Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Jason Kingsley, the CEO, said:

Despite rumours, Rebellion has always been planning to support dedicated servers for Aliens vs Predator PC and we can now officially confirm that this is the case. Rebellion has always appreciated fan support. We’re really looking forward to the release of Aliens vs Predator as much as you guys are!

I’m not sure the earlier report was “rumour” as much as it just left a question unanswered. Regardless, you can expect dedicated servers in this game if that’s how you roll in multiplayer.

I am wondering, a little, if Rebellion waiting to see how much hell Infinity Ward would catch for its decision to drop dedicated servers in Modern Warfare 2, then DICE cashing in on the controversy by vowing dedicated server support, and decided the latter was their better marketing option.

Dedicated Servers for Aliens vs. Predator [GamesIndustry.biz, thanks Warboy]

But anyway, Spirit Tracks has multiplayer. Boy does it ever have multiplayer, and boy did we ever play it. Here’s what we liked:

What Is It?
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks’ multiplayer mode is akin to The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures for the GameCube — four people each control one colour-coded Link and move around the same map as the other Links. The difference in Spirit Tracks is that instead of trying to help each other, you’re racing each other to collect Power Gems and trying to royally screw each other up on the way.

Note: It’s local-only.

What We Saw
I played two matches against a developer and two publicists at Nintendo’s Redwood City office after finally getting my hands on the single-player mode.

How Far Along Is It?
Spirit Tracks is out December 7. I was playing on a normal-sized cartridge that may have been a final version.

What Needs Improvement?
Little Bit Laggy: When dashing around the dungeon map, things start off steady and the Power Gem drops are few and far between. As the match picks up pace, however, and players start falling into traps or getting sliced up the Phantoms, huge amounts of Gems will suddenly spill out onto the map. That plus all four players frantically running to that point to scavenge Gems caused a couple of super-laggy moments in an otherwise smooth experience.

Trap Door Confusion: There are trap doors in every map that are either random or triggered by switches. I honestly couldn’t tell you which, though, because sometimes I’d press a switch and a trap door would open and sometimes the door seemed to open and shut in a kind of rhythm. It was confusing — and that much more frustrating when I fell into one because I didn’t know if I should blame somebody for it.

What Should Stay The Same?
Spreading The Phantom: Numerous Phantoms — those big guys in helmets from the last Zelda DS game, Phantom Hourglass — wander the maps, prowling for Links. When one spots you, a little icon pops up above your head, indicating that it’s got a bead on you. If you fail to run for your life, the Phantom will speed toward you and cut you – costing you precious Power Gems and precious seconds as you scramble to get up and recover them before the other players get there. The fun part about this mechanic is the bit where you can pass the Phantom’s bead onto other players you run by — like spreading Chlamydia. It’s amusing.

The Invisible Zone: One map we tried out had a patch of water in the centre that rendered players invisible when they ran in. You could still see ripples where their feet landed in the water — and if you look closely, the ripples are colour-coded like the Links — but with all four players running around in there and Phantoms bearing down on one or more of them, it was blind panic. And freaking awesome.

Mario Kart-style Pick-ups: Occasionally, an orb with a question mark on it will fall from the sky. Players that snag this pick-up are treated to several things like a random Gem drop, invisibility or a lightning strike that you can inflict on other players. It keeps things interesting and can be the salve to the wound of a player who just went from 51 Gems to two after a string of Phantom infections.

Single Cartridge Play: I am so happy that it doesn’t require four people to actually buy the game to enjoy this mode.

Final Thoughts
The multiplayer mode in Spirit Tracks certainly isn’t the main attractions of the game — but it’s a solid addition that deserves to be played if you can tear yourself away from trains and princesses for a little while.

Though one is obviously dwarfed by the comparison, both figures are impressive in their own right. And both speak to the health of their form of multiplayer gaming. For console games like Modern Warfare 2, multiplayer’s meteoric growth is commonly understood. But for LAN parties, still playing games like Counter-Strike, their resilience and persistence are most frequently seen among university-aged gamers on campus.

“If anything, I think it’s growing” says Nathan Etzell, a student at Oregon State University, whose 300-member OSU Gaming organisation has a prewired, 30-person LAN room at the bottom of a dormitory where at least two large parties are held per term. In January, his club will meet the University of Oregon in the second “Civil War LAN”, a gaming tournament named after the schools’ football rivalry.

But there is a sense that the PC LAN party — like all-nighters, streaking, whatever — are something whose time and place comes on a university campus. Out in the cold hard world, PC LAN and direct server support in new titles is dwindling in favour of console multiplayer and proprietary hosting services. Most notably, StarCraft II will not support LAN gaming as it shifts to Blizzard’s Battle.net. And dedicated servers are out under Modern Warfare 2, which is now running multiplayer with a combination of Steam and the recently created IW.net for Modern Warfare 2. Both sequels’ predecessors had a strong history in dedicated servers and LAN gaming, leaving some gamers feeling betrayed, and some LAN enthusiasts feeling marginalised.

LAN gaming is not gone from the off-campus civilian world. But annual convention hall events with big budgets, entry fees, prizes and sponsorships are different creatures from six people linking up to play Warcraft III. While the former will definitely still happen after you graduate, the latter is less likely. Those six-people sessions are most likely made among fellow gamers, who are likely to find each other in a class, or perusing a bulletin board in a student union.

“Their age group usually involves a lot of what PC gamers are,” says Keegan Gormley, whose Big City Gaming in downtown Eugene, Ore. offers constant system-linked gaming and monthly tournaments. “They’re mostly university students who, in their spare time, enjoy playing a game like Counter-Strike, or another game they’ve played for a long time.”

The players in his $US5-an-hour “stadium,” — eight consoles connected to high definition, Major League Gaming–standard panel monitors — are largely high-schoolers, Gormley said. Younger kids are less likely to LAN, he said, because of the accessibility of consoles and the desirability of their most current games.

“There’s much more deep-rooting in PC gaming,” Gormley said. “Someone who gets into a game on the PC can end up playing it for years,” he said. “On consoles, I’ve seen people drop Halo for Call of Duty, then drop Call of Duty for Flashpoint. For PC gamers, mostly, it’s whatever they originally clicked on and killed with.”

And that helps explain the persistence of LAN gaming. The standbys of a LAN party are usually real-time strategy games such as StarCraft, or WarCraft III, then shooters such as Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2 and Unreal Tournament. TF2 is the most recent of these, releasing in 2007, with others having roots going back to the late 1990s. There’s a reason for this.

“It’s what people are good at,” said Patrick Chinn, one of the University of Oregon organisers for the Civil War LAN, which will be held January 22-23. “One reason people want to play an older game like Counter-Strike is because they’ve played it a long time and they’ve gotten good at it. We’ve done tournaments for games that are brand new, and there’ll be some attendance, but they’re not as well played.”

Plus, by this point, the support histories for the games have either controlled for or patched out of existence most means of cheating. “The tactics in a game like Counter-Strike have become so refined that there’s no real dick move you can pull,” says Dylan Leeds, a senior majoring in digital art at Oregon. And for whatever in-game legislation doesn’t cover, LAN gaming offers another control: being physically in the presence of your opponent. It cuts down on ragequits and unsporting behaviour.

“You’re more likely to respect someone if you know you’re going to see interact with them after the game,” he said.

And that speaks to another quality of LAN gaming that, unlike its numbers, can’t be replicated or really improved: the human contact of it all.

“If you’re playing online by yourself, the hype’s really not there,” said Josh Bothun, an Oregon student majoring in computer science and music technology. “It’s like you have to intentionally create it for yourself, but you get a completely different experience when people are around you.”

LAN parties have an anecdotal culture that just can’t be replicated by solitary multiplayer gaming. Often stretching 24 hours or more, they’re salted with tales of inside jokes and hyper-caffeination. At major tournaments in the civilian world, bragging about casemods and your rig are their own sideshow, similar to a custom-car show.

“It’s more about community,” says Gormley, the game store owner. “It’s being able to shoulder-shove the person you just killed. It’s less about yelling at someone over a mic, and more about actually giving that person the evil eye.

“It gets so elitist online, sometimes,” he continued. “It seems like a lot of people don’t want to play online console games because they don’t get the game in its first week, don’t level up their character in time, and then they feel like they can’t compete.”

It might be easy to assume that anything other than gaming over the Internet, as opposed to a LAN or WAN, is redundant, a relic, or headed for obscurity. But system-linked games bring something to the room that proprietary multiplayer services can’t: One’s friends.

To use an apt college metaphor: “It’s like drinking online versus drinking with friends,” Chinn said. “Drinking a couple of beers and IMing with friends is not nearly as much fun as actually drinking with your friends.”

A tipster to Joystiq pointed out the advertisement for a “Senior Online Level Designer,” and it’s set off alarms all over that you’ll be doing some strategic dismemberin’ with and/or of your friends in Dead Space 2.

The person hired for this job must “own the level design for the online game [and] be able to work collaboratively with Creative Director and Online Producer to create extremely fun, satisfying and polished multiplayer levels,” according to the ad.

For those of you not qualified for this job (like me), the rest of the listing gives up some details on where the game stands as of now.

The game is in the later stages of pre-production, ready for production in the next few months, with many of the navigational and combat mechanics in place. We have complete autonomy and creative control over our own decisions. The Games Label at EA is 100% committed to this IP, and has already worked on IP extensions such as comic, animated features, and action figures.

EA Job Listing Hints at Online Multiplayer for Dead Space 2 [Joystiq via VG247]

Community guru Major Nelson tweeted the news today, with operations manager Eric (”e”) Neustadter following with word of his own soon after.

No specific reason was given for the record traffic but it’s unimaginable Modern Warfare 2 is not a strong factor in this. No word on what the previous record was.

Xbox Live Breaks Records [Hot Blooded Gaming]

Until Infinity Ward comes up with a better solution, your best bet is to create private matches filled exclusively with fellow Aussies. But maybe not everyone has a friends list long enough to do this whenever you want to play. So let’s help each other out.

In the comments below, I want you to leave your relevant gamertag or ID on whichever platform(s) you play. Hopefully we can make it just that little bit easier to enjoy shooting each other in the face.

Note: I’ll leave this post pinned to the top of the front page all day. Or longer, if it proves really popular. all weekend.

“Right now don’t not buy it on the 360 because you think it’s coming out on the PS3 – it’s not going to,” Chet Faliszek said. “Right? It’s coming out on the PC and 360. It’s going to be exclusive for that.”

Faliszek also said that Left 4 Dead 2 is “all about playing with your friends,” and that “in hooking up with your friends and the community aspects, I think the Xbox 360 is head and shoulders above the PS3. The 360 and PC are on par, right?”

Let’s see, dissed PS3, and equated a console with PC, thus starting a good-old three-way let’s-you-and-him-fight. Check, check and check. All in a day’s work, Chet!

Valve: 360 Community “Head and Shoulders Above PS3″ [CVG]

In the middle of last month, ex-Midway producer John Vignocchi was a guest on the Giant Bomb podcast, and managed to share some wild tales about his adventures at Midway. I just caught up to listening to it today.

Past stories of sending porn to NBA stars and before a story of people hitting on the sister of a famous music producer, comes this bit from Vignocchi about the value of multiplayer modes in games that might otherwise be single-player games.

You can find this at about the 1 hour, 22 minute, 51 second mark of the October 13 Giant Bombcast:

We were having this battle all the time, talking about, “OK, is a totally amazing single-player experience, the most important thing? Or should it be an 80 per cent single-player experience and then a pretty cool multiplayer. Stranglehold when through that exact same problem. I think if you ask every single person that worked on Stranglehold whether or not multiplayer was a necessity for that product, they would all say, ‘I wish we never did it.’ It was the worst part of the game, and it was something that executive management had said, ‘This has to be in the game.’ And no one wanted it, and it turned out the way it turned out. That’s something every game developer goes through.

Vignocchi segued his story into some talk about our own Michael McWhertor’s story about the diminishing presence of single-player-only games. And there’s more. Check out a particularly juicy episode of the ever-entertaining Giant Bombcast.

Giant Bombcast: 10/13/09

This comes from the site MW2blog.com, which though it might look official (it even cites “Copyright Modern Warfare 2″), is registered through GoDaddy to someone in the U.K. I’m not saying these are false, just saying it’s not official. And via Twitter, the Infinity Ward community manager Robert Bowling says: “Can’t confirm nor deny any leaks for #MW2. Official stance is to just wait and discover the awesome yourself on November 10th.”

Marathon (Tier 1)
Standard: Unlimited Sprint
Pro: Get over obstacles faster

Sleight of Hand (Tier 1)
Standard: Faster reload
Pro: Aim down sights faster

Scavenger (Tier 1)
Standard: Retrieve ammo from dead bodies

Bling (Tier 1)
Standard: Dual attachments on primary weapon
Pro: Dual attachments on secondary weapon

One Man Army (Tier 1)
Standard: Use primary weapon in secondary slot

Stopping Power (Tier 2)
Standard: Increased bullet damage
Pro: Increased bullet damage to vehicles

Lightweight (Tier 2)
Standard: Move faster

Hardline (Tier 2)
Standard: Killstreaks rewards require 1 less kill
Pro: Deathstreaks require 1 less death

Cold Blooded (Tier 2)
Standard: Undetectable by UAV, air support, sentries, and thermal

Danger Close (Tier 2)
Standard: Increases explosive weapons damage

Commando (Tier 3)
Standard: Increased melee distance

Increased melee speed Steady Aim (Tier 3)
Standard: Increased hip-fire accuracy

Scrambler (Tier 3)
Standard: Jams enemy radar

Ninja (Tier 3)
Standard: Invisible to heartbeat sensors
Pro: Move silently

SitRep (Tier 3)
Standard: Insertions. Reveals enemy explosives and Tactical Insertions

Last Stand (Tier 3)
Standard: Survive after being killed for 10 second, pistol equipt. You can crawl too

Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer Perks [MW2blog.com]

Multiplayer spoiler alert, I guess. Should you be awesome enough to rack up 25 straight kills in Modern Warfare 2, the game gives you a superweapon from which there is no escape. Not even for the guy who uses it.

Nuke Your Opponents in Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer [Spoilers] [Hot Blooded Gaming]