The interview really focuses in on what Firebrand is doing differently for the handheld version of the game. It sounds as if they're really doing a great job in taking the special capabilities of the DS into account when it comes to track creation, as well as tweaking gameplay to match the handheld experience. I'm glad to see that more and more developers are taking this approach. Shoveling out ports helps no one.

Race Drive: GRID does user-gen content

Perhaps the most interesting bit for me, though, was Shea's discussion of how they're taking all of the user-created content the track editor is going to spawn to really make GRID something special:

Shea: It's very straightforward. You can save six different tracks on your Game Card, and then by connecting to Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, you can upload any of these tracks to your own space on the Gamespy servers.

You can then tell your friends about it, and they can look for your tracks online using your Friend Name, and download them to save on their own copy of the game. They are then free to race or edit the track, or upload it to their own bit of the server.

There's a wealth of great content out there that people are creating every single day. The hardcore folks know to head over to FilePlanet and look for the latest maps or mods on the PC. The more mainstream gamer, and those on the console, aren't necessarily going to want to jump through those hoops. What they need is a dead simple means of sharing that content from directly within the game.

That, my friends, is exactly what we built Sake, our Persistent Storage system, to do.

We saw a similar approach taken in Mini Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2, a single player title, and the first game to ship with Sake. The additional content spawned a thriving, if small, community and gave the game huge legs. You can read more about it in my presentation from last year, Breaking the In-Game/Out-of-Game Barrier.

I'm excited to see Sake put to great use again on the DS, this time by Firebrand. We'll definitely be doing a case study on this bad boy when it hits shelves later this year.

Kotaku, courtesy of Famitsu, are reporting that Super Smash Bros. Brawl has become the fastest selling Wii title, beating out hits like Wii Fit and Wii Sports.

We’re hoping that the killer online feature set - from straight-up multiplayer action, to betting on replays, to sharing home-brew stages - are helping to contribute to those numbers.  Nintendo pulled out all the stops when bringing one of my favorite franchises to the Wii.

Look for a full case study on Super Smash Bros. Brawl when the game becomes available to the rest of the world in a few more months.

• Panzer Tactics (DS) 10Tacle
• Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (Wii) Sega
• Empire Earth III (PC) Vivendi Games
• F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate (PC) Vivendi Games
• Ultimate Mortal Kombat (DS) Midway Games
• Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command (PSP) THQ
• Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 (Wii) Ubisoft
• Need for Speed: ProStreet (DS) Electronic Arts
• Crysis (PC) Electronic Arts
• Word Jong (DS) Destineer
• TimeShift (PS3) Vivendi Games
• TimeShift (PC) Vivendi Games
• Unreal Tournament 3 (PC) Midway Games
• Geometry Wars: Galaxies (Wii) Vivendi Games
• Trauma Center: New Blood (Wii) Atlus Software
• Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2008 (DS) Konami
• Tank Beat 2 (DS) Milestone

But MTV thinks otherwise. The MTV Multiplayer blog has an interesting bit of speculation up, suggesting that the "solo-only" experience is on the way out and more simultaneous play is on the way in.

For proof they cite Super Mario Galaxy and the inclusion of a two player mode. One guy is jumping about as Mario while the other shoots incoming enemies and collects golden goodness. There are also all of the ads featuring groups of happy people on couches - even if the game in question (Metroid Prime 3) is single player.

Perhaps MTV are on to something here... though I would hesitate to say that Nintendo is the only one leaving the solo experience out in the cold.

If anything, I'd say Nintendo are just now catching up with a wave that the industry has been riding for some time now.

Gears of War did a phenomenal job with the co-op campaign last year and looks poised to repeat it in the "single player/tournament" mode in Unreal Tournament 3. GRAW 2 and Lego Star Wars also had stellar co-op campaigns. In fact, there were entire sections of the game that practically required co-op play in order to access. Guitar Hero 3 is in the same boat here, with co-op play being required to access songs like "Reptilia"" and "Sabotage."

I believe that Nintendo are, however, doing what they do best: taking a fairly straight-forward concept and applying it new and in novel ways.

Mario Strikers lets you take local co-op to a new level by competing against another team of two humans sharing the same Wii. The same will be true in the new Smash Brothers title due out next year.

While MTV makes some great points, I'm more inclined to believe that Nintendo's recent designs are less about leaving the solo experience out in the cold and more about offering Player 2 a cozy seat by the gaming fire.

The sites, while in many cases beautiful, come up sorely lacking when it comes to some of the key functions you expect from a major marketing vehicle. There was little call to action for purchase, little or no attempt to create a community around the sites and almost no attention paid to turning your users into Mini-Marketers for the games.

Bummer... but not at all unexpected, to be quite honest.

Where are the feeds for game news? Where is the link to purchase Bioshock digitally? Where is my AIM icon pack? What about keeping people coming back once the game has launched?

Now, The Cult of Rapture does have some awesome goodies but it is so, so hard to find... and doesn't really seem to fit in at all with the big, Flashy main Bioshock site. Could it be that the two were designed by different folks? The Cult by people who "get it" and the main site by people who, quite frankly, don't?

The Guitar Hero 3 site does offer a glimmer of hope with the Backstage Pass but breaks one of my cardinal rules for websites: the dreaded "coming soon." I can almost guarantee you that I'll never come back to see if you finished what you promised.

We're always preaching to developers about how community needs to be a part of game design from day one. It looks like that message needs to be expanded to more forcefully include marketing as a part of the design process.

Commande & Conquer 3 was an excellent case study for this approach. We worked very closely with the team at EA LA to get as much of the site up and functional as soon as possible. C&C Online was there to provide a constant stream of information for fans of the game.

There were forums for users to chat with one another, developer blogs on the design process and in-depth podcasts for users to download and listen to again and again. In addition to a wealth of information we gave them a real reason to visit: gamers were allowed to pre-register their nicknames for the retail release.

Perhaps most importantly the site morphed once the game was released. The marketing material was still there for new users but new, live content appeared. Ladders, clans, Battlecast and other features were exposed giving people a real reason to return time and time again.

It pains me to think of all the time and money spent on the ineffective sites Meldum profiled. How much more effective could they have been in driving sales by recognizing and using the simplest of tools the Web has to offer? What more could have been done post-launch to keep users coming back, priming them for the next installment in the franchise...

The laws range from the obvious (Law 1: Reduce "The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.") to the nearly contradictory (Law 9: Failure "Some things can never be made simple.") You can - and should - read more about each of the laws on Maeda's blog. It struck me as I was listening that complexity is among the greatest barriers we in the game industry face.

Complexity prevents us from expanding our audience.
Need proof? Just watch a non-gamer struggle with a controller. The 360 controller, which I consider quite usable, has two stick controls, a D-pad, 7 buttons on the top of the controller and 4 triggers hidden from view. Over time, of course, using the controller becomes second nature - a natural extension of the player. But not everyone has the time to commit to learning, nor the desire to learn some new skill in order to play a game.

Touching is good. And intuitive.

A large part of Nintendo's success with the DS and the Wii, I would argue, comes from stripping away the complexities of the controller. What could be simpler than tapping directly on the screen of the DS? Or swinging the Wiimote just like you would a golf club? My three year-old quickly figured out how to pet her Nintendog (named 'Anchovy' in case you were interested) and my father has no problem playing Clubhouse Games - online, even!

That's Law 1 in action, folks. How could you put it to use in your game?

Complexity prevents users from discovering (and enjoying) higher-order functionality.
We've focused a good bit in recent years in adding more and more complex functionality to our suite of products. One of the questions that constantly comes up during design meetings is how to add Feature X such that the interface doesn't become needlessly complex? Or, perhaps more importantly, whether or not anyone will really make use of a feature if it requires too much thought on a user's part?

We are, for example, big proponents of lots of filtering in a server browser. It allows users to get a smaller list, making the browsing process faster (Law 3: Time). It also makes the list far more relevant, making it easier to select a server that meets your criteria. Great!

So many options, so much complexity.

Sort of. In practice, though, we often see filtering implemented as a jumble of drop-downs, multi-state checkboxes and text-entry fields. Worse still? The filter options are all present but defaulted to none. Why not pre-select some? Like "not empty/not full" or "not passworded." Law 5, people. Simplicity and complexity need each other.

Complexity causes frustration, fatigue and failure.
As a game developer you want to evoke emotions in your players. You want them to feel attached to the characters. You want them to feel a rush of adrenaline in the heat of battle. You want them to forge strong friendships with the people they play with online.

You don't want them feeling frustrated because they don't understand how a feature works. Or feel fatigued by having to do the same tasks every time they play. Law 7 states that more emotion is better than less. So long as it is positive I'd say that's true. The last thing you need, though, is more negative emotion.

Immediately after hearing the interview I put in an order for The Laws of Simplicity. Download the podcast and see if it has the same effect on you. Who knows, maybe the game you're working on right now could use a little simplicity!

I was relieved when the ESA announced the format change last year. President Doug Lowenstein cited making the show more "business-friendly" among their key reasons for the change:

"When we asked key audiences what they wanted in the new event, we heard that they wanted opportunities for high-level meetings in a business-like setting, to play games, network, and socialize, to see major company offerings while also preserving the sense of discovery that is so much a part of the show, and to hear substantive presentations on the most important issues and trends facing the industry," Lowenstein said.

Sure enough, this year's format was great for business. The 30 minute shouting matches were gone and replaced by leisurely conversations with publishers and developers in private, quiet locations. It was easy to bump into someone walking down Ocean and have an impromptu discussion on the way from the Fairmont to Lowes. What a change!

What was missing, though, was the "sense of discovery." What was missing, more specifically, was Kentia Hall.

Kentia always held a special place in my heart. You never quite knew what you would discover there. There were crazy peripherals, like the CyMouse, that you controlled with your head instead of your hand. I saw the first cool use of a USB camera on a PC at Kentia in Gaijin's Flight of Fancy in which you controlled your dragon and cast spells via gesture recognition.

Kentia was always the home of the risk-taker. While there was certainly a large number of flat-out kooks (God love 'em!) showing their wares in Kentia you could always find one or two gems that you knew would go on to greatness. You can never forget the biggest thing to ever come from Kentia: Guitar Hero. Would Rock Band be all the rage this year without the help of Kentia oh so many years ago? I tend to doubt it.

There was no place at this year's E3 for the smaller developer to participate. If the ESA can crack that nut next year I think that the new E3 will be on the right path.