Many of us gamers and game reporters have become accustomed to the intense secrecy surrounding even the most basic facts about upcoming games.

We've gotten used to it.

But when an outsider describes video game secrecyin the context of "Gears of War 2" and incorporates a quote from former Microsoft exec Jeff Bell, well... the whole thing sounds absurd. (Probably because it is!)

Check this paragraph out from the New Yorker magazine's profile of "Gears" designer Cliff Bleszinski: Read more...

Nintendo is a company full of secrets. Working for them must be pretty cool, right?

JC Rodrigo started working for Nintendo of America's Treehouse division in February. That division handles the translation and writing of Nintendo's games, among other things. Rodrigo is tasked with doing a variety of things he could tell me very little about.

When we talked about "Wii Music" at Nintendo's fall summit last week, I wanted to know what his first day at Nintendo was like. It must be like going behind the curtain of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory!

"Man, they threw me in the deep end!," laughed Rodrigo.

Asked to explain what that meant, Rodrigo had to be cryptic. Was it a mystery game he needed to translate? Or a strange task tied to some secret Nintendo procedure?

"Umm, I'll say it was exciting but I can't tell you what it was," he said. "Because I looked around and basically, I said to my boss, 'Really? Are you serious?!' and he said 'Yeah, I'm not kidding.' So, I'm like 'oooookay!' [laughs] So I started doing…something. Something exciting and something unexpected -- something completely unexpected."

Whatever Rodrigo is working on, it hasn't been announced yet, but when he told me the story, his enthusiasm was genuine. It must be pretty exciting.

I wonder what it is?

[Image Credit: Warner Bros.]

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My #3 Nintendo Fall Summit Game - ‘Wii Music’

Do you know what Stop N Swop refers to?

If not, stop reading. This post won't mean a thing.

If you have heard of it, then you, like me, probably played "Banjo Kazooie" on the Nintendo 64 and discovered that the game included locked content that couldn't be accessed until, theoretically, the release of the game's sequel, "Banjo Tooie."

The unlocking would occur through an unusual and seemingly dangerous technique called Stop N Swop.

The feature was supposed to allow players to pull a "BK" cartridge out of their Nintendo 64 -- while keeping the power on -- and then plug a "BT" cartridge in its place. This would unlock content in "Kazooie." I think that's what was supposed to happen. Islands and chambers that had been off-limits in "Kazooie" would suddenly be accessible, maybe? Cool stuff would be found.

But gamers never got the opportunity to Stop or to Swop. Even though programming code for Stop N Swop was included in "Kazooie," the feature was not implemented in the final version of "Tooie." Instead, a poor man's version was delivered as collection quest that had players fetching game cartridges in "Tooie" so that they could make Kazooie the bird turn into a dragon.

That was a disappointment.

For many years no one at the game's development studio, Rare, nor its publisher, Nintendo, would explain why Stop N Swap was removed from the "Banjo" series. But explanations have trickled out, attributing the decision to Nintendo but never, to my knowledge, identifying what the issue was.

But finally, last week, I learned an answer that made sense.

Read more...

I can't talk about what I saw at last night's San Francisco media presentation of "Alone in the Dark" yet. But I can tell you it made me hold my notebook over my eyes.

At one point, the audience was told they were about to see an exciting, pivotal moment in the storyline. A main character's story arc was going to take an unexpected turn.

Thing is, I didn't want to know about it. I want to play "Alone in the Dark." I certainly didn't want a crucial narrative point spoiled for me. So I covered my eyes.

Game Videos assistant producer David Ellis informed me when it finally was safe to look. It was slightly embarrassing to be consciously ignoring what the developer was trying to show me, but it's not the first time I've felt that way, either.

The same sense of "spoiler alert!" happened last week with "Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots" and "Silent Hill: Homecoming," too.

Am I failing as a journalist?

Read more...

While visiting the Sega offices in San Francisco last week, I noticed two arresting pieces of art on company walls.

Both featured ninjas.

But neither one was selling a game. Instead, they were reminding Sega workers to keep quiet about Sega's secrets.

(Click the image at left to see how Shakespeare helped the ninjas make their point.)

These posters were encouraging employees to not be like the people who let all those "Sonic Unleashed" shots permeate the Internet a few weeks ago. 

But surely these images themselves shouldn't be hidden, right? Surely the world must know how it is that Sega secrets remain secret.

Multiplayer readers, I give you: The Official Sega Ninja Keeping-Secrets Posters.

(P.S. Next time I won't use the flash on my camera. I won't even need a motivational poster to remind me.)

(Below is the beginning of my latest GameFile column. For the full thing, check out MTVNews.com)

My video game January is not like anyone else's video game January anywhere on the planet. And to prove it, all I need to do is look at the map and find Chubb Lane.

Chubb Lane is a stretch of road in "Burnout Paradise," the open-world racing game that is coming out January 22. The game's publisher, Electronic Arts, sent me an early copy of the finished game last week. It was in a box, in shrink-wrap. I popped it into my PS3, made sure that my console was hooked up to the Internet so that all my records would be saved onto the worldwide leader boards, and I started driving.

I think it was on Friday when I drove over to Chubb Lane on the western half of Paradise City. I drove from one end of the road to the other in 52.10 seconds. Then I activated the "Burnout" Showtime mode, which sent my car hurtling through traffic, racking up points, in dollars, for the amount of damage I caused: $2,647,250 to be exact. My speed and damage performances were new world records. More oddly, they were original world records, displacing ... nothing. I set them first, as if I were Neil Armstrong setting the long-jump mark on the moon. And several days later I still have the records. I think that's because no one else is driving on Chubb Lane. Not yet.

The gaming life of a video game reporter is a bit strange. You get games early. You play them when no one else is around. You have to play by some odd rules. And while nothing about it is painful or worth complaining about, it is odd in ways that many gamers probably don't realize.

Check out the rest of this column at MTVNews.com

SPOILER WARNING: Read the headline again and you'll know what this post spoils

Last week MTVNews.com ran an interview I conducted with Patrice Desilets, creative director of Ubisoft's "Assassin's Creed."

I left something out of that story.

I left out the secret.

"Assassin's" players know the secret. Even some people who don't have the game know what it is. But where did the secret come from? Who thought it up? Who was privy to it prior to the game's release?

And did Kristen Bell really ruin everything?

Well, first of all, Desilets told me, there wasn't always going to be a secret.

Read more...