Thursday at GDC Austin featured several excellent presentations, but the cap to that day's writing track was without a doubt BioWare's discussion of their writing processes, tools, and the creation of the Xbox 360 title Mass Effect. The talk detailed the numerous revision processes their work goes through, as well as the shape of their writing team across a project's lifetime. Read on for notes from the session, and impressions from the short amount of in-game footage they showed during the event.

Ars Technica's Opposable Thumbs blog is reporting that an apparently 'AO' rated version of Rockstar's Manhunt 2 has made its way to warez sites across the internet. "There have been a few videos posted on YouTube that seem to come from this version of the game, which the release notes warn may be a beta version, 'so no crying if it ***** up on you.' That inspires confidence. While this scene-release is being talked about in multiple places, fansite Project Manhunt has a warning: '...remember downloading this game is only going to slimming [sic] the already slim chance of Manhunt 3 ever happening,' they tell fans."

Ian Bogost writes at Gamasutra about the (now quiet) controversy between Sony and the Church of England. You may recall the religious organization's objection to the use of the Manchester cathedral in Insomniac's alternate history WWII shooter Resistance. The result of this objection was a weak-kneed apology from Sony, and an attempt to push the whole thing under a rug. Bogost notes that never once did the company try to defend itself on artistic merit, simply capitulating to the objections of the church. That, he has decided, leaves the job up to him: "For my part, I think the cathedral creates one of the only significant experiences in the whole game, one steeped in reverence for the cathedral and the church, rather than desecration. Resistance is not a game richly imbued with wisdom. It's a first-person shooter, and it is a pretty good one. It's beautifully rendered, taking apparent advantage of the advanced graphical capabilities of the PlayStation 3. The game is very linear, both in its plot and the paths through each level, but that linearity allows it to focus the player on a smaller, more tightly crafted environment. Resistance takes up a common theme in science fiction: an ultimate test of humankind against the Other."

GamesIndustry.biz notes that the popular PC communication service XFire has reached the startling mass of 8 million users. XFire users don't pay a fee to use the service, of course, but with some 40% of those gamers coming from North America that represents about 3.2 million players here in the states. They also let fly with some interesting statistics, gathered from their teeming masses: "According to the details based on activity across the month of August, taken almost entirely from PC game-playing data, World of Warcraft logged over 440,000 hours of gameplay on average per day. This was followed by Call of Duty 2 Multiplayer and Counter-Strike: Source, on 173,355 and 158,714 average hours respectively. The second most popular MMO was Guild Wars, logging 59,199 average hours per day, while Eve Online was sixth most popular MMO, and Lord of the Rings Online came 8th."

With the 60GB version now 'sold out', the 80GB version of the PlayStation 3 is quickly going to be the only option for consumers in stores. Besides the hard-drive size, though, the two systems have another fundamental difference: the 80GB unit handles backwards compatibility with software and not hardware. What games work on the two console versions is now a bit trickier. To aid in your comprehension, Joystiq notes, Sony has released a handy online game checker to let you know how your library will fare. Over at Curmudgeon Gamer, they have an examination of a game library looking at both a PS1 collection of titles and a group of games from the PS2 era. Assuming this random sampling to be in any way indicative, it looks like there isn't much difference between software and hardware compatibility for PS1 games ... but PS2 games might not have an easy time of it.

WoW Insider has the word that the South Park Episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" has won the Creative Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program. The episode, which heavily features machinima shot inside a Blizzard-run World of Warcraft server, has proven extremely popular with fans of both the game and the show. So much so that the DVD set including that episode includes a 14-day trial for WoW, and extensive commentary on the episode from the show's creators. From the WoW Insider post: "This isn't the first Emmy that South Park has won, but perhaps this kind of attention will get WoW more positive (or at least humorous) attention in other television shows. Though, when it comes to TV ratings, 9 million people worldwide does not a target audience make. For example, American Idol was considered slipping when it only had 30 million US viewers for an episode. Would you like to see WoW references appear more often on TV? Or are you too busy playing to care?"

The strange tale of the Massive game built by committee gets a little less odd, as a Q&A session with Jamil Moledina at GDC Austin unveiled some details about the MMOG former Shiny director David Perry has been working on. The 'Top Secret' Acclaim MMOG has been said for months now to be a 'racing' title, and Perry unveiled this week that it will not involve vehicles of any kind. Instead, the game will involve racing beasts of many kinds. The beasts can be bred and traded, used to engage in Player vs. Player battles, and will help the player explore the game world. For the first time since the project was announced, the idea of players using tools provided by IGN to make the game doesn't sounds quite so out there.

Friday at GDC Austin saw the day starting with a keynote that may seem unusual to players unfamiliar with the Asian online gaming market. Nexon is a major player from the country of South Korea, boasting a handful of titles that see more users in a month than many well-known online games made here in the US. All of the company's titles, regardless of genre, have one thing in common: they're free to play, sort of. Microtransactions, the practice of paying a very small amount of money for an object or service, is what provides Nexon its revenue ... and plenty of revenue it is. Nexon America's director Min Kim gave a discussion on the realities of rolling Microtransaction-based titles out in the states, with a case study of the success of Maple Story's launch in our country.

Eurogamer is reporting that the package of Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episodes One and Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 known as the Orange Box will have a delayed release on the PlayStation 3. The 360 and PC versions are still slated for retail release on October 9th, with the PS3 version coming two-to-three weeks later. But, Valve was quick to point out, it's not because of the console: "The reason for the PS3 build's late arrival, marketing director Doug Lombardi told Eurogamer, is simply that the EA UK team handling [the PS3 Orange Box's] development are on the other side of the ocean and are necessarily a bit behind the core Valve team's development. 'We weren't going to hold up PC and 360 for PS3,' Lombardi told us."

Over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun Keiron Gillen has a writeup he did back before the original Dungeon Siege released. Something of a post-mortem, he and designer Chris Taylor discuss what makes the mostly traditional hack n' slasher unique. "Technologically speaking, the most distinctive element of Dungeon Siege was how it streamed its levels. Throughout the huge world, there wasn't a single loading pause. 'When you're in a fantasy game...' Chris reaches for a metaphor to explain why this is so important, 'Well, imagine if it's a movie, and if you have to change the film every ten minutes, you wouldn't be able to immerse yourself into the Fantasy. By eliminating loading screens we were able to keep people in the game, and much more immersed in this world. You become one with the game. You could melt into the monitor and the keyboard and the mouse.'"

Despite some very public, very negative criticism of Factor 5's dragon/shooter Lair, Next Generation notes that Sony remains unfazed. "Outgoing SCEA PR boss Dave Karraker told Next-Gen in a phone interview that despite poor critical reception, the flying lizard game isn't necessarily grounded. 'At the end of the day, I'll be interested in the consumers' response, because the consumer awareness for this title was so huge.'" Meanwhile, MTV's Stephen Totilo notes, with more than a touch of seriousness, that Lairs production may have been a touch cursed.

The fundamentals of game design for Massively Multiplayer Online Games are beginning to become fairly well known in game development. Just the same, there is still a lot of argument about what is and is not a 'good call' when it comes to adding features to a massive service. The way to go about making those choices, and a good deal of attention to the concept of a game as a service, was laid out by Damion Schubert in his talk at GDC Austin on Thursday entitled 'The Zen of Online Game Design'.

The other keynote on Thursday at GDC Austin homed in on the growing collusion between Web 2.0 site and online gaming, with an examination of the wildly successful Habbo Hotel by world creator Sulka Haro. Habbo is more of an online hang-out space than a game, thought it does have many game elements. The service grew from humble origins to now offer a home to almost 7.5 Million unique users per month. From Gamasutra's coverage: "Globally, the game attracts around 51% boys and 49% girls. '13-16 seems to be the predominant age group we're getting.' But in different territories the story may be different. For example, in Japan there are a lot of younger kids playing, but there's also a hardcore cadre of housewives who play in their own cliques. When it comes to the U.S., Haro posited, 'I guess in the States the tipping point is when you get your driver's license and you can actually go somewhere to meet people.' A big concern of Habbo players is to create a private space where their parents don't know what's going on -- and this extends to when they get in trouble."

The Escapist is reporting that the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), frustrated with the costs incurred from their successful battle to overturn the state's violent videogame law, is now going after California for legal fees. "The ESA is claiming the legal battle, which led to the overturning of the "fundamentally flawed" law, cost a total of $324,840. If granted, it will bring the costs awarded to the industry in First Amendment defenses to nearly $1.9 million, spread across eight other jurisdictions that had attempted to pass similar laws." The site also reports that California Governor Schwarzenegger has followed through on his promise to appeal that overturn, seeking to restore the legislation championed by Leland Yee.

At GDC Austin, the technical keynote for Thursday focused in on the challenging task of developing the online game Final Fantasy XI. We were treated to a broad but vaguely technical discussion from Hiromichi Tanaka, the producer of the half-a-million strong game world. He was joined by Sage Sundi, the global producer of the game, who gave a fascinating discussion about Square/Enix's battle against real money traders. Their successes have been hard-fought, and are illustrative of the problems facing anyone running one of these games. Read on for notes from the event.

Today Newsweek's N'Gai Croal has up an interview originally held back at E3, speaking with current President of Nintendo Satoru Iwata. The piece is an interesting look inside one of the top minds at a company that has experienced unprecedented success in the last year. In the interview, Iwata states that one of his most important tasks right now is to avoid allowing the company to appear arrogant. Just because people now assume Nintendo will succeed, he needs to make sure that's not the company's view as well. "This time, we were very lucky and very fortunate that people were accepting and positive about the introduction of the Wii Balance Board and the Wii Zapper. Now, what we have to do, what's very important for us is to make sure that when those products are actually launched, we not only meet their expectations, but we surpass them so there's that gap--we thought it was going to be this, when actually it's here. We need to create that buzz. We need to create that word of mouth and that's our challenge."

The Austin Game Developer's Conference, now under new management, kicks off today with a keynote from Blizzard President Michael Morhaime. He started off the event with a discussion of the potential of gaming in the 20th Century, and the lessons his company has learned from the long trial that has been World of Warcraft. Read on for notes from his presentation.

A report released by casual gaming mecca PopCap Games indicates that white collar workers play games constantly throughout the day. The study indicates that as salaries and titles improve on the organizational chart, the amount of gameplaying in a given day increases substantially. "Considering that the casual games market is around 200 million people, PopCap estimates that the executive crowd is very much into casual gaming, with about 80 million 'white collar' workers playing. 24 percent of the 'white collar' employees said they do play at work, and that number jumps up to 35 percent for CEOs, CFOs and other senior executives. 98 percent said that they play casual games at home too." What's your favorite on-the-job casual title?

Next Generation has confirmed with Sony a rumor working its way through fan boards: Lair is playable via remote on the PSP. That is, you can load up the game on your PlayStation 3, and then actually play it on the PSP's small-but-beautiful screen. This is functionality that Sony has been hinting at since the PS3 was announced, but up until now remote play has been restricted to music and movies stored on the console. Kotaku notes in their writeup that you need to play through the tutorial first on the console proper if you want to do this. The PSP doesn't have the buttons the game uses to brake.

Via GamePolitics, a story reported by the St. Lois Post-Dispatch of frustrated war veterans protesting America's Army . Roughly 100 veterans of the Iraq war marched near an elaborate demonstration of the military-funded game, outside of an expo center in Missouri. Their shouts of 'war is not a game' must have contrasted sharply with the elaborate simulator the Army had set up to publicize their (already very popular) FPS title.