Posts tagged @interview 
Hotline Miami's Cactus on the price of freeware development
Hotline Miami designer Jonatan Söderström – perhaps better known by his prickly development alias, Cactus – began his career in freeware, developing smaller, experimental games that anyone with the appropriate hardware could download and play at any time, game-development ...
Path of Exile version 1.0 is six months away, one expansion per year after
The free-to-play action RPG Path of Exile went into open beta this past January, and the next step is putting together a version 1.0, Grinding Gear Games co-founder Chris Wilson told us this week at GDC 2013. Starting with about 250,000 registered players, the game has since grown up to around 2 ...
The Sentimental process behind GungHo's PSOne Imports
I was impressed with Gungho Online Entertainment's first batch of PSOne Import games, partly for symbolic reasons: they were all interesting games, yes, but they were also numerous, and Gungho CEO Jun Iwasaki told me the company had plans to release more. Imports, in my mind, are the most ...
thatinterview with thatgamecompany co-founder Jenova Chen
In a relatively quiet, upstairs nook of the rain-soaked Palmer Events Center in Austin, TX, thatgamecompany co-founder Jenova Chen and I sat down to discuss Journey, his company's future and his thoughts on free-to-play business models, among other things. For Chen, 2012 was an auspicious year. ...
Bringing horror out of stasis in Dead Space 3's 'Awakened' DLC
If there's any worry at Visceral Games over criticisms that Dead Space 3 strays too far from its horror roots, no one is talking about it. On the contrary, producer Shereif Fattouh seemed completely optimistic about the game's reception and its place within the Dead Space universe during a recent ...
Gears of War: Judgment's scribes recount the narrative process
During a preview event last week, I asked Rob Auten and author Tom Bissell, the writers and one pair of "many parents" for Gears of War: Judgment, about the gig and how they were going to instill some drama into a franchise whose calling card is killing underground-dwelling monster men. ...
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag 'pushing hard' for more assassinations, less hand-holding
It has become necessary to ask about the prevalence of assassination in a series called Assassin's Creed. Ubisoft's massive franchise has grown to encompass different developers, protagonists, historical contexts, and design ideals. The central thrust of the hidden blade has been obscured by an ...
Tactical Intervention: Born out of Counter-Strike and insecurity
"I never really expected it to last this long," Minh Le tells me over video chat. "It" is Counter-Strike, a mod Le helped create alongside Jess Cliffe in the late 1990s. Since the two-man team and its creation was acquired by Valve in 2000, Counter-Strike has continued to expand, with new, ...
Uncharted 3 multiplayer goes free-to-play, available today on the PSN
This week, Naughty Dog will try its hand at the free-to-play market by making the multiplayer component of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception available for all to download. As a standalone PSN download, the free-to-play version of Uncharted 3's multiplayer introduces a host of microtransactions for ...
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and the power of customization
Those who don't own a 3DS or Wii may not be familiar with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate – it's an updated version of 2010's Monster Hunter Tri, coming to both the Wii U and 3DS in North America. Producer Ryozo Tsujimoto says the Wii U update is a logical fit based on Wii U's dual-screen setup. ...
