Organizers of the Game Developers Conference and DICE may be moving to an invite-only system for members of the press next year, Kotaku reported today.

GDC director Jamil Moledina expressed concerns of maintaining the show's atmosphere and scope in the face of an ever-rising attendance rates and an increased press presence.

"We don't have it nailed down, but we are looking at moving to an invite model for press access at GDC," Moledina said. "It's meant to be a networking event for people who make games, but more and more we are seeing a lot of individuals who are obtaining press credentials who aren't full-time press. It's kind of open to being spoofed."

Increased press presence is also leading DICE organizers to head in a similar direction. "The academy's role, first and foremost, is to make sure the academy members are comfortable and that the role of the media is to be there to watch and not participate," said Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences president Joseph Olin.

The movement towards invite-only events mirrors the Entertainment Software Association's decision last year to retool the E3 Media and Business Summit, which now requires attendees to be invited directly by publishers and developers. In the absence of larger-scale events, many developers are moving towards smaller, invite-only press gatherings to announce and demonstrate upcoming titles.

Caution: The full text of this article contains spoilers.

Don't tell anyone, but some of Portal's best dialog, the stuff about the importance of your weighed companion cube, came from writer Eric Wolpaw's readings of some "declassified government interrogation thing."

From that, he learned "isolation leads subjects to begin to attach to inanimate objects." So when designer Kim Swift and the rest of the small Portal team at Valve, which was never larger than ten people, were trying to make players drag "this stupid thing" (Swift's exact words) all over a map, Wolpaw had an idea.

His solution? Have a piece of dialog that implied the box was the player's only friend in the world. "After that, no one ever forget the box," Swift noted. "When all else fails, great dialog really was a great tool to give hints to players."

Making the Player Smile
"On its own, the [Portal] gameplay would be alright. Honestly, a little on the dry side," said Swift, emphasizing the importance of clever writing in the beloved title.

"If you're writing a funny game, first of all, god help you," admitted... Read more

"I really love LEGO Star Wars," said Lionhead designer Peter Molyneux during his GDC lecture this afternoon.

An unlikely comment from a man involved in complex, high-concept titles, but easily explainable: cooperative play in his studio's upcoming RPG Fable 2 was inspired by the Traveller's Tales' series, featuring a single-screen co-op system for both players.

Molyneux then dropped a few more nuggets of information on the co-op gameplay. When another player is brought into your world, you have the power of deciding what percentage of experience someone recieves from combat. You can even hire your co-op partners on as henchmen, giving them no experience but compensating them monetarily.

As it turns out, Molyneux was only able to reveal 50% of the co-op feature... Read more

Director of Microsoft XNA game platform marketing Dave Mitchell has told Shacknews that games produced under the Xbox Live Community Games program will be available for all Xbox Live users--even those members with free Silver accounts.

"That may change closer to launch," Mitchell warned.

Announced on Wednesday during Microsoft's GDC keynote, Xbox Live Community Games is a new project that will allow independent developers to easily and quickly publish games to Xbox Live. If a title under the program passes peer review, it will then be made available to every Xbox Live member as a free download.

Mitchell also revealed that community-developed games will be under the same 150MB size restriction that Xbox Live Arcade games must adhere to, and that the games will not include Gamerscore achievements.

The project will launch sometime this fall.

Square Enix research and development manager Taku Murata announced this morning that his company's internal game engine has been renamed from the White Engine to Crystal Tools. The announcement was made during Murata's lecture at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

The Crystal Tools engine is being used by Square Enix for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC development, and has been running under version 1.0 since September of last year.

Murata also slipped in the news that the engine is being ported to the Wii, but is not yet totally functional on the system.

LucasArts sent along some new screenshots taken from its force-featuring action title Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

First up are a load of crackling images from the Xbox 360 version of the game.

Meanwhile, these somewhat less impressive shots come courtesy of Krome Studios, the developer of the Wii version. Finally, if you're feeling artistic, check out some concept art.

Maybe it's no surprise that the creator of one of the more basically joyous fighters in gaming history is a fan of action figures.

"This is a Micro-man poseable action figure. It's about four inches tall and sold all over Japan," said Super Smash Bros. Brawl director Masahiro Sakurai in his morning Game Developers Conference lecture. The veteran designer then explained the figures were used to illustrate combat animations for the benefit of his design team.

"We created virutally all of the animations in Brawl without the aide of motion capture. Everything was done by eye," added Sakurai. "Visually communicating the moves for each character [with action figures] was very useful."

Sakurai later compared the jump animations of Mario and Samus, noting... Read more

During a morning session at the Game Developers Conference, Nintendo network administration manager Takashi Aoyama announced a new program that will see Wii users being charged for service while using Wi-Fi enabled games.

Aoyama referred to the program as "Pay and Play," and noted that games supporting it will be marked with a new red Wi-Fi logo to ensure players are not mistakenly charged. No details were provided on the program, though it was noted that Wii Points will serve as the method of payment.

The network guru also mentioned that a new data compression solution will soon take care of Wii storage concerns, shrinking software to a tiny size until needed.

GarageGames designer, Fallen Empires: Legion project lead, and Shacknews regular Tim Aste sent along some footage of his team's team-based shooter tonight, straight from the GDC show floor.

Grenade launchers, laser rifles, and all manner of Tribes-like weapons and combat are shown off.

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For more information on Fallen Empires: Legion, be sure to check out today's big news, as well as our three-page interview with GarageGames. Also, be on the lookout for our impending impressions of the game.

"Porting CryENGINE 2 [was] not as hard as we expected."

Harald Seeley is Crytek's engine business manager, and by his estimation, things couldn't be looking better for his company's venture into console development.

While work on the console version of CryENGINE 2 only began after Crysis shipped in November, it is now in a fully operational state. Graphically it appears somewhere between mediun and high detail as compared to Crysis on the PC, and the team hopes to support game worlds as large as those found in its flagship title.

But will Crysis be heading to consoles?

"We're certainly looking at it and considering it," said a tight-lipped Seeley. The studio is currently debating if such a project is the best use of its time. Among... Read more

Partially confirming the leaked list of tracks found on on Scorehero.com last week, the Portal track "Still Alive" by Jonathan Coulton will be heading to Harmonix's Rock Band.

The news comes from Valve's GDC party, where Coulton took the stage to sing the song he wrote overtop of the GLaDOS vocals, according to Harmonix's Sean Baptiste.

No information about when the track might be released was given--only that it will be available as DLC in the future.

In advance of the Game Developers Conference lecture on the title, Square Enix has released a smattering of screenshots for its upcoming WiiWare release Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King.

Set for a March release in Japan, the simulation RPG hybrid--which tasks players to excel at both city-building and traditional quests--has yet to receive a release date for North America.

A group of several developers representing major MMO studios such as Blizzard, BioWare and Cryptic Studios sat on a panel today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Together they fielded a flurry of questions on some hot genre topics, including whether MMOs are headed to consoles en masse, and why there are so few successful massive sci-fi titles out there. We were there too, taking notes.

The Rising Cost of MMO Development

Cryptic chief creative officer Jack Emmert: "Expectations are so high now because of WoW that [some] publishers aren't even going to try."

BioWare general manager Ray Muzyka: "[Five years ago] who would have imagined [Portal] winning game of the year? Perfect execution, very polished. There is no one business model. It's about tuning the game to your audience. You can succeed [in both] but you gotta know who you are."

Blizzard VP of game design Rob Pardo: "It's interesting almost to hear that no one wants to compete with WoW's success. As a business person, that's great. As a game player, I hope that's not true. As a game player, I really want to see other... Read more

"That whole thing with the Rancor blowing up from the inside we couldn't do due to ESRB reasons. We tried."

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed project lead Haden Blackman is talking of the painful restrictions that a Teen rating imposes during his lecture at the Game Developers Conference.

But even more painful was the act of imposing restrictions on the over-the-top designs his team came up with on the onset of production.

"This turned out to be more challenging than I had ever imagined," he said of his project.

Blackman has been working on The Force Unleashed since 2004, when LucasArts essentially relaunched in an effort to revitalize the business of... Read more

A torrent of details on the Starsiege: TRIBES spiritual sequel Fallen Empires: Legion were unveiled today, along with some brand-new screenshots.

GarageGames representative Bill Linn told Shacknews that the web and team-based online shooter is being developed under a mod-like rolling release philosophy.

Coined "Live Development" by the five-man Fallen Empires team, the process will see the game continually changed and updated based on community feedback via an innovative voting system.

As a result, the full game will sell for a very low cost when the final version is released, roughly two months post-beta. New features will be continually added through beta and post-release.

The beta is set to begin at the end of March, and will include the following:

• 2 classes
• 2 character models
• 3 maps
• 4 weapons (rocket launcher, grenade launcher, chaingun, laser rifle)
• 12-16 players
• Capture The Flag mode
• First and third person cameras

Linn noted that while only InstantAction.com testers would be allowed into ... Read more

Capcom isn't leaving PC gamers in the dust when it comes to the 2D remake of Bionic Commando.

The GRIN-developed Bionic Commando Rearmed will arrive on the PC either simultaneously or within a week of the console versions, Capcom producer Ben Judd told Shacknews.

The process of adding necessary copy protection was the provided explanation for the possible release lag. The studio is considering digital distribution methods, but has not yet decided on a platform.

Bionic Commando Rearmed is set for a May release on the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, and PC.

More environment renders than anything else, only two of these Bionic Commando screenshots have any shooting or swinging going on. Normally that'd be disappointing, but this game isn't looking too bad.

Developed by GRIN, Bionic Commando--not to be confused with Bionic Commando Rearmed, the 2D remake of the original title--will be released on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

Valve's hit puzzler Portal took home the prestigious Game of the Year award at the 8th annual Game Developers Choice Awards last night in San Francisco.

In all the team from Valve tallied three trophies for the title, including Innovation and Best Game Design.

2K Boston matched that number by winning three awards for its spooky shooter BioShock, in the categories of Best Audio, Best Visual Art, and Best Writing.

Civilization designer Sid Meier was on hand to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, with inventor video game pioneer Ralph Baer receiving a well-deserved Pioneer Award.

The full list of award recipients can be found below. ... Read more

Stepping away from lectures and keynotes during Game Developers Conference today, I was able to put some time into an incomplete arcade build of Street Fighter IV. In short, it was very pretty and lots of fun.

It is truly a thing of beauty. While screenshots may capture the game's core appearance and some goofy facial expressions, mere snapshots cannot convey all the nuances contained within its presentation; the silky smooth animation, the billowing of fabric, the subtle environment destruction.

Oh, and the game is only halfway complete.
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"It's kinda a golden age of gaming. We're seeing some great games out there."

But after rifling through a half dozen titles he's played recently--including Advance Wars, Mercenaries, and Halo--Sid Meier, legendary Firaxis designer, admitted that he has yet to play Valve's Portal.

"When [Civilization Revolution] is done. On my pile of games to play."

With the upcoming release of Civilization Revolution, much of the Game Developers Conference Q&A with Meier was unsurprisingly devoted to the addictive strategy series he is known for.

Speaking of his team's early days on the original Civ, it turns out that even Meier was shocked at how enticing a round of Civilization could be.

"I actually did not really expect the game to be as addictive as it was," said Meier. "Every game had its fans but this kind of universal addictiveness.. was scary."

Meier went on to admit that much of the winning Civilization design... Read more