“I absolutely fucking hate the iPhone App Store,” declared indie developer Tommy Refenes during his segment of the Indie Game Makers Rant at Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week. Refenes, known for his work on Goo! and the upcoming Super Meat Boy, has philosophical objections to Apple’s mobile digital distribution platform. “The majority [...]

Julian Farrior, CEO of Backflip Studios, shared some of the company’s ups and downs after one year on the app store. He pushed the idea that free apps are an excellent way to drive revenue, but you can also employ some interesting tactics if you can predict the market. One of Backflip’s apps is Paper [...]

Today in San Francisco, Sony unveiled the final form of its motion controller, the PlayStation Move. It’s a solution that seems to look more like Nintendo’s Wii Remote than Microsoft’s Project Natal — though it includes both camera and accelerometer technology. On stage during the event, SCEA marketing head Peter Dille talked about the product [...]

There isn’t a secret formula to creating a blockbuster video game franchise,& #8237; & #8236;but game developers like Bungie and BioWare know a thing or two about creating commercially successful games. At GDC on Wednesday,& #8237; & #8236;BioWare general manager and CEO Ray Muzyka said that today,& #8237; & #8236;developers should be thinking in the [...]

Multimedia artist, Carnegie Mellon professor and independent designer Paolo Pedercini is best known for his Molleindustria projects — the shorthand definition of his work would be “serious games”, but he defines it as “a reappropriation of video games that combines media activist attitude with game criticism.” These have included McDonald’s Videogame, a criticism of the [...]

At GDC, Gamasutra had the chance to speak to Final Fantasy XIIII director Motomu Toriyama about the game. Released this week, the game has drawn both strongly negative and positive reviews and fan reactions. One area of criticism that the game has consistently faced is that major traditional RPG elements that the series is known [...]