This Week in Video Game Criticism: A Rogue for All Seasons This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Zach Alexander on topics including the player's idealized self as avatar and the storytelling of Rogue.

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  Your game can change the world: How games can heal players "Games are effecting your players and society whether or not you’re designing them to," writes Brendan Bozzi, who runs down games that, "just by playing them, help heal mental or physical illnesses."

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  Sony, Tencent, Blizzard, Ubisoft to speak at this week's GDC Taipei Summit The second annual GDC Taipei Summit begins December 5th, 9 a.m. UTC, with onsite registration available starting opening day at the Taipei International Convention Center.

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1 Facebook games on the decline? No one told that to Pretty Simple Games Though notable companies have shied away from the social game scene, Pretty Simple's Criminal Case has met the challenges of Facebook and come away with a 6 million DAU game.

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2 Monster Hunter continues to grab big sales for Capcom Capcom's Monster Hunter series continues to be a hit for the Japanese game publisher, as the series surpasses 28 million units sold.

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  Video: Porting 3DS success story SteamWorld Dig to PC In the latest Gamasutra video interview, editor Mike Rose talks to Bryann Sigurgeirsson about the PC release of SteamWorld Dig, and how difficult porting from Nintendo 3DS to PC turned out to be.

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6 Blog: Who needs interactivity? By focusing on game-like design, are attempts to move different aspects of games -- like storytelling -- forward being hampered?

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2 Spil Games is gunning for HTML5 in a big way Casual game network Spil Games today announced that it will invest $5 million in developers creating HTML5 games during 2014, as the company looks to push the HTML5 platform.

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11 Microsoft reveals the first batch of ID@Xbox developers Although the Xbox One didn't exactly appear very friendly for indie developers earlier this year, Microsoft has most definitely now changed its tune, and today revealed a raft of devs who are making games for the new console.

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8 With Valve pushing Linux, the company joins The Linux Foundation "Joining the Linux Foundation is one of many ways Valve is investing in the advancement of Linux gaming." - Mike Sartain of Valve explains the company's next step in supporting the future of video games in Linux.

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  Refining the 'Gamification User Types' Andrzej Marczewski outlines version 2.0 of his Gamification User Types scheme -- a system for classifying users of gamified apps by what sort of reward they seek.

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  Video: The evolution of eSports - from hobby to international pastime Members of Riot Games and Twitch join Cloud 9, djWHEAT, and the commissioner of Asian League of Legends pro team GPL in a panel on the evolution of eSports as a sport and entertainment.

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53 'I'm not psyched about a business where 3% of your customers pay you' "I'm not psyched about a business where 3 percent of your customers pay you, which is what you're dealing with." - Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick on the free-to-play business model.

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4 EA's new CEO spells out long-term plans, expectations "Platform is important, analytics are important, marketing is important, but at the end of the day, the future of this company will live and die based on hit, quality software," says EA's recently-appointed CEO Andrew Wilson.

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1 Online game opportunity awaits in Southeast Asia, says report If you're thinking about bringing a game to Southeast Asia, now might be a good time if you're an online game developer.

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1 'Freemium' design analysis: Combat Monsters F2P consultant Ben Sipe test-drives the monetization model of the turn-based strategy game to find out what works and what does not -- offering helpful suggestions on improving player conversion.

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  Brenda Romero, Ubisoft's Patrick Redding join GDC 2014 speaker lineup New talks for GDC 2014 will see Brenda Romero on re-inspiring designers for greatness, Patrick Redding on enabling meaningful setbacks in stealth games, and Lucien Parsons on the psychology behind gender-based pricing and IAP for games.

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  Blog: Generating solvable Cut the Rope levels Automatically generating levels is useless if they can't be completed by players. Researcher Michael Cook writes about a system that makes sure CPU-designed Cut the Rope levels work.

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6 An in-depth lesson in modular level design Making a game out of a series of interconnected rooms is a great tactic, writes ex-Metroid Prime developer Paul Tozour. Here, he offers up techniques for optimizing such a design.

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6 Why did the PS Vita TV launch in Japan first? "I feel there really hasn't been a critical driver or device that's driven the adoption of streaming content overall [in Japan]." - Sony's Andrew House explains why the PS Vita TV launched in Japan first.

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11 Blog: Jamming your way into the game industry Scared to take your first step into making games for real? Jam your way in! Experienced game jammer and, according to him, rookie developer Anchel Labena explains why.

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5 The PS4 has now sold 2.1M hardware units worldwide Following the news that the PlayStation 4 sold 1 million hardware units in its first 24 hours on sale in the U.S., Sony has now revealed that worldwide sales of the new console have surpassed 2.1 million.

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15 Deconstructing the 'Indie Revolution' What does "indie" mean -- and does it matter? Developer Robert Fearon looks backward to see how the indie movement got going, what it means, and what its place is in the overall industry.

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  Get a Job: Treyarch is looking for a technical animator "We are seeking an experienced Technical Animator to join our team. The Technical Animator will produce animation assets and also be the Animation Department’s facilitator."

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17 PC Gaming Alliance plans March launch for certification program The PC Gaming Alliance is slated to launch a new certification program that aims to standardize quality across the PC game marketplace, PCGA president Matt Ployhar tells us.

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