When Planet Alpha launches on Nintendo Switch on 4th September, Team17 will have released a whopping 100 games for our enjoyment. To celebrate this milestone, the studio has released a new video which looks back over some of the famous titles that have helped it to become one of the UK’s most well-known names in gaming.

Founded in 1990, the Wakefield-based Team17 started life as a publisher working with the likes of Housemarque on Super Stardust and Epic on Silverball. It soon became famous for the Worms series – a mascot of which stands proudly at the studio’s main reception to greet unsuspecting guests – which launched in 1995 and has spawned a huge number of titles since including Worms W.M.D. on Switch.

In 2013, Team17 set up its global games label, helping bring hit games to the market including The Escapists and Overcooked series, Yooka-Laylee and many more. It’s been a long journey, but one that has put lots of great games into our hands, including a very healthy selection on the Switch over the last year or so.

Debbie Bestwick MBE, CEO of Team17, has released the following statement:

“The 100th game marks an incredible milestone for Team17 as we move closer towards our 30th year in this diverse and creative industry. Team17 started life as an indie publisher in 1990; the release of Planet Alpha in 2018 is a poignant moment for us all in that we have come full circle in bringing our expertise, perspective and values from our time as an independent developer to games publishing in this exciting modern era of indie games.

“I’d like to pay tribute to employees of Team17, both past and present, as we celebrate the release of a multitude of titles across many game systems from 16-bit and beyond and in countries far and wide. I’m appreciative, humbled and honoured to work with talented developers in bringing their wonderful creations to fans everywhere. We’re just as passionate and excited for the next 100 games!” 

Do you have a favourite game from the studio, either new or old? Perhaps today would be a great day to fire up a couple of your favourites and join in with the celebrations. Congrats, Team17!

DEATHGARDEN™ is Now Available on Steam Early Access!

Set in the near future, DEATHGARDEN™ revolves around a spectacular real blood sport that became the most popular entertainment on the planet. Players choose to team up as one of the five agile Runners or to embody the Hunter, a heavily armed competitor whose mission is to kill the Runners.

LF Networking (LFN), launched on January 1st of this year, has already made a significant impact in the open source networking ecosystem gaining over 100 members in the just the first 100 days. Critically, LFN has also continues to attract support and participation from many of the world’s top network operators, including six new members announced in May: KT, KDDI, SK Telecom, Sprint, Swisscom; and Deutsche Telekom announced just last month. In fact, member companies of LFN now represent more than 60% of the world’s mobile subscribers. Open source is becoming the de facto way to develop software and it’s the technical collaboration at the project level that makes it so powerful.

Similar to the demos in the LFN Booth at ONS North America, the LFN Booth at ONS Europe will once again showcase the top, community-led, technical demos from the LFN family of projects. We have increased the number of demo stations from 8 to 10, and for the first time, are showcasing demos from the big data analytics project PNDA, and demos that include the newly added LFN Project, Tungsten Fabric (formerly OpenContrail). Technology from founding LFN Projects FD.io, ONAP, OPNFV, and OpenDaylight will also be represented, along with adjacent projects like Acumos, Kubernetes, OpenCI, Open Compute Project, and OpenStack.

Read more at The Linux Foundation

Skype in the Classroom has always been one of my favorite resources for engaging students in real-life, relevant learning experiences. I recently learned that using Skype in the Classroom has become even easier for teachers with the addition of FREE activity plans! These are activity plans written by educators for educators.

5 Reasons to get excited about the launch of these helpful new resources:

Teachers always have a long to-do list. Want to engage your students with a Skype in the Classroom experience but short on time? These activity plans will help make it happen! The plans are free and easy to download in just a few seconds. Each one includes objectives (GREAT to share with parents and administrators), activities to activate background knowledge, research, brainstorming, preparing students for the call, assessment, reflection and more.

• Easy to adapt

Each activity plan can be followed step-by-step or easily adjusted to best fit your students’ needs. Once you download, each plan is fully editable, making any adjustments quick, seamless and easy. This is also a great way to save any changes after the Skype experience, so you will be able to remember how you adapted the lesson for the next time you use it with students.

• Aligned to ISTE Standards

Not only are objectives listed for each activity, they are also aligned to ISTE standards. This is a nice way to keep the big picture in mind. It’s a valuable resource to share with students, parents, administrators and colleagues.

• Help other teachers

Do you know other teachers who are curious about using Skype in the Classroom with their students but are unsure how or where to start? This handy resource will give them a step-by-step guide, including question prompts, research and assessment ideas, and more.

• Deep(er) learning

Each activity plan includes ideas to launch the lesson, research, prepare students, reflect and assess. These ideas help teachers plan intentionally for each aspect of the learning experience and provide a framework of ideas for before, during and after the Skype experience.

Whether you are looking to launch a new school year with an exciting Skype call, planning for Skype experiences throughout the year, dreaming of Skype-a-Thon connections, or whatever your Skype in the Classroom goals may be, be sure to check out and download the free activity plans to support and enhance the experience for you and your students.

By Mikey Campbell
Tuesday, August 21, 2018, 05:19 pm PT (08:19 pm ET)

Apple CEO Tim Cook gifted 23,215 shares of directly owned company stock to an unidentified charity this week, an amount worth nearly $5 million at the end of trading on Tuesday.

Cook’s charitable donation was recorded in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing today. As no shares were sold, a reporting price was not applied to the transfer.

Apple stock finished the day at $215.04, meaning Cook’s gift, if converted today, would be worth $4,992,154.

While the destination of Cook’s donation is unknown — corporate leaders are obliged to disclose movement of owned shares, but are not required to publicly report a charitable transaction’s recipient — the executive has made similar gifts in the past. In 2015, Cook transferred 50,000 shares of owned company stock to an unspecified organization.

Including an acquisition of 166 shares on Jan. 31, the last effective day of Apple’s 2017 Amended Employee Stock Purchase Plan period, the CEO now 878,425 shares of beneficially owned Apple stock.

This week’s contribution is the latest in a string of donations from the Apple chief. In 2014, Cook donated a “substantial sum” to the Human Rights Campaign’s Project One America, which focuses on promoting LGBT rights in the U.S. South. That same year, he gave $291,791 to Pennsylvania’s Steel Valley School District, funds that were later used to purchase iPads for students and teachers.

In addition to direct donations, Cook has raised funds for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights by auctioning off one-on-one lunches through online service CharityBuzz. One such auction brought in $330,000 in 2014.

Despite amassing vast wealth as Apple’s top executive, Cook leads a relatively simple life that stand in contrast with other tech leaders who spend their fortunes on homes, yachts and planes. Indeed, Apple in 2017 mandated Cook use private jets for future travel, citing new security protocols.

Cook in 2015 said he plans to give a bulk of his money away to charity in what he called a “systematic approach” to philanthropy.

Mobile puzzle games are a dime a dozen. Many take the path of least resistance, despite the genre being one of the most open to innovation and new concepts. That’s why One More Button stands out despite its simplicity. It takes familiar mechanics and turns them on their head to make for a fun, easy-to-understand, and challenging

One More Button is the sequel to the mobile title No More Buttons, a hand-drawn platform-based puzzler with an intriguing control scheme. It’s more of the same interesting design, and could nearly be called the same game, just an extension of the original. With that said, it’s a great twist on typical ‘move this there, now stand here’ formulate that all-too-often permeates on-the-go puzzlers.

The premise is extremely simple. You play a small yellow creature with one eye looking to reach a level’s end goal. There’s only one problem: There are small bright yellow blocks in your way with lots of different arrows on them. They represent the directions your character can move in. The game doesn’t make this explicitly clear at the beginning, so before you start tapping around trying to figure things out, it can be a bit confusing if you didn’t play the first title.

You’ll notice that there’s no on-screen controls to move your character, and you can’t just tap where you want it to go. That’s because there aren’t any traditional controls. Each maze-like level instead finds you tapping on those yellow blocks with arrows on them, because those are also the controls. Pressing on one of the blocks with a right arrow will move your character right, and so on. It’s an interesting deconstruction of puzzle controls that tie up the very way you control the game as part of each stage as a whole, and it’s a refreshing change of pace because of it.

The goal of each level is obviously to reach the exit the end, marked with a block with a lock on it. This is achieved by pushing around the arrows themselves onto special areas on the map with the outline of where the buttons should go or figuring out how to push the blocks away and into areas where they aren’t blocking your path. It’s quite simple to get accustomed to early on as you’re getting your bearings, but then the game throws quite a few curveballs into the mix to keep you on your toes.

Once you’ve become adept at clearing out paths with its rather unorthodox control scheme, it’s time to tackle special unlockable areas and blocks that require you to flip them around, as you won’t be able to slide them on their designated spaces if they’re pointing in the wrong direction. Luckily, tapping on a button offers precise moves, if a bit frustrating since you’re always going to be searching where the other directional controls are with each puzzle setup. But this setup completely deconstructs the way typical mobile games approach control, which is the most admirable part of the whole thing, and something you’ll come to appreciate as you play.

If you make a mistake, unfortunately, you’ll have to simply restart the entire level. There is no undo button for your last move, so if you find that you’ve pushed a block all the way it can go to the bottom of the screen accidentally, it’s stuck there. It’s prudent to try and remember the moves you’ve made because of this, which can be a bit frustrating in later levels. There’s no real strategic reason to exclude a ‘rewind’ step, so it’s strange that the only option is to erase all progress.

While there are also plenty of levels and mazes to solve, each level isn’t very large, and only takes a few minutes to complete. This isn’t so much a negative, but a hope for longer, more complex mazes in any future content instalments or sequels. Since you’ll have to restart levels several times using the ‘undo’ feature, you’ll be spending plenty of time in each one, anyway.

One More Button is a fun experiment in changing the way players approach and think about puzzle games as well as the way they’re controlled. It’s not absolutely perfect in its execution and could use a bit polish for any future iterations, but it’s a fun diversion for a few minutes at a time while waiting at the doctor’s office or on your commute.

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.

Written by Anil Mistry (MD), Ben Powell-Jones (Head of Creative) and Howard Ife (Producer)

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We began development for Black & White Bushido in 2015. At the time all of us worked for Endemol Shine Group, a global content creator, producer and distributor you may know from shows like Black Mirror, MasterChef and Big Brother. Legends of Gaming Live, one of their live events in which gaming influencers come together for a competitive gaming tournament, approached us to create a competitive multiplayer game for them.

We have released Black & White Bushido on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. In autumn 2018 we will release the game on Nintendo Switch, but first we wanted to take a look at what we have learnt so far on our journey, what went right and what we would do differently.

A Concept We Love

The concept we created was a couch brawler with a unique stealth twist.  Black & White Bushido pits the forces of light and shadow against each other. Each team can disappear into their respective colours and move without being seen as they fight in Death Match or Capture the Flag mode. This stealth mechanic hadn’t been done in an arena brawler before.

We created a prototype with the core mechanic, just cubes attacking each other in an arena with light and shadow areas, and we all fell in love with the game. We knew we had something good, because usually our taste in games is very different. We found something we were passionate about and we believe that’s the most important thing when choosing a project. Looking back, we could have done more research before choosing a genre, as this would have given us a better understanding of the audience for this game – something that we will touch on later when looking at what we could have done differently.

2. Black & White Art Style

Black & White Bushido’s light vs shadow mechanic didn’t only add a nice twist to our brawler, it also inspired our game’s art style and marketing material. It was a great choice, because it made us stand out from other games in the market.

We considered multiple themes for our game, including spies in an urban setting and abstract monsters or aliens, but we wanted to find something that explained the brawling and stealth mechanics. Ninjas and samurai made sense, they sneak around, jump across buildings and fight. We also found it improved the learning curve of the game, because the player expected these actions to be possible.

We collaborated with a very talented artist, Tom Waterhouse, to make all of the artwork and it paid off well. Our artwork had a really positive impact on the first impressions of the game and the perceived quality.

3. Going to Game Conventions

Our most successful marketing was taking Black & White Bushido to game conventions. EGX 2015 in Birmingham was our first show, just before our Steam launch. We were nervous because we invested a lot of money into our stand and worried people wouldn’t like our game. By the end we had made the top 5 best indie games at EGX list!

Our booth was constantly full and very lively. The game naturally attracted a lot of people and we made sure to engage with everyone who walked by and invited them to try the game. We played the game with them to demonstrate the multiplayer experience and we organised daily tournaments with prizes which encouraged a lot of people to return to our booth.

Going to shows had a lot of benefits for us. Firstly, we got a better understanding of our target audience by looking at the type of people who enjoyed our game and how they were playing. The second benefit was receiving feedback. People gave us a lot of good suggestions, for example, to add a button which reveals your position in stealth if you lose track of your character. And even just watching them play revealed a lot. If they were laughing they were enjoying it, if they were staring at the screen, something was confusing them so we took note of that.

That first show is also where we noticed how much Black & White Bushido brought out the competitiveness in people, and it inspired the friendship breaker theme we used in our marketing.

Another invaluable benefit was making new contacts in the industry. We tried to meet as many people as possible to explore taking Black & White Bushido to the next level. Anil met an Xbox contact and brought him to our booth to try the game. He liked it enough to convince us to make a version for the Xbox One and Playstation consoles.

4. Partner with a Publisher

We knew we had a great game and were well received at shows, but we felt we needed to get the game out quickly to capitalise on the interest we were getting. We knew the Steam greenlight process could take a long time, so we partnered with Green Man Gaming which allowed us to skip greenlight and they also helped us publicise the game. There is no doubt this was the right decision for us.

Research

As mentioned earlier Black & White Bushido was a passion project, but looking back we could have done more research. From a business perspective, a local multiplayer brawler perhaps wasn’t the best choice. Given that it’s a niche genre, the target audience is relatively small and our initial sales numbers were lower than projected. However, the experience we gained was invaluable and allowed us to start our own studio.

We also should have done more research on the game’s name, Black & White Bushido. Although descriptive, it is too long, and adding an ampersand complicates search results and can make finding our game tricky.

2. Online Multiplayer

Black & White Bushido is a great local multiplayer brawler. Its strength lies in playing with your friends on the couch and experiencing the moment. That’s how it was originally designed. However, we received a lot of feedback to add online multiplayer to our game and we decided to add it for our console launch.

The development process for this took much longer than we had anticipated and we had several rounds of QA before getting certification on PlayStation and Xbox. This had a significant impact on our budget which we hadn’t originally planned for.

Having gone through the painstaking task of getting online multiplayer up and running, we didn’t have as many active players as we had hoped which were needed to keep the servers active and well populated. In hindsight we should have compared the sales numbers of successful multiplayer games to get an idea of how large our player base needed to be.

3. Marketing

We made the classic beginner’s mistake of waiting too long with marketing. Aside from taking it to shows we didn’t do enough marketing prelaunch to build hype around the game. We did get press coverage for launch and worked with a great agency to help us, but in future, we would want to bring all the press and marketing elements together to generate awareness both at launch, and also in the lead-up.

For our console launch we did some influencer marketing to help raise awareness. Our biggest learning was that by working with a number of smaller influencers, who’s audiences fit well with the game’s audience, proved much more valuable than spending all your budget on one big name.

Our console marketing also struggled with losing momentum following the Steam launch, as the development was over a year. Publications didn’t necessarily want to cover our game again and we had exhibited at most of the key shows already.

What did work well for us was our pricing and sales strategy. We made sure that our pricing gave us leeway to participate in sales without cutting into our margin. Since launch we have tried to be part of every relevant platform sale and have seen an impressive spike each time.

Our journey so far with Black & White Bushido has been full of highs and lows! We have gained so much knowledge from the experience and are applying all our learnings to our launch of the game on Nintendo Switch. We’re keeping our development cycle short to keep the budget reasonable and we now have a full marketing plan and team in place, to raise awareness for our Switch release.

We are taking Black & White Bushido back to its core, a local multiplayer, fun and addictive couch brawler, which fits perfectly with the Nintendo Switch console. Keep an eye out, this won’t be the last you hear of Black & White Bushido!