Last week during E3, I met up with 3000AD’s president and lead developer, Derek Smart, where he showed me a significant amount of his team’s upcoming free-to-play shooter Line of Defense. In all honesty, I was not familiar with title, so Derek had to catch me up on quite a bit in our short time together.

In total, he showed me four colossal landscapes, two of the huge space stations, the inside of one of the main space ships, and every other facet of the game you could imagine. Read on to see what I mean.

On any one server, 256 people can play in one scene at the same time. Split into two teams, the players’ ultimate goal is to take up each of the key points on the map.

Once a team has done that, their goal is of course to defend against the other team from taking everything back. This is where things in Line of Defense get truly interesting.

Continue Reading at Destructoid

The world of massively multiplayer online games keeps getting, well, more massive. We’ve come a long way since I first picked up the genre eight years ago. World of Warcraft may still dominate the traditional monthly susbcription market, but free-to-play multiplayer worlds of all kinds boast tens of millions of subscribers worldwide.

At E3 last week, I saw demos of a half dozen games each claiming to be a unique, fresh entry to the space. The interesting thing is, in a sense, they all really are. Every game I saw was easy enough to sit down at and pick up the basics of, but each and every game I saw also had at least one surprising or new-to-me feature, whether in settings or skills. From singing to space, here’s a look at what unique features RaiderZ, Otherland, Grimlands, and 3000 AD: Line of Defense bring to the table.

Continue Reading at Kotaku.

“Oh, sh*t!” was Derek Smart’s reaction upon hearing the announcement of Sony Online Entertainment’s PlanetSide 2. Smart and his team of thirty at 3000AD had been working on his newest, similarly-themed title Line of Defense for some time before Sony broke the news, but Smart is a PlanetSide fan and has no hard feelings toward the game or its team. ”They’re not doing anything different. They’re not doing anything innovative. I see it’s more of a polished PlanetSide… which isn’t a bad thing. I say it on Twitter all the time, but I think people are going to be disappointed if they’re expecting anything different.” The bombast of SOE’s large and loud booth to play that game kept things in perspective as a few days earlier, I’d visited Derek Smart in a quiet hotel room for a one-on-one interview and preview of his new indie game, one he hopes will be his most approachable one yet.

“We’re now in the age where any schmo fresh out of college and with an F average in math can develop and self-publish a game if they have access to the right tools. For those of us serious about making a living from this, the stakes are lot higher – especially where lots and lots of money is concerned.” Brutal Gamer peeks inside the mind of Derek Smart, president of 3000AD, Inc., as he talks about the changing times in the industry, breaking into development, and their upcoming game, Line of Defense.

Live from E3 2012, lots of new Line Of Defense screen shots are now up on the media page