GDCA 2024 nominees and honorable mentions revealed
Friday, January 26, 2024 by Freeman Lightner
The finalists for the 24th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards, the peer-based video game event celebrating the industry’s top games and developers, have been revealed. The winners in all categories will be honored at the Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) ceremony, which takes place at the 2024 Game Developers Conference (GDC) on Wednesday, March 20, and is he...
GDC 2022 Supercell talks
Wednesday, February 9, 2022 by Richard Harris
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) has announced that Supercell will return to GDC 2022 with two talks surrounding its popular title Clash of Clans. The studio will give an in-depth look into the creation and expansion of the Clash Universe, along with its move into social gaming with Everdale.
GDC 2022 Supercell talks about Expanding an IP: Case Study Cl...
Mobile game developers are capturing female audiences
Tuesday, December 7, 2021 by Brittany Hainzinger
Browsing social networks can be addictive and can cause feelings of inadequacy and isolation, even depression, say mental health professionals. However, when it comes to mobile gaming, the situation is not so dire. On the contrary, used in moderation, it could help people boost positive well-being, according to various sources.
Traditionally considered a domain for m...
Free AI solution for developers from Kythera AI
Thursday, August 26, 2021 by Brittany Hainzinger
Kythera AI has begun publicly distributing its AI middleware as a Gem with the Linux Foundation’s new Open3D game engine (O3DE).
Free AI solution for developers from Kythera AI
Previously only available to commercial clients, Kythera AI will now distribute their toolset as a binary Gem packaged with O3DE, becoming the first middleware provider to make its ad...
Game Developers Choice Awards at GDC 2021
Monday, August 2, 2021 by Brittany Hainzinger
Organizers of the 21st annual Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) have revealed the recipients of this year’s Pioneer Award and Lifetime Achievement Award. Tom Fulp, creator of Newgrounds and trailblazer of the Macromedia Flash games that helped define a generation of indie developers, will receive the Pioneer Award, while influential game designer with 28 years ...
Uptodown: An alternative to Google Play
Wednesday, June 2, 2021 by Richard Harris
The Uptodown app market has more than 130 million active users per month, and more than 450 monthly downloads of their more than 4 million APKs available. The company operates worldwide and it is localized to 15 different languages. The Spanish-based company was born in 2020 in Málaga and founded as a University Project in 2002. Recently we intervi...
Unity asset store gets new AdInMo SDK
Thursday, March 4, 2021 by Brittany Hainzinger
AdInMo’s InGamePlay™ brand advertising SDK is now available to all mobile game creators via the Unity Asset Store, the global marketplace where game developers source third party assets, tools and services.
Designed by game developers for game developers, AdInMo’s Unity SDK integration is a simple UNITY texture replacement that enables mobile game d...
Mobile game monetization models might be evolving
Thursday, October 1, 2020 by Brittany Hainzinger
GameRefinery’s database counts with more than 10,000+ analyses of top-performing mobile games. The company has recently acquired UK’s Reflection.io, providing them the capability to offer additional revenue and download data for iOS and Android games spanning 35 markets, in addition to its feature-level insights.
With a library of the latest mobile game d...
What your zodiac sign says about your gaming personality
Tuesday, August 20, 2019 by Richard Harris
No two gamers are alike. Everyone has their own unique interests and approaches to playing their favorite mobile games. Fascinatingly, a person's zodiac sign can often point to certain traits that not only affect your personality in real life, but also your gaming style!
The folks at Fort Mason Games— the female-run mobile gaming company that brought ...
How to create effects like Game of Thrones
Friday, August 16, 2019 by Richard Harris
Red Giant is once again taking on what is arguably one of the greatest TV series ever made with the latest edition of its popular YouTube tutorial series, Cheap Tricks, diving into the mind-blowing visual effects of Game of Thrones. In part one of the series, Action Movie Dad Dan “Hashi” Hashimoto demonstrates how to create magic fire effects like the many s...
Harry Potter Wizards Unite event coming to the city of Indianapolis
Tuesday, July 2, 2019 by Brittany Hainzinger
Niantic, Inc. and WB Games, in collaboration with the City of Indianapolis, announced the first ever real-world event for Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, the hit augmented reality (AR) mobile game played by millions of wizards and witches around the world, will be coming to Indianapolis from August 31 - September 1. The Harry Potter: Wizards Unite Fan Festival will take pl...
Female gamers are an untapped market for developers
Wednesday, February 27, 2019 by Richard Harris
Here are some fun facts. Women gamers make up 65% of all active gamers and they also play mobile games at a higher rate than men. What's even better for app developers and publishers, is that 79% of those females are more likely to make in-app purchases.
Brands want to reach this highly engaged audience, and yet, a large part of the gaming app industry's outp...
Retro gaming talk with Matthew Thomas of Storytellers Entertainment
Tuesday, November 20, 2018 by Richard Harris
Storytellers Entertainment, an emerging game studio, seeks to revive fantasy retro gaming with its serialized fantasy based, solo-RPG. Matthew Thomas and Bill Munns are the creative heads behind their game “Imperium Omni”.
Matthew grew up in Southern California, where he went to college at age 16 later on, and earned a degree in Computer Programming ...
New game studio wants to bring back fantasy based retro gaming
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 by Richard Harris
An emerging game studio, Storytellers Entertainment, is hoping to spark a new generation of fantasy based retro gaming with the development of “Imperium Omni”, a four part serialized solo-RPG set in the vast fictional world of Aeris Pri. The game is to be released on PC with future expansion to Xbox and PS4 console platforms.
The company, established by f...
GDC 2019 adds five new members to the advisory board
Monday, July 30, 2018 by Richard Harris
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 has announced five new additions to the Advisory Board of the upcoming conference, which will help further bolster its Programming, Business & Marketing, Design, and Production & Team Management Tracks.
The new additions to its Main Conference Advisory Board span creators & contributors to titles such as the Ratch...
USC Games announces first student games expo
Wednesday, April 18, 2018 by Richard Harris
USC Games announced that its inaugural USC Games Expo will take place on May 9th, presented by Los Angeles-based mobile games company Jam City, a developer of mobile games like Cookie Jam, Panda Pop, and Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery.
The event will provide a hands-on look at the future of interactive entertainment, showcasing games and innovations created by the ne...
Blockchain gaming platform celebrates prelaunch
Thursday, April 5, 2018 by Richard Harris
The blockchain gaming development platform, Chimaera has announced the launch of their public pre-sale has begun. Coming hot off the heels of their private pre-sale, which raised an estimated $1.5 million USD or 155 Bitcoin, the Chimaera team has already raised over 40 Bitcoin in less than a week since the launch of their public pre-sale on March 23. With another estima...
GDC 2018 breaks attendance records
Monday, April 2, 2018 by Richard Harris
The 2018 Game Developers Conference (GDC) ended after a week of networking, learning and inspiration. This year, the event saw a record attendance of 28,000 industry professionals at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center from March 19-23. GDC and VRDC will be returning to the Moscone Convention Center on Monday, March 18 to Friday, March 22, 2019. The call for submi...
Change the Game Design Challenge launches from Google
Wednesday, March 28, 2018 by Christian Hargrave
Of the hundreds of millions of people around the world who enjoy games on Google Play, 49% are women, yet only 23% of game developers identify as women says Google Play's Jackie Lau in a recent blog article. In the article she announced that Google will be teaming up with the organization Girls Make Games and the ESA Foundation in order to launch a new contest named the...
AR mobile ads for games launched by ironSource
Monday, November 20, 2017 by Richard Harris
ironSource has recently launched AR ads for their advertising network. As the first network offering AR ads, ironSource is developing a format that showcases the same experience of the game in an ad environment. The AR ads use 3D assets from the original game, and can run on both iOS and Android in-app traffic, within rewarded, video, and display placements. The ads are...
Multiplayer arena and game builder released by uGen World
Wednesday, June 28, 2017 by Richard Harris
uGen World, an indie game studio, has announced the launch of a cross-platform virtual playground for gamers to build, share, and play called Q.U.I.R.K.. Q.U.I.R.K. (Quantum Universe Interaction and Replication Kit) is directed by user feedback and fueled by user-generated content so players can enjoy an ever-changing selection of fun and innovative games. Q.U.I.R.K. al...
Drag and drop game creator studio GameMaker updates to version 2
Wednesday, May 24, 2017 by Richard Harris
YoYo Games’ recently launched cross-platform 2D game engine, GameMaker Studio 2, is now available in a convenient education package specifically for schools and their students. Any approved university or school affiliate will now have access to a free trial version with zero time restrictions/commitments and a simple option to upgrade to the full version. Educational in...
Playwire and Overwolf look to tap into the eSports industry
Wednesday, April 5, 2017 by Christian Hargrave
Playwire Media has formed a partnership with Overwolf, a software platform for competitive PC gamers, designed to seamlessly integrate apps to any game. As part of the new agreement, Playwire Media will exclusively handle their new partners entire advertising inventory within their software application, which includes takeovers, display ads and pre-roll video ads. Overw...
HacknPlan 1.0 game developer project management tool launches
Monday, April 3, 2017 by Richard Harris
HacknPlan is a collaborative project management tool tailored for game developers and producers. With HacknPlan, teams can create tasks and assign them to members, set up milestones and deadlines, create game design documentation, track the progress and generate metrics and statistics to evaluate the performance of the team. This way, game developers can avoid or minimi...
What we learned at GDC 2017, and dates for GDC 2018 announced
Monday, March 13, 2017 by Richard Harris
The 2017 Game Developers Conference (GDC), the world’s largest and longest-running event serving professionals dedicated to the art and science of making games, concluded a successful week of networking, learning and inspiration. In total, the conference hosted more than 26,000 professional attendees, 500 lectures, panels, tutorials and roundtable discussions, and ...
Cut the Rope creator ZeptoLab transforms into a mobile app publisher
Tuesday, March 7, 2017 by Richard Harris
ZeptoLab, the app gaming company behind Cut the Rope franchise and the mobile multiplayer hit King of Thieves, announced that they have officially entered the publishing business by opening a website where mobile game developers from all over the world can now leave their submissions.ZeptoLab has been “soft-launching” their publishing activities for about a year by part...
Game Developers Choice Awards game of the year goes to..
Friday, March 3, 2017 by Richard Harris
Blizzard Entertainment’s popular and stylish multiplayer shooter, Overwatch, was honored with the prize for Game of the Year at this year's 17th annual Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) ceremony during the 2017 Game Developers Conference (GDC) at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Overwatch’s carefully calibrated balance and polished gameplay mechanics also earned ...
Five indispensable tools for your agile projects
Sunday, December 18, 2016 by Richard Harris
Agile project management methodologies have become increasingly popular for software development—especially among development teams making video games. Perhaps developers are attracted by the cool name which brings to mind animators and game designers in ninja outfits nimbly scampering over once insurmountable project deadlines. Or maybe it resonates with programmers wh...
How Emotion AI is becoming a real opportunity for developers
Tuesday, October 18, 2016 by Richard Harris
We recently spoke with emotion artificial intelligence (AI) company, Affectiva, about how Emotion AI is emerging as a new opportunity for developers. Affectiva recently announced that its emotion recognition SDK has been integrated with Unity. Developers in a range of industries from gaming, education, robotics and healthcare, to experiential marketing and more ar...
A Peek Inside Ireland's Largest Games Developer, DIGIT Game Studios
Friday, September 30, 2016 by Richard Harris
DIGIT started in 2012 and based it in Dublin, Ireland. Not the usual gaming capital, however it's had a great impact on the company today. Their focus is on building strategy games for mobile and browser. They spent the first couple of years of the company's life focused on the underlying technology and believe they are probably the most advanced GaaS (Games as a Servic...
Virtual Reality is the New Mobile
Monday, June 6, 2016 by Steve Mezak
Why VR Makes Software Development Outsourcing Even More EssentialThe recent flood of inexpensive virtual reality (VR) headsets from manufacturers has provided a boost in interest in the emerging VR ecosystem by consumers and the news media. Although VR today is predominately in the domain of gaming, this emerging technology will soon be part of enterprise IT strategies....
Sequel Launches API Integration for its Chatbot Platform for Messaging Apps
Thursday, June 2, 2016 by Stuart Parkerson
Sequel has launched out of beta its chatbot platform that provides the ability to build conversational personas for entertainment and media. The platform provides the ability to build bots for media and entertainment on messenger platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Kik, and Telegram. New features added prior to the launch out of beta include natural language processin...
Leveraging Mobile Gameplay Analytics and User Psychology For Retention
Friday, March 25, 2016 by Sergei Kovalenko
Ever since Apple introduced its App Store in 2008, game developers have been lining up for their share of the now almost $50 billion dollar industry. However, designing games that stand out from the rest of the crowd can be extremely difficult and is now just as much art as it science. With over 2,000 new apps being added to the App Store and Google Play daily, dev...
Engineering is the Top Job Need for the Gaming Industry
Monday, March 14, 2016 by Richard Harris
In a recent study on the hiring needs for the gaming industry, SmartRecruiters found that engineering dominates as the top job function sought after in the gaming sector, with engineering representing 36 percent of all gaming jobs posted, followed by design at 17 percent. Here’s how the top functions ranked in the study:1. Engineering2. Design3. Art/Creative4. Educ...
First Wave of Unity Games Published for Apple TV
Monday, November 2, 2015 by Richard Harris
The first wave of games built for Apple TV using the Unity for Apple TV platform have been released. Unity has been working under a closed alpha to work the kinks out of the Unity for Apple TV platform, treating it as a separate platform, rather than an extension of the iOS platform due to the differences on how content is presented, consumed and interacted.The publishe...
