“With virtual worlds a continually evolving global phenomenon, what are the issues that affect developers creating titles that may be played in a multitude of different cultures? At the recent ICE 08 conference in Toronto, a panel featuring Matt Daly (Metaversatility); Barbara Lippe (Avaloop) and Adrian Crook (freetoplay.biz) discussed these issues, with Lippe detailing features of Avaloop’s social MMO Papermint, currently in English-language beta.”

I’ve had stuff crossposted on Worlds In Motion (CMP… I mean Think Services’ Virtual Worlds blog) before, but I think this is the first time that what I’ve written has been intended for the site. So I have linked it as such!

Papermint is a very cool looking MMO. It’s “one to watch out for.” (I have such a good record for saying that, I thought I’d give it another shot!)

“Let’s admit it: last year we were incredibly spoiled when it came to good writing in games.

As a result, we’ve probably got a bit cocky about the state of game writing. But as we all know, pride comes before a fall. And that fall is Army of Two.”

This must be the article with the most juvenile title on The Globe and Mail ever, surely!

Other than that, this review just recounts my painful disappointment with Army of Two. I’ve been paying attention to the title since I spoke to Alain Tascan (I actually called it “one to watch out for” at the time) and the missed opportunity here is almost heart breaking.

I think the saddest think is that a sequel will probably be produced, and will probably go some way to fix the game design problems, but will be unable to “retcon” all of the horrible, horrible writing from the first game out of existence.

“Well, there have been a lot of films made about the ongoing conflict in Iraq and its effect on soldiers, and here’s another one! Stop-Loss is probably the glossiest, most-Hollywood looking attempt so far (no mean feat, considering Paul Haggis has had a shot already) and it remains to be seen if anyone in America really wants to be reminded that its sending its army off to fight a war that the majority of them didn’t want, especially when in many cases the soldiers don’t want to go.”

Don’t worry, it’s not all this serious. I also mock Kevin Spacey!

“Gamevil’s James Song gave the audience at GDC Mobile a ‘glimpse into the future’ by examining case studies between Korean and US cultural phenomena, relating them to the future of mobile gaming and its business models.

He argued that a shift away from branded games towards original content would come in time for the US market.”

Last of my GDC Mobile session coverage!

You can also check out:

Best of GDC Mobile 2008: The Rise Of The Widget?

Best Of GDC Mobile 2008: Why Publishing Good Mobile Games Isn’t Easy – Glu Mobile’s Jill Braff moans about how hard it is to be a publisher. Boo hoo.

Best Of GDC Mobile 2008: Kicking Tires On The Ad Wagon

Best of GDC Mobile 2008: Mobile Social Entertainment: The Next Big Thing from Japan – A great talk on the popularity of small Flash Lite games on mobile social networks in Japan. It’ll never take off here because carriers are too lazy/stupid to put Flash Lite on handsets (there’s also their insane data costs, can’t forget them) but it sounds brilliant.

Best Of GDC Mobile 2008: Dredge On Journalists’ Loves And Hates – Stuart Dredge helped me judge games during IGF Mobile, and this was a cute talk on what game reviewers love and hate, specifically when it came to mobile games. It’s interesting, but rather a difficult sell to get developers and publishers to care about what reviewers think when they (primarily) have to care about what the carriers think just to sell their game in the first place.

“Couple of things going on with the films released this week. With Shutter, most interesting is that it’s based on a Thai horror film, but has been, in its Western remake, transplanted to Tokyo. Reasons? Well, either ‘all of Asia is basically the same thing, right?’ or ‘people always think of scary pale girls with long black hair as being Japanese, anyway.’”

Oh those wacky Asians!

“Digini has announced Blade3D, a new subscription-based development environment for Xbox 360 and PC, based on Microsoft’s XNA platform – the company’s Jon Grande and Tony Garcia talk exclusively to Gamasutra about how the new model will ‘shake up’ game development.”

This Q&A on Gamasutra by yours truly might seem kind of random, as usually my coverage on Gamasutra has been limited to show coverage and cross-postings from Games On Deck, but this interview marks the first piece of original content produced for the site as part of my new position as contributing editor.

My duties include posting news and editing other articles on a daily basis (if we’re going to nit-pick, my first piece as a contributing editor was this short news post on the upcoming Dexter game) so expect to see my work on the site often from now on. As with Games On Deck I’m not going to post about everything I do on the site here, but I’ll be sure to post anything of interest.

“This week I watched as Mario, without mercy, beat Princess Peach around the head, body, and legs with a baseball bat until she could barely grip onto the edge of a dangerous precipice in the Mushroom Kingdom. The second she started to climb her way back up, without a moment’s hesitation, he whacked her so hard in the face that she flew off into oblivion.

A little later, I placed bets with a group of other people on the outcome of a battle between a small blond boy, known only as Lucas, and a cheerful little monkey dressed up like a person. I didn’t look away once while Lucas electrocuted the monkey over and over again, before finally setting him on fire to finish the job. (I’m ashamed to say I won a lot of money on that fight.)”

I have never been a fan of the Super Smash Bros. series, and yet have found myself utterly captivated by its latest iteration. However, it’s a backhanded compliment when I say “for any Nintendo fanboy there is arguably no better game available on the Wii right now,” as it’s the continued discovery of new Nintendo fetish objects that make it enjoyable – more so than the actual gameplay (which is still way too floaty for my liking.)

It’s a very interesting (indeed, even culturally significant) title as a result, though. Tim Rogers also has an excellent review of it, up on Action Button, one iteration of which is similarly backhanded in its compliments.

“Is anyone else disappointed that the dystopian future promised in 1980s films isn’t here? If there’s one thing we’ve learned here at Torontoist, is that en masse, humans are terrible at predicting our future. It’s always so much more mundane than we expect it to be.”

I don’t talk about it at length in this article, but I guess I have to see Doomsday now that I’ve learned its set in a post-apocalyptic Scotland. My attachment to home country (and, of course, dystopian futures) makes it unavoidable.

I even really wish Rebellion would republish Cal-Hab Justice – I never read it at the time.

“Welcome to the first ever Dobbs Challenge, a special game competition brought to you in association with the world-renowned Dr. Dobb’s Journal for software developers and Microsoft.

Full source code and art for the games are freely provided for programmers to ‘mod’ the results and win prizes. Use your creative side to make fiendish and cool new games – change the mechanics, add new levels, even change the entire game genre – using the power of Visual Studio 2008, and win thousands of dollars doing it! “

A strange announcement to see on this site, you might think, but this is official notification that sI’m The Dobbs Challenge community manager. I’ll be blogging on the site (and on Dobbs Code Talk, its sister site) regularly about the happenings in the competition, plus moderating the forums.

“If there’s something that all critics know, it’s that it’s great fun to rip apart something that’s incredibly bad. Especially if you know the person who made it deserves it. So as a result there’s a regular bounty of great criticism thrown at Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 B.C. The guy has foisted some of the worst, laziest, most idiotic films on the public ever (his take on Godzilla should have had him tried in the Hague) and just the trailer of 10,000 B.C. seemed like it was intentionally trying to make us stupider.”

My headline joke might have been a little too obscure for some readers. I was playing with the fact that Ringo Starr (a drummer, popular opinion famously holding that he wasn’t very good, not that I would wish to comment) was actually involved in the making of a film about prehistory (Caveman) that is almost certainly better than 10,000 B.C. is – at least Caveman is intentionally a comedy.