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The Weekly: Deconstructing Florence, why indies are thriving on Switch, and Nintendo's stock price drops

Rounding up the week's games industry analysis and news from around the internet

The Weekly: Deconstructing Florence, why indies are thriving on Switch, and Nintendo's stock price drops

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, the lead designer of Florence, Ken Wong, goes into detail on creating the hit mobile title and the inspirations behind the gameplay.

Elsewhere, indie games developers discuss why Nintendo Switch is pulling in sales, there's an analysis of why Nintendo's stock price is falling despite the lack of a particularly big reason, and developers discuss 10 years of the App Store.

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.

You can find previous editions of The Weekly here.

The lead designer of Monument Valley deconstructs his latest game, Florence

“I try to make games that anyone can play. It sounds like a really simple idea but I think traditional game designers take it for granted … games are actually really hard! I prefer games that are really simple, where you don’t need to learn a bunch of special moves or practice it for 100 hours — you can just get an idea or get a story and then move on with your life. I think people really appreciated that about both Monument Valley and Florence — that they can just get to the end of a game and then tell their friend about it and reflect upon it.”

Why indies continue to thrive on the Switch

"Joe Park, the studio director at Harmonious Games, said their co-op adventure Putty Palsexperience a similar Switch-powered second wind. "Unsurprisingly, Putty Pals did a lot on Switch than it did on PC." The game sold more copies on Switch in a single day than it did "in the previous 8 months on Steam", Park told Kotaku."

What's behind Nintendo's falling stock price?

"This is no small wobble; the company has now lost almost a quarter of its value on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in a series of price drops that began in late May. The curious thing about this drop, however, is that it's not really the kind of Nintendo rough patch anyone might have been anticipating."

iPhone App Store at 10: How it changed gaming, mobile, tech forever

“I don’t think it’s possible to really encapsulate the impact of the App Store on games. That’s how large it is, and it’s still occurring,” said Nathan Vella, co-founder and president of Capybara Games. “Before the iPhone, you developed for consoles, handhelds, or maybe PC. Mobile wasn’t even a blip on the radar. Now the App Store is arguably the biggest platform in games… in ten years. How do you even qualify that scale of impact?"

Gaming as a shared experience: Fortnite and Pokemon Go

"Sharing is now so important in gaming that we have Share buttons on our consoles, and tech company Nvidia have made it a major selling point of their latest PC graphics cards."

Game of Thrones: Conquest players expose alleged botting ring that’s scamming users

"The bot (and several others like it) essentially gathers and sells information on other players, information that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to find through fair gameplay. Users can pay to determine the coordinates and histories of specific players, find resources, and most recently, automate many of the game’s required actions, such as fortifying defenses and completing daily quests."

In the wake of ArenaNet Firings, game studios rethink their social media policies

"This idea that an angry mob can get people fired because publishers like ArenaNet are scared to take some heat on behalf of their employees? It’s shameful,” van Lierop said. “Who do they think is going to make the games once all the developers have been fired? The angry internet mob? We need to find a better balance, because this entitlement culture is burning people out.”

What game devs can learn from Japan's most interesting puzzle magazine

"Learning about these puzzles, and how to solve them is of immense value for puzzle-making game designers. Being familiar with this style has much to teach about both the nature of puzzles, and what it is about puzzles that makes them enjoyable: the joy of applying reason, knowledge and skill to solve a difficult problem."

Mark Cerny and Amy Hennig: A fireside chat with master game makers

"In film school we were learning about the Lumiere brothers and Edward Porter and Sergei Eisenstein, people who had to figure out what film was. But then we were just following their lead. In games, we got to be those people. We got to figure out how we were going to make this stuff, what the mechanics and the language of these games would be. That’s what inspired me. I wasn’t thinking so far ahead like, “Someday, we’ll have photorealistic characters.” I was just intrigued by the fact that we had to solve such bizarre technical problems. I kind of got off on it. It was fun."

'We just created the game that we wanted to play as Japanese developers'

"With Bravely Default - we really thought it'd just be for Japanese people. But when it was released, Nintendo got in touch and said many players outside of Japan would like to play the game. So what could we do? Together we released a game, even though at first we had no intention of selling it outside of Japan. Finally, it did well! The sales were good outside of Japan."

The new vid economy: Making a living from crowdfunded game analysis

"Even for a highly popular channel, making the jump to an entirely crowd-funded salary was an intimidating prospect for Brown. “I thought about if my Patreon was at the same level as my current salary, then maybe I could quit,” he says. “But then the thing about Patreon is it fluctuates so much … so I decided if it was double my salary then I would quit my job. And that was what happened.”"

We asked Nintendo, Microsoft, and 12 other devs how they deal with crunch

"I think [pause] the problem with our industry is that we've got a lot of people who are very passionate, so you can always find someone who want to work for free for you, and if not, you will say "There are hundreds people like you who want to come to my team." So it's easy to profit from that, and to use that too much. I really think we never have something good from someone who spends nights at work, and I think inspiration comes a lot by your other life out of the game industry and game development, so it's really important to have time in your life for friends, family, or whatever."


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Craig Chapple is a freelance analyst, consultant and writer with specialist knowledge of the games industry. He has previously served as Senior Editor at PocketGamer.biz, as well as holding roles at Sensor Tower, Nintendo and Develop.