GDC 2019 may be in the books, but you can catch Gamasutra's coverage from last week right here, from details on Google Stadia to brilliant talks on game design to interviews from game industry luminaries plus all the news you can use.
Check out our dedicated GDC 2019 coverage page
Here are just a few highlights from the show:
Stadia's biz dev director talks challenges, opportunities in new age of cloud games – Kris Graft
An interview with Jack Buser, director of games for Google's newly-announced cloud streaming platform, Stadia, on how starting up a game instantly via a hyperlink could change how game marketing is done:
"If I want to tweet out my game, I can do that. If I want to leverage YouTube, I could do that. If I want to use my own website, I can do that. Really, the totality of the internet becomes the opportunity. If one particular venue isn’t right for your as a developer or publisher, well, there are so many other ways."
How indie devs can form their own worker cooperative – Emma Kidwell
Game developers from several studios spoke about the benefits (and drawbacks) of worker cooperatives, what they are, and how fellow developers can confidentially form their own:
"There’s not someone way over your head that’s sucking up the surplus value of your labor after you get paid," said Scott Benson, developer on Night in the Woods and co-owner of the worker co-op The Glory Society. "In worker cooperatives, everyone is sharing in that and discussing how that’s distributed.”
Mapping out the subtle social cues throughout Hitman's level design – Alissa McAloon
The hide-in-plain-sight gameplay of the Hitman series means its level designers are faced with a unique challenge whenever creating one of the game’s sprawling sandboxes: How do you design believable everyday life?:
"Apart from mocking everything up one of the most important things that we do in a game like Hitman is making life, making drama situations as we call them," says IO Interactive’s Mette Podenphant Andersen. "We borrow a little bit from the world of theater."
Sweeney commits to human moderators & quality filters for Epic's Games Store – Alex Wawro
Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney is frank about the state of the digital marketplace and his vision for the Epic Games Store in this Gamasutra interview:
"We have a storefront now too, big whoop — our storefront isn't going to be the be-all or end-all either."
Knocking down design pillars was key to making Destiny 2's Gambit mode really shine – Alissa McAloon
Bungie outlined eight distinct design pillars when it set out to create what would become Destiny 2’s player-versus-everything-versus-player mode Gambit, but the only reason the mode became what it is today is because the dev team knew that breaking rules can sometimes be as important as making them:
Says Bungie's Peter Sarrett: "Ironically, we succeeded by failing. We didn’t find a way to make the players care about the other team without direct player interaction, and it turns out that was the secret sauce that really makes Gambit stand out."
More here! Come from South African Online Casinos
Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa