Blog: The design process of going from prototype to game How do you take a game that "played super-nice already in its prototype form" to execution? This post outlines one developer's journey there.

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  Big Viking buys YoVille back from Zynga in a bid to keep it alive By reassuming control of a game they sold to Zynga in the face of its impending demise, Big Viking seems to be mirroring RockYou's "rerun" strategy of rescuing games that other publishers don't want.

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1 Kickstarter challenges: A candid look at a struggling campaign A rocky launch, with a good chance it might not hit the goal. What went wrong? Tristan Moore offers a candid, thoughtful postmortem of a Kickstarter in progress.

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9 Using Scrum in real-world game production Veteran triple-A producer Harvard Bonin (God of War: Ascension) shares insights into scrum methodologies from the real world: Their advantages and their drawbacks.

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  GDC Europe welcomes new board members from Rovio, DeNA and more GDC Europe organizers add 3 experienced game developers to the event's advisory board, where they will help program lectures, panels and sessions taking place at August's conference in Germany.

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2 Epic releases Unreal Engine 4.1, including PlayStation 4, Xbox One support Subscribers can now download the new version from GitHub, including both the stable build and "bleeding edge," untested new code.

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4 A veteran producer's take on how to write a game concept doc "There are a lot of resources online that talk about game concepts and game design documents. So instead of retreading used ground, I wrote a game concept for us to examine together."

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5 Blog: Forcing hard currency use in F2P games "Depending on the game, a very closely calculated time in the gameplay comes, when the give-aways stop. No more free Diamonds for you, sir!"

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5 Investors throw $3 million at the Virtuix Omni treadmill The Virtuix Omni treadmill went up for pre-order recently, due for release later this year. Today the company announced that it has received $3 million in a round of investment.

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8 Blog: Gamification design vs. game design Is there no middle ground? "Game design starts from the desire to make something that people will enjoy. In gamification design, you are making something that will achieve a particular goal."

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  Close encounters with console indie execs, part 2: ID@Xbox's Chris Charla What are the tastes, backgrounds and experience of some of the biggest decision-makers at major console companies? Developer and senior contributor Brandon Sheffield talks to ID@Xbox's Chris Charla.

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  In second quarter, Apple's iPhone sales rise as iPad sales fall More phones sold is good news for game developers, but tablet sales falling may be bad news for Apple -- even if profits are jumping.

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  Facebook game revenue growth falters as users move to mobile The growth of Facebook game payment revenue is stalling as users abandon the desktop -- where all game payment revenue is currently generated -- in favor of accessing the service via mobile devices.

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2 Zynga founder Mark Pincus steps down as company poaches Xbox Live point-man Pincus stepped aside to let Microsoft exec take the CEO role; now he moves away from the day-to-day entirely as Mattrick brings in more Xbox talent.

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  That Dragon, Cancer developer shares grace through game design Josh Larson exhorted fellow developers to think of games as a form of communication between themselves and their players in a talk given today at the 12th annual Games for Change festival.

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1 See Jane study exobiology: A new approach to role models in games Rob Jagnow writes on how scientist Jane Van Susteren became a character in Extrasolar: "her transition from biology consultant to in-game character wasn't the intent from the start."

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8 Spoiler: Steam games with high Metacritic scores tend to sell well According to data gathered as part of Ars Technica's ongoing Steam Gauge project, games with extremely high Metacritic scores tend to see significantly higher sales on Steam than those with extremely low scores.

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2 Automatic avoidance for player characters on an indie budget Mike Bithell (Thomas Was Alone) describes how he's emulated the smart input optimization you see in triple-A games in his upcoming Volume -- in a quick and simple way.

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  Facebook's acquisition of Oculus VR gets FTC approval The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has granted antitrust approval to Facebook's proposed acquisition of Oculus VR, allowing the deal to move forward as planned.

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3 Hack-Man: An interview with Watch Dogs' creative director Creative director Jonathan Morin speaks about decisions made during the development of the hotly anticipated Watch Dogs, and his expectations for the next generation of games.

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22 Blog: Are innovative games too risky for Kickstarter? "Hex Heroes didn't take off on Kickstarter as we anticipated. This campaign was in the works for over four months. Why wasn't Hex Heroes funded in its first three weeks?"

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2 Cloud Chamber: The TV show you play on Steam How the heck do you describe Cloud Chamber? Imagine following along with your favorite TV series, and after each episode you're able to jump online, dig deeper into what you watched, and discuss the twists and turns with fellow viewers.

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2 Have you played the Train Jam games? In the days leading up to the Game Developers Conference this year, dozens of indie developers all boarded a train from Chicago, and sat together for 56 hours to create games.

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  Ubisoft aims to better support Latin America with local payment options Ubisoft is looking to more rapidly expand the presence of its video game catalogue in Latin America, Portugal, Spain and Turkey, with a new partnership that will introduce more local payment methods in its games.

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5 Blog: A look at my Google Play and iOS sales, early 2014 edition "The sales data shows that my plan for making lots of little games quickly for multiple platforms should work as long as I keep up a steady stream of quality releases."

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