From Gears of War to Unreal Tournament, Epic Games is known for great games and bleeding-edge technology.   And now you can add another bonus to the list - free software. 

The company just released the Unreal Development Kit for free online.  Download the software, and you can use the acclaimed engine to make your own titles.   Yes, there's a caveat - only for educational and non-commercial use.  But Epic - along with Valve Software in Bellevue, WA and id Software in Mesquite, TX - remains committed to nurturing the homebrew gaming scene.  It's worth noting that all three of these companies rose from the PC gaming underground, and have never forgotten their roots. 

Gamers are using consoles to watch movies, but will they use them to read books?   Maybe so.  In an interview with the Financial Times, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata says “I’m interested because it’s a new business model in which the user doesn’t bear the communications cost."

Nintendo is actually already into the e-books business with a classic novel collection for the DS handheld.  I described this in a commentary for National Public Radio, which you can listen to here.   Or read the transcript:

Do gamers read? To me it's always been a silly thing to ask, like wondering if gamers sleep or wash. It's as if by picking up an Xbox controller, a person ceases to be human, that ordinary values and interests get unplugged, that after a few rounds of Grand Theft Auto, all that's left in front of the TV is a twitching Neanderthal with big thumbs and a tiny brain.

Players don't have to defend themselves against this charge anymore. Video game culture hit an important milestone with this year's release of the 100 Classic Books Collection for the Nintendo DS handheld game system. Plug the cartridge into your DS and you get a choice of electronic books to read - from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" to William Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night."

The experience is ideally suited for the DS, which has two screens. Hold the DS upright and you'll see a page of text on each small menu. To turn pages, you tap the screen with your stylus. To keep your place, you press a button and a brightly-colored bookmark awaits your return.

There are gamey features, too. If you're not sure what you feel like reading, the DS will suggest a book based on how you answer a quick quiz about your mood. What did you dream about last night? Something scary? If so, then the pages of "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson might materialize on your screen.

Gamers who crave more atmosphere for their reads can select from ambient background audio like a soothing beach or bustling airport. And not to worry -if you burn through the 100 available books, with a wireless Internet connection, you can download more.

While a Nintendo DS won't replace Amazon's Kindle e-book reader, it marks a significant advance, just as Guitar Hero and Rock Band turned a new generation onto classic rock artists, like Rush and The Who, publishers and authors can now rethink how they reach this audience, too. Grand Theft Dickens may be coming your way soon.

I profiled Insomniac, makers of games including Resistance and Rachet & Clank, in a previous issue of IEEE Spectrum.  The company always manages to churn out great games that exhibit both sophisticated technology and addictive play.

But, according to this blog post from Insomniac's Mike Acton, the games are changing.  The company had long been making games under a certain formula - the higher the frame rate, the better.  But those days are done, Acton says.   "One of the long-standing sacred cows here at Insomniac is framerate," he writes, "We’ve long viewed a solid framerate as both a sign of a quality product and professionalism as developers. It’s always been point of pride in our work and considered an extremely serious part of our development process. However, during development, there are hard choices to be made between higher quality graphics and framerate. And we want to make the right choices that reflect our commitment to providing you with the best looking games out there. To that end, our community team did some research into the question of framerate. The results perhaps confirmed what I’ve known for a long time, but found it difficult to accept without evidence. They found that:  A higher framerate does not significantly affect sales of a game.  [AND] A higher framerate does not significantly affect the reviews of a game."

Read more here.

The other day, I blogged about the end of TV broadcast, and the rise of gamers viewing flicks via vidgame platforms.  Here's an addendum - Nintendo Wii looks to be joining in on the party.  

And here's my added two cents.  How about indie films made for vidgame platforms?  You may have heard about a film called Paranormal Behavior, made for $15,000 in a week - and now topping the box office with about $30 million in ticket sales.  It's a classic, minimalistic horror movie, perfect for the game crowd.  As more people get accustomed to watching films on their Xboxes/PS3s/Wiis, it's only a matter of time before filmmakers plug in too.

Here's an interesting story in the Los Angeles Times.  It's about people watching media on their computers instead of TVs.  The big idea is that - with services like Hulu and Netflix - there's less and less reason to tune in to the Tube anymore.  To this, I'd add Xbox Live - which offeres Netflix streaming as part of its service.  

Speaking of Netflix, now the movie streaming service is coming to the Playstation 3. More than 12,000 movies will be available on the PS3 next month.

I have an old friend who refuses to own a TV, but has been watching stuff on his Xbox for years - not just streaming movies, but DVDs, etc.  The idea of not having TV service might seem odd to some, but a new generation is increasingly comfortable with the plan.

While Microsoft's motion-sensing cam - code-named Project Natal - has been garnering buzz, Sony isn't staying out of the hive.  Here's a video of a new 360 degree 3D image display from the company.  Gamers are already imagining what kind of new experiences can be rendered with such a device - as if it's the holographic chess board from Star Wars made real.  Between innovations like this and Natal (and of course the Wii and iPhone), the game industry is going through a period of explosive transformation.  Slowly but surely, the whole idea of the screen is breaking apart.  Gaming is becoming more immersive, more fluid, more mobile.  The Holodeck- the virtual world imagined in Star Trek - may be closer than it seems.

Some intrepid gamers who are modifying the old Duke Nukem shoot 'em up for high-resolution playback.   Cool.  So where's Duke Nukem Forever - the long-awaited follow-up?

The aptly-titled shooter goes down as the ultimate shorthand for everything that can go wrong when a game gets too bold. Since the first game debuted in 1991, the franchise (which includes more than 15 titles) has raked in roughly $500 million.  The beefy, catchphrase-spewing, Ahnold-inspired Duke was a huge innovation - establishing the sort of political incorrectness, and giddy gore that would become the trademark of the Grand Theft Auto generation.  Fittingly, Take-Two Interactive, publishers of GTA, would eventually snap up the rights to Duke Nukem Forever (along with buying 3D Realms' acclaimed shoot 'em up, Max Payne, for $45 million). 

Oh, and it seemed so cool at the time.  DNF promised a cheeky, cheesy antidote to the grim late 90s shooters.   With 3D Realms staying tight-lipped, fans devoured every new bit of into online (lap dances!  Vegas!).   Then came the lag, the rumors, the engine switches (Quake II!  Unreal!).   Diehards hoped the delays were some elaborate viral marketing hoax, but couldn't avoid the stench of staleness setting in.  

After a tantalizing build-up of tweets, screenshots, and rumors this spring that seemed to indicate the game's release, the brawny first person shooter ended with a whimper.  Earlier this year, 3D Realms announced that it was shutting down for good and ending development on the title.  Gamers hoping for viral marketing ploy were quickly fragged by a post from the company's webmaster, Joe Siegel.  "This is not a marketing thing," he wrote, "It's true."  But with other Duke spin-offs, and maybe a film, in the works, the legend lives on.

Need another reason to download games?   Here's one.   A postal worker got caught swiping games from Gamefly envelopes.

Meanwhile, there's more evidence that gamers are booting up downloads - especially during a recession.  According to this story in Reuters, premium downloads of online games is growing 50 to 100 percent per yer.  This is happening while game sales - so far in 2009 - are down by 14 percent.  Consider the difference between buying a new Madden game and getting it online:

"[The] exclusive downloadable five-on-five football game offers a $15 casual alternative to the fully-packed 'Madden NFL 10' console games, which retail for $40 to $60. It's not just the mainstream audience that's migrating to downloads. Chris Buffa, editor-in-chief of AOL's GameDaily.com, said as hardcore gamers have tightened their belts during the recession, they've opted for more affordable gaming options. 'Instead of going to the store and picking up three or four games, they're buying that one big game each week,' said Buffa. 'Personally, I opt for more downloadable content over retail releases because I get more for my dollar.'

Good news for all you game makers out there.  This week, the Wall Street Journal reports that videogames are looking to score a comeback. See more below:

WSJ 10/14/09

Sales of video-game software have been on the decline for six consecutive months, but analysts expect a return to positive growth when sales data for September are reported Thursday afternoon.  U.S. game sales in the month of September will be released late in the day Thursday by the NPD Group. On average, analysts are expecting software sales to grow about 15% compared with the same period last year, according to a tally of forecasts by MarketWatch.

Game sales have been showing declines for the last six months, as the slumping economy and tough comparisons have made the current year a difficult one for the industry.  By the end of August, total industry sales were $9.07 billion, according to NPD data. That's down 14% from sales for the same period last year.

Analysts widely expect the current year's total sales to come in flat with last year, but the sector will need to have a strong holiday-sales period to get to that point. Several of the year's most anticipated titles, including "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2," have yet to hit store shelves.  "Overall, September sales and retail data indicate that the preholiday season is off to a good start," said Jesse Divnich of Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, a game market-research firm, in a report this week. "These results will bring some much-needed pressure relief to both publishers and retailers alike amid concerns the economy may still have posed a threat to holiday-season performance."

I've blogged quite a bit about the impact of the iPhone on gaming.   In my opinion, it's a good thing - fostering the kind of independent development we saw back in the days of the Commodore 64 and Apple II (funny how Apple was behind the first wave of game innovation too).  Instead of needing $50 million and a team of dozens of programmers, two guys in a garage can code and distribute the next big thing on their own.

But for established publishers/developers, this kind of bottom-up revolution could be a killer.  By porting their Triple-A titles to mobile platforms like the iPhone (in effort to cash in), they may actually be devaluing their content.   This is something on the mind of game industry analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan, who tells Bonus Round that "the iPod touch is the most dangerous thing that ever happened to the publishers, ever, and they don’t get it for two reasons.  One, if you put Madden on the iPod touch for $10, you just cheapen the value of Madden. Whether it’s the same experience or not, and it’s not, why would I ever spend $60 for Madden if I can get it for $10 on my iPod touch?”