Most people measure the console wars by hardware unit sales, but although those numbers can be indicative of a console's success, that's not where the real console war is taking place, independent design consultant Don Daglow said at GDC on Friday. "The real war is the war on Wall Street," he said. That's where CEOs are judged, and those CEOs are expected to grow their business year after year, or else that stock price will ...

A panel of online luminaries - including Valve's Jason Holtman, Zynga's Brian Reynolds, BioWare's Ray Muzyka, Nexon's Min Kim, and Blizzard's Rob Pardo - discussed the new frontier of connected gaming. "If you're going to design a game that has multiplayer of some element of connected gameplay," said Pardo, "really understand what you want to get out of it. What you want out of that connectivity. Once you get into asynchronous connectivity, like you have ...

During the Nuovo session at GDC Friday, indie game developers who are known for pushing the boundaries of innovation shared ideas and development philosophies. And despite the fact that they share the label "indie," their views vary. Alexander Bruce, the developer behind the Unreal Engine 3-based "art game" Hazard: A Journey of Life, said that he hated art games, but somehow ended up making one himself. He offered his personal development philosophy, which is more ...

The GDC's popular Microtalks session allows 10 game industry people to discuss a topic of their choice for 5 minutes. We present here the highlights of three of those talks, from Foundation 9's Jane Pinckard, writer and consultant Margaret Robertson, and Jesse Schell, instructor of entertainment technology at Carnegie Mellon. Jane Pinckard Pinckard decided to tackle the subject of romantic love in games. "When we design software we've got really good about asking the question ...

At the Game Developers Conference this year, a wide swath of investors, execs and developers are all but declaring the imminent demise of traditional console game development, thanks to the rise of social, mobile and digital games, plus new tech. Few people are less likely to agree with that perspective than Epic's Mark Rein. "How'd that Modern Warfare 2 do," he joked at the event, where he showed Gamasutra the latest updates to the company's ...

Sid Meier is known as the mastermind behind some of the most respected and influential video games of all time, such as Civilization, Railroad Tycoon and Pirates. But in his pursuit of conveying a realistic experience for players, he says his logical mind wasn't taking into account enough what was going on in players' heads. "Gameplay is a psychological experience," Meier acknowledged during his GDC keynote. Today he is director of creative development at Firaxis ...

Ubisoft was forced to recall Collector's Edition copies of PC game Silent Hunter 5: Battle Of The Atlantic in Germany due to "World War II symbols" that were not edited out in accordance with German law. The publisher failed to properly remove a portion of Silent Hunter 5's World War II symbols, presumably Nazi symbols such as swastika flags, in the game's Collector's Edition, according to a report from German website ComputerBase translated by Blues ...

Though Xbox 360 editions of multiplatform releases like Aliens vs. Predator outsold their PS3 counterparts for the most part, BioShock 2's PS3 version cracked the NPD Group's top 20 U.S. retail games chart for February. Following the release of last month's retail video game sales data yesterday, the NPD Group has provided Gamasutra with an exclusive list of the top 20 U.S. console retail video games across all platforms for February 2009 according to unit ...

Electronic Arts plans to handle dynamic in-game advertisements for its titles in-house beginning this August, abandoning its current partnerships with specialist advertising firms like Massive Incorporated and IGA Worldwide. The publisher held an event earlier this week in New York City where executives pitched possible in-game sponsorships and other ad opportunities available in its upcoming titles to advertisers and media buyers. EA showcased popular series such as Madden NFL, NBA Live, FIFA, and Need For ...

A couple former developers from Electronic Arts Los Angeles have formed Supergiant Games, an independent studio planning to release a new title for digital download platforms in 2011. Amir Rao, formerly a game designer at EA LA who worked on the Command & Conquer series during his three years at the company, "runs" the studio and manages design/direction for its projects. Gavin Simon, who was an AI designer at the EA studio for two years, ...