This past week, the Multiplayer crew was out at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Come back next week for more from GDC!
Things We Learned At GDC:
* Xbox is bigger than music, movies and YouTube and -- surprise! -- "Gears of War 2" is on the way, along with Xbox Live Community Games.
* Not to be outdone, EA announced "The Sims Carnival," a free web-based portal for creating, sharing and playing free computer games.
* Miyamoto had the idea for "Wii Fit" long before the console's launch, but there were many challenges in creating the Wii Balance Board.
* "Home" trophies were revealed; an EA developer asked, "Why should we care?" (Awkward.)
* The makers of "Crackdown" spoke about their MMO, which is more "GTA" and "Counter-Strike" than "WoW."
* Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack and Saber 3D's Matthew Karch strongly disagreed with each other over the importance of story in video games.
* "Lost Winds" showed that a WiiWare game can be beautiful, mellow and innovative.
* "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" could've starred a Wookiee superhero and had exploding Rancor heads.
* More Western developers are making promising games for the Nintendo DS and Wii.
* We wondered, "Do we need to play a game to relax... from playing other games?"
* "Tetris" is the beef jerky of mobile phone games and not being able to "win" makes it a bad mobile game today.
* Funcom wants to make "Age of Conan" for the Xbox 360, but the controller may be an obstacle.
* At the opening panel of the Independent Games Summit, Jonathan Mak said we should think of games as a system of inputs and outputs, and Pekko Koskinen asked if we can create games that change the way we act.
* Sony's Station Exchange and Live Gamer teamed up to make player-to-player virtual item sales for MMOs legitimate.
* The swan song of "Portal" will make its way into "Rock Band."
Other News:
* PlayStation executive John Hight talked PSN: why its line-up includes unusual game as well as issues with pricing, size and lack of demos.
* We get a glimpse of "LEGO Indiana Jones" and an exclusive look at new, heart-tugging character Mola Ram.
* Should a game about immigration and deportation be fun? The makers of "ICED" say "no."
* When is the right time to announce a game? Cliffy B shared his thoughts.
* Holding the fort down in New York, Jason Cipriano ran into issues with his Achievements quest, proclaimed his love for "Professor Layton" in "What We're NOT Playing" and asked for help completing his GameCube game collection.
* This week's MTV Rhythm Game Trackfinder update included new tunes from "Rock Band," "Guitar Hero III" and "Dance Dance Revolution."
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