Frontier Developments lays off staff as it launches new franchise Elite: Dangerous developer Frontier Developments has laid off at least fifteen people as it refocuses development operations from its satellite studio in Halifax to its headquarters in Cambridge.

---

  We want your Global Game Jam blogs! This past weekend, the Global Game Jam took place across over 500 sites around the world. Were you a participant? Blog about your experience and your game!

---

2 Does your mobile game or website comply with this new California law? "The new law requires these services to provide a mechanism by which minors can remove any information or content that they have posted on that service themselves (with a few exceptions)."

---

  Get a job: Be a UX Designer for Treyarch/Activision Activision-owned Treyarch is looking to bring on a user experience designer who can help build compelling, accessible interfaces for its games alongside the team in its Santa Monica, CA studio.

---

  Video: How Amplitude Studios tackles community-driven development At GDC Next 2014, Amplitude Studios' Jeff Spock spoke about how the studio practices open development by involving its fans, as well as the positive and negative lessons learned.

---

1 Freelancers, contractors, and consultants don't work for free! A quick guide to working with outside collaborators: "Doing those 3 things above shows that you are a professional with a low budget, not a disillusioned idea person looking for free or cheap labor."

---

2 Don't Miss: David Cage's Indigo Prophecy postmortem In this classic 2006 Game Developer Magazine article, Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit creator David Cage writes candidly about what went right -- and wrong -- during the game's development.

---

  Patton's final battle: Publicity rights of deceased celebrities in games An in-depth blog post from attorney Dan Rogers covering how General George S. Patton's estate has sued a San Francisco-based game developer, and the grounds the legal challenge rests on.

---

  Learn how to make your game just completely hilarious at GDC 2015 "Watch William Pugh desperately attempt to deconstruct The Stanley Parable to find an excuse for its success. Be amazed as he lists pre-prepared top tips for making your game funny" at GDC 2015.

---

3 Postmortem: Space combat and trading sim Starpoint Gemini 2 Mario Mihokovic, CEO at Croatia's Little Green Men Games, writes about what went right, wrong, and key takeaways from the development of space sim Starpoint Gemini 2.

---

  GDC 2015 partners with iam8bit to showcase the 'Wheel of Whimsy' For the fifth year running, iam8bit will delight GDC attendees with an interactive exhibit on the show floor. This time it's the Wheel of Whimsy, which is tied to four fun live-action minigames.

---

  This Week in Video Game Criticism: From Formalism to Femmes Fatale This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Zach Alexander on topics ranging from the continued role of formalism in game studies to a Bayonetta style guide.

---

3 Blog: A design dilemma in prop behavior "This turned in to more of a design rant more than a 'lesson learned' post, but one of my motivations for writing this was to hear from other designers how you approach a design challenge like this."

---

14 Unity error fix: Timestamps and assets maps out of sync One developer encounters a devastating Unity error: "My work of about three weeks was gone. I couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t do anything at all." Here's how to work around it.

---

  Looking back, looking forward with devs of the Independent Games Festival Past Independent Games Festival finalists and winners revisit their time in the IGF, and reflect on where they are now.

---

18 'If you had to pick one game for aspiring devs to study, what would it be?' What game teaches you the lessons you need to know to make games? What game really matters -- and why does it matter? We asked our followers.

---

  DayZ hits 3 million sales after 13 months in Early Access The popular standalone version of DayZ has hit 3 million sales in just over a year -- as the team works to rebuild its engine from the ground up.

---

  Get a job: Be a Mobile Game Engineer for Sega Networks Sega Networks' Three Rings studio is looking for developers with strong backgrounds in mobile and server-side engineering to work on new mobile and live operations games in San Francisco, CA.

---

  Video: Building Glitch City, a Voltron-like indie dev collective At GDC Next 2014, indie developers Asher Vollmer, Teddy Diefenbach, Ben Esposito and other Glitch City members discuss their failures and successes in founding an indie dev collective and workspace.

---

9 The development and sales of a niche iOS game: Freediving Hunter A quick and cost breakdown, and sales/revenue (with promotional costs factored in) for Freediving Hunter, which has been available on the App Store for 8 months.

---

41 Don't Miss: How to get started in game programming, from Super Meat Boy's coder Taking your first steps toward your dream game is an overwhelming feeling. In this classic blog, Super Meat Boy programmer Tommy Refenes offers practical tips for aspiring (and veteran) developers.

---

15 Numbers in games: What they say about us "Clearly I seem to be drawn to games about numbers going up. But the truth of the matter is the numbers in games mean things -- they represent complex systems, whether ecosystems, economies or relationships."

---

  The rough road of taking HyperBowl from arcade attraction to mobile game A 2001 arcade attraction game becomes a modern mobile title -- a fascinating story that includes crashed PCs, difficult data exports, and a move to Unity.

---

4 Ditch the booth! A DIY game promotion manifesto "You don't need a festival or conference or expo to show your creations. Stop waiting for marketplaces to 'solve' discoverability. Reach out to your local and surrounding communities."

---

3 Removing the bottleneck: Programming a dynamic event system "By breaking the game into simple event sequences, we're able to build a robust system that allows anyone on the team to use a drag and drop UI to implement a vast array of content instead of requesting coding time."

---

[Read More]