Get a load of these posters. They're game posters done up to look like movie posters, but not the boring kind, the kind you see for a quaint little art house cinema that only shows a movie once.

So they're not cold, stark images. They're a little kooky, a little old-fashioned, full of quirks and detail and colour. And there's not an airbrushed actor or "SUMMER 2011" in sight.

They're by Ron Guyatt.

Freelance artist and game designer Anjin Anhut shares some thoughts (and neat comparison charts) on what size means for video game's creatures great and small .

Feeling And Understanding

While "make it big" seems to be the obvious approach, there is more to consider and to achieve by structuring the sizes of protagonists, enemies, items and environmental elements in a clever way. The basic conventional concept of size representing power can be an awesome tool to help players instinctively understand a game situation and also trigger the desired emotional reaction. Let's check out some ways how this is achieved.

The conventional idea of bigger=stronger is not manmade, it is based in nature. A common defense mechanism for many animals is to appear bigger. Some four-legged animals stand up and birds spread their feathers to provide a bigger silhouette and hopefully appear to be too dangerous to attack for their opponents and predators. Also large horns, antlers, tusks, manes or overall physique often help establish the status of the dominate male in herds, packs and animal families.

Man comes into play when tackling the idea from the physics side and cultural side. From a physics perspective, it is roughly understandable that large objects easily move small objects, but not vice versa. You know, like your body can easily be crushed by a tank. But the tank can't be crushed by your body. (I would like to see the Myth Busters disprove that one.) Anyway, culturally the analogy of size and strength is commonly used in narration and language. For example: "Why don't you pick on someone your own size?", which basically means "why don't you pick on someone as strong as yourself?".

Stacking Doll Food Chain

To start with the simplest and clearest form of the idea, let's have a look at stacking dolls. Using the engulfing/swallowing as representation for all sorts of dominance, it helps to illustrate a simple concept. Whatever is bigger than me, is superior in strength, power to me. Everything smaller is inferior in those regards. One could also extract that idea from the principle of food chains, where it is usually the bigger animal eating the smaller one. But there are so many exceptions to the principle there, that I rather came up with the very consistent stacking dolls analogy.

The stacking doll model takes nothing into account, except size itself. No weapons, no superpowers or other factors. Some factors, we will explore later.

Organize By Size

The stacking doll analogy can be applied in various forms to various games. Structuring entities by size to help the player instinctively understand strength relations is quite effective and already used well. In professional chess several conventions assign relative values to the pieces regarding their offensive qualities on the board. This represents the strength of the pieces in the imaginary combat situation depicted in a round of chess. Various sources assign values like this: pawn=1/knight=3/bishop=3/rook=5/queen=9 (king not included, since he is not mend to join the battle). This hierarchy is roughly represented by the size relations of traditional chess pieces.

In Gears of War 1+2 it becomes also quite obvious that relative size is used to hint at relative offensive power or level of threat. While most enemy creatures actual offensive power is determined by the weapon they are carrying, the physical appearance of the enemy is always matched. Except boss-like enemies, unarmed creatures are smaller than the Gears (human soldiers). Enemies with equal weapons to the Gears (sniper rifles, shotguns, assault rifles) are human-sized. Slightly more powerful weapons and special abilities (Torque-Bow, summoning Tickers) are used by enemies either slightly bigger than Gears (Kantors) or by enemies with the same size, that wear big hats to appear bigger (Theron Guards). The really heavy weapons are held by so called Boomers, which are big in size and have a massive physical appearance.

Please note that the difference in size of all those enemy creatures is not a logical consequence of the weight or usability of the weapons they are handling. Making the physique and weapon power of the Locusts match in size is just a visual cue for the player. Gears can pick up and use all of the weapons described above and do not need to vary in size to do so.

Huge Threat

So, keeping the stacking dolls in mind, let's have a look at how the player characters from Bioshock 1 and 2 are ranking amongst the other characters and creatures from the respective games. Please note, that the mannequin is just a stand-in for the faceless protagonist from Bioshock 1. We can clearly see, that in both line-ups, the Little Sisters are way smaller than the player characters, which perfectly suits the concept of them being at the player's mercy. Also in Bioshock 1 the enemy creatures are either the same size or noticeably bigger than the player character, successfully providing a sense of threat.

In Bioshock 2, the player is the biggest stacking doll, with maybe only the Brute Splicer or other Big Daddies equal in size. This made me feel very safe and comfortable while fighting the regular Splicers. Even the Big Sister was very spooky but did not appear to be equally matched with my powers. If we just take the stacking doll principle into account, the player in Bioshock 2 had very little to actually fear, while in Bioshock 1 he was under the constant threat of being swallowed by bigger matryoshkas.

Maybe this issue is more tricky, than some game developers treat it.

Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Bee

There is something weird happening, when the difference in size passes a certain threshold. The payoff is satisfying. Taking down a titan as big as a house is quite an accomplishment. But the fight itself can feel less physically tense and dangerous, than fighting enemies, closer to the protagonist's height. Simply put, when the enemy is too big, he can become less frightening and the player character suddenly becomes the palpable threat.

I think, this impression is caused by several factors. One is the depiction of physical pain. Instant death is always looming, but normally there is little pain involved for the player. When the protagonists looses against the giant, he is getting completely crushed, swallowed whole or ripped to shreds. Total instant destruction. The giant enemy, whenever critically hit, gets hurt pretty bad and it takes multiple painfully articulated hits to finally end him. The protagonist mutilates hands, rips out eyes, cuts of tounges and the giant enemy creature dies a slow painful death.

Then there is giant enemies becoming so big, that they are treated as part of the environment. Fighting giants often feels like and is structured like a sequence of avoiding environmental hazards. All strategic elements of armed and hand-to-hand combat gameplay usually don't apply to taking down titans. There is no blocking, no quick kills, no juggling, no counter attacks, no splatting head shots. Climbing on titan creatures or crawling around in their innards, circling them on horseback and systematically damaging their weak spots often is more akin to toppling a tower, derailing a train or wrecking a building than to fighting.

Lastly, to return to the narrative perspective, the giant enemy creatures are often engaged by the protagonist in games. The giants are either hunted or are placed as bosses of their own realm. The player character usually moves thru an area to reach the giant, not the other way around. This also enhances the feeling of the insect-sized protagonist being the offensive force.

Supersized

Size can also be used as a multiplier for emotional effects. In horror literature and films supersizing things and creatures has a long tradition. Think of King Kong, Tarantula, the US version of Godzilla, Attack Of The 50ft Woman. But the multiplier also works on a smaller scale. We do not need the sense of being physically overpowered here. Know somebody who shudders at the sight of spiders? Have ever seen a camel spider or seen what it's bite can do? Use supersizing to multiply the dread and fear small terrors give us.

On the other hand, making things supersized can also result in big comedic effects, when funny and harmless things get blown out of proportion.

Size Matters

Now let's have a look at dead things. Props, weapons, armor, tools. I already mentioned large horns, antlers and so forth visually establishing the status of being strong. This can be directly translated into the size of manmade tools and weapons. Where it gets interesting, when you consider weapons and tools as extensions of your body. This concept is already extensively explored by various writers (for example Steve Swink – Game Feel or Scott McCloud – Understanding Comics) and especially powerful in video games, where the tools we pick up in a game actually allow us to interact. The power of the weapon or tool is projected onto the character by making the weapon or tool an extension of the characters physique.

This concept allows us to give great physical strength to a skinny boy, have a baby be a heavy force in hand-to-hand combat or apply the destructive power of a tank to a single person.

Conclusion

I know my observations are incomplete and subject to discussion and there is so much more to explore. There is a lot of depth to the ways size and size relations can work for gameplay, narration or emotionally. And I always enjoy, when I recognize game developers tackled this issue with consideration and concept.

You can read more of Anhut's stuff (including this piece) over on his personal website, How Not To Suck At Game Design.

In a remote Horde outpost in the Stonetalon Mountains of the newly-restructured World of Warcraft, a young Blood Elf girl named Clarissa begs passers-by to help bring her pal Mr. D back to life. Sound familiar?

Players that participated in the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm beta and those players that have ventured into the Stonetalon Mountains since last week's world-shattering patch might have already run into Clarissa and her friend, a sizable Goblin mech called Large Daddy. There's also an Alliance version of the quest line that starts with a young girl named Alice, but no one plays Alliance so that hardly matters.

Kotaku reader Travis pointed us in their direction, so I dusted off an old level 24 shaman alt of mine and did a little exploring, nearly getting killed in the process.

The quest wasn't open to me, which is probably for the best, considering my shaman had a respec waiting and hadn't repurchased any skills. In layman's terms, I was pretty gimped.

Interested in finding them for yourself? Just check out the quest Dream of a Better Tomorrow, or Just Ask Alice if you're Alliance and have somehow figured out how to read. You'll score Mr. Bubble's Shockingly Delicious Ice Cream for your trouble, and learn a little something about friendship in the process.

PlayStation 3 owners may still feel the sting of the original BioShock being an Xbox 360 "exclusive," then eventually getting a port of the game from another developer a year later. Don't expect similar treatment for BioShock Infinite.

Irrational Games' technical director Chris Kline took to the developer's forums this week to address concerns that PS3 owners might get less than first-class treatment for Infinite, explaining the team's approach.

"We're serious about making sure the PS3 version is great," Kline writes, noting that Irrational is "doing simultaneous in-house development on the PS3, 360, and PC versions of the game," which is expected in 2012.

"So instead of declaring a 'lead platform' and porting the game to the others, we've instead changed the game engine so that all platforms look (to a programmer) more like a PS3," Kline explains, touching on the unique architecture of Sony's home console. "Writing code this way is more difficult for us, but has a key advantage: it's both optimal for the PS3 *and* gives speed improvements on other platforms."

So, yeah, win-win.

For much more technical nitty-gritty from Kline, make sure to read the full post at the Irrational Games forums.

Please tell me your new game will be on PS3 [Irrational]

Looks like someone at 2K Games had a little leftover resurrection potion from whatever they used on Duke Nukem Forever because the formerly dead downloadable content for BioShock 2 on PC is alive. It's coming. Viva PC Gaming Week!

Over on the 2K forums, 2K Elizabeth spreads the news that BioShock 2's PC patch as well as the Protector Trials and Minvera's Den downloadable expansions — both of which are out for the console versions of the game — are back in development.

The patch and Protector Trials had been scuttled because they were too buggy when 2K's deadline for them hit. Minerva's Den (which we liked a lot on console) just wasn't done. Following a rash of fan feedback and an unexplained change in resources or priorities, 2K Elizabeth says work on all of that is being resumed.

2K estimates the patch and Protector Trials will be out in December and will offer them for free. Minerva's Den's schedule is more murky, though 2K Elizabeth says the team is committed to finishing it and releasing it.

Update: Protector Trials, Minerva's Den, and final patch coming to a PC near you [2K Games Forums]

Exactly a year after rolling out Windows 7 with much fanfare, Microsoft seems to be finally remembering the gamers who help make their platform so popular.

The Oct. 22, 2009 launch of Windows 7 happened with almost no reference to gaming, or the people who use the system so prevalently to game.

It was a massive shift in tone from 2006, when then Microsoft Vice President Peter Moore apologized for what he called a dereliction of duty to the company's number one gaming platform: The PC.

While Vista's 2006 launch was touted as a renaissance for Windows gaming, three years later Microsoft seemed to have once more forgotten about their other gaming platform.

Last week, though, the company unveiled their plans for a bigger, better online store for selling computer games digitally. Peter Orullian, group product manager for Windows PC and Mobile, told Kotaku that the idea is to "bring some of the rigor thought and success we've had on console to bare in the PC space."

"PC games," he said. "is a place where we are doubling down."

For now "doubling down" on PC gaming means relaunching their web-based Games for Windows Marketplace next month with about 100 titles for sale.

While it's nice to see Microsoft paying attention again to the PC as a gaming platform, I asked Orullian why Microsoft is spending time fixing a program that already has several very successful third-party solutions. Why reinvent the wheel, I asked, mentioning Valve's tremendously popular Steam service which currently has more than 1,200 games for sale.

"We have a different vision that runs parallel to what (Steam) is doing," Orullian said.

This is just the start of Microsoft's latest PC gaming push, he said. As the company builds up their store, they will also be tapping into the massive community they've built with the Xbox 360.

Could that mean that gamers will see a second attempt at cross-platform gaming between the PC and the Xbox 360?

"We have a healthy list of features we're going to start bringing out once the store launches," Orullian said.

One obvious place where Microsoft's new Games For Windows store may have the upper hand on Steam is how it handles digital rights management.

Where Steam uses a single proprietary system, Games for Windows will have a much more flexible approach.

The Marketplace will work with nearly all forms of digital rights management, Microsoft told Kotaku. Instead it will allow publishers to submit a pre-protected or unprotected build of their game with their choice of DRM. Microsoft will then distribute the builds on the Marketplace along with the appropriate activation keys.

While Microsoft's renewed interest in Windows gaming is surely tied to the chance to create a foothold in the digital game sales space, this year's tremendous line-up of computer games also probably helped.

Over the past ten months we've seen the release of a new StarCraft, a new Civilization, a new Total War and computer versions of massive hits like Mass Effect 2, BioShock 2 and Dragon Age: Origins.

With only two months of the year left, we can also look forward to the coming of the Cataclysm expansion to massively popular, massively multiplayer game World of Warcraft.

Despite the popularity of Playstation 3s, Xbox 360s, Wiis and iPhones, computer gaming isn't just still around, it's making a resurgence.

Well Played is an internationally syndicated weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

We're getting a little tired of Minecraft's arts-and-craft shows. Yes, you made Mega Man, well done. But there's always room for applause when people recreate BioShock's Rapture in its entirety, complete with whales.

Actually, even that sells the whole thing short, because the creators - members of Penny Arcade's forums - have even recreated the introductory sequence from the game, and populated the world with characters from Irrational's underwater epic.

Does the game industry have a Hollywood complex? BioShock designer Ken Levine seems to think so.

"I think there's a sense in the entertainment fields that video games are seen as the junior varsity," Levine tells Develop. "There's this feeling of 'oh one day you can come up to our league'."

Back in the late 1980s, Ken Levine hoped to break into the film industry as a screenwriter, but fell short. He instead went on to make video games and shook things up with his groundbreaking title BioShock.

Levine points out that the game's industry doors are wide-open to film directors. "Guillermo del Toro — who by the way is an amazing film director — recently signed a deal with THQ to make video games," says Levine. "And I'm thinking... he's never made a video game."

The game designer does concede that perhaps the film director could have a "genius" for making games. "But games are really, really hard to make well," he adds. "In our industry there's too many people star-struck of the movie world, jumping into deals with some big movie director just because they're big film directors."

Filmmakers are no stranger to video games. Levine says he was even offered the chance to make a game with a big movie director, but turned the project down.

"What's the point of having two creative leads together, and why would I want a film director to help me make a game, any more than they would want me to help out with their films?"

They wouldn't, which makes it odd that they "help out" on games. If they create, design or whatever, then that's a different story all together. And the skill sets, while different, do not have to be mutually exclusive.

We're too star-struck by Hollywood, says Levine [Develop] [Pic]

The crafty Michele Legendre, whose work you've seen before, has been a busy bee in the months since, coming up with fantastic video game felt toys like this Andrew Ryan, from 2K's BioShock.

For a whackjob megalomaniac, he's looking downirght adorable, right down to his cute little golf club. He's a commission piece, so this one's not for sale, but hey, since it's a commission piece you could always ask for your own. Or your own Silencer. Or Leisure Suit Larry. Or whatever!

misscoffee [DeviantArt]

sirleechalot wanted to build himself a new PC, one with a BioShock twist, so he did just that. The twist being almost the entire thing is submerged in liquid.

While it looks like water, it's in fact mineral oil, which many endorse for its cooling benefits, but which sirleechalot just wanted to use because it "looked really nice". No arguments here.

Only the HDD is left out of the oil, the rest dunked under the surface and guarded by a Big Daddy.

Bioshock Mineral Oil Media Center Case [Reddit]