There have been a lot fundamental changes in the gaming landscape over the past year, and cataloging them is a challenge. So, instead of trying to keep up on your own, you can take the easy way out.

Game Developer Research, a sister service of Gamasutra, has released their yearly report, titled the 2009/2010 State of Game Development Survey. This survey was distributed to more than 800 video game professionals from North America and beyond who read Gamasutra, subscribe to Game Developer magazine, or attend Game Developers Conference.

Not surprisingly in today’s economic climate, there’s been a seven percent increase in small developers (those with less than 50 employees), as developers that have been victims of layoffs or studio closings work on their own projects. It also shows a growth among mobile support, with developers in that space increasing by 25 percent.

In traditional spaces, PC gamers can rest easy knowing that over 70 percent of developers have at least one game in the pipeline for PC or Mac, and 41 percent have at least one console game in the works. Wii owners may be concerned to hear that support for that platform dropped 12 percent from last year.

If you want to delve deeper into the results, you can head over to the Game Developer Research website, found at http://gamedeveloperresearch.com/ to purchase a copy of the report.

So, have you ever wanted to go Los Angeles? Ok, have you ever wanted to attend a taping of G4’s X-Play? How about attending a meet and greet with X-Play host Adam Sessler?

If you’d like a shot at any of that, then there’s a simple way to get yourself in the running. Simply visit http://www.indiegamechallenge.com/ to vote in this year’s Indie Game Challenge sponsored by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, GameStop Corp., and The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University, and you’ll be entered into the Gamer’s Choice Sweepstakes.

The grand prize of this sweepstakes is a trip for two to Los Angeles to tour G4 studios, passes to attend a taping of the popular X-Play program, and a meet-and-greet with Adam Sessler.

You can vote for your favorite indie game anytime between now and midnight central time on February 18th. The winner will receive the Gamer’s Choice Award, one of the $350,000 in prizes available to the winners.

So, if you’d like to take a shot at winning the trip, or just support the independent game scene, head on over to http://www.indiegamechallenge.com/ and vote today!

Over at VG247.com, our very own GT alumnus Stephany Nunneley has posted a little snippet of an article from The Guardian UK. In this article, the Guardian purports to list the pros and cons of each gaming console in an honest effort to provide consumers with buying information.

Unfortunately, it’s all too obvious that whoever wrote this piece either hasn’t actually touched any of the consoles, has been away from the gaming scene for months (if not years), or has inserted their head firmly in a certain orifice of Microsoft’s.

Let’s examine exactly what they say, and then counter it with some actual, useful information.

We’ll start with the Wii. The Guardian says, in part, “the graphics aren’t as pretty as its two more technologically advanced rivals, and really ground-breaking Wii games come along very infrequently.” OK, that’s true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’ve sold a blue million of the damn things.

Read the full article »

You may recall a few weeks back when Epic Game released the Unreal Development Kit (mirrored here on FileFront) to let gamers create with the Unreal Engine 3 free of charge. Now, Epic has released a bevy of new tutorial videos to help you manage those tools and create your best games.

The list contains a number of .zip files, each containing a number of tutorials on various topics. You can grab them all on FileFront at the UDK Tutorial page.

The full list of links and videos can be found after the break.

Read the full article »

Lost Saga Client

OGPlanet has released a new game client of Lost Saga, an online fighting game where you can choose between four different battle modes, Escapee, Hidden Crown, Power-Stone, and Deathmatch, and fight in many different maps.

http://www.filefront.com/14864129/Lost-Saga-Client/

X Motor Racing Demo v1.21

X Motor Racing is an auto simulator with next generation physics model.

http://www.filefront.com/14864395/X-Motor-Racing-Demo-v1.21/

Close Combat The Longest Day Patch v5.50.07

This major update comes with dozens of bug fixes, map line of sight tweaks, data file changes for increased historical accuracy of equipment performance, and much more.

http://www.filefront.com/14864447/Close-Combat-The-Longest-Day-Patch-v5.50.07/

Wanna make your very own game? Well, here’s your chance!

Epic Games has released the Unreal Development Kit. Wondering just what the UDK is? Says Epic:

The Unreal Development Kit is the free version of the award-winning Unreal Engine 3, the software development framework used to create computer and video games, 3D simulations, TV shows, films and more

Anyone can download UDK and work with the same game development tools used to create blockbuster games, architectural walkthroughs and digital movies. UDK ships with the latest version of the Unreal Editor, with its unrivaled content creation toolset and rapid prototyping functionality.

UDK is free for noncommercial and educational use. Licensing terms are available to those who wish to sell UDK-powered games or to create commercial products or services for business use at www.udk.com/licensing.

You can grab your very own copy of the Unreal Development Kit, as well as trailers for the kit and sample games built using the kit, over on FileFront. So, go get your game making on!

Grab it here: http://www.filefront.com/listing/pub2/Unreal-Development-Kit

Darkest of Days Instant Action Patch v1.05

Download it at FileFront!

Darkest of Days Toolset

Download it at FileFront!

One of my all-time favorite blogs to read is Tobold’s. It’s a great place to get a fresh take on everything that’s happening in the MMORPG world. As I was perusing his site over the weekend, I ran across this article.

In short, he refers to the recent rumors that Blizzard’s Chinese World of Warcraft servers aren’t going to be coming back up anytime soon. For those of you who aren’t aware, Blizzard recently transferred their license to operate WoW in China to NetEase, away from The9.

The9 filed several lawsuits in an attempt to stop this transfer, and the Chinese government accordingly refused to give NetEase a license to operate WoW, saying that “in order to protect the interests of domestic gaming enterprises,” they would “suspend review of all games belonging to foreign companies in the event of lawsuits or arbitration between foreign companies and Chinese companies.”

The Chinese servers have already been down for a month or so, and there’s still no word on when they might return. This really doesn’t hurt Blizzard as much financially as you might think, as they received little revenue from the Chinese players, who pay as little as 6 cents an hour to play.

But how does this get Blizzard down to 5 million subscribers?

Read the full article »

Today EA LA officially announced the conclusion to the Tiberium series, Command and Conquer 4. Players will finally witness Kane’s master plan come together or fail utterly as the bitter rivals Global Defense Initiative (GDI) and the Brotherhood of Nod race to save mankind from destruction.

“Command & Conquer is a powerful franchise with an amazing 15-year legacy. We are thrilled to bring the dramatic Tiberium saga to a conclusion in Command & Conquer 4. This game is designed to give fans all the answers they’ve been looking for,” said Mike Glosecki, Lead Producer of Command & Conquer 4 at EA Los Angeles. “With its objective-based multiplayer mode, persistent player progression and all-in-one mobile base, players will experience Command & Conquer like never before.”

Much of the information on C&C4 is being kept under wraps and doled out as exclusive content. For more details on Command & Conquer 4 make sure to catch BattleCast PrimeTime on the July 24th episode. They’ll be revealing exclusive information C&C4. The first glimpse of the game will be the premier cinematic trailer aired exclusively on the July 23rd episode of Gametrailers TV on SPIKE TV. The ETA for Command & Conquer 4 is sometime in 2010. Read the full article »

John Harris, a writer over on the industry news site/blog Gamasutra,  writes a regular series of articles entitled Game Design Essentials. These long and exhaustively researched story discusses his position on many topics important to modern game design and the lessons learned along the way.

His latest installment discusses 20 RPGs that all designers should be familiar with and why. The feature article is interesting from the perspective of someone who has studied game design and as someone who has been using RPGs for storytelling and  enjoyment over the years. Aspiring designers could do far worse than to dig through this fairly dense statement of information covering RPGs from the classic pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons through the evolution of Wizardry, Ultima, Wasteland and more contemporary games like World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy and the Elder Scrolls titles.

You can check out the entire article here.