The 25th edition of Game Developers Conference was held at Moscone Convention Center, San Francisco, California, between February 28 and March 4, 2011. Organizers reported a brand new attendance record with over 19,000 industry professionals attending the event. GDC offered this year over 450 lectures, panels, summits, tutorials and roundtable discussions. The effort and its results didn’t slip past the media: Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, USA Today and many other outlets took notice of the event while Gamasutra, GDC’s sister site, covered it fully.

Lecture highlights included Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka discussing the Angry Birds phenomenon … More

With seven open beta sessions under its belt, Rift: Planes of Telara is probably one of the most polished fantasy MMORPGs at launch. The graphics range from pleasing to breathtaking depending on one’s tastes, bugs are nonexistent or if some managed to survive they are certainly not show-stopping or heavily frustrating gameplay wise and all the game’s elements come together to create a fluid gameplay experience. But is that sufficient to keep a subscription based MMO afloat on a market in which free-to-play is the new rage? We took a look for you at what Rift hides under its shiny polished cloak so you can decide for yourself. … More

Three nVidia GTX 580 in SLI – that’s what it took to reach the high end capabilities of the new Unreal engine, unveiled today at Game Developers Conference. Epic’s VP Mark Rein clearly pointed out that the demonstration is way above the technical capabilities of the current console generation and added that “this this is our proposal for what the next generation of gaming is going to be. […] The whole idea behind this is to tell the hardware manufacturers that this is what you should be doing down the road.”

The demo used to demonstrate the new engine’s capabilities focused on a … More

During a presentation held yesterday at Game Developers Conference, Chris Donahue, head of OnLive publisher and developer relations, revealed some of the plans for the payment methods to be implemented in Europe for the cloud streaming service, such as cashcards and mobile payments.

“Our economy engine is a little bit limited at the minute but we’re looking at it,” stated Donahue. “We’re launching in Europe later this year, so we’ve got to change. They don’t accept US credit cards there. There’s pay by mobile and all those other billing things.” … More

F.E.A.R. 3 was released in autumn 2010 on multiple gaming systems as PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows PC. F.E.A.R 3 was presented as a first-person shooter horror game, a new installment for F.E.A.R. franchise, featuring intense combat gameplay and a co-op option.

In F.E.A.R. 3 you are able to fill the shoes of Alma`s sons, Point Man and Paxton Fettel, in a divergent co-op gameplay, that gives players the possibility to control different abilities which can affect both your and your co-op partner`s in-game experience. Point Man, a super soldier originally introduced in F.E.A.R. is available in single player or co-op modes, … More

Today, 25th of February, 2011, Frogster announced its intention to reshape the highly popular and successful fantasy-MMORPG Runes of Magic  in order to allow players access and enjoy its features from a browser  interface such as Facebook. The update is expected to come online in Q2/2011. The international publisher agreed to cooperate with technology partner Kalydo, the Dutch middleware provider, that will realize the browser integration with a browser plug-in, and also the creation of a scalable server platform operating on cloud computing. The originally client-based MMORPG will be able to be played through any browser, on every Windows PC without having any limitations while using the so-called Kalydo Player.

The partnership will focus primarily on Facebook integration. … More

Today, Feb 24, 2011, a partnership between Unity Studios, sister company of the leading 3D platform provider Unity, and Exit Games, the leading provider of network engines, was announced in order to introduce the perfect “couple” for MMO game development with Unity: Legion and Photon.

The powerful MMOG development framework, provided by Legion for Unity developers, comes to be complemented by Exit Games’ Photon. Easy-to-use MMO development tools of the Legion will be combined with the existing Unity work-flow as an extension of the Unity editor. … More

Online rumors claiming that the sequel to Mirror`s Edge, the single-player first person shooter action-adventure game released in 2008, has been canceled recently pushed the publisher EA to offer official comments related to the issues. Several games sites interpreted the indirect quotes attributed by the Swedish site Press 2 Play TV to EA senior VP Patrick Soderlund as a sign that further developments on the game had been stopped. However, it seems that the DICE series was “an important franchise” as EA stated for 1UP before adding that it had “nothing further to announce” at the moment, thus giving no more additional details about the state of the game or the amount of truth present in rumors that spread over the internet. … More

A demo for the upcoming Men of War: Assault Squad, an RTS based on the WW2 military clashes, was released today by Lace Mamba and 1C Company. It features the single player campaign introductory level focused on the Pacific War battles. Upon completion of this level, players will be allowed to also try a skirmish mission set in the European Theater. According to Lace Mamba Global the release date for the game is set on April 22, 2011, in UK, Australia, New Zealand, the Benelux countries and Greece.

Men of War: Assault Squad comes to complement its already highly popular and critically acclaimed predecessor … More

On March 1, 2011 a multiplayer demo of Crysis 2 will be available for download on the game’s official site. Crysis 2 is the latest installment in the science-fiction 1st person-shooter Crysis series, developed by Crytek Frankfurt and published by Electronic Arts. The demo will feature two maps, two exciting modes and multiple hours of multiplayer gaming.

The war-torn Manhattan will become an arena where players will battle six vs. six on two maps: Skyline and Pier 17. The battles taking place on the first map, Skyline, will be held on top of the rooftops and interiors of the city buildings, especially on the skyscrapers, while Pier 17 will feature an open environment. … More