SAN FRANCISCO — Sid Meier, creator of Civilization, says gamers are a bunch of head cases.

“Player psychology has nothing to do with rational thought,” said the acclaimed game designer during his keynote address at the Game Developers Conference on Friday. Titled “The Psychology of Game Design (Everything You Know Is Wrong),” the speech talked about what’s going on in a player’s brain as he plays a game, and how designers should anticipate and react to their irrational expectations.

As an example, ..read the full article

If you play Wii Fit video game regularly, then you might need the Wii Push Up Bar. CTA Digital’s plastic push up bar pops right on top of your balance board, offering adjustable grips for you. The Wii Push Up Bar is compatible with Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus, U Fitness and Jillian Fitness Ultimatum. If you are interested, you can pre-order the Wii Push Up Bar for $25.

[Product Page]

Check out the latest cinematic trailer from Bethesda’s upcoming first-person shooter video game ‘Brink’. Just a quick a reminder, the game will be out this Fall for the PS3, 360 and PC platforms. Watch the trailer after the jump.

[ScrawlFX]

SAN FRANCISCO — For the future of Final Fantasy, director Motomu Toriyama is looking to Uncharted 2.

The interactive cinematic scenes in Naughty Dog’s critically acclaimed action game seem to have inspired Toriyama to try the same thing in the Final Fantasy games, he said at his Game Developers Conference panel on Friday. “In Final Fantasy XIII, the interactivity was focused on the battle scenes,” he said. ” I think there will be more interactivity (in future Final Fantasy cut scenes) ..read the full article

SAN FRANCISCO — Final Fantasy XIII began its life as a PlayStation 2 game. Here’s what it looked like.

Speaking at Game Developers Conference on Friday, FFXIII director Motomu Toriyama talked a bit about the development history of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game, showing the early screenshot pictured above. The battle system, Toriyama said, let players attack enemies so they slammed into a wall and collapsed — perhaps the precursor to the finished game’s “Stagger” mechanic.

“The battle system and ..read the full article

Here is good news for all Grand Turismo fans around the globe. Sony has finally announced that the long awaited Gran Tursimo 5 during the GDC press conference in San Fransico. The game will be hitting store shelves at some point this year. We will keep you posted. [That Videogame Blog]

BioWare is preparing to release the first DLC pack for Mass Effect 2. Known as the Kasumi’s Stolen Memory, this add-on content will include a new character named Kasumi, a new weapon and a new Achievement. The pack itself is scheduled to be released on April 6th for both Xbox 360 and PC platforms, however, there’s no word on pricing yet. [Joystiq]

The Xbox 360 version of BioShock 2 topped the sales charts in February, moving half a million copies in a month packed with big game releases, the NPD Group said Thursday.

Boosted by BioShock, Dante’s Inferno and continued sales of Modern Warfare 2, the Xbox 360 was the best-selling home game console in the U.S. last month. On the software side, Wii hits New Super Mario Bros. and Just Dance continued to sell boatloads, and Sony’s innovative Heavy Rain had a ..read the full article

SAN FRANCISCO — “Audio is my lover,” Akira Yamaoka said as he kicked off his presentation Thursday at Game Developers Conference. Pulling out his guitar, he played some music that he composed over the past day on his trip from Tokyo to San Francisco.

Yamaoka is best known for his years at game publisher Konami, creating the music and sound for the Silent Hill horror game series. He is now working with independent developer Grasshopper Manufacture, composing music and producing sounds ..read the full article

SAN FRANCISCO — Nintendo’s Metroid games take their creative cues from an unlikely source: Dario Argento, the Italian horror film director.

At his keynote speech during the Game Developers Conference on Thursday, Metroid creator Yoshio Sakamoto said that Argento’s films Susperia and Deep Red, which he discovered in his youth, awoke his creative sensibilities. The horror films were a big influence on the innovative, stylish space adventure Metroid games, he said.

“Deep Red has the greatest inspiration on my creative process,” he ..read the full article

SAN FRANCISCO — Kumar Garg, policy analyst for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wants the game industry to address America’s “national challenges.”

In a keynote entitled “Grand Challenges for Game Developers” delivered at the Game Developers Conference on Wednesday, Garg focused on videogames’ unique ability to engage, immerse and teach.

“We don’t allow kids to fail and iterate,” Kumar Garg said of our country’s current approach towards education. Garg believes that games have much to teach educators, ..read the full article

SAN FRANCISCO — Sony’s motion controller is called PlayStation Move and will be released this fall, the gamemaker said Wednesday. Whether any killer app games will be released with it is still in question.

At a lavish press briefing taking place a few blocks away from the Game Developers Conference, Sony revealed the final name and specifications of Move, which it first showed off at last year’s E3 Expo.The controller itself is almost exactly like the Wii remote, although Sony says ..read the full article

The OnLive Cloud Gaming platform will be launched on June 17th, 2010. Using this gaming system, the games are actually run from OnLive server, similar to cloud computing so you will be able to buy or rent high-end games such as “Mass Effect 2″ with an older or less powerful computer and Mac without owning such consoles as the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3. OnLive will offer new games from publishers such as Electronic Arts Inc., Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive ..read the full article

Here are the first screenshots from Lucas Arts’ upcoming Monkey Island 2: Special Edition. This graphic adventure video game will be coming to the iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac, PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 this summer. More pictures after the jump.

[Kotaku]

SAN FRANCISCO — Search behemoth Google buttered up the game development community at the Game Developers Conference Wednesday by handing out free mobile phones.

At the tail end of the panel “Bring Your Games to Android” presented by Jack Palevich — the programmer who recently ported Quake to the Android platform — representatives from the company gifted a Motorola Droid to every developer who listened in on Palevich’s pitch session.

Google launched the Android operating system for mobile phones in 2008. ..read the full article

Classic videogames like Street Fighter and Ms. Pac-Man inspired the artists whose works will be displayed in the Game Over 3 exhibition.

Put on by geek magazine turned art, design and clothing purveyor Giant Robot, the group gallery show will feature pieces from dozens of illustrators, painters, cartoonists, artists and game designers.

Game Over 3 runs Friday through Sunday at the Giant Robot store, 618 Shrader St., in San Francisco, California. Check out Wired.com’s preview of ..read the full article

SAN FRANCISCO — OnLive, the streaming games-on-demand service, will launch on June 17 for $15/month, the company announced Wednesday at Game Developers Conference.

Only the PC and Mac versions of the service are launching on the 17th — the tiny box that connects to your television won’t launch until later this year. And what will that $15/month get you? Access to OnLive’s service, but no games — those will have to be purchased separately. I’d rant about this but Bill Harris ..read the full article

SAN FRANCISCO — Big-name videogame designers are thinking small.

Creators of legendary games of the ’80s and ’90s like Sinistar and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade are increasingly working on social games like those found on Facebook, largely because the development of popular time-wasters like FarmVille closely mirrors the creative process that drove the early days of gaming: small teams, short production schedules and more creative autonomy for designers.

“It feels to me like 1981 or 1982,” said designer Brenda Brathwaite ..read the full article