Happy New Year Everyone!

Man alive, it's 2008 and where are my flying cars? And for that matter, where's my robot servant? Oh well, instead I have a smoking hot, overclocked quad-core processor in my latest gaming rig, dual monitors, and crazy fast dual 8800 video cards with 680 million transistors each — honestly, what more could a guy want? I can't wait to hear they've surpassed 1 billion transistors in the next year or so — it'll makes my brain explode! But hey, before that happens, let's get down to the business at hand. There'll be plenty of time for exploding brains later.

As I hinted at last time, we have some big things in the works for 2008. And I can finally start to talk about the first of many, our new big game, Demigod. We've been secretly working on this game for almost a year now, and we're tearing the kimono off and revealing all the juicy details in the February issue of Games for Windows magazine. We're really excited about finally getting the word out, and we can't wait to hear what you all think.

But there's more to Demigod than just us revealing a new game. We're also announcing that we're moving into self-publishing. It's an exciting and risky move for us, but one that we've been wanting to do for a long time, and it marks the beginning of a new chapter for us as a company. Our goal, more than ever before, is to create the best games ever and to stay ever faithful to the art and craft of game making.

We're barely two weeks into 2008, and we have another big announcement--the release date for the movie based on our Dungeon Siege property is fast approaching. In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Take will hit theaters on January 11 (only a few days from now) and people from all over the country are reporting that they're seeing the commercials on TV and huge billboards on the sides of roads and buildings. This is a big thrill for all of us here at GPG, and we're very excited about heading out to the theater next weekend and seeing the movie.

Have a great week, play tons, play fair!

Have a great 2008!

Chris Taylor
CEO
Gas Powered Games

The February issue of Games for Windows magazine (on sale January 8th) has the exclusive reveal on our newest game, Demigod. Set in an awesome future-fantasy world, Demigod is a team-based action game that casts you as a hero waging war to obtain a position within the pantheon of gods.

There are two hero types--General and Assassin--and the type you choose determines how the game plays. Select an Assassin-class hero, and the game plays like an action-RPG; select a General hero, and Demigod plays more like a strategy game.

For all the details, pick up Games for Windows. In the meantime, we sat down and spoke with Demigod's lead designer, John Comes, who dishes some dirt on the game.

Question: What was your inspiration for Demigod? How long have you been kicking around the idea for this game?

Answer: Bob Berry (Demigod's producer) and I spent a lot of time playing RTS mods. We looked at all the popular ones, like Defense of the Ancients (DotA), Footmen Frenzy and even some tank mod for WarCraft III. Each of the mods circled around the idea of playing as a single hero in a huge battle. That was our starting point.

From there, we combined those ideas with my love for team-based first-person games like Battlefield and Team Fortress, then we added in the principle that we wanted the game to be quick and fun, something you can play for a short time and then quit. The Supreme Commander engine was the final piece of the puzzle because it allows for a fantastic sense of scale.

I first got the itch to create a fantasy game with the Supreme Commander engine about a year before we started the concept phase of Demigod. Moving away from the strict RTS model is something I've wanted to do for a long time, and Demigod has given me the freedom to do just that.

Q: How did "white boxing" (creating the game with minimal art assets) Demigod in the early stages help shape its design?

A: If you were to look at the original design document, the original maps or play an early version of the game, you wouldn't recognize the game we have today. White boxing gave us a luxury most game makers don't get—we could drastically change the gameplay when something wasn't working without spending any money on redoing art assets. "Find the fun first" was our motto.

The first few months were crazy. We ripped out and replaced entire systems over and over again, but each iteration just got better and better. We finally got to the point where the game was an absolute blast to play, and all it was a bunch of white boxes. That's when we knew we really had something special.

By the time we ramped up the team, Demigod was already completely playable, had a ballpark balance and people were playing it every day because it's fun. White boxing also gave us an intangible benefit in that everyone on the team could just pick up and play the game—they didn't need to read through a big design doc in order to understand what we were doing.

Q: Demigod takes several different genres and combines them into a new experience. Is that the future of gaming?

A: It's hard to say what the future of gaming is, but sticking with the same model over and over again has proven to wear out over time. I do believe there are a lot of in-between-genre areas that we still have to work with. How much of each genre to put in a game is the tricky part. You don't want to alienate your RTS players because it's too RPG-esque and vice versa.

The International CES exposition is happening in Las Vegas until January 10th, and our sci-fi-action-RPG game Space Siege is on full display at the Microsoft Games for Windows and Dell booths. If you're attending CES, be sure to stop by and see how the game's shaping up.

The official Space Siege Web site continues to offer new content. The crew section was recently unlocked, revealing more details about the game's characters. And starting in late January, we'll be posting a series of video interviews with Chris and team, where they discuss the game's development.

Official Space Siege site: http://www.spacesiege.com

In mid-December, the GPGnet team released the first casual game for GPGnet, SudokuMP. Sudoku is a popular casual game, and we've added our own twist that lets players go head-to-head or play in "FFA" mode with any number of other players.

If you'd like to play SudokuMP, log into GPGnet and then head to the Vault (under Tools). Simply download and install the Sudoku software and you're set. We plan on releasing more casual games via GPGnet in the future, so watch for announcements.

With the release of Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, the number of registered GPGnet users (people who have created an account and logged into GPGnet) continues to climb steadily. As of this writing, over 206,000 people have registered and more than 500,000 ranked and unranked games have been played over GPGnet. Those are some significant landmarks.

The GPGnet roadmap for the next few months includes a significant facelift and new server technology as we prepare to support Space Siege and other products on GPGnet.