Valve's Chet Faliszek and Eric Wolpaw conducted a Portal 2 postmortem at GDC last night. The writers talked candidly about alternate endings and the difficulties of following up on their critically acclaimed first game. Chet also mentioned that, at some point in development, the team experimented with competitive Portal 2 multiplayer modes.

Chet also mentioned that they sucked. "We also tried a competitive multiplayer mode which we put together over the space of a month or two," he revealed. "It was a mix of the old Amiga game Speedball and Portal, except with none of the good parts of either of those two. The game was super chaotic and no fun, so the only good news about this part was that we cut it pretty quickly."

Speedball 2 was a competitive, violent, and featured an incredible soundtrack, and I love the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device as much as the next man. That said, I can imagine this combo resulting in a confusing mess of nonsense. Valve made attempts to satisfy more competitive gamers by including leaderboards and a challenge mode in some later DLC.

As a part of Rift's anniversary celebrations, Trion Worlds is re-activating the accounts of all past subscribers today. If you've ever subscribed to this fantasy MMO that's fueled by dynamic content, you can play all of your characters for free until March 14—no restrictions, no questions asked.

Download the game client, and be sure to check out the Carnival of the Ascended—the once-a-year in-game event stuffed with silly minigames and exclusive rewards. For those of you that have never played Rift, you can still take advantage of their Rift Lite program that allows you to play forever up to level 20.

Oh, and if you feel like making a big commitment, find someone special and get married.

Last night the 12th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards took place in San Francisco. The awards ceremony celebrates the "creativity, artistry and technical genius of the finest developers and games." It was hosted by Epic’s Cliff Bleszinski.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim brought home the bacon with Game of the Year, but Portal 2 brought home three different types of bacon: Game Design, Best Audio and Best Narrative. Fledgling developers Super Giant took recieved two awards for the innovative Bastion: Best Debut and Best Downloadable Game. Battlefield 3 took Best Technology, but not best Visual Arts which was awarded to PS3’s Uncharted 3. Boo!

The 14th Annual Independent Games Festival Awards happened before the show. They’re about encouraging innovation and recognisng the best indie devs about. Our Tom was nominated for his excellently designed indie, Gunpoint. He was pipped to the post by one of his favourite game designers, Derek Yu, though so I doubt he’s that upset. Fez took the coveted Seumas McNally Grand Prize.

Click through for the list of nominees and winners. Congratulations to everyone involved!

The winners appear in bold. Here are all the results from the Game Developer’s Choice Awards.



Game of the Year
Batman: Arkham City (Rocksteady Studios)
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Game Studios)
Portal 2 (Valve)
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Eidos Montreal)
Dark Souls (FromSoftware)
Best Game Design
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Game Studios)
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Nintendo)
Portal 2 (Valve)
Batman: Arkham City (Rocksteady Studios)
Dark Souls (FromSoftware)
Innovation
Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure (Toys For Bob)
Portal 2 (Valve)
Bastion (Supergiant Games)
Johann Sebastian Joust (Die Gute Fabrik)
L.A. Noire (Team Bondi)
Best Technology
Battlefield 3 (DICE)
L.A. Noire (Team Bondi)
Crysis 2 (Crytek Frankfurt/UK)
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Game Studios)
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (Naughty Dog)
Best Handheld/Mobile Game
Tiny Tower (NimbleBit)
Super Mario 3D Land (Nintendo)
Jetpack Joyride (Halfbrick)
Infinity Blade II (Chair Entertainment)
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (Capy Games/Superbrothers)
Best Audio
Bastion (Supergiant Games)
LittleBigPlanet 2 (Media Molecule)
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Game Studios)
Dead Space 2 (Visceral Games)
Portal 2 (Valve)
Best Downloadable Game
Stacking (Double Fine)
From Dust (Ubisoft Montpellier)
Bastion (Supergiant Games)
Outland (Housemarque)
Frozen Synapse (Mode 7)
est Narrative
Portal 2 (Valve)
The Witcher 2 (CD Projekt RED)
Bastion (Supergiant Games)
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (Naughty Dog)
Saints Row: The Third (Volition)
Best Debut
Supergiant Games (Bastion)
Team Bondi (L.A. Noire)
Re-Logic (Terraria)
BioWare Austin (Star Wars: The Old Republic)
Eidos Montreal (Deus Ex: Human Revolution)
Best Visual Arts
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (Naughty Dog)
Rayman Origins (Ubisoft Montpellier)
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Game Studios)
El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron (Ignition Japan)
Battlefield 3 (DICE)
Pioneer Award
Dave Theurer, creator of Missile Command, Tempest, and I, Robot
Ambassador Award
Ken Doroshow and Paul M. Smith, game industry lawyers for the Supreme Court case against California
Lifetime Achievement Award
Warren Spector, founder Junction Point Studios



And here are the results of the Independent Games Festival awards. Gratz on getting nominated Tom!
Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Dear Esther (thechineseroom)
Fez (Polytron)
Frozen Synapse (Mode 7 Games)
Johann Sebastian Joust (Die Gute Fabrik)
Spelunky (Mossmouth)
Technical Excellence
Antichamber (Demruth)
Fez (Polytron)
Prom Week (Expressive Intelligence Studio, UC Santa Cruz)
Realm of the Mad God (Wild Shadow Studios & Spry Fox)
Spelunky (Mossmouth)
Excellence in Visual Art
Botanicula (Amanita Design)
Dear Esther (thechineseroom)
Lume (State of Play Games)
Mirage (Mario von Rickenbach)
Wonderputt (Damp Gnat)
Excellence in Design
Atom Zombie Smasher (Blendo Games)
English Country Tune (Stephen Lavelle)
Frozen Synapse (Mode 7 Games)
Gunpoint (Tom Francis, John Roberts, and Fabian van Dommelen)
Spelunky (Mossmouth)
Excellence in Audio
Botanicula (Amanita Design)
Dear Esther (thechineseroom)
Pugs Luv Beats (Lucky Frame)
To The Moon (Freebird Games)
Waking Mars (Tiger Style)
Best Mobile Game
ASYNC Corp (Powerhead Games)
Beat Sneak Bandit (Simogo)
Faraway (Steph Thirion)
Ridiculous Fishing (Vlambeer)
Waking Mars (Tiger Style)
Nuovo Award
(Designed "to honor abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development.")
At a Distance (Terry Cavanagh)
Dear Esther (thechineseroom)
Fingle (Game Oven Studios)
GIRP (Bennett Foddy)
Proteus (Ed Key and David Kanaga)
Johann Sebastian Joust (Die Gute Fabrik)
Storyteller (Daniel Benmergui)
Way (CoCo & Co.)
Best Student Game
The Bridge (Case Western Reserve University)
Dust (Art Institute of Phoenix)
The Floor Is Jelly (Kansas City Art Institute)
Nous (DigiPen Institute of Technology)
One and One Story (Liceo Scientifico G.B. Morgagni)
Pixi (DigiPen Institute of Technology - Singapore)
The Snowfield (Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab)
Way (Carnegie Mellon University)
Audience Award
Frozen Synapse (Mode 7 Games)
XBLA Award
Super Time Force (Capybara Games)

We've just received the first screenshots for MechWarrior Online. Click within to check out more Atlases and Hunchbacks. I'll be seeing the game later today at GDC here in San Francisco, and should have a preview to share sometime tomorrow.

Really like that cockpit HUD, I've gotta say.

Warface closed beta sign ups are now live! If you're interested a chance to check out Crytek's upcoming, CryEngine powered, free-to-play shooter with the silly name then you can head over to Warface.com now and enter your details into the empty fields on the right. You'll also be able to sign up for a "Gface" username, but you'll have to be quick if you want to take "W4rF4ceIsAS1llyN4m3" before anyone else does. In fact, I'm on my way in to do just that. Let's race.

Perhaps you're having a hectic day, perhaps you caught a glimpse of Gabe Newell peering suggestively over his cash fan and now your heart's all a-flutter. Sit back and enjoy this calming slice of footage Under the Ocean from RPS. It's a gorgeous remake of the free survival/exploration game, Under The Garden in which your blue chap must strike out into the surrounding wilderness to find food and shelter.

Under the Ocean's simplicity is part of its charm, but the way its objects interact is so sensible that the logical solutions that emerge feel almost ingenious. It's the antithesis of your typical overly complex, contrived adventure game puzzle. It's refreshing, and wonderfully serene.

Under the Ocean is still in an early stage of development, but you can follow its progress on the Under The Garden site, where you can pre-order now and help the two-man team bring Under the Ocean into the open.

Building Star Wars: The Old Republic was hard. That was the message from a startling and searingly honest talk given by director of production, Dallas Dickinson and Bioware executive producer Richard Vogel during this year’s GDC. In an hour long session, the pair took us through the production and lessons from a long and gruelling development process that saw Bioware Austin hire huge numbers of developers, outsource much of their art, completely rebuild how their team was integrated, and eventually make strict cuts to game features in a triage process known internally as “The Death Star”.

Richard and Dallas began with the high level goals of The Old Republic: to reach 1,000,000 subscribers, and to innovate carefully, by introducing Bioware’s expertise in storytelling to MMORPGs. Richard explained that they weren’t intending to revolutionise MMOs, just make them better in key areas. “If you offer nothing different, you fail. But we are an MMORPG. We have to have the core MMORPG feel. Our players have to feel familiar as soon as they start.”

To build the game, the team hired in stages; first building a structure they thought that would work, before laying on staff. At peak, the team size was staggering: 280 QA staff. 140 artists split evenly between internal and outsourced staff. 80 engineers and programmers, 75 designers, 40 platform engineers and 30 producers to manage the team’s workload and organise.



How do you manage such numbers? As Dallas put it: “ Very badly at first. We grew quickly and we had the growing pains to match.”

The problem was integration - developers were working within hubs; programmers sat with programmers, artists with artists. It meant that features and content just weren’t getting done. Eventually the decision was made to reorganise developers into strike teams, each responsible for a specific feature or piece of content. All the staff were given rolling desks and then placed with their peers in different departments to work on a ‘deliverable’. Every seven weeks, the teams would assess how far they’d come, and reconfigure.

To grow, the TOR team were hiring relentlessly. Dallas explained that they would travel to game development schools around the US and offer the top ten percent of each graduating class a year long contract to work in Austin. After a year, the very best would then be offered a permanent position. About half of the art was outsourced to different outsourcing studios - causing serious management issues. Eventually, the team took to putting pictures of every outsourced artist on the wall, “and awarding them gold, silver, bronze or ‘fire’, stars. They didn’t know about that at the time,” revealed Richard.



During the last six months of development, the team began a difficult triage process; where features that weren’t going to make it for launch were cut. All development heads were summoned to daily meetings at what Dallas dubbed ‘The Death Star’ - with each team being coached on what to cut, and what to keep. “Some developers cried,” explained Dallas. “I didn’t enjoy that.”

It was a staggering insight into the development of what will surely be the last big subscription MMO. Remind me never to work on an MMO.

To the soldier who stabs a man in the face three times in this trailer. Just STOP you maniac! He's ALREADY DEAD. The War of the Roses was a brutal scrap for the throne in 15th century England which, in spite of its name, wasn't the least bit romantic. The Tudors stabbed their enemies so hard that they went on to rule for more than a hundred years after its conclusion, which makes it a good setting for some violent multiplayer battles.

War of the Roses will have 60 different weapons and a levelling system which can be used to research new forms of stabbing and there will be "team-based tactical challenges as well as deathmatches for soloists." More importantly, it will let you dress up as a knight and shout noble battle cries into your monitor before storming into melee and mashing men into pulp with an enormous hunk of metal. For the King! It's out in Autumn.

One of my favourite things about the Mass Effect games, particularly the third, is the gorgeous sci-fi vista of a new alien world as you swoop in to land. I screenshotted my favourites as I played through for our review, and I'll embed them here for your approval. Click through to the 1920x1080 versions for a nice wallpaper. No plot spoilers - there's one location you'll recognise, but I don't think it'll surprise anyone that you go back there.













And here's the big version of the headline shot. If you take any while you play, link us to 'em in the comments. imgur is probably the simplest way to upload.

"Talents should be meaningful game-changers" says WoW's lead systems designer, Greg Street. He's been dissecting the successes and failures of Cataclysm in a frank post mortem on Battle.Net. Talent trees are one of the thorniest problems the World of Warcraft team has had to deal with over the last few years, but Street insists that the major overhaul Blizzard are planning for WoW's talent trees will fix the problems players have been having with the system "once and for all."

Cataclysm made important changes, bringing in a class specialisation choice at level 10 and pruning passive skills that players felt they had to take to maintain the most efficient character build. While Street says that the addition of a level 10 spec choice was "as close to universally acclaimed by players as anything we’ve ever done," he admits that there are still big problems with the current system that Blizzard are determined to resolve in the next expansion.

"We weren’t very happy with the rest of the talent tree overhaul," Street said. "We definitely pruned some dead wood from the trees and got rid of some talents that weren’t a lot of fun, but players felt like they weren’t getting anything out of the bargain." The problem, he went on to explain, is that the changes to the talent trees were a compromise that "didn't solve the original problems it was intended to solve."

WoW's designers had come to realise that the entire original design idea for the talent system was flawed. "The talent tree model where you pick up tiny performance increases here and there (and where there’s, mathematically, nearly always a ‘right’ answer and a ‘wrong’ answer) is not a great model," he said. "The Mists talent design is a major revamp that should fix this problem once and for all."

At Blizzcon last year, Blizzard revealed their plans for the new structure. Once it's implemented players will get to pick one of three talents every 15 levels, which can then be swapped around at any time. Blizzard are hoping that this will make for more meaningful build choices and less cookie-cutter class building. "The fact that you’ll have more flexibility to change your talents should help keep gameplay fresh, even with that character that you play most often," says Street. "At absolute worst a given talent may be the right one only situationally, and at best, players will have a lot more customization to make their play-style stand out."

Mists of Pandaria was revealed at Blizzcon last year. It'll add a new race of Pandas, a new continent and "Talents 2.0." Find out more in our Mists of Pandaria preview. If you're considering getting back into WoW, or want to encourage a friend to join your questing, check out the revamped Scrolls of Ressurection, which will give a returning player the opportunity to instantly level one of their characters to 80.