Blizzard updated the official StarCraft II site today with a preview of how the revamped Battle.net will function. They emphasize the social features, competitive matchmaking system, and the ease of sharing mods and maps. Quoting: "When the legacy Battle.net service introduced support for user-created mods such as DotA, Tower Defense, and many others, these user-created game types became immensely popular. But while Battle.net supported mods at a basic level, integration with tools and the mod community wasn't where it needed to be for a game releasing in 2010. The new Battle.net service will see some major improvements in this area. StarCraft II will include a full-featured content-creation toolkit — the same tools used by the StarCraft II design team to create the single-player campaign. To fully harness the community's mapmaking prowess, Battle.net will introduce a feature called Map Publishing. Map Publishing will let users upload their maps to the service and share them with the rest of the community immediately on the service. This also ties in with the goal of making Battle.net an always-connected experience — you can publish, browse, and download maps directly via the Battle.net client. Finding games based on specific mods will also be much easier with our all-new custom game system, placing the full breadth of the modding community's efforts at your fingertips."

Martin Ecker writes "The Red Book, also known as the OpenGL Programming Guide published by Addison-Wesley Professional, returns in its seventh edition, now covering OpenGL up to and including version 3.1. The Red Book, so called because of its deep red cover, is the most-well known, authoritative introduction to the OpenGL graphics API. In this review I want to take you on a whirlwind tour through the pages of this book to see what it has to offer." Keep reading for the rest of Martin's review.

Several sources have written to tell us that in terms of hype at this year's CES show, there is none bigger than that surrounding 3D TV. Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, and Toshiba all have their own flavors of hardware and ESPN announced a 3D sports channel, but Microsoft seems to be bucking the trend with their apparent lack of 3D interest surrounding the Xbox product. "We're yet to see any major brand at CES pushing a 3D TV that doesn't require them. In most cases these aren't the basic Ray Ban style you might have worn to watch Avatar. In many cases they'll actually require power. For example, Sony's 3D TVs use a 'frame sequential' display method, which involves active-shutter glasses that turn on and off in sync with the images. Some TVs come with the glasses and have the transmitter built in, but again, in some cases you'll need to buy the transmitter and glasses separately."

A feature at Gamasutra examines one of the foundations of many MMORPGs — the idea that class roles within such a game fall into three basic categories: tank, healer, and damage dealer. The article evaluates the pros and cons of such an arrangement and takes a look at some alternatives. "Eliminating specialized roles means that we do away with boxing a class into a single role. Without Tanks, each class would have features that would help them participate in and survive many different encounters like heavy armor, strong avoidance, or some class or magical abilities that allow them to disengage from direct combat. Without specialized DPS, all classes should be able to do damage in order to defeat enemies. Some classes might specialize in damage type, like area of effect (AoE) damage; others might be able to exploit enemy weaknesses, and some might just be good at swinging a sharpened bit of metal in the right direction at a rapid rate. This design isn't just about having each class able to fill any trinity role. MMO combat would feel more dynamic in this system. Every player would have to react to combat events and defend against attacks."

Since the release of Baldur's Gate in 1998, BioWare has cultivated a strong reputation for quality role-playing games, exploring various aspects of the genre ranging from traditional D&D roles and rules to space marine and Jedi Knights. Dragon Age: Origins is a shift back to traditional swords-and-sorcery standards, unashamedly embracing the archetypes that made RPGs what they are, and using them to tell a complex, interesting story in a familiar yet unexplored world. In addition, BioWare has done yet another iteration of their combat system to make it deeper and allow the player to dictate the level of engagement. The result is that Dragon Age: Origins is one of the best RPGs in recent history. Read on for the rest of my thoughts.

Champions Online is Cryptic Studios' latest entry into the Superhero MMORPG genre, representing several years of advancement in game design both for Cryptic and for MMOs as a whole. It's no longer a new field, and there are now certain expectations about what an MMO should contain, and how it should play. Two major factors to a new game's success or failure are the standards they embrace and do well, and the ones they reject and do differently. Champions Online succeeds at adapting many established concepts, while still setting themselves apart from the typical swords & sorcery backdrop. Read on for the rest of my thoughts.

Alison Beasley sends word that GaiKai, the cloud gaming service being developed by games industry vet Dave Perry, is about to begin beta testing in Europe. (Sign-up page.) GaiKai is a competitor to OnLive, which started beta tests of its own recently. IGN got a chance to try out GaiKai for themselves, and they've posted a video showing how it performed. From Perry's announcement: "Our closed beta has two goals. #1 is to bring our servers to their knees so we can choose the final configuration before we start ordering large quantities of them. (We think we have it worked out, but you can be certain our staff will be swapping cards and testing different processors as each day goes by.) Goal #2 is to test older computers. We've had lots of emails from people describing their computers and 99% of them have ample performance. Remember you don't even need a 3D card to see a 3D game run on our service. I know this is strangely counter to what people expect, but we actually want to get plenty of basic office-grade XP machines testing so we can make sure we can reach the widest audience possible. ... After we choose the hardware configuration in Europe, our next phase will be our USA Nationwide Network Test, that will be using 8 Tier-1 Data Centers, getting hammered by Closed Beta testers. During that process, [we] will be identifying the other data centers we need to include to blanket the USA in a low latency array. Phase 2 of that is Europe, in exactly the same test."

stoolpigeon writes "The popularity of web site Will It Blend? is indicative of how people enjoy mashing things together. Of course this kind of sharing and combining has been going on in the arts for quite some time. The new Lev Grossman novel, The Magicians asks 'will it blend?' of two rather popular fantasy series, J.K. Rowling's world of Harry Potter and the tales of Narnia from C.S. Lewis. Grossman's thoughts on both are tossed on top and then the author begins to play a symphony across the full range of buttons from stir to liquefy. What comes out is not children's fantasy but at times a rather bitter mix." Keep reading for the rest of JR's review.

Rob Hearn sends in a piece up at PocketGamer.co.uk on why Apple suddenly pulled Manomio's C64 emulator soon after finally approving it. (El Reg has coverage too.) "It was a glorious few moments for retro gamers when Manomio's C64 emulator was finally approved by Apple and released to the eager, nostalgic iPhone public. Then, calamity! It was gone again. Apparently some wily users figured out how to access the Commodore 64 BASIC system that was originally packaged with the emulator — something that Apple wasn't too happy with, given the nature of the interpreter's code. By setting the keyboard to 'always on,' launching a game and restarting BASIC, players got into the 'empty shell' of their C64 emulator."

Scythal writes "In-game advertising provider Massive Inc., acquired by Microsoft in 2006, has signed up or renewed contracts with several publishers, notably EA, Blizzard Entertainment, THQ, and Activision. Eagerly anticipated games like Need for Speed: Shift will feature the technology that continuously collects 'anonymous' information about users, sends them to the Massive database for analysis, and downloads advertisements to be shown in the game. All that happens insidiously, without the users' explicit consent and out of their control, which raises further concerns about privacy, security and quite frankly, customer abuse. Would you feel concerned about software that collects personal information and sends it so that you get more personalized ads in a game you paid for?" (More, below.)

Franchise reboots are all the rage these days in Hollywood, and the trend is starting to creep into the games industry as well. The Guardian's games blog is running a story discussing a few examples and pondering likely candidates for future reboots. Quoting: "If anything, the concept of the reboot makes more sense in the videogame sector than it does in movies. For a start, games are complex entities, with each new iteration in a familiar series adding many, many hours of fresh narrative content. Entering, say, the Zelda, Resident Evil, Half-Life, Dragon Quest or Metal Gear worlds at this stage must be massively intimidating — even if the developers go to great lengths to make each entry work as a singular, self-contained entity within the canon. Also, videogames are going through a paradigm shift in terms of popular appeal at the moment. The faithful audience of young males has been joined by new demographics brought in by the Wii, PC casual games, and now the iPhone. Many of these people may be vaguely aware of long-running game brands, but won't have a clue about the key characters, sign post events and basic gameplay mechanisms." So, which series (or individual title) would you like to see rebooted?

One of the most promising MMORPGs in development these days is NCSoft's Aion, a fantasy-based offering built on CryEngine. It makes heavy use of flight as a gameplay mechanic, allowing aerial combat and easy travel around the visually stunning game world. There are four basic classes — Warrior, Priest, Mage, and Scout — each of which have two subclasses. For example, Warriors can be tank-like Templars, or berserker-like Gladiators, while Mages can turn into a scholarly Sorcerer or command the elements as a Spiritmaster. Early previews of Aion almost universally comment on how polished the game seems — this is partly due to the fact that it has been up and running since November in South Korea. "Being stable, scalable, reliable and fuss-free is far from a given in MMOs, but Aion is all those things, and can already stand alongside the genre's usability kings, EVE Online and World of Warcraft. Its expansive, zone-free open-world environments look terrific and run smoothly on a wide variety of systems. It just works." Since the game is already in a relatively complete state, NCSoft has been running closed beta "events," where a portion of the game is opened for testing. MMOGamer has a write-up from the latest such event. Aion is due out in September.

stoolpigeon writes "Hitting middle age has been an interesting time. I catch myself thinking about how well kids have it today and sounding a lot like my father. One difference is while my dad was happy to teach me about sports or cars, we never spent any time knocking out code together. I think he did realize that home computers were important and I will always be grateful for the Commodore Vic-20 he brought home one day. It was a substantial purchase for our household. I spent many days copying lines of basic from magazines and saving the results to cassette tapes. In my home today we have a considerably better situation, computing wise. There are usually a couple laptops running as well as the desktop machine upstairs. My kids take for granted what I found to be amazing and new. Still, that's all pretty normal and I'd like to give them an opportunity to go deeper if they are so inclined, just like we give them opportunities to explore other skills and pursuits. With that in mind I brought a copy of Hello World! home a few weeks ago, and the response from my oldest has been surprisingly enthusiastic." Keep reading for the rest of JR's review.

Slatterz writes "Microsoft's Natal can recognize a player's skeletal structure, and also perform some sophisticated translation of body physics into in-game movement. As a control mechanism this is fascinating, but the next step is to merge the game graphics with the real world. Now, basic examples of augmented reality (AR) are being shown using a mobile phone, unlike previous demos which have involved walking around with a large backpack strapped to your body. A game titled Arhrrrr blends live-action video overlaid with game graphics. The processing is taken care of by Nvidia's new Tegra platform, while the game's 'maps' are generated by pointing the phone's camera (in this case 5MP) at a 2D drawing/printout lying on a table. The end result is a 3D world which seems to spring forth in real time, with buildings popping up as players move around the game 'map.' This story shows two other interesting videos demonstrating AR, including the ability to add real-life objects into the virtual game world and have the gameplay respond and react accordingly."

Aeonite writes "As the title suggests, Game Design: A Practical Approach presents a practical approach to game design — one that is almost too practical in places. The book does a good job of covering many of the foundational elements of game design (called "atoms" by the author), but in places the level of practical detail — and the heavy focus on Lua code examples — is a bit hard to work through. Readers allergic to code may find themselves skipping over swaths of text instead of actually reading it." Read below for the rest of Michael's review.

GamesIndustry reports on comments by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot about what to expect from the coming generation of gaming hardware. In addition to greater integration between game hardware and set-top boxes, he said he doesn't expect Apple to stop with the iPhone as a platform for games. "We will see more customers coming to the videogame industry, and they will not only come to the basic consoles like we have today, but they will start also to come on all the boxes that you see under the TVs. TV boxes will be more powerful, and with accessibility, will help to take more people. So we will see more consoles on which we will be able to put product." Guillemot continued, "... because you saw new interfaces with the Wii, with the Wiimote, and also with the DS, with the stylus, what we see for the future is that there will be also big announcements in interfaces. And it will not only happen on consoles, but it will also happen on those TV boxes as well."

eldavojohn writes "At some point in the history of video games, violence became uncomfortably real for censors and some parents. In addition to that, realistic use of narcotics has entered mainstream games. While gamers (of adult age) have by and large won the right to this entertainment, a large amount of games have arisen lately that challenge a different aspect of video games — inappropriate or sensitive topics. We've covered it before on Columbine to Fallujah, but I noticed through GamePolitics recently a large trend in severely controversial video games. Where do you stand on these titles?" Read on for the rest of eldavojohn's thoughts.

AndreV writes "In another attempt to dehumanize our bar games, a Canadian engineer has turned the classic game of billiards on its head with his BilliardBots pet project, which consists of a series of remote-controlled mobile robots meant to replace the standard cue sticks normally used to pocket pool balls. While in his version the basic rules remain, unlike regular billiards, players in this version simultaneously rush to pocket their designated balls (they don't take turns), 'thus it's very competitive and fast,' the creator says. In order to keep tight reins on the mechatronic ball handlers' movements, he adapted a pair of Playstation controllers and says that playing 'requires dexterity, like a video game,' to control their 3.5-m/sec-maximum speeds. The 'bots are designed simply but effectively, using a 3-by-3-by-3-inch metal frame with an electronic board, two motors and rechargeable battery packs. Using a Bluetooth wireless communication protocol, its commands come from the wireless controller with single or double joystick selectable control (the other buttons are not used). Its other parameters are software programmable, such as maximum acceleration rate, maximum speed and maximum rotation speed."

Gamasutra is running a feature about how the ease of learning new games depends on the types of games a player has seen before. "Pong offers quick pick-up not because it is easier to learn than Computer Space (although that was also true), but because it draws on familiar conventions from that sport. Or better, Pong is 'easy to learn' precisely because it assumes the basic rules and function of a familiar cultural practice." The article goes on to examine how the need to master some games is more akin to the "catchiness" of a song than an addiction. "Familiarity relates to another of Barsom's observations: repetition. Catchy songs often have a 'hook,' a musical phrase where the majority of the catchy payload resides. Indeed, the itch usually lasts only a few bars, sometimes annoyingly so. But games rely on small atoms of interaction even more so than do songs. The catchy part of a game repeats more innately than does a song's chorus. In Tetris it's the fitting together of tetrominoes."

The success of the Halo franchise is unquestionable. Bungie's trilogy of first-person shooters established a standard against which most similar games have been judged for the past eight years. Thus, when Ensemble Studios picked up the task of bringing the Halo universe to real-time strategy, they faced two separate mountains to climb: maintaining the high quality demanded by fans of the series and developing for a genre that traditionally translates poorly to console play. Fortunately, they had a head start on the latter, bringing in a wealth of experience from the Age of Empires series. Creating an intuitive and dependable control scheme was a top priority, and their success in doing so makes Halo Wars a worthy addition to the series. Read on for the rest of my thoughts.