How Destiny 2's clan system is shaped by Super Bowl rings Game designer and Destiny 2 social lead M.E. Chung explains to the Financial Post how Bungie studies sports and team culture for inspiration in designing Destiny's new community & clan systems.

---

  Kingsway's developer explains how to make the most out of your user interface We talked to the designer of the role-playing 'operating system' Kingsway about indie life and developing a UI-focused game.

---

  Video: Avoiding the scourge of 'evil data' in playtesting At GDC 2017, indie dev Adriaan de Jongh shares all the "evil data" he gathered in 6 years of playtesting 8 games and offers practical advice for playtesting your game effectively.

---

  Analyst: Dedicated mobile game players in Japan, South Korea now play 3+ hours/day The most dedicated mobile users are spending more time than ever playing games on their smartphones according to a recent report from the analyst firm App Annie.

---

  Get a job: Sony PlayStation is hiring a Sr. Animation Programmer Sony PlayStation is looking for an animation programmer to help develop next-generation animation systems for an in-progress title at its Bend, Oregon Studio.

---

5 Don't Miss: A look back at the development of Ori and the Blind Forest The CEO of Moon Studios pours his heart out in a lengthy postmortem of what went right -- and wrong -- during the 4-year development of Super Metroid-inspired Ori & The Blind Forest.

---

  Gigantic devs share tips for surviving game development's ups and downs “It's hard enough to make a new IP from scratch, but throw in the fact that we were a new company, an independent company, without a huge financial backing ever just makes everything challenging.”

---

  Chat with the developer of RPG 'operating system' Kingsway at 3PM EDT We're streaming the RPG "operating system" Kingsway today at 3PM EDT and talking with developer Andrew Morrish.

---

1 The absurdity and optimism of Everything Is Going To Be OK Nathalie Lawhead's indie title Everything is going to be OK explores dark, horrible life events through a lens of relentless optimism and humor, facing down soul-crushing horror with absurd cheer.

---

  Blog: Creating my very own virtual reality short, Witness This post describes key aspects of the design process that went into making Witness, a virtual reality short I made in partnership with Warsaw Rising museum.

---

1 AR game restrictions ruled unconstitutional by district judge A Wisconsin ordinance decreeing that augmented reality developers must get special permits if their apps encourage play in county parks has been ruled unconstitutional by a district judge.

---

1 Blog: The importance of mechanical foreshadowing We're used to the concept of foreshadowing in narrative media, but as a number of existing games already show, the same principles can be applied to game mechanics.

---

  Blizzard's senior audio director Russell Brower departs studio After joining the World of Warcraft creator over a decade ago, Brower has worked on almost every single Blizzard release since The Burning Crusade expansion, including recent hits like Hearthstone and Diablo III.

---

7 Understanding the battle between stores, devs, customers, and publishers All of the major game stores (Steam, GOG, Origin, Uplay, itch, etc) serve different groups at the same time, many of which have competing interests. Here's how that balances out.

---

1 Gigantic dev makes a case for why games should look like candy "Candy is completely engineered to entice you to pick it up," says Gigantic lead concept artist Vinod Rams in a recent livestreamed chat about the game's design, development, and alluring art style.

---

  Churning out Tomb Raider games in the '90s 'just about killed us', says former dev "We worked long, long hours," Core Studios cofounder and former game dev Jeremy Heath-Smith tells Polygon in a new interview. "But we also earned an awful lot of money."

---

1 Microsoft's earnings continue to rise, despite lagging Xbox hardware sales Microsoft's latest earnings report suggests its Xbox software and services businesses appear to be on an upswing even as revenue from sales of Xbox consoles slips ahead of the Xbox One X debut.

---

  Video: Shigeru Miyamoto's classic 1999 GDC keynote In this classic video, restored from the GDC archives, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto speaks to his fellow game makers as part of his keynote address at the 1999 Game Developers Conference.

---

  Gamasutra plays the Destiny 2 beta We checked out the Destiny 2 closed beta...and wiped. To the same boss. Over, and over, and over, again.

---

  Get a job: Tilting Point is hiring a Sr. Game Designer Tilting Point is looking for an experienced Game Designer with a deep understanding of free-to-play design to join its team in New York.

---

4 Don't Miss: Making a multi-character RPG narrative in Supergiant's Pyre "We got excited by the idea of the player getting close to an interesting cast of characters over the course of a grand journey, and having some impact over what happened to them," says Supergiant's Greg Kasavin.

---

  Antihero, Wandersong among 2017 PAX 10 indie showcase picks The organizers behind the Penny Arcade Expo’s Seattle chapter have named the colorful cast of indie games set to be featured in this year’s PAX 10 showcase.

---

  U.S. lifts laptop and game console ban for international flights After a four month ban, game developers and other professionals traveling to the US from a number of Middle-Eastern countries will once again have access to their electronics during international flights.

---

16 Blog: Protect your Steam Keys (and your brand) This is the story of how shortly after releasing a tiny, five dollar indie game, I was inundated by every scam imaginable to steal my delicious Steam keys.

---

  VRDC Speaker Q&A: Jennifer Hazel on utilizing VR during exposure therapy Jennifer Hazel founded the CheckPoint Organization and will be at VRDC 2017. Here, Hazel discusses what makes VR effective for phobia treatment.

---

[Read More]