Matt Ployhar

By Matt Ployhar

In my last blog, I talked about some of the biggest factors impacting the gaming ecosystems today. In part one, I discussed the impacts of mobile form factors; this time, I’ll discuss the biggest implications occurring in the formats and business models.

So, in no particular order, here are some of the biggest format and business-model evolutions I see taking place in the video game industry.

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:

Screencap from Diablo III.

By Gus Mastrapa

Lead technical artist Julian Love is a nine-year Blizzard veteran. He’s been working on Diablo III almost as long as fans have been waiting for the game. We spoke to Love about the long-gestating project, Blizzard’s approach to making games and the role of the technical artist in development.

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.

Mandy Mock

Do you know what the opportunities are in PC gaming? They’re probably better than you think. The PC gaming market is much bigger than consoles, both in installed base and in money made.

Sound hard to believe? Between how fast changes are happening in game models and distribution mechanisms, and the fact that industry reports only give a piece of the whole picture, it’s hard to get a really good feel for what’s happening in PC gaming. And yet, knowing things like how many gaming PCs are out there, how much revenue PC games generate, what the most popular gaming styles are, etc., is critical to deciding what kind of game to build, how to generate revenue from it and how to distribute it.

Screenshot from Lego Universe

NetDevil, based in Louisville, Colo., is one of those fairy-tale software developer stories: guys who love games start company in basement; work hard; move upstairs to spare bedroom; attempt to save the universe. That would be LEGO Universe, the online game the company recently released in collaboration with the LEGO Group of Billund, Denmark, and NetDevil’s parent company, Gazillion Entertainment.

Jun Takeuchi has gained a prominent voice in the gaming industry in the last few years, urging Japanese game designers to catch up with North American producers, adding co-op gaming to a refresh of Resident Evil, and pushing Capcom to embrace global gaming. Capcom uses the MT Framework engine to bring games to multiple platforms, and the company works hard to build support for threading and multicore hardware.

Garrett Romaine recently caught up with Mr. Takeuchi (and his interpreter) to discuss his start in gaming and his thoughts on the industry’s future.

By Gus Mastrapa

DC Universe Online, which launched in January for the PC and PS3, presented some unique development challenges. MMOs are notoriously difficult to create, but Sony Online Entertainment and Everquest veteran Chris Cao rose to the challenge. The game director of DC Universe Online talked to us about the game’s launch and what’s next.

Veering away from painstaking authenticity and turning back to the white-knuckle arcade races which initially defined it, high-stakes driving game Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit appears to be cruising in the fast lane toward success. You can credit not only an impressive sensation of speed, but also the introduction of savvier computer-controlled opponents and a suite of new social networking elements that enhance online play. Producer Hamish Young drove by to tell us how publisher Electronic Arts is steering the storied franchise back on course.

Longtime fans of the Harry Potter film franchise are familiar with the series’ ample visual effects (VFX), and this summer’s box office hit Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 -- the final adventure in the series -- ranks as one of the biggest VFX-driven Hollywood productions of 2011. Among the many emotive sequences in the Harry Potter film franchise is the memory pool sequence created by Gradient Effects. Here is a behind-the-scenes look at how Gradient Effects and Exocortex Technologies worked together to pull off this visually stunning special effect.