One of the GAMESbrief design rules is that players must not fail, using examples such as Backbreaker and Bejewelled Blitz. It has also been one of the more controversial, with comments via Twitter and the web saying...

Electronic Arts and Zynga are locked in a court battle in the USA, with EA accusing Zynga of "persistent plagiarism" while Zynga counters that EA's actions are "anticompetitive". In the broader picture, we can probably all agree...

If free-to-play becomes the dominant business model for platforms that encourage longer play times and less 'snacking' (such as consoles or PC), how can rich, 8+ hour single-player narrative games (such as Half-Life 2, Tomb Raider or...

Harry Holmwood writes: “A colleague and I downloaded New Star Soccer at the airport and were playing it on a flight back from Germany last week, got hooked, but then hit the 'hard payment' point where we...

Activision recently launched a revival of a 30-year-old IP with a paid iOS version of Pitfall. They have taken a Paymium approach, combining a 69p up-front purchase price with IAPs. The game has consistently been in the...

I thought it’d be nice (and a bit of a reassuring cliché) to do a roundup of the Hard Lines story so far, and take a look at some of the interesting facts and figures that have...

Andrew Smith of Spilt Milk Studios (and the associated developer diaries on GAMESbrief) has written a great piece on indie PR and marketing on Gamasutra. His summary: Be nice. Market to the platform holder, as well as...