Mars Horizon rockets onward, a look back on GameTheNews, the Steampocalypse, and more...
/More about Mars Horizon
We’ve had a lot of interest in Mars Horizon since we first announced it, so we put together an article on Medium that goes into an area of it that we’re most proud of: its links with real science.
As you’ll have heard on the studio’s podcast about the game’s development, as well as read about on here, Mars Horizon is tied closely with the real-world realities of managing a space agency. We’ve worked with people in the field who have guided the direction of our thinking and ultimately the game’s design, by giving us their insight into, for example, why certain agencies specialise in certain kinds of missions into space, or why public interest is so important to science.
A GameTheNews retrospective
A lot of people will have first heard of Auroch Digital through its work during the GameTheNews initiative, where we were part of the vanguard leading the charge into the (then quite new) world of newsgames.
Tom wrote an article about our experiences creating works in that field, talking about the huge positives of making them, as well as some of the downsides. If you’re interested at all in “serious games” or “games with purpose”, it’s well worth a read.
Asset flips and the Steampocalypse
There has long been a debate about the subject of “asset flips”. This is a term given to games that primarily feature pre-made assets, usually with the subtext that they are of poor quality and created for nefarious reasons.
It’s lead to a rise in poor quality content on Steam, the primary channel for PC games distribution, which many have linked with the “Steampocalypse” - the idea that at some point making money on that platform for most studios will be next to impossible.
Tom weighed in on both of these topics across a variety of high profile media channels recently, including VentureBeat, GamesIndustry.biz, and MCV, and spoke about how developers can best prepare for the Steampocalypse at Develop.
And everything else...
As noted above, we were at Develop, with both Tom and Nina giving talks.
And we’re proud to report that podcasting is doing surprisingly well for us as a studio. Our go-to audio expert Matthew Walker has been producing them and walks through his process in this great article that you should totally read if you’ve ever thought about dipping your toe in the warm waters of branded podcasts.