Blog: A postmortem of my game jam entry Pwny UP This is a small set of thoughts and score reflection after being judged in a game jam.

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  Unity launches graduate research program to fuel innovation in games Engine maker Unity has issued a call for applications for its first ever graduate research fellowship program.

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  Super Mario Odyssey wins big at Game Critics Awards The winners of this year's Game Critics Awards, which aim to shine a spotlight on the best and brightest games at E3, have been announced.

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  Nintendo Switch sales surpass 1M in Japan That means the hybrid console is doing better than the Wii U, which saw sales in the region reach 920,000 in just under four months.

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  Blog: A Rise & Shine audio postmortem A retrospective of the audio work by Damian Sanchez on Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team's game.

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  Devs share tips on using Discord to build a pre-release community Boss Key Productions and Pocketwatch Games have both used to Discord to build vibrant pre-release communities. They share tips and advice on how they get the most out of the chat service.

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  How Prey uses a foliage shader to make its aliens look alien "All the effects are meant to support the global Typhon design as something, to quote Raphael [Colantonio], 'that does weird shit,'" Prey lead visual designer Emmanuel Petit tells RPS in a new chat.

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2 Unity showcases new camera and Timeline tech ahead of 2017.1 release Unity opened its Unity Europe event today with a lengthy keynote that showcased some of the new features coming to the game engine, including a new "smart camera system" called Cinemachine.

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  Heads up, devs: Eleven Ventures is a new game-focused investment firm This week marks the public debut of Palo Alto, CA-based Eleven Ventures, a new venture capital firm that aims to partner with startups in "high-growth sectors" like VR/AR, eSports, and video games.

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  Get some great tips to improve your level design skills Level design can be a tricky task, so we tried to improve our skills while getting great advice from some top-notch game developers from across the globe.

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  Video: Crafting epic, interactive music for Final Fantasy XV At GDC 2017 Square Enix audio programmer Sho Iwamoto takes the stage stage to explain how the Final Fantasy XV team designed a custom system to allow for interactive music that still sounds epic.

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  Get a job: Hidden Monster Games seeks a Sr. JavaScript Game Developer Hidden Monster Games is on the lookout for a Sr. JavaScript Game Developer to join its studio in the Netherlands.

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  Twitch Affiliates will soon reap the rewards of paid subscription tiers Twitch is beefing up the benefits it offers to streamers that partake in its Twitch Affiliates program and making the streaming platform more profitable for those that qualify in the process.

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5 Blog: Should your engineering lead be fired? Here is a checklist that represents the minimum bar of what else you should expect from your engineering lead.

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1 Arkane Studios president Raphael Colantonio stepping down After 18 years with the studio he helped found, Raphael Colantonio is departing Arkane to spend time with his family.

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30 Don't Miss: Learning to love handicaps in competitive games Rubberbanding and randomness can level competitive games' playing field, but they also cause problems. In this timeless 2013 feature, designer Keith Burgun examines handicaps as a design alternative.

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8 Blog: The many questions surrounding Genital Jousting Genital Jousting is a popular and somewhat shocking game about penises penetrating each other. The devs weigh in on why they are making it and their anxieties about possibly making a bad sex game

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  AbleGamers's Player Panels aim to give game devs insight on accessibility The charity organization has created a new program that seeks to put game developers, publishers, and researchers directly in contact with disabled players and accessibility experts.

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  Get expert guidance on building for VR and AR at VRDC Fall 2017! VRDC organizers want you to know about two great sessions at VRDC Fall 2017, one from VRTK dev Harvey Ball about building better VR games in Unity and the other about designing great AR experiences.

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  Blog: Why you should build custom hardware for your mobile game What we learnt by building custom hardware for our game Swing King and the Temple of Bling, and what other mobile developers could pick up from it.

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  Chat about good level design with the pros at 1PM EDT We're experimenting with some level design in the SnapMap tool and talking about best practices for the field at 1PM EDT on Twitch.

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  Guillemot family raise Ubisoft stake to fend off Vivendi Ubisoft founders the Guillemot family have raised their stake in the company in an effort to fend off a potential Vivendi takeover. 

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8 Blog: Defaulting to zero when coding In this blog post I argue for using 0 as the default and "nil" value in multiple parts of the code.

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2 Report: Augmented reality startup CastAR has closed its doors Augmented reality startup CastAR, which was founded by former Valve employees Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson, has shut down. 

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  Playdead co-founder Dino Patti helps form new studio, Jumpship Playdead co-founder Dino Patti, who left the Limbo developer last year after a purported conflict with business partner Arnt Jensen, has established a new indie studio called Jumpship.

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