Speaking on various elements of Sega of America's operations, company president Simon Jeffery critiqued publisher Electronic Arts' handling of the core gamer market.

"EA has always struggled with the hardcore gamer," Jeffery told VentureBeat. "I think they look at Gears of War and Halo and wonder why they can't do that. EA has to do something about that. They have tried on and off over the years. It's just like Activision had to come out from doing hardcore games and do more for the masses."

Jeffery further described what he sees as changing tastes among core gamers, moving away from lengthy, epic experiences towards pick-up-and-play titles.

"We are seeing a shift, even in hardcore games, to snackable gaming," Jeffery explained. "Call of Duty 4 had a shorter single-player campaign and... Read more

2K Boston and 2K Australia's narrative-heavy BioShock (PC, PS3, 360) has exposed millions to a new brand of shooter and effectively opened a new market, lead designer Ken Levine believes.

"I can pretty much guarantee to you that if BioShock wasn't successful, there never would have been another game like this," Levine told Eurogamer.

"I don't even know how we convinced people to pay for BioShock. These games had never made any money—everybody told us when we were pitching BioShock, sounds like a great idea, you'll sell 150,000 units—next!"

Levine added that his team aimed to popularize the gameplay emphasized in BioShock, which featured first-person shooting blended with role-playing and customization elements. BioShock predecessor System Shock 2 (PC) employed those elements to a much greater degree, but failed to reach commercial sales expectations.

"How many of these type of games do you think are going to be made now, compared to how many were going to be made before?" Levine asked. "How many... Read more

Ex-Ion Storm developer and Deus Ex series creator Warren Spector expects to see shorter games as development budgets continue to escalate.

"Game costs are going to be $35-40 million, even $100 million, and the expectations are huge," Spector said at last week's Game Education Summit, going by Gamasutra. "You have to differentiate yourselves. One-hundred hour games are on the way out."

"How many of you have finished [Grand Theft Auto IV]? Two percent, probably. If we're spending $100 million on a game, we want you to see the last level," he continued.

"Building a game is as complex as making as a Hollywood movie... It used to be that you could trade off gameplay for graphics, but you can't do that anymore... Read more

Vocational college and game design school Full Sail Real World Education has been awarded University status by the state of Florida, the school announced today.

Founded in Winter Park, Florida in 1979, Full Sail offers degree programs in computer animation, game art, game development, digital arts and design, and several other programs. The private university currently serves over 5,800 students.

Alumni from the university have gone on to work at game development studios such as Infinity Ward, Insomniac Games, and EA Redwood Shores.

"We will continue to grow and carry on the tradition of empowering students with the knowledge necessary to pursue their educational and career goals, through our long-standing tradition of accelerated, real world education and immersive, project-based learning," said Full Sail University President Garry Jones.

Patrick Curry, lead designer on Wideload's Stubbs the Zombie (Xbox, PC) and currently working as a designer on a next-gen Midway project, recently started up an interesting project related to, but separate from, his actual work. A few weeks ago, he charged himself with coming up with one new game design idea each week for the entireity of the year, ending up with 52 designs by the end of 2006. He has three rules, that the games must be new, not work-related, and fun.

Ever since I moved to Chicago I've wanted to create a game that I could play at the city's many bus stops and el-train stations. The ideal "train game" would be something I could play for five minutes a couple times a day, but play it every day with some level of persistence. It's All Business was conceived to be that game, fun for me and everyone else who commutes to work and has some time to kill.

It's all Business is a turn-based, text-based multiplayer game for cell phones designed to be played via WAP, SMS or simple HTML. The player assumes the role of an up-and-coming business person fresh out of school and starting a new job. The player is assigned a small staff and has to start work right away. Each day the player is allotted so many "turns" (think classic BBS door games) in which he can hire and fire staffers, suck up to his boss, mingle at the water-cooled, or actually "do some work." Each action has an affect on the staff's overall productivity and costs.

Curry's first design was a Trauma Center-inspired dentist sim for Nintendo DS (in which you can inflict pain as well as work to minimize it), followed by the mobile business sim described above. This weekend he posted an idea for a mountain biking game that gives the player intimate control over his bike. If Curry indeed sticks to his self-imposed schedule, it should be an fun project to keep tabs on throughout the year.

So You Wanna Be a Game Designer is a new GameSpot feature, talking to Chris Avellone, Ken Levine, Akira Yamaoka and CliffyB about working in the game industry as a designer. The foursome is asked about how they became a designer, the specifics of the job, the reality of being a game designer vs previous expectations, good and bad parts of the job and getting a job as a designer.

Ken Levine: I remember being really surprised to learn about how technical game design was. A lot of people tell me: "I've got a great idea for a game." Frankly, who gives a crap? A great idea is meaningless. A great idea that leverages your existing technology, gets the team excited, is feasible to do on time and budget, is commericially competitive, and, last but not least, floats the boat of a major publisher... Now you have something.
Akira Yamaoka: There was not much of a difference between my expectations and the real world of game designing...although it was surprising that you have to communicate with a lot of staffs outside development, like sales and marketing department, etc., in the course of game production. I realized that many people in different fields are involved, from when a game concept is born until the fans get the finished products in their hands. The scale of a game project is enormous.

Entertainment Depot has an article called Standards in Game Design, asking several game developers (Levelord, George Broussard, John Romero, Rick Johnson and others) about certain aspects of a game that should always be the same. Like Esc bringing up the menu, having an option to invert mouse in FPS games, etc.

CG Online has posted the second part of their "So You Want to be a Game Designer?" feature. In this installment, Raven's Kenn Hoekstra goes over the structure of a game company and where you could possibly fit in.

The Future of Game Design: Moving Beyond Deus Ex and Other Dated Paradigms on the IDGA site is a transcript of a keynote address by ION Storm Austin's Harvey Smith. In it, Smith talks about all kinds of things related to game design and touches on how it effects Deus Ex 2.

Here's an interesting article looking at DigiPen, the nations only institute dedicated to teaching people how to make games. The first 5 graduates had their ceremony recently (out of an initial class of 30, 25 dropped... sounds like game developers to me! :P) It's a pretty impressive list of developers who have hired from there:

Many other DigiPen alumnae from its two- and four-year programs have also secured positions with such reputable game makers as Interplay, DreamWorks Interactive, Konami, Electronic Arts, and Iguana Entertainment

Also recently a college on the east coast (Damn I forget which one) announced that they are offering degrees in game design. There have been a number of classes offered at colleges as electives but I believe that one is the first to offer actual college degrees.

There's a new article on Evil Avatar, Game Design Philosophy. Make 'em Play!. It's written by Raven's Jake Simpson, who talks about various aspects of game design.