Dev Links: Particle Man

“It’s time to leave the debate as to whether video games are art or not behind.

Today’s Developer Linksinclude the future of Zeboyd, the Australian games industry and the pursuit of a video game masterpiece.

Pursuing a Video Game Masterpiece(Gamasutra)
“It’s time to leave the debate as to whether video games are art or not behind. Instead, there is a need to consider how video games function as works of art, to ask whether game developers have properly grasped the nature of interactivity and to consider whether we as an audience really understand what it is about video games that makes them so compelling.”

Particles; the homicidal aurochs(Gaslamp Games)
“Daniel and I are crunching a little bit this week in order to meet an internal deadline. (“El Dorado”, named after the mystical city that doesn’t really exist and has never been found; we only chose that codename because “Titanic” was apparently used for a Microsoft product.) We try to avoid it as a general rule – after Dredmor, which was released after we crunched for about three months, non-stop, the old batteries need time to recharge – and were more or less successful doing this for the Dredmor expansion packs; however, we’re a little bit behind where we want to be and we need to do a little sprinting until the end of June in order to get everything back on track.”

The Future of Zeboyd Games(Zeboyd Games)
“We feel like we’re at a turning point here at Zeboyd Games. We’ve released some fun RPGs over the past few years (and in fact, we just released a new RPG earlier this month which you should definitely play if you haven’t already) but now it’s time to take things up a notch. Now it’s time to get serious.”

Zeboyd Weekly Art! (6/19/2013): Fish Force! And more sweet CSTW fan art!(Zeboyd Games)
“Hey everyone! It’s Bill, I’m alive. Been living under a rock finishing up on Rainslick4 the past few months, so now that the game is out, I can start up the weekly art column again! Yay!”

Osmos 2.3 for iOS(Hemisphere Games)
“Hey everyone, just a quick post about our latest iOS Osmos update.”

Island Snapshot(The Witness)
“Once again, we have been mostly working on things you can’t see from this angle. The most-visible changes are probably the peninsula on the left in the foreground, which has undergone extensive work lately.”

A hot Summer(Winter Wolves)
“Technically today 21st June Summer starts, but here in Europe things are getting hotter since one week at least. Every year during this period I struggle to work, and this year is no exception. I thought that going living at 800m on sea level would have been enough but apparently I was wrong…”

Opinion piece: Australian games industry social media culture(#AltDevBlogADay)
“I’m a programmer. Through and through. I might pretend to be good at organising a community every now and then, or at speaking on panels, but in my heart I’m a programmer. I deal much better with pieces of code than I do with words or people. So please bear in mind that writing is not my forte as you read this. It is a struggle to communicate exactly what is on my mind – just ask the people who know me well. And sometimes I screw up: what I say doesn’t quite capture what I meant, and occasionally people can take other meanings from my words. Also, the following is all my opinion, and mine alone. It does not represent that of the IGDA, AIE, Convict Interactive, the GDAA, PAX or AltDevBlog. And if you would like to comment about this article, please do so here – as I mention below, discussion over Twitter is difficult.”