Dev Links: Unboxing

“Bombball is an abstract sports game that I released on the OUYA last week, on 6/26, one day after the OUYA launched.

Today’s Developer Linksfeature an Ouya launch game postmortem, Democracy 3 crime stats and a pay-what-you-want indie b-side album.

OUYA indie postmortem: 8,000 downloads and 46 sales for Bombball(IndieGames.com)
“Bombball is an abstract sports game that I released on the OUYA last week, on 6/26, one day after the OUYA launched. The game was inspired by Hokra and the indie eSports panel at last year’s IndieCade, and it was first created for Kill Screen’s 10-day CREATE game jam, for which it won a minor award. First, some juicy sales metrics! After six days of being featured, Bombball has been downloaded about 8000 times and has actually sold 46 full copies (at $4.99 and $2.99 after a recent discount). It’s still early, but I feel that this was a weak launch, and I figured that now was a good time to do some public reflection on the project.”

The making of the Indie B-Side, Vol. 1 album cover(Lost Decade Games)
“Video game composer and arranger Joshua Morse just released his new album Indie B-Side, Vol. 1. It features eight arrangements from indie darlings such as FEZ and it’s pay-what-you-want!”

Postmortem: Game Developer magazine(Gamasutra)
“Former Game Developer magazine editor-in-chief Brandon Sheffield turns the critical lens inward to examine the ups and downs of the magazine’s 19-year legacy.”

Patch 0.705 Plans(Rocket Bear Games)
“I’m planning to release updates in 2 week intervals. Since this is the launch week, the next patch will be smaller than usual.”

Crime statistics in Democracy 3(Positech Games)
“Democracy 3 has two crime measurements. Violent Crime and Crime Rate. Obviously they can vary massively, depending on your policies. I’ve been investigating the differences between the UK and the USA to try to get the policies to all make sense, whilst also presenting the player with roughly sensible crime and violent crime rates in these two countries. This is, of course, totally impossible. But I like to try six impossible things before breakfast, so I am trying anyway. If all else fails, i can include cultural override scripts to nudge the stats in the right direction. Some countries do naturally have a more law-abiding culture than others, so this is fairly acceptable.”

The Last of Us, Bioshock: Infinite and why all video game dystopias work the same way(The Guardian)
“Video games tell us interesting things about damaged and bizarre societies – but most seem to come to the same conclusion: it’s all about men and violence”

A close up of the Luxuria Superbia’s temple in Unity’s scene view(Tale of Tales)
“This is the hub of the game where you choose which flower to play with. A cross section of each flower tunnel is displayed as a silhouette, surrounded by up to three rings that are the game’s equivalent of the conventional three star rating of the player’s performance. In Luxuria Superbia they express how well you have pleased each flower.”

Have traditional MMOs had their time?(Eurogamer)
“Traditional MMOs have gone out of fashion lately. It used to be that every gaming brand had exciting untapped MMO potential and every publisher wanted an MMO in its stable, but the gold rush inspired by World of Warcraft yielded little precious metal, and a lot of publishers got burned in the process – especially Electronic Arts with Star Wars: The Old Republic – while the term “MMO” has become taboo when discussing a new breed of games that includes The Division and Destiny, even though in many respects they are both massively multiplayer and online. Now it’s not MMOs that publishers are in a hurry to stuff into portfolios, but “shared-world shooters” and MOBAs – multiplayer online battle arena games – because everybody wants a piece of those big fat World of Tanks and League of Legends money pies, and it sure doesn’t cost as much to bake them.”