Spending Money
11 Bit Studios investing $21 million in seven new games
Firm is putting $15.1 million behind its first-party line-up
Welcome Aboard
Andres Gonzalez joins Zelgor Games as its lead level designer
Has experience with triple-A titles such as Bioshock Infinite
Brick By Brick
Interview: LEGO Super Mario design lead Jonathan Bennink on bringing Nintendo's mascot to life with bricks
"Our team has been working on this for more than four years"
Switch It Up
The Defold Foundation adds Nintendo Switch support to Defold engine
"It was an absolute no-brainer to start with Nintendo Switch"
Team Work
Kwalee teams up with no-code development platform Buildbox
"Our number one goal is to empower anyone who has an idea for a video game"
My Talking Tom Friends
Interview: How Outfit7 started a virtual pet revolution with its new game
"What's been wonderful is that the final product is actually very similar to our first concepts"
An Old Friend
Rovio hires Jakob Longer as its new head of corporate development
He worked for the company from 2012 to 2016
The Ohm Approach
The Voodoo Approach: OHM Games on what sets its hit titles apart from the crowd
"We are really proud that all our games have extra long session lengths for hyper-casual"
The Tarboosh Approach
The Voodoo Approach: Tarboosh Games CEO Rani Hammad H. on learning how to make hit games with Voodoo
"It is hard to always meet their KPIs, but when you do, the game is usually sustainable and successful."
The Aya Approach
The Voodoo Approach: Why AYA Games feels like Voodoo is the only publisher it wants to work with
"Voodoo was willing to support us in pretty much every possible way"
The Orbital Knight Approach
The Voodoo Approach: Orbital Knight publishing director Jan Chichlowski on the importance of testing
"If you test something for the fifth time and the results are not good, this means the concept is not good"
The Lawson He Approach
The Voodoo Approach: Tower Run creator Lawson He on why partnering with a publisher is crucial
"I would say that Voodoo has increased my business' revenue by infinite %"
Gamedev Toolbox
GameAnalytics launches The GameDev Toolbox - the first one-stop directory of mobile game service providers
The free web resource includes information and links to hundreds of companies and platforms offering everything from ad monetization to user attribution
The Cassette Approach
The Voodoo Approach: How AquaPark.io developer Cassette grew with help from the hyper-casual publisher
"These guys are experts of feeling the thin line between giving advice and letting you make your own decisions"
The Voodoo Approach
The Voodoo Approach: How the world's biggest hyper-casual publisher makes its hit games
An inside look at the company's development process
Open Source Defold
King is making its Defold game engine open source
Establishing the Defold Foundation to help it grow
New Acquisition
Sumo Digital purchases Snooker 19 studio Lab42
Terms of the deal were not disclosed
Class Has Started
Supercell celebrates its 10th anniversary by taking a look at what its learned
10 lessons across 10 years
It's Unreal
Epic Games gives a first look at Unreal Engine 5
It's also launched Epic Online Services
Bolt From The Blue
Unity acquires scripting tool Bolt
"Bolt becoming an official Unity product is a major and exciting leap forward for visual scripting"
Dazzling
Dazzle Rocks raises $6.8 million in Series A funding round
Funds to be used in developing new social mobile MMO
Round The Track
Sperasoft teams up with Codemasters to work on racing titles
"We are proud to be a partner of Codemasters and to share in their cultural principles"
Independence
Demiurge becomes an independent studio after its co-founder buys it back from Sega
It will continue to run Marvel Puzzle Quest and Sega Heroes
Call Me Maybe
Activision Blizzard CEO gives out personal number to employees amid pandemic
Bobby Kotick also confirms all games are on track
End Of An Era
Alien: Blackout developer Rival Games closes its doors as coronavirus shuts down partnership opportunities
"It shut down all the leads that we had and left us lost in the dark with no way out"
Merging
Game development agency Amber and independent studio Scorpius Games are merging
It wants to further its PC and console expertise
Coronavirus Impact
The impact of the coronavirus epidemic to China's games industry: A view from Beijing
Sunny Painter CEO Junxue Li provides an insider perspective
Mobile Game Marketing
Game of Phones: Why it's time for a smarter approach to mobile game app marketing
Mobile acquisition specialist Saikala Sultanova explains all
Unique Identities
Riot Forge on how to find your own unique identity as a studio
Head of studio Leanne Loombe talks finding your own path in the development world
Cocos Play
Cocos launches Cocos Play for easy integration of HTML5 game centres
Launch your own mini-game centre in whatever app you please
Buildbox Free
How Buildbox is opening the doors of game development for everyone
Buildbox co-founder Trey Smith on why now is the time for a free edition of the no-code development tool
Next Big Thing
Rollic, hyper-casual publishing star of 2019, launching its SDK equipped with analytic features powered by AI
Rollic co-founder and managing director Burak Vardal tells the story behind the huge scale his company achieved in less then a year, and Rollic's plans for 2020
Bigby's Back
Telltale revives The Wolf Among Us sequel as its first project since closure
New trailer shown at The Game Awards
Tag Team
Bandai Namco revealed as a development partner for Mario Kart Tour
“Partially implemented in-games and 3D visual assets for courses, characters and machines”
Event Recap
4 Things We Learned at Gamesforum Seattle 2019
Co-development, China, LiveOps and more: last month we were at the multi-format industry conference
Faster, Faster
Build fast and start playing: How Ministry of Games created its Rapid Development Funnel
Next-gen mobile game development in 4 months
Lego Star Wars
TT Games Brighton developing a new LEGO Star Wars game for mobile devices
The game feature content from all nine Skywalker saga films, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rogue One
Interview
“We view our development process more like a marathon than a sprint, so it makes no sense to have a crunch culture”
Future Games of London MD Ian Harper discusses how the studio aims to look after employees and fights off toxicity and crunch culture
Access All Areas
New platform Unity Learn Premium aims to help teach real-time 3D development
Available at no further cost for Plus and Pro subscribers or $15 a month
Accessibility
AbleGamers is embedding Accessible Play Experience Practitioners into triple-A studios
CEO Mark Barlet: “We want to create champions within the studios”
Keeping Lean
How Kolibri went from minimum viable product to 70 million installs for its Idle Tycoon games
A look at the development process from concept design stage to post-release
Unity
Unity Playground aims to open game development up to kids
Scriptless asset suite seeks to provide a stepping stone for young users looking to get into the engine
Valued
Which simple tips deliver the biggest value to developers?
Evasyst's Mark Ollila, Madfinger's Marek Rabas, Gamevil's David Mohr, Gram Games' Jeremy Glazman and Pixel Federation's Martin Jurášek weigh in
Crunch
Minit developer encourages developers to share games made without crunch
Indies take to Twitter to share games developed without excessive overtime
Offline
Marmalade SDK shuts down citing increased pressure from Unity and Unreal
Unpredictable iOS changes are also stated as causing Marmalade’s developers to close up shop
Development
Unity ARKit update includes persistent mapping and improved tracking
Apple and Unity worked closely in the latest update for the ARKit 2 plugin
New Digs
Games Factory to open new hub for Finnish games companies in June
The tech space will hold 20 Finnish small to mid-sized gaming companies at a time
United
Unity introduces scriptable render pipelines and C# Job System in 2018.1 update
Latest version includes 330 new features and improvements
Tech Line-up
Line launches new mobile games developer tools to combat clones and track player behaviour
Also includes automated QA and testing platform
Iterative Approach
Keep on shipping: How Fluffy Fairy Games updated its game 50 times in a year
Founder and CTO Oliver Löffler explains the challenges and advantages of this iterative approach to development