Leaderboards: The original and best social feature A look at why leaderboards are so commonly implemented, what they gain you as a developer, and how players react to them.

---

  Sony swings to profits, thanks to strong PS4 performance Sony saw a notable rise in profits during the first quarter of the current fiscal year, as the company's PlayStation business swung back from losses to income.

---

  Gamasutra Explains: The YouTuber Phenomenon What do YouTubers do? Who are they? Why does it matter to you? Gamasutra looked into the phenomenon and created a handy guide so you can get up-to-speed on it.

---

  Glu revenues up, and thanks to Kardashian, it's raising guidance Still, the company makes a loss for the quarter -- though it expects "record" performance for next quarter. It's also picked up Racing Rivals dev Cie Games.

---

1 Puzzle & Dragons' GungHo has great first half: $523 million in profit The top-ranked Japanese smartphone publisher reveals strong numbers for the first half of 2014, though its second quarter saw a slight year-on-year dip in profit.

---

  Video: Using the Fox Engine to build Ground Zeroes Hideo Kojima and the Kojima Productions staff demonstrate and explain the workflow and development process of Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes on the Fox Engine at GDC 2013.

---

2 Crytek's Austin studio is no longer making games The German company withdraws from U.S. game development as it moves Hunt development to Crytek Frankfurt and lays off developers -- but not CryEngine support staff -- at Crytek Austin.

---

1 Blog: Who are my game dev heroes? "When I think of a game dev hero, I think of a person who I feel has impacted me on a personal level. Someone I aspire to be like or whose work greatly influences my own."

---

  Get a job: Turtle Rock is looking to hire a Technical Artist The developer of Evolve seeks to hire a technical artist to assist with asset production and optimization for PC and contemporary console hardware in their Lake Forest, CA studio.

---

  Crytek sells Homefront IP to Koch Media, development to continue Under the terms of the deal, Homefront: The Revolution development will be picked up by Koch Media's newly-formed Deep Silver Dambuster Studios.

---

59 Don't Miss: Level design in The Legend of Zelda Can the original Zelda game still have things to teach designers? Mike Stout (Skylanders) dives back into the 1986 classic to see how Miyamoto handled pathing, challenge ramping, and more.

---

  Xbox One gets its first free-to-play MMO Perfect World is planning to launch Cryptic Studios' F2P Neverwinter PC MMORPG on Xbox One later this year in China, then roll it out to consoles in North America and Europe in 2015.

---

6 Blog: Making a shoestring-budget game for the Xbox One "I’ve been indie for almost nine years now and am still in the red, so I’ve gotten to a point where I’m loathe to spend another penny. Add to that I really had no idea how a game on the Xbox One would sell."

---

  Microsoft lays out the details of Xbox One's Chinese debut The company plans to launch Xbox One in China with a select slate of launch titles and the promise of more to come from Chinese developers, including Tencent and NetEase.

---

3 Game about HIV shows how playing and learning go hand-in-hand A new study, based around an iPad game that teaches about the risks of HIV, has found that video games can be used in "new and exciting ways" to teach young kids real-world knowledge.

---

4 Japan's console game market is shrinking fast - report According to a new report from the Japanese Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association, Japan's console game market shrunk by a fair margin during 2013, while the country's mobile games market expanded.

---

5 A look at four studies on game preferences by gender "There are motivational differences in gamers’ preferences for genres... This comes from common perceptions among gamers as well as good number of studies."

---

  Juicebox Games making 'mid-core' mobile games with $2.5M investment A free-to-play mobile studio headed up by ex-Zynga staffers today revealed that it raised $2.54 million in funding to create "mid-core" games aimed at men aged 18-35.

---

10 Sony doesn't think EA Access subscription service is good value Sony has explained why the upcoming EA Access subscription service from Electronic Arts is not coming to PlayStation platforms, stating that the scheme is not good value for money.

---

  Using Scrum in indie game development "At the end of the day, the team is what remains in a company, and it grows up with its experiences. In every case the team should learn a lot, to take the maximum advantage independently from results."

---

18 Blog: Why I'm no longer participating in game jams "I started feeling like game jams have become a forced frame for creativity, a required activity for those interested in making games. It's like we collectively started saying 'You wanna make games? Do jams.'"

---

3 Touch Love: Ledoliel and the world of Devine Lu Linvega Leigh Alexander spends time with Ledoliel, an often-intimate, often-violent alien negotiation app -- and looks into the distinctive world of its multidisciplinary creator, Devine Lu Linvega.

---

14 More losses for Nintendo, despite Mario Kart 8 success Nintendo continued to see decreased profits and notable losses during the last three months, despite the launches of big name titles like Mario Kart 8 and Tomodachi Life.

---

5 Why Animal Crossing and Nintendo need diversity "We have a broad age range, a broad range of experiences. It helps different topics get brought up that might not have been on a team that isn’t as diverse." - Aya Kyogoku, Animal Crossing co-director

---

3 20 million viewers stream Dota 2 championships While it's not as popular as League of Legends with audiences, millions still flock to see how the players of Valve's MOBA game stack up.

---

[Read More]