Each weekend we’ll be rounding up a selection of the most interesting articles related to mobile and the games industry at large.

This week includes the story of how one YouTuber went from playing games to starting a cult, why kids are enjoying mobile free-to-play over console, and the road ahead for mobile eSports.

See an article you think we should share? Email PocketGamer.biz Craig Chapple at craig.chapple@steelmedia.co.uk to add it to our weekly round-up.

How a YouTuber's cult following became an actual cult

"Athenism began as a dude streaming from his apartment, but soon became a movement of about 25 people, all living together and working on "projects". Sort of a lamer, internet-based version of Fight Club's "Project Mayhem". Anyone can come join what Athene has dubbed the Singularity Group, as long as they're financially self-sufficient, a vegan, and serious about working."

Opinion: The kids are free-to-play

"The time had come for the groups to present what they had come up with to the rest of the students and take questions. Given the ice-breaker before where they all talked about the console games they were playing I expected to hear about some complex game on the PS4 or Xbox but instead, they began to present a free-to-play mobile game, complete with a monetisation strategy and retention mechanics."

Is mobile eSports heading in the same direction as PC?

"The other fundamental difference on mobile is that eSports elements can be added into existing games, providing developers with a new source of income. The mobile eSports approach can be successful at a much smaller scale as it adds ongoing income and retention on top of in-app purchases. Compared to major PC-eSports titles and many have to rely on in-game items or skins to make money, rather than cash-based competitive play with swanky, high-stakes events as a marketing tool."

Face or heel? The prospects for Glu Mobile's new WWE game

"To-date, two of the three big WWE licensed mobile games have been financially successful in the order of $50 million of annual revenue, with Take-Two's WWE SuperCard, in particular, demonstrating the long-term potential of the WWE brand, especially around real-world events such as the annual WrestleMania."

Designer Notes Episode 28 - George Fan

"In this episode, Soren interviews independent game designer George Fan, who is best known as the creator of Insaniquarium and Plants vs Zombies. They discuss why he learned to program instead of just focusing on art, how most Diablo monster design is a variation of kill-me-first, and why Plants vs Zombies wasn’t Fish vs. Aliens.

'MagiKarp Jump' gives the world's worst pokemon the clicker game it deserves

"Sometimes, in other words, you need a clicker. One of those dumb but weirdly compulsive Skinner boxes that have become increasingly prevalent in the era of browser and mobile gaming. Magikarp Jump is one such game, and it's as profoundly stupid and weirdly loveable as its subject."

Nintendo's 3DS isn't dead, but it is trapped in the Switch's shadow

"It's true, the Switch isn't replacing the 3DS -- at least not yet -- but the lack of games showcased at E3 shows that the family of handhelds really isn't Nintendo's priority."

Crash Bandicoot: An oral history

"So we talked about a lot of things having to do with character design and story that generally we wouldn't have spoken about in the past and really decided that we wanted to start to mix story into games. Which now seems like a stupid idea - of course you would do that - but back then nobody had really done it. It was either a game or it was a story, and we were thinking about that really early."