Taku Murata, the general manager of Square Enix’s R&D division took the stage at GDC and made it very clear that his English was not very good. The packed house didn’t seem to mind one bit — of course those unable to understand Japanese were equipped with translation headsets, so that may have had something to do with it.

So there I sat, in the back of a jam packed room with my recorder jammed between my ear and the headset (no point in recording Japanese), as I feverishly jotted down the highlights you can read below.

Taku Murata starts by discussing the Square’s learning curve from Final Fantasy Tactics in 97, to Vagrant in 2000, to the creation of Play Online in 2001 as the company’s first attempt for common software, and finally jumps all the way to the release of Final Fantasy XII.

With this he discusses the large volume of assets and what it took for the company to make the jump from the PS1 to PS2, stating that they they ultimately decided to create separate tool sets for the different needs associated with the many aspects of developing the game.

He then goes back in time to 2004 to discuss new 3D data formats such as Collada, FBX, or propriety. After much consideration they decided to develop their own format based on thief own specific needs. The integration process was not easy, but through discussion they made it work.

As information became available regarding the PS3 in 2005, they developed a tech division within Square-Enix for the first time. He became the head of this division, and it was at this time they began creating their own development platform.

They announced the White Engine prior to the R&D division being developed in 2006, and today they announced a new name for that engine … Crystal Tools. He then asked for opinions on the name and received some applause.

He went on to discuss the essence of Crystal Tools, stressing coolness on multiple occasions, in that he felt it was more important for things to look cool as apposed to being accurate. He also discusses stylized expressions and shows us several examples.

The first is called “Character Viewer” which appears to be some sort of 3d Viewer for textures, containing a directory tree, model specifics, and more.

Second, the “Cut Scene Editor” used to check the detail of closeups, and make sure everything looks — cool. This is more like a movie editor he says.

Finally, he discusses the decision to use a GUI interface extensively. He explains that as the team got larger and the mix began to vary from high experience to entry level. He believed the GUI would help to level the playing field for the team and help overall productivity.

He then shows a slide which outlined the process they use internally, and follows that up with a trailer for FFXIII. The room erupts afterwards, although I did not see much if any new material displayed in it.

Taku Murata wraps things up by informing us that all the tools shown to us today were used to make the new FFXIII and FFXIII versus. He mentions that Square is also working on a next gen MMO which will also use the tools, but offers no additional detail for any of the games.

Square-Enix hopes that many will eventually make use of the newly named Crystal Tools, which hit version 1.0 this past September.

The tenth floor of the St. Regis hotel offered up a Street Fighter IV journalist-only tournament, complete with an open bar and enough pizza to satisfy the great E-Honda.

Upon entering the hotel room you are greeted by a loop of Street Fighter II playing on a large wall mounted plasma, two linked arcade units, and plenty of journalists trying to cram in as much practice as they can before the tournament officially kicked off.

The controls were fluid and familiar for the most part. I was the first to step up and try out one of the new characters (Abel) however, I wasn’t “able” to pull off very many of his moves, and with limited practice time, I quickly switched back to the familiar Ken/Ryu approach.

In terms of visuals, the game was flat out beautiful, and there was no need to jog your memory for a comparison to the original, since it was looping on the plasma just a few feet behind you (a stroke of PR genius).

The arcade unit itself is set to be distributed in Japan, and while those in the US can purchase the Japanese version right now on the AOU website, Chris (head of Capcom PR) told me that they are working to bring it to the US on a larger scale. In terms of completion, Chris shared with me that the current build we were playing was about 55% complete, with the major differences over the 50% build being primarily UI related.

GameTap’s Jared Rhea was kicking ass and taking names early on during the practice period, as he and his Street Fighter counterpart (Zangief) proved difficult to dethrone. My money was on Jared to win it all.

As the night went on, the arcade joystick became one with pizza grease, and the competition grew stiff. I managed to make it to the third round of the single elimination bracket before getting my ass handed to me by Mike Jones.

While I didn’t take away the 1st place trophy for best Street Fighter IV journalist in the US, I should have won something for moving the arcade unit at least six inches each time I performed a move — they really should have bolted that puppy down.

Unfortunately, my predicted winner lost in the final round to Dan Boutros — and it broke my heart to hear Jared’s first hand account of a “combo gone bad” later that night at the Will Wright party. Dan was then treated to a special guest match up against the games producer, Yoshinori Ono, where he once again emerged victorious.

No one walked away empty handed, as Capcom gave us all a sweet SFIV grab bags direct from AOU. All-in-all, it was a fun filled event, and thanks go out to Capcom for putting it together.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now that the Game Developers Conference 2008 has come and gone, we here at Ripten are taking a look back on the past week using the magical art of photography. Hippity-hop to check out the gallery.

(Click the images again to enlarge)

GDC 08 - A Pictrospective

109 Photos

 

Our very first installment of Ripten Radio sums up the high (and sometimes low) points from this years Game Developers Conference.

This particular edition features the following Ripten super studs: Dan “90%” Landis, Jon “as seen on Ripten TV” Zungre, Emily “like a banshee” Balistrieri, and myself — for the purpose of this event known as: Chad “my feet still hurt” Lakkis. Enjoy it after the jump.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Work began on Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King back in 2006, before details on WiiWare had even been confirmed. Fumiaki Shiraishi, the lead programmer of the project, was itching to try a game on a smaller scale, and pitched the concept to Toshiro Tsuchida, who decided to produce the project.

They both appeared at GDC yesterday to give audience members an insight into how and why the development process was different from your typical Square Enix blockbuster.

The team had to find solutions that would work for the scale of the game. A smaller group of people (about 18 tops as opposed to sometimes over 200) meant that while each member had to cover a wider range of responsibilities, they could have more say in the game and gain confidence.

Since Square Enix is known for super high quality graphics, they had to think of ways to keep a signature style while coming in under the memory limit, which seems to be between 30 and 40 MB and “subject to change.” The game wasn’t originally pitched as a FFCC title, but once that was decided, they were able to borrow assets from the GameCube game to cut costs and keep that Square Enix feel. The result is a mix of new and old material that looks familiar, but not low quality or cheap.

My Life as a King takes place entirely within a town where you play as a chibi blond boy with a big crown. In a potentially interesting role reversal, your task is to build the village according to what your heroes need to keep heading into the field to fight monsters.

Notices pop up in the upper right corner of the screen to let you know during the day what your brave fighters are up to, but most of your information will come in the form of a morning report detailing how much loot they scored in which dungeon, and other highlights of the adventure.

Characters go shopping in the stores you create, and you can observe their satisfaction levels. One came out with a smiley icon over his head saying, “I bought a level 15 broadsword!” Shiraishi noted that they aimed to make it something gamers can enjoy, but also spent a lot of time on the tutorial so casual users will hopefully get into it.

“Sorry about that. I’m a bit nervous so I just broke out into song,” joked Masahiro Sakurai, the designer of the Smash Bros. series, after regaling us with a few bars of the chanting trailer soundtrack. He gave an in-depth and very articulate look at the process of developing the latest installment’s character roster.

The line-up was pretty well finalized as early as 2005, with the exception of Sonic, who was added just last year. Characters were selected for their individuality, unique abilities, and balance of both the fighting and game series representation.

After describing some of these choices, Sakurai continued on to discuss how they unified the look of all the characters as much as possible by using intermediate colors, textures, and lighting. Not only does this help make Link and Mario feel natural side by side, but it gives the Smash Brothers team interpretations a lot more detail than the regular models.

He gave special emphasis to their Pit, who, not having had an update in about 20 years, was really fun to design. “Please don’t tell me this isn’t the Pit you all remember, because it is,” he said, even as he pointed out the “pretty cute” Grecian footwear, and the spinning bow attack “sort of like Darth Maul in Star Wars.”

Next he elaborated on how he designed the moves for each character. It starts with brainstorming, which he assumed was the easiest part. There are four parts to each animation: standby, windup, strike, and follow-through. He said they don’t have to be super realistic, because it’s supposed to be more about fun for the player.

To show his team the vision he had for each move, Sakurai posed 4″ Microman action figures and took 30-50 shots per character. He showed lots of side by side pictures with Wario and the figures, Pit and the figures (with twisty tie bow prop), Sonic and the figures (with added visual effects for his spin move), and others. Even for characters like MetaKnight who aren’t really shaped like a standard human being, he said that it was better to have the action figure tool than to just use a text explanation.

“To build the characters you must synthesize the intent of the originals, Smash Bros. game design, and character moves,” Sakurai explained, leading up to his discussion of parameters. He did all the work on this part of the game, which involved refining performance again and again to get the character speeds, throw distances, and other numerical issues just right.

“Hitting the mark here may well be the most important thing…” and he explained that it was very important to go back to the original games and “sniff out” the reasons why, for instance, Mario jumps and falls quickly, while Samus floats. The answer is that Samus needs to aim and shoot while she jumps. Sonic is actually quite slow until he gets going, which is why players feel such intense speed once he’s topped out.

He played a bit of the game for us (showing Snake stick a butterfly bomb to Pit’s face and remote detonating it, getting a funny screenshot of Pit’s wings poking through Snake’s back during a grab animation) before ending his talk by reiterating how important it is to market your game effectively. Descending into “dojo update hell” was a necessary task for his dev team, and he wrote the daily updates himself.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl ships for North America, in case you somehow forgot, on March 9th!

Our second installment of Ripten TV highlights the Star Wars Force Unleashed GDC session hosted by Haden Blackman. The presentation outlined many aspects of the teams growth as well as the struggles and successes during the development of the game. Have at our impressions after the jump.

Yesterday Steve Theodore of Bungie Studios sat down with Isamu Kamikokuryo to discuss how he got into the videogame art business and where his inspirations lie. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the new FFXIII trailer and concept art he had to show us, but we can point out some of the highlights.

Kamikokuryo actually started as an oil painter and illustrator and hadn’t considered working in videogames until after he saw FFVII. Inspired by the artistic potential, he presented a portfolio and eventually ended up directing background art in FFX, moving onto directing the art of FFXII.

His influences range from painter Andrew Wyeth to designer Luigi Colani, and even include comics he read in middle school by artists like Alex Ross and Frank Frazetta. Kamikokuryo is also a world traveler, always taking pictures of scenery and architecture for inspiration. He showed us a few of over 40,000 photos he took on a trip through the US last year.

On working in a large team at Square Enix, he said the key was to have a good vision for everyone to work towards. He did note that even though the scope of games had already broadened a lot by the time he joined the business, he still felt some nostalgia for the days of smaller groups.

What hasn’t changed is their aim for Final Fantasy to be a stylized reality, which is even more important now with the increased possibilities afforded by the hardware. The whole art staff at Square Enix instinctively agree, without needing a memo, that a stylized reality is better than getting too close to the Uncanny Valley -”…we can’t go there.” And with one of the scenes showing a girl on a green flying motorbike, prompting Theodore to quip, “Chocobo of the future?”, a stylized “reality” is what they’ve created.

The new trailer featured tons of CG, but also some in-game battle. Huge airships, something like dragons, and of course, Lightening herself, flew through the air. We saw her fighting a huge purplish ogre monster, and later against a swat team-like force in yellow uniforms and white masks. A blond fellow pulls up on a motorcycle but we don’t get to find out more about him before it faded to black.

We also got a peek at some really fancy concept art. The world of Cocoon hangs in the sky over the monster-infested outer world, Pulse, like a moon with a what seemed to be a huge crater. Cities have very intricate designs and at least one seemed almost nautical in style, another featured terraced halls enclosed by glass lit up in the night.

Obviously FFXII is one of those games that gets prettier every time you see it, so we’ll be looking forward to the next eyeful.

Well, I have to admit that I’m a little high off of that presentation. Dave Jones is a breath of fresh air for MMO design and it tastes good. He had a lot to say, and said it with strong belief. To find out what Dave (from the developer of Crackdown) had to talk about and his next game, the All Points Bulletin MMO, follow the jump.

David Jones began by stated that he’s not really making an MMORPG, because MMOs don’t always have to be RPGs, nor do they always have to be fantasy or sci fi, since that limits your audience.

He wants to get away from the geeky stigma and root games in the contemporary world that people can understand right away without needing a niche culture passport. In fact, he says he’s not even sure most MMOs are “massively multiplayer” at all, considering that most of your time is spent in 5-25 man raids.

A dedicated server for a game, this Jones considers the most exciting part. Instead of asking what kind of MMO he should make, he thinks of what game he can make with a dedicated server. New audiovisual effects are great for artists and composers, but he feels like adding the dedicated server is a serious asset for designers.

So on the back of Crackdown, Realtime Worlds’ first release, David Jones wants fewer constraints and more freedom, because “the true beauty of our medium is in the players’ imaginations, not the designers’.” He also boldly says, “I like to leave the story to books and movies, they do it so well.” This is clearly evident in Crackdown, since nobody plays that game for its narrative; it’s all about the crazy times with crazy super powers.

So what’s going to be in this new game of his, APB? Well for starters, one hell of a character editor. And not just a character editor, but an everything editor. Not only can you pinch and pull each facial feature, grow the hair, put on weight, pop out veins, add freckles or fresh/aged scars, but the decal system in this game is fantastic.

You’ve seen decals in racing games before, but in this game the system extends to tattoos, clothing, cars – all your stuff. You make a clan/gang (instead of a “guild-” part of his replacement of geek with chic agenda) and create your own completely unique look.

Everything is scalable and (he hammered this point home) high quality, as if an actual artist designed it. None of that cheap decal that looks like you slapped some paint on your shirt; tattoos look like tattoos and clothing looks like cloth. Basically everything from the music you hear in your car (which supports custom soundtracks and even matches music/music style with others you play with) to the jeans hanging off your ass (if you so choose – your boxers don’t have to show) is ridiculously customizable.

Summing up the character editor portion with toons of some industry greats, including Shigeru Miyamoto in mushroom boxers and an old school Mario t-shirt, drove home the fact that not only could you make whatever you want (within the constraints of a realistic world – no aliens) but you could just make yourself.

At this point I was thinking, well that’s great, but what’s the game? Well, you plop a couple hundred players into a big city (from high rise to waterfront), give them some sandbox tools (physics, guns, vehicles) and ask them to choose sides.

Players pick to be enforcement or gang and will receive missions accordingly from their bosses. For example, we watched one mission that sent gang members to hijack a truck. Although the truck driver is some NPC, it gets interesting in that instead of “Artificial Incompetence” going after you, the game will assign other players to try and stop you through some dynamic matchmaking magic. This way, every mission is automatically different because you’re not just grinding the same MOBs.

Speaking of the grind, Jones declares it a “broken hook,” adding, “…it’s called a grind for a reason.” He has played lots of WoW, but he played it “like a programmer” by just hitting the sequence of buttons that works and repeating and repeating. So how do you keep people playing when there is…ahem…NO LEVELING? Apparently, it’s all about pimping your character; “visual progression, not spreadsheet.”

The other important thing that will keep people coming back is having great core gameplay. For this, he refers to Counter-Strike, calling it, “the best online game ever.” He bet that many people in the audience were compelled to play it for 100+ hours because, as he said earlier in the talk, “Multiplayer gaming is really where it’s at.”

To illustrate one way to balance out noobs vs. hardcore veterans, he showed another example mission where four novices (in rather plain t-shirts and minimal gear) are sent to steal TVs. The matchmaking system finds one badass guy who’s been playing for six months and sends him in. This makes him feel like a badass, and gives the noobs a sense of (false) hope that maybe they can survive. Yeah, this hope is crushed when he pulls out a rocket launcher. Death, however, is not so bad – just an inconvenience of a short distance and the time taken to hop-skip back.

In-game Character Model

One great thing about MMO’s is that they are never complete, and take inspiration from their players. This can be seen in a feature asked for by APB’s QA team; a videocamera. One player can be the videographer while the rest make costumes and stage elaborate theatrics in the streets – with blocked off roads to stop AI from driving through the middle of the set. Other players can still crash through and aspiring actors will stand around asking to be let in the movie, but creative people will be able to have even more fun in APB.

More importantly, players can design their experience with the game themselves. “Watch, listen, embrace,” is Dave Jones’ mantra for supporting players, and that sounds absolutely rad.

No news on a timeframe, so it’s probably best to wait until a later date to start shopping for your new PC. I hope that what he told us about the specs not being so crazy is true, because I gotta play this game.

Sony had a rather comfy-looking booth on the GDC show floor, with large 1080p screens and leather couches, perfect for sitting around and playing Devil May Cry 4 or Echochrome. Behind these were rows of PSPs with God of War: Chains of Olympus, and the charming surprise Patapon.

Echochrome was just as trippy as we’d hoped. By slowly maneuvering the viewing angle of an Escher-like pathway, you can allow a little mannequin to hit all of his shadowed marks. The five rules of Echochrome (which we first previewed here were demonstrated in a lengthy tutorial, but when it came time to use all five at once to pass each stage, some players at the show were quickly overwhelmed.

It seems like there are multiple solutions to Echochrome’s puzzles, and when the game is released, we’ll be sure to find Portal-like Youtube videos showing all sorts of shortcuts and cheats.

It was hard to get a sense of pacing in this timed demo (which lasted around 10 minutes), but the beautiful violin soundtrack created a calm and avant-garde mood. This is definitely a more highbrow, cerebral puzzler than we’re used to seeing on the PSN–it’s like the exact polar opposite of Pain.

Moving to the PSP, we found some extremely promising titles. God of War: Chains of Olympus was really satisfying, even though the grab move seemed limited to just one attack, and the forced analog stick controls weren’t perfect. But the graphics, sound, and combo-raking combat felt absolutely perfect, so it felt like very little had to be sacrificed to make the game work on PSP.

And then there’s Patapon, which could be an original smash hit evocative of 2006’s LocoRoco. Using the circle and square buttons, you lead a tiny army of one-eyed creatures as they hunt mammoths and other massive creatures. They respond to music, so you have to keep the beat to make them march forward or attack.

There is also an in-depth strategy element as well, since you outfit each little guy with the right equipment, starting from spears and working your way up to other, sharper implements.

Patapon has some of the catchiest music I’ve heard come out of the PSP since Lumines, so this is one title I’ll probably buy just to drive out the repetition. “Pata-pata-pata-pon” sends your army forward, and “pon-pon-pata-pon” urges them to attack.

Patapon seems to grow in complexity throughout, but even with just two drums keeping the beat, the game was fun and addictive. If only we could skip the cutscenes and get straight to the action!

This Sony lineup for the first half of 2008 certainly feels very promising, leaving little doubt that Playstation owners will be enjoying the wait for Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to drum up some support for my war against the mammoths.

As you may have noticed, Day Three exploits are going up a little later than usual. Unfortunately, we had a run-in with the Blaznatz chewing up our bandwidth, so we were unable to get a good connection. Damn him and his chainsaw bayonet…

We’ve decided to combine our day three info with day four, which would officially make this Ripten’s GDC 08 Coverage: Day Seven. Read on for all the goodness.

A lot of stuff happened over the past two days. Everything will be explained in more detail by the peeps that were there, so don’t bust my balls if I don’t deliver the full monty right now.

We got a sneak peak at a bunch of upcoming Xbox Live Arcade games, courtesy of the XNA dev tool. There were a few titles that actually haven’t been announced yet, so stay tuned for that.

We also met with the Zeitguyz team for Recoil: Retrograd, and saw quite a bit of Havok stuff (which you can read about here).

Jon ran off and did a bunch of interviews while Chad and I went to the Microsoft keynote. A lot of good stuff was talked about there, including Ninja Gaiden II, Fable 2, Gears of War 2, and XNA 2 — er, just XNA. Sorry, I got on a roll there with the 2s.

We got some coverage of the IGF and Game Developer Awards, had a Q&A with Sid Meier, saw new footage of Mercenaries 2, Prototype, and The Force Unleashed, saw RealTime Worlds’ new MMO, hung out with the peeps from X-Play, and had a quiet evening with Will Wright.

Of course there are other things we did, too, like your mom. Oh, snap! Seriously, though, we attended quite a few events and will give you the complete story shortly.

In the meantime, rest easy knowing that I was only once almost run over by a speeding fucktard in a BMW, and Chad was kind enough to half almost attempt to save me. Thanks Chad!

We also had a kind soul offer to taxi us back to our hotel for just slightly more than the cost of taking an actual taxi, but this ride had the added thrill of almost getting us murdered. The dude was kind, but very strange. He called us “country bumpkins” and never really answered me when I specifically asked whether or not he was going to kill us. I take that as a definite “maybe”, but perhaps he just didn’t do it because he knew we were expecting it.

Moral of the story here, kids, is that you should never cross the street — ever, and under no circumstances should you get in someone’s car before asking if they are going to kill you. Wise words from your good pals at Ripten.

Takao Sawano, who works at Nintendo with Shigeru Miyamoto, gave a great lecture on how Wii Fit came to be– it turns out it was “in the center of Miyamoto’s brain as a concept even before the console was released.”

Planted in the middle of Miyamoto’s Wii conceptual diagram (along with Wii Play and Wii Sports brainstorms) were ideas stemming from the fact that Miyamoto just enjoys measuring his weight and collecting the information. Of course, to make the product have wide appeal, there needed to be more to it, because who weighs themselves in the living room?

While the software team was taking care of that area, Sawano and his team were hard at work designing the peripheral that would become the Wii Balance Board. His idea to have two scales came from seeing Sumo wrestlers weighed that way, since one scale wouldn’t be enough to measure over 330 pounds. Not that we are all huge, but just that charting the weight shifting between feet could be an interesting way to proceed. He showed pictures of various prototypes, including raw shots of the strain gauges, of which there are four in the final product.

“Connecting the Wii Remote is a clumsy solution, don’t you think?” is how Nintendo President Satoru Iwata responded to their already heavily tweaked prototype when they first presented it. So much for cutting costs! Now the Balance Board is a self-contained wireless device. The decision to widen the board to account for a shoulder width stance during exercise also added more cost. Luckily it seems that since the game is selling so well in Japan (over 1.4 million copies since it was released last December) third parties may be interested in developing for the peripheral as well, so we’ll have more to do with our new toy. One such title already released in Japan by Bandai Namco in January is called Family Ski, which features a more fleshed out skiing game. Sawano rolled footage of a Japanese comedian having a great time while pulling off jumps and navigating moguls.

Wii Fit hits Europe April 25 and North America May 19. Might wanna start jogging around the block so the Miis don’t leave you in the dust on Wii Fit Island.

I heart Havok’s ragdoll physics and now they’re even better. Check out a video of their new tech after the jump.

The first time I played Max Payne 2 and shot a criminal off a building I had myself a moment. I died, came back to life, had 5 babies, got married, died again and came back to life. It was quite an emotional day.

At this year’s GDC, Havok is showing demos of two abosolutely new engines and my heart is racing. Check out a video of their new cloth physics offering.

Thanks to PS3 Attitude for the video.

When the North expo hall opened at 10 am today, I was the second person to hop on a balance board and get my feet on Wii Fit.

Not much time to pour over the menu, but they have a variety of exercises ranging from aerobics to yoga. The two I tried out were balance type: slalom skiing and heading soccer balls.

I’m not sure whose Mii was queued up, but the first thing we did was send him down a hill. You can adjust speed by leaning forward or backward, but most important is aiming for the blue and red gates with precise movements left and right. You’re less likely to whack the flags or miss gates completely if you move gradually.

After skiing, we tackled the familiar soccer ball game. The object is to head as many balls as possible, while avoiding look-alike panda faces and the occasional shoe. Again, control is a matter of keeping balance and trying to make smooth motions, so you don’t end up leaning back suddenly on the wrong foot and getting a face full of cleat.

Overall, our brief play session today adds a layer of experience on top of the comment that the game is for body awareness and not fitness. They appear to have hit this goal.

Cliff Johnson’s 1987 Mac game, The Fool’s Errand, was featured at GDC today in a panel entitled “Stories Best Played: Deconstructing the Best Interactive Storytelling.” The game was an example of how to tightly integrate storytelling and gameplay.

The integration is so tight in this game that you won’t be able to continue reading the tale without first completing puzzles to unlock the text. The memory of poring over the scrambled Sun Map was fondly recalled, and you can have a go yourself by downloading the game from this website.

Then as an extra tidbit, they mentioned that the game’s sequel, The Fool and His Money, will ship this year. Johnson’s website corroborates this fact, adding that if you pre-order, “…your name shall be immortalized in the Compendium of True Believers inside the game.” Does Duke Nukem have one of those, too?

Independent games make me excited. The unrestrained creativity of game developers trying to break into the industry can be a dynamic and explosive thing. So I had to check out this years GDC mobile awards to see what the best had to offer.

The entire awards ceremony was only half an hour long… short and sweet or perhaps short and oversimplified? I went to get a glimpse of a lot of the games and to be honest, I only got a minimal one at that. No video or game description was given and only one or two pictures for each nominee and winner. I wanted to see more.

The awards ceremony started at 10:05 in the morning! Equally bizarre! Plus, prior to the events start, Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name was pumping through the large event’s speakers. I love me some Rage, but at 10am, I don’t know that my heart wants to feel riotous anarchy. 11am, sure, but 10? No.

All the Awards presenters and winners were very respectful and classy, and presented the following awards:

Audio Achievement Winner: Critter Crunch by Capybara Games

Impressions: A very colorful, whimsical looking puzzle game? It looks like a column based puzzle game and in one picture, it looks as though a character at the bottom of the screen is about to eat a critter column that has formed at the top of the screen with his tongue, Yoshi style.

Technical Achievement Winner: Steam Iron: The Fallen by Mikoishi

Impressions: They only showed one screenshot, but the graphics look fantastic for a mobile game.

Artistic Achievement Winner: Kodo by Jadestone

Impressions: Kodo are little hungry things that live in the digital environment.

Innovation in Augmented Design presented by NVidia Winner: Phone Tag Elite by Knowledgewhere Inc

Impressions: This category had me more excited than any other, since the nominees use GPS as the technology base for their games. Phone Tag sounds great, I’m not surprised it won, but another nominee used GPS as a sort of tour guide function, telling you history as you followed it around. Cool.

Innovation in Mobile Game Design Winner: Ego by Punch Entertainment

Impressions: Looked like a fairly flushed out Japanese RPG. Again, only making judgments from one picture.

IGF Best Game Winner: Critter Crunch by Capybara Games

Impressons: The guys from Critter Crunch tell us to look for it on other platforms, which makes me hope DS.

All in all, the IGF mobile game awards were short and fun and although i would of liked to see more info about the games they were honoring, it definitely wet my appetite for the full fledged Independent Game Festival Awards that we’ll be reporting later on tonight.

A few minutes ago at the Microsoft keynote, Peter Molyneux officially showed off the online co-op of the upcoming Fable 2.

Unfortunately for him, however, his in-game friend happened to murder Peter’s wife right in front of him. Oh yeah, Peter Molyneux is a red-headed chick with some nice boobs, which came as quite a shock to me. He looks much different on camera.

So his in-game character is female, which looked pretty nice. He apparently got pregnant at some point, but said that there is no childbirth minigame. Damn…

Peter comes home from a six-month stint away from his family and is instantly assaulted with love from his 5-year-old son. His husband appears slightly angry at Peter for being away so long, so Peter’s co-op partner decides to shoot him in the face.

Choose your friends wisely because this event is permanent. Peter’s husband is dead. No respawns, no second life. He is gone forever, and Peter is one sad girl.

The co-op itself is drop-in/drop-out, so no need to set up a game beforehand. The host player remains the same character while the joining player becomes a henchman based off of a character from their own game.

Fable 2 will be demoed again on Friday, all by itself. Check back for more coverage and info on what looks to be another sure-fire hit for the Molynator.

Cliffy B has just announced at GDC 2008 that Gears of War 2 will in fact be released in November 2008.

“Gears 2 is going to be bigger, better and far more badass than the first one.”

That’s straight from the horse’s mouth, ya’ hear? An updated Gears of War was shown, presumably from GoW 2.

Afterwards, Cliffy B came back on stage with a real chainsaw bayonet.

“It’s a funny thing about rumors on the Internet – once in a while they’re true.”

Chad has also told me that from what he’s seen, he believes that you’ll be able to block and counter chainsaw attacks.
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Unlike most sequels, the Game Developers Conference Day 2 did not suck. The Ripten crew actually did stuff today! Amazing!

We met up in the press room to get our schedules straight (again), eat muffins, and get our daily recommended allowance of Mountain Dew. Jon Zungre drew first blood by attending the Independent Games Festival Mobile Awards, making us all look bad with his go-getting initiative.

When Jon got back, we headed over to the D3 Publisher’s GDC 2008 Press Event. While we were there, we got some hands-on time with the Dark Sector multiplayer, which we can’t talk about, and got demoed three more upcoming games.

The first and only game we are allowed to talk about was NARUTO: Ninja Destiny for the Nintendo DS. It was surprisingly solid for a handheld 3D fighting game. Look for our full impressions of the game later this week.

The other games we were shown were Bangai O Spirits and an as-yet unannounced game that we will spill the beans about next week, so be sure to check back for that. We were treated to some cheesecake and cupcakes before heading back out into the recently nerdified San Francisco. We had a few things to see, so we split up from here.

Jon and I went to see a new game called Freaky Creatures, an MMO game from Abandon Interactive. The concept was actually very cool, and even though all of the art and effects weren’t in the game yet, we walked away pleased. Look for our full impressions of the game very soon.

We headed from there to a press conference about the Emotiv headset, a device that reads your thoughts, emotions, and facial expressions. The event was almost a complete train wreck, mainly because the douchebags in the audience refused to disconnect themselves from dork headquarters — all those wireless signals in the room were messing up the headset’s reception. They promised us some hands-on time with the thing tomorrow, so hopefully we can get a better idea of whether it’s actually cool or just another expensive way to make me look more retarded.

While we were doing all that, Chad went to an ominously vague PC announcement, which turned out to be this. The invite did a good job of making it sound extremely important while also not saying anything at all. Those crafty bastards!

He then met up with a few others at the Sony Online Entertainment party. Apparently, Sony really wanted to solidify the competition they have with Microsoft by throwing an equally shitty, fallopian tube party — the female version of Microsoft’s Sausage Fest 2008. Packed with a bunch of old ladies, Chad fled the scene before the combined might of their mental undressings left him naked (the room was cold, too, so we couldn’t have that).

After that, we all took refuge in our overpriced dumpster that is somehow considered to be a hotel. As I said before, we don’t get to bite into the meat of the GDC sandwich until tomorrow (or technically today, considering what time it is), so things will only get better from here on out. If we somehow manage to stay awake and experience it, we’ll be sure to tell you all about it first because you are our very bestest friends.

Hot on the heels of the announcement that Street Fighter IV will be playable at GDC, Capcom has also revealed that both Bionic Commandos–the XBLA downloadable remake of the original, and the next-gen, kosher frank-smuggling reboot, will be shown as well.

I’m personally not a Bionic Commando fan–the original games never excited me in the same way as remakes of classics like Mario, Zelda, or Castlevania. But the series must still have some currency with grown-up gamers, as Capcom is going all out with their franchise resuscitation.

Some concerns were raised over early screenshots of the next-gen Bionic Commando. His arms were too big, the forums decried, and are those hot dogs stuffed into his grappling hook? Could there be a connection to the recently announced Major League Eating license? We’ll try to check out BC, both versions, at GDC next week, and when we do we’ll bring you a first-hand account of this intriguing series.