, and that’s an N7 Mission. For those, you find these locations on a planet and then you drop down to the surface. Those missions are kind of designed to be the opposite approach to the missions from Mass Effect 1, where you’re in the uncharted worlds. The only reason why they exist is because each one of them offers something unique and different than you’ve done before. Every level, either the gameplay or the story, or something about it is really unique and special

Each one that you do is different. You’ll want to go back out and find the next one and the next one, because you know that each one is going to offer you something weird and wonderful, just like you’d expect out in space. Those are some of the improvements we’ve made to exploration, it suits the game a lot better and it’s a lot more interesting. Because, again, all of the rewards that you find out there tie back into the main story; either they’re part of the key storyline, or the resources that you find out there tie back into the goal of equipping your team, building up your ship, and getting ready for a suicide mission.

With Mass Effect, I was constantly impressed with the depth of the fiction. For example, while the Elcor received considerable exposition, the Keepers seemed to be left intentionally ambiguous. How or where do you all decide what’s going to be explained, and what’s left up to the mind of the player?

I think its fun for players and it’s certainly fun for us too, because now that we have a universe established, we can think about which parts we want to develop. I don’t know if there’s any method to it, necessarily, but we work from the top down. We know the basic idea of where we want to go with the story, and what we want to make sure the players have the opportunity to do, as far as the story. Then we work down from there; if it’s a Dirty Dozen-style suicide mission, then you need missions where you’re going out the recruit characters, and you need to do things where you’re making them loyal to you, finding what’s important to them and what’s going to be meaningful enough that they’ll become loyal, and those become missions.

Once we get into the missions themselves and the locations we want to go to, then we can start bringing in things like characters from the first game, or different creatures and storylines. If you’re talking to a character, maybe this character knows something about the Rachni decision that you made. Or, if somebody is causing trouble in a bar, maybe that character who’s causing trouble is that Commander Verner, your super fan from Mass Effect 1, and will remember you when you interrupt him. It’s kind of a fun process. Once we get down to the details of the story, figuring out how we want to develop things in a way that’s going to be interesting to the players.

What contemporary games has the team looked to for inspiration?

I think, with the first game, we were looking at what some of the top shooters were doing, what some of the Xbox RPG’s were doing. Mass Effect ended up being unlike any game in particular, but it did combine elements of the better third person shooters and RPGs of the time. I guess our inspiration mostly came from games that came well before us, the main one being Star Wars Knights of the old Republic. A lot of us worked on Knights of the old Republic, and a lot of the core team worked on that game as well. To some degree, that really became the basis for what we were going to do with Mass Effect. The main idea being that we knew that we wanted to work on our own science fiction property, and trying to build something new there.

We also wanted to be able to incorporate more different kinds of players into the experience. A lot of people still have trouble with pause and play style gameplay like we had in KOTOR, but we wanted to have a more accessible gameplay interface, being that of a third person shooter. Otherwise, the overall experience was meant to capture that same sense of huge story and non-linear decisions making where you can go where you want in the universe, but with a little bit more freedom for exploration. The same kind of really intimate character stories, but then a story on a really high level of scope. That was probably the game most responsible for what Mass Effect became.

The other one is from even further back, which is a game called Star Flight for the PC. It was an incredible game in the sense that it offered space combat, and you’re driving a vehicle on distant planets, and you’re getting resources. At the same time, there’s an epic story brewing under the surface that evolves over time, and as you explore deeper into spact, it kind of magically evolves on its own. That was really fascinating to me, and I’ve always wondered how far can you go with present day techonology to try and achieve that kind of experience. That was kind of one of the more spiritual inspirations; what would that look like, that kind of non-linear and very open ended experience.

Are there any changes or improvements lined up for the inventory system as well as the character upgrade system?

We’ve made a bunch of improvements there, all in the spirit of preserving the original depth that we had, but just making it more intuitive in what you’re actually doing. The main thing, in the first game, the inventory system was all in one screen, so you were trying to equip your team with weapons and armor and whatever other gear you had. You’re also trying to then mod each of those types of equipment, and then you’re also kind of going through lists of inventory and trying to juggle your inventory. All of that was in one screen, so, even though it had a lot of depth, I think a lot of people weren’t able to access that full potential of what it was offering.

What we’ve done is taken all of the functionality that was there, and we’ve moved it into separate activities. For example, we’ve got an armor locker, and in your armor locker, you can actually create a modular N7 armor out of pieces, so you go and buy these pieces in the store as you’re exploring the galaxy, there are a variety of ways that you can get them, and then you bring them back and, in your armor locker, you actually build them piece by piece and each piece kind of does a different behavior in terms of gameplay or combat. Whether it’s enhancing your shields, armor, health, and accuracy, all of that kind of stuff. You can adjust every aspect of it, like how shiny the material is to all the different colors, your helmets, visors, all that stuff way deeper than we had before. Because it’s in its own location, you actually have much greater control over what’s going on.

Similarly for upgrades and modding your weapons and armor, that’s done through research terminals. The research terminal, because it’s actually about going out and getting research projects, come back and either spending money or different kinds of resources on it, it becomes a whole activity chain, but it also means that potentially anything can be upgraded. There’s a whole variety, whether it’s different kinds of ammo mod or modifications to weapons for accuracy or things that you can do to improve your armor, or even the ship itself has research projects that you can enhance the ship so, when you see it performing in certain key moments in the story, different things will happen as an outcome. It’s a very open ended system.

Likewise, the character progression system is very similar. We’ve added some new powers. You spend points in a very similar way to develop your character, you still have levels, you still have the paragon and renegade system. But there’s been some more subtle changes in there than in the other systems, its more similar to Mass Effect 1. But the changes we’ve made there are to draw out more impact on your gameplay. Most of these things that you have as powers or skills that you’re developing are active powers that you fire, either during combat or as part of interrupts in conversations, persuasion, things like that.

Are there any densely populated locations besides the Citadel, or is every place you visit a neatly established colony or an outpost?

We have a whole bunch of different kind of locations. I think Mass Effect is still very much about this idealistic, futuristic universe where everything is beautiful and sleek and clean, except for this underbelly that exists. It’s a part of the universe; symbolic of that is this larger threat of the Reapers, and the fact that a really idealist civilization would not easily accept the idea of such a threat. That’s kind of the role of humanity and Commander Shepard, to be tough enough and pragmatic enough to be able to see these things and dig into them, and in Mass Effect 2 you end up digging into that darker underbelly of the Mass Effect universe.

Two examples of different populated locations would be the Citadel, which you all have seen before, but you get to new locations there. It’s kind of idealist and beautiful and populated. Then there’s the other side, which is Omega. It’s also densely populated with huge space stations, but it is the opposite. It is completely lawless, it’s run by gangs and there’s a lot of crime. What you find there is just all of that other darker side of the galaxy.

And you also have other places like Illium, which is an Asari home world. It’s just a beautiful location, very sleek and clean like the Citadel, but it’s got its own style. Lots of Asari characters, it’s a very worldly place, it has a stock market, space ports, and that kind of really cool stuff to be able to visit. There’s a bunch of different populated locations. Even places like Tuchanka, which is the Krogan home world you get to visit.

Have enhancements been made to some of the minor, more technical aspects of the game, including long-ish elevator load times?

That’s part of the feedback that we accumulated together. We just set out to make sure we hit every one of these points. One is the elevator, or the way we transition from once place to the other. In Mass Effect 1, I think we missed an opportunity in telling and showing people what’s actually happening when you’re in one of these elevators. You’re actually in this kind of tube that goes throughout a huge location like the Citadel and, even though it seems like you’re going up three or four floors and though it seems like it takes a long time. What’s actually happening there is you’re going from, essentially the equivalent of, you’re going from one end of Manhattan to the other.

In Mass Effect 2, we have a different system for transitioning from one location to another, and it actually shows you a schematic of where you are, where you’re going, and how you’re getting there. Quite often these are spectacular, like the ones on the Citadel you actually see now, for the first time, where you are, and what an amazing location it is in 3D, and how you move from one place to the other. The other side effect is, by doing this way, the actual load times ends up being much faster. It makes a seamless continuity to the narrative because you can see yourself moving from one place to the other, but, at the same time, it’s faster. On the Normandy it’s even better. You get schematics of the Normandy in each deck as you pass through it, but it’s so much faster.

A slow transition time seems like a minor thing, but it’s actually beyond that because it actually became a barrier for people to develop relationships with the characters who are too many floors away. Now, because it’s very fast and interesting to watch, it’s just a ton of fun to move all around the Normandy and go between decks and go up and down from your quarters at the top to engineering at the bottom.

Texture loading and texture resolution, memory, frame rate, all of that stuff is much improved.

The dialogue plays a large role in BioWare games, what other changes are in store for Mass Effect 2? Will we see more conversations, more natural and final closure, forcing a player to choose their words even more wisely than before? Where will the dialogue system fall in relation to the first Mass Effect and Dragon Age?

I think it’s an improvement over the first Mass Effect for a few reasons. One of them is that the technology was improved for how we portray the conversations. You’re able to see characters moving around a lot more. The actual situations are more dramatic, they can walk and talk at the same time, and you’re in quite a variety of different situations when you’re having a conversation.

Another subtle change is that, thinking back to when we were designing the first game, a lot of the dialogue was written before we could really prove to ourselves how good the game would look and how cinematic it would be. Coming from game’s like Knights of the Old Republic or even Baldur’s Gate or Neverwinter Nights, where you’re essentially writing dialogue for sprites, if you don’t write the dialogue, if you didn’t write the words then, to some degree, it didn’t happen. You had to write everything. We were trying to go for a more movie-like or TV-like quality where an actor can give a response that is unspoken, with just a look that can tell you everything about how they feel.

We had that as a goal, but we hadn’t proved to ourselves that we could do it. In Mass Effect 1, there were moments like that; when Ashley apologizes for ruining the first mission, and getting you hurt, you can say, “No it’s okay,” or you can reprimand her. If you reprimand her, her response is just a look, and she looks hurt, like you’ve hurt her feelings, and you feel that as a player. Until we really saw those things in the first game, we didn’t know if we could pull that off. But now that we have, now we can go ahead and write it much more like a it’s a movie with more concise dialogue and with more reliance on the acting performance.

The bigger, functional difference is we’ve added a new kind of dialogue response which we call Interrupts. Basically, it’s a way to seize physical control during a conversation, depending on what’s going on. You’ll either have Paragon Interrupts or Renegade Interrupts at certain times. And you can let them pass, if you’re a Paragon-style player and you see an opportunity to do a Renegade Interrupt, you can let it pass and it’s okay to keep playing. It’s more a part of role playing, as opposed to being a quicktime-event where you have to do something or you died. It’s not that at all, it’s more about, do you want to physically do something special at that moment as part of role playing that character.

If somebody that is hostile to you wanders near a ledge over a steep drop off, you might see a Renegade Interrupt and know whether your character would be able to shove them off at that point. As a Paragon player you might see that and think, “No, I’m not going to push them off the building.” Likewise, you might be talking to a character who’s dying right there in front of you from an illness, and you have the cure with you, and just as they start sputtering their last breathe, you could do a Paragon Interrupt and inject them with the cure right at that moment and save them.

Again, if you don’t like that character you can let that pass, and then that character will die. It’s a way to instantly seize control, versus just a dialogue option that you choose and let it play out. Knowing that the conversations are peppered with these kind of Interrupts, it makes the whole experience just a more active experience. You’re more aware of what’s going on and ready to take action at a certain point.

Look for Mass Effect 2 on January 26th, 2010 and be sure to check back here at Gamer Limit for the full review coming at the end of January.

Released a few days ago, Edmund, an entry in the Adult/Educational Compo at TIGSource. While at first glance, Edmund appears to be a game created just for ‘shock value’, but with a little digging I’ve found it does go a lot deeper then expected.

Paul Greasley, the creator of Edmund, recently let us pick his brain on the ‘demon’ he has unleashed.

Gamer Limit: For those who haven’t heard of you, can you give us a brief history or your game development career?

Paul Greasley: I’ve made lots of rubbish indie and commercial games, this would be my first attempt at a somewhat serious subject matter, and hopefully a halfway decent game.

To jump straight into it, what made you decide to make a game involving rape?

Inspiration was mostly personal, I’ve known a few girls who have been through similar situations, which sparked the concept. As far as the experience, I wanted to inspire emotion in the player, even if its vile and disgusting.

The discussion on various forums around your game has brought up an interesting debate; Why do you think people don’t mind stabbing, torturing or shooting people in video games, but take a moral high ground when it comes to rape?

Double standards… Maybe because people are desensitized to violence in games, sexual violence not so much. That being said, I think the reaction for the most part is perfectly natural.

What would you call Edmund; Expression, Art or a Game?

I would call it a experience, but others might not, I think that question is best left to the individual player.

With Edmund’s subject matter, was it a hard choice to release the game under your own name, and not a pseudonym?

I’ve made this game as genuine as I can possibly make it. In Australia, the country where I live, it has shown it can and will censor indie games with dangerous content. It has happened before and no doubt it will happen again. But end of the day I’ve got nothing to hide, I’m not promoting rape here, to anyone, ever. Hopefully people will play the game before judging it, and judging me as a person, that’s all I ask.

I know making this game will effect my livelihood, maybe my job prospects, I know some of my family and friends will think I’ve lost my mind (Hi Mum!), but that’s just how it goes.

How long did it take to get Edmund from concept to finished project?

The game took 4 weeks of work outside of a 9-5 grind, developed for the adult/educational competition at www.tigsource.com.

How much hate mail have you received so far regarding Edmund, any death threats?

You would be surprised…

The TigSource community appears really supportive towards your game, while the IndieGamer community is quite… venomous… why do you think this is?

Because TIGSource is awesome, thumbs up to Derek Yu and Melly for creating the competition, and all the other editors over there that work really hard to build a strong indie community where competitions like this are possible, and most importantly, all the people at TIGSource who keep building indie games, and those playing them.

And now to answer your question, I think Indiegamer forum is mostly focused on the business side of Independent Game development, while TIGSource is a hub for game design and experimentation, so they are a little more accepting of these sorts of games.

Currently there are four known endings for Edmund, are there still any secrets left to find?

Look harder…

And now that you have got a controversial game under your belt, what do you have planned next?

Two months ago I was going to quit game development, I think it’s a bit early to figure that one out, maybe take a break and build a muscle car?

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.

No problem, a massive thank you to Compound, who not only did a amazing job on the audio, but was there to assist with the game design and making the project possible in 4 weeks.

———–

You can snag a copy of Edmund here, but be warned… it’s not for the faint of heart.

Blur may have been pushed back into 2010, but that is no reason to dismay, Gamer Limit are here with an interview with the developers, Bizarre Creations, to brighten up your day as September draws to a dreary close.

We spoke to Ami Langton, Studio Communications for Bizarre, so hit the jump to find out what those lovely people from Liverpool are up to.

Gamer Limit: To start off, the standard into question, can you offer the readers a brief background on Bizarre Creations, how it came to be and who is involved?

Ami Langton: Bizarre Creations is a Liverpool-based developer in the North West of England. We currently stand at a whopping population of 200 employees (and a mini superlambanana – who sends his regards by the way!).

Bizarre’s been about (officially) since 1994, we’ve been making racing games since then (F1, F1’97, MSR). We’re probably better known for the creation of the Project Gotham Racing series, which kicked off in 2001 and continued to grow until the end of 2007 when we released PGR4.

Whilst developing our racing titles, we also dabbled in other genres (from Amiga classics right up to Xbox 360 releases) developing the likes of Disney’s Treasure Planet, Fur Fighters, The Club as well as starting the Geometry Wars revolution! We’ve definitely had a very interesting 15 years to say the least, and we wouldn’t be the Bizarre Creations of today without every staff member who’s contributed along the way.

GL: Before Blur was announced, there was a lot of talk of comparisons; “Mario Kart meets Forza” being one of the most prominent.  Did a lot of research go into other games of the genre or did you try to stay away from that to keep the game more innovative?

AL: We really looked at the racing genre on the whole and found that there were many gameplay related frustrations that we wanted to address. These frustrations ranged from crashing on the first (or worse, the last) lap and having to restart, to falling behind in a race and never being able to catch up. As a studio that’s made racing games for 13 years, we felt that we needed to bring something fresh and exciting to the dry racing genre.

So when we set out to work on Blur, innovation was definitely in mind, and thinking up ways to combat these frustrations is what inspired new design ideas. This, plus the fact that we had the chance to start from scratch, of course; which is immensely exciting! So with Blur we’ve included many features with the hope of combating these racer frustrations, such as ‘hand of God’ – which places the player back on-track if they stray too far off the course; driving assists for those that require it, and most importantly Power-ups – which gives special racing abilities to the player.

GL: One of the things you say about Blur is that the development was focused on making racing ‘fun’ again, what was it about the genre that you believe had steered into ‘not fun’?

AL: We noticed that the racing genre had become more concentrated at the simulation end of the market. So while sim racers are undeniably great, it’s probably not going to be much fun for you if technical precision isn’t your thing. The simulation style has also been done time and time again – and for us at Bizarre, our next franchise had to be something different. We want to bring real racing to people who love to play racing games, as well as to those who play casually or even those who may never have played before!

It’s a shame to have all of these great racing titles with only a few that are actually accessible by the majority of the market. Everyone should be able to enjoy racing games – regardless of their skill level, especially since more and more people are playing games every day. Aside from this, we wanted to eliminate some of the racer frustrations for those who are more hardcore racing fans.

Let’s face it, there’s nothing worse than spinning out on your last lap and falling into last place! We’ve all been there and the only way to rectify a situation like that is to restart – we wanted to get rid of this. Racing shouldn’t be about restarts, memorising a track apex by apex, or modifying cars.  It should purely be about racing and having a blast on-track!

GL: Being the developers of the hugely successful PGR franchise, now moving onto another racing game, are you concerned as being pigeon-holed as a “racing studio”?

AL: As a studio with a strong heritage in racing games, being pigeon-holed as a racing studio is not really a great concern of ours! We love making racing games – we’ve been doing it since the Formula 1 day’s, so we know the genre inside-out.

Of course, racing is Bizarre’s first love. But we like to dip our toes into other genres too – we’ve done rhythm, arcade, platform, and 3^rd person shooter games, and will continue to broaden our horizons, no doubt!

Ultimately, developing games for a variety of genres keeps the neurons and imaginative juices flowing and the passion alive! We have a lot of creative people here at Bizarre, so it’s nice to give them the freedom to work on games in other genres, besides racing.

GL: It seems that Activision have been very accommodating to you, whereas I’ve read things about Sega chiming in, changing things in The Club, for example. Has this been the case? And how are things under such a large publisher?

AL: Activision has really looked after us. They operate what’s known as an “independent studio model.” This basically means that Bizarre is pretty much left to our own device, which allows us the time to focus on what we do best – making games. The studio is run exactly as it was before; the only noticeable difference being the opportunities and resources we now have on offer from Activision.

GL: You have quite an active community on your website, has feedback from places like this affected how you’ve developed your games?

AL: Our community has always been very important to us, as is their feedback, but forums tend to consist of mainly hardcore gamers. While this portion of the market is obviously very important, we think it’s essential to get feedback from all sorts of gamers, which is why we have regular usability testing – to gauge players opinions, irrespective of their abilities.

This is one of the many perks of working for a publisher like Activision – before we joined their extended family, we’d never really had to opportunity to test our games so extensively with the public before release.  This whole process really helps us highlight what people like and dislike about our games, which can be a very useful tool in development, as I’m sure you can imagine.

GL: You seemed to have a bigger showing at E3 than you have other years, how did that go and how was the fan feedback?

AL: This year’s E3 was by far the biggest showing Bizarre has ever had before, and the response that Blur got at the show was wonderful too. We had ten stations hooked-up on the show floor for multiplayer, and were showing the game behind closed doors too, and people were having a great time!  We even got nominated for Best Racing Game of the show.

Now, granted, at E3 the game build was still fairly early (pre-Alpha) so as you can imagine some of the harder core gamers had comments about a few things here and there.  But again, that all leads back to us really listening and evaluating fan feedback throughout the game’s development and making adjustments along the way.

GL: With motion control sweeping the industry right now, have you considered the technology as a viable future for your racing games?

AL: It’s really interesting to see how motion control is developing. At the moment we are still quite satisfied with gamepad controller configurations, and at the end of the day it all comes down to player preference.

So we’ll stick to what we know best for the time being while people are still buying Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3, etc, but we will certainly be keeping a watchful eye on things. And as you know, we’re always open to new ideas, so never say never!

Thanks to Ami and Bizarre for their time, and we wish them all the luck and success with Blur! Be sure that we will have a scorchingly hot review on release.

The Madden franchise, over 21 years and running, has been the most successful football sim to date. With the recent release of Madden NFL 10, gamers have been sucked in, once again, to the most addicting Madden yet.

Gamer Limit was given the opportunity to interview one of the many reasons behind Madden’s continued success. EA Tiburon’s Creative Director, Ian Cummings, recently took time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions for us.

Read on for some enlightening information behind Ian and the past, present, and future installments of Madden.

GL: Tell us a little about yourself.  How did you get to the position you are in today?

Ian: I, like many others in the gaming industry today, started at the ground floor as a game tester. I moved from Tennessee to Orlando to test Madden NFL 2001 for the PC. I stayed in Quality Assurance until Madden NFL 2003, and got my first shot in a design role for Madden NFL 2004 for PS2/Xbox/GameCube. I’ve been burning the midnight oil ever since to get myself where I am today.

GL: Does having no competition in the pro football video game genre bring you more or less pressure?

Ian: For me personally, it is actually a lot more pressure. When the main comparison that reviewers or fans use against your game is “real life”, that’s a lot of pressure to live up to.

GL: Was there anything that was planned to be in Madden 10 that didn’t make it?

Ian: Each year, there are always a ton of ideas that don’t make the cut – that is the nature of game development.  Due to the aggressive dev schedule, some things get tabled.  That said, we always revisit the great ideas and consider them for future versions.  We never want to release a feature without it meeting our high quality bar.

GL: What are your thoughts on the micro-transactions in Madden 10? Is this something Madden fans should begin to get used to?

Ian: I feel that if you can add something that’s worth the value, then you’re doing something right, regardless of whether it’s free or if you have to pay for it.  Microtransactions are totally optional – if you don’t want to buy them, you  don’t have to.  I wouldn’t say it’s something Madden fans should begin to get used to, I think every single gamer in the world should expect these offerings to continue across every genre.

GL: On your personal blog, you had noted that you haven’t been “addicted” to Madden for five years. Why do you think that is? Since this year has changed things for you, can you speak to those older Madden fans or even 2K fans as to why this year would be the year to return?

Ian: There are a lot of reasons that I think Madden NFL 10 “hooked” me again, but the main reason has just really been the overall “feel” of gameplay. I am EXTREMELY critical of our gameplay, animations, and AI in general (that’s my job in essence), but this year really was the year that I could play a game and have a really great time. I think, before this year, the game was just too fast, and I wasn’t able to get into a good rhythm.  As a “sim” or old-school Madden gamer, this year really gives me that feeling of the glory days.

GL: You recently tweeted that some people are saying that the core of Madden has remained unchanged. Do you feel this is a misrepresentation or simply a sign that Madden has hit its peak in terms of gameplay where this is something we will hear each year?

Ian: Obviously it’s frustrating when you pour all your effort into the game and make a ton of key changes to the core game itself (game speed, momentum, player control, etc) and see someone say it’s unchanged.  I think we’ve realized that this sentiment probably won’t go away…the game is still football and our goal is still to create a realistic and fun representation of the sport. If our game played exactly like a real life broadcast I think people would still say “the gameplay is largely unchanged” because it’s still 22 players, there are still passing and running plays, there are still tackles and touchdowns, etc.

GL: When you play Madden, do you play smart football or smart Madden football?

Ian: I think it’s a combination of both. Having played Madden over each and every version for the past 20+ years, I’ve learned what plays and styles work better than others, but I definitely center my play around real life strategies – like trying to eat up clock with a balanced offense and mixing up my play calling.  I hate exploits and money plays – even if I knew of one I wouldn’t use it.

GL: If you were given unlimited resources and budget to do one thing to improve Madden what would it be?

Ian: Though it doesn’t really classify as one thing, I would continue to focus on gameplay. Our goal is an authentic and realistic representation of the sport, so we always have room to improve in animation, authenticity, and AI.

GL: Any hints into what we can expect from Madden 11?

Ian: Other than you can expect it being totally awesome? Nope, not really.

Thank you again to Ian for taking the time to answer our questions. Best of luck burning the midnight oil for many successful Madden years to come!