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OLD “RPS Exclusive: Gabe Newell Interview” – John Walker

The worst days [for game development] were the cartridge days for the NES. It was a huge risk – you had all this money tied up in silicon in a warehouse somewhere, and so you’d be conservative in the decisions you felt you could make, very conservative in the IPs you signed, your art direction would not change, and so on. Now it’s the opposite extreme: we can put something up on Steam, deliver it to people all around the world, make changes. We can take more interesting risks.

“Selling candy to babies” – Rich Stanton

“The F2P space for kids is unfortunately a highly predatory one,” says Jeffery. “There are a lot of developers doing things they must know and feel are not the right things to do. It is predatory, and it is lucrative. We make six apps a year. Companies like TabTale make 200. It’s a machine, a freemium converting machine.”

LONG “Games By Design: AI War: First Four Years Postmortem (And By Extension Arcen History)” – Chris Park

That AI War can gross more than a million dollars (and growing) while serving that sort of niche — and have players happy about the prices they’ve paid, and not grumbling about it as they do with certain $80+ titles that I can think of — is quite something. It shows that there is a lot more life in the “small spaces” that the big AAA publishers are ignoring. And it’s something that I think should be a hopeful sign to players who love various “dead” genres. Most “dead” genres could provide this level of developer income and this level of player happiness for the right game sold the right way, I’m convinced.

“Positional Balance” – Matt Pavlovich

Positional balance is a relatively new notion in game design, and it seeks to lessen the possibility of a runaway leader and keep players engaged through the duration of a game, even ones nominally at the “back of the pack.” The primary concerns of positional balance are addressing the runaway leader problem and implementing catch-up mechanics.

“Repeating History: N++ And The Case For Conservative Game Design” – Michael Thomsen

“It’s actually pretty shocking how lucky we are to live here,” Burns said. “From attending our first GDC when N was in the Independent Games Festival, to securing the loan to make N+, to help with financing N++, we would be in a vastly different position today were it not for government support of small businesses. Without this support, we probably could have still made the games, however we would have had to cede control of them — as well as the majority of the royalties — to a publisher.”

“How Long Does It Take to Make an Indie Game?” – Joseph Mirabello

Also, looking back, here’s a tidbit I learned about myself during prototyping: feeling overwhelmed leads to demotivation. Demotivation leads to stagnation/distraction/facebook. Working mostly in solitude makes this worse: the sense of a shared investment that comes from teamwork is replaced with an echo-chamber of doubt. Devising strategies to combat self doubt, therefore, became a crucial part of development (maybe that’s worth a blog of its own someday).

VID “Music Object, Substance, Organism” – David Kanaga

Liquid is of special interest being at the edge of chaos, as it were. It is between stillness and chaos. More or less viscous. Besides, we are inside of music. It is not in front of us, like a picture, going away if we turn around or close our eyes. No, music is like a bath. We have to dry off after to get away from it.