Game Dev Quick Links – July 2017 (I’m reading lots of game dev stuff so you don’t have too!)

Each month I put together a few links that get added to the Bristol Games Hub newsletter. As an active games developer, I do read a fair amount around game dev, bizdev and the art and culture of games development. We also get posted links in the hub discussion space and sometimes people send me links. I thought that going forward I’d also try to share the link here on my blog with a few more notes re the context as to why I think they are important.

Here goes…

Looking a SteamSpy data to try and predict success on Steam – This was a great experiment, to see if that data on SteamSpy could be used to predict if a game was going to be a success.  Sadly it didn’t yield much,  but worth a read.

Video games & the social contract (video):

The guy who does this is more about boardgames than digital games. However his experience trying to play an online PvP title shows some lessons for all devs trying to create a space people want to play in. Worth a watch.

Superhero games show how the industry has changed – Once such titles were huge sellers even if the game was not that great. We have now had some amazing hero titles (Batman’s Arkham series spring to mind) yet the changes in the business models the industry uses, the proliferation of social and mobile has mirrored wider changes in the industry.

E3 2017 press conferences were a contrast between heart and cash – File this in the ongoing series of art vs income. The creative tension here is something I think that does create great games, as well as sink amazing, but less popular ideas. (Which is something crowdfunding then picked up and ran with! As in it might not be valuable enough for a AAA budget, but there are enough fans to back less popular ideas/genres.)

Games as biography – I’d like to write some more that follows on from this. I think it’s amazing that games are reflecting not just our fantasies, but our dreams, losses, experiences, hopes and fears too. That was lies art. (I picked up Cibele from reading this, it’s in my Steam queue now…)

Is high-end VR over? I hope not. VR has not turned into what some had predicted, but it’s a powerful medium and has lots and lots of uses, so I expect it to grow nonetheless.

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