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Warren Spector has been making some interesting comments at GDC Europe, regarding the differences between games and film. And more specifically, developers who are trying to make the former like the latter. Stop it, he cries. "If you want make your game as a movie," Develop reports the Epic Mickey developer saying, "you should be making movies”. He then goes on to discuss what games should be doing differently. But I'm not sure I agree.

Hello! I'm currently out at GDC Europe, skipping around businessy talks to cover for my day job, but I ended up sat in on BIoware's laidback and fascinating retrospective on the making of their breakthrough game, Baldur's Gate. It's a landmark title, and fascinatingly critical to what modern RPGs and MMOs are, but one we've surprisingly not talked about much on RPS. Thanks to my magic (and now rather broken) hands of transcripting +1, let's change that...

Indie dev Cactus has released two new games, both deeply different and both deeply Cactus (read: disturbing).

Gamma4 is a beautiful, disappointingly brief headtrip set to a club beat where you guide four independant lasers through various squres. I say it's disappointing, but I'm sure if it were any longer it'd just start to hurt. Norrland is a little stranger, being a kind of 8-bit simulator of a Swedish hillbilly on a hunting trip. In between shooting and punching various animals you deal with dreams of withering insecurity. Videos of (and thoughts on) both after the jump.

Many internet tipsters have been forwarding this particular title toward us over the weekend, and it's looking intriguing. Star Ruler is a 4X space strategy that... well, some features: "choose however many systems you desire; you are limited only by the speed of your cpu... Full 3D too much to handle? Flatten maps for ease of interaction ... Massive ship battles fought in real-time with particle effects and directional damage... Play with as many competitors as your server can manage, with drop-in-drop-out compatibility." Sounds too good to be true, eh? Now go look at the video I posted below. Yeah, I'm going to be taking a look at this one. At £13 for the GamersGate pre-order, (also on D2D) and it being out on Saturday, it's almost worth a punt in the dark. Much more on this soon.

RPS reader Ben Esposito writes to say "I'm a stupid intern at Dejobaan Games (AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!) and after seeing what it's like to make games with no money and no air conditioning, I decided to start doing it myself."

Mr. Esposito's new game, Nudo, has just been released (for free!) and provides about an hour of addictive, rewarding puzzling. Ben describes it as "a platformer on top of a rubik's cube", but as a professional games journalist I must categorise it as "game where you kind of move the level as well as the little man but with certain limitations." To borrow a phrase from Kieron, it's one of those games that's much easier to grasp with a video rather than an explanation, so I've wedged a video after the jump.

My love for Soldner is real and weird. The most bugged game I've encountered (while Boiling Point's bugs were extraordinary, it was at least a decent game underneath), it plays like slapstick comedy with an unbreakably straight face. I returned to it, playing the completely unpatched original version, and sticking to the single player (I did try to play some multiplayer later, but of course it didn't work), to see if it would deliver the joy years on. It, of course, did. You can read my adventures here.

There's a quote from it below, as it's a bit long.

Sad news broke on Friday. Firstly, with rumours that in addition to previously announced scaling back of the APB team post-launch, the whole team of the recently announced Social Networking Game MyWorld would be laid off. Later, speaking to Develop, Studio Manager Colin Macdonald confirmed that the further redundancies had been made, and that those cuts were made to the MyWorld team, but stopped short of saying the project was cancelled and they "were still looking at options for it." However, APB would continue...

Catching up with some news from the back end of last week! The previously covered Battlestar Galactica Online revealed that Dean Stockwell (A character from Battlestar Galactica), Callum Keith Rennie (Another character from Battlestar Galactica) Tricia Helfer (A third character from Battlestar Galactica), Grace Park (Someone else from Battlestar Galactica), Aaron Douglas (Battlestar Galactica), Katee Sackhof (Who you know from Battlestar Galactica), Edward James Olmos (Yet another Battlestar Galactica character) and James Bamber (Jace & His Wheeled Warriors*) are "do"ing their roles in the forthcoming browser-based MMO (powered by Unity). Go over to Bleeding Cool for more grabs of the cast in game-o-vision or see the (not in game) trailer beneath the cut...

One last snippet of news from Quakecon. They've set the release date for Rage in UK for September 16th 2011.

So - er - yes.

Astute (and handsome) readers will recall that we've been following the hyperbolically ludicrous-looking dinosaurs-versus-jetpack-battlesuits-plus-other-stuff Half-Life 2 mod, Orion: Prelude since it started looking like a contender. Now, however, it's pushed itself even further into the realms of awesomeness by becoming a commercial project, Orion Project. The mod team have formed "Spiral Game Studios" and say: "ORION: Prelude pays homage to other classics that we grew up on that entertained us as gamers as well as inspired us as developers. You will see inspiration from classics such as the Unreal Tournament series, Quake 2 CTF, Starsiege: Tribes, early Counter-Strike betas and plenty of our own unique takes and twists in the design and mechanics." There's loads more information and some more visuals here, as well as confirmation of "Dinosaur Interaction" on the feature list. Happy days. Oh - and here's some footage of the previous Orion Source Multiplayer Beta to give a vibe. First real video at PAX.

Financial squabbles between Southpeak Interactive and CDV had made some people wonder what would happen to the games being produced by the corporate couple, and somehow we missed the confirmation last week that Stronghold 3 is unaffected, and will still hit its 2011 release slot. Eurogamer have the news, and some affirmation by Southpeak's CEO that they have confidence in the title. And they should have confidence, because it's one of Germany's biggest selling strategy titles and as such is likely to sell half a squajillion copies. No major details on the game yet, but a smattering of screens show a new 3D engine, which should make for spangly castle-construction when the game arrives next year.

Sundays are for finishing off an episode of Twin Peaks, crouching in your office trying to type quietly while Delightful Fiance records some music and compiling a line of the fine (mostly) games related reading from across the week, while trying to not link to some manner of future-music remix of the future-fiction of the Victorian age.

• This was probably the story which lead to most outrage. Kaitol writes about How To Hire An Artist to assist making their games. And he writes about it with awe-inspiring candour, basically explaining exactly how to exploit ignorant artists to maximise your own bottom line. Clearly, artists explode at it... but the piece actually serves a useful purpose in educating artists that this is how people are going to be treating them. That Kaitol was stupid enough to say what actually happens will hopefully lead to the penny dropping for a whole load of people. It's the same in games journalism. I recently heard that apparently some people are working for free for national newspapers for "the exposure". It was only not knowing for sure if it was true which didn't stop me hunting them down and boiling the little scabs alive. It's fine to work for free when people aren't making serious money off you (i.e. You aren't being exploited). To agree to exploitation is to sell out your entire fraternity, and forever reduce the currency of your work, you idiot scum.

I want to quickly post this, which Jim found. Where did he find it? I don't know. He could have just been reading the XCOM thread at Gamasutra. Google suggests he may have found it at RPGCodex, but that doesn't sound likely. Anyway, Julian Gollop was the legendary creator of Chaos, Laser Squad and - relevantly - the original X-COM. I've been wondering about what he makes of all this ever since it came out. Sadly, he's not replying to any of our e-mails. However, he did turn up in the comment thread (twice!) to the aforementioned Gamasutra article and said the following...

The Curfew's been in Beta for a few weeks now with all the four episodes running, but they've been a bit twitchy. However, as the end of its Beta approaches, it's basically in a good enough state for me to feel happy to link to it - which is pretty much what Curfewer in arms Simon Parkin said last night. As in, my saved game for the end of episode one works and I got all the way through it with only a couple of eyebrow raises. For those who the loading is still iffy - and it's always been fine for me - I'll say two things. Try loading it and leaving it running in a tab for a while, because I vaguely recall it having some streaming tech. Give the game a chance to get ahead, and it could be smoother. Secondly, they're planning a full 700Mb Download of it for September, which will obviously solve everything. What's the Curfew? Well, it's... oh, let's hand over to Simon's short description...

EDIT: But see the edits at the bottom of the post too...

One of the stories to emerge from Quakecon was that Zenimax have got their corporate cheque-book out again. Following Id into Bethesda's masters maw is Arkane Studios, who you'll know from Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah of Might And Magic and doing work alongside 2K Marin on Bioshock 2. To state the obvious - with Id, Bethesda and publishing Splash Damage's Brink, this helps cement Zenimax as a major power in that PC-centric PC/Console developed game area. By which I mean, traditional PC games which are now developed for both (and so provoke comment thread - aha! - Rage for merely existing). The press release follows and if you want to try and work out what Arkane are actually up to, our interview with Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith is where they lay out their current thinking best. Though I would say that.

Kalypso and Haemimont Games aren't abandoning their dreams of benevolent dictatorship simulation any time soon. We're going to be basking in the warm light of a fourth island-managing build and diplomacy game in Q2 2011. It looks like this will be an expanded take on Tropico 3, with new buildings and political features, some new online rankings and Facebook/Twitter feature stuff, as well as revamped disaster and trade systems in the game itself. I discussed my casual fondness for Tropico 3 just here.

GSC have been vaguely rumbling about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 for a while now, but it seems that they've decided to officially announce its development and arrival in 2012. A news article over on the company's main site makes the matter known, saying that it the technology will be "completely new" - a statement which could be aimed at rumours GSC were going to use the Crysis engine. ""After the official sales of the series exceeded 4 million copies worldwide, we had no doubts left to start creating a new big game in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe," says GSC's Sergiy Grygorovych. "This will be the next chapter of the mega-popular game players expect from us."

Don't just stand there, etc. I'll get in the queue for an interview.

Hail, hero. Would you like to win a copy of the super-chap MMO that half the internet has called Going Rouge? Plus enough add-on microstransactiony costume parts and whatnot to fill up a Fortress of Solitude? Well, you can. And, I'm very pleased to say, even if you're not a UK resident. This is global baby, global.

Going Rogue is the second mega-expansion for City of Heroes, following City of Villains. This one deals with the moral stickiness between good and evil, enabling you to go off super-piste to pursue something that's more your own agenda, rather than that of organised do-goodery or crime. Sounds good. Sounds... roguish. You should try and win a copy. If only you could find a website that had such a competition! Oh.

It's late at night after the unveiling of Bioshock Infinite by the time I sit down with Ken Levine to talk about the city of Columbia. What follows is a discussion which takes in how the themes of the game resonate between 1900 and today, how Irrational think they took the binary Little-sister choice as far as they were interested in already, dances elegantly around the question of whether this shares a universe with Bioshock 1 or not and expresses sadness that people aren't going to totally get the name until they've finished the game...

Something for the weekend, sir? May I recommend Part-time Angle Grinder Hero? You can download it from here, then load it by dragging the 14mb .swf file into your browser. It is an epic tale of love, drinking, and angle grinding. But mainly drinking. And angle grinding.

Cor, it's all go this week, isn't it? Here's the first ever official look at Deus Ex 3 in-game content, along with lots of other pretty cutscene gubbins. You are all commanded to interpret it below.

Unreal-powered shooter The Scourge Project has a demonstrational download version. It's here at 1.5gb.

Jim: 4-player co-op, we should all grab that, for hot co-op action. Alec: Nice. Quintin: Oh it's fucking terrible. I reviewed it for a mag. It's properly abysmal. Cyberpunky Gears of War with tedious level design, shoddy shooting and awkward mouse support. If we played it together we would never play a videogame together again. Alec: That only makes me wanna play it more. Quintin: Nooo!

While I'm finishing off the transcript of the Levine interview, I thought this may be of passing interest. At certain press events, you can find yourself given what I'll describe as gumpf. Having a house already brimming with literature, Skaven and literature about Skaven, I tend to give it to a passing tramp. However, noting that some of the actual repurpose Bioshock: Infinite propaganda posters were among them, I dragged 'em with me and took some quick cam phone shots. Also, some of the other stuff, which may reveal some fine detail of what Irrational are up to. Possibly.

...if 10,000 people sign up to the Steam group. Hmm, I'm a little conflicted by this. On the one hand I want you all to sign up so that Men Of War: Assault Squad can have an open beta, simply so that you can see how awesome it actually is. And on the other, well, they should just have an open beta! I've already rambled a bit here about how superb the co-op missions are, and I feel like I should talk more about the special units, such as conscription for the Russians, or the epic tank battles, or the incredible details that make the thing come alive. I've been playing the hell out of the closed beta and it's sitting at the top of my contenders for game of the year right now. I know certain other RTS games are dominating the headlines, but this is ten thousand times more absorbing. It's going to be a nutritious feast of a game. I'll write more about it next week. In the meantime, go sign up!

Cast your mind back. Back! Back to the distant, murky, forgotten times of July 19-22nd 2010. Life was so much different then. We could have been anything that we wanted to be.

We were also talking excitedly about Recettear, the Japanese indie game that had you playing the owner of a cheerfully stereotypical RPG shop. All we had to go on was a demo. Now, we have a place in time in sight for the full version. Ho!

Rock, Paper, Shotgun will be down from 9am to 11am (approx, UK time) on the 13th August. This is so we can transfer to our spanky new server, which hopefully won't crash every hour. It's a dream.

RPS has grown extremely quickly, and we've far outgrown the server we've been on. The utterly extraordinary folks at Positive Internet have done miraculous things to keep us online for the last year or so, and will continue to do miraculous things as we do our best to outgrow the new server. If you have any hosting needs at all, we without hesitation (and let me stress, without their ever asking us to plug them, and even though Nick's so horrid to me on our podcast) recommend you use Positive Internet. They're not only extremely competent hosts, but deeply ethical, and have gone beyond the boundaries of expectation in their support. We can't say enough good things about them. They are, as they say, good.

About five minutes into my demonstration of Relic's Space Marine I realise what I'm looking at is a 3rd person shooter that draws heavily from Gears of War, so I ask an obvious question. "Is there some kind of cover system?" Relic man grins. "Actually, the team has an internal line about that. We say, 'Cover is for Pussies.'"

I don't take my eyes off the screen, but my ears do a double take. "We do have this though," says Relic man. With the press of a button he sends Ultramarine Captain Titus running straight through a low wall of cover like a wrecking ball, and begins hacking apart the orks on the other side with his chainsword. "Oh," I hear myself say, mesmerised. "Right!"

id's Todd Hollenshead has told Eurogamer that they will no longer be licensing out their tech, starting with id Tech 5, for third-party developers. Unless their game is published by Bethesda. While it's perhaps not unusual for a publisher to hold onto their own tech, it seems a long way from id's past to keep their new middleware to themselves. The company has a rich history of not only licensing out their engines, but then releasing them as free software after a few years. However, this change comes after the company was bought by ZeniMax, owners of Bethesda, in 2009.

It's rare as a games journalist that you find yourself sitting in a hall, knowing you're there for an announcement, without a single clue what the game actually is. You've always got theories. And – yeah – I had some, but none that I'd dignify with a word like “theory”. “Guesses” would be as far as I'd go. So when the trailer rolls, it's a surprise in all sorts of ways. And since there's a chance this is the first place you've heard about the game, we'll like to recreate the experience for you guys. So, head below for the video they unveiled the game with...

So you know how you wanted Dungeon Keeper 3?