"It's really gold for us to get this insight from the community."

    Lars: For us it's validating and solving problems with the backend servers. Validating that it all worked to ensure we have a really good launch. In addition to that getting the audience's eyes on battlelog, having them try it out, even though it's rough code still. It's really gold for us to get this insight from the community. Yes, they're loud sometimes, and very passionate about it, but I'd rather have them loud and passionate than not talking to us at all. So I see that as a sign of investment.


GameSpy: When Bad Company 2 came out there were lots of issues with the server browser for the first few days. Do you think your beta testing will ensure that everything will work well on Day 1? Are you confident of a perfect launch?

    Lars: That is the intention of course. I am much more confident than before the open beta. It's like when you do a parachute jump – you can only fold your parachute so many times. For every game we get more experienced, and we've definitely done the best we can, far beyond what we've ever done before, to make this a successful launch. Of course, if numbers go totally bananas, there's always areas that you can't predict. If that happens then those are luxury problems.

Battlefield 3 Beta Interview

Who better to speak to about the issues arising from the recent Battlefield 3 beta than the game's Lead Multiplayer Designer, Lars Gustavsson. After pumping dozens of hours into the beta we had plenty of questions for him during yesterday's Australian Battlefield 3 event. Where's the VOIP and joystick support? Will bullet damage be altered? Can we set up our own squads? Why are jet campers such douchebags? Lars answered all of these, and more.

Reviews Rage PC Review

With John Carmack devoting a large chunk of his cybernetically enhanced brain to the art of building rockets instead of crafting rocket jumping simulators, we've been decidedly cautious about the upcoming Rage and its reliance upon id Tech 5. Id games are known first and foremost for their technological prowess, so has Rage suffered from Mr Carmack's obsession with sending passengers into orbit? More importantly, has id finally rediscovered how to create truly great game experiences, rather than excellent tech demos for their licensed engines?

Despite Carmack's attention being less than undivided this time around, Rage is still a technological tour de force… for the most part. It's equally at home rendering vast desert planes as it is crumbling post-apocalyptic cities and subterranean havens cramped with detail. This is a graphics engine that excels at environment and character models, but it's not quite at home with the small stuff, such as fluids and smoke effects. Nor does it churn out dozens of dynamic light sources like many of today's deferred rendering engines. Considering its greatest strength is the use of a technique called megatexture, it's surprising that its greatest weakness is the appearance of textures at close range. Stand with your virtual nose pressed against any of the game's surfaces and they devolve into a blurry mess, lacking the microtexturing that other engines do so well (and yes, we did enable the texture hack on our dual GTX 580 powered test PC). Still, overall we're pleased to report that Rage is generally an amazing game to look at, especially when you're standing at the foot of a mountain range or city.