CC: First of all, thank you for taking the time to speak to us. I'm very keen to learn more about the latest Witcher title and I'm sure that's a curiosity shared by many of our readers. So to kick things off, what can you tell us about Projekt RED's early days?

KT: Boy, did we have fun back in the early days. I mean, we actually have more fun now, but reminiscing about the "old days"... Well, it seems everything had this special glow back then. RED studio came into being in 2002 and began working on the first Witcher installment a year later. Back then, The Witcher 1 was the biggest-budget Polish game ever and, in a way, we were pioneering development on such a large scale in our country. We went big right off the bat - we cooperated with the Academy Award nominee and BAFTA winner Tomasz Bagiński, comic book writer Przemysław Truściński and, most importantly, Andrzej Sapkowski - the author of the Witcher book series.

Don't get me wrong - we had a fairly good idea how to go about making a game, but many things were new to us, especially the scope of what we wanted to do. We decided our first game would be an RPG, and a complex one at that, set in a grim universe, which isn't necessarily the easiest thing to pull off. Still, we were doing what we loved, which is what gave us the fuel to keep going. After all, we were developing a game that we'd like to play ourselves. Eventually, The Witcher turned out to be a critical success, winning over 100 awards, as well as the hearts of RPG fans around the world.

CC: What games of old have inspired Projekt RED's work?

KT: Definitely RPGs - we've got a full spectrum of role-playing fans here at RED. Whether it's DOS-era dungeon crawlers, custom LARPs (including Witcher-themed ones), pen-and-paper games or Japanese RPGs on consoles no one has even heard of - I bet there's someone at CD Project RED that has played them, mastered them and continues to play them to this day. We draw inspiration from all of these every day - singling out one or two titles that inspired us is just impossible.

CC: How important has the response from fans been in the development of Wild Hunt?

KT: Very. Something we always have in the back of our minds is why we're actually making these games and who we're making them for. How could we not listen to our players? We have a very active and supportive community, and the forums are full of great ideas, feedback and general chatter on do's and don'ts from the gamers' perspective. For example - Geralt himself has been and undoubtedly will continue to be one of our most discussed topics. We've been approached countless times about modifying his appearance: hair in ponytails or loose, cut long or short, with a beard or without - it's all been subject to player scrutiny and we love every bit of it. We've also benefited a ton from gamers commenting on the games' interface, quests and much more. Fans are our best focus-testers and that's why we love them so much!

CC: Has there been talk of a fourth game? Or will this be the last in the series?

KT: I'd rather not dodge this question with a typical "yes, everything's possible," but that's exactly the case - one of the fun things about making games is that nothing's written in stone. Still, currently we're only focusing on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077, so let's leave talk about what the future might bring for another occasion.

The wamasu prowls the swamps of Black Marsh in The Elder Scrolls Online. Read our Creating ESO article to find out more about this dangerous enemy

G'Day! I'm very pleased to announce that BioWare will be attending the very first PAX Australia in Melbourne from July 19 to July 21. BioWare has been part of both PAX Prime and PAX East for years, and we are thrilled to now be able to come to Australia and meet our fans there.

Come out to PAX Australia for your chance to meet Cameron Lee (Producer), Patrick Weekes (Senior Writer), Karin Weekes (Lead Editor), and "Evil" Chris Priestly (Community Event planner) as they hold their first-ever-in-Australia panel "BioWare Goes Down Under" Friday July 19 from 4:30-5:30 in the Dropbear Theatre.

We're still finalizing other activities for our visit and want to hear from local Melbournians... Melburnians... Melbournites.... BioWare fans about where we should go and what we should see. We want to see the sights and meet our fans during our stay, so any suggestions for gatherings, parties or ways we can talk with you are very welcome! Email us your ideas to community@bioware.com or contact me through Twitter at BioWare Facebook Page for updates on our Australian trip.

We hope to see you mad blokes and ace sheilas for a fair dinkum chin wag when we come down under for PAX Australia! (Ok, ok - I promise no more Canadian guy trying to use Australian slang. No worries.)

When we opened the doors of the Neverwinter Open Beta on April 30, we expected there to be all kinds of responses, from positive feedback and fun player stories to bug reports and constructive feedback...We've counted on these responses to make the game even better as we get closer and closer to our live launch.

What we did not expect, and should have, is how amazingly supportive and helpful our community would be during the brief snags that we might hit along the way. We are sincerely overwhelmed by all of the positive comments and feedback that we've received from you over the past few weeks, and would like to express our deepest thanks for your ongoing support and willingness to help us make Neverwinter one of the best free-to-play MMORPGs around.

Case in point: this past weekend, the Neverwinter community helped us to identify a major exploit involving the Auction House and Astral Diamond Exchange, which we promptly addressed through a number of corrective actions, including permanent bans on exploitative accounts and a necessary rollback to the time before the exploit was initiated. We realize the frustration that the rollback and related downtime may have caused and are deeply sorry for this inconvenience. We're also overwhelmed by your positive support and patience during the downtime, as well as your assistance in identifying the issue and helping us to develop and implement a solution as quickly as possible.

Kickstarter RecapBackers and fans, let us tell you something. The last ~29 days have been quite an amazing journey. And we're already looking back, getting a bit sentimental. Thomas even had a tear in his eyes this morning (srsly). It feels as it was just yesterday that we pressed the green "launch the damned thing" button on Kickstarter. Without knowing what would come, what to expect, what to fear.

It's has been a great learning experience from our side and we've been challenged in more ways than we could imagine. And at the same time it has been a fantastic journey that seems to have united us with a large part of the community to dare dream the dream of another great Jagged Alliance game.

We are now approaching 6000 people who share the same dream. So we wanted to take this opportunity to make a recap of what has happened the last ~29 days.

- The most important thing is that people from all over the world have already put more than $307,000 (at the time of writing this) into Jagged Alliance: Flashback already. Again we want to tank you (pun intended, as always) for all your support.

- We recently released a Diorama of the game which everyone can download to get a feel for the art direction we'd like to see in Flashback. Thanks for the massive feedback you gave us on that one. See update #20 for more info

- From the start of the Kickstarter we realised that we needed to be a lot clearer and more specific in certain areas, we were in pre-production (and still are) and wanted feedback from all the fans. But the following two weeks we spent on clarifying major parts of the story, combat and strategic elements of the game, which was overall well received by the backers. See the following updates for more info: Update #1, Update #2, Update #4, Update #5 and Update #9.

During the Kickstarter we've been trying to reach out the press for coverage in various areas and also social media like Reddit and YouTube. We even did a Reddit IAMA. We managed to get some coverage here and there, but not at the level we anticipated, which is why we'd like to thank you guys for your help with pushing them to do those interviews and spreading the word among friends, family and on multiple forums! And Thanks to all those journalists who had the time to send us some questions!

Slacker Backer initiative
When we reach our goal (Yeah we'll get there!!) we want to open up for a slacker backer initiative like they have on Project Eternity. The initiative will run to a certain date and all funds will go towards stretch goals. We plan to make this available to both Paypal and Credit Card backers.

The Paypal tally is almost $ 8,000 which means we're already ⅓ of the way to the first stretch goal when we reach our initial goal.

We right now have no end date, and we are unsure what it will be. As long as we are in pre-production and even early production we can still add more sectors and story that fits with the sector. So we will announce the end date sometime after summer to give appropriate warning.

This also means that we will continue adding stretch goals as we reach the initial ones.

Bear Pit Interviews
Shanga and his fellow bears have been busy and cooked together questions for Chris Camfield, Ian Currie and our CEO Thomas Lund. All of the interviews were ready yesterday, so we think you should go check them out

Chris Camfield
Ian Currie
Thomas Lund

New Tiers
$650 Doctor Y No Q Tier: Phew, we're glad you're here, you're rewarded with:
All previous DIGITAL REWARDS + Become a Doctor (Help co-design the Doctor and the name of the clinic co-write 3 responses) Limited (3)

$850 Bubba Croc Tier: *Snap Snap* it's a Trap, you get: All previous rewards + Become the croc "farmer" in the game and help decide his name and the name of the croc farm. (Co-write 5 responses of your choice) Limited (1)

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes begins right where Fallen Enchantress left off. Your fame has spread far and wide bringing forth champions who will aid your cause in restoring civilization to the land.

Two New Factions.
The Objectivist Capitarians and the Industrious Urxen have been added.

Fame.
Champions are no longer placed randomly on the map but instead are earned through fame that your civilization generates through its deeds.

New Leveling System.
Your sovereign and your champions now evolve through a skill tree that visually allows you to pre-plan what kind of hero you want him or her to be.

New Tactical Battle Maps.
Battles are now much more intense with far more special skills available and initiative being far more important. New combat mechanics - such as swarming increase the strategic options.

New Monsters.
The Legendary Heroes did not reach our lands alone. Their ancient enemies have arrived with them - including the nightmarish liches and their skeletal minions, banshees and the dreaded Garagoxi seek dominion over Elemental itself.

More Magic.
New spells like "Wall of Fire" and "Raise Horde" add new options and new dangers to battle.

New Quests, Items, and Equipment.
All of the factions will encounter new quests, gain access to new weapons, armor and equipment and discover many new treasures as they explore the world.

Huge Maps.
A new gigantic sized map delivers epic sized games.
Updated Graphics Engine.

The graphics engine delivers stunningly new visuals while improving performance on older machines.

Updated User Interface.

LOTS more.

Given that the talk is rather long and there's quite a lot of Russian in there, a language a sizable portion of our reader is likely unfamiliar with, I'll try to summarize the salient points of Feargus' speech:

AAA is growing bigger in terms of budgets and team sizes, making this a much less relevant prospect for developers of Obsidian's size, and also making big-budget titles less innovative (because publishers want to be assured their significant investments will wield some profit)

In the future mid-sized developers will have to look at alternatives, and he points out a few of these:

- making parts of games (again, linking back to the swelling team sizes, that make it more difficult to handle everything in-house)

- making free-to-play titles (which he compares to TV, while AAA is akin to movies) and smartphone/tablet titles

- funding game projects with Kickstarter

Feargus also explains that games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout: New Vegas are actually exceptions to the trend of bloated budgets and teams he explained earlier, and are actually relatively cheap to develop, certainly cheaper than what people believe

Feargus then goes on to point out the strategy Obsidian is adopting to tackle future challenges:

First of all, the company won't devote any further resources in developing their own engine, Onyx (which powered Dungeon Siege III and the upcoming South Park: The Stick of Truth, and which was also used as the tech backbone for the ill-fated Aliens: Crucible), and will instead license third-party tech like CryEngine 3 and Unity.

However the tools that have been developed for Onyx, like Obsidian's proprietary dialogue tool, will continue to be used and integrated with the third-party technology Obsidian will employ. Iterating on tools and having them be as efficient as possible is something he stresses Obsidian is putting a lot of focus on, echoing the thoughts of Todd Howard from whom he's borrowed the expression "ninjas and tools"

Obsidian is going to make an effort to get games in a playable state earlier in the development cycle for the future, something he acknowledges has been difficult for the company in the past due to the sprawling nature of their games.

In general, the company is going back to their roots and look more into PC and tablets in the future. Feargus acknowledges that there's not exactly a wealth of deep RPGs on tablets, but sees it as an opportunity, as they can take the genre in that space.

Feargus was also gracious enough to elaborate further on his thoughts on the AAA marketplace for us, and whether Obsidian will stop looking into it altogether:

Legendary Heroes doesn't leave the greatest first impression. Its graphics make the game look like an HD port of something released last generation. Its story drops out once the game starts, leaving you stranded, without direction as to what you're expected to do next. There is a scenario to play through, but it does little to add any sort of entertaining narrative.

At first glance the lack of direction appears to be a weakness, but in actuality Legendary Heroes requires you to assist it, to give it the direction it needs. The game thrives on customized scenarios just as much as it wants you to create your own unique army. To get the most out of the game it's best to play around with the settings to make your own world.

You can choose a sovereign or build your own. Name him, or her. Name their kingdom. Decide what clothes they wear and what sigil is emblazoned on their banner. Give them a backstory. But that's only the start of it. The experience of Legendary Heroes is highly user defined. It's a sandbox for you to build your empire, for you to explore, and it's up to you in regards to the how.

14.5 million unique gamers have played Diablo III since launch, with 2.1 million logging in every day on average. Of the 67.1 million characters created, just 9% are using hardcore mode. Each of those characters kill an average of 49,595 monsters.

The three Battle.net regions are remarkably evenly represented in the global population, with 22.2 million players from the Americas, 22.1 from Europe, and 22.9 from Asia.

Again we want to thank you for all this support, for your trust and your help. Thank you so much, this already has been an amazing journey. We love you. Honestly.

So this is the first day we're going for a second update. Why? Just because. And Javier already posted this on the Bear's Pit. But we want you to know his thoughts as well, as he is one of our leading heads behind the scenes.

Assets and Modding
Hello everybody! People keep asking about budget things and how much money we can spend on this and that. So let me give you a small insight on the Art-Department. One of the challenges we face with whatever budget we have to make Jagged Alliance Flashback is of course what we make with the time and money we get. If you ever worked with 3D graphics you know its a time intensive affair. And sometimes not always a loved affair. To bring in the love again we need to have an art pipeline that is efficient and reduces wasted time. Cause wasted time is money thrown out of the window. And honestly: Who the hell does that?

New Tier Bundles$2700 Two Please Tier: You sure drive a hard bargain, therefore you get: All previous rewards ($2500 not included) + The $1200 and $1800 bundled up (ONLY THIS TIER) Limited (3)

$3600 Lead and Conquer Tier: You're quite the multitasker huh, you get: All previous rewards + The $1800 and the $2500 bundled up (ONLY THIS TIER) Limited (1)

Radio in JAF
Kaboom! As you may know, there'll be an in-game radio in Jagged Alliance: Flashback. This means that here and there you'll find radios to listen to and probably also be able to carry one with you for the road. Crank up the volume and go for it. To make this part a bit more interesting we'd like to add different music from the 1980's era and include channels, each with their very own music style which people can choose from (in terms of modding we think we're going the Grand Theft Auto way to allow people adding their own music, however that's not yet clear).

While we won't have Elliot, the idiot, in the game (which is for obvious reasons) you may have noticed that one of our backers already pledged to become the voice of the local radio. The radio host will occasionally be able to comment on the current situations happening in San Christobal. These are triggered either by the player succeeding or failing specific missions and can even be used to hint at troop movements across the island. Elliot might be gone and the faces change, but rest assured we'll try hard to re-produce the same tongue-in-cheek situations and dialogue from JA2 in Flashback.

Diorama Commentary Video
We released a diorama commentary video to go along with the this morning's press release, so you should get a chance to see it in the update as well.

With its most famous legacy usurped, now may be a good time to assess Diablo III on a different criterion. I am not an expert on Action RPGs, and I've only played a few hours of Diablo II, so I don't feel qualified to ruminate on the loot distribution and auction house. What I can talk about is the story and characters. Any RPG, even one where the conflict is literally as simple as 'good versus evil,' requires an engaging story and characters to be truly successful. Believable motives, interesting dialogue, and memorable villains are the hallmarks of a successful RPG. Of course, it's nice to have these components in any game, but in a genre that boasts game features like Alpha Protocol's dynamic dialogue system or Mass Effect's famous characters, any RPG worth its salt needs to put in a strong showing.

This is where Diablo III disappoints the most. Sure, the loot is uninspired and the auction house is a painfully naked attempt for Blizzard to wring yet more profit out of a game that has already sold over twelve million copies, but what really hurts is that such a phenomenally successful game could have such mediocre writing. Players starting up this hugely-anticipated chapter in the series expected either a bare but serviceable story, like in the previous installments, or a dynamic world with genuinely fascinating characters. What they got was a mess with a lot of characters, lore, and words, but nothing that was fresh or sensible.

Sloppiness and blandness are the hallmarks of Diablo III's story, and yet there is a bright side. When I am listening to a podcast or have an hour to kill, I might still play a bit of the game, because its visuals, sound design, and action are so addictive and satisfying. It's just a shame the writing can't match their standard.

Dungeon of Elements, the upcoming game from Frogdice Games, is a title that combines the casual puzzle gameplay of tile matching with the more hardcore elements of a dungeon crawler to create a hybrid game inviting to gamers of all calibers.

In the game, players take on the role of an alchemist on the hunt for rare elements. In the quest to obtain these precious resources, players will battle in 45 different levels while obtaining new gear and items along the way. In the lab, players conduct experiments to create new armor and items.

The studio's goal is create games that merge casual gameplay with core genres in an effort to appeal to every type of gamer.

Can you talk a little bit about some of the gaming projects you have worked on in the past? Most notably Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny and Neverwinter Nights.

I've started writing computer games on the Apple II in the very early 80s and had my first game published in 1983 or so. I was a huge fan of text adventure games in those days and the first few years I focused on that genre. However, I was attracted by role-playing games a lot and eventually let role-playing influences flow into these text adventure games. "Drachen von Laas," for example, a game that was published in Germany only, already had a full blown phased combat system, even though the game itself was still a text adventure game.

Eventually I made the switch to full role-playing games (RPG) and "Spirit of Adventure" was the first hard core RPG I wrote, together with my friend and business partner Hans-Jürgen Brandle, at the time. The success of that game opened the door for us to obtain the license for "Das Schwarze Auge," a famous German pen&paper role-playing game. We began developing games in that universe, which were subsequently released as the "Realms of Arkania" trilogy.

After the third game in the series I left Attic Entertainment Software, the company that I had co-founded, and moved to the US where I worked for Interplay Productions for a while. During my tenure there I worked on "Fallout II," and "Planescape: Torment", and also helped start up the "Neverwinter Nights" project, among others.

All in all, I've been in the games industry for just about 30 years now, pretty much since its infancy, really, when computer games were still sold in Zip-lock bags.

What role did you play in the development of these particular titles?

"Blade of Destiny" was developed by a very small team. Attic was still pretty much a start-up company at that time. As a result everyone had to multi-task as much as possible, and we tapped into everyone's full abilities. In my case that meant that I was working on the game as a designer, a programmer, and a producer, and later on also as the publicist and business developer when we began to reach out, looking for partners to release the game internationally. I was wearing every hat imaginable on that project - as well as all the other "Realms of Arkania" games. It was my job at Attic, in a sense, to be the Jack-of-all-Trades.

As for "Neverwinter Nights," I was Interplay's internal producer for the game during its start-up phase. As such I was part of various brainstorming sessions where the foundation for the game was laid, and where technical questions and obstacles were tackled. Apart from the look of the game and the technical design of the block-based level design of the game, we did research on the game system itself, as the AD&D 3.0 rule set was just about to be released, and we wanted to see if we should or should not use it for "Neverwinter Nights."

I was working hand in hand with Trent Oster on this, who was the producer for the game at Bioware. He was really the driving force behind the project while I was there only to lend my experience to the discussions. I left Interplay a few months after "Neverwinter Nights" really went into development, so my contributions to the game happened really just at the beginning.

FemShep -- Jennifer Hale -- swings by Up at Noon to talk about the franchise, and we make some Pokemon/Star Trek jokes.

Non-Combat Skills

Also we want to share with you the ultimate list of non-combat skills that will be available unless we need to include one or a couple more due to gameplay needs later. Miguel A.L.M. has been working on it and we are quite happy and sure this will cover most game situations we can think of. The list was bigger but we decided to disregard those ones that weren't meaningful enough. It must also be taken into account that we can only spent a full year after the next Kickstarter relaunch to complete the game due to budget constraints, so we needed to focus only on the strictly necessary ones to add enough content and at the same time to have full control of the possible outcomes. This will serve us to prepare all the quests, dialogues and game situations so you can complete them in different ways.