The New Year has begun, finally! It's about time I think, while 2004 was a year full of surprises and many cool games, I’m pretty sure that 2005 will bring us even more joy and what we all like the most; videogames. It also means a lot of exciting things; for a start we've got a new guy on board with the community team; Woody - or Wout for those who can pronounce it. I've worked with him in the past, Woody and I go way back. We launched our first gaming website together, ten years ago! We know our subject well. Nonetheless it's a pleasure to be working at such a great company such as Lionhead Studios. We're surrounded by some very talented and even nicer people. While I will be focusing on Black and White 2, Woody will mainly be active as a Community Pet for The Movies.

You have to agree with me though; the last year has been one with many good releases on different platforms! We gamers have been spoiled last year. On the other hand, some games were quite disappointing to say the least and the recent developments in the strategy games’ genre don’t appeal to me at all to be honest! Restrictions on what and where you can build; boring mechanics in long lasting chases after flags or hot points and the worst design decision since the day, ehm a while; very silly limitations on the number of units you can build due to a silly mechanic called ‘Command Points’! It's everything I personally dislike in those games. And I am not talking about what a game states to be on the back of the DVD-case; I am actually talking about the actual gameplay itself! I surely hope Black and White 2 will be nothing like this, because that would be, well, "a bummer".

Last year I received an email, from a bloke who I didn't know. To make a very long story short; he now works at Lionhead Studios, and so does his brother; they are Ron and Chris Millar. Both worked at Blizzard on titles such as Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. Currently they've been on the Black and White 2 project for what will be exactly a year in May. I've attended as many design meetings as possible with Ron, Chris, Peter Molyneux and Philip Robinson since the day they started. Almost every possible subject gets discussed. The result is a very nicely written design document which covers just about every possible subject and gives answers to every possible question. While both Peter and I thought that releasing this document to the community would be a good idea, everyone else thought the opposite! So we have thought of a different way to explain Black and White 2, but more about this later. I'm not mentioning anything specific about what the design team talked about, not just yet. All I wish to say now is that the frowns and looks on Ron's face, when Peter mentioned one of his tiny little ideas, made me laugh. And it will make you laugh. I sincerely hope so. (Off the record: the latest screenshots in the Gamespy Diary give away some of these subjects already)

The result of this plan is a continuous flow of information on the new website, with the regular addition of new updates. If you then put all this information together you'll get the bigger picture of the game. It won't be possible to answer every possible question on the forum, seeing as every answer would only bring forth more questions with the internet being the medium it is. But we'll try to cover all major issues in these updates on the websites and elaborate on them in one forum topic.

From time to time developer chats in the chatroom #lionhead on Quakenet will be organized with the development team present, stay tuned for details on this! If everything goes to plan; the first one will be in January.

"What about Fable?" I hear many ask - well, it has sold over 1 million copies. Other then that; nothing. I don't know if there will be a sequel or an expansion pack, I don't know if it will come out for PC. Or Mac. Or PS2 or any other platform out there. I don't know what the team is doing now (off the record: the webcams show some activity) and I don't know all the secrets in Fable myself. And if I learn something new and it was be appropriate to say, then I will change this community update.

Sam, Community Pet Lionhead Studios