If you’re even remotely interested in videogames, chances are you heard about the next World of Warcraft expansion coming out tonight. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is set to follow in the steps of The Burning Crusade and shatter all-time sales records for an expansion.

Remember those posts I made about finally quitting WoW? Well… yeah. It lasted three months, then I got sucked back in and geared up my Druid. I can’t explain it: I’m glad to do other things when WoW loses my interest, but when it has my attention, boy does it keep it. The game, quite simply, is fun, like no single player game I can think of.

Part of it is the social aspect. Living in Edmonton right now, it means I don’t get to see a few friends of mine outside the game. Chatting with them on Ventrilo, and running raids together, is one of the things I do to keep in touch. Which brings me to an interesting realization about WoW: it’s not just a game, but it’s a social networking platform, too.

And this actually explains a lot of its resiliency. Go to Orgrimmar, and stand in front of the bank: you’ll see dozens of low level players who probably never leave the city anymore. For them, WoW is a social networking platform, where they can create an avatar (most often a female Blood Elf in her underwear), and then take them for a chat with friends and strangers.

When you think of WoW this way, it suddenly explains how competitors like Lord of the Rings Online and Warhammer Online can’t seem to dethrone the 800-pound gorilla that is WoW. It actually works a lot like Facebook or Twitter: compare them to newcomers and they’re underwhelming; but they’re familiar, and don’t miss any critical features, and so switching to a competitor is a LOT more complicated than switching to another game. To really change, you’d need to change your entire online network of friends.

But it’s not to say WoW is all about playing Bejeweled while dancing naked on a mailbox in Orgrimmar… The game underneath is deep, challenging and rewarding. And it provides an amazing sense of community when you gather your friends and beat a particularly demanding part of the game.

And so, when the Tirisfal Glades Zeppelin begins carrying members of the Warsong Offensive to Northrend tomorrow, I’ll be on board one of them. First stop: Vengeance Landing, for a few Profession skill-ups, then I’m off to Utgarde Keep with my guildies.

Hail to the Lich King, baby.

Heard of Braid? It’s an Xbox Live Arcade game, going for low price of $15. Notably, it is currently the highest-rated Xbox Live Arcade game ever. Is it deserved?

Yes, a thousand times yes.

The only way I can describe Braid is this: it’s a Haruki Murakami story in videogame form.

Two weeks ago, I was curious at seeing this game mentioned so many times on game news sites, so I downloaded the demo on Live. I went through the first level, and found it to be a weird, cool little platformer, with echoes of Super Mario Bros. The central game mechanic is a Rewind button, which drew comparisons to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. I felt the puzzles were interesting and clever, but yet I wasn’t sure this was a game for me.

But over the last two weeks, I felt drawn back to the game. The text, displayed as a prologue to each world, hinted at something larger. It spoke of time, and forgiveness. So I went back to it and bought the full game.

Braid is a story about memory, forgiveness and regret. It’s about loss, and the search for meaning. It tells its story through moments and impressions, and leaves you clouded in emotion from a source you can’t quite pinpoint. The last level, in which the themes of the game come together, pulls off something of such magnificence and grandeur that I was left breathless by it. It is, quite simply, a piece of art.

The gameplay? Well, it’s really damn good, actually. The Rewind feature is part of it, but it goes much further. Much like Portal before, this is a game that requires you to be in a certain state of mind to succeed at it, and it leaves your perception of time askew once it’s over.

I always believed the videogame industry was capable of producing art. Much like Hollywood, however, I have my doubts that true art can be produced by a large, profit-driven enterprise. I had a hunch, back when the X360 launched, that Xbox Live Arcade could be the independent filmmaker equivalent for videogames, where little gems filled with insight and meaning could thrive, and tell their tale away from the well-trodded paths of the corporate giants.

Braid has now proven this possibility, and left me breathless in the process.

One note: the game is hard. Some puzzles are hard enough to give you a headache, but all of them are fair and well thought out. Personally, I took to the story so much, that I couldn’t endure laboring through the puzzles for days. I have to confess, I took a solver from GameFAQs. I’m sure the game is more rewarding if you solve it by yourself, but I have to say that the experience was totally worth it for me regardless.

BioWare, being the awesome, nerd-friendly company that it is, has treated us to private showings of Second Skin. The documentary on the lives of a few MMORPG hardcore players has received positive reviews from the MMO community, so I was eager to take a look at it.

I have to admit I’m disappointed in Second Skin. It purports to present an unbiased view of the subject, and while the lack of preaching on the dangers of game addiction was refreshing, I felt neither side had a coherent argument to present. As a result, I didn’t feel the movie offered any insight on why MMO players play the game and build relationships with fellow players.

It got me thinking, though.

I’ve known a fair share of hardcore players addicted to the online gaming lifestyle, both in my MUSH days in University, and more recently while playing WoW. While Second Skin didn’t offer any outrageous tale I hadn’t heard before, it got me thinking on how close I’ve flirted with online gaming addiction myself.

You see, I did do the online dating thing myself, way back when. I’ve flown to a few cities in the US in the hopes of transforming an online romance into something tangible. These attempts never imploded violently as much as they fizzled out; online gives you the illusion of proximity for a while, and then you meet face-to-face and realize there’s still a chasm to cross to truly be close. Online worlds aren’t so much alternate realities, as much as a refuge from the one reality we all live in. It’s not to say I haven’t made dear friends over the Internet (some of my longest-lasting friends I met through social gaming), but these friendships grew into something concrete once pulled out of their gaming context, instead of existing solely through online.

Ultimately, that’s the lesson I took away from online social relationships. They are real, and sometimes very significant, but they exist in a space that’s a refuge from the real world. And when a relationship exists in a place of comfort away from the rigors of the real world, it’s hard for that relationship to exist in the real world you’re trying to escape in the first place. I’m glad to say online dating is something I moved away from quite a few years ago.

I don’t know what prevented me from truly falling into online addiction myself. I mean; I did, for a while at least. Helene would surely agree that she had to put with some grief during those times when I was obsessed with World of Warcraft. But somehow, these things passed, perhaps because I never tolerated that they would put real elements of my life at risk. Somehow, this has prevented me from falling down the cliff, where my real life would have slowly eroded around me. Something inside me forced me to keep my life and play in balance.

That’s the kind of reflection I would have liked to see in Second Skin, I think. Not some self-professed expert exhalting the values of “synthetic worlds”. Not a Dolores Umbridge-like videogame addiction “expert” still seeking revenge on games for the death of her son. (Although the tragedy of that story – of how a geek seeking solace in videogames was persecuted by a concerned mother – was pretty haunting.) I would have liked Second Skin to truly take a hard look at online worlds, and understand its illusory promises and limitations all at once.

Because beyond all that, there is a reason why we game. It is neither a simple addiction nor a utopia of acceptance, but a social phenomenon all in itself, a symptom of an information age where, as Gordon Walton of BioWare Austin puts it, we are estranged from our neighbors against all conventions of human social instincts. Online worlds are the new tribes of the Information Age. They exist in World of Warcraft and Second Life, but they took root way before them, in BBSes and newsgroups.

And, I’m afraid, the exploration of this reality by traditional media has been merely skin-deep.

Whether you think Gamerscore is relevant or not, X360 Achievements are now part of the console gaming landscape. Yeah, they can be gamed, and no, a Gamerscore is not an indication of anything besides time spent playing games. But there’s something strangely satisfying about seeing the words “Achievement unlocked” pop on your screen.

Myself, I admit to being driven by Achievements when they are well thought out. If an Achievement prompts me to accomplish something I consider fun or challenging, I will go out of my way to get it. What I won’t do is pick up a game solely for its easy Achievements (although I did play Peter Jackson’s King Kong - the easiest 1,000 Gamerpoints I got), or go out of my way to get a difficult Achievement.

I played Half-Life 2, Episode One, Episode Two and Portal on PC, and I finished them all. Recently, however, I purchased The Orange Box, in the hopes it might get Helene to play Half-Life 2, since she’s not a PC gamer. (Yeah, it means I paid twice for the same game package, but Valve deserves it, I guess.) Anyway, I found myself playing through Portal again, for the fun of it… And then I started getting Achievements.

The Achievements alone made me play through the entirety of Half-Life 2 and both episodes. They’re that well-done, in my opinion.

The way I see it, the Achievements of a game play two key roles:

• Provide small, incremental reinforcement as a player progresses through the game;
• Encourage the player to toy with elements of the game off the golden path, such as easter eggs, or simple yet rewarding exploits.

With that definition in mind, I believe The Orange Box has the best Achievements available on Xbox 360.

When playing Half-Life 2, Episode One, Episode Two and Portal, the core of The Orange Box‘s Achievements constitute a breadcrumb trail that rewards you in a small way whenever you reach a key point in the story. The Achievements laid out on the main path are always there at key moments where you accomplished something a bit tricky or intense. Beat a boss, or resisted a major assault, and the “Achievement unlocked” message adds to the reward of having accomplished that particular segment of the game.

Then there are the secondary elements of the game that are rewarding in their own right; these are not necessary to accomplish the game, but they’re clever and rewarding, and the Achievements encourage you to seek them out. These include killing 30 enemies with thrown physical objects, running over enemies with your car, stealing a grenade from a Zombine, fall 30,000 feet in Portal… the list goes on.

These Achievements have pretty much defined my playthrough on the Xbox 360. Whenever I got to a new section of the game, I brought up the Achievement list to see if there was something there I could accomplish. Some of them made me aware of small easter eggs in the game I would have otherwise missed, such as the Half-Life HEV recharging plate in Eli’s scrapyard, or the infamous garden gnome you can actually launch into space in Episode Two.

Add to it the constant reinforcement of the breadcrumb Achievements, and I was hooked from the moment I re-entered City 17, to the final moments of Episode Two. Even worse, I’m considering going back to pick up some Achievements I missed. How’s that for Achievements enhancing replay value?

Another thing that Valve has done exceptionally well with The Orange Box is the in-game Achievement list, complete with pop-ups that show you progress at key points. For instance, let’s say you’re going after the Achievement where you kill 30 enemies with physics objects; at 10 and 20 enemies killed, you’ll get a pop-up notifying you of your progress in that particular Achievement.

Truly, whenever the topic of X360 Achievements comes up on games I produce, I’ll have to keep The Orange Box in mind. Its Achievements are simple yet very thoughtful, and they contribute to my overall experience with the game. We’ve come a long way from the “Here’s 1,000 Gamerpoints for finishing our game”. I’m looking at you, King Kong.

I developed a financially unhealthy habit of taking cabs in Shanghai, and have been unable to shake the addiction once in Montreal; even here in Edmonton, I still cab on occasion. Thing is, I love taxi drivers. They meet all sorts of interesting people, and often lead fascinating lives themselves.

Last week, in a moment of weakness, I took a cab home. The cab driver was in his fifties, and spoke in a slow, relaxed voice, smiling easily. And he felt he should pitch me his marketing genius right then and there, in the event that I might have a spare million to throw at him.

It went something like this:

Cab driver: “So, what do you do?”

Me: “I make videogames.”

“Ooooh… You must be making millions!”

“Heh. I wish. If I did, I’d stop working.”

“How do you distribute your games? How do you sell them?”

Definitely not a videogame player, then… I explain to him how videogames are sold: in boxes, on the shelves of stores. But that’s not what he was asking about.

Him: “Thing I don’t get is how you convince people to buy them. With music, it’s easy: you hear a few seconds of a song, and you know if you like it. For movies, you can watch a clip on YouTube. But games? How you sell the game itself?”

Ok, he’s got me there. This is actually a pretty damn good question. I explain to him how there are demos, but they take a long time to download. How some specialty websites become trusted sources of judgement on gameplay, so people look at previews and reviews to judge a game without ever playing it.

Him: “But you see, that’s not for people like me. I don’t want to go to a website, read a review, then buy a game and play it at home. Videogames are for nerds and weirdos!” Haha, ouch! “I can’t sit at home and play games, my wife will yell at me.”

At this point, it’s painfully obvious that this guy is not part of my target audience, as it may be. But I always find the perception of non-gamers to be very interesting, so I listen politely and nod.

“What you need to do is set up your games in bars. Like Pac-Man! Or those old pinball machines.”

This, ultimately, is my taxi driver’s master plan: bring back the arcade to bars. At this point, I thought he was insane, and whenever I try to explain that there are still, in fact, arcade games out there, he talks to me about Pac-Man again.

Except I have this annoying habit of really giving the people I talk to the chance to be heard out, and I try to ask myself, what if they’re right?

What this guy’s point was, he isn’t being reached at all by the videogame market. But he was, once, a long time ago: back in the times of Pac-Man. For all the talks about casual players entering the fray, this guy is the most casual of casuals. He’s never gonna sit at home with a controller to play a 20-hour game, however “accessible” I make it. I don’t think the Wii or the DS cut it either.

So what’s the way to reach this audience with videogames? Thinking about it, he’s already reached, but perhaps he doesn’t know about it. Perhaps he throws the occasional coin into a video-poker machine. Or perhaps he picked up that plastic rifle at the pub and shot a few bucks. (Yes, we have hunter arcade machines in pubs in Edmonton. Not the most un-redneck thing around.)

The truth is, when we talk about videogames, we talk about a very small subset of electronic entertainment, even when we start including casual gaming. We’re talking about home entertainment, distributed for use on the PC or some form of handheld or home console. There’s an entire segment out there that reaches people that never heard of an Xbox. Heck, even the quiz machine at the pub downstairs is a form of electronic entertainment.

The arcade is a dying form, relegated to the dark corners of shopping malls. What happened to it? Most of the games nowadays are less-than-stellar, involving either simple beat-em-up gameplay, or some sort of plastic gun. Is there a way to bring better gameplay to these? And what is “better”? Do better graphics matter? Does it matter than the game does little more than tease you long enough for you to throw a few quarters at it?

I don’t really know. All I know is that videogames are not ubiquitous as music, partly because we have a very specific way of thinking about them, and the hard thinking about alternate means of distribution is left to the video poker and bar quiz machine makers of this world.

As for my taxi driver, maybe he’s the marketing genius he tried to sell himself as. If that’s the case, he’s years ahead of the game. Or years behind.

Or both.

I played Portal for the first time a few months back, and loved every bit of it. This weekend, however, I found myself playing it again after I showed it to my friend Flint. I sat by him as he played through the game once, occasionally asking me for hints; then I played it through on my own in an hour. Then I played it again.

Running through the game a second time in a few months, I’m struck by the brilliance of this game. This may well be the best pure videogame experience of the decade. I’m convinced this is one game that will stand the test of time, and still be highly enjoyable even once the graphics are severely outdated.

Portal is a game technology achievement. The portal mechanism, rather than being a gimmick, is one of those game mechanics that is both technologically impressive, and a paradigm shift in gaming. After playing through a few levels of Portal, you find yourself gauging your immediate environment not in terms of distance, but in terms of portal mobility. Suddenly, a high wall is not an obstacle, but an opportunity to jump a great distance, if you can only find a deep enough hole to fall down into before opening a portal at your feet. Portal is one of these amazing games that actually forces you to rethink a map’s topology in terms that are unique to the game. In other words, it makes you think differently.

Far from being a tech demo, however, Portal is also an incredible story. The story of <insert test subject name here>, the unknown and quiet prisoner of Aperture Science, is expressed subtly, through the one-way relationship the character develops with GladOS, the psychotic, passive-aggressive AI. The pathetic begging that GladOS deploys to convince the player to turn around and die a horrible death is simply priceless, and full of pathos.

For all its simplicity, the Portal universe is actually pretty well-realized. The game never, EVER needs a cutscene to expose its universe; you wake up in the lab, and are given the promise of cake at the end of the 19 tests. And that’s it. The rest is told through quick glimpses into the inner workings of the laboratory, including hidden corners where human lab rats have hidden, as well as Aperture Science Powerpoints. The intensity with which the survivors write “The cake is a lie” over and over on the walls is a quiet testament to how surreal and oppressive the lab environment is meant to be. Talk about driving the point across without the need for a cutscene.

Back to the gameplay mechanics themselves, I was stunned, watching my friend Flint play through, to see how progressive and rewarding the whole game is. Sure, some of these puzzles are pretty wicked, requiring clever thinking, but also some decent skills with a controller. But these puzzles are constructed in a sequence that gradually gives you the tools needed to solve the more complex puzzles, and makes you practice the techniques you’ll need. What’s left is an intense sense of satisfaction when you solve a challenging puzzle.

Overall, Portal is one of these rare combinations of technological, gameplay and storytelling innovations, all rolled into one neat, unpretentious and focused game experience. In my mind, the craft and creativity that went into making such a game makes it stand head and shoulders above the top tier of positively-reviewed games such as GTA IV or Halo 3. This is what videogames should be, and as such, Portal needs to be celebrated.

Bravo, <insert Portal game creator here>! You must really be the pride of <insert game creator’s home town here>!

I was originally reticent to pick up Call of Duty 4. I felt giving the cinematic shooter a modern setting would be pushing it squarely into the realm of glorification of war. But as the reviews started pouring in, I couldn’t help myself. Yeah, it’s another game that contributes to the fantasy that wars are exciting events that pit Americans against the forces of evil in the world; but at the same time, it was a pulse-pouding, no-holds-barred cinematographic experience, and quite possibly the best game I played last year.

Call of Duty 4 did the extraordinary thing that previously only Resident Evil 4 had managed: offer a new installment in the series which managed to both stay incredibly true to its roots, and yet offer something completely unique and riveting. Truth be told, we attempted that in Splinter Cell Double Agent, but ultimately did not pull it off. CoD 4, along with RE4, should be held in high esteem by any team wishing to inject a new dose of excitement in a long-running franchise.

That being said, I’m puzzled by the decision of Activision to go back to World War Two with the next installment in the series, Call of Duty: World at War. They had originally hinted at a new theater of war, but it turns out we’ll be going back to the Second World War, going to such exotic and original locales as Nazi Germany Berlin, and the Pacific. Wow, how compelling.

It sounds totally illogical to take such a step backward when you consider CoD 4 sold a whopping 10 million copies so far. Yet it all becomes clear when you notice who is helming this installment in the series: this is not Infinity Ward’s baby, people; rather, it’s Treyarch’s.

It’s no secret that Activision is alternating between Treyarch and Infinity Ward when it comes to pumping out CoD titles. Heck, that’s how I got to work on Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow and Splinter Cell Double Agent, when these episodes were sent to Shanghai while Montreal spent their time on the odd-numbered titles. What sucks here, however, is that clearly, when Treyarch began their work on the fifth installment of Call of Duty, someone out there didn’t believe in Infinity Ward. There’s no reason to go back to World War Two if it isn’t to minimize the damage of a botched Call of Duty 4. If the fans had rejected en masse the modern setting, they would be confident that the fifth installment would be bringing them back to the wonderful world of Nazis and kamikazes.

In other words, Call of Duty: World at War is quite possibly the result of Activision heding their bets with the modern setting, and placing a bit of their money against Infinity Ward. I bet an executive producer somewhere must have shit his pants the day he saw CoD 4 pass the 10 million units sold mark, though.

As for CoD: World at War, I can’t find much in it that excites me. Darker, more survival horror approach to war? Meh. Integrating the innovations of CoD 4‘s multiplayer into the single player? Not sure how that’s innovative considering CoD 4 brilliantly took them from single player RPGs to begin with… Not to say World at War won’t be a good game; I’ll just wait to learn what’s next on Infinity Ward’s plate before I get worked up about the series again.

And Activision, for betting against your star studio when establishing the setting of the new CoD: bad publisher, bad!

I’ve spoken about GTA IV before. I’m still of the opinion that it doesn’t offer much more than GTA San Andreas did, and I’m incredibly annoyed at the mission and saving structure. Every time I drive to a mission giver’s house, then drive to my objective, then start the mission and die… then have to go through the whole goddam tedious thing again, I want to scream. Fortunately, I found I can just get a cab from place to place. So I’m playing the game pretty much as a pedestrian, and I get to skip having to drive through Liberty City for the 200th time. It doesn’t overcome my frustrations, but it lowers the annoyance enough that I’m still playing this game, somehow.

If GTA IV is what I play when I’m alone, I kickstart Rock Band whenever Helene is in the mood. I tell you: it’s just an order of magnitude better than Guitar Hero. Personally, I was never that great with Guitar Hero… I made it to the end of Medium difficulty and pretty much stagnated there. Helene, on the other hand, kicks ass. She plays most of the Rock Band songs on Expert. The great thing here is that I can sing instead of playing the guitar, and as a result, we’re currently going through the Band World Tour on Hard. Feels like we’re on a bit more of an even ground.

The fact that you’re playing different instruments in the band is actually, I think, one of the most pleasant things about the game. It’s asymmetrical collaboration, if I can coin a silly game design expression: you’re all working towards the same goal, but you’re doing so in dramatically different ways. I love it. Case in point:

The other night, Helene and I were trying to finish a 7-song set when we ran into the hellish guitar solo of Molly Hatchet’s Flirtin’ with Disaster. After three tries, we decided the best strategy was to stock up on star power to get through the solo (Helene was playing it on Hard.) I kind of panicked and launched my star power too early, but Helene managed to power through the solo… only to die at the very end of it. And so, stressed like crazy, I hit two yellow lines… Enough to get the star power necessary to save her with the life bar an inch from the bottom. Whew!

As to the pleasure of playing on the X360 again, I have one thing to say: it’s good to be back.

Erick Wujcik, whom I was fortunate enough to call a friend, passed away quietly Saturday evening.

I met Erick at Ubisoft Shanghai, where he was the Game Design Studio Manager. Erick was a man like no other: a true master of game design, and a lover of the imagination. You could see where Erick went by the blazing trail of inspiration and dreams he lit on the way.

Erick died from pancreatic and liver cancer. The doctors had given him 4-6 weeks to live; he lived for six months, and passed away quietly, surrounded by friends and family.

Farewell, Erick. I am grateful to the Universe for making our paths intersect.

For a list of his staggering accomplishments in the videogame and the RPG industries, please visit www.erickwujcik.com.

Having recently kicked my WoW habit, and being a huge fan of GTA: San Andreas, I really couldn’t help but pick up GTA IV and check out the hype for myself. After all, how could I pass up on the bestselling game of all time and one of the most critically-acclaimed ones as well?

For starters, I want to make it clear: I’m enjoying this game a great deal. There’s just something that resonates with me about the story of Nico Bellic, trying to escape his shameful past only to find into the criminal element of Liberty City. I enjoyed San Andreas‘s story a lot as well, and the gangsta culture didn’t bother me at all… but the Eastern European flair of this installment is charming to me. Not only that, but the voice work and the mo-cap are pretty amazing.

But my problem is this: I don’t see the generation gap between Xbox and Xbox 360, here. Whereas GTA: Vice City on the PS2 was a revolutionary piece of gameplay, GTA IV on the X360 sounds like a refined version of an old-gen title.

Sure, there’s more details in the city. What I question, however, is how much of it actually builds up to a next-gen experience. It seems Rockstar has added width to the offering, but very little depth. So now I can go bowling, play darts, witness explicit sex with a prostitute, take the subway, or even go online and meet someone over Craigslist. Uhh… Ok.

Contrast this with San Andreas, and the way it innovated. GTA:SA essentially took GTA III, and expanded it in scope. It added elements of RPG into the mix with character customization. It gave us not only the city of Los Angeles, but also the countryside and San Francisco.

These added elements injected depth into the experience. I would argue that logging on and looking at websites in GTA IV is funny, but doesn’t add any depth. In other words: I get a slightly more complex GTA experience, but nothing innovative with this iteration. How is it that GTA:SA doesn’t deserve the magic “4″ number, yet this X360 iteration does?

And once I’ve experienced the added quirks, what am I left with? Pretty much the same mission structure as before, actually, with all its flaws. I still can’t save anywhere, and when I fail a mission, I have to start all over. It’s ok for a game to be hard and ask me to start again a few times, but when I have to start all over again the boring parts, then have to fail because of crappy controls or poor difficulty balancing? That’s unacceptable. When I dread certain types of missions because the crappy controls get in the way of my experience, that’s inexcusable especially if you consider that these problems have existed in previous GTA installments. (I’m looking at you, “shooting at an enemy motorcycle while trying to follow it at high-speed without being thrown off my own bike” missions.)

GTA IV is “old gen”. It’s a wider, more expansive version of GTA III, without much added polish or realization, or even depth. Was it too much to ask that GTA take the Call of Duty 4 road and offer us unparalleled levels of excitement instead of adding a bowling mini-game? Perhaps. After all, that’s not preventing them from selling gazillions of copies.