If you have any interest in level design you’ll want to check out the popular Level Design Workshop at the 2019 Game Developers Conference next month, where you’ll get a chance to learn from folks who have worked on everything from big-budget blockbusters to arresting indie games.

Notably, if crafting believable, authentic levels where it feels like real people live and work is important to you, check out the GDC 2019 Design track talk on “‘Hitman‘ Levels as Social Spaces: The Social Anthropology of Level Design.” 

Presented by IO Interactive level designer Mette Podenphant Andersen, this Level Design Workshop session will consist of three sections. First, Mette will cover framing and the analysis that sparked a change in the way the Hitman 2 team approached level design.

Next, he will present an analysis of what happens when you look at game spaces as social spaces, and how that played out in the pre-production design of the levels in Hitman 2. 

Finally, Mette will discuss how the results of this exercise resulted in coining some new phrases and concepts that affected Hitman 2 from pre-production onward!

The Level Design Workshop will also play host to fantastic talks like “Building New York in ‘Marvel’s Spider-Man’: It’s Still Just Level Design“, in which Insomniac’s Josue Benavidez will share the fundamental level design principles that shaped Marvel’s Spider-Man, and “Rewarding Exploration with Collectibles and Gatherables“, a talk from writer and designer Leah Miller that’s all about the best ways to place collectible items and other gatherables in your levels. Don’t miss it!

For more details on these (and many more!) talks, check out the GDC 2019 Session Scheduler. There you can begin to lay out your GDC 2019, which takes place March 18th through the 22nd at the (newly renovated!) Moscone Center in San Francisco. 

Bring your team to GDC! Register a group of 10 or more and save 10 percent on conference passes. Learn more here.​

For more details on GDC 2019 visit the show’s official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa

The 2019 Lunar New Year Sale has begun, bringing big savings on thousands of titles across Steam in celebration of the Year of the Pig!

During this year’s Lunar New Year Sale, players will receive a one-time automatic $5 (or equivalent currency) discount on qualifying purchases over $30 — this is limited to one cart purchase per account.

On top of that, buying games during the sale will earn you tokens that may be redeemed for Steam rewards at the Rewards Booth. You can exchange your tokens for a shiny profile page, emotes, badges, and more instant discount coupons! These tokens will expire once the Lunar New Year Sale ends.

For more information about how the Rewards Booth works, check out the FAQ: Rewards Booth FAQ

Throughout the 2018 Steam Winter Sale, millions of you cast your votes in the third-annual Steam Awards. The results are in, and on February 8th at 10am Pacific, the winners will be announced via broadcast at https://steam.tv/SteamAwards.

This is the first time we’ve announced the results of the Steam Awards via broadcast, and the show will include special messages from the winners. Don’t forget to tune in!

With Disney Infinity, Skylanders and Lego Dimensions falling by the wayside in recent years, toys-to-life seems to have reached its natural conclusion. Much like the plastic instrument peripherals of a decade ago, consumers have had enough after filling their homes with plastic discs, USB base plate readers and assorted clutter – the novelty just isn’t enough anymore. As much fun as we had with it, Starlink: Battle For Atlas seemed like a foolhardy endeavour even from its initial reveal back at E3 2017, and despite being a very strong game (with Switch owners getting the choicest cut thanks to the excellent Star Fox crossover content), disappointing sales and a speedy price drop only confirmed what seemed self-evident from the start: toys-to-life is well and truly dead.

But is it, though? A quick survey around the Nintendo Life office reveals we’re still picking up amiibo when something catches our eye. Nearly five years on from launch, Nintendo’s reaction to Skylanders and Disney Infinity – wisely branded apart from the struggling Wii U – has somehow bucked the trend and outlived nearly all competition. We’re still buying them even after toys-to-life went off a cliff. The crazy days of shortages and flipping Wii Fit Trainer on eBay for 500% profit are long gone, but last year’s figures remarkably showed growth in amiibo sales. Nintendo is often accused of artificially bottle-necking supply to generate consumer demand – a practice they deny – but shortages certainly drove interest when the platform launched in 2014.

The reasons for toys-to-life’s precipitous decline is tough to pin down to one factor, especially while Nintendo continues to buck the trend. The explanation that brick-and-mortar stores got sick of bulky stock might hold water were it not for all the Funko Pops lining racks at your local gaming emporium. Retailers are happy to clog shelves with plastic so long as it’s shifting, and amiibo are still doing just that. Restocks of some of the rarer figures prior to the arrival of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate helped collectors pick up ones they’d missed, and we’ve seen figures from other series reappear, too. Just the other day we were thrilled to see an Ocarina of Time Link in the wild and fought the urge to snap it up immediately. What started out as ‘okay – just a couple of the ones we really like’ has ballooned into a collection which threatens the structural integrity of our Billy bookcase. Of course we were going to get Chibi-Robo and the squidgy Metroid, and we’d snap Nintendo’s hand off at the wrist to get that Japan-only Qbby amiibo for a sensible price, though did we really need Duck Hunt dog? Our shelf contains several fringe characters purely because they were cheap, or worse, they were rare.

You could argue that other brands don’t enjoy the broad cross-generational appeal of Nintendo’s beloved characters and IP. Skylanders are unlikely to strike a chord with many parents – as the plastic pouches filling second-hand bargain bins at your local GAME will testify – but Nintendo’s roster is recognisable to virtually everyone. It’s a valid point that unfortunately founders when you consider Lego’s timeless charm and Disney’s unimpeachable (and ever-expanding) portfolio. If Mickey Mouse, Buzz, Woody, Darth Vader, Iron Man, et al. aren’t enough to save a sinking ship, what dark magic fuels the success of a platform boasting Captain Falcon, Mii Brawler and, er, Roy? How are amiibo popular enough to justify twelve different versions of the same character? (Link, if you’re wondering – yes, that includes his lycanthropic form.)

One can safely assume that amiibo are surviving – thriving, even – purely as collectables. The wedding-themed Mario, Peach and Bowser figures comprising the Super Mario Odyssey series, for example, were arguably designed as cake-toppers for nerd nuptials in addition to the nominal in-game bonuses they offer. The overall sculpture quality means they look great on display – far better than any run-of-the-mill World of Nintendo figurine – so that’s undoubtedly a factor in their continued success.

In spite of amiibo’s healthy effect on Nintendo’s balance books, it’s harder to argue that in-game implementation has been anything but a disappointment. With no need for a bulky base, the fact that their Near-Field Communication chips interface with the controllers directly is a massive boon, but we’ve yet to see any truly innovative use of them in software. Even notable examples of integration are hardly ground-breaking and anecdotal evidence suggests that many players simply don’t bother scanning them anyway. Smash Bros. – the driving force behind the majority of the amiibo line – is a case in point: training amiibo fighters that ape your fight-style is a diverting little extra and the idea of pitting them against a mate is fun, but the novelty wore off quickly. The handful of bespoke challenge levels they unlocked in the original Splatoon led to some exclusive swag, although we don’t recall if we completed them all, and we’re not digging the Wii U out of the loft to check. In Super Mario Maker they handily gave you immediate access to the corresponding 8-Bit costume, but those could be earned through normal gameplay. Other instances of decent implementation exist, but it’s nothing terribly interesting or game-changing.

In fact, you could say that for space-conscious gamers with families, NFC functionality and gameplay value – however notional it may be – works more as a psychological justification to purchase. It’s an easier sell to yourself and loved ones alike when you can claim these attractive bits of plastic also enhance the games. Their compatibility with multiple titles is another win; even the ones you’re on the fence about might end up on your shelf if they unlock a natty costume in Mario Kart 8. Hardly essential, but neat enough to rationalise throwing down a tenner.

Conversely, there are plenty of examples where amiibo support feels like more trouble than it’s worth. Wii U’s insipid Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival was developed mainly to encourage the company to make amiibo for that series – and for that we’re thankful. The actual game, though, was a turgid snorefest. Mini Mario & Friends: amiibo Challenge on Wii U and 3DS was another stab at a bespoke title which fell flat, though at least that was a free downloadable offering.

Perhaps the problem lies in Nintendo’s unwillingness to use amiibo for anything more than cosmetic items or minor rewards. The company’s approach has been sensible for the most part – any variant of a character (Dr Mario or 8-Bit Mario, for example) will unlock character-specific bonuses. Of course, gating significant content behind them (like, say, proper dungeons in a Zelda game) would be a sure-fire way to provoke ire from the fanbase, and Nintendo hasn’t taken that road.

Admirable as it is, this approach does hamstring creativity somewhat if designers must constantly work on the basis that players have nothing but the base game. A sensible choice, yes, but it leaves an enormous amount of untapped potential on the drawing board, and after seeing the sheer creativity on display with things like Labo, surely there’s some outrageous, outside-the-box idea that could make use of the millions of amiibo sitting on shelves across the globe. It’s unthinkable that Amiibo Festival and Mario Party are really the best Nintendo can do.

At the very least they should be providing added value to your system. Why don’t they unlock custom themes or skins on your 3DS or Switch? Is a simple colour scheme asking too much? How about a simple chess game? Board games have enjoyed a huge renaissance over the last decade, both digital and physical. Imagine a Dungeons & Dragons-style campaign, for example, where your character stats and choices are stored in your amiibo. What about some sort of Labo tie-in where you can use the figures in your own Toy-Con creations? Remember the oversized Yarn Yoshi or that monstrous Guardian amiibo? Why weren’t they tied into some exclusive DLC – something meatier than a boss-rush challenge dungeon? We’re not promoting the idea of excluding players, but packing amiibo with the software ensures everybody’s on the same page and opens the door to more interesting interactions and gameplay possibilities.

We’re just spitballing – Nintendo’s boffins could surely come up with something that utilised all those latent NFC chips in the wild. The company is adept at finding new and interesting ways to repurpose older tech. Think how some simple motion tech started the Wii revolution, or how Pokémon revitalised the ageing Game Boy. In fact, Pokémon is the perfect vehicle to refresh the amiibo concept. Remember Pokémon Rumble U? Its capsule toy concept died on the vine, but for one hot minute, those tiny pre-amiibo figurines seemed to indicate the direction Nintendo would take with NFC.

The sheer number of monsters in the franchise makes our once-imagined toys-to-life/Pokemon RPG crossover impractical now – obviously, you’re not going to carry all those figures around with you, and the reality of finding the right one and constantly tapping it to the reader would soon become a chore – but the franchise seems ripe for a trading card crossover using the amiibo cards we saw for Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer. Unlike Animal Crossing, direct control over the Pokémon brand lies with The Pokémon Company (of which Nintendo is joint owner), so there may be a couple more legal hoops to jump through, but if there’s one thing The Pokémon Company likes more than Pocket Monsters, it’s cold hard cash. Switch sales are incredibly healthy and, unlike the 3DS family, every single console (or more accurately, every right Joy-Con) has an in-built NFC reader, so the player base is primed.

It’ll be interesting to see what amiibo integration Pokémon Switch has in store. At the very least, it seems we’ll be seeing the Gen 1 starters in Smash amiibo form, and once again we’ll snap them up because, at the very least, they’ll be cute little figures. There’s so much untapped potential in them, though, and following Switch’s success, it’s still not too late to unlock it.

It’s no secret there’s a portion of Nintendo fans who absolutely adore Waluigi. We’ve seen petitions for the purple Mario character to be included as a playable fighter in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and the Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aimé has even gone on record saying how the series’ creator Masahiro Sakurai is well-aware players want to play as the mischievous character.

If you needed some more evidence to prove just how popular this character is, the official Play Nintendo website recently ran a poll to find out which character fans would love to give a Valentine to on Valentine’s Day. Despite characters such as Isabelle from Animal Crossing, Pikachu from Pokémon and Princess Peach from the Mario series being on the list, Waluigi won in a landslide victory. Below is an image of the poll, courtesy of NintendoSoup:

Newsbrief: FoxNext Games, the development studio behind the mobile game Marvel Strike Force, has opened up a development fund aimed at arming indie devs with the resources they need to create and release new games.

With an unspecified sum at its disposal, FoxNext Games’ indie fund has already picked up a few projects including Altered Matter’s Etherborn and some yet-unannounced titles.

All in all, the team says its goal is to find and support “like-minded developers focused on innovation, experimentation and a certain amount of creative risk.”

The announcement also comes as FoxNext Games’ parent company 21st Century Fox is moving toward closing a deal that will ultimately see it acquired by Disney. That pending arrangement has been in the works for a little over a year now, but Deadline reports that the company is making “significant progress” toward closing the merger.

This interview is part of our Road to the IGF series. You can find the rest by clicking here.

Genital Jousting uses the framework of the mundane lives of anthropomorphized penises to tell a story of toxic masculinity and breaking down harmful socializations. It’s a silly game of floppy dongs doing normal things in funny ways, but it also touches on the hurtful things men are taught every day.

Gamasutra spoke with Robbie Fraser and Evan Greenwood of Free Lives, developers of the Excellence in Narrative-nominated Genital Jousting, to learn about the challenges of making a penis that wasn’t intimidating or horrifying, the humor to be found in putting genitals through everyday tasks, and the appeal of using such a silly setup to explore an important subject.

The private storytellers

We are Robbie Fraser and Evan Greenwood. Along with Richard Pieterse (who wasn’t around to help us fill out these questions), we take full responsibility for the design and programming of Genital Jousting. But it would be amiss not to mention the rest of the wonderful team at Free Lives who put so much work into making Genital Jousting happen. With regard to the story, a lot of credit must also go to Jon Keevy – our delightful writer (who also didn’t help us fill out these questions).

We’ve been trying to make games and art for just about as long as we can remember. Game development wasn’t really a commercially viable thing in South Africa up until quite recently, though. It was only after the advent of indie games that Free Lives could be formed in 2012.  We had a breakout success with Broforce that paved the way for us to try weirder (and stupider?) things like Genital Jousting. We thought we had seen it all, but Genital Jousting turned out to be surprisingly hard to make!

Their long history of wang-based media

Believe it or not, Genital Jousting is the latest in a long lineage of penis-related games by Free Lives team members. Pieterse, in particular, made a good few penis games in an effort to explore his sexuality and masculinity. One of these, a local multiplayer game called Wang Commander, was particularly inspiring and important for the conception of Genital Jousting. Not just because of how much people found the game to be funny, but also because of how it enabled people to have conversations about penises that they wouldn’t otherwise have in everyday life.

The idea for “stacking” penises came from an old (and admittedly gross) drawing that had been on our walls since early Broforce days – controlling flaccid penises that could penetrate each other just seemed like a fun multiplayer mechanic to try out in a game jam.

After the first multiplayer versions started coming together, the thought of a story mode really started to take hold. The idea of a fully narrated fumble-core game about penises was too stupid and too surprising not to pursue. There was nothing remotely like that around, and that was very exciting to us.

Tools of the trade and key motivational dogs

[We used] mainly Unity and Google Sheets. Also, a large pedestal for our dog (Leeroy Jenkins – Italian Greyhound) to sit on in the middle of the room where we could more easily see and pet him at all times. He really kept us motivated by always maintaining the highest possible standards with regards to smoothness and soulfulness.

Using humorous dinks to explore toxic masculinity

The first draft of the story mode was going to be much more like Goat Simulator with narration and genitals. It was going to be about a depressed penis learning how to make friends. The joke was that it was something of a tutorial mode for real life. It was so that you could have enough friends to play the multiplayer modes with.

However, pretty early, on we realized that we had experiences and feelings from our own lives that we wanted to pour into the game. We wanted to make something that people could relate to – that they could find meaningful as well as funny. We realized we wanted to talk about masculinity more than anything – and a game where you are a literal penis would be the perfect vehicle to do so.

We kept the setup of a lonely penis in a rut with an unfulfilling job, but we shifted focus to make the pursuit of romance become the driving narrative force. The story of a man trying to find love and attract women in all the worst ways seemed like an obvious opportunity to talk about how men are socialized and offer a critique of toxic masculine culture.

Genital Jousting isn’t really a love story – it’s a story about learning and unlearning what it means to be a man. The whole quest for love thing serves as a plot device that allows us to subvert and avert all the harmful romantic tropes that you find in popular culture.

How silliness makes a serious message more approachable 

At its core, Genital Jousting is a fumble-core game. It’s slapstick comedy. The very first multiplayer version of the game was predicated on the idea that a floppy sausage is an inherently funny object to control. Flaccid penises are funny and make perfect targets for a physics game.

As for the narrative, a large part of the Genital Jousting joke is the juxtaposition of a serious story alongside silly, wiggly penises. The fact that all the characters are fumbly and flaccid makes the story funnier and more absurd. And the fact that the story is so serious and the world is so mundane makes the moment to moment gameplay of trying to control a fumbly, flaccid penis funnier and more absurd.

Making the gameplay silly and comedic also serves another purpose. Trying to make the story have a lesson that people could take on board was one of our design goals. Making the game more ridiculous allowed us to get away with putting in some more serious messaging without the game coming across as preachy.

Breaking down harmful socializations

A lot of the story beats are based on what we called “false masculine quests”. These are things that men are often socialized to believe gives them value in the eyes of society. For example: having a 6-pack, amassing wealth, or sleeping with women. We wanted moments where our protagonist could try (and fail) to achieve these things, and hopefully at some point it becomes clear that he’s chasing the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

There are also plenty of moments where we simply had an idea for a funny scene or a joke we wanted to tell. A lot of these scenes have a bit of absurdism and some cinematic storytelling to them. For example: a smash cut to tell a once-off joke.

And then, last but not least, there are plenty of scenes that are just there for storytelling and narrative design reasons. Sometimes you just need to do a bit of character development, change the tone, or build some tension.

Creating playful toys for genitals

Genital Jousting is not a mechanically deep game. There are very few player verbs, and there is little in the way of challenge or problem-solving. With this in mind, we wanted to make sure each scene was still interesting and fun to interact with. We went to great lengths to make a lot of toys and hide a lot of extra jokes in the world. This rewards player curiosity and helps the world seem that much more interactive and detailed.

We place a lot of value on having things be surprising – so we added a lot of small things that are easy to miss. Did you know there’s a fully functional photocopier in a side-room on an entirely optional path through the office?

Droopy, rumpled, and taboo

Flaccid penises are just funny to look at and think about. With their droopy shapes and rumpled foreskins – they’re very silly. This is all amplified by the fact that they’re kind of a taboo a lot of the time. There’s a lot of shame, self-worth, and uncomfortable emotions tied to them. This makes them funnier to anthropomorphize. A giant anthropomorphic penis in a cactus field is a funnier idea than a person in a cactus field.

As we mentioned earlier, the juxtaposition between the penises and the mundane world is the core joke in Genital Jousting. Everyone has boring jobs, mortgages, and anxiety. They live in small apartments, buy groceries, and work out at the gym. But they’re also big floppy cocks and they ejaculate sweat all over the floor and treadmill when they do. It’s great!

Disempowering the phallus

Getting the look and feel of the penises was something we worked very hard on right from the first prototype. Phalluses are often seen as symbols of power and dominance, and they are quite threatening to a lot of people. We wanted to dis-empower them a bit. Make them abject, silly, and more approachable. We deliberately made them imperfect and awkward to control, just like real penises are.

In terms of visual design – we spent a lot of time softening the game as much as we could. We made everything colorful, but not too saturated. We rounded edges, simplified forms and removed every detail we could get away with. We also simplified the lighting and opted not to use any textures. The goal was to try to make everything look like it belonged in a plastic dollhouse.

It must be said that the playful music and sound design really help a lot to set the mood too.

Starting at 2:00 p.m. PST today, members of the Xbox One Preview Beta and Delta rings will begin receiving a new 1902 Xbox One system update (rs5_release_xbox_dev_1902.190131-1620). Read on for more about the fixes and known issues in the latest 1902 system update.

Fixes:

System

• Various general system fixes.

Known Issues:

Profile Color

• Sometimes users may encounter the incorrect Profile color when powering on the console.