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The keynote speech from Hideo Kojima was about his game design philosophy, which he said is essentially "making the impossible possible." Here are a few slides from his presentation: Read more...

The "Spore" DRM copy-protection backlash won't be happening to "The Sims 3," given the news that broke just minutes ago. EA has announced that "The Sims 3" will only use serial-number copy protection. Buy the game, input the serial number that comes with the game, and you're good to go.

From the blog of Rod Humble, head of EA's Sims and Casual division:

The game will have disc-based copy protection – there is a Serial Code just like The Sims 2. To play the game there will not be any online authentication needed.

We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future.

Happy, PC gamers? "The Sims 3" is slated for a June 2 release for PC and Mac.

Yesterday's teaser trailer for the game we all thought was going to be called "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" labeled Infinity Ward's next project simply as "Modern Warfare 2." It's not yet clear whether that's the sign of a brand split or if it is simply a way to remind trailer watchers that this game is from the people who made 2007's "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" and not 2008's "Call of Duty: World at War." I will at least bet that the game won't be called: "Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2." Let us know where you stand on this.

I just filed a positive piece about "Kodu," Microsoft's spring Xbox 360 downloadable development tool, which is designed to make game programming 3D games possible for kids -- and anyone else who is clueless about writing code. Screenshots were released for the service a while ago, but I never understood what I was looking at when I saw lines of "Kodu" code. After playing with it on Monday, I get it. If you were confused too, let me explain.

In the image above:
-Rules are being defined for an artificially intelligent blue blob (if it had been controllable you would have seen images of controller buttons here
-Line 1: When the blue blob sees an apple, it should move to it
-Line 2: When it bumps into the apple, it should eat it
-Line 3: When it bumps into the apple, the blue blob should change into a random color.

Simple, right?

On Monday, I told readers of this blog that someone at GDC made me a game in 10 minutes. I announced that I would reveal the game "tomorrow," and then, like the best game companies, I delayed my announcement. Now I'll tell. Read more...

Walking over to DoubleFine Studios earlier this week here at GDC to get an embargoed look at "Brutal Legend," I spotted a familiar gaming figure with his back to me, waiting to cross the street. This was happening less than 24 hours after the leaked news of the OnLive cloud-computing service. And here, in front of me, was the game designer who has been talking publicly about a One Console Future and cloud computing more loudly than most.

I shouted to get his attention: "Denis Dyack was right!"

Dyack, president of Silicon Knights, turned. He had given me a long, confident pitch about cloud computing just a month ago at the DICE gaming event in Las Vegas. So he was feeling proud to be on the right track. He said he didn't know enough about OnLive to comment about their plans, but said that he's been excited to see other companies, including IBM, also pursuing this kind of technology. I joked that he should try to make his studio the first OnLive-exclusive development group.

He laughed. I headed off to "Brutal Legend."

Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime told MTV Multiplayer on Wednesday that the motion-sensitivity upgrade for Wii remote is looking good -- and would not say that it's delayed. Read more...

Another day of GDC done, another day of not playing much games. But I did play Capcom's upcoming four-player co-op "Monster Hunter Freedom Unite" on the PSP with three other players seated at a table with me in an art gallery.

One of those players was... a woman.

I am not shocked by playing a game with a member of the opposite sex. I play "PixelJunk Monsters" with my wife co-op at least once a week. But I am amused by the dynamic at a session like the one I had yesterday. There's the requisite comment from her to one of the guys that "I have played games before." Sadly, her press badge hadn't sufficiently implied that. There's the obvious flirtation when she's joking about what she's doing in the game and one of the other guys is finding her jokes to be just too funny. There's the -- a guy would never get away with this -- element of her pausing our four-player monster-slaying mission because she just had to get another piece of sushi from the buffet 20 feet away from us. There's the after-session small talk, while I'm walking away, when one of the guys assures her "You were pretty good."

In moments like these I'm reminded that to be a male gamer is to be invisible. To be a female gamer? It often seems to be the opposite.

A trailer for "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" just closed out the Game Developers Choice Awards. The trailer revealed that the game, slugged only as "Modern Warfare 2," will be released on November 10. The full trailer is on the game's official site. At first, it doesn't appear to show much, but click on the "analyze" button and you'll be able to spot all kinds of interesting things: like a submarine and an oil-drilling platform.

Tim Schafer, "Brutal Legend" developer and host of tonight's Game Developers Choice Awards, here in San Francisco in front of hundreds of game developers, talking about downloadable games before announcing the winner:

"They come into your house but you can't touch them, just like strippers.

"Because of their small size they tend to be more creative, just like short strippers."

That got a big laugh. The winner of the category, in case you were curious, was "World of Goo."