When the rumors started circulating about a new DLC called Hearthfire for Skyrim, people started excitedly speculating as to what new powers you'd go on in the expansion. Dawnguard brought vampire abilities to Bethesda's hit RPG so Hearthfire would bring what? Magma-flinging? Dovahkiin sidequests involving arson?

No one was really expecting house-building and adoption.

In a new team diary on the Elder Scrolls site, lead designer Bruce Nesmith, environmental artist Robert Wisnewski and co-lead designer Kurt Kuhlmann all talk about how the add-on was created. It turns out that Mojang's hit sandbox construction game Minecraft served as a key inspiration:

Meanwhile Nesmith, a fan of the popular game Minecraft, wanted players to have more ways to create content in the game. "Being a fan of [Minecraft], I asked, ‘Why can't I build things in our game?'"

Hearthfire started out as a project during the Skyrim Game Jam mentioned by Todd Howard talked about earlier this year. It grew from humble origins of being just a cabin to a multi-room home that can hold a greenhouse with plants for alchemical recipes. As for the adoption of little Dovah-kinder, level designer Steve Cornett says:

"The idea of adoption came to me after the Dark Brotherhood questline was presented. After first seeing the [Innocence Lost] questline, I asked, ‘what happens to the kids? What happens to the orphanage after the quest is completed?'"

Hearthfire provided an opportunity to answer these questions, as the concept of adoption seemed a natural fit with the idea of creating a household.

"Build your own house lets you make a house and adoption lets you make it a home."

Players will get the chance to build their own Dragonborn estates when Hearthfire comes out next week.

Skyrim Team Diary #6: Hearthfire [The Elder Scrolls]

Once of the most memorable things about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the in-game gear. So when cosplayers Sheila and Sylar feel in love with the game, they decided to replica Skyrim's Nightingale Armor for the above photo shoot. Because, you know, they being cosplayers and all.

This is the result. The truly impressive result.

Pulling something off like this ain't easy! The suit looks even more impressive when you read the nitty-gritty about how it was put together:

The entirety of this armor is made from craft foam, that was sealed, detailed (with hot glue and carving into the foam) and then painted to resemble leather texture. It is all heated into shape and then attached directly onto a base black catsuit.

The bracers are attached to gloves, and the armor below the waist is actually attached to a detachable belt. All of the silver adornments, buckles and rivets were sculpted from sculpy and sprayed silver. The face mask is also craft foam, simply glued onto a ski mask. The head and cape were sewn from scratch and attach via some metal snaps on the suit.

There's even a walk through so you can make the suit yourself. How nice!

Click the lower corner of each image to expand to full size.

Skyrim [Aicosu's DeviantArt page]
Karliah (Nightingale Armor) [Aicosu]

Created by Kotaku reader Geo "Tyrannicon" Paradissis, he who made that crazy re-creation of 300's final battle in Skyrim, this is an excellent way to start off your morning. Pour yourself some coffee and dive in.

It's rather clever, as I'm having a tough time grasping the full vocabulary available for making pre-snap adjustments (there are more than 120 commands you can give). This may not be as handy as my Cooking Mama oven mitt but it's still a useful piece of swag.

Especially when I apply it to one of my favorite games.

Paul Steed, an artist whose video game career spanned design, publishing and even console development, died unexpectedly, according to The Jace Hall Show. Steed was perhaps best known for work on Wing Commander and Quake and also for controversies arising in his time ad id Software.

Steed was most recently the executive creative director of Exigent, a 3D art company he founded. Prior to that, he had worked for publishers such as Atari and Electronic Arts, with Microsoft on the Xbox 360, and at id. He got his start at Origin Systems as an illustrator for the Wing Commander series and had credits on other games such as Privateer and Strike Commander.

At id, he worked on Quake and Quake II. According to John Carmack, id's co-founder, in 2000 Steed was fired (over Carmack's objection) in retaliation for his insistence on working on what would become Doom 3, a project then opposed by two of the firm's co-owners. Steed also was notorious for releasing the "Crackwhore" player skin for Quake II, a model apparently intended as a tribute to a clan by that name but controversial for its name and appearance. Steed also was noteworthy for giving the keynote speech of Game Developers Conference 2008.

Jace Hall called Steed "a close friend" and "simply one of the first cutting edge low-poly 3D modelers to ever exist in the industry." The circumstances of Steed's passing are unknown. Steed is survived by his wife and children.

Goodbye Paul Steed [Wing Commander Combat Information Center]

Quake, Video Game Industry Legend Paul Steed has Passed Away [The Jace Hall Show]

Image via Wing Commander Combat Information Center

Jason Fader and his team were sitting in a bar, drinking. Commiserating.

Earlier that day they'd all been laid off from their jobs at Obsidian Entertainment, where they helped work on games like Fallout: New Vegas and an unannounced project called North Carolina. When North Carolina was axed, Obsidian had no choice but to let the team go. It was grim. Job opportunities were limited. Some of the team—particularly artists and designers—were worried they'd have trouble finding gigs.

Five months later, they've all got gigs—and an ambitious plan that promises to give us a new way to play video games.

"I wasn't planning on starting up a studio again," Fader told me. He's a longtime veteran of the industry. He's worked on games like World of Warcraft and helmed production on the DLC for New Vegas, Obsidian's excellent post-apocalyptic role-playing game.

"I was just going to call it quits at Obsidian, maybe go back to Blizzard or something," he said. "[But] everybody's kinda turning to me... they all looked to me, asked if I was gonna start up a studio."

So he did. He re-launched Iocaine Studios, the indie company he had started before Obsidian, and brought the majority of his team aboard. (Fader says he can't pay them yet, but he takes them out for pancakes every weekend.)

Now they've got big plans. They're simultaneously developing three games. One is a SimCity or Civilization-like town builder called Steam Bandits: Outpost. The second is sort of an action-RPG inspired by games like Privateer and League of Legends. The third is a flight simulator not unlike Crimson Skies.

Here's the catch: all three of these games will take place in the same persistent universe. You'll be able to interact with people who are playing the other two games. And you'll be able to team up to make your characters better.

"If my girlfriend loves town-building games, she can play Steam Bandits: Outpost on her iPad, build up a town and stuff," Fader said. "I'm playing the other game... one island I visit and trade with could be her island. I can link up with her and she's on my friends list. I can visit her island at will. I can link my captain up to her island as my port of call. Any time I go on a quest, she gets a reward as well since she's sponsoring me. And any time she produces stuff, that gives me a little boost."

There will also be quests that span multiple games, Fader says. "Let's say in my captain game I'm on a quest. I pick up a really weird item, a crafting recipe. Now there's no crafting in the captain game; it's RPG and combat focused. I can take this [recipe], hand it off to my girlfriend who's playing the town-building game. She can build it up. I can equip it on my airship... We're taking quests a layer above an individual game and spanning it across an actual game world."

Sounds neat, right? It also sounds ambitious. And like most ambitious game makers nowadays, Fader has started a Kickstarter for his project, asking gamers for $30,000 to help him release the first game of this three-pronged series by November. Right now they've raised around $10,000. They have 11 days to go.

(I asked Fader what he'll do if he can't meet his Kickstarter goal. He says he's been approached by publishers and angel investors, and that he'll figure out a way to fund this project either way. He's passionate about this. "No matter what, I will find a way to make this game," he said. "This game has to happen.")

They're avoiding Facebook. The first game will be released on Steam, iOS, and Android. The second game, just Steam. The third is slated for digital release on the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. All three games will cost nothing to play.

Diet Civ

Fader describes Steam Bandits: Outpost as "kind of like a diet version of Civilization." It's got shades of SimCity and Tropico too.

Here's the premise: You're working for a major company that controls all of the steam in the world. (In this lore, steam is a rare and precious resource.) They're investing in you to settle on an island, build it up, populate it, and turn a profit. To do this, you can construct different types of buildings: inns to hold people, for example, or taverns to get them drunk. Power generators to keep everything running.

You're also in charge of an army of captains that you can send out on various quests. Fader says they're inspired by companions in BioWare's online game Star Wars: The Old Republic. You can level up these captains, give them equipment, and boost up their stats and skills as they go from mission to mission doing things for you.

(Fader, laying out some not-so-subtle Firefly references, gives me an example named Captain Melvin (or Mel) Reynolds of the ship Tranquility. Who eventually gets himself a brown coat.)

As you keep playing, you'll be able to train captains, collect resources, and grind out large amounts of money. And you can eventually amass an entire empire of floating islands. All without paying a thing.

Free-To-Pay

Steam Bandits: Outpost is a casual game, but it's not a Facebook game. It will be free-to-play, but not exploitative. It will have microtransactions, but it won't keep you jailed until you spend money on them. And it definitely won't ask you to spam your friends with notifications.

"That is not playing together with a friend," Fader said. "That is just bugging the shit out of them... I'm calling us the anti-Facebook game company. That model just needs to die a horrible death."

So when Fader calls Steam Bandits: Outpost casual, what he means is that it can be played in short doses. He compares it to Puzzle Quest or even Torchlight, games you can enjoy during both quick and lengthy sessions. He has the lofty goal of making Outpost appeal to just about everyone. Especially those of us with long work hours and not as much time to play games as we used to have.

"I'm making this game for the hardcore player that does not have time to be hardcore anymore," Fader said. "The part-time hardcore player. I grew up playing games like Civilization and SimCity and Tropico and it pains me that I don't have time to put so many hours into them. I can't sit in front of my computer and just play."

The key to keeping it appealing, Fader says, is not limiting the amount of time that we can spend playing it. Steam Bandits: Outpost is free-to-play, a term that has been stigmatized by companies like Zynga that use "energy" systems to restrict your playtime. Fader can't stand it. He calls it "gaming paralysis."

"It's dumb. It's business-driven design," Fader said. "When these guys were designing their games, the first question was 'How can we get players addicted and then take away their addiction so we can get money from them?'"

Not that Fader and his team don't want to make money. But their microtransactions are more like League of Legends or Team Fortress 2. You'll be able to spend real money on outfits and accessories, not playtime.

"[Steam Bandits] is pay-to-style," Fader said. "Not pay-to-win or pay-to-continue-playing."

And if Fader has his way, Steam Bandits won't just be a set of good casual games. This will be a set of good casual games that changes what casual games bring to the table for people who like video games. These will be the type of games that wash out "the bad taste Facebook games are making on the gaming industry," Fader says.

It's passionate. It's ambitious. And maybe it won't work. But it'll be a fun experiment to watch.

Generations of gamers who have not only the arcade but also years of computer, Nintendo, and PlayStation games in their pasts are now, themselves, raising children. In a world of wall-to-wall screens and endless gaming options, it can be hard to find just the right game for game-loving parents and their inquisitive kids to enjoy together.

Over at Brainy Gamer, Michael Abbott describes the challenge of finding games that engage his four-year-old daughter, Zoe. Games designed for kids don't always do it. But Skyrim does.

"Kids quickly learn that parents save the best stuff for themselves," Abbott wisely observes. "Zoe is happy to while away twenty minutes with a Dora game, but she knows whatever I'm playing is likely to be a hundred times more interesting, and she wants a piece of that action." Enter Skyrim. While clearly some parts of the game are too violent or explicit to be kid-friendly, Abbott finds that with some planning and prep work on his part, Skyrim is perfect for his daughter to enjoy.

There are eight ways parents can help make Skyrim great family fun time, Abbott explains. Some are more obvious than others. For example, no matter what system the game is running on, a game pad will be easier for small, young, relatively uncoordinated hands to learn to use than the keyboard-and-mouse combination is. Likewise, establishing an ethical code of action in advance—such as "help people who ask for it"—can make the wide and murky waters of a game easier to navigate.

"Be a mage," Abbott also advises. "I prefer Zoe casting spells to wielding swords and axes. It feels less ‘realistic' to me and more suitable for a child." And of course, parents should review the game, or sections of the game, before sharing them with a child, to make sure the content in question stays appropriate.

But Abbott's best advice is all about letting kids explore and learn from games the same way their parents do. Creative problem solving can be the best part of Skyrim:

Let your child discover there can be more than one way to solve a problem. I spared Zoe the Fellglow Keep gore, but let her face The Caller boss at the end of the quest for a reason. We were given the choice of fighting her or negotiating with her, but we found a third option we liked better. We cast an Invisibility spell, grabbed the stolen books, picked her pocket for the exit key, and escaped the dungeon. "We were smarter than her, Daddy!" You bet we were.

Thanks to the time she's spent in Skyrim (and with her brainy gaming dad), four-year-old Zoe can now read maps and count currency. And she's young enough not to care about things that may not matter: " Just remember that a small child thinks less about leveling up or RPG mechanics," Abbott cautions, "and more about having fun, moment to moment, in an imaginary world."

Sounds good to me. Maybe we really should try seeing games through the eyes of a child more often.

Skyrim for Small Fry [The Brainy Gamer]

Wondering when you can get Skyrim's downloadable content Dawnguard for your PlayStation 3 or PC? So is Bethesda.

"We have not announced Dawnguard for any other platform, nor given a timeline for any such news. If we have news, I promise I'd tell you," Bethesda vice president of marketing Pete Hines wrote on Twitter yesterday.

But in May, Bethesda told me that the Xbox 360 would have a 30-day exclusive on the DLC. Dawnguard was first released on June 26. Today is July 27.

I've reached out to Bethesda to ask why the Xbox's exclusivity period has exceeded 30 days. I'll update if they respond.

Thanks to a Daily Deal over at the Steam Summer Sale, popular role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is $30 for the next half-day. You can also get a ton of Bethesda games for only $50. [Steam]

There's nothing quite like a bard in a tavern, strumming his medieval proto-guitar of choice (here a mandolin, there a lute, sometimes a harp) and humming dulcet tones.

Then there's this bard. He's a little more 21st century than those other minstrels and troubadours. As he says: "You see, I bear some rare amazing information / and you look like someone who's used to strange situations." Because he's the rapping bard. And his Skyrim-wide rhymes are funnier than they have any business being.