John Gaudiosi

By John Gaudiosi

Chair Entertainment -- based in Salt Lake City, Utah -- has catapulted to the top of the mobile game development business thanks to the success of its Infinity Blade franchise. In a little more than a year’s time, they’ve spawned a full sequel, a new iPad prequel (Infinity Blade: Dungeons), a digital book from bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, a hit soundtrack and a stand-up arcade game (Infinity Blade FX). The mobile franchise has also generated more than $30 million for Chair and its parent company, Epic Games. Donald Mustard, creative director and co-founder of Chair Entertainment, talks about the multiscreen future of gaming and how mobile, PC and console experiences will interconnect in this exclusive interview.

By John Moore

Puzzle-based games and adventure titles that feature puzzles have been a staple of gaming for years. A newer entrant to the puzzle segment is Crytek, best known for first-person shooters such as Far Cry and Crysis. The company recently branched out into mobile games with Fibble, a physics-based puzzle game that focuses on the travails of a crash-landed extraterrestrial.

Fibble, available on the iPhone, iPod and iPad, marks Crytek’s first mobile offering as well as its first puzzler. We recently talked to Kristoffer Waardahl, studio manager of Crytek Budapest, about the company’s new development direction.

Cloud computing concept photo from Shutterstock.

By Rich Seidner

The rapid rise of cloud computing has been driven by the benefits it delivers: huge cost savings with low initial investment, ease of adoption, operational efficiency, elasticity and scalability, on-demand resources, and the use of equipment that is largely abstracted from the user and enterprise. There are fundamentally challenging questions that companies will be forced to grapple with as they decide what cloud functionality suits them best. The central issues include security, cost, scalability and integration.

Matt Ployhar

By Matt Ployhar

I’ve been following slates, tablets and similar PC form factors for quite a while now. They’ve actually been around for a very long time when one comes to think of it -- at least a decade from what I can tell. There’s a ton of hype around them all of a sudden, since Apple released the iPad over a year ago. So where will they go next?

Scott Steinberg.

William M. “Trip” Hawkins III -- founder of Electronic Arts and father of the 3DO console -- needs no introduction to serious gamers. But three decades after writing the blueprint for the PC and video game business, his latest creation -- social games start-up Digital Chocolate  -- is rewriting the rules again. Here, Hawkins explains why he believes social gaming and virtual goods are the future of interactive entertainment.

By John Gaudiosi

Epic Games put on quite a show at this year’s Game Developers Conference. Every day, designers and publishers checked out the technology behind the new Unreal Engine 4 game development framework. Meanwhile, journalists watched demos of games powered by Unreal Engine 3, including the new Infinity Blade: Dungeons and the pumped-up version of Mortal Kombat. Not to mention that some of the most popular games at GDC 2012 were running on Unreal Engine 3, including Hawken, the free-to-play PC shooter, and TERA, the massively multiplayer online action fantasy game.

Cliff Bleszinski, the company’s design director, is at the heart of Epic’s new game development. I caught up with him before he went on to host the 2012 Game Developers Choice Awards.

By John Gaudiosi

Electronic Arts used the Game Developers Conference this month to offer an initial look at its first-person shooter sequel, Medal of Honor Warfighter. Danger Close Games, its developer, is expanding the fight against terror by taking its Tier 1 Operators on a contemporary globe-trotting adventure to such exotic locales as the Philippines and the Somali coast. The game also features new vehicles on players’ new missions, like an on-rails boat ride through a monsoon-stricken city.Here, Rich Farley, creative director at Danger Close Games, talks about what’s in store for PC gamers and gives his take on the move to modern warfare in this exclusive interview from GDC 2012.

By Gus Mastrapa

Record crowds converged on the Game Developers Conference 2012 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center earlier this month. About 22,500 attendees came to share techniques, troll for jobs and hunt for the best new tools of the trade. The conference -- now in its 26th year -- hosted hundreds of panels, workshops and talks that were aimed at educating, inspiring and inflaming video game developers. Here were my highlights:

John Gaudiosi

By John Gaudiosi

One of the themes at this year’s Game Developers Conference was games for change. Electronic Arts took this concept to heart with the development of SimCity, a new PC-exclusive, 3D reboot of the franchise from Maxis that’s scheduled to ship in 2013.

The Game Changers event -- presented by EA at the W Hotel -- was hosted by Lucy Bradshaw, senior vice president of Maxis, and featured Davis Guggenheim, the Oscar-winning director of the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. While Guggenheim wasn’t involved in the development of the game, he did lend his environmental star power to GDC 2012 to help showcase the social consciousness behind the new SimCity.

“Video games like SimCity allow gamers, including my own kids, to see the consequences of their actions,” says Guggenheim. “Games can educate people, without making them feel like they’re taking their medicine. SimCity gets under your skin and sticks with you.”