Gamedev.js Weekly #72

Articles

Why market conditions have shifted to favour mobile game developers
The definition of traditional roles has hardened: publishers don't develop, they publish; while developers don't publish, they develop.
Jon Jordan at Pocket Gamer

Scroll back: the theory and practice of cameras in side-scrollers
This is a modified version of a talk I gave at the Independent Games Summit, GDC 2015. It contains some background information on 2D scrolling, along with plenty of classic gaming nostalgia.
Itay Keren at Gamasutra

MelonJS 2.1.0 unleashed
Following on the trend we initiated with the 2.0.x series, we are very happy today to finally release a new version of melonJS.
melonJS blog

Mobile games can sink without trace for want of marketing know-how
For Hernan Lopez of Epic Llama, selling a game on mobile was like throwing a stone into a lake — it sank without trace.
Scott Johnston at Spil Games

The video-game industry has a dress code – driven by a lack of diversity
I wasn’t expecting a young, vibrant creative world to have a uniform. But there is an insidious pressure to fit in, and it involves plaid and denim.
Holly Nielsen at The Guardian

Where in the world did blockbuster educational games go?
From the late 1980s through the 1990s, as console games and computer games remained two very separate markets, a handful of studios built a blockbuster empire atop the burgeoning personal computing market: the educational video game.
Bryant Francis at Gamasutra

Introducing the new Cocoon Beta - now open
During the last months we have been working on building the greatest possible cloud service for HTML5 developers.
Cocoon blog

The first 8 months and going free
It’s been 8 months since we released our first iOS title Rapture - World Conquest. It's been a roller-coaster of a ride.
Daniel Collier at Gamasutra

Tutorials

How to load level data from JSON files in Phaser
Making the game content can be bit simpler if you separate it from the game code itself. A common way to do it is by loading levels from external files.
Fariazz at GameDev Academy

Upgrading to melonJS 2.1
The melonJS 2.1 is a major release and include some breaking changes which forces you to make adjustments in your game code.
Andre Antonio Schmitz at Cian Games

HTML5 player movement as seen in iPad Magick game, using tile maps in Phaser
The way you control the player, which actually you don’t control, you can just make some changes to the level, is really interesting to build with Phaser.
Emanuele Feronato's blog

Tools

WarriorJS - learn ES6 JavaScript by playing a game

Demos

VoxLords: a WebGL game demo

Tetris background

Black hole in WebGL

Videos

GDC15 Video: John Carmack shares his vision for the future of mobile VR

GDC15 Video: How biking across America changes the way you make games

Games

Curious Expedition is out and available on Steam