Sims Carnival has been officially announced by EA at this years GDC and a Closed Beta has begun, if you head over to the site and register you will be in with a chance of being involved.

What is The Sims Carnival?

The Sims Carnival is a new online community and gaming experience from The Sims that makes game creation and sharing more accessible and fun than ever before.

The introduction of this new creative endeavor from The Sims is designed to convert millions of players into game designers - no programming skills required!

Press release and more follow

Thank god for that! Back online at last. Don’t know why, but yesterday I was having mega problems with my net, just couldn’t get anything to load be it with a direct connection to my router or the wireless connection. It is working now though so :D

Quicks newsy tidbits:
Crayon Physics Deluxe won the top award at the IGF awards at the GDC - More information.

Far Cry 2 tech video from the GDC:

Portal related info - big winner at the GDC awards - information and Kim Swift accidently confirms Portal 2 more info.

Chris Taylor the head honcho behind Supreme Commander has claimed that piracy on the PC is causing developers to turn over to consoles, and that is why we are seeing a spate of RTS games appearing on the 360 and PS3 in the coming year.

IGN: Recently there have been many attempts to bring the RTS genre over to the console. Do you think what people learn from that will affect how the PC RTS is made in the future?

Chris Taylor: Well, yeah, because if there’s success on the console, people are going to stop making them on the PC because of my earlier point, what’s happened on the PC with piracy. The economics are ugly right now on the PC. You’re not going to see these gigantic, epic investments of dollars on the PC when it just doesn’t work. The economics have to work. You’re going to see those investments made on the console side and it’s going to become a more console-centric investment. And then you’re going to see them ported back over to the PC and that creates a different experience on the PC.

Right now it’s up in the air, but right now the PC market is kind of voting with its dollars, if you will.

Read the whole thing here.

To see the humble RTS, a genre that is for me a core part of PC gaming, be predicted to follow the trend of console-led development is frightening and worrying. While I cannot agree that piracy is the sole reason for this shift, it has certainly played a large part in it. I would hate to see piracy being the cause of even more developers moving away from the PC, I really would.

Read the rest of this entry

More (great) new details have emerged regarding Red Faction III Guerrilla. According to CVG the game is going to take the game to the third-person perspective and bring in amazing destructive environments and open-world gameplay. It has also been revealed that the game will return to Mars with a new Red Faction movement fighting against the Earth Defense Force.

“Red Faction: Guerrilla expands the signature destruction elements of the series and pushes the boundaries of next-gen gaming on a massive, terra-formed Mars where gamers can literally tear down the enemy EDF presence brick by brick,” Mike Kulas, president of Volition - the game’s developer - says.

“With a new third- person perspective, a full cover system that allows for guerrilla style tactics and a diverse planet to explore we’re excited to revitalize the gripping world of Red Faction for high-definition platforms.”

Quite intriguing and interesting, certainly sounds like Volition have some promising plans for this one. Going back to Mars with the EDF and Red Faction movement is a great move, hopefully the horrible memories of RF2 can be erased.

[CVG]

The PC Gaming Alliance has been officially announced at this years GDC and they seem to have some noble intentions.

PC Gaming Alliance will be the Authoritative Voice of PC Gaming World Wide. We will make data that highlights and promotes the PC platform to analysts, press and the public.

We will promote the PC Gaming Industry and the PC as a gaming platform, provide web and event based forums to discuss, debate and influence all aspects of PC development for gaming for all regions of the world, and guidance to help resolve industry-wide challenges such as: Piracy, Cheating, Security, Consumer experience.

PC Gaming Alliance will also provide guidelines to simplify hardware specifications and speed the introduction of new technologies, as well as improve Consumer PC Gaming Experience by working with developers and publishers and PCGA members to maximize the PC gaming experience in all ways possible.

Read on for my thoughts and much more

US Politician Lyndon LaRouche (info) has launched a scathing attack on Microsoft blaming them for the latest US university shooting claiming that (and I quote) International Fascism: Microsoft Will Kill More Youth than Hitler and for some strange reason, only known to himself, says that Microsoft were behind Counter-Strike, a game made by Valve.

LaRouche and his cronies take their lead from the sensationalist New York Post article which also blamed the Northern Illinois University killings by Stephen Kazmierczak on Counter-Strike while giving little mention to the fact that he stopped taking prescribed medication for an undisclosed medical condition.

In further evidence of LaRouche’s mad conspiracy theories read this;

The intended effect, to foster an environment of mass suicide terrorism in the U.S.A., is a by-product of the ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ policy, organized by Felix Rohatyn and George P. Shultz; the same individuals, who not only helped to install the fascist Pinochet into the Chilean government, but are the prime backers of a fascist Bloomberg Presidency.

Getting such basic facts as tying Microsoft to Counter-Strike, making outlandish claims about other US politicians and giving little credence to what was the probably cause of this tragedy, the fact that Stephen stopped taking his medication.

Politicians like this make me sick, people in positions of credibility need to take a stand against this. Microsoft should reply and set the record straight and distance gaming from this awful event.

[Kotaku

Ever wanted to play Quake for free, in your internet browser? Well soon you will be able to thanks to a new partnership between IGA and ID Software. Boasting the potential of ‘freemium’ software Quake Live promises to bring many great features to your browser. Elements such as friends lists, sponsored events and tournaments, stats tracking and much more. Kinda like Xbox Live and Steam Community features all rolled into the web browser and a great gaming series.

For the chance to play a new Quake game, for free with the above features…yeah I would happily accept some in-game advertising for that.

“IGA understands game developers and game players which makes them the perfect partner for QUAKE LIVE. Whether it’s been the ease of implementing their SDK or just their excitement about QUAKE LIVE, they have been fantastic to work with,” said Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software. “As we work to bring QUAKE-style deathmatch excitement to the masses, IGA has fully supported our vision.”

More information on Kotaku.

After studiously working away for over a year (I think!) as a Content Writer on Half-Life2.net I have received the honour of being bumped up a position to Editor. What does this mean? Well for starters I now get to Moderate certain areas of the forum on the site, and I guess I can now boss about the other lowly Content Writers! :D

That is all.

Everyone loves music; everyone (I should hope) loves games. Mix the two together is surely a winning combination, and in the case of AudioSurf it most certainly is a winning combination. Created by Dylan Fitterer and distributed on Steam using the Steamworks tools this is a game that truly shows the great potential of the independent gaming scene currently on the PC.

AudioSurf is a racing-puzzle game that takes your music and turns it into a track within seconds of selecting what you want to play. The shape of the track is entirely dependent on what type of song you chose; a slow acoustic song will generate a gentle uphill track while (this would be my choice) a heavy thrash metal song will give you a hell of a ride racing down hill all the way. It really is fantastic the way Dylan has made this possible, the track will undulate and take you on a trip following the pace and beat of the music, this is brilliant as it allows you to easily chose whether you want an easy or a very challenging game, purely by your selection of music.

The focus of each track is on the blocks that litter your path, you must hit the coloured blocks to create a grouping and score the big points. There are different characters which you use to race the tracks, however many of them are quite similar with just some small abilities adding a twist to proceedings. However once you find a character you feel comfortable with then you can have a whole load of fun with it.

Controls are simple and intuitive, there are three lanes on each track, and depending on what character you go as there is a rest lane where no blocks will appear. You can easily use the mouse or keyboard to shift your ship from lane to lane weaving between different blocks in your aim to get the high scoring ‘warm’ colours like red and yellow. The graphics are very nicely presented, you can choose what background you want and on that there are some funky patterns and designs that change colour and shape depending on what the song is.

You will find yourself racing again and again to get a high score; if you create an account with the game your high scores will be submitted to a central hub which allows you to see the scores achieved by everyone around the world, local to you and even your friends you can add in the game. If someone beats your top score you receive an e-mail informing you that you have lost your spot at the top which, in me at least, gave me the drive to go out and try harder and harder to reclaim my top spot. AudioSurf is one of the first games to utilise the Steamworks utilities provided by Valve and the immediate signs are that it is a great set of utilities. AudioSurf has achievements which provide another great incentive to knuckle down and get some great high scores and really go out and play the game to the max!

The sheer fact that one man has been able to create this game is quite some feat, making the game based on your music means that if you enjoy the racing/puzzling of the main game then you really should have no complaints as you are the one choosing what kind of track you race on. This is a very innovative game, while it may lack depth it is a great game to jump into and spend your time listening to your favourite tunes and having a great time. Further evidence, if needed, of its quality is the fact that it is nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the Independent Games Festival.

Highly recommended purchase.

Just played some AudioSurf, as you do you know. Threw on ‘Bleeding Me’ by Metallica, it was the S&M version…and it was brilliant! A great song in its own right, after being put through the AudioSurf magic it was a joy to play. The track was very up and down, some great slow point climbing points punctuated by some utterly heart-pounding downhill heavy moments. I highly recommend anyone with AudioSurf and Bleeding Me (S&M version) go and give it a whirl! Track preview below.