“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!

“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.)

“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.)

“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!

“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…

“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.

I’ve made it through another festival, admittedly one in which I was felled by the foul but inevitable “festival cold” roughly a week early (I got it on the first Saturday of the festival rather than the last) and this year I chose to put all of my day-to-day work on Torontoist. That’s not to say reviews and interviews from the festival won’t appear elsewhere, of course.

TIFF 2007 Preview: Special Presentations, Real To Reel And Canada First! – A review of Heavy Metal in Baghdad. Definitely my favourite documentary of the festival and certainly one of my favourite films.

TIFF 2007 Preview: Vanguard, Short Cuts Canada – A review of Help Me Eros and a selection from the Short Cuts Canada programme. Reviewing the Canadian shorts is one of my favourite tasks of the festival each year and although I utterly despised an (otherwise highly rated) short this year the rest were pretty okay.

TIFF 2007: No Fugitive Peace From The Festival – The festival begins!

TIFF 2007: Lust, Control – Reviews of Captain Mike Across America; Control and Lust, Caution.

TIFF 2007: Heavy Metal In Toronto – An interview with Suroosh Alvi, co-founder of Vice Magazine and co-director of Heavy Metal in Baghdad.

TIFF 2007: You, The Dead – Reviews of You, The Living and Diary of the Dead.

TIFF 2007: Erik Nietzsche Into The Wild – Reviews of Juno and Erik Nietzsche The Early Years.

TIFF 2007: Pixel Projections – Coverage of the Into the Pixel exhibition, held as part of the film festival’s Future Projections programme.

TIFF 2007: Run, Filmmaker, Run – Reviews of Operation Filmmaker and Run, Fat Boy, Run.

TIFF 2007: Cassandra’s Smiley Face – A review of Smiley Face.

TIFF 2007: The Rambow Fragments – Reviews of Son of Rambow and The Tracey Fragments (two of my favourite films of the festival) and Mad Detective.

TIFF 2007: Hirsute And The “Many Martys” Theory – An interview with A.J. Bond, director of Hirsute, the best short I saw at the festival.

TIFF 2007: Sukiyaki Western Django – A review of Sukiyaki Western Django, and the festival ends!

“Mobile porting technology provider Tira Wireless recently announced Tira Jump 2007, the latest version of their flagship product suite, including a new feature, “Jumplets.”

Games On Deck talks to Tony de la Lama, SVP Product Management and Marketing and Simon Keogh, director of Product Management, about the company’s history and their future.”

I’m linking this because it’s a nice reminder to the beginning of my career as a journalist – my first paid article was in fact a review of the Tira Wireless Product Suite for Game Developer Magazine. Game Developer Magazine, of course, part of CMP, who are the umbrella group that own Games On Deck.

My other recent articles on the site include Q&As with Mike Nelson, CEO of Timelapse Mobile, and Eric Berger, the Vice President of Sony Mobile Entertainment.

It’s been rather a while since I’ve written something for Plan B Magazine, but I’ve returned to its pages in fine style, with a full page interview with Tetsuya Mizuguchi about his interest in creating virtual pop stars for video games; from Ulala (for Space Channel 5) to the nameless girl featured in the Genki Rockets video for Lumines II.

I think it’s a rather interesting concept, and while, admittedly, this isn’t the most enlightening interview (it was his final interview of the Montreal Game Summit, and the jet lag was obviously getting to him) it’s still a good article.

As ever, you can purchase this issue at Plan B’s website.

“Casual games developer and publisher PopCap Games recently announced the hiring of Andrew Stein to the newly-created position of Director of Mobile Business Development.

In this exclusive interview, Games On Deck talks to Stein about why he chose to join PopCap and his plans for the company’s mobile future.”

It’s been three months, roughly, since Games On Deck launched, so I think it’s about time to mention it again here. Things are going excellently at the website, with this interview just a small example of what’s been going on. I’m particularly proud of the articles I’ve commissioned, rather than wrote myself; such as this week’s postmortem of Pillowfight from Capybara Games (who are, funnily enough, based here in Toronto.)

But here’s a list of everything I’ve written for the site since my last update: SNAP Mobile: Nokia’s Antoine Doumenc; Q&A: Vipul Sawhney, President of Hovr; Q&A: Mahi De Silva, Co-Founder And CEO, Frengo; Q&A: Mobile Complete CEO Faraz Syed; Q&A: Christian K-L Yau Heilesen, CEO, Funmobile; Q&A: Bob Shireman, Chief Publishing Officer, SkyZone; Q&A: Paul Maglione, President of Vivendi Games Mobile; Q&A: Tom Sperry, CEO of Exit Games USA and Q&A: Jim Blackhurst, Producer, Tomb Raider Legend.

That’s a lot of Q&As!