Codemasters has seen fit to develop a second Grid game. The first, released in 2008, was pretty damn great, as you'd expect given the fact many of the team from the respected TOCA series had worked on it.

The sequel, Grid 2, will be out in 2013.

The last few years have been rough for British game developer and publisher Codemasters. Despite a lengthy and varied history going back to the 1980s, their more recent games have seen mixed success.

Last year, after their first-person shooter Bodycount launched to decidedly mixed reviews, and admist accusations of unlawful working conditions, Codemasters shut down the studio that made the game.

However, the developer has remained successful on the racing game scene, with its DiRT and Formula 1 series staying popular with genre fans. At a press event, the studio announced that going forward, they will publish all of their racing games under the label Codemasters Racing, and cease work on action games, shooters, or any other genre.

Communications director Rich Eddy described racing as the "absolute razor focus" for the studio, and confirmed to Gamasutra that, "The focus is an exclusive one, there are no other genre properties in development at this time; racing is everything."

In addition to narrowing their scope, Codemasters intends to rally the racing game fan community with a social hub called RaceNet, designed to link players of all Codemasters racing games with each other across all platforms. Registration for RaceNet is scheduled to open May 1, and the service is planned to launch with DiRT Showdown on May 25.

The New Face of Codemasters [IGN]

Codemasters turns focus purely to racing games, launches social hub [Gamasutra]

Since we ran a feature on Duncan Harris, the groovy "video game photographer" behind the website DeadEndThrills, I've been sharing some of his work each week here.

This week Harris was really on fire—a whole grab-bag of games, with some spectacular shots from Zeno Clash, Fuel Total War: Shogun 2s. Let's dig in.

First up, up top we have:

"The Far Side"

Hot damn, that is an awesome shot of the desert in Fuel. Wow.

Tools and tricks: 2160p rendering (windowed), antialiasing (4xMSAA, 2x transparency supersampling, injected FXAA w/ texture presharpening), restored developer menus, vignette effect disabled, no-HUD, free camera.

"An Unexpected Journey"

Another great wide-angle shot from Fuel. This game really does deserve the benefit of a good cameraman.

Tools and tricks: 2160p rendering (windowed), antialiasing (4xMSAA, 2x transparency supersampling, injected FXAA w/ texture presharpening), restored developer menus, vignette effect disabled, no-HUD, free camera.

"It Follows"

Yeah, it follows that we'd get at least one more great Bioshock shot after last week. Don't look so glad to see me, Little Sister.

Tools and tricks: antialiasing (FXAA), Post Process Injection DLL w/ pre-sharpening for texture and post-sharpening for image, high-performance ambient occlusion, 2160p rendering, no-HUD, custom FOV, noclip, timestop.

"The Friendly Ghost"

A great shot from Zeno Clash, a game I know unfortunately little about.

Tools and tricks: no-HUD, viewmodel removed, Valve demo recorder, custom FOV, 2160p rendering, antialiasing (8x MSAA + 2x transparency supersampling).

"His Honour"

The first of several epic shots from Total War: Shogun 2.

Tools and tricks: unrestricted camera, 2160p rendering, antialiasing (injected ‘ultra-quality' SMAA), HUD removed in Photoshop.

"Beached"

Another shot from Zeno Clash that actually reminds me of a level I just played in Resident Evil: Revelations.

Tools and tricks: no-HUD, viewmodel removed, Valve demo recorder, custom FOV, 2160p rendering, antialiasing (8x MSAA + 2x transparency supersampling).

"Red Arrows"

Another kickass shot from Total War: Shogun 2. As Harris puts it, "RTS rendering has reached a point where zooming out to anything remotely playable feels like a retreat."

Tools and tricks: unrestricted camera, 2160p rendering, antialiasing (injected ‘ultra-quality' SMAA), HUD removed in Photoshop.

"Firefall"

Here come death, in Total War: Shogun 2.

Tools and tricks: unrestricted camera, 2160p rendering, antialiasing (injected ‘ultra-quality' SMAA), HUD removed in Photoshop.

"Lone Star"

A nice-looking one-off shot from Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2010.

Tools and tricks: 2160p rendering, antialiasing (4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA), Racer_S camera and HUD hack, in-game Photo Mode.

I'm going to tell you a secret. My favourite racing series of this generation has been neither Gran Turismo nor Forza. It's been Codemaster's Dirt series. A new game in the franchise should be cause for joy, then, but, well. Hrm.

The next game isn't Dirt 4. It is, as GameSpot describes it, "an arcade-style spin-off that takes the extreme-sports elements of Dirt 2, mixes in the Gymkhana events from Dirt 3, and then throws in some Destruction Derby action for good measure."

Handling has been changed to make the thing feel more arcade-like, there's online multiplayer but also two-player splitscreen as well.

So it's Dirt, but it's not Dirt.

That's all the information we have, aside from the fact it's available on PC, PS3 and 360 in May. Presumably as a downloadable title, given the timeframe.

Dirt Showdown [GameSpot]

Do violent video games cause aggressive behavior? According to a recent report published in the journal Psychology of Violence, the competitive aspect of gaming is more likely to generate aggro than mere violence. All this from a bunch of university students, some video games, and some hot sauce. Science is an amazing thing.

In the report The Effect of Video Game Competition and Violence on Aggressive Behavior: Which Characteristic Has the Greatest Influence?, researchers at Brock University in Canada mix a proven method for determining aggression — Lieberman's Hot Sauce Paradigm — with a different way to characterize violent and non-violent games. Rather than simply measuring the amount of violence, Paul J. C. Adachi and Teena Willoughby further separated games by the level of competition.

Here's how it worked. A series of students were told they were participating in two different studies, one to study eye tracking while playing video games, the other a food study. In the first experiment the participants were asked to play two games: bloody hack and slasher Conan and Codemasters' open world racer Fuel, both for the Xbox 360. The games were chosen during a previous study, in which they were measured similar in terms of pacing, competitiveness, and difficulty. After a brief play session, participants were then asked to create a dish using hot sauce for an imaginary test subject that had indicated distaste for hot and spicy foods.

That's the Hot Sauce Paradigm. The hotter the sauce is made, the more aggression is displayed. It's also fun at parties.

The results of the first experiment showed no difference in the level of aggressiveness, despite one game being violent and the other not.

So a second experiment was conducted, this time adding Mortal Kombat Vs. DC and Marble Blast Ultra and replacing Conan with Valve's co-op shooter Left 4 Dead. This made for two violent and two non-violent games, one competitive and one not.

Using the same Hot Sauce Paradigm, the researches noticed a strong increase in aggression from those that played the competitive games, while those that played the non-competitive games went easier on the sauce.

The researchers' conclusion?

Some researchers believe that they have already shown that violent video games are a risk factor for aggressive behavior and that this effect stems from the violent content in the games . On the contrary, results from the present study indicate that video game competitiveness, not violent content, is responsible for elevating aggressive behavior in the short-term. The present findings lead to a new direction in video game and aggression research and should encourage researchers to continue to critically examine this issue.

Now that makes a whole lot more sense, doesn't it?

Now our course of action is clear. We have to make sure no one ever plays Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe or Fuel ever again. It's a long row to hoe, but we're just the Joes to hoe it.

Video game competitiveness, not violence, spurs aggression, study suggests [The Washington Post]

Aside from making us all hungry, commenter FortWaba shares with us the supplies he needs to make it through a video game all-nighter. What food and drink fuels your power-gaming sessions? Bring enough to share in today;s Speak Up on Kotaku.

Some people use strategy guides, some use music, some go it alone...

I just need this to beat a game in one night. Deus Ex, I'm coming, honey.

We've seen plenty of games trying to achieve photographic realism, but how often do we come across attempts to make real life look more like a game? The folks over at Codemasters have done just that, with their latest tie-in video for last month's racing title Dirt 3.

Shot using a tilt-shift lens, this video of Ken Block whizzing around London's Battersea Power Station has the appearance of having been miniaturized or computer-generated.

Dirt 3 is currently out on the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.

Darksiders II. Tekken: Wii Successor.Assassin's Creed. Dirt. Ghost Recon: Online. Aliens: Colonial Marines. These are some of the hardcore games coming to Wii U—which Nintendo showed off in its E3 press event.

Jump to about two minutes in to see the "Wii U" games in action. Why the quotation marks? Because as Nintendo honcho Reggie Fils-Aime pointed out, these aren't actually Wii U games, but their Xbox 360 and PS3 counterparts.

Ah, Monaco. A charming Principality, famous for its azure harbors, Grace Kelly and...car rallies. Lots and lots of car rallies. The folks over at Codemasters would like to invite you to this car-racing paradise in their newest gameplay trailer for Dirt 3, giving a glimpse of the title's Rallycross, Gymkhana and Head 2 Head stages.

It's unlikely I'll ever make it to Monte Carlo in this lifetime, so my thanks to Dirt 3 for this virtual substitution.

Dirt 3 due out Tuesday, will also include a single-use code to enable online access - a growing trend, if not the new norm, in console games with heavy online components. The "VIP Pass" also comes with a set of five vehicles, and it's free in retail copies. If you get a used copy of the game and the code doesn't work, you'll have to pay Codemasters to get one over Xbox Live or PSN. [MCV]