Video: Designing Titans, the 'moving' levels in God of War III In this classic GDC 2012 talk, Sony Santa Monica's Chris O'Neill and Bruno Velazquez share the development story of making God of War III's Titans from elevator pitch to completion.

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  Stillfront acquires Imperia Online developer for $11M The Swedish firm Stillfront Group announced today that it has acquired developer Imperia Online, known for the medieval-themed MMO strategy game of the same name $11.7 million. 

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2 Telltale Games initiates 'majority studio closure' Update Telltale Games, the studio behind games like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, is all but closing its doors, the company confirmed Friday.

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25 Don't Miss: Exploring the rise and appeal of Roguelikes In this 2014 feature, Gamasutra speaks to a number of game devs to explore the appeal of Roguelikes, both for players and developers.

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1 Google exploring 6DoF and other features for Daydream VR The in-development features could open up augmented reality and additional tracking possibilities for the standalone VR headset.

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  Blizzard's Diablo series tapped for possible Netflix show Activision and Netflix look to be pulling together a team to develop an animated series based on Diablo, at least according to a now-deleted tweet from a possible writer on the project.

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  Blog: The interplay between order and chaos in games Game designer and engineer John Nelson Rose takes a look at games from the dual processes of bringing order and wreaking chaos.

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  Blog: How Ragna Cycle turned into All-Star Troopers A look into how Norsfell's latest mobile game, All-Star Troopers, started out as a very different project called Ragna Cycle.

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2 Jagex fires RuneScape moderator for stealing player gold Update "During our rigorous routine system checks, irregular activity was identified on small number of accounts, including the movement of wealth and items back into the live game."

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5 Inside the Awesomenauts matchmaking algorithm Joost van Dongen, lead programmer and co-founder at Ronimo Games, addresses the question at the core of online matchmaking: who should play with whom?

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  Record 78.3 million people played Fortnite in August It's a tidbit that highlights the enduring popularity of Epic Games' last-person-standing shooter, which launched in July 2017.

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1 Blog: A tale of two bugs Games industry veteran Niklas Grey gives a detailed account of hunting down two bugs in The Machinery alpha.

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  Twitch abruptly blocked in China & delisted from local iOS App Store Video streaming platform Twitch has suddenly hit a wall in China, as the Twitch website is currently inaccessible in the country & the Twitch iOS app has been removed from Apple's regional App Store.

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  Ex-BioWare GM Aaryn Flynn is now Improbable's North American GM of games Former BioWare GM Aaryn Flynn has joined up with the folks at British tech firm Improbable, makers of the SpatialOS game server platform, to serve as their North American general manager of games.

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  Video: Game design lessons worth learning from collectible card games At GDC 2011 game designer Skaff Elias (who worked on a number of Magic card sets) offers insight on how you might apply the best practices of CCG design to your own games, be they physical or digital.

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1 Blizzard cracks down on third-party data-tracking apps in Overwatch Blizzard has warned users that further use of third-party data tracking applications for Overwatch will lead to bans on their accounts.

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31 Don't Miss: 7 combat systems that every game designer should study We reached out to several designers for their take on the games that introduced truly memorable innovations to hand-to-hand combat systems.

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  Get a job: Heart Machine is hiring a Gameplay Engineer As a critical anchor for the project, you’ll be crafting code for character interactions, NPC interactions, scripted sequences, combat, environmental interactions and much more.

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  Monster Hunter: World grabs top prize at Japan Game Awards 2018 Japan’s Consumer Entertainment Supplier’s Association has shared the winners of its 2018 Japan Game Awards, held this year at the Tokyo Game Show.

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3 Blog: Understanding the primary concepts of QA I want to dive in to the primary concepts of QA and attempt to draw a general conclusion as to what 'quality' is, and what it means to control, assure, or develop it.

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  Sony officially ending Vita production in Japan in 2019 After winding down support for the Vita for some time, Sony has officially announced plans to discontinue production of the handheld in Japan next year.

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  PlayStation Now begins offering downloadable PS2 & PS4 games PlayStation is expanding its pay-for-access streaming game library PlayStation Now to allow subscribers to download PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 2 games directly to their consoles.

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  Learn about AR and VR's unique therapeutic potential at XRDC 2018! Come out to XRDC in San Francisco next month to learn from leaders at forefront of therapeutic VR/AR aps about treating chronic pain, improving mood with neurofeedback, and more!

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2 Political extremism and gunplay meet in The Church in the Darkness Columnist Katherine Cross examines the upcoming The Church in the Darkness, a game that confronts the complicated themes surrounding political extremism.

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  Blog: Realism and legibility in open-world level design The design underpinning Breath of the Wild's open world come from what may be a surprising source: urban planning. This article examines how these principles lend Hyrule a high degree of legibility.

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