I'm not saying this is an easy problem to tackle! It's extremely difficult with subjective results. We're probably many years away from seeing really significant changes. Of course, on the other hand, there are people tackling this problem. Look at a game like Fable from Big Blue Box - it's still too early to tell, but if all goes as planned they'll create a game where the world genuinely reacts to the player's actions over the course of time. Here's hoping!

What was the best "sleeper" game of the past year and what made it stand out?
It seems hard to believe that it was a sleeper, but Dice's Battlefield 1942 surprised a lot of people. EA didn't know the hit they had on their hands when this one was in development at the Electronic Entertainment Expo a couple years ago, it was shoved away in a different room off of the main convention hall.

But WHAT a game! Battlefield is a triumph of multiplayer. It promotes teamwork without forcing it, and everybody gets to do something. A couple of players will be fighting a dogfight in the skies while two tanks fight over a bridge below and a scout calls in an artillery strike from the battleship that other players are piloting just offshore. Incredible!

...and of course, at THIS year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, the Battlefield expansion pack was displayed front and center on the show floor. It was mobbed with people.

Who, in your opinion, are consistently the best game developers and what makes them so?
That's a difficult question to answer - developers seem to ebb and flow based on the talent inside. But one company that has managed to maintain a standard of excellence for years is Blizzard Entertainment. It's a combination of many things: Their artistic talent is absolutely top-notch, giving each of their games a brilliant visual flare. (You can recognize a WarCraft character from a mile away because the art style is so distinct.) They concentrate on polish: refining and refining a game until the unit balance is just perfect and the interface is as simple as possible. They're not afraid to delay a release or cancel it altogether if a product isn't going to be up to their standards (they canned a WarCraft-based adventure game a couple of years ago, even though it was late in development. That's gutsy, and speaks to their dedication to remain on top.) And they rarely try to revolutionize, they just find game formulas that work and consistently do them better. The result is one tight best-selling product after another.

Recently there was an exodus of talent from Blizzard, but it's unclear if that will have a noticeable impact on the company. As long as fresh talent comes in and the company priorities stay focused, the "golden age" can continue!

If you could give game developers 3 tips that might help their games receive more critical-acclaim, what would they be?
Expensive press junkets with underdressed models in exotic locations. (Kidding!)

In all seriousness, there's no magic formula, but here are some things that will help:

1) Make sure your game does one thing and does it WELL. Creating a game that's a little bit of everything sounds great on paper but in the end nobody knows how to talk about the product. Find a hook - something you can do better than anyone else - and build a game that'll bowl people over using it.

2) Sell your story! Talk to people! Get some face-time with editors and show your product. Boxes full of games show up at publications regularly and - let's face it - there are a lot of jaded editors out there. Don't be another game in a crowd of genre clones. Get your story straight, make appointments, and show off what's cool and unique about your product. Editors LOVE to see something new or something well-done that they can tell their audience about.

3) Take the time to do it right. Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds both bring their games to the prototype stage immediately so that they can start playtesting as soon as possible - they can identify features that aren't working early and cut them out. Heed that advice! Everything in your game should sing, like Blizzard's games do. Don't be afraid to cut features if you have to. Release a great finished product, not a good one that suffers from a couple poorly implemented features.

Of course, great games seem to break all the rules - Battlefield 1942 was far from being polished, but it was saved by some brilliant gameplay mechanics. Still, those are good rules to keep in mind!