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With both summer blockbusters and big time fall previews of some huge titles, July’s Episode 38 of Qore travels from the deserts of Journey to the far reaches of the Ratchet & Clank universe.

To start things off, Veronica Belmont explores the sand dunes of thatgamecompany’s latest game Journey. With shifting sands, different environments and a new take on co-op play, Qore travels deep into this new PlayStation Network exclusive.

Veronica also takes us behind the scenes of Insomniac Games to profile industry legend, Ted Price. Ted talks about how they got their start, how to get started in the industry and how his company is putting the final touches on Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One and Resistance 3.

With the blockbuster movie set for release, Captain America: Super Soldier brings the fight to the PlayStation 3. Go behind the shield for a preview of the storyline and the new fighting mechanics (including how to use that very cool shield).

Climbing to the top of the ranks of a secret association of assassins has never been as wild or as over the top in No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise. With upgraded graphics, wild new bosses, and PlayStation Move support, check out this ultimate version for the PS3.

Climbing to the top of the ranks of a secret association of assassins has never been as wild or as over the top in No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise. With upgraded graphics, wild new bosses, and PlayStation Move support, check out this ultimate version for the PS3.

Annual Qore subscribers also receive an exclusive Journey theme and a new dynamic theme lava lamp to set the mood for another busy summer of gaming….

With both summer blockbusters and big time fall previews of some huge titles, July’s Episode 38 of Qore travels from the deserts of Journey to the far reaches of the Ratchet & Clank universe.

To start things off, Veronica Belmont explores the sand dunes of thatgamecompany’s latest game Journey. With shifting sands, different environments and a new take on co-op play, Qore travels deep into this new PlayStation Network exclusive.

Veronica also takes us behind the scenes of Insomniac Games to profile industry legend, Ted Price. Ted talks about how they got their start, how to get started in the industry and how his company is putting the final touches on Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One and Resistance 3.

With the blockbuster movie set for release, Captain America: Super Soldier brings the fight to the PlayStation 3. Go behind the shield for a preview of the storyline and the new fighting mechanics (including how to use that very cool shield).

Climbing to the top of the ranks of a secret association of assassins has never been as wild or as over the top in No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise. With upgraded graphics, wild new bosses, and PlayStation Move support, check out this ultimate version for the PS3.

Annual Qore subscribers also receive an exclusive Journey theme and a new dynamic theme lava lamp to set the mood for another busy summer of gaming….

E3 may have wrapped up a few weeks back, but the excitement here at PlayStation is growing by the day. Not only are we coming off of one of the most successful E3s we’ve had in recent memory, but we are preparing for the launch of some of this year’s most-anticipated software titles as well as a couple of very exciting new pieces of hardware.

This year we showcased one of the strongest software lineups in our history, including many creative and show stopping titles for the upcoming PlayStation Vita, family friendly options for PlayStation Move and an amazing lineup of AAA titles and franchise favorites for PS3. The positive response we received from our community was overwhelming, and the confirmation from E3 judges was very gratifying. In fact, PlayStation hardware and software was nominated for more than 140 awards at E3 this year. Here’s a look at just a few of the accolades we received:

G4TV.com, “Best New Hardware”
GameCritics: “Best Hardware”
Game Informer: “Best Tech”

Examiner.com: “Best Living Artwork”
GamesBeat/VentureBeat: “Best Games of E3 2011”
G4TV.com: “Best Downloadable”

IGN: “Best Music/Rhythm Game”
GameTrailers: “Best Music Game”
GameCritics: “Best Handheld/Mobile Game”

Attack of the Fanboy: “Best of E3 PlayStation 3”
PlayStation: The Official Magazine: “Most Valuable Game”
VGChartz: “Best Multiplayer”

G4TV.com: “Best Action/Adventure Game”
GameTrailers: “Best Multiplayer,” “Best 3D Graphics,” “Best Graphics”
Yahoo! Games: “Best of E3 2011”

Game Informer: “Best Handheld Game”
E! Online: “Top 10 Games of E3”
Game Trailers: “Best PlayStation Vita Game”

The year ahead will be a memorable one for PlayStation fans everywhere. The introduction of innovative hardware such as PS Vita and the PlayStation 3D Display will set the bar high when it comes to both quality and creativity. PlayStation Vita will provide gamers with the highest definition handheld gaming experiences, delivering new ways to play at home and on-the-go. In addition, the PlayStation 3D Display will offer PS3 users and their friends the ability to face-off with the exclusive two-player mode and provide easy access to all of their favorite 3D entertainment. Developers meanwhile will have more ways than ever to challenge and change the way people play and experience PlayStation games.

We are continuing to work closely with the global community of Worldwide Studios game developers and partners to deliver innovative games and content for the entire family of PlayStation hardware. I’m personally looking forward to all of the great software titles launching in the upcoming months, including Resistance 3, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One and Twisted Metal. We’ve got some great new PlayStation Move titles coming as well, including Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest, and Carnival Island. And of course…we’ve got all kinds of great PlayStation Vita titles in the works, including Uncharted: Golden Abyss, ModNation Racers, LittleBigPlanet and Sound Shapes. Too much goodness to talk about in one little blog post…

Thanks to all of the great PlayStation fans out there who helped make E3 2011 one to remember!

Thanks,
Scott
Twitter: @RohdeScott

By design, Journey requires a different kind of multiplayer beta. A select number of players will have the chance to check out thatgamecompany's latest months ahead of its formal release, the details of which were made available today. There are a couple things to pay attention to.

One, if you were you one of the "very earliest adopters" (read: buyers) of Flower and a member of PlayStation Plus, a code may be headed towards your account in the form of a private message.

Two, thatgamecompany is giving away some codes--but you only have until 7:00 p.m. PST tonight to send an email to journeybeta@thatgamecompany.com, which gets you into the Journey lottery.

Stay tuned to thatgamecompany's Facebook page for additional details, as the beta kicks off.

Coming out of E3 a few weeks ago, we at thatgamecompany couldn’t be more excited about the reception our latest game, Journey, received from both the press and general showgoers. Journey is our third exclusive game with SCEA’s Santa Monica Studio for PS3 and PSN, and we’re trying something new, something that we hope changes the way people think about online gaming.

As you may have heard, in Journey, players take on the role of travelers headed to a mysterious mountain in the distance. But unlike our previous two games, flow and Flower, Journey is presents our vision of what an online adventure can be. As you explore Journey, you may cross paths with other travelers. You can to join and play with up to one other player at a time.

But what makes Journey different is that there are no online lobbies, no matchmaking, no PSN IDs, and no chat. You are the character, limited to the ways of communication of the character itself. Will you choose to travel together – or go your own way? What secrets lie in the mysterious, sand-covered ruins of this world?

We had a great time at E3 talking to all of the press that stopped by the Sony booth. And we couldn’t be more proud after Journey took home some great awards like PlayStation: The Official Magazine’s Most Valuable Game award, Machinima’s Best Downloadable Game award and Examiner’s Living Art award, as well as Best PS3 game nominations from IGN, G4TV and GameSpy, as well as a Best Original Game nomination from the E3 Game Critics.

To test Journey’s innovative and unusual multiplayer functionality, we are conducting a small, invite-only beta that will run tomorrow, June 28 and will run through July 12. If you were one of the very earliest adopters of Flower, and you are a PS Plus subscriber as well, watch your XMB inbox for your invitation and entry into the beta. Additionally, we’ve been able to free up a limited number of additional spots for the beta. Please check thatgamecompany’s Facebook page, here on the PlayStation Blog, or our media partners and their sites for code give-aways.

We will be inviting players to join our weekly play sessions in order to help test our network code and all of the technical stuff running in the background of the game. You will also be able to provide feedback to the team on your experience. These sessions will take place on Tuesdays from 6 PM to 10 PM PST.

Thanks, and keep watching the blog, and our Facebook page, for the latest on Journey.

I've played Journey, but you haven't. Fortunately, that's going to change for some of you!

thatgamecompany has revealed the ambitious multiplayer-driven adventure game's getting a "very limited" beta test, according to the company's Twitter, with more details on Monday.

I heard whispers about the beta at E3, so it's great to hear it's actually happening. When I played Journey just prior to E3, the multiplayer part wasn't working, so this'll all be new for me, too.

If you're not familiar with Journey, make sure to check out my hands-on preview and interview with designer Jenova Chen. We also had Chen sit down for one of the ridiculously E3 podcasts.

Thankfully, we weren’t discussing soft American rock; we were talking about the upcoming PlayStation Network title from the people that brought you flOw and Flower.

I’ve been trying to avoid hearing too much about Journey as I want to enjoy it without any presumptions – not the easiest to do when you work at PlayStation and not ideal preparation for an interview with the developers, you might argue. Regardless, here is my spoiler-free conversation with Robin Hunicke, Journey’s producer and Jenova Chen, co-founder of thatgamecompany.

I’ll be posting a few more video interviews from the PlayStation Experience event in London next week; check out yesterday’s chat with Insomniac Games about Resistance 3, if it slipped you by.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting with Jenova Chen, the creative director of thatgamecompany and designer of flOw and Flower. Chen’s latest project, the upcoming PSN exclusive Journey, may be his most enigmatic project yet. In talking with Chen, I was most interested in learning what drove his unique, minimalistic vision, as well as the challenges in creating a drop-in, drop-out online multiplayer game without the use of industry-standard matchmaking lobbies and voice chat.

Sid Shuman: Journey’s got a certain mystique. Who are you in Journey? Where are you?

Jenova Chen: I want the player to find it out, it’s part of the fun. This is a world where there are no plants, no animals, and not even a single water drop to be found. The only things that are moving are these things, these characters, made out of cloth.

SS: Journey’s a multiplayer game, but there’s no matchmaking or online lobbies. Would you say it redefines multiplayer? Is it a co-op game?

JC: We’re not really redefining. We make games for PS3 owners, but we also make games for their relatives or children. I don’t think your grandma is going to know what a [multiplayer] “lobby” means. I don’t think most children will understand what [internet] “latency” means. So after we eliminated the lobby concept, we had very few choices — other players have to be able to connect at any time, not just the beginning of the game, and a player has to be able to finish the game by himself he can’t find someone. All these technical issues came in with that one decision to get rid of the online lobby.

A lot of games design co-op for co-op play only. The best game I’ve played this year was Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. It’s very well designed, like a designer’s jewelry box. But it wouldn’t work for Journey. What if the other player wasn’t there? So we have to come up with other ways to make co-op more meaningful. We wanted something very primal, which forced us to make innovations.

We didn’t try to redefine multiplayer, we just wanted to create a more intuitive experience. If your grandma asked, “what’s Journey?” I’d tell her “Journey is just like hiking. You go to hike a mountain, and there are other hikers you might meet and if you like them you can hike with them.” And that’s it.

SS: What’s the core gameplay goal in Journey? What activities will I be engaging in?

JC: You will be…Journey-ing. Moving from point A to point B. [laughter] The problem is, moving is very boring. In World of Warcraft, you’re always moving…and waiting. So in Journey, we have things to spice up the moving. You can surf the sand dunes, collect cloth to fly over larger distances, cooperate with another player to get faster travel…sometimes you can ride things.

SS: It also looks like you’re collecting cloth patches, which seem to open up bridges or paths to other areas…

JC: Usually, players think about collecting as a “level up” experience. But we wanted to make the player feel small and weak. So initially, we did have a level up experience — if you collected 20 patches, you would jump higher or fly further. But that felt too empowering, which is the opposite of what we wanted. So instead of acquiring power, we made this metaphor for borrowing power. There are patches in the world, and when they hear your call, they come to help you out. Once you use them, they return to where they were. It’s not an ownership situation.

It also has to do with multiplayer. People would say, “I don’t want to play with you, I don’t want you to take my precious resources!” We tried various ways to eliminate that, but in the end, we decided to not give you [permanent] possession of them.

SS: Surfing on waves of sand looks like an interesting way to get around this very dynamic, shifting environment. It’s such a simple pleasure — a bit like Flower, actually.

JC: We had problems with walking. It’s frustrating, but there’s no easy way to make walking fun. So we tried surfing, because as a gameplay mechanic it’s fun — you know, SSX. But you could surf on the slopes but not on the flat surfaces, and most of the game is flat. So we had to come up with a reason why you could surf, so we made the sand have waves.

SS: Does Journey use any buttons?

JC: There are two buttons right now. “Calling” lets you collect patches and communicate with another player, a very primal form of communication. And then there’s a “Fly” button.

SS: I noticed that the camera is controlled by the DualShock 3’s Sixaxis motion sensor, not the analog stick.

JC: I have seen various non-hardcore players try a first-person shooter, and they couldn’t even aim. The two-stick camera system, using them at the same time, is just very difficult. It takes time to train. And every time I see a player struggle with that, he just puts the game down. So I wanted to think about a more intuitive form of camera control. The other problem with a stick camera, particularly in a third-person game, is that people tend to adjust the camera very often and very rapidly. When I watch them play, I get dizzy. And I want people to be able to watch others play Journey.

SS: Why does jumping not require a button press?

JC: We used to have a jump button, but we wanted to simplify the game. When you can jump, during the boring walk [laughs] people would keep jumping. And that’s not what we wanted to see! After we removed the jump button, people said “we want to jump!” So we added an automatic jump, and it’s working pretty well. I do miss pressing the X button sometimes when I’m walking, though!

SS: Are there enemies in Journey?

JC: There is something like an enemy, there is. [laughter] Nature is your enemy. If there is an enemy, you can’t do anything about it. You’re small and weak. You can’t slay the Shadow of the Colossus!

SS: Did an artist inspire the visual style of Journey?

JC: Do you know Chirico? If you see the original Japanese cover art of Ico, it’s an homage to Chirico. At an early stage, that was an inspiration.

SS: Journey is a very different kind of multiplayer game. Is it important for developers to challenge preconceived notions about what makes a multiplayer game?

JC: It’s important because your brain can be stimulated intellectually, emotionally, and socially. When people design online games, they often do lazy work. They bring an existing single-player game — an RPG, an RTS, a fighting game, a shooter — and duct tape on some online technology. They say, “okay, there’s multiple players, now do something cool. Here, play a kid’s game like Capture the Flag.” That’s the level of design. “Why don’t you kill each other until the last guy is left standing.”

If you really wanted to stimulate a social activity, you need to re-think it from the ground up. What is the skill they’re supposed to acquire? Accuracy? Or is it the ability to convince others? If the skill is social, it’ll be very relevant and useful. People still play poker. Why? Because the skill of deception is useful for real life. Look at online games. How many skills are based on social elements? Most games are based on grinding, accuracy, physical dexterity. They are not social games. They’re just old games with online features.

SS: Now, you’re saying this as a Call of Duty player, aren’t you? You like shooters.

JC: Yeah. I like fighting games too.They’re fun. But as I get older, what’s the point in pulling off another infinite combo? What does that do for your life? It’s not useful. People still play chess because strategic thinking is useful. Brain training games, fitness games…these have relevance. People don’t have much time to waste, so they want relevance. Whether it’s emotional relevance, like experiencing joy or sadness, or intellectual relevance, or social relevance.

SS: What other developers do you think are challenging gaming, perhaps in other areas?

JC: Quantic Dream. Team Ico — everything they make is very rich and deep emotionally. I think LittleBigPlanet is also very interesting. It’s not so much emotional as it is a different frontier. I also really appreciate whoever makes the best first-person shooter. Blizzard is always great, they have a lot of craft. We need those things too, because the game industry has to cover all sides. It’s not that I’m against fighting games or shooters — they need to be there, and they need to be good.

SS: Are you looking forward to BioShock Infinite?

JC: I liked BioShock but I didn’t finish it. I think I didn’t appreciate it as much as the fans, but I totally get the philosophies. I will try [Ken Levine’s] new game…it’s relevant. It’s not just about being strong and killing enemies. I appreciate that.