Gamasutra has an interview with Ubisoft's Patrick Redding about the development of Far Cry 2. He explains his team's reasoning behind some of the decisions they made while trying to innovate in the very well-established first-person shooter genre. Ubisoft is also trying to crowdsource a guide for the game. "We don't want to be necessarily spoon-feed everything to people, because that gets insulting. It's also tiresome if you're constantly interrupting them to remind them things about that system. I like to learn things through trial and error, and I know a lot of players are like that. But accessibility isn't just about it being easy to pick up the controls. It's also making sure that you're supporting a certain kind of readability, giving the player a certain kind of feedback. Maybe the way to put it is that it might be less a function of the kind of low-level mechanics of the game at the control level, and more about how you're using the output of the game as good feedback for the player, so they at least are clear on the causal link between what they're doing and what's happening."

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Blizzard has added another victory in their campaign against World of Warcraft bots. A federal judge has ruled that not only did the Glider bot break the EULA, it can be classified as a circumvention device under the DMCA. "As we've noted before, Blizzard's legal arguments, which Judge David G. Campbell largely accepted, could have far-reaching and troubling implications for the software industry. Donnelly is not the most sympathetic defendant, and some users may cheer the demise of a software vendor that helps users break the rules of Blizzard's wildly popular role playing game. But the sweeping language of Judge Campbell's decision, combined with his equally troubling decision last summer, creates a lot of new uncertainty for software vendors seeking to enter software markets dominated by entrenched incumbents and achieve interoperability with legacy platforms."

IGN reports that Prince of Persia will be getting downloadable content on February 26th for the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game. It will be an epilogue to the original game, and it will add about three hours of gameplay. "Expect everything to be at a higher pace and to keep you on the edge of your seat. Figuring out how to succeed passing this long acrobatic sequence mined with traps or how to defeat this boss before he regenerates his energy will definitely be more intense. What hardcore Prince of Persia gamers want is a challenge and some of them found the game too easy. We understand this. Seeing such feedback, our vision and intentions with the DLC coincided with their comments quite well. We wanted to build a challenge and experience even greater with all the tools at our disposal, and let me say that there are a lot: Elika's power, traps, combat system, etc."

carlmenezes writes "It seems that the DRM on the PC version of Gears of War came with a built-in shut-off date; the digital certificate for the game was only good until January 28, 2009. Now, the game fails to work unless you adjust your system's clock. What is Epic's response? 'We're working on it.'"

Zonk brings word that Mythic has announced their plans to expand Warhammer Online in the coming months using a series of live events that will open up new careers, gear, and zones. The first event, planned for sometime in March, will allow access to the Dwarf Slayer and the Orc Choppa, as well as a new RvR scenario. Later, players will race to unlock a massive new zone, the Lands of the Dead. The expansion itself is titled "A Call to Arms," and it will be rolled out free of charge.

Gamasutra is running an opinion piece about the way video games handle simulated emotions. Most often, an non-player character's emotional state is used to either tell a story or to drive gameplay. The author suggests that as both concepts become more complex in modern games, the simulation of emotions must also become more dynamic to remain interesting. Quoting: "Most of our emotional simulations use a simple sensation/calculation/behavior loop. Someone says or does something to a character; this influences his emotional state; he acts upon his feelings. His emotional state then reverts to a more neutral state over time (I was angry half an hour ago, but I've calmed down now), or changes again in response to another sensation. If these systems are really simple they produce absurd results: a character is furious one moment and cheerful a second later, like a Warner Brothers cartoon character. This is the kind of thing you get with finite state machines. This approach doesn't take into account the fact that behavior itself changes emotions. Behavior is not merely an output to be exhibited; it also affects how we feel. It feeds back into our emotional state."

A reader writes with news that the Operation Anchorage downloadable content for Fallout 3 has been released. Rock, Paper, Shotgun details the extensive difficulties encountered by users of Games for Windows Live while trying to locate and install the new content. This is the first in a series of three DLC releases, and they are exclusive to the PC and Xbox 360. The last, Broken Steel, will allow players to continue within the game once the main story is finished. Unfortunately, Bethesda apparently doesn't plan to patch that ability into the PS3 version.

nandemoari writes "While Nintendo boasts that its Wii can make you fit, the game company's popular line of DS 'Brain Games' have for some time promised to make kids smarter by challenging them with word puzzles and math formulas. However, a French professor isn't buying the shtick. University of Rennes professor Alain Lieury, a cognitive psychology specialist in Brittany, France, recently studied a group of ten-year-old children playing a variety of mentally-challenging games. Not all were video games, however; Lieury pitted more traditional games (including sudoku, Scrabble, and regular old reading and homework) against Nintendo's popular line of DS hits, including Brain Age, Big Brain Academy, and Brain Training. Although he credits the Nintendo DS — one of the best selling consoles of all-time — as 'a technological jewel,' he finds Nintendo's claim that it can actually help kids learn is nothing more than pure 'charlatanism.'"

doug141 writes "Lessons learned in video games may transcend computers, PlayStations and Wiis. New research suggests that virtual worlds sway real-life choices. Twenty-two volunteers who played a cycling game learned to associate one team's jersey with a good flavored drink and another team's jersey with a bad flavored drink. Days later, 3/4 of the subjects avoided the same jersey in a real-world test. Marketers and lawyers will take note."

The Tumeroks blog reports that the University of California, Berkeley is now offering a class on Blizzard's Starcraft real-time strategy game. "This course will go in-depth in the theory of how war is conducted within the confines of the game Starcraft. There will be lecture on various aspects of the game, from the viewpoint of pure theory to the more computational aspects of how exactly battles are conducted. Calculus and Differential Equations are highly recommended for full understanding of the course. Furthermore, the class will take the theoretical into the practical world by analyzing games and replays to reinforce decision-making skills and advanced Starcraft theory."

Cemu writes with news that Nintendo is teaming up with Panasonic, NEC, and Hitachi to work on the Wii Fit Body Check Channel, which will use data from the Wii Fit to provide users with health advice. Quoting: "Since last December, NEC and NEC mobile began a cell phone version of the 'Wii Fit Body Check Channel.' Starting this April, the NEC Group (NEC and NEC Mobile) will launch a hosted Wii Fit Channel aimed at employees and their families. The company hopes to offer this service outside NEC in the future. ... Also this April, Wii Fit and the Wii Fit Body Check Channel will be introduced by Panasonic Medical Solutions to health care workers with its Plissimo Sigusa health care plan. What's more, Panasonic Medical Solutions is offering the program to the country's health insurance union."

cyrus_zuo writes with this month's round-up of independent game reviews by the folks at Game Tunnel. The top rated game this month is Defense Grid: the Awakening, a tower defense game which "does not revolutionize the tower defense genre, but is solid in every aspect with a few interesting twists." Also scoring highly were cloudphobia and The Tales of Bingwood: Chapter I. "Bingwood is a very clear and unabashed homage to The Secret of Monkey Island. It succeeds because it manages to reference and mimic the style of the original with a fresh and engaging story and a consistent, clean presentation."

Softhaus writes "The guys at Blood Frontier have been busy for the last two years working on a new FPS called (surprise) Blood Frontier . This game is an enhanced Cube 2 engine with original artwork and new gameplay (including a kid-mode, which optionally turns off the blood — a nice option for a change). Add the new paintball mode and you have a real 'game community' here. The code is all there (complete for you to play with), the team listens to feedback from the community, and the game is great! It's nice to see these talented guys showing a true free software attitude. They've mentioned that the first actual release is scheduled for next Friday. Does anyone know of other great open source games that are truly 'open?'"

Timmus writes "Gamers holding onto Windows XP may not have to fear sluggish performance when Windows 7 debuts. While Windows Vista's gaming performance was pretty spotty at launch, the Windows 7 beta build seems to handle most games well. Firingsquad has tested the Windows 7 beta against Windows XP SP3 and Vista SP1 on midrange and high-end gaming PCs across 7 different games. While the beta stumbles in a couple of cases, overall it performs within a few percentage points of Windows XP, actually outrunning XP in multiple benchmarks."

The Opposable Thumbs blog reports that work is underway on a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for the Wii. They note that "Game Arts, the developer for Super Smash Bros. Brawl, will be creating the four-player action title for Ubisoft." According to the press release, the game is set to launch in late 2009 to celebrate 25 years of the TMNT franchise. The game won't be tied to any particular movie or TV series.

An anonymous reader writes "Metallica has announced the setlist for their upcoming Guitar Hero game. They have a wide variety of songs from their different albums. There are 28 Metallica songs and 21 from other artists. They have also confirmed the release date of March 29th. The list includes Enter Sandman, The Unforgiven, One, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Fans who pre-order the game will have an opportunity to get an extra bass drum pedal to keep up with Lars Ulrich's beats."

An anonymous reader writes "Intel released the article 'Quake Wars Gets Ray Traced' (PDF) which details the development efforts of the research team that applied a real-time ray tracer to Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. It describes the benefits and challenges of transparency textures with this rendering technology. Further insight is given into what special effects are most costly. Examples of glass and a 3D water implementation are shown. The outlook hints into the area of freely programmable many-core processors, like Intel's upcoming Larrabee, that might be able to handle such a workload." We mentioned the ray-traced Quake Wars last in June; the PDF here delves into the implementation details, rather than just showing a demo, and explains what parts of the game give the most difficulty in going from rasterization to ray-tracing.

IllusionMPN notes that a new patch has been issued for the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV. It primarily contains bug fixes and optimization changes, though it's created an issue with some input devices. We're also starting to get hands-on previews of the upcoming downloadable "episodic content," The Lost and the Damned. Trailers and an achievement list are available as well. The original game's Niko Bellic won't have much of a role in the new content.

Philip Hingston writes "Computers can't play like people — yet. An unusual kind of computer game bot-programming contest has just been held in Perth, Australia, as part of the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games. The contest was not about programming the bot that plays the best. The aim was to see if a bot could convince another player that it was actually a human player. Game Development Studio 2K Australia (creator of BioShock) provided $7,000 cash plus a trip to their studio in Canberra for anyone who could create a bot to pass this 'Turing Test for Bots.' People like to play against opponents who are like themselves — opponents with personality, who can surprise, who sometimes make mistakes, yet don't robotically make the same mistakes over and over. Computers are superbly fast and accurate at playing games, but can they be programmed to be more fun to play — to play like you and me?" Read on for the rest of Philip's thoughts.

GamePolitics reports on legislation proposed by Senator Anthony Sykes (R-OK) which would make video games eligible for the same tax breaks that apply to TV and film. The catch is that games with a mature rating would not be eligible for those breaks. Quoting: "While games are restricted to projects appropriate for those under 17, the only eligibility requirement placed on film content is that it be neither child pornography nor obscene. By that standard, R-rated films and MA-17 television programs would easily qualify for the tax break. ... '[Sen. Sykes]... would rather not include the ratings restriction. Unfortunately, as he went around to his fellow senators asking for their support, the first question out of their mouths was whether there would be ratings restrictions.'"