Game Design Deep Dive: Maintaining tension in Nex Machina "We needed to cut as much of excess fat as possible and figure out what was really necessary to get the feeling you are on the "knife's edge"." - Henri Mustonen, Senior Level Designer at Housemarque.

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1 How medical care benefits from VR/AR and virtual humans During VRDC 2017 in San Francisco today, Director of Research and Development Integration at USC Institute for Creative Technologies Arno Hartholt lead a discussion about immersive medical care.

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  What Cyan learned in taking FMV-rich Obduction from 2D into VR Today at VRDC Fall 2017, Cyan software engineer Hannah Gamiel gave an interesting talk about what the team learned in the process -- and how other devs can make use of those learnings.

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  Video: Applying game design principles to be a better leader At GDC 2017, Happy Brain Science's Scott Crabtree took the stage to share his perspective on how you can apply game design lessons to your work as a game dev leader.

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  Don't miss your chance to pitch a talk for the GDC 2018 Indie Games Summit! Just a quick reminder that organizers of the 2018 Game Developers Conference are still accepting Independent Games Summit talk submissions through Friday, September 29th at 11:59 pm Pacific!

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1 How neuroscience can pave the way for VR's future For Noah Falstein, the future of virtual reality depends not only on understanding the technology and the market, but understanding the fundamental underpinnings of the human brain.

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  Owlchemy shares lessons learned making Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality At VRDC Fall 2017 today, Owlchemy's Alex Schwartz and Devin Reimer talked about what they'd learned in making the game, from making death feel comfortable to doing portals the Rick & Morty way.

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  Get a job: Telltale Games is looking for a Build Engineer Telltale Games is looking to bring a new Build Engineer on board to help diagnose bugs, build automated processes, and review content for platform fidelity.

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  CryEngine 5.4 introduces Substance integration and (beta) Vulkan support The full release of CryEngine 5.4 is upon us, bringing with it support for the Vulkan graphics API and sandbox integration for the Substance material authoring tool.

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  Devs discuss the best practices for creating positive social VR At VRDC Fall 2017 in San Francisco today, a panel of experienced devs provided insight into how fellow developers can foster a more enjoyable, interactive experience among VR users across all platforms.

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  VR vets share practical advice on making immersive VR worlds At VRDC Fall 2017 in San Francisco today Adam Orth (Adr1ft), Chris Pruett (Robot Invader), Will Smith (Foo Show) and Dirk Van Welden (Space Pirate Trainer) shared advice on making immersive VR worlds.

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  Don't Miss: BioWare founders discuss how BioWare and Baldur's Gate came to be BioWare co-founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk dig into the nitty-gritty details of how the developer was born and how it came to create an iconic RPG.

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  Mobile AR headset maker Mira secures $1M investment Additionally, the company says the first wave of its $99 dev kits are in the mail.

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  Follow Gamasutra's VRDC 2017 coverage right here! VRDC 2017 begins today in San Francisco. Follow our ongoing, on-site coverage on our special event page!

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4 Blog: How we created a 2D isometric platformer in Unity A way to make a full 2D isometric platformer, an overview of my work on the 2D isometric approach with Unity.

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  Former Twitch exec to lead Madison Square Garden Company's eSports charge The Madison Square Garden Company, the holding company and owner of the famous Madison Square Garden arena in New York, has appointed former Twitch exec Nick Allen as its new vice president of eSports. 

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  HTC promises more VR innovation following $1.1B Google deal HTC is letting some of its talent join Google as part of a $1.1 billion "cooperation agreement" in an effort to expand its smartphone and Vive virtual reality businesses.

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6 Blog: How much does it cost to develop a video game? A recent Kotaku article sparked a discussion about how much it costs to create a game. In this post, I'd like to share my own thoughts and clarify a few things.

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2 Classic Postmortem: Firaxis' Civilization V Civ V, released 7 years ago today, has a fascinating backstory. Its design and engineering teams were on separate but simultaneous tracks for the first three years of the four year development process.

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  Report: Buried in the Switch is code to run NES Golf on the date Iwata died Reports and videos suggest there's a version of NES Golf coded into Nintendo's new Switch console, modified to be played with motion controls -- but only on the anniversary of Iwata's passing.

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  In the wake of CSGO Lotto, FTC takes to Twitter to clarify its disclosure policy In a live Twitter Q&A inspired by its recent case against YouTubers who stealthily promoted their own CS:GO gambling site, the FTC lays out how devs and influencers should handle disclosure.

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1 Tips for surviving Early Access from Ark: Survival Evolved's lead designer Now that Ark: Survival Evolved has left Early Access, we talked with Studio Wildcard co-founder Jeremy Stieglitz about what he's learned about this new field of game development.

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1 Video: How (and when) to not give up on your game At GDC 2007, Brandon Sheffield walks devs through how and why, if you have a game out, you sell it again -- be that to different platform holders, different regions, or even through a different model.

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2 To tackle toxicity, Overwatch now mutes Xbox One players with bad Live rep Shortly after bringing an in-game report feature to console versions of Overwatch, Blizzard is making use of Xbox Live’s built-in reputation future to combat bad behavior.

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  VRDC Speaker Q&A: Adam Orth discusses the importance of creating believable VR spaces Adam Orth discusses the importance of creating believable and immersive VR worlds through 4 unique experiences lenses, products and platforms.

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