The unusual story behind Space Harrier's vibrant color palette Space Harrier designer Yu Suzuki recalls the story of the intentionally-triggered bug that ultimately gave birth to the colorful skies in the 1985 fantasy arcade game.

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  Chat with the developers of The Blackout Club at 3PM ET The makers of The Blackout Club will be answering your questions starting at 3PM ET.

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  Alt.Ctrl.GDC Inspirations: First-ever Alt.Ctrl.GDC award winner Fear Sphere! Submissions for the popular Alt.Ctrl.GDC showcase at GDC 2019 close a week from next Friday, so now's the time to submit your weird, offbeat controller prototypes! To inspire you, here we profile

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  Koch Media acquisition driving record sales at THQ Nordic The company attributed a sizable upswing in net sales to the recent acquisitions of Koch Media and Deep Silver, along with a positive showing from its own game roster. 

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  Jam City signs multi-year game dev partnership with Disney The deal means Jam City now has the rights to create mobile games based on characters and stories from both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. 

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  Blog: Creating audio for VR platforms Game composer Winifred Phillips looks at developments with VR platforms and their SDKs, this time honing in on audio issues.

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  THQ Nordic acquires Coffee Stain and Bugbear Entertainment THQ Nordic has agreed to acquire Coffee Stain Studios and Bugbear Entertainment in two separate deals. 

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  Q&A: Designing the beautifully surreal time puzzles of The Gardens Between Gamasutra spoke with Simon Joslin and Matt Clark about designing the surreal time-manipulation puzzles of The Gardens Between.

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  Video: The art of developing audio soundscapes In this GDC 2018 session, Guerrilla Games' Anton Woldhek presents some practical tips from his years of experience in game development on the art of developing audio soundscapes for video games.

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  Owlchemy Lab devs include a variety of representation in avatar customization Owlchemy Labs is committed to ensuring that Vacation Simulator is equipped with a system that allows for players to create authentic versions of themselves using the game's avatar customizer. 

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  Get a job: Playful Corp is looking for a UI Designer As a UI Designer, you will work closely with the Directors to conceptualize, mock-up, and execute the visual interface designs to support Playful Corp's games.

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  Balancing challenge and collaboration in Final Fantasy XIV's raid battles Combat Designer Yoshito Nabeshima explores the process of designing (and later overhauling) a Final Fantasy XIV raid boss.

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  Senators ask FTC to investigate malicious ads in apps geared for kids Several Senators have urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate the practice of monetizing kids' mobile games and apps.

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1 Don't Miss: Exploring color theory and production design in the classic Spyro the Dragon John Fiorito and Craig Stitt share some of the ways they used color to focus player emotion and create a vibrant 3D world during the PS1 era for original Spyro the Dragon.

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  God of War, Red Dead Redemption 2 lead nominees for The Game Awards The Game Awards has listed the games nominated for honors in the event's coming 2018 award show, with both God of War and Red Dead Redemption leading the pack with a total of 8 nominations each.

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  Rob Dyer hired as COO of Capcom USA Dyer's resume includes leadership positions at companies like Sony Computer Entertainment America, Zynga, Eidos Interactive, and more spread across the last 25 years.

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  Apply the science of desirability to game design at GDC 2019 To help you better understand desire and how it relates to your work, Harvard Desirability Lab director Dr. Beth Altringer will present an intriguing talk on the science of desirability at GDC 2019!

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  Blog: How I managed to ship 6000 copies and stay in business One year ago I was struggling to stay in business after failing to sell 700 copies of my game. Now, I'm working on my next project after releasing a major update to the original. Here's what happened.

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2 Hacker gets $20K from Valve for unearthing bug that generates free Steam keys Valve has paid a $20,000 'bug bounty' to security researcher Artem Moskowsky after he discovered a bug that would've let people generate Steam game codes for free.

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  Nintendo wins out in legal battle against ROM sites Nintendo's legal battle against the owners of ROM websites LoveROMS and LoveRetro is coming to an end, and the Japanese console maker has come out on top.

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  Blog: Adaptive music with Elias - Part 1 Adaptive music has come a long way in the past several years with custom middleware solutions like Elias Studio. This article provides a step by step guide to re-creating an adaptive project in Elias.

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  Designing for survival in Steam Early Access hit Green Hell Gamasutra spoke with Michal Stawicki, lead game designer and Krzysztof Kwiatek, art director, to learn about surviving in the Amazonian wilderness in Green Hell.

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  Video: Designing the strategic card game Race for the Galaxy In this GDC 2018 talk, game designer Tom Lehmann discusses the design behind his acclaimed card game Race for the Galaxy. 

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1 The audio design behind the original Xbox startup sound Sound designer and composer Brian Schmidt discusses the audio design challenges behind the original Xbox startup sound.

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2 Xbox chief Phil Spencer taking on a 'bigger role' in fixing the Microsoft Store Xbox chief Phil Spencer discussed how he would like to fix the Microsoft Store to make game content more discoverable and easy to find.

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