Another Game Developers Conference (GDC) has come and gone. Creative Director Clint Hocking gave a presentation titled "Improvisational Success Through Design Failure". It's a mouthful, but the subject matter is quite relevant, as he shares how fire made its way into Far Cry 2. Gamasutra has a nice writeup of Clint's presentation:

"Games are not only a medium for the creative expression of their creators, they are also a medium for the creative expression of their players," Hocking pointed out, speaking on the difference between interactivity in general, and intentionality. "Intentionality is a subset of strategy that is concerned with expression beyond the limited constraints of winning the game."

He explained that fire propagation didn't find its way into Far Cry 2 simply because "fire is cool," but rather as part of an attempt to build on the avenues for intentionality as explored in Chaos Theory. However, it didn't entirely succeed -- "this is how we failed," he admitted."

Read the full article here

The existence of the Ubi Recommended list has always been intended to provide the community with some suggestions for interesting maps to check out that may not already be in the spotlight. We'd like to start up a new effort to get more community involvement, so you can feel like this is a pretty darn good list to go by. While to a certain extent, some map opinions can be subjective, we believe that having regular member recommendations will assist with improving the lists.

To do this, we've put together a Map Council and recruited a few members in the mapping community for each platform who have been observed to be helpful with suggesting good maps as well as creating quality maps of their own. The contributors to the Map Council will remain anonymous, not because we are being secretive of the process, but you can imagine how bombarded a Map Council member could get with "Look at my map! Recommend my map to Ubi!". However, if a Map Council member wishes to make their involvement public, s/he is welcome to open that Pandora's box.

Some notes on what this means for the Ubi recommended list:

1. Suggestions are taken from the Map Council but final decision is always up to the dev team
2. There are over 200,000 maps on the server, having these eyes and ears will assist us with being able to look over even more maps
3. Map Council will review maps, and play them before offering up a recommendation
4. Map Council members are still qualified to have their maps featured on the Ubi recommended list, but also go through same peer review as other maps

Another thing that we are currently reviewing with the Map Council are the types of maps featured on the Ubi recommended list. The original intention of the list was to feature maps that were "diamonds in the rough", which meant that they were found to be good maps but may not necessarily be gaining notice.

This could also mean that a map showcased a creative use of the tools through either visual creativity or unique implementation. It was never intended to be a "best of the best", which popular opinion seems to have been nowadays of this map list (and perhaps a reason why many don't agree with the selection). While we still stand by the "diamond in the rough" usage, we of course are open to what you desire the list to be, and as a result are reviewing this with the Map Council."

Here's a brand-new batch of map suggestions for you to download and play this weekend before we lose an hour to DST (unless you live in Hawaii. Or Kyrgyzstan).

360

Optimus revealed by XnjXMfmassacre

Terminator by Alpha sgt 14

The Hunted ASLT by Dayton28

ALIEN HUMOR by DEATH WEAPONxx

Dismalland by Enfadel

PS3

Deserted Shore 2.0 by BorrelnootjeNL

THE DOCKYARD by memento2001

Citadel by x_maxpower

ONR_RICKETYMINES by SABRETOOTH1971

Paradise Hanger by LAFFERTY360

PC

OverLord v1.10 by Agent00Kevin

Defense Grid v1.0 by Agent00Kevin

ABSCHAUMCITY by TANGALILLY2008

Golf Course by Pacient.cz

Desert Prison by MaldeamStart

360

Optimus revealed by XnjXMfmassacre

Terminator by Alpha sgt 14

The Hunted ASLT by Dayton28

ALIEN HUMOR by DEATH WEAPONxx

Dismalland by Enfadel

PS3

Deserted Shore 2.0 by BorrelnootjeNL

THE DOCKYARD by memento2001

Citadel by x_maxpower

ONR_RICKETYMINES by SABRETOOTH1971

Paradise Hanger by LAFFERTY360

PC

OverLord v1.10 by Agent00Kevin

Defense Grid v1.0 by Agent00Kevin

ABSCHAUMCITY by TANGALILLY2008

Golf Course by Pacient.cz

Desert Prison by MaldeamStart

Missed previous week's list? View an all-time list here (no screenshots included).