The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) broke the eardrums of 48,200 attendees this year, a 2,500 increase from the prior year. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the trade group that organizes the annual Los Angeles meet-up, estimates the show brought the city $40 million in revenue.

E3 2014 is scheduled for June 10-12, 2014, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Stay with us for more E3 coverage as we keep shaking out the stories. There's still more. Like, way more. Please ignore our tears.

The heroes and villains of the DC Universe will soon kneel before Zod, as the perennial Superman villain has been revealed as Injustice: Gods Among Us' next DLC character. The announcement was made during the latest installment of Conan O'Brien's Clueless Gamer series, wherein Conan loses to a blindfolded Aaron Bleyaert.

The segment also revealed a character based on Conan: "The Flaming C," which was co-designed by Conan and legendary DC animated universe pioneer Bruce Timm. We've reached out to Team Coco to find out whether The Flaming C will be coming to Injustice, or if his creation was solely for the show. We'll be simultaneously keeping our fingers crossed for The Flaming C, while also keeping our ears to the ground for more specific information about Zod's release, in the days to come.

[Thanks, Steve!]

That Dragon, Cancer is a poetic, emotionally intense story of love in the face of death, blended beautifully into a point-and-click adventure game. It tells a true tale, unfortunately, of developer Ryan Green's family life – his 4-year-old son, Joel, has cancer, and he's currently fighting his eighth tumor. Joel has survived two years of treatments, surpassing doctors' initial estimates, and Green has transformed his pain into a beautiful, introspective game.

That Dragon, Cancer doesn't naturally fit into the standard idea of E3, but it isn't out of place in the PC circle of IndieCade's exhibit space. It tells a traumatic story, but in the end it's a simple, gorgeous game.

Green explains his intent with That Dragon, Cancer, and I take a deep breath and dive into a part of it. That Dragon, Cancer is a living game, in every sense of the word – it's still being written, by real events, every day. See the Green family's efforts and development process on the game's website.

IndieCade is always a refreshing experience at E3, and this year in particular was full of surprises. Check out the other games I highlighted this week right here.

Grand Theft Auto 5 is not at E3, but that isn't going to stop this September's guaranteed blockbuster from putting out some screenshots to remind you of its existence during this week.

We had the opportunity to chat with Call of Duty: Ghosts Executive Producer Mark Rubin during E3, but instead of asking how many guns the latest installment has, we decided to focus on tech and art.

Rubin explains how the next-gen console architectures being so close to PCs will likely help all developers, from the mega studios, like Infinity Ward, to basement developers like Sally Perkins (you'll hear about her in five years). He also goes on to explain how Infinity Ward has reworked its art flow to benefit all platforms.

Mad Catz's extensive line of PlayStation 3 Tournament Edition FightSticks will not function with Sony's new PlayStation 4, Joystiq confirmed today with Mad Catz senior product development manager Richard Neville. "Playstation 4 will require a whole new set of peripherals," Neville said.

Currently, Mad Catz has announced that it is launching a new and improved Tournament Edition 2 FightStick for the Xbox One when that console is released sometime this year, but the peripheral manufacturer was unable to comment on the availability of future PlayStation 4 sticks.

The Wii U and 3DS versions of the new Super Smash Bros. will not feature cross-platform play, director of Sora Ltd. Masahiro Sakurai tells Joystiq. Since each version of the game has completely different stages, cross-platform play wouldn't work, he told us through an interpreter. Each version will interact with one another, however, as announced back in 2011. Specifically, players will be able to take characters they've customized and transfer them to the Wii U version.

He wouldn't elaborate on exactly what those customizations are, saying only that they won't be costumes and they won't be something that players have to unlock through repetitive tasks. Different costumes, he said, would take away from what makes each character unique. He also wanted to avoid boring, repetitive tasks, while Sora works to produce a "stress free, easy connectivity" between the two versions.

When asked if the level editor would return, Sakurai gave us a "no comment."

Nearly ten years ago, a quirky little game called Disgaea: Hour of Darkness put developer Nippon Ichi on the map for lovers of Japanese RPGs – the ones from America, anyway. This quirky strategy RPG combined Final Fantasy Tactics with a Tim Burton-inspired aesthetic, and just as the genre seemed to be fading from relevance. Nippon Ichi capitalized on the success of Disgaea by opening up an American branch months later, and continued to iterate on their particular brand of complex and bizarre mechanics.

For some (like myself), Nippon Ichi's prolific nature soon became a case of diminishing returns, and their audience gradually checked out from the company's regular forays into strategy RPG territory. Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness for PlayStation 3 stands as the developers' attempt to recapture that magic of 2003 with a spirtual remake of the game that made them, and by all accounts looks to be treading some very safe waters.

This might not be a bad thing, though; just as the New Super Mario Bros. series added a fresh coat of paint to old-school action, Disgaea D2 has the same intent. The latest installment to the series acts as a direct sequel to the first game, complete with the same mechanics and characters, but with an entirely new story.

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When you're tasked with previewing the latest and greatest in kid stuff, it's hard to not feel at least the slightest bit jealous. In my day, our molded lumps of China-manufactured plastics rarely interacted with technology in any meaningful way, and we liked it just fine.

Even so, if you lopped a good 20 years off my current age, it would be impossible to avoid the charms of Skylanders, a series that's successfully merged the worlds of physical and digital play – all with a booster pack-style setup that's only mildly predatory on parents' wallets. As backwards compatibility quickly becomes a thing of the past, Skylanders: Swap Force offers compatibility with every figure Activision has sold since 2011, along with a slew of new features that promise to make this installment the biggest and best its pint-sized audience has seen yet.

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A group of alligators are stalking one area of the PC roundtable at IndieCade's E3 expo. They're tiny and plastic, and they're all over the laptop for 7 Grand Steps: What Ancients Begat, the first chapter in a new series from longtime indie developer Keith Nemitz, known as Mousechief.

I stopped by Mousechief's table to talk about 7 Grand Steps, a board-game-inspired tale of ancient family drama and not getting eaten by alligators (you hope). Seven Grand Steps launched on Steam for PC and Mac on June 7, and it's already on track to bring in $100,000. So that's cool.

Watch as Nemitz and I discuss the mechanics of a Sopranos story swathed in ancient garb, and the benefits of choosing to be evil. Later today I'll share the last eye-catching game I found at IndieCade's booth, caught on video – just as it captured my heart.

Microsoft's Cierra McDonald has outlined plans for the Xbox One's overhauled achievements system, detailing new in-game "challenges" that promote community collaboration.

Xbox One challenges are time-limited tasks displayed alongside achievements in a player's profile. Unlike achievements, challenges do not award GamerScore. Challenges, however, have the ability to track progress across multiple games and among all Xbox Live members, allowing developers to implement community-based goals. The Xbox 360 currently offers a similar service with Avatar FameStar.

McDonald outlines a possible implementation: "Imagine, for example, a game releases a headshot weekend challenge that requires players to cumulatively headshot 1 million baddies in a 3 day period. And every person who participates and meets the challenge's goals gets the unlock on his or her achievement history and reaps its reward."

Achievements, meanwhile, are not bound by time constraints, and are still unlocked via individual player progress. Promising players "more tangible benefits" for their in-game progress, McDonald notes that Xbox One achievements may now unlock "digital artwork, new maps, unlockable characters, and temporary stat boosts," along with other bonuses.

McDonald revealed that Xbox One video and music apps can also use achievements to reward players with "sneak peek content, early access, or subscription extensions." Note, however, that you can't use app achievements to pad out your Gamerscore – points are only awarded for achievements earned in games.

In an effort to tide players over until the games shown at this year's E3 are ready to be released, Sony has kicked off a sale for a handful of last year's best-reviewed games on the PlayStation Network.

Through next week, PSN users can take advantage of steep price drops for a selection of PS3 retail and PSN-exclusive games, including Tomb Raider, The Walking Dead, and Sound Shapes, among others. PlayStation Plus members get an additional discount on top of Sony's announced sale prices.

A full list of discounted games is after the break below.

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The PlayStation Vita version of Gaijin Games' Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien will block, spring, slide and/or jump its way onto PlayStation Network sometime between mid-July and mid-August, Gaijin Games designer Danny Johnson told us during this week's E3 in Los Angeles.

"At least that's the plan," Johnson said. "The version we have here [at E3] has been in development for a couple weeks – less than a month I think – so it's something that's fairly recent. We don't have the kinks quite worked out yet, but we wanted to show people that it's a thing."

We spent time with the demo on-hand, and found that it was identical to the console/PC versions, save for some framerate issues on certain levels. Johnson added that the framerate problem is one of the kinks Gaijin has yet to work out, but that the release build will be on par with the existing versions on terms of performance.

Victory Games' Command & Conquer, built on EA's Frostbite engine, is launching as a free-to-play game later this year through Origin. Tim Morten, development director, says that while Command & Conquer will require an internet connection, it's not such a far-flung idea given the multiplayer nature of the game. The benefits of this are chiefly a more nimble game that can be updated far more frequently than any retail product.

With SimCity still fresh on everyone's mind, I asked Morten about the choice to take the online path. "First thing to know is this is not only a multiplayer game – we do offer skirmish so that people can practice up. I think with SimCity, a lot of people had an expectation to play solo. Many people are going to come to us to play multiplayer so we came from the mentality of how do we the make multiplayer experience as good as we can make it? The answer to that question is, we try to get rid of as much cheating as we can, and we try to get rid of as many problems with other peoples' lag impacting your own game."

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Wednesday night, a black Samsonite backpack filled with an Asus laptop, two iPads, two Vitas, a Kindle, a bunch of European-US outlet converters, and "enough power cables to power E3," disappeared from an E3 party. The bag and everything inside of it belong to Vlambeer co-founder Rami Ismail.

Ismail was at the Sony mixer at the Figueroa hotel last night, and he left his bag near a table for a few minutes. When he turned to reclaim it, it was gone. Today, Ismail filed a police report, but so far no one has produced any information about the thief.

"It's pretty much my entire company in that backpack," Ismail said. Vlambeer is responsible for Ridiculous Fishing, Super Crate Box and the coming multiplatform game, Luftrausers.

Authorities said E3 and its surrounding events provide a hotbed for burglaries, so keep a close eye on your bags. And if you spy anyone playing Luftrausers on a Vita that isn't attached to a Sony booth, hit up Ismail's Twitter.

Microsoft Studios manager Michael Saxs Persson tells Joystiq that Project Spark is a natural evolution of the programming language found in Kodu Game Lab, the game building software released on Xbox 360 and PC in 2009. "The project architect from Kodu is working on the language for this game," Persson added.

Persson says that Project Spark isn't the same in terms of the game designing elements, but the language used to aid players program how objects in Spark is the natural progression of the same features found in Kodu. Programming in Spark takes the "If This, Then That" approach, telling objects when and how to react to different situations. In a demo presentation behind closed doors, Persson showcased how layered those decisions could be.

Spark has a host of other features, including a decision tree-type system that allows creators to answer a handful of questions to build quests and missions. Once their "story" has been developed, it can be shared to other players who can play through the created experience or edit it for their own tales.

Spark also allows players to create a variety of different kinds of games, much in the same way that players could use the tools available in LittleBigPlanet 2 to develop shooters. Examples shown were a Pilotwings-style game created by the developers, as well as a working synthesizer with on/off switches, programmed background beats and a record and playback option. Though not shown, one gametype that sounded especially devious was a "Bad Advice Blackjack" game, where a Goblin would troll the player during card games, offering bad advice and telling them how bad they were.

Project Spark is a launch window game for the Xbox One. A beta is planned for later this year on Windows 8.

Indie Fund is funding two original projects with Double Fine. The news was announced during the Horizon conference by Indie Fund's Kellee Santiago and Double Fine producer Greg Rice. Santiago didn't offer any additional details, saying only that there would be more revealed in "the coming months."

Double Fine is currently very busy, working on two Kickstarted games – Broken Age and Massive Chalice – the music game DropChord and now two more games with Indie Fund.

Utter the phrase "Diablo for consoles" to anyone that has some familiarity with gaming history and you're bound to hear some Sideshow Bob-style shudders in response. Blizzard's skeleton-clicking series didn't have the most graceful entry into the world of console gaming, and after a disastrous 1998 PlayStation port Diablo hasn't dared to leave its PC home.

This year, however, Blizzard revealed Diablo 3 would make the transition with versions coming to Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One and PS4, finally giving console players a taste of the magic they've been missing out on for well over a decade.

Thankfully, Blizzard has been much more thoughtful this time about transitioning a mouse-and-keyboard-driven experience to console controls.

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