Keyword expands art service line-up with $6M Strongbox purchase Game service provider Keywords has been splashing the cash again, this time picking up art asset specialist Strongbox for $6 million. 

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2 Why creating an internal wiki could do more harm than good "I guess when the company gets bigger I'll have to establish wikis and make those kind of things. But you know it's very uninspiring to actually go and read a wiki."

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Blog: How we designed a third-person VR experience The challenges of developing our first VR game. Theseus is a third person experience, so how did we approach cameras and UI?

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  Aaero designers agonized over being 'too Rez-like' The makers of the indie rhythm action game Aaero initially resisted making a necessary change to how shooting worked in their game because they didn't want to be accused of being "too 'Rez-like.'"

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  Video Game Deep Cuts: Gnog Bunnies Love Snipperclips This week's best longread/standout articles & videos about games include Gnog's quirky gameplay, Second Life bunny tragedy, and Snipperclips' surprising third-party story, among others.

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  There's now 45 million people gabbing about games on Discord The chat app company is reporting a total of 45 million users are now present on its platform, with an average of 8.9 million people logging in each day.

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  How Rain Games built on Teslagrad's fiction to make World to the West Catch up on our conversation with the lead designer of Teslagrad and World to the West about building on indie success.

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  Get a job: Be a UI Artist at Telltale Games Minecraft: Story Mode dev Telltale Games in San Rafael, CA seeks a UI artist to design, create and implement user interfaces across multiple platforms and languages.

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  Video: We failed at publishing competitive games so you don't have to At the GDC 2017 eSports Day Iron Galaxy chief Dave Lang showcases how the company tried (and mostly failed) to form a "competitive games" publishing label, sharing lessons learned along the way.

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2 Why Chinese industrial firms are snapping up game studios: 'You can buy profit' Curious devs may appreciate a recent Bloomberg feature digging into why, exactly, Chinese industrial firms (specializing in everything from mining to chickens) are buying Western game companies.

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8 Don't Miss: A game design deep dive into Rocket League's rocket jumps Psyonix founder Dave Hagewood explains how Rocket League's "rocket boost" mechanic started as a simple nitro button and wound up becoming a critical part of the game's acrobatic high-level play.

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  A report from GaymerX Australia A report from GaymerX Australia. Liam Esler and Joshua Meadows brought the GX franchise to Australia just two years ago, but sadly 2017’s was (at least for now) the last one.

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1 How Kona's devs used the Canada Media Fund, and why they won't use it again What's it like to fund indie game development in Canada? For its game Kona, Parabole made use of one option Canadian game developers have at their disposal: the Canada Media Fund.

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  Chat with World to the West's lead designer today at 3PM EDT We're streaming World to the West and chatting with the game's lead designer today at 3PM EDT.

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  SteamVR goes social with Second Life style update Valve's SteamVR virtual reality platform is being updated with a "home" social experience that'll let users interact in an online virtual world á la Second Life. 

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  How World of Warcraft inspired Destiny's raids "The feelings that matter from cooperative gameplay are those around other people making things easier. It's about being able to see the impact everyone has on the success and failure of the group."

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Blog: What can game devs learn from Dungeons & Dragons? I always wanted to play D&D but never got the chance. Now that I finally started watching D&D videos and running my own campaign as a DM, I'm discovering valuable lessons about designing video games.

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  Conservative party's immigration policy could hurt UK game devs, warns UKIE "As a fundamentally global industry, games businesses will always need to source and compete globally for this top talent."

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1 How Scanner Sombre immerses players in a pitch-black cave: sound and lasers Inspired in part by a Radiohead video, Scanner Sombre has players explore a cave using a LIDAR sensor . "My aim was to put the player in an environment that perhaps they'd never seen before.”

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15 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe devs patch out potentially obscene taunt This is a good reminder that gestures and messages which appear in your game can be interpreted differently in different parts of the world -- sometimes with offensive results.

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  Inside cleans up at the 2017 Nordic Game Awards The long-running Nordic Game Awards took place this week in Sweden, and Playdead stood out among the nominees by taking home Game of the Year and a few other awards for its 2016 game Inside.

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  Bungie's Destiny 2 will be the first non-Blizzard game sold on Battle.net Destiny developer Bungie today confirmed the sequel is expanding beyond consoles to launch on PC -- but not on Steam. Instead, it will be first non-Blizzard game sold through Battle.net.

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1 How a single dev turned a side project into a successful sailing sim Richard Knol once wrote software for golf courses. Now he's a full-time indie with a game on Steam (Sailaway), and in a chat today with Gamasutra he opens up about how (and why) he made the switch.

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  Video: How Ensemble Studios crafted the terrain of Halo Wars In this classic GDC 2009 talk, former Ensemble Studios developer Colt McAnlis provides a programming-driven look at how the studio built terrain for a console strategy game like Halo Wars.

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  Get a job: Playwing is hiring a Gameplay Programmer Playwing is looking for a talented Gameplay Programmer to implement gameplay features, fine-tune controls, and more as a member of its team in Montreal, Canada.

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