FEATURES

Postmortem - Beenox's Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions

Beenox had traditionally staffed its production teams with recent graduates. This approach worked well for the studio when it was working principally on ports, but designing the large scale Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions was often in conflict with the demands of managing a young team. Fortunately, the studio was working with its own internally-developed technology which helped spread the workload across small groups.

The Game Developer 50

Looking back at the past year, we single out the people who are helping advance the state of the art. From art and technology to business and culture, these are the individuals who are making games great.

No Darkness Without Light

For too long, otherwise beautiful games have been marred by strange, glitchy shadows. Here, David Tuft goes into detail on the five most problematic shadow issues along with helpful methods for fixing them.

Good Games Bad Design

It may be 20 years old, but Konami's Castlevania III still has much to teach us about level design. In this design analysis, Eric-Jon Russel Tairne offers up a molecular deconstruction of the game's first level in an effort to single out wells of disappointment.

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