Business

With such seemingly opposite takes on the genre, the argument usually devolves down to proponents of each genre arguing that theirs is the best example of "role-playing." Extra Credits dares to jump into the fray to see is one group is right, or perhaps if one is more right than the other or maybe even if both are wrong. Clearly it's not an easy task or it wouldn't be broken up into three parts.

The crew at Extra Credits return with the second part of their two-part series on how to become a developer.

It seems that the controversy surrounding Mass Effect 3 has been cranked to 11. An FTC complaint against BioWare is the latest individual action, and it's served to fan the flames of what's become a binary topic. People seem to either enjoy and/or accept the game's ending for what it is (Let's call these people Group A) or they are upset for a variety of reasons (or Group B). I have no horse in this race myself, as trying to play either of the first two Mass Effect games was met with rapid failure and disinterest that shortly followed, so it's interesting to observe this controversy from a distance.

Do you love spending hours in front of a computer writing code? Do you prefer spending many more hours debugging software than spending time with your loved ones? Do you want to spend time justifying your hard work to fickle gamers and an even more fickle gaming press? Then you want to be a video game developer and this video might be right for you.

Lots of you are probably wondering who "won" the portable showdown last month. Early estimates of 300,000 units for Vita seemed likely to nudge it past the 3DS, which would have made sense given that Vita is the newer platform and that early adopters would push it to a respectable launch number. That didn't happen, however.

Here's the wrap-up of our fantastic talk with David Jaffe, creative lead on the Twisted Metal series and one of my favorite all-time games, God of War.

Inside, we finish up our talk on the new Twisted Metal, we hear about Mr. Jaffe's future plans, and we hear how he feels about other games and designers aping his style.  If you're a fan of David's, you don't want to miss this one!

In a way, it's good to see that there hasn't been the reaction to February's NPD data that I anticipated. On the flip side, February was another month of deep Year-over-year (YOY) negatives and presents questions to me about just how long the current console cycle can remain viable.

In this episode, Mr. Jaffe shares with us his thoughts on God of War 4, the troubles of tumultuous development (including two cancelled games, Darkons and Heartland), the failures of Calling All Cars, and the reasons why he left God of War. Finally, we wrap up with thoughts on the process of creating the brand-new Twisted Metal.

More mailbag. Some of the highlights: "Is EA's Origin service a good thing?", "Which books are best for learning game design?", "How to get into game localization?" and "Should you pitch an idea to a game studio?"That last one is probably the easiest one for anyone to answer—it's always a resounding no.

I love that Daniel (the narrator guy) starts the video by saying that Extra Credits is a bit late on the whole SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) & PIPA (Protect IP Act) debate because it saves me the trouble of having to say it myself. That said, a lot of us (myself included) still do not know the particulars of the bills and just how close we came to one of the largest legislative cluster-you-know-whats in U.S. history.