Game Development reports and market data
Documents
Best of British Game Hack 2
The Best of British (BOB) game hack serves as a collaborative, high-intensity development event designed to foster creativity and rapid prototyping within the UK game industry.
- The Best of British (BOB) game hack is a 48-hour development event held at Mine Candy headquarters where professional developers create and ship functional mobile games for iOS and Android.
- Participants utilize a standardized, pre-built framework to integrate multiple mini-games into a single, cohesive, and shippable software product.
- The event mandates a design philosophy inspired by the WarioWare series, requiring mini-games to last exactly seven seconds each.
Will Luton talks about the second Best of Brtiish game hack
The Best of British (BoB) game hack serves as a collaborative industry event designed to foster creative competition among mobile game developers.
- The Best of British (BoB) game hack is a collaborative industry event where mobile development teams compete to build rapid-fire, seven-second games.
- Games are linked sequentially in a WarioWare-style format, with gameplay speed increasing progressively as the player advances through the segments.
- Participating companies contribute teams of two to develop these high-intensity, condensed game mechanics within a constrained timeframe.
Spilt Milk's Andrew Smith on Best of British Hack
The Best of British game hack serves as a collaborative platform for professional developers to rapidly prototype and release mobile titles within a compressed 48-hour timeframe.
- The 'Best of British' hackathon challenges professional developers to conceptualize, build, and ship mobile games for iOS and Android within a strict 48-hour timeframe.
- The event utilizes a micro-game structure where individual gameplay segments last approximately 17 seconds, optimized for rapid mobile engagement.
- Participants are encouraged to step outside their traditional professional roles, such as developers taking on artistic responsibilities, to broaden their skill sets.
Horror Protagonists - How Ordinary Characters Make Scarier Games - Extra Credits
Effective horror design relies on a triad of the monster, the setting, and the protagonist.
- The protagonist is the most critical element of horror design, as the effectiveness of fear is determined by the relationship between the character’s capabilities and the threats they face.
- Horror protagonists must be ordinary, relatable individuals rather than trained combatants to ensure the audience can project themselves into the narrative and experience disempowerment.
- True horror requires the protagonist to be fundamentally outmatched; if a character is too powerful, the genre shifts from horror to action.
Game Developer Index: Sweden 2012
The Swedish game development industry demonstrated exceptional growth and profitability in 2012, establishing itself as a significant player in the global market.
- In 2012, the Swedish video game industry experienced rapid growth, with total turnover rising 60% to 414 million euros and profits surging 163% to 38 million euros.
- The industry workforce expanded by 30% to 1,967 full-time professionals, supported by the launch of 37 new companies.
- Market success was driven by global hits like Minecraft and Candy Crush Saga, alongside established AAA output from studios such as DICE and Starbreeze.
Demo Daze - Why Don't Creators Make Game Demos Anymore? - Extra Credits
The decline of game demos is primarily driven by unfavorable economic outcomes for developers, rooted in shifting consumer purchasing habits.
- Industry data indicates that releasing a game demo frequently results in decreased total sales, as demos often satisfy player curiosity enough to discourage a full-price purchase.
- Developing a demo is a poor business investment for most studios because it requires significant time, money, and certification resources that could otherwise be used to improve the core game.
- An analysis of nine potential outcomes for demo releases shows that only two scenarios result in a net positive for developers, highlighting the high risk of negative financial impact.
Aesthetics of Play - Redefining Genres in Gaming - Extra Credits
The current method of categorizing video games by mechanics—such as camera perspective or input type—is fundamentally flawed and limits design innovation.
- The industry's current practice of categorizing games by mechanics, such as camera perspective or input type, is fundamentally flawed and stifles design innovation.
- Designers should adopt the Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics (MDA) framework, which prioritizes the psychological reasons for play over the underlying rules and systems.
- Player engagement is driven by nine primary aesthetics: sense pleasure, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, competition, discovery, expression, and abnegation.
Beyond Fun - Why Games Need to Be More than Fun - Extra Credits
The gaming industry is currently constrained by an over-reliance on the concept of fun as the primary metric for success and design.
- The gaming industry’s over-reliance on 'fun' as the primary design metric restricts creative potential and prevents the medium from achieving the narrative maturity found in literature and cinema.
- Prioritizing 'engagement' over 'fun' allows developers to explore a broader spectrum of human experiences, including fear, sadness, and intellectual curiosity, without the pressure to rationalize every design choice as amusement.
- Forcing 'fun' into titles intended to be tragic or challenging often results in diluted design and incoherent critical discourse.
Starting Off Right - How the First Five Minutes Draw Players In - Extra Credits
The first five minutes of a game serve as a critical threshold that determines player retention, reviewer perception, and overall engagement.
- The first five minutes of a game act as a critical threshold that dictates player retention, reviewer perception, and long-term engagement.
- Designers should distill the core gameplay loop into a high-intensity, approachable sequence rather than front-loading complex tutorials that stifle pacing.
- Using the 'in medias res' technique allows developers to bypass slow exposition by dropping players directly into high-stakes action or powerful character scenarios.
Cultural Test for British Video Games: Consultation
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) published a consultation paper in October 2012 on a proposed cultural test to identify culturally British video games eligible for a new corporation tax relief from April 2013, subject to European Commission State Aid approval.
- The proposed test awards a maximum of 30 points, and a game qualifies with 16 or more points. Cultural content can yield 16 of those points on its own.
- Section A requires a minimum of 6 points from the cultural content criteria. The paper proposes this minimum as a requirement.
- Cultural practitioners are scored on UK or EEA nationals or residents across key roles (including manager, lead programmer, lead artist, scriptwriter and lead designer) and crew, each worth one point.
On Game Schools - How to Find a Good Degree - Extra Credits
The pursuit of a formal education in game design requires careful scrutiny, as the industry is currently bifurcated between legitimate, high-quality institutions and predatory, for-profit entities.
- Prioritize traditional, accredited universities offering foundational degrees in computer science, mathematics, or the arts to ensure versatile, transferable career skills.
- Avoid predatory, for-profit institutions that use commission-based recruiters, misleading marketing, and accelerated two-year programs to secure tuition loans without providing professional value.
- Evaluate potential programs by verifying regional or national accreditation, student hiring ratios, and the professional credentials of the faculty.
Pocket Gamer's Mobile Mixer 2012 - Ville Tuominen from Symbio
The development landscape for Windows Phone in 2012 presents a strategic opportunity for mobile developers despite the platform’s smaller market share compared to industry leaders.
- Microsoft’s massive annual R&D investment, which exceeds that of major competitors, signals a long-term commitment to the Windows Phone ecosystem.
- Windows Phone is experiencing rapid growth, with adoption curves currently outpacing those of the Android market as of 2012.
- Microsoft provides robust, mature tooling and high-quality documentation that enables rapid application development and high levels of abstraction.
Writers
Games and companies
Games