On the surface, the racing plays just like a furry-free, cars-only Diddy Kong Racing: the tracks have multiple paths and shortcuts and are littered with power ups and traps. The 3-level powerup system is also borrowed from DKR: you hit an item box, and you’re given a random level 1 item. Hitting up to 2 more item boxes without using the item will increase it’s power.

Where ModNation’s racing differs from DKR is it’s depth. United Front games has packed in a complex racing game underneath the skin of a simple kart racer. There is a boost meter that is filled by getting air time or by attacking enemy cars. The boost meter can be used up on a temporary shield or in the titular action of forward propulsion. As I played, I slowly learned some of the advanced tactics, but tricks like double-jumping and the side swipe attack are still a mystery to me.

ModNation Racers is more than a racing game. It’s essentially the LittleBigPlanet of racing games, with fully customizable characters, karts, and levels. While the kart and character customization is purely cosmetic, the track creation is the strongest feature in the game.

The track creation tool is amazing in that it’s so simple to create a fully fleshed out track that’s ready to race on in a matter of minutes (no exaggeration). It’s the same feeling of glee you experienced in Spore when your masterpiece/intentional abomination was walking/barely able to hobble. In ModNation Racers, there is an auto-populate tool that will add all the props, traps and boosts necessary for a track. The player has the liberty of placing these entities themselves, but the auto-populate brush does an amazing job of it, most people will be satisfied with the results.

I wasn’t able to test out these features, but you should know they exist: campaign mode, online multiplayer, sharing tracks, sharing “mods” (avatars), sharing karts, and online leaderboards for track creation and race times.

ModNation Racers is the kind of game that will make memories for kids. While adult or teen players might tire of the track creation after creating a few ridiculous levels, kids will love every facet of the game, and best of all, they’ll have the time to invest in it. The creation tools, like LittleBigPlanet’s, are essentially digital Lego: they’re great ways to foster creativity in kids. Getting this game for a younger gamer also reveals an unexpected bonus: you’ll get to play something more substantial than the latest movie tie-in game.

This is big news for those of us who have specifically avoided the garish white Nintendo Wii because it totally clashed with the rest of our entertainment set up. After a Gamestop employee snapped a picture of a promo poster announcing the black Wii bundle a few days ago, Nintendo of America has finally dropped the bomb on us: They’re going to paint it, black.

The new Wii bundle will come with Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, Wiimote with Motion Plus attachment and a nunchuck, at the same $199 price point as always. Although not specifically mentioned in the press release, we’ve heard through the grape vine that Canada may be getting a similarly toned bundle May 23rd.

Via Tiny Cartridge

How good a deal you ask? How about a free conference pass worth $700?

GDC Canada has announced that they will be offering free passes to the Vancouver conference to those who have been laid off from their games industry job in the past 12 months. Potential devs who want to take advantage of it can’t be currently employed, and must present a Record of Employment at the show to be eligible.

It makes sense that GDC Canada would want to offer a deal like this: although being geographically close to GDC San Francisco, the Canadian conference usually draws less than half of the attendees of its Californian counterpart. Even with this deal, the current economy will give GDC Canada a hard time attracting developers out west for another series of parties and schmoozing.

For all the details see the GDC Canada page on the offer.

This originally appeared on FeedYourConsole on April 21, 2010.

This budget will be effective until March 2011. Hopefully the UK government will see that supporting such a growing industry will help manage their massive debt and continue the program for a long time.

If you’re interested, you can show support for this project on Kickstarter and keep up with the one-man dev team at Shen Games. Cadet 227 is due to be released this Summer.

As a side note, this is exactly the kind of stuff I was thinking of doing as my main area of study for grad school.

No doubt you have been inundated with news of the Wii HD and Monkey Island: the sequel: the remake, but let’s be honest with ourselves: the only true news is that this is a totally sweet photoshop of a highway sign leading into Hoboken, NJ. No, nobody cares about the New Sam & Max season making it’s way to PS3, the winners of the Game Developer’s Choice Awards, or that Gabe Newell (head honcho at Valve) got a Portal-themed BSOD during hispresentation. I am in serious doubt if anyone gives two shakes of a wiimote about the Indie game rant session, the new Deus Ex 3 trailer or Steamworks being integrated with Unreal Engine 3.

This image is so much more awesome.

Full image: imgur
via: The Tanooki

According to Develop’s Salary Survey, nearly 30% of industry workers will be changing jobs in 2010. If you look 2-3 years into the future, over 70% of employees will have changed jobs at least once.

Why the shakeup? The biggest reasons are that employees are looking for a new challenge (26%), or they’re looking for a bigger paycheque (20%).

The focus on recruiting for big studios is obvious: Ubisoft hired someone to hype their new Toronto studio opportunities, even though everyone in Toronto already emailed their resumes the day it was announced.

Check out Develop’s survey here.

You may remember the big EA Spouse shakeup that happened back in 2004, but evidently Rockstar games didn’t hear about it, or didn’t care. For those of you who are foggy on the topic, EA Spouse was a user on Livejournal who wrote a short essay about the poor working conditions and unpaid overtime at EA. After the media got a hold of it, EA found themselves at the business end of a class action lawsuit that lost them about $15 million.

A similar situation is unfolding now with Rockstar. A post on Gamasutra by a user named “Rockstar Spouse” called for working conditions to improve, for overtime to be paid, for benefits to be reinstated, and for crunch times to be only a sometimes food. The post has over 140 comments and over 300 direct retweets from their website. The blogs picked up the story and ran with it, while the rest of the industry held their breath for the next move whether it be Rockstar or the employees or their significant others.

Rockstar responded, and in true Rockstar fashion. The company posted a series of desktop wallpapers on their website titled “The Eye”, as a reference to a comment made by a former employee comparing Rockstar New York to “The Eye of Sauron”:

The source went on to compare Rockstar NYC to the Eye of Sauron when dealing with their studios. Teams would apparently work on a title for close to two years, but because of other priorities, like a major “GTA” release, for example, upper management wouldn’t focus on other titles until the major project was done.

The most recent volley came from Rockstar in the form of a paragraph buried in a post on their corporate blog – the Newswire:

As for the stories spreading around the internet, yes we have noticed them.  Unfortunately, this is a case of people taking the opinions of a few anonymous posters on message boards as fact. No business is ever perfect, but Rockstar Games is a tight knit team made up of around 900 supremely talented and motivated professionals, many of whom have worked here for a very long time.  We’re saddened if any former members of any studio did not find their time here enjoyable or creatively fulfilling and wish them well with finding an environment more suitable to their temperaments and needs, but the vast majority of our company are focused solely on delivering cutting edge interactive entertainment.  We’ve always cared passionately about the people working here, and have always tried to maintain a supportive creative environment.  There is simply no way Rockstar could continue to produce such large scale, high quality games without this.  That being said, making great games is very challenging, which is why we have and will continue to try to keep hold of some of the best talent in the industry and support them in every way we can.

While the last sentence seems to be a bit on the humble or apologetic side, it’s certain that this will be eventually settled in a way quantifiable by dollar signs.

According to a report by Screen Digest, the big name players in the games industry are set to change in the next few years. GamesIndustry.biz has summed up the article, noting that Disney, Time Warner, Viacom, News Corp and NBC Universal are moving in on the games industry. They’ve spent over $3 billion in gaming over the past 5 years, and by 2013 they will have a significant portion of the market in their control.

Here’s a list of what each of these companies own right now:

• Viacom
  • MTV New Media (Rock Band, Harmonix)
  • GameTrailers
  • Neopets
  • Any licensed game to come from: Comedy Central, any Nickelodeon Network or any Paramount Pictures film
• Disney
  • Marvel
  • Pixar
  • ESPN
  • Studios: Avalanche Software, Black Rock Studios (PURE, Split/Second), Fall Line Studios, Junction Point Studios (Epic Mickey), Propaganda Games
• Time Warner
  • GameTap
  • Studios: Monolith Productions (F.E.A.R., F.E.A.R. 2), Snowblind studios, Surreal Software, TT Games (Lego Rock Band, Lego Indiana Jones 2), WB Games, WB Games Chicago (Formerly known as Midway)
  • Any licensed game to come from: Lord of the Rings, DC Comics, Adult Swim, or Cartoon Network
• News Corp
  • IGN
  • GameSpy

Kotick used to love games; he played a huge amount in the early ’80s and it is his high risk of addiction to the medium that keeps him away from games these days. Not only did he play games, but he made them as well: he had created Apple II games for Electronic Arts. In business, Kotick paid $400,000 for 25% of what was to be Activision because he loved Activision’s catalogue of games and he wanted to restore the company to it’s former glory.

As for his past comments that the blogs ran with, Gamasutra recaps:

Aware of recent criticism of some of his remarks to investors — remarks about taking the fun out of making video games and working in an environment of skepticism, pessimism and fear, to name a few — Kotick says that too much brashness means “you can come across as being like a dick.”
He particularly addressed his ‘taking the fun out of video games’ comment: “I wanted to somehow come across in a humorous way that… it wasn’t some Wild West lack of process exercise.” Nonetheless, he says, he regrets how it was misconstrued.

Finally, Kotick revealed the creation of the 2010 Activision Independent Game Competition (PDF) granting $100,000 to the winner.

Take from this what you will, but you can’t deny that there is more to ‘ol Bobby than just an expensive suit.