After greedily hogging a Left 4 Dead (PC, 360) demo station for what seemed like hours today at PAX, I had the chance to pull Valve's Chet Faliszek aside and get his comment on a number of topics related to the upcoming co-op zombie shooter. How different is the Xbox 360 version? Will the game have an all-talk chat option? What's that about a flamethrower? Read on for Faliszek's answers.

On the differences between the Xbox 360 and PC versions:

"I know someone on Shack or Left4Dead411, someone was like, 'Oh you can see they slowed it down on the 360.' Did it seem slower to you? Yeah. We didn't slow it down at all for the 360. Our tech guys, our really smart guys, did a ton of work so that the 360 users see the same things the PC users do.

Everything's the same. When we do split-screen, we do a couple little things just graphically there to smooth things out, but it's still the same speed, same match, same number of zombies. So as we were working on it, guys were like... Read more

Fallout 3 is making a big showing here at PAX. Vault Dweller Survival guides, a giant nuclear test site display with a fully-functional aluminum trailer (left)--and then there's the actual game.

I pulled Bethesda VP Pete Hines and Fallout 3 lead artist Istvan Pely aside to talk about the game, its design, and their reaction to Oblivion comparisons.

Shack: As far as the DLC goes, what type of content should we expect?

Pete Hines: The type is really--we want stuff that's going to be several hours. Not just like a one-off thing, but something like where you can download it and play it for X number of hours. It'll be similar to what we did with... Read more

To the uninitiated, MBS might sound more like a degenerative syndrome than a gameplay mechanic. To StarCraft diehards, however, it's almost as serious.

Multiple Building Selection is a feature that has been debated on every StarCraft forum since StarCraft 2's unveiling at BlizzCon last year. Essentially, MBS allows players to select as many buildings as they like, and then form them into a control group--allowing remote training of units en masse.

The argument against MBS is relatively straightforward: by allowing players to select multiple buildings at once, Blizzard risks simplifying the strategic balance of the game, to the point that the many pro StarCraft gamers will find it uninteresting.

On the show floor at PAX, I learned that Blizzard will be fielding a new StarCraft II build at its upcoming BlizzCon convention, and that MBS will be changed... Read more

As the president of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, Joseph Olin certainly has a lot to say.

Head of an organization dedicated to advancing the entertainment software community, Olin helps promote gaming via the annual DICE summit, the accompanying Interactive Achievement Awards, and the Into the Pixel gallery of game-related art.

In an interview with Shacknews, the one-time Eidos marketing VP gave his opinion on a number of topics, from E3's relevance to Metacritic ratings. He had some particularly harsh words for gaming journalists, expressing his belief that certain outlets often report on issues that "probably aren't relevant since the game isn't done," and saying that some game reviewers are "lazy."

Olin even called out many video game publishers for spoiling their games too early in the development process. "You're new once. Why not use new as an advantage, as a point of difference, and be able to promote when it is fresh," he asked... Read more

The Mission: It's the last day of E3, and a tired team of Gearbox Software employees are willing to sit down for an open interview. Your stomach is growling, and your schedule is tight, but there will be lunch involved, and the developer's upcoming post-apocalyptic co-op shooter Borderlands (PC, 360, PS3) was easily one of the most interesting titles shown at the expo.

The Reward: More information on Borderlands, which takes the best of Diablo--procedurally generated loot and instances, for small group online cooperation--and combines it with gory shooter gameplay and Halo-esque vehicles. And a great burrito.

Randy Pitchford: As a shooter gamer, my bar for plausibility is higher. We forgive so much when we play WoW. There's so much that, if we ever made a shooter where I press the action button and [my character] does this same generic animation three feet away from the object he's interacting with, we'd just get crucified. But we forgive it because of the kind of game it is and the way it's presented. But that plausibility is actually important. Why does it make sense that when I kill that Murloc he has a fin, but the other one doesn't? And why does he have a sword on him? He didn't have a sword when I fought him. That's weird. Read more..

"This is no joke," said Gearbox president Randy Pitchford, and I had to agree. The more we hear about Aliens: Colonial Marines (PC, 360, PS3), the more exciting it sounds for fans of the original films.

Gearbox seems dedicated to staying faithful to the source material, and smartly expanding on it with a solid creative team. Four player co-op doesn't hurt, either.

Last week I had the chance to catch up with the Gearbox squad during a quick E3 lunch. During the interview, Pitchford explained the lengths that his company went to in order to make their game feel like an authentic piece of the Aliens franchise.

Randy Pitchford: One thing that's cool is some of the people we've been able to work with to help us [on Aliens]. The guys that write the Battlestar Galactica series, Bradley Thompson and David Weddle, they wrote our script. They're amazing guys. They gave us a lot, too. We could make a whole season of TV with the stuff they gave us. [laughs] We profited from the writer's strike, let's just put it that way. We talked with a lot of people, but those guys are so good.

And then a lot of the concept guys that helped make the movies. Like [Aliens concept artist] Syd Mead, that guy walks on water. And to be able to go to his studio, his house, and then have him draw a bunch of stuff. "Here's when I designed the Sulaco back when we made the first movie. Here's the original artwork. You want a copy, Brian?" And Brian's like, "Yes."... Read more

The Far Cry 2 level on display at E3 was the same one we got a look at a few weeks ago, and I managed to play through it in an almost identical fashion.

After embarrassing myself with a flamethrower for a few minutes, I chose to put down the weapon and speak with Ubisoft's Clint Hocking. The Far Cry 2 creative director revealed details on a freshly cut feature, the game's expansive multiplayer functionality, and a few detailed examples of what we'll be doing in the full version of the open world shooter.

Clint Hocking: I wish we'd made [the game] shorter in hindsight. Because it's so hard for us to test everything--the game is so massive. I'll be driving around, I'll get in a chase, and I'll have to take a turn that I haven't taken in a long time. I'll end up off-road, my vehicle will break down, I'll kill the guys chasing me, and I'll be like, "..where the fuck am I?" I'll be looking around in my game that I've been working on for three years. Read more..

Following the release of Doom 3, developer id Software shuffled to the background of the gaming industry for a time. Now the independent company is readying for a resurgence, on several fronts at once.

id is readying two traditional big-budget titles in Doom 4 and Rage, the latter marking the company's first original IP since the release of Quake. Founded late last year, id Mobile will be releasing its first project later this year with Wolfenstein RPG, the follow-up to the Doom RPG. Finally, the company is forging new ground in the web-based gaming sector with Quake Live, a free version of Quake III Arena without all the fuss--or the cost.

Recently I had a chance to talk with id Software co-founder John Carmack and executive producer Marty Stratton. While the theme of the talk was Quake Live, we also covered topics ranging from the state of PC gaming to the potential of iPhone development, painting a larger picture of this now multi-faceted studio. Read on for the full interview.

John Carmack: We can't go on making PC games like we used to.. But still, there are some things that the PC does fundamentally better than the console. And from a first person shooter perspective, the keyboard/mouse interface is just a lot better than a console interface.. It's just plain better, and that's one of the things we want to cater to. There are strengths that the PC has, and we think Quake Live is very much playing to them.... Read more

When it launches in September, CD Projekt's Good Old Games will offer cheap, DRM-free digital downloads of long-lost old-school PC titles like Fallout, Fallout 2, Jagged Alliance 2, Sacrifice, Descent 1-3 and Kingpin: Life of Crime, among others. Priced at either $5.99 or $9.99, these aren't straight re-releases. CD Projekt has done work to ensure that each game is now compatible with Windows XP and Vista, going so far as to create a custom installer for each game. The company is even planning to remove DRM from titles that featured copy protection upon their initial release.

But how does it actually work? How far back will GOG's offerings go, and what's stopping them from offering modern games as well?... Read more

Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath marks the third real-time strategy game EA Los Angeles has brought to Xbox 360. One of the major claims this time around is that the studio has, at long last, resolved the controls it says were "lauded by critics."

But is this the control scheme for real-time strategy efforts on consoles? Lead producer Jim Vessella thinks so. Well, as far as next week's one-two punch of Kane's Wrath and Supreme Commander on Xbox 360 is concerned.

"We think that this is certainly going to be the best control scheme for RTS games coming out next week," he told Shacknews. "[With] the Radial Interface, we really think that we've hit the chord for the console audience."

"That's not to say that we're going to stop there, we are going to continue developing this control scheme," he continued. "We're actually already iterating on it for [Command & Conquer] Red Alert 3's development, and we have some new, really cool features."

But why did it take three games to reach that point in the first place? Furthermore, why do PC gamers need C&C3 to run the expansion while Xbox 360 gamers... Read more

Service-oriented. Outsourcee. Bootstrapper.

There is no easy way to describe a studio like Demiurge. The video game industry is a tough one for small fries, but the company has taken an almost workhorse-style approach in the effort to keep its independence. No job's too big, no job's too small.

With many independent developers like Iron Lore--a company that once contracted Demiurge--shutting their doors or being bought up, Demiurge's strategy of solving other studios' problems has lead to increasing freedom and success. It's also gotten the team hands-on time with some of the industry's most valued properties, including BioShock, Medal of Honor, and now Mass Effect.

Recently I sat down for a chat with studio head Al Reed, fresh off the launch of the company's PC port of Mass Effect. We touched on the copy-protection controversy, the challenge of porting the game, flying rubber frogs, and the studio's... Read more

No one asked Vicarious Visions to make Guitar Hero for the Nintendo DS. No one at studio owner Activision, fellow Activision subsidiary RedOctane, or Nintendo believed it was even possible.

"People thought it was ludicrous," Vicarious CEO Karthik Bala told me at a Guitar Hero event earlier this week. "It was never in the plan to do that."

As Bala puts it, the whole thing came out of the Vicarious staff playing around to "see if it was even possible to do a really good music rhythm game on a handheld." Twenty-three prototypes and a few cardboard guitars later, a breakthrough came in the form of a "crazy Frankenstein GBA cartridge" wired with fret buttons.

Activision and RedOctane thought it was insane. And when the first prototype was presented to Nintendo, Bala says they were stunned.

But the really, really amazing part? For all the unwieldy-looking peripherals and wacky ads, the Nintendo DS entry, Guitar Hero: On Tour, really is Guitar Hero. It works. It's fun. In fact, I think it does some things better than the console editions... Read more

At the recent Ubisoft press event, I got a chance to try out the Ubisoft Shanghai-developed Tom Clancy's EndWar, that voice command-enabled, real-world RTS for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

At its core, EndWar is fairly simple. You command tanks, infantry, helicopters and artillery, all arranged in small unit groupings a la World in Conflict. You capture points. You call in reinforcements. You say things like "task force one, attack hostile three." You feel kind of cool, and a little ashamed at the same time.

The voice recognition works surprisingly well, picking up my words on a noisy show floor without much trouble. In fact, the only bothersome aspect of the whole thing was remembering to hold down the right trigger before talking, and to let it go afterward. Unfortunately, the game does not recognize wanton cursing.

A few minutes into my demo, I had most of the basic voice commands down. The thing is, I'm not sure it actually saved me much time, as the controller works pretty well for basic commands. Often I ended up using a combination of the two... Read more

Entering the final minutes of EA's Spring Break event, most demo stations in the room long since abandoned, the bank of Valve's Left 4 Dead systems were still at capacity.

Zombies exploding in the background, I pinged marketing VP Lombardi on a number of Valve-related topics, including whether we'll see a demo for Left 4 Dead, and the likelihood of launching with a free weekend. We also touch on his company's new Steamworks initiative, as well as what Valve has planned for the future.

We're still sort of tinkering with the model and playing with it a little bit, but we'll definitely at some point do a free weekend for Left 4 Dead. It'll be somewhere near the launch. Whether or not it's the first weekend is still sort of to be determined. Read more...

The PC is no longer a viable platform. The PC is all about casual gaming. The PC market is dying.

We've heard it all before, and so has Valve's Doug Lombardi. I recently caught up with the marketing director during an Electronic Arts press event. At the end of the night, the house music dying down, we had a long chat on a number of topics--many of which pertained to his company's primary platform.

What does Valve think of the PC Gaming Alliance? Are they as tired of the PC gaming "problem" as we are? What is at the root of the issue, anyway? Read on for some answers.

If you go around and you look at all these different things that are happening on the PC, and you add them together, my hunch is that [the sales numbers] would actually be much larger than all of the consoles put together.

Again, minus the DS, because the DS is this crazy thing by itself. But talking purely in terms of the Wii, the PS3, and the 360, if you added those together and looked at the whole picture, I'd bet you PC would be even, if not bigger than those three systems in terms of the money that's changing hands and the opportunity for doing business. Read more..

Silent Hill: Homecoming lead designer Jason Allen had just finished talking about the virtues of Alien. Eloquent in his presentation at a recent Konami press event, he noted the strengths of Ridley Scott's classic horror film, pointing out that we only fully see the monster at the very end of the movie--a major influence on his approach to tension in Silent Hill.

Later on in the night, I pulled Allen aside for a brief chat. We went over the challenges he and his team have dealt with in facing this daunting project, with topics including combat changes, Eastern horror, composer Akira Yamaoka, and other filmic influences.

As humans, we categorize and we label, and that's how we store and understand what it is. We go, "Okay, I'm seeing the Gecko in Metal Gear. I can see how it walks, how it runs, and I can potentially see how it might have limitations, because I can view it and think that way analytically."

But if I don't see a creature, if I only see glimpses of it, I don't know what he can do. And my fear is maybe greater than its skills. Read more..

Earlier today, hardware manufacturer AMD pulled back the curtain on AMD Game!, a new branding program meant to help mainstream consumers identify and purchase gaming-capable PCs.

In advance of the announcement, I had the chance to talk with AMD desktop gaming strategist Brent Barry about the new initiative, the software behind it, how AMD approaches system-eating games like Crysis, and just what it means for the PC Gaming Alliance since AMD Game! is an independent effort.

We also discussed the confusion that could stem from not branding compatible games with the AMD Game! logo, not to mention the periodic updates to the AMD Game! guidelines that won't be reflected with any sort of name change or... Read more

Fresh off of a hands-on demonstration of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars on the Xbox 360, I had the opportunity to sit down with id Software's Kevin Cloud, executive producer of the upcoming shooter.

During our time together, the developer spoke about the simultaneous development of Quake Wars on consoles and PCs, creating an all-in-one objective-oriented experience, and more. Click through for the full interview.

Kevin Cloud: The classes have a real meaningful role to play in the game--they're not just equipment load-outs. When you're playing a medic, you're definitely doing the job of a medic... That doesn't really exist in a lot of the other games where, really, the only difference is in what weapon you're carrying. Read more..

Flashbang Studios captured the attention of gamers everywhere after the release of their innovative web title Off-Road Velociraptor Safari.

Inbetween their busy schedules, the Flashbang team and I corresponded on a number of topics, including the upcoming Jetpack Brontosaurus, their unique development process, and the true meaning behind their games. Check out the full interview.

Flashbang: Who said that the Velociraptor as a whole is doomed to commit genocide? See, this is the very problem with the world today. The act of one casts a shadow over many, and we find ourselves demonizing entire cultures and races. You have now just done this to an entire species. Way to raise the hate bar. Read more..

Following yesterday's initial installment, here now is the conclusion to Chris Faylor's lengthy interview with designer Peter Molyneux. Topics include Lionhead's next project, Molyneux's thoughts on the PC gaming market, his enthusiasm for a Syndicate remake, and how he feels about playing the role of a "famed designer."

I am a big show-off, that's what I am. I'm just a kid showing off his toys, really. I love doing it so much.

I love showing things to people who haven't seen it before and I love having a tired, worn-out journalist come into a room and sitting him down and saying, "Look, this is the vision of what we're trying to create," and then get excited by that.

It's a wonderful feeling to be able to do that. I've kinda almost forgotten what it's like to be not like that, because it's been like that since 1992. It's been like that for a very long time. Read more..