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The organizers behind the next Penny Arcade Expo have announced that the convention’s opening keynote will be given by none other than Ken Levine. He is the president and creative director of 2K Boston, but is probably best known for his work on BioShock. In addition to that announcement, it has now been revealed that a number of musical performers will be making appearances as well, including MC Frontalot, mc chris, FreezePop, the MiniBosses, Jonathan Coulton, The OneUps, The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, and Anamanaguchi. The prize for this year’s Omegathon has also been announced as a trip for two to Tokyo, along with a home theater setup and $5,000 in cash. Add to that the fact that the exhibitor hall is completely sold out, and you’re looking at yet another awesome PAX for this year. The show is set to take place on Aug. 29-31 at the Washington State Trade and Convention Center in Seattle. You can check out www.pennyarcadeexpo.com for more details on the upcoming festival.

Via Press Release

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“Pirates of the Caribbean” director Gore Verbinski is slated to direct the film adaptation of BioShock. According to Variety, the film will be developed by Universal Studios, which subsequently handed over a multimillion-dollar advance to Take-Two for the film rights.

Screenwriter John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator) will be the scriptwriter and while Universal has not announced a release window, Verbinski said that pre-production will begin as when the script is finished and approved.

Strauss Zelnick, chairman for Take-Two and former President of Fox said the deal was structured to prevent any pre-production hang ups:

“The reason I structured it the way I did is to make sure it gets made. One of the things we decided early on is that we didn’t want to go through a producer. It’s terribly important to us to have a meaningful influence on how this project is produced.”

The Variety piece also mentions that BioShock creative director Ken Levine has been “regularly consulted” but having a formal role in the film’s process remains to be seen.

Let’s all keep our fingers crossed that it does not suck. Verbinski is a decent director, and even though the last Pirates film was awful in my opinion, you can’t totally blame him. He did the best he could with a shoddy script.

Via: Variety

Remember how many people were up in arms about the PC version of BioShock’s copy protection, SecuROM, which limited people who bought the game legitimately from having it installed on more than two computers at once? Well apparently EA and BioWare don’t, since they’re using an even more restrictive version of the software in the upcoming PC release of Mass Effect. This version of the game will automatically authenticate your CD key with your PC every time you run the program, and will actually run this check on its own every five days as long as your computer is connected to the internet. If the game can’t find a connection, then it will still allow you to play the game for five days before locking up. At that point, you’ll have to contact customer support to get your beloved game unlocked again. Bottom line: you’ll have to re-authenticate your copy of Mass Effect online every ten days…forever. In other words, don’t leave your internet unplugged, don’t toss out an old computer without uninstalling the game first, and God forbid you should ever go on vacation and take the precaution of leaving your electronics unplugged.

Naturally, this raises a lot of issues with gamers. For one, nobody likes being treated like a criminal for legally purchasing a product for their own entertainment. Besides that, this makes you wonder if people will even be able to activate the game years later — seriously, I still crack open the original Fallout every few years without a fuss. At least they’re disclosing this now rather than after the game hit store shelves, like with BioShock. Of course, some people with enough free time won’t even need the ten days to finish with the game (hell, it took me three days to plow through it around Christmas time). Unfortunately though, it sounds like SecuROM isn’t going anywhere as far as EA is concerned, seeing as Spore will apparently use similar copy protection methods.

Via The Angry Pixel

Contrary to what you may believe, a study presented at the MI6 videogame marketing conference recently suggests that trailers are more effective at selling games than demos are. While I doubt BioShock would have turned out to be the success that it did without releasing a demo, I can understand where the logic comes from — you can certainly make a bad game look good in trailer form. But release a demo of a bad game, and suddenly those potential buyers who are on the fence realize their money would be better spent on gum. Lots and lots of gum.

Gregory Short and Geoffery Zatkin of the Electronic Entertainment Design and Research Group presented the study. They were also responsible for a study that said marketing teams should have a hand in creating a game’s achievements.

MTV Multiplayer has two charts proving the case, although I wonder how it would work out over a longer period of time and if games like Halo 3 – which don’t need to release a demo — weren’t included. I certainly can’t see the harm in releasing a demo provided you’re releasing a good game. But, like delaying the press from reviewing games until after release, hiding a bad game for as long as possible probably would benefit from what this study is saying.

There’s a rumor making the rounds that BioShock 2 may be released for the PS3 and possibly the Wii.

2K Marin has put out job postings for developers with PlayStation 3 experience required.

BioShock 2 was confirmed in March, along with the announcement that the new 2K Marin studio would take on the challenge of creating a game to equal or best its predecessor with the guidance of Ken Levine. No platforms were confirmed in the announcement although it’s a fare bet that the Xbox 360 and PC can look forward to the game.

I’d like to think that PS3 and Wii users will have the chance to play BioShock 2. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anywhere specifically in the job postings that specifically said the the positions being filled were to dedicated to working on the game. At this time 2K Games hasn’t made itself available to confirm or deny the rumor.
BioShock 2 is slated for release sometime between August and October 2009.

via Eurogamer

Ken Levine, the creator of BioShock, is regarded as one of the most creative game developers around. But that does make you wonder just what games the man enjoys himself. Well, apparently MSNBC was wondering the same thing, as they asked Levine to list his top five favorite games. You could read the brief article on their website…or I could just spoil it all here:

1. Beyond Good and Evil
2. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
3. Heroes of Might and Magic 2
4. World of Warcraft
5. Civilization IV

You have to admit, the man has taste. And I’m not all that surprised to see a fairly even blend of action and RPG games.

Via MSNBC

2K Games was kind enough to oblige a wish of Major Nelson’s to share more audio from games with the readers, and provided him with several of the sounds from BioShock – namely, from the vending machines. The files are taken from the digital master files, so they’re much better quality than what you would get by holding your phone next to your computer or TV’s speakers.

I sunk enough time into BioShock that the lines from the vending machines are permanently imprinted on my brain. As such, I won’t be making use of these. But they wouldn’t make for a half-bad ringtone – when the orb sound effect from Crackdown was released, I started using that as a text message indicator on my phone. It somehow never gets old.

Recently, a bit of a spark was lit under the debate over the place of writers in the games industry. Adam Maxwell, a game designer, wrote a piece that was run on Gamasutra which proclaimed that writers don’t have a place in this business, and that they’re essentially an obstacle in the path to creating a good game. I vehemently defended writers, pointing to examples of cases where writers had a dramatically positive impact on a game – Portal, BioShock, and so on.

A new analysis of the value of a good writer by developer James Portnow dives into the subject of how he believes videogame writing should be done. He starts off bluntly enough, as he asserts: “I’ll be blunt.  Videogames are terrible at making statements.  You want to tell a person what they should think?  Go write a book or appear on daytime TV or compose an epic poem…don’t make a videogame.”

One of the subjects he discusses is the problem of binary choices in games. I’ve written before about how it’s this sort of thing that really detracts from the overall experience of a game like BioShock or Mass Effect, and there’s no doubt that Portnow agrees that binary choices need to go.

EPIC FAIL!  Binary choice is one of the worst things in gaming.  It keeps us from being an art and, more importantly, it takes away “fun” from any game it is in.  This one ridiculous cop-out has sabotaged more masterpieces than I can name.  What is it?  Glad you asked…

A binary choice is a choice between two extremes.  Do you want to be Mahatma Gandhi or the lovechild of Satan and Hitler?  Do you want to save the world or blow it up for all eternity?  Do you want to get laid or not (always a stupid question)?

HUMANS SIMPLY DON’T INTERACT THIS WAY!  In case you didn’t get the emphasis on that previous sentence, please take a moment to go into a quiet room and shout it as loud as you can.  Done?  Good, now maybe you’ve got it.

For the full read, head over to Next Gen.

When Take Two rejected EA’s buyout offer this morning, they obviously had to sell that decision to the stockholders first. For part of this, they decided to list “Potential Untapped Opportunities” the company might be able to mine in the future. These opportunities included MMOs, mobile games, and films, all of which could bear the “BioShock” name. Of course, it’s hard to tell if these are serious considerations or just ideas that someone came up with desperately to convince shareholders to toss out EA’s offer. Still, this wouldn’t be the first time the idea of a BioShock movie has been tossed out. However, the idea of a BioShock MMO both frightens and intrigues me.

Via Kotaku

I posted recently about a so called “Co-Op Bill of Rights,” which was a concept inspired by Penny-Arcade and then run with by Microsoft employee Ozymandias on his blog. He threw together a list of features that co-op games must have, and then ones that would be ideal but aren’t necessary due to the time/effort/technical requirements they require. It’s nothing official of course, and it’s likely never going to be something that impacts how developers spend their time. More recently, he posted up a more finalized version with the help of various comments from around the ‘net that his initial article called for.

This got me thinking about features that all games simply must have. It irritates me to no end to go pick up a new game, assume something about the game and then come to find out that a blatantly obvious feature or option is nowhere to be seen. I asked for feedback from readers and friends, and I’ve come up with my own Bill of Rights. It’s not necessarily focused on features that have to be included, but more often functionality and design choices in games. Some of it will overlap with Ozymandias’ list, but that’s only because these are things games absolutely must do.

I’m looking for feedback, so if you think I omitted something or something made the list that shouldn’t have, share in the comments. This is by no means intended to be a finished piece, but more of a building block. And, as long as I’m admitting my faults, this doesn’t apply only to games, but game-related things, as well.

And just to make sure things are clear, I’ll give out examples of games that did it either well – guised as a Dick Vitale “That’s awesome, baby!” – or poorly – a Charles Barley “That’s turrible.”

Read the full article

Game designer Adam Maxwell, who has worked on Auto Assault and Dirty Harry, recently reworked a blog post for Gamasutra which is entitled “The Case Against Writers In The Games Industry.” With an intriguing enough title, I read through his piece and walked away thinking that a writer must have stole Maxwell’s girlfriend at some point; I couldn’t possibly disagree with him anymore than I do.

His main points are that a writer takes time away from development of a game’s core mechanics, his or her contributions won’t make a game good, and a writer’s linear work is at odds with a designer’s non-linear work.

Maxwell also claims that a designer who also has the ability to write is much more valuable than a writer, which is true to an extent. I completely can understand why you would want a multi-talented individual on your staff; someone versatile is always an asset. (Just ask Ron why he hired me. I do wonderful papier-mâchés.) But, that argument doesn’t take into account two things. Read the full article

An exhaustive report – combining factors like game sales, Metacritic averages and developer feedback through Gamasutra – has concluded creating the first-ever Top 50 Developers list from Game Developer magazine. Coming in at the top of the list is, but of course, Nintendo’s Kyoto studio, followed by Infinity Ward, Blizzard, EA Canada, and Valve.

The top 20 are as follows, along with some of their notable 2007 releases:

1. Nintendo Kyoto (Brain Age, Wii Play)
2. Infinity Ward (Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare)
3. Blizzard Entertainment (World Of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade)
4. Electronic Arts Canada (FIFA Soccer 08, NBA Street: Homecourt)
5. Valve (Portal, Team Fortress 2)
6. Konami Japan Studio (Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer, Dance Dance Revolution Universe)
7. Insomniac Games (Ratchet & Clank Future)
8. Capcom Osaka Studio (Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, Monster Hunter Freedom)
9. Electronic Arts Tiburon (Madden NFL 08, NASCAR 08)
10. BioWare Edmonton (Mass Effect, Jade Empire: Special Edition)
11. Bungie Studios (Halo 3)
12. Ubisoft Montreal (Assassin’s Creed, Naruto: Rise Of A Ninja)
13. 2K Boston [& Australia] (BioShock)
14. Harmonix (Rock Band)
15. Bandai Namco Tokyo (Ace Combat 6: Fires Of Liberation, Beautiful Katamari)
16. Square Enix Tokyo (Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, Front Mission DS)
17. Game Freak (Pokemon Diamond/Pearl)
18. Epic Games (Unreal Tournament 3, Gears Of War PC)
19. Hudson Soft (Mario Party 8, Mario Party DS)
20. Neversoft (Guitar Hero III, Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground)

The full list and all of the excruciating minutiae that went into the list can be found at the Game Developer Research website, located here. It’s interesting to see how the top 50 shaped itself; in the top 20 alone I was surprised by several things (Valve not being higher and Hudson Soft being so high, for example) – what do you make of the list?

Along with the good, but completely expected news that a sequel to BioShock is in the works, Take Two also noted one unfortunate change to their release schedule. The upcoming sci-fi FPS/RPG hybrid, Borderlands is now being delayed into their 2009 fiscal year. According to the company, this was done “in order to allow additional development time for this highly anticipated game and provide a better balance in the release of Take-Two’s triple-A titles.” Basically they’re saying that GTA IV is expected to drop with such a big shockwave that they don’t want too many other games out there competing with it. Yes, that’s right: GTA IV knocked Borderlands into next year.

Via Take Two

It’s official: Take Two has announced that a sequel to BioShock is already in the works. The development is being put in the hands of the recently formed 2K Marin studio and is expected to be released in Q4 of 2009. And…that’s pretty much all that’s known at this moment. You can probably chalk this up as the most unsurprising news of the day, since it doesn’t take an industry expert to tell that a game that sells two million units and wins oodles of “Game of the Year” awards will probably get a sequel. Hopefully we’ll get some more details on this game soon (or at least some official word on the rumors that it’s a prequel).

Via Kotaku

Details have been released on Obsidian’s new action RPG in development, Alpha Protocol. Game Informer featured the new title on the cover of the April issue. Here are some of the highlights of the story courtesy of NeoGaf.

“A modern day espionage focused action/RPG that takes you on a suspenseful ride in the vein of James Bond, Jack Bauer, and Jason Bourne. Take a wet-behind-the-ears greenhorn agent up through the ranks to become a bona-fide super spy.”

• Main character is Michael Thorton, a fully trained but inexperienced young operative who has the world turned upside down when a mission goes wrong.
• Title “Alpha Protocol” is a phrase that is used when operatives go underground to work off the grid. Usually reserved for senior agents.
• Battle system is similar to Mass Effect but have more in common with Uncharted. It revolves around real time combat with an emphasis on gun play and high tech gadgets.
• Third person perspective, action orientated gameplay
• Close quarters combat can be a last resort or primary method of fighting depending on how you spend skill points you have earned.
• Skill system is based most closely on Fallout. It’s classless, you have 10 skills and 10 ranks in each skill. Skills don’t simply improve things like accuracy, they improve the way your character will perceive situations.
• The game will suit all play styles from the run and gunner to the stealth assassin.
• Extremely in depth dialog system that is a mix of Mass Effect and Indigo Prophecy. Once conversations happen, that’s it, no revisiting the NPC to try to talk again and again. System is named the Dialog Stance System. You dictate your characters tone in a conversation by pressing a corresponding face button. Options can be cool and suave others can be brash/impatient.
• You can have multiple active missions in different countries and travel freely between them.
• Lots of girls and romance subplots. You’ll meet tons of different girls on missions and yes you can bag them all.
• Current control scheme for selecting powers and weapons is similar to Bioshock.

Sega has signed on as the publisher for Alpha Protocol. The title will be available for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 and is scheduled for release Spring 2009.
via NeoGaf

The notorious No Mutants Allowed forums has an impromptu Q&A up based on questions generated by the recent Next Generation interview of Emil Pagliarulo.

Frankly I figured something like this would be coming as soon as I read Pagliarulo’s comments on knowing when to stop listening to fan input. NMA is one of the most feared and outspoken fan bases on the web. The Fallout forum didn’t get that reputation by letting comments like Pagliarulo’s pass by. NMA has been very outspoken about its opposition to Fallout 3 being developed as an Oblivion like game. Pagliarulo has responded with a respectable amount of apology and a firm defense on his own, his team and Bethesda’s behalf. It’s a spirited debate and well worth the read.

Not all of the questions are an assault on Fallout 3 and Bethesda. The Q&A also covers a few questions on System Shock and BioShock, Myth and Myth 2. Get the full details of Pagliarulo’s grilling on No Mutants Allowed.

BioShock’s art direction and sound was what really made it such a terrific game. Forget the story and plasmids; it was in the more subtle areas that the game made such great strides. BioShock 2 is no doubt in development, but apart from assuming that we’ll be seeing Big Daddies once more, we don’t have a lot to ponder.

Ben Mauro has put together some concept art for BioShock 2, and it’s all really well done. Sure, this is far from having some new details about the game to speculate upon, but taking some time out of your day to enjoy some inspired art is time well spent.

For all of the concept art, head to Ben’s blog, located here.

via Evil Avatar

There’s a whirlwind of news surrounding Take-Two and the potential EA buyout of the company. But the creative director at2K Boston (which is owned by Take-Two) isn’t concerned. He believes that the talent is critical to the equation, and that the suits have to keep that in mind so that they don’t end up losing what they are essentially investing in.

“If the people with the money don’t realise that the people with the talent are critical to what they do, then the people with the talent will go elsewhere,” he told GamesIndustry.biz last week at GDC.

“Look at the Call of Duty guys who came over from the Medal of Honor franchise. It’s the talent,” he explained.

“You can do a game, but if you don’t have the talent - maybe you’ll sell a lot of a sequel or something, but you need the talent to keep it going.

“The question is, are you building up the brand or are you damaging the brand? You have to be very careful with brands.”

Levine raises a good point. If the entire team from BioShock were to leave before developing a sequel, the second game would sell based purely on the name alone. But if it didn’t live up to the standards set in the original game, gamers would lose interest in the series.

The full interview with Levine will be going online tomorrow, so we’ll keep an eye on that to see what other interesting nuggets came from the talk with Levine.

Thanks to Geek Squad, if you are having trouble installing BioShock on your Xbox 360, they have agents available to install it for you. Before I get a bunch of crazy comments about this image as usual, it is a joke. If you happen to be one of the people who can’t figure out how to install BioShock on your 360, I really don’t know what to tell you.

Via flickr

Like any other month, we’ve gotten Microsoft’s spin on the latest NPD figures. But unlike most months, the Xbox 360 was outsold by both the Wii and PlayStation 3 – so where does that leave Microsoft to spin things in a positive way? Plenty of places, apparently, as they flouted the total amount spent on the platform and how games sell better on 360.

Hit the jump for the spin and my thoughts. Read the full article