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Civilization designer and veteran god game developer Sid Meier gave one of the final keynote speeches at this years’ Games Developers Conference in San Francisco, explaining his thoughts on what drives his players and how his thinking on player psychology has changed over time. Meier talked of the “unholy alliance” between the player’s suspension of disbelief and the designer’s willingness to defy both logic and the laws of maths to satisfy the player’s expectations. “A lot of what I thought I knew was wrong,” said the Civilization designer. “And the reason was because I really hadn’t taken into account what really happens in the player’s game.” Can’t reward the player enough Meier, the Director of Creative Development at Firaxis Games, stressed that it is crucial to give players the feeling of winning and to make the first 15 minutes “really compelling, really fun – almost a foreshadowing of all the cool stuff that’s going to happen later in the game

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Nintendo is rumoured to be preparing an Nvidia Tegra powered successor to its popular DS handheld, following the recent UK launch of the DSi XL . The rumours were swirling amongst the crowds of games developers at the Games Developers Conference in San Francisco earlier this month, with talk of a possible unveiling at this year’s E3 in June. Accelerometer gaming Raymond Padilla claims that several developers working on the next-gen DS have said at GDC it could be announced at E3 in LA in three months’ time. It adds that the development kits are similar to those developers received from Nintendo for GameCube and Wii, with an Nvidia Tegra chip set included as its CPU/GPU (instead of ATI’s CPU chips which were used in GameCube and Wii). The developers Padilla spoke with also claimed that the DS2 will have an iPhone-style accelerometer, as suggested by Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata late last year.

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PlayStations recently announced Move motion controller may have wowed audiences at this year’s Games Developers’ Conference, but already there seems to be limits to the peripheral. It seems that only two fully fledged Move setups (which is the motion controller and sub-controller) will be able to be connected to the PS3 at any one time. This means that you will be able to have four controllers, without nunchuck, connected which will limit the moves of the controller somewhat.

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While cloud-enabled gaming has the potential to deliver games like Crysis to smartphone screens in all their glory , owners of Palm webOS phones can do with far less for the time being. Palm is tying up with Epic Games in a bid to bolster the entertainment value of its webOS platform. Epic has successfully ported its insanely popular Unreal Engine 3 to Palm’s webOS just like it managed with the iPhone. It today demoed the game engine on a Palm Pre Plus at the ongoing Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. This means that developers will be able to leverage Epic’s popular game engine in combination with Palm’s new Plug-in Development Kit (PDK) to develop more powerful games for webOS phones.  Unlike on the iPhone, games running on a webOS phone can be pushed to the background as the user engages with other apps

For the full story, go to Maximum PC

AMD really is kicking sand in their competitor’s face in the graphics business, but they dipped into their marketing bag for an old trick at the annual Game Developer Conference: developing a vague branding strategy, complete with logo. At a presentation where the company featured guest speakers from leading game companies, AMD discussed its commitment to developer relations. At the end, they rolled out a new brand: AMD Gaming Evolved. “AMD Gaming Evolved” is a catch-all brand that is “a reflection of our ongoing commitment to gamers.” It’s as if AMD’s eventual goal is to cover the entire surface of your PC with stickers with AMD logos. The 90-minute presentation wasn’t entirely bereft of content, however

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While there is currently a cool 32 million people regularly playing FarmVille on a daily basis on Facebook, the social network has made a plea to games developers to create ‘iconic games’ such as Mario, Halo or Sonic for the platform. Facebook Platform Manager, Gareth Davis, speaking at this week’s Games Developers Conference in San Francisco, reminded devs that the next killer game was out there and that Facebook was ready to help to host it and popularise it. Research suggests around three quarters of Facebook’s 400m users regularly play social games on the site. “The next killer game is still out there and this game will come from you,” Gareth Davis told a room of designers in San Francisco. “When we look at every major game platform, we see that there is an iconic defining game on that platform whether it’s Sonic or Mario or Halo.

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Sony has signed up the big six Hollywood studios to provide high def movies for the PlayStation Network this week. The latest PSN high def announcement was made at this month’s Games Developers Conference. Sony has inked deals with 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, Sony Pictures (obviously), Universal and Warner Bros. to deliver HD movies for the US PSN. A significant milestone “Securing high definition content from these studios is another significant milestone further validating PlayStation Network as a complete entertainment network in the home

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A super-duper amount of RAM! There are two things we think of when we hear the word “supercomputer.” The first is the failed 1970s NBC show Supercomputer (now available on DVD from Shinehart Wigs). The other is a massive room full of HAL9000-like scary boxes just two MIPS away from declaring thermal nuclear war on humanity. So, what was Gateway thinking when it decided to call its FX6831 a Gaming Super-computer?

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Earlier, we brought you word that Ubisoft’s much-maligned DRM servers were on the fritz . “But why?” you probably wondered before continuing to stay far, far away from them. Well, what goes around comes around, it would seem, because Ubisoft’s declared that its servers are under “attack.” PC gamers who are both tech-savvy and prone to semi-militant protest? Who’da thunk it?

For the full story, go to Maximum PC

The first game containing Ubisoft’s massively controversial new digital rights system, which kicks players out of the game if they lose their internet connection for any reason, shipped last week. Silent Hunter V is just the first of many planned titles to include this ‘feature’, though a recent revelation that it’s already been cracked may throw a spanner in the works. Nonetheless, gamers hate it with righteous passion, while the publisher thinks it’s safeguarding PC gaming.

The full story can be found on Tech Radar