notthatwillsmith writes "For the last ten years, we've heard the promise of 3D shutter glasses, which when combined with the proper video card drivers and a good display, can trick your brain into thinking that your 2D monitor is creating 3D images. Unfortunately the glasses never really took off, partly because there were rendering problems with many popular 3D games but mostly because monitors didn't support high enough refresh rates to display games without giving people crushing headaches. Nvidia thinks they've solved both problems--the software works much better, and there are a surprising number of supported 120Hz-capable TVs and monitors that ameliorate the headache factor. Maximum PC has a hands-on with Nvidia's new tech, plus details about Nvidia's planned hardware solution."

With Call of Duty: World at War set to hit store shelves this November, Activision has been making plans to monetize the online component of the game. "Infinity Ward-developed CoD4 has paid downloadable maps available on digital storefronts, but with CoD5, developed by Activision studio Treyarch, downloadable content will be a considerably bigger priority. Griffith added that Activision 'plans to increase online monetization' with CoD5, offering '3x the amount of content available for download and premium content called Day One Advantage.'" Activision also announced that for Call of Duty 6 they will be going back to Infinity Ward for development, the company who developed the first, second, and fourth offerings in the series. Treyarch made the third and fifth installments.

mcgrew writes with news that a study done by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found game playing is all but universal among teens, and it provides a "significant amount of social interaction and potential for civic engagement." 97% of teens responding to the survey said they played games (75% played weekly or more often), and roughly two-thirds of teens use games as a social experience. The full report (PDF) and the questionnaire with answer data (PDF) are both available for viewing. From the report: "Youth who take part in social interaction related to the game, such as commenting on websites or contributing to discussion boards, are more engaged civically and politically. Youth who play games where they are part of guilds are not more civically engaged than youth who play games alone."

Gamasutra is running a story about how the "hard" modes in games can be designed to include difficulty, but not frustration. They give some examples of the changes made to several games as their difficulty settings are increased, and they discuss some of the simple options, such as increasing the number of required button presses, or increasing the relevant numbers by an arbitrary amount (a boss on easy may hit you for 10 damage, whereas a boss on hard may act the same but hit you for 100 damage). They also talk about maintaining the "illusion of fairness." Quoting: "Bungie's Halo series is often praised for its excellent execution of difficult play in the form of its Legendary mode. Not surprisingly, the team took a very well-thought out approach to introducing and tuning difficult play. Halo 3 gameplay designer Francois Boucher-Genesse explains that it's not just a case of one formula fits all. 'It's not like we just cranked every enemy's health by 200% and called it Legendary,' he said. 'There was a good amount of custom changes made per mission as well. In that sense we encourage players with previous Halo experience to play at least on Heroic, since they get to see the game in its full scale.'"

Fable II is due out next month, so it's been making the rounds for previews. So has its creator, Peter Molyneux. He talks with Joystiq about the game's Co-op feature, which allows players to drop into the games of others, getting a look at how it would have played out had they made different choices. Molyneux also offered a frank interview to CVG about flaws in the game, such as poor lip-syncing and the occasional "low-spot." (This comes two weeks after he unabashedly rated it as a 9/10 game.) Joystiq also got several hours to preview the game, and Gamespy gave it a test drive recently as well.

Erik J writes "Electronic Arts has abandoned plans to absorb Grand Theft Auto IV publisher Take-Two Interactive, the company announced earlier today. Following over half a year of hostile buyout offers by EA, the pair went into talks under a confidentiality agreement in late August. From the official announcement: 'EA continues to have a high regard for Take-Two's creative teams and products, [but] after careful consideration, including a management presentation and review of other due diligence materials provided by Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., EA has decided not to make a proposal to acquire Take-Two and has terminated discussions with Take-Two.' The announcement caused Take-Two's stock to drop by 30%, and analysts expect a bidding war to ensue for employment of the GTA creators."

Mini-Geek and many others tipped news that Blizzard has announced the release date for Wrath of the Lich King , World of Warcraft's second expansion. It will be in stores on November 13th in the US and Europe. They've also released details about the contents of the Collector's Edition. Wrath will be preceded by a large content patch, which will expand the talent trees and include many of the gameplay changes set for the expansion (including the consolidation of spell damage and healing into 'spellpower,' achievements, and a new profession). The patch was installed on the public test realm yesterday, and the current patch notes are available.

Crazy Taco writes "The heavy Amazon.com protest of Spore's DRM appears to have caught the attention of executives at EA. IGN reports that DRM for the upcoming C&C: Red Alert 3 will be scaled back. Unlike previous Command and Conquer games, the CD will not be required in the drive to play. The online authentication will be done just once (rather than periodic phone calls home), and up to five installations will be allowed, as opposed to three for Spore. While I still think five installations is too few (I've probably re-installed Command and Conquer: Generals 20 times over the years for various reasons), EA says they will have staff standing by to grant more installations as necessary on a case by case basis. So, while this still isn't optimal, at least we are getting a compromise. Hopefully, if the piracy rate for the game is low, perhaps EA will get comfortable enough to ship with even less DRM in the future."

HDRL is running an analysis of loot systems in modern games. They talk about how in-game rewards, formerly the domain of RPGs and adventure games with powerups, have expanded to exist in every genre, as achievements and unlockable bonuses have become standard fare. "For the majority of gamers, once the novelty is gone, they move on. To keep players interested, rewards are required. ... The Diablo series is a perfect example of the theory in effect. Just as in the story of the donkey and the carrot, a game's rewards cannot be too frequent, nor can it be too infrequent. If rewards are too frequent, they lose value in the eyes of the player, and they lose interest. If the rewards are too infrequent, the player loses sight of the carrot, and likely loses motivation to keep playing."

Gamasutra sat down with Jonathan Blow, creator of the successful independent game Braid. He talks about going through the three-year-plus development cycle as a one-man team, and how his concept of the game changed as he worked on it. He also discusses what he feels is the difference between "natural rewards" and "artificial rewards." "... for the most part, when you're playing Tetris, you're enjoying it because you enjoy fitting the blocks together. Whereas when you play World of Warcraft — and what I'm about to say is a generalization, since different players enjoy different things, obviously — a lot of the appeal of playing World of Warcraft is not in the core gameplay mechanic, because it's boring, a lot of the time. ... I think what keeps them in there is, at first, the level ding, because it's very addictive to get that. 'Okay, I've got more gold. Whatever.' And eventually, they've made this huge time investment and they've got a character there and they know what that level ding feels like and the next one is pretty far off, but they can get there! And it's not any better, because this is like number 67. It's got to be better than 66!"

Activision finally unveiled the full 86-song track list for Guitar Hero: World Tour, which is set to come out October 26th in the US. The list contains a wide variety of artists, from Creedence Clearwater Revival to Tool to Ted Nugent. Activision also recently acquired FreeStyleGames to "develop new music-based IP," such as DJ Hero. GH:WT's set list shares 13 songs with Rock Band 2, which is due out tomorrow and may get its own reality TV show. Gamespy ranked the RB2 track list by difficulty.

IceDiver writes "I used to be an avid PC gamer. However, I have only bought 1 game in the last 18 months because I am sick and tired of the problems caused by the various intrusive, and sometimes damaging DRM schemes game publishers insist on forcing upon their customers. Once burned, twice shy! The EA announcement that upcoming releases will include SecuROM, along with verification requirements and major restrictions on installations left me wondering which recently released or upcoming games (particularly major titles) are being released without DRM? Are there any? How has DRM affected your game purchasing? Will EA be negatively affected by their DRM decision?" The ongoing DRM controversy was stirred by the recent launch of Spore. We discussed the public outcry from Amazon's reviews (which were subsequently taken down and then re-posted). EA's response to the outcry was to say that only one percent of accounts tried to activate the game more than three times, which is the limit without help from their customer service. Meanwhile, their efforts to find a "balance" between preventing piracy and not hampering legal users may not have been as successful as they hoped. According to Forbes, a P2P research firm found that illegal copies of Spore had been downloaded over 170,000 times already. So, is it time to create a whitelist for game publishers and developers?

Kotaku reports that a demo for the much-awaited PS3 port of Bioshock will be available on October 2nd. 2K Games launched a new interactive website to promote the game, which comes out on October 21st in the US. GiantBomb took a brief look at the PS3 version, saying, "... quality seems perfectly intact. The PS3 seems to be perfectly capable of rendering Rapture just as it appeared in 2007. The main changes you'll see with this version include things like Survivor mode, which is a new, harder difficulty setting. ... the game also has all of the downloadable updates that rolled out to 360 owners." 1Up notes that the full version will require a 5GB install, and they made a comparison video.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Kieron Gillen has combined and updated a series of guides he wrote for getting into the development of game mods. He provides a detailed explanation of the process from concept to reality as well as a look at some of the obstacles you're likely to run into. Quoting: "First thing is that it really is work, and should be planned as such. As I've said earlier, you really need to be aware you have to sacrifice other elements of your life to get it done. If you just rely on your free time, the Mod will fail. You may find it helpful to actually time-table periods when you can do stuff, in the same way you would book a regular evening class. If every night you put aside a limited amount of time to do work, you'll make steady progress. This is considerably healthier than the boom/bust approach which most modders will follow. But - y'know - most people on your team will move on a cycle of massive productivity followed by long fallow periods."

The demo version of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was released a few weeks ago for download through Xbox Live and the Playstation Network. Now, LucasArts has announced that the game shattered records for the number of downloads on Xbox Live, taking only eight days to reach 1 million. The full version is due out next Tuesday, and LucasArts will be holding a launch party in San Fransisco on Monday night to celebrate. The game is part of a multimedia project which includes a best-selling book, a comic, action figures, and other tie-ins. According to Eurogamer's interview with producer Cameron Suey, previous Star Wars games suffered from a "lack of ambition." Suey also shows off some of the gameplay in a video. A video walkthrough of the PS2 and PSP versions is available at Kotaku. The game will not be available for PC. Early reviews for the game are good, but not great, and developers recently mentioned that George Lucas himself provided input on the project.

The Multiplayer blog spoke with Tadashi Iguchi, one of the developers for the recent Pac-man and Galaga remakes, about the decision to bring new life to old classics and whether today's games will receive similar treatment twenty years down the road. "'I think more than half of the games you see today with huge budgets and such a "realistic" focus will be either stale or forgotten in 20 years,' he said. 'On the other hand, the masterpieces of the '80s will definitely be enjoyed far into the future. The reason for this is simple — many of these classic titles have unique and fascinating mechanics that can't be diminished by the advancement of technology.'"

Forbes is running a story examining the possibility of Google becoming a games publisher. The launch of their Google Lively 3D world and the acquisition of in-game advertiser AdScape has analysts speculating on whether Google will use its enormous reach to tap into the lucrative games market. "Google also has several existing technologies that could be used to create games. Imagine a flight simulator that uses Google Earth as a backdrop or tracking a spy in a major city via Google Maps' street view. While there would still be significant work required to create a game using these tools, the underlying technology is already fundamentally finished."

Shacknews reports that Ensemble Studios, developer of the Age of Empires series, will be shut down by Microsoft Game Studios (MGS) as soon as the upcoming Halo Wars title is complete. Microsoft execs said parts the team would continue to work with MGS. Halo Wars is scheduled for early 2009, and Eurogamer took a look at the Halo-styled RTS game last month.

With Warhammer Online just around the corner, Zonk wrote up a guide which compares it to the current top dog of the MMO market, World of Warcraft. He highlights the fact that despite the appearance of "War" in both names, Warhammer is much more focused on the struggle between factions, in gameplay and artistic style. Warhammer's open beta started on Sunday, doing well in the US but stumbling in Europe. The full version launches on Sept. 18th, but people who pre-order the game will be able to access live servers up to four days before, thanks to Mythic's head-start program. Mythic CEO Mark Jacobs recently launched a blog to answer questions about the game.

Wired is running a story about a research paper out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison which discusses how some games get players to do scientific research without them explicitly realizing it. The paper itself is also available. Quoting: "... we examine the scientific habits of mind and dispositions that characterize online discussion forums of the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft. Eighty-six percent of the forum discussions were posts engaged in 'social knowledge construction' rather than social banter. Over half of the posts evidenced systems based on reason, one in ten evidenced model-based reasoning, and 65% displayed an evaluative epistemology in which knowledge is treated as an open-ended process of evaluation and argument."