A few weeks back (June 23rd to be exact) I had the pleasure of taking a quick trip out to sunny San Jose, California to visit the offices of MMO Developer Cryptic Studios. While there I got an update on the studio’s plans and their upcoming release Champions Online. Through fortuitous events I was lucky enough to get interview time with the company’s Chief Creative Officer Jack Emmert.

Champions Online is Cryptic’s latest MMO. Once again the topic de jeur is Super Heroes but this time the platform is a bit different since the game is being developed for both the PC and Xbox 360 platforms and is adopting and expanding the world setting and characters originally developed for the popular and long-published Champions Pen-and-paper RPG.

Mr. Emmert was kind enough to agree to allow the interview to be recorded and I’ve turned the entire 12 minutes into the first Special Edition of the File-N-Forget Podcast.

The podcast interview can be downloaded here and found on the File-N-Forget podcast page along with the other 30+ weekly episodes.

For those who prefer their interviews typed you can read a transcript of the conversation after the jump.

Keep an eye out in the coming weeks as the embargo lifts and I can share the details of my Champions Online Gamer’s Day experience more completely.

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This probably the largest press release I have ever seen – or at least since I have been at Gaming Today. Normally they are pretty much short, to the point, and padded with overly positive and glowing quotes regarding just how fabulous the announcement is to them or how wonderful it is to work with so and so.

I wonder if we will ever get a press release that includes quotes from people who hated to work with one another? For example: “Bob was drunk all the time and kept playing grab-ass with all the female employees” or “John was such a tyrant that I wanted to spit in his tall-quadruple-half-caff-light-foam-latte with soy milk every morning. God I hated that guy” or “Pete stunk so bad that even after I got home of the evening I could taste cabbage in the air – even in my apartment”.

Anyway, this press release is more or less a massive list of upcoming titles from EA and its studios which will be released around the holidays and into next year. These titles will also be showcased at E3 next week with the initial press conference being hosted by CEO John Riccitiello, will also spotlight many of the creative leaders behind the games.

The complete line-up of titles on display at E3 are as follows:

• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
• Crysis Warhead
• Dead Space
• FaceBreaker
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• HASBRO FAMILY GAME NIGHT
• iPhone/iPod Touch Games from EA Mobile
• iPod Games from EA Mobile
• Left 4 Dead
• LITTLEST PET SHOP
• Madden NFL 09
• Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
• Mirror’s Edge
• Mobile Phone Games from EA Mobile
• Mobile, iPhone & iPod titles
• MySims Kingdom for the Wii and Nintendo DS
• MySims, made for the PC
• NBA LIVE 09
• NCAA FOOTBALL 09
• Rock Band 2
• SimCity Creator for the Wii
• Skate It
• Spore
• The Lord of the Ring: Conquest
• The Sims 2 Apartment Pets for the Nintendo DS
• Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09
• Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09 for the PSP
• Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
• Zubo

For the full press release including more information on each title listed, as well as the prerequisite “sweet as honey” quotes from EA’s John Riccitiello and John Pleasants, read on after the jump.

Via: Press Release

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Okay, so this is kind of a grab bag of Rock Band 2 rumors. For starters, an insider is claiming that you’ll be able to download all the tracks from the first game disc as free DLC. With the news that your downloaded tracks from the first game will work on the sequel, it’s seeming more and more like that precious Rock Band disc will be reduced to coaster status in the coming months. Aside from that, it also seems that two different track lists from Rock Band 2 may have been leaked to two different web sites. Loading Reality and 8bitfix (through a commenter) each have their own lengthy track lists for the game that may or may not be the real deal. Either way though, there’s sure to be something included for everyone, plus a few odd choices thrown in for good measure. Of course there’s no word on whether these will all be on the game disc, if some of them will be released as DLC, or even if there’s truth to any of this. Not that any of this matters, since they’d have to rename the game “Rock Band 2: Now That’s What I Call Emo!” before I’d stop considering this a must-buy.

Each track list can be viewed after the break.

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Many Battlefield: Bad Company players got a nasty surprise when they logged into the game this morning. A huge outcry was raised when people discovered that their stats, ranks, and weapon unlocks had been completely reset. Even the people who purchased the Gold Edition with an extra five weapons could no longer access them. Thankfully though, the issue seems to have been just a short-lived hiccup. The servers were reset apparently, and it just took some time for everything to return to normal. You can probably expect that sort of thing to happen in the game from time to time, so don’t panic and just wait it out if it does. After a couple hours though, raise hell.

Via EA Forums

Instantly upon reading comments from Cevat Yerli, the CEO of Crysis developer Crytek, I thought of something Stardock said back in March: that piracy is not the main issue facing PC games. Yerli seems to disagree, though. In a new interview discussing Crysis Warhead, Yerli said that while the developer made a profit on Crysis and the “real expectations” were met, piracy in PC gaming is very, very bad — to the point where, for every copy of a game that is sold, 20 copies are pirated.

“The other critique outside Crytek was the fact that the PC industry is really, at the moment, I would say the most intensely pirated market ever,” Yerli said, according to GI.biz. “It’s crazy how the ratio between sales to piracy is probably 1 to 15 to 1 to 20 right now. For one sale there are 15 to 20 pirates and pirate versions, and that’s a big shame for the PC industry. I hope with Warhead I hope we improve the situation, but at the same time it may have an impact on [our] PC exclusivity in the future.”

I don’t have specific numbers to cite, but it seems like Yerli is focusing too much on piracy. There’s no doubt that it’s a significant force, but once again, I think about the reasoning Stardock gave as to why they didn’t put copy protection on Sins of a Solar Empire. “We do it because the people who actually buy games don’t like to mess with it. Our customers make the rules, not the pirates. Pirates don’t count. We know our customers could pirate our games if they want but choose to support our efforts. So we return the favor – we make the games they want and deliver them how they want it. This is also known as operating like every other industry outside the PC game industry.”

Crytek clearly has a different mentality. Yerli continued, “Effectively, if the game isn’t an online game or multiplayer game–there are challenges regardless of what you do–the game can be cracked. The effort is to make it more difficult to crack, and certainly we’re going to make it more difficult this time with Warhead.”

It’s difficult to blame companies for wanting to emphasize copy protection. But one has to wonder when a company is spending too much time on copy protection — especially when you consider that if there’s a will, there’s a way, and if pirates want to crack something, they will.

If you’ve played Bad Company for any amount of time, you’ve likely come across any number of issues in the multiplayer mode. (The single-player and its atrocious AI is an entire story in and of itself; don’t get me started on that.) The development team at DICE is committed to addressing the issues, starting with the release of the classic Battlefield game mode, Conquest. The mode (and altered versions of the game’s maps to go along with it) is currently undergoing testing and certification, which is a good sign we won’t have to wait too much longer to see it.

Following that, DICE will be working on other problems and omissions that gamers have been wanting. On the official Bad Company blog, they list some of the issues they’ll be looking to address, including:

• Clan support/private rooms/team chat
• Auto balancing on servers
• Continued support against stats exploits
• VOIP issue on PS3 (working with Sony on this)
• Squads might be split up when joining a server as a squad. This is due to team balancing in the games that are being joined, and usually resolves itself in round 2.

As a fan of the game (I’ve grown to like it more and more each time I play it), I’m glad DICE won’t be sitting back now that the game has been released. Battlefield games have been notoriously buggy, with patches not coming nearly as often as they should. In my experience, Bad Company doesn’t have a laundry list of game-breaking problems, but the more attention DICE pays to the game, the better.

It was only a matter of time before Qore got an exclusive demo, and it didn’t take long. Qore Episode 2 was released today and includes the exclusive Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm demo. (I wonder how many diehard Naruto fans fork over the $3 entry fee to play the demo.) It’s also got part one of a three part series on the development of Resistance 2. In other words, I continue to regret having purchased a subscription when Qore was first released.

Qore is pretty much the main attraction this week. You can find the week’s new Rock Band tracks (including one free track) and the free Guitar Hero III Top Gun track that Stephany posted about on Tuesday. Although I wouldn’t recommend grabbing the latter, not unless you want to torture yourself with garbage.

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The File-N-Forget Podcast returns this week as we ramp up for our upcoming E3 coverage. With Metal Gear Solid 4 now established in the market and fans going gaga over it, Ron and Shawn give their quick impressions of it along with Battlefield: Bad Company and Alone in the Dark.

Bigger questions loom however as we discuss the state of E3 and what we think might happen in years to come.

There are also Rants & Raves to make the fanboys happy.

This weeks show is available by direct download here.

As always, you can get past episodes from our podcast page at http://podcast.filefront.com, and you can send your comments, questions, suggestions, or snarky comments to podcast@filefront.com.

File-N-Forget is also available on the iTunes Music Store.

Marketing did a fine job with Battlefield: Bad Company, and moving forward they’ve got their work cut out for them with Battlefield Heroes. DICE executive producer Ben Cousins gave some insight into the market they’ll be targeting with Heroes, which they call the “frustrated restricteds.”

“So who is Battlefield Heroes for? The marketing guys love to come up with snappy titles for market segments. The market segment they came up with for us was ‘frustrated restricteds’ – people who really want to play full games, and aspire to be gamers,” Cousins said during his keynote at GDC Paris, reports GI.biz.

“But they’re restricted in some way, and this makes them frustrated. Maybe they’re restricted by money, time or skill?

“For example, a 15 year-old boy who can’t afford a PS3 – he’s desperate to play Call of Duty, but can’t afford the console. Maybe a 30-35 year-old guy who is a new dad, who used to play games, but is restricted by time. Or maybe a new gamer who loves the idea of playing games but heard that all people who play multiplayer games are really skilled.”

I hardly fit into any of those categories, and I’m still interested in playing Heroes. And I’m hardly the only one who fits that bill, so won’t all of us self-proclaimed hardcore gamers throw off the curve for the people Cousins is referring to? It’ll be interesting to see how DICE handles that aspect of the matchmaking process.

Great lineup of games for this week’s 1UP Show, with three big name games fighting for your attention. You can expect Dan Hsu to get the answers to your questions about Gears 2 directly from the face of the franchise, Cliff Bleszinski.

If that’s not your thing, then perhaps a little Battlefield: Bad Company talk will interest you? I think the general consensus is that the game’s trailers have been hilarious — who doesn’t like poking fun at Metal Gear Solid, Rainbow Six and Gears of War, after all? — but that won’t count for much if the game doesn’t live up to the franchise’s name. David Ellis and Shawn Elliott will discuss.

And finally, the newest addition to the lineup of 1UP podcasts, 1UP FM, gets a major plug during the segment featuring Atari’s Alone in the Dark.

Now make with the downloading and check out this week’s 1UP Show in the format of your choice:

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