The Rise of the Mobile Collectible Card Game 14
by Christian Nutt [02.14.13]
Rage of Bahamut was a surprise smash hit -- and brought the collectible card game to prominence on mobile. But is it just a fad, or does it have sticking power? DeNA, Ngmoco, Gree, Konami, and Cygames weigh in.
Design, Interview, Social/Online, Smartphone/Tablet

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Storyboarding for Games User Research 6
by Lennart Nacke, Pejman Mirza-Babaei [02.13.13]
You can do user testing, and that can generate massive volumes of data -- but how can you feed that data back down to the team in a helpful way? Game user researchers Mirza-Babaei and Nacke discuss a useful storyboarding technique.
Design

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The Writer's Job: If Breaking Bad Became a Game... 24
by Susan O'Connor [02.12.13]
In this article, experienced game writer Susan O'Connor explores what a writer brings to the creative process, by analyzing hit TV series Breaking Bad -- as though she were in the kick-off meeting for its game adaptation.
Design

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Postmortem: zGames' Pong World 5
by Tanya Aulachynskaya, Chris Howard, Artyom Vorobyov [02.11.13]
What does it take to build a winning mobile game -- literally? This postmortem details the development of Pong World, the game that won Atari's Pong Indie Developer Challenge contest, with a focus on practical solutions in mobile game development.
Business/Marketing, Design, Postmortem, Production, Indie, Smartphone/Tablet

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Beyond MUDs: Kate Flack on Designing Ultima Forever 7
by Brandon Sheffield [02.08.13]
Can moral choices actually teach us about who we are, and can online RPGs ever break the bounds of text-based MUDs? Lead designer Kate Flack hopes that the answers to both of these questions are "yes," as she discusses the latest Ultima game with Gamasutra.
Design, Interview, Social/Online

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Making the Move to HTML5, Part 1 16
by Duncan Tebbs, David Galeano [02.07.13]
In this first of a three-part series, seasoned console developers, formerly of Criterion, describe the process of moving to HTML5 development, discussing the differences between working in C and JavaScript, and explaining dealing with the difficult environment of the browser.
Programming, Social/Online

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Postmortem: Intelligence Engine Design Systems' City Conquest 25
by Paul Tozour [02.06.13]
A candid and detailed look at the difficulties one team encountered when developing a mobile and tablet-based strategy game -- including everything from problems with Kickstarter to networking code, and how some difficulties were solved with automation.
Business/Marketing, Design, Postmortem, Production, Social/Online, Smartphone/Tablet

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Reflections on XNA 25
by Nathan Fouts [02.05.13]
Nathan Fouts quit his job at Insomniac Games in 2006 to strike out on his own as an indie developer, ultimately settling on Microsoft's XNA as his development platform of choice -- and here, he reflects on the tool, which Microsoft last week announced will be discontinued.
Business/Marketing, Indie

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Developer Roundtable: Triple-A, Free-to-Play 7
by David Daw, Patrick Miller [02.04.13]
In this Game Developer magazine reprint, find out how free-to-play games Tribes: Ascend, PlanetSide 2, and MechWarrior Online are making inroads into core PC audiences -- and how their developers view working in the space.
Business/Marketing, Design, Interview, Social/Online

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Accessible Strategy is not an Oxymoron: Design Pillars for Skulls of the Shogun 15
by Jake Kazdal, Borut Pfeifer [02.01.13]
How did the developers of the new indie strategy game strive to break the bounds of the strategy genre? In this article, 17-Bit's Jake Kazdal and Borut Pfeifer break down the decisions that lead to the design choices they made.
Design, Indie

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