Favorite Game:Game Research Institute

The Brazilian gaming community has grown significantly in recent decades, and it’s now one of the largest video game markets in the world. With that, more game developers have grown across Brazil, releasing well-received titles like Dandara, Dodgeball Academia, and Chroma Squad as recent standouts. For developer Rogue Snail, which launched Relic Hunters Legend into Early Access, they view the release of their ambitious action RPG shooter as a statement for the growing Brazilian game dev communi ...

The Meta Quest platform continued to lose momentum in 2023. Omdia analysis of Sensor Tower data reveals that the associated app was downloaded by a combined 7.5 million iOS and Android device users in 2023. This is a 25% reduction on 2022 where it achieved a record 10.3 million downloads (see: Over 10 million people downloaded the Meta Quest app in 2022, up 27% on 2021). It also marked the second consecutive drop in Christmas Day downloads, which fell to just over 400,000 – 18% lower than in 20 ...

At a Glance Game marketing on TikTok rewards authenticity over polish. Using TikTok yourself is essential to understanding what makes for a good video. Don’t overexert yourself while chasing success on the platform. In today’s competitive attention economy, marketing your game through social media has never been harder–but the tools to find people have never been better. Avenues like Twitter and YouTube are well-trod, and there’s plenty of advice out there for maximizing awareness on these ...

When you think about game developers venting about the trials of game development, you usually think of conversations that take place in the studio, the back halls of GDC, or maybe the months after release on Twitter. While the game-playing public worries about the quality of water puddles, developers sweat at the thought of closing their Jira tickets. It’s those highly niche problems that concept artist and comic strip creator Victor Lahlou has elegantly captured in his online comic strip Devt ...

At a Glance E3’s demise in 2023 showed that video game events need to evolve in a post-pandemic world. Double Fine and iam8bit’s Day of the Devs may hold clues for where video game gatherings can go. The world of video game events has gone through a massive upheaval since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. Events like Game Developers Conference (our sibling organization) and Gamescom have bounced back with thousands of attendees, but poor strategy and a floundering mission statement led to ...

Game Developer Deep Dives are an ongoing series with the goal of shedding light on specific design, art, or technical features within a video game in order to show how seemingly simple, fundamental design decisions aren’t really that simple at all. Earlier installments cover topics such as how indie developer Mike Sennott cultivated random elements in the branching narrative of Astronaut: The Best, how the developers of Meet Your Maker avoided crunch by adopting smart production practices, and ...

On the surface, a RoboCop video game seems like a very straightforward premise—fight bad guys as a cyborg cop and uphold the law in dystopian ‘80s America. However, most of RoboCop’s game appearances didn’t quite focus on the social satire and gray morality of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 film, instead leaning on a shooter experience. But with RoboCop: Rogue City, developer Teyon aimed to not only capture the bleak, sci-fi setting and hyper-violence of the original films but also cast a light on the h ...

On Sat Oct 11, I slithered onto my Edmonton hotel bed with my shoes still on, my left eyelid vibrating as it had been for 2 weeks straight. I was giving a talk at Alberta Game Series that weekend, which inconveniently wound up being the same weekend we were announcing the launch date for Fish Game. I had left for the airport that morning on no sleep due to an all-nighter cutting and delivering the Fish Game Date-Announce Trailer so our PR company could distribute it Sunday. Before descending in ...

Wizard with a Gunis a cooperative survival game set in a world devastated by magical catastrophes. Not that any of the mages of that world have learned anything from that—they all still make use of firearm-based magic to do just about anything. From fighting monsters to building furniture, there’s a gun for that. Game Developer spoke with Patrick Morgan, studio lead at Galvanic Games, to talk about the challenges that come with making changes to eight years of worldbuilding, the balancing chall ...

Back in March, Electronic Arts subsidiary Respawn Entertainment opened up a satellite studio in Madison, Wisconsin to bolster development on Apex Legends. As the company noted at the time, its new office wasn’t established as a pure support studio—it’s a third arm of the game development team behind the company’s juggernaut sci-fi Battle Royale. Earlier today studio director Ryan Burnett—who leads Respawn’s third office—delivered a keynote at midwestern video game conference M+DEV arguing that ...