Some of the most fun to be had during multiplayer video games isn't actually in the game itself -- it's outside of the games, where players chat with each other for fun, break down a strategy during co-op, or trash talk in-between deathmatches. You don't usually get XP for taunting over voicechat or telling your team where the enemy is, but there's a reward nevertheless, a social bonus completely independent of the code that developers write.

Wideload Games has done a great job of focusing on that gameplay in Disney Guilty Party. I got to play the same co-op Party Mode as Randy at a pre-E3 event this week, and while it's definitely a family game, it competently serves up custom-made mysteries for families to take on. In hunting down and accusing various colorful suspects, that out-of-game conversation and interaction becomes just as important and fun as the in-game button pressing and Wiimote waggling.

Game Director Patrick Curry was my partner-in-crime-solving, and since we have common roots in Chicago (I used to work in the same building, one floor below Wideload's studios), we had a quick chat about the studio's direction towards family games, and its acquisition by Disney Interactive.