What to read at your leisure. Gaming Industry News Digest for August

The children are sent to school, the song "The Third of September" is sung, the hot tea is prepared: we meet autumn and remember what has happened in the gaming industry in August.



Graphics

Kelly Murdoch made a review of Autodesk Maya 2015. She writes that this version will blow everyone away with convenience and a wide range of options.
Radek Kontsevich continues a series of articles about the game of feeding time. This time the material is dedicated to branding.
Detailed article about pixel art on the portal tutsplus.com. Pretty informative publication.
How Valve created the design for Half-Life.
Dynamic illumination of a 2D character is described in the article by Oliver Franzke.
We make a 2D jump together with the author of the article on atomjack.net.
We optimize the game design for advertising monetization.
')
Programming

There are several articles on templates on gamedev.net. Matt Bus has explained how Alias ​​Templates saved him from insanity . And Paul Cook has released material on using Varadic Templates to implement signals and slots in C ++.
Martin Prantl simplified work with sound and told about it in the article “OpenAL sound manager for your project” .
The author of the game Jack Benoit told about procedural generation of levels in a 2D platformer.
We create AI hockey games using Steering Behaviors.
Pablo Farias Navarro gathered in one material recommendations for creating a game in the style of "top down" on HTML5.

Mobile direction

[A] listdaily talked with COO Zynga Clive Downey about reducing the company's revenue and deepening into the production of sports games.
Women are the best target audience for mobile gaming, according to Flurry statistics.
Taj Kelly tried to figure out why “one game syndrome” often occurs in mobile games.

Console

Reasoning Steve Peterson on "How consoles can evolve in the future, and XBOX One - to beat PS4."
31% of new PS4 users have previously owned Xbox 360 or Nintendo Wii, not PlayStation 3.
In September, the Xbox One will officially go on sale in 28 countries, including Russia. In October, scheduled to start selling Xbox One Kinect . The device will cost about $ 150.

Unity

A selection of news about the game 3D-engine from the portal gcup.ru.
Unity Awards 2014 results.
Unity CEO David Helgason talked about balancing the satisfaction of the community and leadership.
Big release for developers: WebGL in Unity 5 and new technology features.

news

Samsung's Gear VR will go on sale this fall.
The presentation of new products from Apple will be held on September 9.
Hiroshi Kavano, CEO at Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, resigned.
Australians plan to sue Valve. The first hearing is October 7th.
South Korea has blocked all Facebook games.
While Google thought and doubted, Amazon decided to buy Twitch.
Destiny screenwriter Joshua Rubin now works at Talltale. I could not resist the "Game of Thrones".
Castlevania producer Dave Cox left Konami.
Pekka Rantala is the new CEO at Rovio.
Nintendo announced new 3DS. The console design is so different that many new games will not work on older versions of 3DS.
Sierra and King`s Quest are back from the Activision filing. Gamesindustry.biz interviewed Bob Loy and found out about Sierra’s future plans.
Author Flappy Bird has released a new game, for which he was cursed again.
CCP Games (EVE Online, Dust-514) closed its San Francisco office and broke up with two key employees : marketing director David Reid and financial director Joe Gallo.
Neither Last of Us nor Diablo III managed to beat the Yokai Watch 2 sales record in Japan.
Casey Hudson left Bioware after 16 years with the company.
Anita Sargsyan was forced to move because of threats against her family.
Anthony Stevenson explained why the bear plays the violin in the new EA Sports ad.
EA plans to make over a million dollars selling DLC ​​next year.
Steve Ballmer, one of the Microsoft directors, bought the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team and left the company.
320 employees were fired from Nintendo’s European division .
The game from Kim Kardashian is in the first place among downloads in the App Store.

It is interesting

"Snowball Effect" in game design and how to avoid it.
Mike Rose told about the game "80 days" and how to create text adventure for mobile devices.
Game design training: games and rules.
Top 10 game engines from the app2top portal.
How to write a good design document.
Four ways to make money in the Irish gaming industry.
Eight reasons for the appeal of minimalistic games.
John Faure collected recommendations for creating a critical path in the game.
4 game design lessons we can get from Shovel Knight.
Animation and sound in the game "Sparta: War of empires."
Bartholomew Filipek gave some useful tips in the publication “Introduction to Software Optimization”.
Alexander Ballard talked about the anatomy of indie games in the article “AngularJS Beginner's Guide”.
According to DFC Intelligence, more than 92% of games are now purchased in electronic format.

Google plans to introduce accounts for children.
Review of Intel Core i7 5960X.
The founder of Puppy Games has published an article in the corporate blog in which he admitted that the players for the company mean nothing.
Eric Dodds and Blizzard's Jason Chace on Hearthstone: money, eSports and player reviews.
The company ThoughtSTEM, specializing in educational programs, has created a mod for Minecraft that teaches children how to code.
On the Techcrunch portal, Peter Yared published a study on the topic “Why did PC sales grow, and tablets dropped?”.
Sergei Azarov told how to survive in the gaming industry with small forces.
[A] listdaily talked to John Kimmich, CEO at Software Illuminati and editor of the Crowd-Funding Bible.
Chris DeLeon conducted a survey among developers about their first projects. The results of the survey in the form of diagrams can be viewed in his blog: part one , part two.
The portal dtf published an anonymous article about screenwriting skills in the gaming industry.
Interview with EA CEO Andrew Wilson about EA Access, new games and listening skills.
Rob Fahi wrote an article in which he states: “The times when Microsoft could buy a place for the Xbox in the industry have passed. The only way for the company is to make the product better than Sony. ”
Todd Ziolek conducted a large-scale study and talked about 11 game innovations , the existence of which we owe to Nintendo.
Everyone wants to work at Valve. Even those who have their own studios.

Not for everyone: the benefits of exclusivity or What games could learn from William Shatner.
An interesting (technically) material "Why is there not enough sex in games?"
Sony professional analysts could not explain to Yoshida why the PS4 is selling so well.
James Gverstsman is eager to save the game industry with the help of the PlayFab project.
“Look back to go ahead” - an article about the need for remakes.
James Brightman wondered: " Why are AAA projects announced in advance?"
Critical article on the industry and gamers - in the blog magicalwasteland.com. The fact who gamers are was discussed in the Brandon Sheffield material published on the gamasutra portal. Why gamers are no longer the target audience of video games , said in another article on gamasutra.

Video and Audio

Mathematics for Developers: Graphics and Pathfinding by George Rodriguez.
Key moments of Unite 2014.
Unity: call the function of the object clicked on.
The giantbomb podcast about mobile gaming.
A podcast from giantbomb ... about various things. And one more.
The giantbomb podcast on Mario Kart, Infamous: First Light, Star Citizen and more.
Design for Assassin`s Creed III.
# 1ReasonToBe inspires European developers . Hashtag, we recall, refers to women working in the game industry.
A podcast about games about GamesCom results.
Podcast "Technique and artistry" in the blog "Disgusting men." Release-pilot, release one , release two, release three.
Sergey Galenkin presented a new podcast.

Magazines

FPS # 31

Humor:

Fishes played Pokemon, and then Street Fighter.

Twitter













Crowdfunding

GaymerX gaming conference renamed to GX: Everyone Games. Kickstarter has launched a campaign to raise funds for the next event in San Francisco.
Ice-Pick Lodge came out on Kickstarter with a remake of "Mor. Utopia."

Developments

• September 4–5, San Francisco: Cloud Gaming USA - a conference on design, distribution and analytics on all platforms.
• On September 6–7, the World of Gamedev Knowledge conference will be held in Gdansk (Poland) .
• September 8 - New York Games Conference.
• September 18-21, Japan (Chiba Prefecture) will be held at the 2014 Tokyo Game Show.
• September 19–20 - Oculus Connect in Hollywood - a conference for those interested in virtual reality.
• September 25-28, EGX-2014 will be held in London .
• October 1-3: Sweden Game conference.
• October 2-4 in Moscow: Game Developers Conference (KRI).
• October 2-5: Igromir (Moscow).
• October 7: GameSoundCon 2014 in Los Angeles.
• October 9th DrinkUp (Manchester) .
• October 10-12, California will host IndieCade: The International Festival of Independent Games.
• October 10-12, Austria will host Game City 2014.
• October 11 in Kharkov: an independent conference XGamesDev.
• October 11-12 in London: Play Expo 2014
• October 15-16 in California: Gaming Insiders Summit.
• October 16-17 in Norway: Konsoll 2014.
• October 16-17 in Kiev: IDCEE 2014.
• October 17-18 DevGamm will be held in Minsk.
• October 20-23: Project Bar-BQ in Texas.
• On October 21-23, Excellence in iGaming (EiG) will take place in Berlin.
• October 22-24: in Canada, IEEEE GEM (Games, Entertainment, & Media).
• October 23-25: Casual Connect Kyiv.
• October 23-26: Barcelona Affiliate Conference.
• October 24-26: IGAMES-EXPO 2014 (Kiev).
• On October 25 - November 1, there will be a Game City in Nottingham.
• October 27-28: Dubai World Game Expo 2014.
• October 28, in Moscow, the MBLTdev Mobile Services Developer Conference.
• October 29-31: Game Connection Europe 2014 (Paris).

Bonus: brief game news

Bioshock released for iOS devices.
Resident Evil 1 will be released on consoles of new and previous generations.
Assassin`s Creed: Rogue will be released on November 11.
Rise: Son of Rome is coming to PC soon.
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments will be released on September 30 on consoles and PCs.
Sleeping Dogs for the latest generation of consoles and PCs will go on sale on October 10th.
Dungeons 2 from Realmforge will be released next year.
Sims 4 released.
Dragon Quest 4 released on mobile devices.
Evil Within will appear on the European shelves on October 14th.
DLC to Watch Dogs will be released in September.
Little big Planet will turn into a runner for PS Vita and mobile.
Syberia 3 will be released on mobile devices in 2015.