Category: News

Sniper Elite and Strange Brigade developer Rebellion has acquired Yorkshire-based studio TickTock Games for an undisclosed fee. 

TickTock will become Rebellion’s fourth UK studio — joining Rebellion Liverpool and Rebellion Warwick as sister studios to the company’s headquarters in Oxford — and will be known as ‘Rebellion North’ moving forward. 

For those unfamiliar with TickTock, the company has recently worked on a couple of Rebellion titles including Rogue Trooper Redux and the Switch version of Battlezone Gold Edition. 

“Bringing more great people to the company is a great way to start 2019,” said Rebellion CEO and co-founder Jason Kingsley OBE in a press release.

“The company continues to grow and it’s important we bring in the right people as part of that process. We’ve worked with the team at TickTock Games for a while now, and we know they’ll continue to prosper as Rebellion North.”

Star Control: Origins has been pulled from Steam and GOG.com after Paul Reiche III and Robert Frederick Ford issued a DMCA takedown notice against the title. 

Reiche and Ford are the designers behind the classic 1990 MS-DOS title Star Control 2, and have been engaged in a long-running legal dispute with Star Control: Origins maker Stardock over the trademarks and copyrights to Star Control. 

Stardock claims it acquired the rights to the Star Control series from Atari back in 2013, but Reiche and Ford have suggested Atari actually gave up the rights to the franchise a decade before the sale took place. 

The pair subsequently began working on a direct sequel to Star Control II called Ghosts of the Precursors, a move that resulted in Stardock suing both designers for trademark infringement while pushing ahead with the development of its own Star Control title. 

Riche and Ford responded with a countersuit, and have now managed to strike another blow by issuing this DMCA. 

Stardock attempted to get a preliminary art injunction to prevent Reiche and Ford from issuing more “false DMCA takedown notices,” but the courts refused to intervene. As a result, Star Control: Origins is currently unavailable for purchase on both Steam and GOG, although anyone who’s already bought the title should still be able to play. 

In a lengthy post on the Steam forums, Stardock criticized Reiche and Ford for bypassing the legal system and jeopardizing the livelihood of its development team by issuing the “vague” notice.

“For those not familiar with copyright law, you cannot copyright ideas, individual or short phrases, concepts, mechanics, game designs, e.t.c.,” wrote the developer. “Star Control: Origins is our own creation without relying on the work of Reiche or Ford. We spent 5 years working on it making it our own game.

“That said, time and time again we have requested, specifically, what elements in Star Control: Origins they think their copyright applies to. If the request wasn’t onerous, we’d be willing to comply.

“Unfortunately, without the income from Star Control: Origins, Stardock will have to lay off some of the men and women who are assigned to the game. We will do our very best to continue to support the game and hopefully Star Control: Origins will return as soon as possible.”

With the success of XCOM‘s relaunch back in 2012, a number of game developers have been looking to take their own stab at the turn-based strategy formula, resulting in the surprising success of Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle in 2017, and in 2018, the release of Mutant: Year Zero right before the holidays kicked off. 

Thanks in no part to a foul-mouthed talking duck, Mutant: Year Zero has managed to find an audience and a strong niche in the strategy game space, showing how even a stripped-back version of XCOM can do well with the right tone and sense of polish. We’ve been enjoying the game over at Gamasutra, and were excited a few weeks back when game director Lee Varley, designer and studio founder David Skarin, and lead animator Calle Granstrom took the time to talk about their work over on the GDC Twitch channel. 

There were a few key insights from the trio about Mutant Year Zero’s design and game balance, so we took the time to collect a (lightly edited) transcription of their most salient points. Read on for a look at how a bunch of Hitman veterans managed to make their own strategy game. 

Skarin: Quite early on, from almost day one, we made the decision that we wanted to keep the stealth aspect as simple as we possibly could. The reason for that was we didn’t want the players spending any more time there than we needed to tell the story and let you explore the world. Because what we wanted to do was to do the stealth moments, or you know set up for combat, while you’re in real time so we could speed it up a little bit but if we started adding too much functionality to that it would just slow it down again right? 

So we made a decision very early on that we wanted to keep the amount of game mechanics that you can utilize in the real time to the minimum, and keep it very very simple. So that’s shown for instance in the attention circles that we use rather than any vision cones or anything like that. We didn’t want people trying to sneak on a corner too much or spending time doing that. 

Skarin: Yeah, exactly that was the choice. It was either that or giving them, whenever you get discovered, you get a little leeway time. As we would’ve done in Hitman for instance, the guy would’ve come over and investigate, but like it was other problems right for balancing the game? So that was quite early of a decision that we don’t put anything extra that we didn’t need into the real time. And as you can see, the attention circles here now, as long as you stay out of them you have the advantage, right? And that communicates very very clearly. 

The idea [with the awareness zones that glow red as you approach] was that this should be a tense moment but that you shouldn’t feel stressed about it, so to speak. You should feel like you have the time to check out the guy coming in on a patrol here and see what’s behind him, etcetera, before setting up. If it were vision cone based for instance, that vision cone might just “BAM” come all of a sudden as he steps from behind a building or a car or something.

Granstrom: We didn’t want to make it something to skill based, basically, when you sneak around it should be more about making a tactical decision rather than being stressed and making quick decisions.

Varley: It was always a design that we wanted the stealth to not be twitch gameplay, because the game isn’t twitch gameplay at all, the game is very much about planning and making good tactical decisions. So the stealth had to feel like it was feeding that quite well. So the stealth in this game is much more about you finding good positions, and working out ‘maybe there’s someone who’s isolated that I can pull down without anyone else seeing.’

The very start of the game that you’re just seeing now is very much designed to be a general introduction to stealth. So extremely obvious patrols of guys with low health walking around on their own, it’s not very taxing, it’s not very challenging. And the characters when they talk they’ heavily hinting at least 2 or 3 times that we should investigate who’s here and we should sneak around first. So I would say that the first 20 minutes of the game is gently pushing the player into this kind of playstyle, rather than us hitting them with a hammer, if that makes sense.

Skarin: In user research about a month ago or something, it was one of the things we probably didn’t communicate enough. We have added some tutorial messages around this. Because if you don’t figure it out rather quickly, the levels can become quite hard later down the line. Because we really wanted you to scout out these positions. You don’t always have to pick off everybody around the map, but at least figure out that they’re there or, when more advanced units step into the zone that can help other units and such, it’s very important that you know about these units or they will surprise you. 

Varley: It was also important that the stealth doesn’t become boring in the game. Because this pattern [in the start of the game,] you repeat that too much it’ll start to get stale. So in the game’s balancing, the enemies that get harder the further in the zone you get, and the enemies health will slowly start to track ahead of your stealth weapons. So at some point in the game you’re going to start having to use multiple characters with stealth weapons to kill an enemy, or make use of your mutations that allow you to do double damage or crit damage and stuff like that to be able to pull off a stealth kill. 

Skarin: So it’s actually, now you’re out of combat, but we have a critical hit and a regular one and that was the balance you were talking about. It’s kind of in layers, that balance, it’s quite nice, where during the mid-game you have to start doing critical hits with your silent weapons in order to take these straggling characters out, or these outliers, so it becomes a little bit deeper to do it which is quite nice. And towards the end, yeah you’ll have to use basically all the tricks in the book if you want to take anybody out on the outskirts.

Skarin: First of all of course we’re also cheating behind the scenes, because people don’t understand percentages very well. So a 75 percent shot here is a bit higher, right. We’ll also do a few tricks on the AI side where if they hit you they’ll actually have less chance next time and such so you don’t get into these streaks of the enemy feeling super powerful just because they got a lucky run. you need to do a couple of these things, specifically around 50 percent, right? 

You shouldn’t be taking those shots really. You shouldn’t be taking 25 percent shots in an XCOM game really. People expect four 25 percent shots to be a hit. So one way of doing that then of course is to add a bit when you miss. So we have a few of those tricks going on behind the scenes, but I think it doesn’t deter anything from the game. We added more along the lines of we felt it was needed. It’s better that the game feels fair, than that it is fair. 

Varley: Especially the hardest thing to do in these games is to make them feel fair.

Skarin: Yeah, and Lee was also very early on with [defining] the percentages. We looked at Mario + Rabbids I think.

Varley: Yeah, they do 100 and 50 which is more extreme than we are.

Skarin: But we went with a system in between.

Varley: Yeah, we went for like an in-between system where we round the numbers up to the nearest 25 percent I think it is. Because it just feels a bit more, for me personally when I’m playing, it feels a bit more easier to predict what’s going to happen. A 75 percent to me feels not guaranteed, it’s still a bit of a gamble. 50 percent, feels like, we know what 50/50 is, its a complete gamble. 25, that just feels like it’s going to miss. Whereas if I’m playing and I get a 87 percent chance to hit that’s a little bit more difficult for me to get a feel of what that number means to me. if i’m taking my shot.

Skarin: What we did was we basically said oh your bonuses are on a 25 percent, so a low cover will give you 25 percent while a high cover will give you 50, like that kind of stepping instead of going with 10 percent or you know some certain angle, trying to be a little more binary so that players will learn that ok i’m going to take 75 percent shots or try to get 100 because in our game it’s quite easy to get 100. 

As long as you flank an enemy you’ll most likely be getting it. we do have range in there, but that’s what we wanted. we wanted players to figure out how to get 75 or 100 shots every time, right. And then try to be pretty harsh on the other ends so you know. I’d rather give you 0 percent than 5 percent, so to speak, because we don’t want you taking 5 percent shots anyway.

Varley: Yeah, it was like to try and make the game feel a lot more fair. Where we want to we reward players for doing good tactical moves a lot more than other tactical games will do. So if I pull off a really really good tactical move and I’m flanking someone, but then I only get an 82 percent chance to hit and I miss, it doesn’t feel like I’m being rewarded for doing some good tactical play. So in our game if you do a good tactical play, you do some good positioning, which the stealth is directly feeding into that, then you’ll be rewarded pretty highly. 

Skarin: It is a tricky one, that we haven’t solved completely here, which is teaching players what flanking means. because it’s the same rules as XCOM uses which basically means that you need to be on the same, behind the grid point that the cover is on, but because we have very lush environments that look almost biological at times, it can be really hard to communicate that. And we opted to go for the, you’ll see if you switch to combat here, making sure that we show the line of fire and the count of your percentages to all the characters in a preview from any tile that you want to move to and that way you can kind of explore where you would get the best advantage. I’m not sure what’s in this demo actually because we’ve been adding a lot lately, but let’s see when you get into combat. 

Varley: [Balancing Mutant Year Zero] is difficult to explain. Just a lot of playtesting, that’s all you can do. this map that you’re seeing right now I must have played this a thousand times. And every time I play I adjust the cover around, and then I play again, and then I’m like this would be so much better if I had a cover here, and then I adjust the cover around, and just keep doing that process over and over again.

Skarin: Yeah, I remember when we generated trees for instance at some point we had a distance we wanted to put them so you could always get in cover, but that doesn’t work to make for an inserting space in itself, so I think that yeah there’s no shortcut there. You really have to play it. I mean there are some ground rules you learn after a while, that you know, you need to have four tiles between high cover walls and buildings and such.

Varley: Sometimes it’s fun to remove cover from the area as well, so the player has to make completely different decisions. Maybe they have to make a sprint move to get to the good cover on the other side. The only real way to do that is through just a lot of playtesting. 

Skarin: That it is a large game to balance.

Granstrom: Yeah. It’s the hardest game I’ve ever done.

Skarin: Yeah, I mean, it’s about 15 hours of gameplay even for us that know the game very well. And of course, we, like we discussed earlier, we changed the balance for the stealth for one, like how many units you can take out, and then you can take them out if you use the correct strategies, so lots of lots of balancing and really really tricky to balance the whole way because of the amount of time that it takes.

Varley: I think, one of the big things that have hit us from the public demo that went out was the response. It’s taken me by surprise how much people are enjoying the game. because we’re completely close to the game so we can’t see it anymore. we’re completely blind to it. There’s the old saying with game developers: we only do with problems. That’s how our entire day is, just problems all day long. We never take a step back to go “oh wait a minute we’re actually building something people really like. “

Skarin: Yeah, it was for balancing, because we get two completely different answers from two different people, right? We have Rui Casais the CEO of Funcom and he’s a really hardcore XCOM fan and he’s constantly been telling us to make it harder and harder and harder. And we have the people that are not hardcore XCOM players and they’re like its way too hard its way too hard. and then you have, because we went with this option where you can take people out silently, that became another one. not just balancing a fight, but if you don’t take anybody out that fight will become way too hard. But if you take as many as possible out it’ll be too easy. So that’s been a tricky one.

Varley: A top tip for any game designers out there, stick all your numbers in a big Excel sheet and make some formulas in there, so if you change one number somewhere you can see what it does to the rest of the game. that’s my approach with this and that’s the only way I’ve been able to get on top of it I would say. If I change how much damage the crossbow does over here I can see roughly what it does to the end game.

Skarin: We’ve finally become old enough to praise Excel. I think that was probably the biggest thing we went thru during the beta period now was just how large the game was. It’s always hard to say how many gameplay hours you have as well, of course, early on and we were playing this in different segments calling it like it would, the start of the game the mid game, the end game, and were just playing those segments but never doing that full run. you wanna do it as early as possible, we always do it too late. and in our case it meant we had a lot of hours to balance all of a sudden. so maybe we should’ve… I don’t know what we should’ve changed to be honest, it’s just a large game.

The game industry in 2018 saw events that will shift the future of games, landscape-shaping trends that we’ll see evolve for years to come, developers and studios who set the bar high, and of course, games we’ll never forget.

Here we present a roundup of our roundups to make your end of year game industry round-upping that much simpler. This is what Gamasutra’s writers thought of 2018.

Also make sure to check out the personal game of the year picks from Kris Graft, Alex Wawro, Alissa McAloon, Emma Kidwell, Chris Kerr, and Bryant Francis.

Thanks for reading and sharing on Gamasutra!

There are a lot of games released into the market every year.

And we cover this trend; this inundation of games filling the marketplace. It’s a trend that complicates the chance for success and recognition, from developer to developer, from game to game.

That was true as ever in 2018. But among our staff, there hasn’t been a real complaint about there being “too many games.” We get it — there are a lot of games, but no one would say “there are too many games” if there weren’t so many games that were great.

There were so many games that were great in 2018. Here are the 10 games that stood out in the minds of Gamasutra’s writers this year. (Selections in alphabetical order.)

When Celeste first came out this year, I played it for maybe a half hour, and then stopped. I just wasn’t in the mood for yet another hard-as-hell platformer.

It wasn’t until I picked it back up at the end of the year when I completely fell in love with it, and appreciated what it was doing. Yes, the game is difficult. But the way the story addresses that difficulty, and emboldens the player to keep climbing, is absolutely brilliant. Celeste shows us that we can be our own worst enemy, but that “enemy” is still an innate part of who we are. And having a friend or two help you realize that along the way never hurts.

Mechanically, it’s a simple concept for a player to understand. Jump, dash, and grab. The game masterfully introduces players to the traversal mechanics, then sprinkles in new level design elements where players have to use those basic skills in new ways. It all just feels perfect. – Kris Graft

Ben Esposito’s Donut County is the perfect amount of video game. It’s a funny, surreal story about remote control holes that’s a joy to play, one that doesn’t overstay its welcome. – Alex Wawro

Before diving into why Florence is a unique experience, the developers deserve credit for making a game that’s the perfect length of time. Clocking in at around two hours, Florence tells a story about love at a great pace.

The game takes the generic formula of a traditional relationship (meeting, falling in love, falling out of love) but tells it in such a different way through effective use of simple mechanics, powerful score, and unique art style.

Games without a lot of dialogue or text need to go the extra mile to convey an engaging and emotional story effectively, and Florence absolutely nails it.

No story spoilers will be given away, because it’s a game that needs to be played in order to fully grasp the impact it has. Florence is made for mobile and other short, narrative games would find themselves a great home on the platform. Mobile is confined to a very small subset of mechanics: Tapping, swiping, or holding an icon on your screen. Those constraints serve as powerful storytelling tools ripe for innovation.

The game in its entirety is made up of small, digestible vignettes of very personal and intimate moments in adult relationships where both the good and the bad are shared in a special way. – Emma Kidwell 

11 bit Studios’ Frostpunk was the 2018 game I could never stop thinking about. From the moment my poor survivors reached the totemic Generator sitting in the frozen Arctic north, every decision I spent with this society simulator helped me reckon with the demons of authoritarianism and how much control and the lies you can tell yourself in the name of the greater good. 

Frostpunk’s thoughtful design means that it’s not just an arbitrary moral messenger here to warn you of the woes of a police state or theocratic regime. It’s crafted to guide you on a path of different path of pain points to remind you that just because you didn’t commit higher crimes against freedom, your lesser decisions still infringed on the rights of your people. And as the pressure drops, and your city is freed from the frozen snow in a great sigh of relief, you’ll look at it’s become and see how even its physical shape was impacted by how much you’d give up in the name of survival. – Bryant Francis

The Hitman sequel drops the episodic format of that last rendition but keeps a firm grasp on Hitman 2016’s charm and quirks as it introduces just the right dose of new mechanics, new levels, and new content to the last game’s already tried and true formula. Hitman 2‘s magic is in each of the massive sandboxes that each main story mission of the game is set in and how it gives players the freedom to take complete ownership of their plans and assassinations, whether the steps they took to complete those objectives were laid out by the game’s suggested or plotted out completely from scratch.

While setting up a platform for another season’s worth of dev and user-made content is an impressive feat, the team at IO Interactive also remade every level, both DLC and base Season 1, from Hitman 2016 for Hitman 2. It’s an undertaking that no doubt took a considerable amount of work, especially since each Legacy level manages to embrace the new mechanics and AI of Hitman 2 without losing the feel of the original. Between the Legacy levels and the still-evolving agent-versus-agent multiplayer Ghost Mode, Hitman 2 has become a game that both builds on the successes of its predecessor without shying away from risk. – Alissa McAloon 

Nothing I’ve played conveys the sensation of snatching salvation from the jaws of failure quite like Into the Breach. There’s a lot to admire about Subset Games’ sophomore effort, but what’s most striking is how often it sets up tactical problems that seem first impossible, then survivable, then solvable. It’s my favorite strategy game since chess, and a remarkable follow-up to FTL. – Alex Wawro

Marvel’s Spider-Man is just one emotional pit stop for the web-headed hero who’s had a hell of a 2018. He gave his life in the film Infinity War, he’s reframing his own heroic origins in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and when given a shot, Insomniac Games doesn’t waste any time when granted use of one of the biggest icons in pop culture.

Not only does Marvel’s Spider-Man give breath to a dizzying and dynamic traversal system that takes advantage of New York’s iconic architecture, Insomniac also uses its mission design and gadget expertise to weave a narrative about the struggles of Peter Parker, and how his selfless nature and faith in other people can be used against him. 

But it’s still not a cynical game! It’s quippy, it’s cute and it gives Mary-Jane Watson something to do. If superheroes are becoming the modern-day mythological heroes, it’s great that Insomniac Games injects a meaningful experience in the middle of its well-honed, well-polished technical achievement. – Bryant Francis

Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 excels on the merits of its smallest moments. The massive open world is an ambitious undertaking, and a space you as a player spend a considerable amount of time traversing during and between missions. And that downtime is where Red Dead Redemption 2 shines. It’s captivating, or even just relaxing to just toss headphones on and exist in that world for a while, fishing, or hunting, or tracking down small oddities hidden out in the wilderness. 

The same is true for the moments spent catching up with the other members of the Van der Linde gang. Catching small conversation with a friend around camp or even just lingering among that cast of characters as they sing, drink, and celebrate after a heist well done makes such an endearing and heartwarming experience that I can’t say I’ve found in other games before.

It’s impossible to mention Red Dead Redemption 2 here however without calling out some of the controversy that’s surrounded the game in the leadup to its release regarding excessive crunch, mandatory or otherwise, during the development of Red Dead Redemption 2. Current and former Rockstar developers have spoken at length about their experiences while working on the game, and the stories on those perspectives should be mentioned with any discussion or praise of the game itself. – Alissa McAloon

In an indie scene where retro has become a cliche, a few games continue to remind us of why gaming’s past remains a valuable space to explore. Lucas Pope’s latest, a brilliant supernatural mass murder mystery-cum-insurance investigator simulator, uses its 80s-inspired graphics to reinforce core mechanics. First, your character uses an enchanted watch to see a deceased person’s moment of death in freeze-frame; no animation required, just an eye for detail. Second, that detail is brought into sharp relief by those same graphics. Where certain things might get lost in the haze of bloom and shaders, the unpretentiously-used bit graphics work in favor of clue-finding.

The story that evolves is an incredibly gripping spec-fic narrative in its own right. You only get snapshots of every life aboard the Obra Dinn, often at their lowest moments and their very ends, but you still come away knowing something all-too-human about them all as you piece together Pope’s grand puzzle. The end result is one for the ages. – Katherine Cross

In the run-up and launch of Tetris Effect, I formed a new pet peeve: people saying things like ‘it’s just re-skinned Tetris‘ or ‘do we really need another version of Tetris?’

For one, Tetris is a game that humankind will be playing in some shape or form for the next thousands of years, barring any near- to mid-term self-destruction of our species. To say something is “just Tetris” is like saying “just the Ancient Pyramids” or “just the moon landing” or “just penicillin.” Tetris is a monumental human achievement.

Ahem ok where were we? Oh yes, Tetris Effect. Yes we do need another version of Tetris — specifically this version. Tezuya Mizuguchi’s take on the game (which was directed by Takashi Ishihara) is surprisingly emotional, bringing together visuals, sound and music, and interactivity together perfectly, with a soulful sincerity unique to Mizuguchi’s work.

And don’t pass up on this if you don’t own PSVR — while that’s a great Tetris Effect experience, the game doesn’t lose its beauty on a regular screen. Just turn the lights down, turn the sound up, and play yet another version of Tetris. – Kris Graft

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

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[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from video game industry ‘watcher’ Simon Carless (GDC, Gamasutra co-runner), rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend.

This week’s highlights include another gigantic chunk of ‘end of year’ charts, discourses, thoughts and ruminations.

And while we’re at it – I’m not really big on editorializing in this newsletter, but just wanted to say: please take some time for you and your loved ones at year’s end, before 2019 gets incredibly busy & clouds your vision.

Until next time…

– Simon, curator.]

——————

Molleindustria’s highlights from 2018 (Paolo Pedercini / Molleindustria – ARTICLE)
“These indiepocalyptic times are giving us an embarrassment of releases but the most popular development strategy seems to be: work within established genres, put a lot of effort into visual polish (probably a result of increasing visual social media), and often just… make games punishingly hard (which I guess yields more play hours in face of limited resources?). [SIMON’S NOTE: Continuing his provocateur shenanigans, but Paolo’s yearly picks are nonetheless reliably some of the most interesting.]”

Athletes Don’t Own Their Tattoos. That’s a Problem for Video Game Developers.(Jason M Bailey / New York Times – ARTICLE)
“When LeBron James bounds down a basketball court, he is both a transcendent athlete and a prominent palette for dozens of tattoos. His mother’s name, Gloria, rests on a crown on his right shoulder and his forearms bear a portrait of his son LeBron Jr. and 330, an area code for his hometown, Akron, Ohio. Although those tattoos have personal connections, they may not truly be his.”

Greg Kasavin’s Top 10 Games of 2018 (Greg Kasavin / Giant Bomb – ARTICLE)
“I made time for plenty of other games, which as always kept me entertained, grounded, and inspired in 2018, through all its ups and downs. There’s a lot of stuff I’m only just getting to, so I’m going to divide my list into two halves–games I played too little or not enough, and games I sank my teeth into enough to put them in a real Top 10. [SIMON’S NOTE: absolutely just the tip of the iceberg on Giant Bomb – please read all of the staff & guest Top 10s if you have a few, uh, hours – including folks like Subset Games, the ever-entertaining Jeff Gerstmann, and Night In The Woods’ Scott Benson.]

[Interview] Eric Chung (exA-Arcadia CEO): ‘We aim to be the next NEOGEO’ (Staff / Shmup ‘Em All – ARTICLE)
“After Spain and numerous public appearances in Japan, exA-Arcadia visited France during Stunfest 2018. Shmup’Em-All took this opportunity to interview the president of this new company, Eric Chung, in order to learn more about this ambitious new arcade hardware. [SIMON’S NOTE: this is a very interesting new cartridge-based arcade game effort – pity it’ll be so expensive for home collectors, but it’s a super neat idea.]”

Netflix Takes Interactive Storytelling to the Next Level With ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’ (Janko Roettgers / Variety – ARTICLE)
“Back in early 2017, Netflix approached “Black Mirror” creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones with an unusual idea. The streaming service had been experimenting with interactive kids content, giving young viewers the ability to choose their own path through a story with a series multiple-choice questions that could be easily answered with the help of a TV remote. [SIMON’S NOTE: This Wired piece has more detail behind the scenes, too.]”

The 10 best video game soundtracks of 2018 (Tayyab Amin, Lewis Gordon & Scott Wilson / FACT – ARTICLE)
“It was also another fantastic year for video game soundtracks. FACT has picked 10 of the year’s best, from the grimy, industrial synth backdrop to experimental first-person horror title Paratropic, to the blissed-out accompaniment for retro platformer Celeste and the big budget Old West sounds of Red Dead Redemption 2.”

The history of the strategy game (Fraser Brown / PC Gamer – ARTICLE)
“The history of computer strategy games begins on tables and boards, crammed inside cupboards alongside that knackered old box of Risk that every home seems to possess. The moment strategy made the leap to consoles and computers, it was already familiar.”

The Year In Relaxing and Stressful Games (Paul Tamayo & Gita Jackson – ARTICLE/VIDEO)
“With the year winding down, I thought it’d be great to look at three games you can chill with as the impending apocalypse—I mean New Year’s—rolls in. Or, if you’d like to prepare for the end times with some hectic games that get your heart rate up, Gita was nice enough to give me her favorite stressful games of the year. [SIMON’S NOTE: rest of Kotaku’s Year In Review is here, including ‘different’ stuff like ‘This Year In Video Game Sex’.]

Esports players are burning out in their 20s (Aisha Hassan / Quartz – ARTICLE)
“Some of the world’s top esports players work as many as 80 hours a week, with much of the time spent on marathon video-game sessions that end up taking physical and mental tolls. According to a new documentary by CBSN Originals, this practice, known as “the grind,” is causing many professional gamers to retire by their mid-20s.”

Gamasutra’s Best of 2018: The top 10 game developers of the year (Staff / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
“The way game developers are telling stories, serving their audiences, and helping their employees stay happy, healthy, and creative are evolving year by year. Looking back and seeing all the good stuff game devs have done this year reminds us how games are small miracles, and the people making them are some of the most gifted people around. [SIMON’S NOTE: also see a Top 10 Games Of The Year list, naturally.]”

How the Artificial-Intelligence Program AlphaZero Mastered Its Games (James Somers / New Yorker – ARTICLE)
“AlphaGo was a triumph for its creators, but still unsatisfying, because it depended so much on human Go expertise. The A.I. learned which moves it should make, in part, by trying to mimic world-class players. It also used a set of hand-coded heuristics to avoid the worst blunders when looking ahead in games. To the researchers building AlphaGo, this knowledge felt like a crutch. They set out to build a new version of the A.I. that learned on its own, as a “tabula rasa.””

The gift of gaming: the joys of getting a console for Christmas (Keith Stuart / The Guardian – ARTICLE)
“We all remember that one Christmas present we got as a kid. The one we’d begged our parents for all year, the one we’d looked up 100 times in the Argos catalogue or on Amazon, depending on our age… For many of us, that present was a games machine.”

The Animation of Gris (Dan Root / YouTube – VIDEO)
“Happy Grismas! There’s something magical about the animation of Gris, and I’m here to give you my thoughts on how it does it.”

Why 2019 could be the year video game unions go big (Charlie Hall / Polygon – ARTICLE)
“When members get together, Kinema said, it’s not just idle talk. Efforts are ongoing inside at least 12 existing studios to form bargaining units and demand the right to negotiate the terms of employment and compensation as a collective. She said that the size of the studios involved run the gamut from several dozen employees all the way up to shops with thousands of workers.”

Weather Systems Took on a New Meaning in 2018 (Rob Zacny / Waypoint – ARTICLE)
“Video games love to stun you with the gorgeous vista, the unexpected majesty (or tragicomedy) of a rare animal in the wild. But these depictions started having an unshakably melancholic resonance this year. How much of what the last two Assassin’s Creed games portrayed is in danger of disappearing during our lifetimes? [SIMON’S NOTE: here’s the ‘games of 2018’ article tag on Waypoint – go wade in!”]

The best VR games of 2018 (Samuel Horti / PC Gamer – ARTICLE)
“This year has been a relatively quiet one for VR, but headset owners have still been treated to their fair share of great games. The likes of Beat Saber, In Death and Moss have become must-plays for anyone with an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, while we’ve also seen plenty of excellent VR ports of existing games, such as Skyrim VR.” [SIMON’S NOTE: plenty of other good end of year charts on PC Gamer, including top games ‘you might have missed’ & a big ‘best-of’ by genre & editor.]

Recovering Nintendo’s Lost SimCity for the NES (Frank Cifaldi / Video Game History Foundation – ARTICLE)
“A lot of you are probably aware of Nintendo’s remarkable rendition of SimCity for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The cartridge launched alongside the system here in the United States, and brought the popular PC game to a brand new console audience. But did you know that Nintendo’s version of SimCity actually started life on the original 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System?”

Alex Wiltshire’s 5 best games of 2018 (Alex Wiltshire / RockPaperShotgun – ARTICLE)
“Now I look back, I realise that I’ve particularly enjoyed a series of games which gave me space to explore them on my own terms. Whether on the scale of giant monsters or the confined scale of the decks of a ship, they’ve all felt expansive and generous, and respectful of me as a player. [SIMON’S NOTE: yep, lots more best-ofs from RPS are here.]”

Dojin Game Trailers of Comic Market 95 (2018) (EdelweisNal / YouTube – VIDEO)
“[SIMON’S NOTE: Just wanted to post this 70+ minute compendium of trailers for Japanese indie/fangames (?!), compiled from the in-progress Comiket event in Tokyo, because there’s a vibrant Japanese game-making scene that isn’t discussed much – it’s just very much traditional genre-based.]”

The Weirdest Video Games Of 2018 (David Wildgoose / Junkee – ARTICLE)
“Fortunately, there’s a whole world of games outside the so-called triple-A space. It’s a world that celebrates the lo-fi, embraces diversity, explores the obscure and champions originality. These are the bravest, strangest, most unconventional and experimental–and, yeah, just plain weirdest–video games of the last twelve months.”

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[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at tinyletter.com/vgdeepcuts – we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected]. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra & an advisor to indie publisher No More Robots, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Here are just some of the many, many positions being advertised right now. If you’re a recruiter looking for talent, you can also post jobs here.

Location: Nottingham, England

Avakin Life developer Lockwood Publishing is looking for a GO Backend Engineer with experience in golang, python, or java to join its team in Nottingham. Responsibilities for this role include the creation and maintenance of fast, efficient, and reliable backend micro-services to be used by the game client, assisting with with the implementation and maintenance of automated testing for both backend API and services, and creating and maintaining document required for team members to understand how web services and API function. 

Location: Hamburg, Germany

Are you bursting with ideas and eager to let your creativity flow in an inspiring work environment with a friendly atmosphere? Then apply now to become part of our passionate and wildly creative team! Join the studio behind the award-winning Galaxy on Fire series as Level Designer to create immersive and spectacular game worlds for an upcoming 3rd person action game for console and PC. Let’s do this together!

Location: San Mateo, California

The Sr. Technical Program Manager reports into the Platform Planning & Management (PPM) department’s Business Operations team and is primarily focused on “Go to Market” and in-life project management, communications & operations around the launch of platform products and features. These projects are typically platform initiatives which vary in scope and subject matter, ranging from incremental feature planning through to new hardware and software releases. 

The PPM team works with a broad set of internal and external teams including global counterparts responsible for all aspects of product planning and development in the PlayStation family. As such, the ideal candidate has direct experience of platform planning and/or managing projects in a global digital media entertainment environment (gaming experience/interest strongly desired).

Location: Seattle, Washington

Valkyrie Entertainment is currently looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our highly-talented team to help us deliver high quality, exciting, and most importantly, fun games. This position seeks a developer with a solid understanding of CS fundamentals and Unity development experience for iOS and Android to write well architected and performant code, contribute to key technical discussions, and provide senior level mentorship to team members.

Location: Bellevue, Washington

The Senior Community Manager is responsible for directing and conducting day-to-day Web and Social Media interactions with the enthusiasts and fans of Ghost of Tsushima. They will provide world-class, personal support by engaging, educating, informing and entertaining our players, while maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the community at large.

Blizzard is looking to curb misbehaving Twitch users in the chats of its official Overwatch streams by requiring that chat participants link their Twitch and Battle.net accounts together before sending messages during a stream.

Blizzard describes the move as a new moderation program, and aims to give it a test run during the upcoming Overwatch Contenders quarterfinals from now through January 12, 2019. 

In order to send a message in Twitch chat during the live-streamed events, viewers will have to log into their Twitch accounts and link their Battle.net accounts up through Twitch’s webpage, though it isn’t explicitly said what action, if any, Blizzard will take against misbehaving chatters following the Battle.net linkup. 

In a blog post on the test, Blizzard says that the change hopes “to improve the viewer experience for the Overwatch Path to Pro ecosystem” and that the team will evaluate how, if at all, the requirement led to a “more positive viewing experience.” 

“I’ve always been interested in telling stories about connection – to land, to a person, to a thing, even to a point in time,” says Katie Stegs of The Blushbox Collective, a group promoting the exploration of intimacy, love, and sex in games. 

“Exploring connection is the focus of so many areas of creativity – especially film, art, and music – but much less so video games. Why is that, I ask myself.”

Games possess a unique power to place the player into a different headspace, having them become the role of another for a time. There is a special power to empathize in this, tasking the player with feeling what that other person is going through as they go through their actions and live out their lives. Like a form of acting, the player becomes this other avatar and exists as them for a time, and in this action they are brought into intimate connection with the thoughts and feelings that come from living these lives.

This unique ability to live and empathize with, moreso than books or movies or other forms of passive media, can make the player truly feel what the characters are going through. Stegs’ work with The Blushbox Collective, as well as their annual Heartbeat Symposium – a three-day event where they seek to bring developers together for days of game jams and speakers from various disciplines working in love and intimacy – looks to capture and explore that connection.

 

“Sex, romance, love, these are universal desires for everyone. Games can also allow us to play, observe and process some pretty complicated issues.”

“I think there is something powerful about the prospective opportunities you have in video games,” says Stegs. “You can play with how inside the character a player is – give them agency and put them in the shoes of someone different from themselves. There’s so much opportunity to capture the nuance, silliness, fun, excitement, and heartbreak through games, and I want to explore how more games could contain those moments.”

Love & games

Games, through their ability to connect a person to another life, may have been underutilized for years in placing players in more realistic, emotional experiences, but that has begun to change.

Still, why explore these kinds of connections? “Because hello, it’s fun!” Stegs says. “Sex, romance, love, these are universal desires for everyone. Games can also allow us to play, observe and process some pretty complicated issues, or partake in light-hearted fantasy for fun. It’s such a diverse topic that there are many reasons to explore it.”

“Games in particular are an interesting way to explore these topics because you can engage more senses than reading or film; you can see, you can hear, you can feel and touch and in some cases, with alt controllers, you can also taste,” Stegs continues. “That’s a bit more senses being engaged than with music, art, or film. How can we manipulate these senses to create a new experience for these stories? That’s what I want to know.”

It’s a largely untapped part of what games are uniquely capable of, and for Stegs, something that offers some interesting opportunities to explore our emotions in and feelings on challenging issues in a space outside of the self. They allow for a safe self-reflection on actions we might not otherwise experience or be afraid to experience, allowing us to learn about ourselves through these shared digital experiences.

Stegs has explored these themes in games before as well. “My own work often focuses on nostalgia in a lighthearted way. The Blushbox Collective is my side project, so I generally don’t make these games for commercial purposes. I see it more like drawing or painting as a hobby. So, having said that, I’ve worked on a range of games from the casual, Pudding Boyfriend, a game about dating foodboys (croissant boyfriend was my fave) to other games such as ASL.”

“ASL is a 3D walking simulator about exploring a world inspired by my memory of 90s internet sites. I’ve imagined the sites I used to frequent such as Neopets, MSN messenger, Hotmail, Yahoo, and others as real physical spaces,” says Stegs. “In the game, you can explore and flirt with or interact with the creatures or people in those environments. I’ve also been working on Nic Cage Himulator– a game where you’ve accidentally guessed Nic Cage’s Hotmail address and you’re going back and forth on the phone with your friend, Becky, about what to say to him. It’s a coming-of-age story which explores teenage development.”

These works, while appearing light and fun, explore important aspects of life growing up, dating, friendships, and connections, all with disarming stories that can encourage players to feel something about their own thoughts on these subjects without necessarily meaning to. Their charming nature gets the player to open up within themselves, or feel free to explore more serious feelings even if the context is light.

“With Blushbox we’ve worked on IncorpoREAL Romance Revival Center, a game about dating dead people, ‘find the love of your life, even if theirs is over’ which explores power and control as well as themes of digital online persona and generally dystopian future ideas,” says Stegs. “Currently I’m working on Woblets (working title) with a friend of mine, which is what I’m calling an interactive sculpture toy. It’s like a Mr Potato Head game but all the parts are fleshy genitally type things. You can create your own strange sculpture which will react to things like shaking and prodding. It generally just flops around. Think of a plumbus, it’s a bit like that.”

Intimacy, love, and sex can often be treated as incredibly serious subjects, which can make players uncomfortable in opening up their feelings about them. Looking at these subjects from different angles, be they lighter or humorous, or through a fiction that lets the player explore the subject from a different angle, can allow an openness in the self that allows them to explore their feelings in ways that feel safe. Stegs’ work aims to utilize these tools to help players open up about their feelings a bit more, using the framework of these games to feel in ways they might not feel comfortable doing otherwise.

Romantic difficulties

Games, in allowing players to live out other lives and control their fates, words, and deeds, seem like a natural place to explore intimacy, but this isn’t often the case, from Stegs’ own observations. Not everyone is comfortable exploring these topics through their games, and for various reasons.

“What makes it so difficult to explore the messiness of human love through a video game format?” Stegs asks. “Is it that we just haven’t been trying? Is it that it’s too difficult with the technology we have available? All these questions were running through my head and I’d been having conversations about this with a few of my developer friends.”

Preconceived perceptions of what games can be and do also harms their ability to explore intimacy. “Also fear, because people are afraid to be associated with projects that deal with sex in the games industry,” she continues. “It’s strange because most other creative industries wouldn’t bat an eyelash, but because games have this perception that they for kids, people put their arms up in the air when they present adult themes.”

There have been other challenges that have made the exploration of sex and love in games difficult as well. “The biggest challenge to exploring these themes are ignorance and fear,” says Stegs. “A lack of research in the nuance of characters and environments, and stereotypes and bad writing are rife in the sex games category.”

Exploring character, especially when it comes to love, sex, and intimacy, requires a grasp of writing and character creation. It requires a deft hand when it comes to telling their stories and creating believable moments and feelings between them. It can be a challenge to tell these kinds of stories from a purely skill-based perspective, and also require an honesty from the writer that can be daunting.

With this need for a deft hand and high skill comes a fear of what will happen should the developer get those things wrong.

“Fear also stops people from trying and failing because the repercussions of failure can be so damning- you can be kicked out of a community and blacklisted for trying something that people perceive as derogatory, sexist, racist etc,” she continues. “It’s a minefield. Like any creative field it’s important that we practice our art and have places that are safe for us to try, fail and learn from our mistakes.”

It can be difficult to experiment in this field without possibly making insensitive mistakes, or fouling up the game with stereotypes or other poor writing mistakes. To avoid these, developers need room to goof up without it feeling like a career-ending mistake. This requires help and encouragement from players and other developers, which would be what lead Stegs’ work in bringing developers together to encourage each other in the creation of these games.

The Heartbeat Symposium

Shared experiences, hopeful advice, and an actual connection with other developers doing the work seemed like a powerful way to help creators explore intimacy with comfort and help. As such, The Blushbox Collective’s work would lead to the creation of the Heartbeat Symposium, a gathering of developers designed to further work in interactive experiences in love and sex.

“Heartbeat Symposium is a 3-day event focused on love, sex and romance in games. It’s held in a different place each year. The first one was held in Byron Bay Australia. The aim is to get developers and creatives out of the traditional game making spaces and use the environment as both a source of inspiration and a framework for creativity,” says Stegs.

It’s been designed as a comforting space for developers to experiment in, as well as receive advice from other developers, psychologists, actresses, writers, and other creative individuals, sharing their knowledge of love and sex in games and beyond. Through this, the event looks to improve the works developers are creating, as well as provide them with a place where they can explore intimate themes with their peers.

“I think Heartbeat provides education about pitfalls, cross collaboration from other industries (our speakers are not just game developers, but also psychologists, sex workers, artists, performers and more), and also a space to practice and get guidance. It’s important that developers and creative have a community to check in with and create with so we’re not just doing this in isolation. The more diverse a community can be, I think the better educated we get,” Stegs continues.

Through this diversity, Stegs hopes that developers will be able to see their topic from all manner of angles and backgrounds, helping move away from painful stereotypes and into a well-thought-out exploration of love and sex.

With events like The Heartbeat Symposium and other initiatives around the world, development of intimacy in games has seemed to be steadily improving. “I actually think it’s going great! We’ve come so far in the last 5 years in including these topics in both mainstream games and in independent titles. I think we’ve got a lot of work to do building tension between characters and removing some problematic trends, but I do think we’re out there making a massive effort, so go games industry!” says Stegs.

“I think that we could improve it by collaborating more with other industries,” says Stegs. “The screen industry is becoming rapidly more interested in video games, and there are a lot of great script and dialogue writers out there who could help us in the games industry a lot. Also, it would be good to work with film and television makers who have mastered camera angles to create a meaningful gaze from the player or viewer to the object of attention. We could learn a lot from that. I’d also like to see more support from the industry in creating and talking about these topics at conferences and online, more of those spaces to practice that I mentioned earlier.”

All of these things are exactly what Stegs and The Heartbeat Symposium are working towards – more creatives from other industries contributing helpful tips, and more places for developers to experiment and hone their craft without fear. In doing this, The Blushbox Collective and Stegs hope to continue the positive trends they’ve seen in the industry, continuing to help developers unlock the ability games have to help players explore intimacy, love, and sex in meaningful ways.

This story originally appeared on Gamasutra sister site indiegames.com