This summer is definitely going to be a hot one as super heroes and heroines alike will get the chance to meet the team behind NCsoft's City of Heroes MMO game. The team will be going around North America to do its run of trade show events for the summer to help promote the game. Find out where the events will be held by clicking on the "read more" link found below.

Blizzard's coming to the 2008 Game Developers Conference and has a bunch of events lined up for the five-day gathering. The studio that brought us the Warcraft and StarCraft franchises will talk about the future of MMOs, show a new cinematic teaser for StarCraft II, and more besides. Check out the full article to find out what else they're bringing to the GDC.

If you feel disappointed about the cancellation of last year's Game Developers Conference in Korea, here's a little bit of news that will make you smile.

It was announced on the official GDC 2008 website that inventor and author Ray Kurzweil will be giving a keynote speech at the event.  Don't know who Ray Kurzweil is? Interested in finding out more details about his speech? Head on over to the full article for the answers.

Second Life players rejoice - all network issues have now been resolved as of 5:53 pm PDT Monday, with the some 400 regions that have been affected now back up and running.

Jeska Linden had explained in an earlier update that the main cause of aforementioned network issues were in fact connection problems between the Dallas and San Francisco locations of Second Life. Thankfully, whatever problems there were are now all fixed, and in a timely fashion too - so kudos to the Lindens for taking care of not only the game, but the players as well.

Other MMORPG managers, take note - THIS is how you should manage your games.

Videogame development news magazine Develop has just reported that Linden Lab, the developers of the highly popular Second Life MMORPG, has set up a new UK development team office in Brighton.

Linden Lab now joins the numerous studios and development companies, such as NCSoft and Relentless, based in the Brighton area.

Develop surmises that the move is part of Linden Lab's goal to attract staff who want to work on Second Life yet are not willing to make the move to the company's corporate headquarters in San Francisco. Develop notes a recent posting by software engineer Jim Purbrick on the official blog for the Second Life community which read, "Have you thought about working for Linden Lab, but didn’t want to move to the US?"

Linden Lab's official website currently has job postings for coders to help with R&D for its virtual community, graphics software developers, web developers, and also ops staff.

After what seemed to have been a period of inactivity, NCsoft has made its appearance at the ongoing Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. This year, they proudly shared details about the upcoming MMORPG, Tabula Rasa. Over at the GDC, more details about this title were finally revealed.

Developed by Destination Games, this MMORPG will feature elements such as an integrated voice chat system (very handy for raids and instances as it won't require the player to install a separate program just to be able to chat with his teammates), PvPs which can be prompted by clans declaring war on each other, the option to temporarily join squads or permanently swear allegiance to clans, as well as a Character Cloning system which allows players to explore different character paths without having to start over.

Besides these, the game also promises a lot of leg room for the player. There will be several planets to explore, each with its own range of continents and regions. Also, players will be able to craft items for either personal use or trade.

And then there's the Battlefield Control Points. Now, one can remember that one of the selling points of Tabula Rasa is that the players themselves will effect the ultimate outcome of the game as they battle against the Bane and master the power (and language) of the Logos. Well, the Battlefield Control Points will apparently be playing a role in realizing this point of allowing players' actions to change the game: "entrenched positions on a given battlefield can change hands over the course of a battle and affect spawn points and missions of both enemy and friendly characters."

It all sounds very promising, and we're hoping to see if we'll be able to score a beta account for this title. So, while we wait for this game to be released by Fall of this year, here's some artwork and some screenies to enjoy for the moment.

More details, screenshots and artwork after the Jump!

Aria Systems announced today during the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco that it has signed several new contracts to provide critical back-office support for 11 online games slated for release in the next twelve months.

While the titles will range from high-seas adventure in search of rich rewards to surviving post-plague and nuclear holocaust earth, customers across the board will experience superior customer support and accurate billing thanks to Aria's highly configurable payment and business support engine.

"There are many billing solutions out there, but few are as flexible as Aria," said Sylvain Rochon, President of Sylien Entertainment. "The Aria team 'jumped through hoops' to configure the solution to our business model and our product. It's the right solution for any game developer in need of a customizable and competitively priced billing solution."

Some of the companies and MMORPGs that will be utilizing Aria products and services include Flying Lab Software, Sylien Entertainment' Trade Wars, Fallen Earth from Icarus Studios, Auran Games' Fury. Several other titles which remain confidential in advance of their official launch have also signed on with Aria.

Everybody looks for the freebies in any major event or conference. Since the Game Developers Conference is one cool event, it's not surprising if they dished out cool satchel of goodies to its delegates, right? Check out what they handed out at the GDC'07. There's a black canvass bag filled to the brim with brochures and fliers that are glossy, colored and surely informative. There's this cool mat of chewing gum from Gamedev and what we love the most: a tiny package of jelly beans from 1UP. Nothing beats sucking on these available-only-at-the-GDC candies!

Currently ongoing (until March 9), the Game Developers Conference is being held in San Francisco. It's an annual gathering of video game makers and gaming enthusiasts that'll leave the average gamer happy with all of the gaming news to be had. Having seen the goodie bags, we wonder if they'll be giving out cooler sweets next year? We'll keep you posted for more news as they come. In the meantime, here are some photos:

See more photos after the jump!

It's only been mere hours since Game Developers Conference 2007 opened its doors and yet news of next year's event are already circulating in, how do you say it, teh intarwebz. It's been a real crazy day here at the QJ quarters, what with all the GDC updates pouring in (in torrents, if I might add). Personally, I'd just like to deal with the ongoing GDC first, but just so you guys are way ahead of everybody else, we'll share with you the details we scored on next year's GDC.

According to DevelopMag, show organiser CMP has already confirmed this early on the dates and venues for GDC 2008. If things go as planned, the Game Developers Conference 2008 will take place on February 18-22, and will be held once again at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's shift the focus back to this year's event. GDC Mobile,the Serious Games Summit, Casual Games Summit and Independent Game Festival are the front acts for GDC 2007, with the main conference and expo scheduled to hit the stage on Wednesday. That said, allow this writer to sneak out and get back to insane GDC news reporting. Stay tuned for more.

Paul Sheppard of ITI Techmedia and CEO Andrew McLennan of Metaforic will be speaking in the sponsored speaker session of the Game Developers' Conference (GDC). The conference will be held in San Francisco from March 5 to 9. Other speakers to be at the event are Phil Harrison and Shigeru Miyamoto.

The session's topic will reveal a working notation for game design that will allow the game experience to be evaluated even before the game undergoes production. The new methodology is expected to cut millions from game development costs. ITI Techmedia announced that US$ 10 million has been invested to standardize and establish the development platform worldwide.

The platform should reflect this new methodology, including standard production processes and distribution methods for online PC, console and handheld games. Hand-in-hand with Metaforic Ltd, the Scottish company will demonstrate how developers can already gauge their game's fun factor by using "difficulty graphs."

Even before production, designers can tweak difficulty levels to keep the game fun, and avoiding the opposite extremes of boredom and frustration. Metaforic will be the organization to commercialize the game design technology. The methodology is a product of ITI Techmedia's research and development program.

Andrew McLennan reasons out, "The black art of Game Design is being able to make games that are fun and playable. This research is beginning to shed light on practical ways to understand if a design is likely to be good in a way that working game designers can use, tune and play with."

ITI Techmedia’s sponsored speaker session will take place on Wednesday, March 7 at 4pm. Representatives from both ITI Techmedia and Metaforic can also be found at Meeting Room 6109 in the North Hall.