You’re an honest-to-goodness, law abiding citizen. You don’t lie, you don’t steal, and you most certainly don’t kill. Like most people in society, you behave according to an ethical moral code which forbids any sort of reckless, deviant behavior. But when it comes to video games, that code is temporarily deactivated, and another, largely contradictory set of rules emerges: As Kara, you stole the bus tickets in Detroit: Become Human, and proceeded to lie about having found them. As Spyro the dragon, you routinely set flocks of sheep on fire. And as Garrett the master thief, you picked pockets and swiped valuables without a moment’s hesitation. A curious observer might conclude that…

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry! Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now. Location: Boston, Massachusetts Harmonix is seeking an experienced network-focused software engineer to join our team developing in-house backend services for our titles in development. As an integral part of our game development teams, you will work closely with designers and gameplay engineers to build out online functionality for brand new music-based games across multiple platforms. This is a senior, experienced role. As such, you’ll have the flexibility to help define and extend our (already modern) technology stack. It also…

Nintendo has brought support for its Labo VR goggles to another flagship Switch game. Super Smash Bros.Ultimate now gives its players a way to watch and play certain matchups in virtual reality by using the craftable VR goggles from a recent Nintendo Labo kit. Nintendo Labo offers a look at how the Switch’s more unique features can be put to creative use to create some non-traditional game experiences, and rolling out Labo Kit support for its first-party games is another way the company is highlighting those potential uses. Nintendo’s foray into console-powered VR launched last month as a standalone experience that, with a little cardboard and specialized lenses, lets Switch owners transform their console into a…

AI researchers at Google’s DeepMind have trained an artificial intelligence agent on Quake III and published a paper on how it performed in matches with and against humans. Video games can be a useful tool for researchers looking to evaluate the capabilities of AI technology, and several including StarCraft II and Dota 2 have attracted the attention of companies like DeepMind and OpenAI. As outlined in a Science paper spotted by Kotaku, researchers at DeepMind trained the AI agent “For the Win” on thousands of hours of Quake III play data with the goal of demonstrating the technology’s ability to function in cooperative environments. The company broke down the whole process in a blog post on Google’s DeepMind last year, and the Science…

Jay Silver, one of the minds behind the Makey Makey invention kit, is working on a plug-n-play game console called GameBender that introduces children to programming by letting them create and modify games on the fly. At its most basic level, GameBender allows its players to jump right into a game, and then modify different elements of that existing game mid-play. It’s an approach that aims to let kids learn code while playing, and make the whole process more appealing from the get-go. The concepts they learn from modifying an existing GameBender game can be used in other games on the platform, or even used to create and share entirely…

In this 2017 GDC session, veteran art director Denis Rogic presents nine major lessons drawn from the mistakes he made as an art director so that you can learn from them — and hopefully avoid some similar misstep! When Rogic was promoted to art director, he had no clue what was waiting for him. He learned he needed to acquire a completely new, social skillset. While not all of his lessons learned are art-related, they made his work so much easier that he considers them essential to run an artistic team. He gave a great talk and if you missed it live, no worries — you can now watch Rogic’s talk free over on the official GDC…