As if it isn’t bad enough that game reviewers attempt to distill a videogame’s entire essence into a number, now Metacritic has taken it upon themselves to do the same for individual developers. As in, individual people who worked on specific games. That’s right, now you too can argue that Peter Molyneux is a better developer than Shigeru Miyamoto, because he’s rated 82 and Shiggy only scores 80. Oh, and Cliffy B is 86. Perhaps if they patched him and re-released as a Cliffy of the Year edition…

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Image courtesy (blatantly stolen from) Gadgetsteria

Reported from Gamesindustry.biz: “Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka has claimed that console games are “dying”, as he criticised both the full price console games model and the “casual” games label.”

Rovio is the developer responsible for Angry Birds: a Crush the Castle clone with decent art and some attitude. It’s had a sparkling success on the Apple iStore, being that “hot new thing everyone is playing right now”.

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Creators of Project Gotham Racing and Geometry Wars (under Microsoft), and Blur and 007: Blood Stone under Activision, are rumoured to have been shuttered. That would mean 200 people have lost their jobs. This is probably the result of the poor sales of Blur (ironically, no fault of the game but rather the context of its release) and poor critical response to Blood Stone.

What would be ironic is if Microsoft hires back the Bizzare Creations staff, as they mentioned they were looking for developers for PGR5. It was rumoured that Forza creators Turn 10 were working on PGR5.

It’s worth it to note that it’d be curious to see what happens to Bungie Software, having just signed up with Activision, if their first undisclosed project for the publisher fails to meet expectations.

Since we’re on the rumour mill: word on the web is that Gears of War 3 has been pushed back so Microsoft can force some Kinect support in there, probably to try and grab some of that fictional hardcore market.

Ubisoft, due to poor sales of RUSE and HAWX 2, have shuttered various undisclosed projects. Hopefully the project from Another World creator Eric Chahi From Dust has survived, as well as Beyond Good & Evil 2.

InstantAction had okay-to-passable games, and a lot of micropayments for maps and such.

InstantAction, a website for browser-based games using the Torque engine, is shutting down.

“Today, InstantAction informed employees that it will be winding down operations,” wrote Eric Preisz, director of InstantAction’s Torque game engine operations on Torque’s community forum.

“While we are shutting down the InstantAction.com website and Instant Jam game, Torquepowered.com will continue to operate while InstantAction explores opportunities with potential buyers for Torque,” he added. “We thank all of our past and current customers for their support.”

Read the rest at Gamasutra. While it’s sad to see people lose their jobs, let’s hope this acts as a lesson for the plethora of browser-based games trying to make a living off micropayments. It can work, but it’s risky business and not the goldmine people think it is.

Old photo of Harmonix guys, for more recent photo just add tears and impending joblessness.

Harmonix, creators of the original Guitar Hero and Rock Band, is being sold off by its owner Viacom.  You can read the full story here. The reason for the sell-off most likely has to do with Rock Band 3 utterly tanking at retail. Combined with how badly all the various music-games are doing, it’s clear Viacom thinks there’s no more money left in it, aside from a trickle of sales from DLC for Rock Band.

Fallout and Oblivion are two examples of the Gamebryo engine.

Lastly, Emergent Game Technologies, creators of the Gamebryo engine that Bethesda is so fond of, is shutting its studio down. It’s unclear what Bethesda will do for an engine now, but probably they’ll go Unreal Engine. Read more about it here.

Joystiq has the news:

Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune has left Capcom, one month after revealing his Mega Man Legends 3 Project for 3DS, six months after being promoted to Global Head of Production and 23 years after joining the company. He was also the CEO of Capcom’s online games subsidiary Daletto.

Read the full post [here]

According to a translation of Inafune’s blog:

Inafune declared he had no more “stairs” to climb within Capcom. “It would probably be good for me to sit gracefully in this seat and become a leading figure in the industry,” he wrote. “However, I cannot do this. Settling down means death for a creator. As long as you are a creator, you cannot settle down.”

Eurogamer had an update as to his replacement:

As of 1st November, Jun Takeuchi will take on the added responsibility of corporate officer as well as his existing deputy head of consumer games and R&D Division, and general manager of R&D production.

Read the full post [here]

Oh no he didn’t! Yes he did!

When asked by MTV what he thought was the biggest problem with the gaming industry is, Mafia 2 Senior Producer Denby Grace said, “It’s a very good question and maybe a little general for a concise answer. An obsession with gay Space Marines.”

Master Chief and Commander Shepard would like to remind you that they are Navy and not Marines.

Here we go with some more news as part of my sneaky campaign to have gaming seen a positive light. I must admit, I really don’t understand this at all, but apparently some scientists working on the Rosetta@home project decided to give gamers a chance to see if they could break down a protein strand by rendering it in a 3D, game-like interface and allowing gamers to fill in the blanks that their computers were struggling with – and it worked. I’d probably be much more impressed if I could understand even a word of what they’re saying, but I can’t. Anyway, if you can make more sense of it, check out the original article here.

Of course, this stuff all makes total sense to a gamer. Scientists should give us a shot at quantum theory and zero point energy.

Don’t get too excited, I think we’re still a long way away from exciting, fast-paced hovercraft races. I the meantime though, Wipeout fan Malte Jehmlich decided to create his own “real” version of the game by hooking up a camera to a remote controlled car screaming around a carboard track based on a popular Wipeout track. He then hooked up the controls into an arcade racing cabinet with a monitor that allows the player to see what the car sees. You could argue that this is taking geekiness to new heights, but how many of you can say that you would pass up a chance to actually try it? I sure as hell wouldn’t mind giving it a go. Anyway, check out the article at Geek.com here, it has video of the thing in action.

Like many things in life, playing with plastic toys is as close as we'll come to the real thing

In what can only be described as the most charitable, spiritual and non-secular opinion I’ve ever heard from the games industry, developer Jeff Vogel from Spiderweb Software made a blog post all about how he doesn’t mind his games being pirated in certain instances. In fact, it almost sounds like he’s encouraging it sometimes. When you sort through all of the points he makes, it essentially boils down to the fact that he’d rather have someone who genuinely can’t afford to buy games pirate the game and play it rather than have them not play it at all. He finishes it up by saying that, if you can genuinely afford to buy his games, however, he’d really prefer you did that. You know, I honestly can’t argue with any of that. Anyway, check out the blog post here.