What are User Clips and what do you expect to see from XBLA players? Do you expect any surprises?

George Broussard: Every time you play the game (single player, co-op or DukeMatch), the game saves a game clip. You can view the clip later or share it with your friends. You can even jump into old clips and play the game (in single player). Your clip can also be uploaded to the leaderboards if you get a top spot. We have a Time Trial leaderboard that tracks how quickly you play a level. It's really cool to download people's clips and see how they ran through a level, then try to beat their times. I think there will be some fun battles on the leaderboards due to this feature.

And Painless Death sounds like something everyone is going to want to know about. Tell us what that's about...and how long do you think it will be before other developers start copying it?

George Broussard: One of the core things that makes you stop playing a game is dying. It's frustrating. This is a feature that spun off the demo-recording mode that was already in the game. John Pollard, one of the programmers, said "Hey, I can do a cool death thing with demo recording, look at this." Once we saw it, we had to pursue the idea.

What happens is that once you die, you are presented with a TiVo-style timeline of your play in a level. You can then scrub along the timeline and jump back into the game at any point during your play of the level. You can still quicksave your game, like 12 years ago, but you no longer need to. You just play. You never ever think about saving the game. This worked well for a classic game where you don't want to replay a level ten times and you don't want to be bothered saving a game in a checkpoint world. Would this work in Halo or Call of Duty? Maybe, maybe not, but it's a fun area in which to experiment and see where it takes us. Braid and Prince of Persia clearly show that the mechanic is a solid idea.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask what everyone wants to know...what's up with Duke Nukem Forever?

George Broussard: It's going really well. There are several hours of fairly polished game to play. We're actively testing parts of the game and getting feedback from play testers and things are coming together. It's fun, it's in focus, we know what bits are fun and which are not, and it's just a matter of time now. I've probably never been as happy or excited about the game as I am these days.