“Even with every next-gen console’s specialized CPUs, we don’t often think of the importance of the architecture design at the chip level. Following a recent roundtable by chip design software specialist Cadence, CTO Ted Vucurevich talks with Gamasutra about his vision of gaming hardware’s future.”

Self explanatory!

This year’s Hot Docs was a bit of a chore thanks to the Toronto Transit Commission’s decision to threaten striking throughout the whole thing. However, I did manage to get some coverage done, most of which was of the simple film listing variety, but there were a few reviews too:

Hot Tickets At Hot Docs – A preview of the festival, with some of my top picks.

Hot Docs 2008: Wesley Willis’s Holy Shadow – Reviews of Wesley Willis’ Joy Rides and Shadow of the Holy Book.

Hot Docs 2008: Vesterbro – A review of Vesterbro.

“I was kind of interested in BioShock, especially because you explore the illusion of choice within games as the metastory. It’s over and above that. One of the things that interests me is that there’s a point where you realize that’s what’s happened, but after that, you’re not actually given any choice! Could you talk about that part?”

Yay! The excellent interview I helped Christian Nutt with is now up on Gamasutra. Exciting if you like the idea of reading a very literal transcription of me spending more time talking to Ken Levine about how Cloverfield sucks than anything else (although, admittedly, there’s a point to it.)

“Harold & Kumar are back! Oh glorious day—how on earth could we not lead with the return of this generation’s most important stoners? Their original quest for White Castle burgers (which we’ve never tried, and still wonder about) was maybe a little patchy but (for some reason) completely rewatchable in the way the best quick-fire comedies are, and the results for Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay seem to promise a similar experience, but one with a more satirical bent.”

This week included some reviews of films screening at Hot Docs: Wesley Willis’s Joy Rides, Shadow of the Holy Book and Vesterbro, but my coverage was hampered towards the end by the idiotic TTC strike.

Ah well.

“We were interested to see Ben X as a result of its award-winning status and heavy use of MMORPG Archlord as part of the story, but despite not having any sort of preconceptions we were still sorely disappointed. It’s a mess of a film in form (mixing up first-person narrative with TV-style interviews) that tried to tell a foolish, crowd-pleasing story about a bullied kid with Autism moving forward with his life. Except you’d have to be pretty unobservant to not note that the conclusion undoes any goodwill by implying that he could only move on by going completely insane.

It will make you feel weird, so we suggest you skip it.”

Hot Docs is this week, and my coverage started yesterday. I’ll post more coverage here after it’s all over and done with, most probably.

“Dofus is the most popular MMORPG that you’ve never heard of: with 7 million registered players, comic books, and spin-off titles in development. Ankama Studios’ Cédric Gérard and Frederic Brunet discuss the IGF-winning company’s current status and upcoming titles, including Dofus-Arena and Wakfu.”

Don’t worry! I’ve never played Dofus either.

(I probably shouldn’t admit to that.)

“Read our Sprockets preview? Don’t have kids—or don’t care? Well, there’s… Not a great deal we can genuinely recommend instead, but there is some stuff. Obviously, the Images Festival continues, ending this Sunday night with closing night gala Trading the Future at 7 p.m. and Cinematheque Ontario is running The Latest Wave: New Romanian Cinema, a retrospective of the latest hot films to come out of Romania to thundering critical acclaim and absolutely no attention from the general populace”

Bit of a convoluted Film Friday today, but it does involve a hidden lolcat, so it’s not all bad.

The Sprockets preview I mention can be found here, if you’re interested.

“As games become more complex, ironing out and navigating ‘geocultural risks’ becomes vital – Gamasutra talks to Englobe founder and former ‘geopolitical strategist’ Microsoft Tom Edwards about navigating cultural issues on titles including Halo 2 and Kakuto Chojin.”

A kinda interesting interview on the idea that game developers should pay attention to cultural differences during development. Largely, I agree, other than I do wish that Blizzard would put Pandaren in World of Warcraft, as then I might actually try it out!

“At the recent ICE 08 game conference in Toronto, Digital Extremes’ president and founder James Schmalz discussed his views on the current and future video games industry. Along the way, Schmalz drew on his experience developing the recently released Dark Sector, and gave high praise to Bioshock’s storytelling abilities and the possibilities offered by Little Big Planet.”

Some more coverage of ICE 08!

“Global teen virtual community Habbo has announced that in-game ad firm Double Fusion is now the exclusive North American sales agency for Habbo.com, and Gamasutra talks to execs from Habbo and Double Fusion to discuss how the two hope to stop simply advertising and “start engaging the community” through its campaigns.”

I’ve never tried Habbo – or at least, I think I haven’t. I might have had a go when it started (2001 in the UK) and have since completely forgotten what I thought about it, but even then I was a bit over the age range to be interested in it.

Then again, I notice that never stopped Simon…