Are games art? Are gamers artists? What do you suck at? Is it launching your game? So many questions (and luckily plenty of answers) in today’s Dev Links.

Are Game(r)s Art(ists)? (Gamasutra)
“”Interactivity’s a very interesting word, because it implies that this is something we didn’t do in art before, which is complete nonsense, because the only interesting art experiences are the ones that engage you in that way; in which you are invited to become part of the authorship of something in some way or another. And usually in some more meaningful way than choosing whether to open this door or that door.” - Brian Eno”

What do you suck at? (Develop Online)
“Mike Bithell on why it is important to be aware of the gaps in your game development skills.”

Launch Day 2.0 (AltDevBlogADay)
“I didn’t sleep well the night before our Sunday launch of Vex Blocks. Despite the weeks we’ve had the game in the hands of testers, a new bug had come to light late Saturday evening. While not game breaking it still needed to be addressed. I stayed up working on the problem until solved. Chat messages, frantic on my part, went back and forth between myself and my partner until between the two of us we were able smooth things out. I then prepped the build for the next morning’s launch and finally after a long day allowed myself to push back away from my desk just after 1am. I tried and failed to sleep after that.”

BattleBlock Theater (Beta): User Created Levels (The Behemoth)
“Ah, yes… the BattleBlock Community Theater. Even after 3 years of playwriting levels, how those Beta builders still managed to surprise me! And kill me. And then surprise me again! Whether I was flung through explosions into rooms made out of teleporters or flung through teleporters into rooms made out of explosions, the experience was quite the rollercoastery deathtrap of emotion.”

A tree killed his Granny! Jack is STEAMing (Owlchemy Labs)
“Mobile’s most poplar game is now available on Steam! Stack beards, chug syrup, and rock flannel as you axe your way through the forest on your PC/Mac/Linux machine and make your Granny proud.”

Receiver’s Greenlight Journey (Wolfire Games)
“Receiver was finally released on Steam today — check it out here! There is a one-week launch sale bringing the price down to $3.99. If you already have Receiver or Overgrowth, then you can claim your Steam key on your Humble Store download page (linked from your purchase email). Whenever a game is greenlit, there are always two questions that come up over and over: “How did it take THIS LONG for this game to get greenlit?”, and “How did THIS game get greenlit?” In this post I will try to answer both questions about Receiver!”

New HUD Layout (Krooked Gaming)
“So after a lot of adjustments, I think I’m finally happy with the new HUD. While I have a few concerns about how complicated it may look to new users, it does contain a lot of useful information.”

Indie Tools: PolyVox (IndieGames.com)
“PolyVox is (according to its developers admittedly) “a fast, lightweight C++ library for the storage and processing of volumetric (voxel-based) environments” that can be used for anything from games to scientific applications.””

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: The Next Plateau

Today’s Dev Links discuss doing things a little differently, with touchscreen controls and cloud gaming.  Also, version control, which is something you’ll probably have to deal with no matter what platform you’re developing your game for.

Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4 News and Screenshots – Battles, Monster Allies, and World Map (Zeboyd Games)
“Lots of fun news for you all today.  First up, we have the first set of battle screenshots for the game. You may recognize a few familiar faces.”

Let’s Talk About Touching: Making Great Touchscreen Controls (Gamasutra)
“I’ve been working on making mobile games as the founder of an independent studio called Action Button Entertainment. In order to make the best mobile games, I’ve been dissecting and researching every interesting game-control mechanic I can find, from Pong to Angry Birds. Here is what I’ve found.”

Democracy 3: Voter Type Income Design… (Cliffski.com)
“Sooo.. I found myself almost sleepwalking into adding a new feature to Democracy 3. I honestly can’t remember actually making the decision to include it, it just seemed to ‘happen’. In democracy 2, the model for income of voters is fairly basic. You can implement policies which affect different levels of income (luxury goods tax hits the rich, for example), and that would affect the membership of the poor, middle income and wealthy voter groups. So far so good.”

What Is Bionic Heart 2 ? (Computer Games)
“I realized that I always talked about Bionic Heart 2 like if everyone played the first game. By the way, if you haven’t, you should since I lowered its price to $9.99 and even if was one of my earlier games, the story is still one of the best I think. Anyway, for those who haven’t played it, I’ll introduce the game. Warning there are some small spoilers about some endings/characters of the first game, so be warned before you continue reading!”

The Video Game Kickstarter Report – Week of Feb 22 (Zeboyd Games)
“First up for this week, we have a new Adventure/RPG hybrid called Mage’s Initiation. Developed by the team responsible for the King’s Quest 1-3 & Quest for Glory 2 remakes, Mage’s Initiation looks to be heavily inspired by the Quest for Glory series. That means multiple character classes, traditional Sierra Online style puzzles, alternate routes of success, and RPG stats. They’re off to a strong start with $39k of their $65k goal raised with 28 days left to go.”

A Clarification About Our PS4 Exclusivity (The Witness)
“There has been worry and speculation on the internet about the PS4 exclusivity that we announced during the press conference, so here are some details to help answer those questions.”

Game Development: Version Control (Unknown Worlds)
“Games are complex systems. They mix 2d and 3d artwork, sounds, game logic and rendering engines. These systems are most often created by teams. The biggest games are often worked on by hundreds of people. All these people are making changes, adding pieces, and fixing problems. It is essential to keep track of all these actions in order to maintain the integrity of the whole. Such tracking is facilitated by systems referred to in game development as ‘version control.’”

Cloud Gaming Helps Indie Developers, Playcast Board Member Says (Polygon)
“Cloud gaming helps independent developers break into the living room through digital distribution , according to Gadi Tirosh, a member of the board of directors of Playcast. Tirosh believes that distributing console quality games through the cloud circumvents retail channels that have prevented smaller developers from penetrating the market. Services like Playcast are ‘removing the barriers to distribution to console games, which historically have been quite high,’ he said.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Going To Town

Today’s Developer Links peek into the development of a puzzle game, an RPG, a party game, and… whatever you fancy calling SpyParty’s genre.

Practice Made Perfect: Super Hexagon (Mode 7)
“Super Hexagon is a brilliant game which is predicated on the relationship between persistence and mastery.  It also might just be a maze having a grand mal seizure.”

One Bug’s Story, Or, Assume It’s A Bug! (SpyParty Blog)
“This is the story of a bug in SpyParty.  This story has a happy ending, because the SpyParty beta testers are amazing, and they are constantly helping find bugs, of course, but they are also constantly helping me reproduce bugs, and narrow down the potential causes of bugs, and triage them, and are generally providing me with incredible support so I can make the game better.”

Driftmoon From A New Angle (Instant Kingdom)
“We’ve just released Driftmoon beta version 0.996! This is the first version featuring our new, tilted viewing angle that we mentioned earlier. It’s available right here. If you haven’t had a chance to try Driftmoon yet, or have patiently been waiting for us to add the angled camera feature, then now is the best time to start playing! And before you ask, yes, the full adventure is all there now, from start to finish.”

Ouya Game Jam Postmortem: Pig Eat Ball (Mommy’s Best Devlog)
“To help invigorate game development for the new console, a game jam was held for the  Android-based ‘Ouya‘ console. It was a bit of an unusual game jam in that it had no specific theme and had some troubles early on (there was a false start and the rules changed a bit along the way). Buuuut once it got going, it turned out pretty fun. And the event, hosted by KillScreen and named the ‘CREATE’ jam ended up being very successful with over 160 games made!”

Super Hexagon Now Available For Blackberry 10 (distractionware: devlog)
“Surprise! Super Hexagon is now available for the new Blackberry 10! This wasn’t originally something I had lined up – the opportunity to do it just sorta came along.”

Twine Bundle, February (Auntie Pixelante)
“here are some twine games i have enjoyed in the past while.”

Mew-Genics Teaser Week 16, The Ballad Of D. Claude! (Team Meat Blog)
“One of my personal faves on the soundtrack, The Ballad Of D. Claude, sheds light on the life of an alley cat from Boone County. The full track is available on Bandcamp free to check out (with lyrics!) and can be purchased for anything you’d like to pay ”

Vexing Puzzle Design (AltDevBlogADay)
“I enjoy a good puzzle.  At my core, I look for patterns in pretty much everything around me and I think we all do to some extent.  Looking for order in chaos is just something that we all do from the time we’re toddlers.  That’s when toddlers aren’t creating chaos, as I’m sure other new parents can attest to.  It’s no surprise that puzzle games are among the most popular games available for mobile devices.  A good puzzle game will keep us captivated for as long as we find it challenging.  I thought I’d take a moment and share my design process as a new game designer working on the puzzle mode for our imminent title, Vex Blocks.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: When Pigs Fly

In today’s Developer Links: web design, video game websites, and serial cross-platform development.

Bastion‘s Argument For Doing Away With Cross-Platform Development (Gamasutra)
“In a talk at the DICE Summit on Wednesday, Supergiant Games co-founder and studio director Amir Rao (Bastion) talked about the year-plus his team spent taking Bastion to different platforms. Along the way, he urged the audience to get away from the concept of simultaneous ‘ports’ and ‘lead SKU’ and towards a thoughtful, non-parallel multi-platform development process.”

Apple Pie Chart (Mommy’s Best Devlog)
“Serious Sam Double D XXL is super close! Go go go! Time to let people know! What’s so cool about it? Let’s tell everyone! That’s what most of my time is devoted to currently and it’s getting very exciting! We’ll be heading to PAX East to promote the game and we’re even throwing a pretty big Mid-West game dev launch party here in Louisville on March 1st!”

What’s In The BattleBlock Theater Beta? (The Behemoth Development Blog)
“The BattleBlock Theater Closed Beta will be here sooner than we think. We’re still locking down all the details, including the beta testing dates, but we do have an exciting update to share! In addition to story levels and the level editor, we’ll be giving Beta Testers access to all the arena modes!”

A Week As Webdesigner (Computer Games)
“Probably not many of you know that before going indie, I was a (rather poor to be fair) webdesigner. Many people probably think that being a webdesigner is a creative job but the reality is that after you do the 100th website, you start to have enough… Anyway, this week I was waiting for some people to send me assets (writing, art, music, etc) so I was idle. If wasn’t Winter I would have use this unexpected “free time” to do some trips around here to relax, but since it is, I thought to finally begin the redesign of my website, something I’ve been procrastinating for too long!”

Going Forward With Drox (Soldak Entertainment)
“First off, we have Drox Operative on Steam’s Greenlight. If you haven’t already, go vote for Drox Operative on Greenlight so we can get the game on Steam. Please tell all of your friends, family, and anyone else that will listen to do so also.”

The Video Game Kickstarter Report – Week of February 8 (Zeboyd Games)
“Big week for new kickstarters! Let’s get started!”

Good Morning Gato # 109 – Warm Kitty (Ska Studios)
“PAX East is 42 days away! Ska Studios will once again be exhibiting, keeping with our trend of showing at every single PAX East there has ever been. When will this dang Charlie Murder game ever be done?! You’re asking, our friends are asking, and even our moms are asking. We still can’t tell you but we can sure show you what we’ve done so far. Come see us and play and listen to us expertly dodge the “when will it be done” question! We may just have a different answer for you by the end of March (disclaimer: we also may have the same answer for you by the end of March).”

Big List of Top Video Game Websites (PixelProspector)
“I have just updated the Big List of Top Video Game Websites. All ~130 sites offer now some basic info (Country, Platforms, Coverage, About). Furthermore I have also created a spreadsheet that you can download here.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Candy Stripes

Today’s Developer Links talk about garbage collection, tool development, a lighting technique, and a suggestion for how to classify RPGs.

The Top 10 Mistakes Tool Developers Make (Gamasutra)
“Since 1999, I’ve had the luck to work in the game middleware industry. It’s been extremely interesting, but something of a crusade. Why? Probably because game middleware is one of the hardest things to market and sell.”

Implementing Voxel Cone Tracing (AltDevBlogADay)
“In last year SIGGRAPH, Epic games presented their real time GI solution which based on voxel cone tracing. They showed some nice results which attract me to implement the technique and my implementation runs at around 22~30fps at 1024×768 screen resolution using a 256x256x256 voxel volume on my GTX460 graphic card. The demo program can be downloaded here which requires a DX11 GPU to run.”

Garbage Collection And Memory Allocation Sizes (AltDevBlogADay)
“As a performance conscious programmer in a soft-realtime environment I’ve never been too fond of garbage collection. Incremental garbage collectors (like the one in Lua) make it tolerable (you get rid of the horrible garbage collection stalls), but there is still something unsettling about it. I keep looking at the garbage collection time in the profiler, and I can’t shake the feeling that all that time is wasted, because it doesn’t really do anything.”

Dog Game (distractionware: devlog)
“dog game”

A Better Classification System For RPGs (Zeboyd Games)
“The labels JRPG and Western RPG are commonly used genre labels that don’t do a lot of good in actually telling anyone what the game in question is like because there is so much variety between games that are arguably in the same genre. For that matter, some people still can’t agree whether these terms should apply strictly to the location of the developer that made the game or to the style of game. Surely, we can do better. Here are 9 criteria you can use to classify just about any RPG.”

Attempt Quest 1 (Auntie Pixelante)
“attempt quest 1 is an abstract, autobiographical game i made in 2004 – i would have been around 21. i can’t remember showing it to anyone, posting it anywhere. i don’t remember making it, didn’t remember that it existed until i found it in an old corner of my web host. but playing it, i could identify it as mine, like deja vu, or like being shown a drawing you did as a kid. at that time in my life, i was dealing with isolation, depression, sorting out my identity, and a fear of my own mortality that has never left me, just transformed. i put all these into this little game that i was too scared to show anyone.”

Announcing “Roger Steel and the Human Element” (Computer Games)
“‘It’s 1936 and the sun is still shining brightly on a steam-powered British Empire. Ann Trevelyan, a naïve but headstrong 21-year-old English girl, is exiled to Kashmir from the sultry streets of Calcutta in the aftermath of a forbidden love affair. Accompanied by her technology-obsessed brother, Arthur, who has been coerced into chaperoning her, and their lifelong Welsh friends, Christina and Neville Mortimer, the four expect nothing but boredom away from the glamour of the big city…”

What Are Games (Proteus)
“I find this rather burdensome to write, but it feels necessary to set out my thoughts given recent rumblings, and specifically to respond to this article and its comments. I don’t call Proteus an antigame* or a notgame. I call it a game, but obviously I am at pains to make it clear that it doesn’t have explicit challenge or ‘winning.’”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: White Dragon

In today’s Developer Links, the developer of Sir, You Are Being Hunted discusses animation; the developer of Cthulhu Saves the World discusses repetition; the developer of Octodad discusses publicity; and the developer of Cthulhu Saves the World discusses repetition. (You see what we did there?)

Heileen 3 Postmortem (Computer Gaming)
“The Heileen series ends with this third chapter, and I’m overall satisfied by it. Without doubts it’s the best game of the series under several aspects: the longest, the most funny, the one with more variety of romances, the one with more artwork, the first one with a custom soundtrack and theme song, and the list goes on.”

Sir, Unity, Mecanim and the Trials of Small Studio In-Game Animation (Big Robot)
“We thought it might be insightful for you guys to be able to read a bit more about the challenges we’ve faced in completely overhauling our animation system since the success of our Kickstarter. As we mentioned in that pitch, animation is one of the key challenges for the game, and we feel we need high quality character animation to really make the experience work. So that’s what we’ve been doing. However, it was not without complications.”

On Repetition and Different Perspectives (Zeboyd Games)
“…This got me thinking about our own games. In one of our games, we have a dungeon that is split up into two parts – past and present. Your party gets split up between the two time periods & you have to go through the dungeon as each group. Your active party, the visuals, and the boss are different for each time period, but otherwise you’re going through the same stuff. Many people complained that they felt it was repetitive and I can’t really blame them. If I was to do it again, I would add more unique gameplay features to each time zone and otherwise reduce the amount of time you spent repeating content (there should have been fewer enemies for one thing).”

Purification Ritual for Computers (Auntie Pixelante)
“luna designed a game / ritual to purify your computer. she did the art, i did the technical stuff, with leon on call for consultation. downloads for windows or mac. purify your computer today.”

The Crowdfunding Experience (AltDevBlogADay)
“So, just recently, I was asked to give a 90 min lecture in my home city regarding crowdfunding after managing to run a successful campaign myself in mid 2012. The lecture is pretty long, but I’ll include the video at the end in case anyone’s interested in sitting through the whole thing. If not, I was also asked to write a shortened version of it for people to read, so I thought I’d share it here.”

Mew-Genics Teaser Week 14, THE MAIL! (Team Meat Blog)
“The mail in Mew-genics is an exciting thing.. you never know what you might get! maybe it will be an invitation to the next Cat Fight? maybe your children sent you a dollar bill… could be a notice of violation from the county about the smell, or more importantly your next SSI check!”

Mavis Minecraft Teaches Coding – Part 4 (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“What’s left? Well, I’ll wrap up a few loose ends by introducing you to some nifty coding shortcuts called functions, tell you how to wirelessly communicate between computers using rednet modems, and explain how bundled cables work so you can make complex creations.”

Octodad’s Path to Popularity (Octodad Blog)
“It’s probably not a stretch to say that the first Octodad became popular for two major reasons: it was quirky and it was free.  But aside from that, it’s interesting to take a look at what has really helped push us into the spotlight over the past couple of years since our release on October 31, 2010.  (As a disclaimer, I tried not to accidentally leave out key people who have helped us, but I apologize if I did!)”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Maritime Maiden

Today’s Developer Links comment on possible alternative financing models, different promotional techniques, an oft-overlooked aspect of human body movement, and, well, commenting.

XNA-To-Unity Part 2: Rendering (Radiangames)
“Last time I covered the general setup for the XNA-to-Unity transition.  This time I’m going to delve into details of the most difficult system to port: Rendering.  Some of the problems I encountered are specific to my methods of rendering, but you’ll likely run into many of the same problems.”

make your first game in twine (Auntie Pixelante)
“being the author of a book about digital game-making for non-coders and a hopeful ambassador for game creation, i figured i should have some link on the front of my site where someone with no game-making experience can click and learn how to make her first videogame. naturally, i picked the simplest, most non-coder-friendly, and my favorite game-making tool: twine.”

Head Over Heels: Upper Body Movement In Gameplay (AltDevBlogADay)
“When it comes to in-game locomotion, we rarely get to see the eyes clearly as we’re mostly behind our character, so the next stop down the chain of importance is the head. Unfortunately, when we place such a high focus on maintaining solid foot-planting, we create a fulcrum point at the ground and our characters often pivot in extreme ways to compensate. This is especially noticeable in bigger direction changes and when aligning characters to interact with each other (melee, high fives, piggyback rides, etc.).”

Expos And Shows Vs. Advertising (Cliffski.com)
“I was rambling to someone a few days ago about advertising and risk, and something hit me about indie attitudes to risk and promotion. I know a lot of indies who never do any advertising. I don’t mean word-of-mouth promotion, tweeting, updating facebook and sending people press releases, that’s PR, it’s not advertising. I actually mean paying for banner ads, and search advertising, and even print or video adverts. For most smallish indie teams, the advertising budget is zero.”

The End Looms! (Instant Kingdom)
“That means we’ve completed at least two thirds of the NEW content (or about 98% of the whole game) for the final alpha, which will be the final version before release! Yay! I don’t yet know how long it will take to complete the rest, but rest assured, you’ll be the first to know if you’ve signed up for the release newsletter.”

Fantastic Arcade: Once More, With Feeling (Octodad Blog)
“Last year we made our very first visit to Austin when we were a featured spotlight game at the super rad event Fantastic Arcade, part of Fantastic Fest, at The Highball.  While there we showed off the first Octodad in a really interesting arcade machine setup. This year we may not be part of the spotlight, but Octodad: Dadliest Catch will be there and playable on all the showcase laptops for ya’ll to try out! FOR FREE! So if you’re in the Austin, TX area be sure to come by and play Dadliest Catch along with all of the other spectacular titles we’re showing with.”

The Elements Of Comment Style (AltDevBlogADay)
“Programming comments are a critical, and often overlooked, part of the development process. Comments may not be exciting enough to have certifications and training classes dedicated to them, but in many ways the difference between a good codebase and an excellent codebase can come down to the quality of the comments.”

Can Film-Inspired Project Financing Work For Games?  (Gamasutra)
“In this extensively-researched piece, former Ubisoft associate producer Yann Suquet, who has a masters in corporate finance, takes a long hard look at precisely how films are funded and pulls apart the question of whether the same could work for games.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Facial Features

Today’s Developer Links cover breaking the rules, texture atlasing, infinite replayability, and more.  Though not infinitely more.

Q-003: What Is One Mistake You Made Recently…? (AltDevBlogADay)
“What is one mistake you made recently and what lesson could you share with others?”

Cooperative Gaming Co-Op (Auntie Pixelante)
“my comrades john and james have put together a free arcade in downtown san jose that opens tomorrow. they asked me to put together a selection of games for them – to curate an arcade cabinet centered around the idea of game zinesters. there are the games i selected, which will be available to play at the arcade until october 13th (and are, naturally, free to play online):”

Storytelling Without Stories: Writing For Infinite Replayability (Gamasutra)
“What goes into writing for a game without a linear narrative? A lot, say Valve and Madden veterans, who explain the keys to writing for games which will be played again and again.”

Innovating By Breaking The Rules (Lazy 8 Studios)
“A big congratulations to Ann Burkett for putting on a successful inaugural Game Design Conference here in San Francisco! I gave a talk on on Innovating by Breaking the Rules. For those who are interested in my lecture slides, you can find them here. I’ll try to post a video later.”

Building An HTML5 Game? Don’t Shrug Off Atlases (AltDevBlogADay)
“HTML5 is an amazing technology for designing web sites. The general flexibility of HTML5 markup and JavaScript often leads web developers to create their content using individual image elements. This approach works well for small sites with low overhead, but for games or other high-load websites, using droves of single image elements leads to long load times and slow performance, resulting in a poor end-user experience.  In an ecosystem where 3 seconds may cause you to lose half your users, it’s important to use the proper tool to address this issue: texture atlasing.”

Indie Tools: Ogmo Editor (IndieGames.com)
“Did you know that Offspring Fling actually used the Ogmo Editor? Well, you do now and you are also about to find out that using the Ogmo editor is both extremely simple and very cheap indeed. Actually, it will cost you nothing, as the tool is a freeware, open-source offering you can download for your Windows PC right here.”

Inafune’s Onward March To Independence (Gamasutra)
“In this interview, [Keiji] Inafune talks about the hidden talents of Japanese developers, why there are few large independent Japanese studios, why he wants to work with Western partners to develop games, and how the back-and-forth of working with external partners works. It’s a calmer, more optimistic interview than we’ve seen from the man who has, of late, become more notorious as the doomcrier of the Japanese industry than recognized for his game development skills.”

A Big Post About Sir, You Are Being Hunted (Big Robot)
“The past couple of weeks have seen us enter a new phase with the game. We’re following the sort-of-standard development cycle in that for us “alpha” means “playable, but not yet feature complete”, and that’s where we are now. That’s not to say that the game is entirely fleshed out, because it lacks a tonne of art assets to fill out multiple islands, and it needs lashings more work on fine tuning our combat and stealth systems.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Triple Header

Is the conventional wisdom about AI in games really so wise?  Today’s Developer Links ask this question, along with discussing multiplayer development and “glorious trainwrecks”.

glorious trainwrecks dot exe (Auntie Pixelante)
“glorious trainwrecks dot exe is exactly the kind of inventiveness i want to see more of. made by mike meyer, it automatically indexes glorioustrainwrecks.com and allows you to browse games by event – whether they were made for last month’s klik of the month or for the gdc pirate kart or whenever – read their descriptions and download and play them instantly. glorioustrainwrecks is an amazing site that empowers everyone to make games, and uses monthly two-hour game-making events to help authors understand that creativity is more important than polish and presentation.”

Gratuitous Controllable Battles (Yes, Really) (Cliffski.com)
“I’ve been working on an expansion pack for Gratuitous Tank Battles, but hit a bit of an admin snag in releasing it right now, which gave me time to do something else. As I’ve had this GSB update pending for ages, I thought I’d get around to finally releasing it for everyone. This isn’t just a minor tweak and bug fix, it adds some good stuff. You might want to update your copy, and try this one…”

Level Lobby ft. The Level Editor [The Sequel] (The Behemoth Development Blog)
“Here’s a follow up post to the previous Level Lobby announcement and with all the fun facts that the first post didn’t have! Questions will be answered, such as: ‘What else is in the level lobby?’ ‘How do I use this thingamabob?’ ‘What do you think about sequels?’”

Q-001: Where Do You Feel Like You Are Being Held Back By The Status Quo In #Gamedev? (AltDevBlogADay)
“This was the question that started my twitter #gamedev Q&A series. As of right now we’re just shy of having discussed 100 questions on twitter. Feel free to join in!”

Cook, Serve, Delicious! Status Update (Vertigo Gaming)
“CSD has been undergoing private beta testing, and so far the results have been excellent. Squashed a lot of bugs, polished the game up quite a bit, and aside from a few bonus galleries the game is essentially complete. I’m definitely going to release it by the end of the month, however there are two things I’m waiting for before going forward with a release date:…”

Guerilla Multiplayer Development (Gamasutra)
“What’s the best way to get a networked game up and running on a smartphone? For his space battle game ErnCon, Ernest Woo investigated existing network techniques and integrated them together, coming up with a solution useful to iOS and Android developers, which he shares within.”

“Flip The Question Around” – Interview With Andy Schatz (Made by Pixelate)
“Andy Schatz has been highly influential and inspiring to the independent game development community for a long time, so I’m delighted to have had the chance to talk to him about Monaco and the Venture Games, the growth of indie games and the most important skill to run an indie studio.”

Over 3 Million Castle Crashers (The Behemoth Development Blog)
“While we were in Seattle for PAX Prime 2012 the XBLA Castle Crashers leaderboards reached 3 million! This means that over three million humans have hacked and slashed their way into a castle in hopes of gaining animated glory! We are tremendously grateful that in four years, we’ve had the continuing opportunity to share this game with the world.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Floorplan

Want to get funding for your indie game?  One of today’s Developer Links addresses how to approach publishers, while another discusses what’s currently going on with indie games on Kickstarter… and in another, a developer explains why he doesn’t use Kickstarter himself.  Also, a look back at a famous indie game that was released two years ago and is still selling strong, and an indie developer shares some of her earliest, previously unpublished efforts…

Amnesia – Two Years Later (In The Games Of Madness)
“It has now passed a little more than two years since we launched Amnesia and one year since the last report, so time for another! One would think that there is perhaps not much to be said this long after release, especially for a single player game with no built-in social features. But the fact is that Amnesia is still going very strong and 2012 will probably be the best financial year here at Frictional Games, which we would never had expected two years ago.”

My Kickstarter Love/Hate (Cliffski.com)
“So kickstarter has raised a bazillion dollars for games. rejoice hurrah etc! I have a love/hate relationship with the idea. On the one hand, it’s awesome to see indie devs get games made that they didn’t have the money to make otherwise, as the alternative (gradually building up over time) took me about ten years to get to the standard of games most people know me for… On the other hand, it’s selling a dream, and a pretty unlikely and far-off dream at that.”

XNA-To-Unity: The Radiangames Method (Radiangames)
“Now with 4 full games ported to 2 major new platforms (iOS and PC/Mac), an all-new game based on the same XNA-based game structure, and another larger game on the way, I think I can say the transition was a success.  Many more XBLIG developers have made the transition from XNA to Unity, but some are still in the process or are only considering it still.  For them, and for others who prefer a more code-based game structure than Unity normally provides, I’m now going to share more details of my particular XNA-to-Unity path.”

What Publishers Want: 10 Tips For Getting Your Game Funded (Gamasutra)
“In such a competitive landscape, how does a developer possibly stand out when trying to land a deal a game publisher? Perfect World’s VP of business development John Young shares what he looks for in a pitch.”

Indie Tools: Blender (IndieGames.com)
“You may have already heard of Blender, the 3D open source suite, as an excellent option for creating 3D graphics and models. Well, that is definitely true. Blender is a 3D tool that actually makes sense for me (I successfully created an almost passable castle) and everyone seems to agree that is both powerful and pretty straightforward to use… The game creation advantages are pretty obvious, especially for artists and indie devs wanting to impress with shiny 3D stuff, but what really impressed me is the fact that Brender actually comes with a complete Game Engine.”

PAX 10! IndieCade! Freeplay! Oh My! (Cipher Prime)
“PAX Prime was awesome! Big thanks to everyone that came out to see us! It was great meeting some of you for the first time and showing off Splice one-on-one with folks. If you missed out on PAX or weren’t able to stop by the booth, there’s a great write-up on the PAX10 over at Geek’sDreamGirl.”

kid stuff (AuntiePixelante)
“here’s some stuff outta history.”

The Video Game Kickstarter Report – Week Of September 14 (Zeboyd Games)
“The big new kickstarter for this week just started a few hours ago. It’s a new RPG from Obsidian Entertainment called Project Eternity. Goal of $1.1 million but they’re already up to $344k after a few hours so they probably will make it.  The game is designed to be a great homage to classic PC RPGs like Baldur’s Gate & Planescape: Torment and will feature the talents of Chris Avellone, Tim Cain, and Josh Sawyer.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Game Pointer