This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Johnny Kilhefner on topics ranging from Konami's decision to pull P.T. to the challenges faced by game narrative. ...

Realism is attractive but can get banal very quickly. It is where art deviates from reality that we can be moved by it. ...

At GDC 2015 engineer Zach Aikman offered a breakdown of Galak-Z's dungeon generator, including its unorthodox math, and his thoughts on balancing hand-crafted and procedural content. ...

Kotaku has published a thorough feature aimed at exposing crunch culture to a broader audience that features developers coming clean about how they had to crunch, or why they made others do so. ...

"Typography can make or break the aesthetic of a game. As game designers, we use type to communicate with our players, not only in the words we use, but also in the way we present those words." ...

"We are all free, for better or worse, and that all the events in our life that are under our control occur either because of our actions or inactions. There is no safety net. No divine path set ahead of you." ...

We talk to SpyParty developer Chris Hecker, and Sub Rosa's Alex Austin about deception as a game mechanic, and why it lends itself so well to multiplayer. ...

"Do you stay consistent with writing code or creating new art for your game? Do you hit your milestones? Awesome. Now do the same with your marketing!" ...

As part of the Failure Workshop at GDC 2015's Indie Games Summit, Donut County designer Ben Esposito talks about the mistakes he made while developing a game that "used Hopi folklore" as its theme. ...

Keen Software House is making a show of supporting game modders by making source code of its game Space Engineers publicly available and putting $100k towards funding the creation of total conversion mods based on the game or its engine. ...