What to read at your leisure. June Game Industry News Digest

Today in the digest we recall what significant things happened in the gamedev world during the first summer month.




Mobile direction:

Developer Dmitry Greshko told how to create a simple game in 2 months .
Senior game designer and producer Raul Aljaga conducted an analysis of the development of the free-to-play game .
The article “Advantages of low conversions in freemium” was published on mobiledevmemo.com , as well as an extensive material from analysts at Direct Agents “Mobile SEO: Optimization in the AppStore” .
Localytics, a mobile analytics company, released an encouraging reportabout your research. As it turned out, compared with 2011 data, the percentage of applications that were open only once after downloading dropped from 26 to 20%.
On June 20, Unity Technologies announced the release of Unity for the PlayStation Mobile.
To exclude those applications that have been updated from the "Best New Games" category , Apple has introduced a new category in the App Store - Best New Updates.
After 4 years, the turnover of gaming software will exceed the mark of $ 100 billion. According to the analytical company DFC Intelligence, almost a third of this amount will be the merit of the mobile segment .

Sound

Composer Vincent Diamante spoke about the importance of sound design for the game.
While working on the Panoramical game, composer David Kanaga wondered why music software cannot become a game .

Graphics

Radek Kontsevich, CEO / Creative Lead at Incubator Games talked about creating characters for the game Feeding Time in the genre of "three in a row."
On the blog http://in2gpu.com you can find material about contour lighting of objects and many other useful articles.
And on the portal gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com published extensive material about bone animation in Unity 2D. With continuation.
An updated article “Vector of objects against pointer vector” appeared on the blog about code and graphics .

Programming

In his article, Lior Tal gave a detailed overview of some of the components of Unity Test Tools , which allow developers to create automated tests directly in the Unity editor.
Nikolai Dyankov gave some practical advice on how to teach mobs in RPG / RTS games to find the right path to their goals and avoid collisions with objects. In general, turn them into a herd of dangerous monsters, not cows. And Christopher Wellons described the advantages and disadvantages of the GPU approach to finding the way.
In the article “Flexible Particle System: Container”Bartolomei Filipek talked about how to create a container for particles, which could be easily and quickly expanded. In addition, in it he gives links to a number of useful materials about the theory and practice of programming graphics.
Karsten Germer wrote about the experience of creating soft gameplay in the MusiGuess project using direct caching of JSON / JSONP and Nginx.
Nicklas Frickholm in his article “What's in your name?” Reflects on how resources should refer to other resources: through the path, GUID, or through the “name”.

Video The

article “How to create video for games” will tell you what to choose: teaser, in-game video or gameplay video? About how and why to create trailers for games said Kirill Klyushkin from Alconost.
Indie developer Richard Yates talked about how to create an indie game trailer without spending a dime.
Kevin Harwood shared the secrets of marketing with the public . Need more video bloggers!

It's interesting.

Sagger Hraishi from Sanctuary Game Studios wrote an article in which he talks about how and why to create a financial model for a gaming company. Five years in 3 years!
Thomas Grip, Creative Director at Frictional Games, talked about a four-layer narrative approach to game design.
Indie developer Dan Stubbs spoke about the dynamics of the narrative in his project The hit.
About what microtransactions are and why they are neededcan be found in Kevin Harwood's article, The Evolution of Microtransactions.
On gamedev.net posted material on how to get into the game industry after university . If this is relevant for you, read about how to prepare for your first interview at a gaming company.
The head of Ubisoft Toronto, Jade Raymond, spoke in an interview with GamesIndustry Internationa about how much the gaming industry needs experienced mentors.
“Can a developer succeed by making games for himself?” Is the topic of an interview with the creators of Bioshock, Jordan Thomas and Stephen Alexandre.
The ups and downs of Yoshinori Ono , producer of the Street Fighter series. The story of how the game first gave him life, and then almost took it away.
All about karma: decision making and moral in games using the hits of Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Infamous as an example.
“The Kiss That Changed Video Games” is the story of how EA first introduced same-sex relationships into her games.
How Internet users tried to falsify Steam Summer Adventure results and how Valve tried to stop them.
Funny stuff about ridiculous video game titles . Perhaps someone will write an article about ridiculous translations of video game names?
There was an opportunity to look at the source codes, design documents, lockout methods and other materials of some games of the past, on which Chris Shrigley worked.
Sergey Anankin began publishinga series of articles on reverse engineering balance in games.
On mail.ru you can find out how roads and cities are created in racing games and what books about games are worth reading.
Studies have shown that those who play violent video games are more sensitive to real-life violence.
Gamasutra.com published interesting material on the work of game designers from the point of view of Internet users.
Kotaku has a review of Mountain. Yes, this is a mountain simulator.
An interesting article about stereotypes in video games.
With the help of Oculus Rift, you can walk around the South Park.
You may have heard about the scandal that erupted around the graphics in Watch Dogs. Portal thg.ru analyzed the performance of the game in detail.

News

Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Final Fantasy, began working with free-to-play mobile games.
The Video Game Higher Education Alliance is set to create a network that helps students better prepare for work in the industry.
Ukrainian studio Vostok Games announced the launch of open beta testing of the PvP mode of the game Survarium. Starting from this day, the Russian-language version of the game will be available on the official website of the project for everyone.
Industry veteran Paul Newrett opened his own studio OtherSide Entertainment on July 1 ,which will specialize in remakes of classic gaming franchises. The studio has already received rights to the Underworld brand.
This month, there was a small conflict between the studios that claim to be the official creator of STALKER ... Meanwhile, the Kickstarter campaign from West Games raised $ 33,000 out of the required $ 50,000. Vostok Games was preparing to sue West Games. The problem was resolved peacefully , and the media remained to blame for everything.
Stephen Toulouse returned to Microsoft and is currently working on the next part of the Gears of War franchise .

In an interview with EA CEO, Andrew Wilson said thatthe company has learned the lessons that Battlefield 4 taught it and promises not to repeat such mistakes again.
Three former employees of the mobile-oriented company The Blast Furnace have created a new studio.
In June, a discussion about women in video games erupted again. This time , the creators of Assassin's Creed Unity , and later the creators of Far Cry 4, came under the distribution . The topic of women in the gaming industry and in the games themselves is still rather painful for our Western colleagues. Sendl Chen in his article also raised questions about the animation of male and female characters in games. An extensive article appeared on the gamasutra blogs under the heading "Women Are Hard to Animate."
And here also the South Korean International eSports Federation banned women from participating in the HearthStone tournament.
However, the International Association of Game Developers in a recent study found that 22% of workers in the gaming industry are women. Since 2009, the number of women who, in one way or another, are associated with the development of video games, has doubled. Are changes coming?

Gaijin Games are no longer "foreigners . " The studio changed its name to Choice Provisions.
Steam Mashine will not be released this year. Most likely, the launch of a new product from Valve will be postponed to 2015.
Zach Braff (yes, yes, that same Scrubs JD) announced the release date for the video game movie.
Atari decided to renew the image. The company intends to pay more attention to mobile and online games, as well as provide all possible support to the LGBT community.
Airtight Games officially ceased to exist. The last game from this studio was released on June 6th: Murdered: Soul Suspect.
Kotaku has compiled a list of the best games in the first half of 2014.
Crytek is on the verge of bankruptcy . Despite the fact that quite recently cheerful articles and press releases from this company appeared on the network, it suddenly turned out that things were going nowhere worse: employees are being delayed, and there are rumors that the creators of Ryse: Son of Rome are going to buy Wargaming.

Console News

PS4 DualShock 4 Gamepad Now Connectedto the PS3 without any wires.
What future awaits PlayStation found out at the E3 exhibition Konstantin Govorun.
Steve Peterson from the portal alistdaily.com spoke about the problems of the PlayStation Now stream service .
Suhei Yoshida, head of Sony Worldwide Studios, hopes PS Vita will live off third-party and indie games.
Nintendo is not going to develop a game stream service on its platform.

An interesting thing on Kickstarter

Insomnia is the atmospheric RPG in the setting of a diesel engine with real-time tactical gameplay from the MONO studio in New York.
We are the Dwarves!- Tactical game in real time from the Kiev studio Whale Rock Games. You can read about the game and its creators on the kitchenriots.com portal or on Habré.
The Deer God is a game with 3D pixel art graphics that will make you think about religion and deer. If he collects another 15,000 dollars, of course.

Magazines and books

FPS No. 30 .
We create games without coding: Unreal Engine .

Significant events of June

Exhibition E3:

Day before E3: events and surprises.
Poster Wars.
alistdaily.com: "What we learned at E3 . "
Overview of the three main presentations: Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo.

Google I / O

What You Need to Know About Google I / O.
After the fact, from the portal code.tutsplus.com .

Apple Design Awards

Games at the Apple Design Awards.

Quakecon

Lack of Carmack and the new Doom.

Tweets:

Epic Games’s managing designer is back on line:


Joneman Nordhagen, 2K Marin programmer, founded his own studio:


Minecraft mania:


Airtight Games said goodbye to fans:


Jonathan Cooper, animator for the Naughty Dog and Mass Effect projects, spoke about a recent discussion about Ubisoft and animations of female characters:


FOX, known for its negative attitude to video games, borrowed the Bioshock: Infinite logo for one of its programs:


Audio

Everything you wanted to know about PBR,in a podcast on thegamedevcast.com.
Interview with MachineGames creative director about Wolfenstein: The New Order.
The podcast about the games this time concerned the E3 exhibition.
Disgusting men discuss HearthStone, GTA V and the games of the future.

Humor

Spanish film company Zapruder Pictures recreated the GTA trailer in real life. In Madrid.

June on Habr

"How to make money on an indie game" - an article from George Zakrua. Extensive and interesting.
Klasscraft - translation of an article about an interesting game for schoolchildren.
The first article about the history of the gaming industry was published on the Mail.ru blog .
Great stuff about John Carmack.
The history of the creation of cinematics for the game "Sparta: War of Empires": part 1 , part 2.
The history of the creation of the world map for the game "C&C Tiberium Alliances".
Can I spam on Google Play?
Game development on Ogre.
Continuation of the Caesar III series of articles.

Events in July-August

Game / AI Conference - July 7-10 in Vienna (Austria).
Tizen Developer Summit Russia - the summit of application developers for the Tizen platform in Russia. Will be held in Moscow on July 10.
Develop conference will be held in Brighton (UK) from July 8 to 10
GaymerX2 - a game conference on LGBT culture in video games. It will be held from July 11 to July 13 in San Francisco.
Сasual Connect USA will be held July 22-24 in San Francisco.
The [a] list of Summit, dedicated to science , art, and marketing, will be held July 31 in Los Angeles.
Nine Worlds Geek Fest will be held in London on August 8-10.
The GDC Europe Developer Conference will be held in Cologne on August 11-13. Gamescom will be held there from August 13 to 17.
Coventry (Great Britain) will host the large-scale Insomnia game festival on August 22-25 .