Microsoft XNA is a freeware set of tools with a managed runtime environment that Microsoft Gaming developed to facilitate video game development. XNA is based on .NET Framework, with versions that run on Windows and Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio can help develop XNA games. The XNA toolset was announced on March 24, 2004, at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. A first Community Technology Preview of XNA Build was released on March 14, 2006.
Kongregate is an American web gaming portal and video game publisher. Its website features over 124,000 online games and 30+ mobile games available to the public. The company also publishes games for PC, mobile, and home consoles. It was purchased by GameStop Corporation in 2010 before being acquired by Modern Times Group MT AB in 2017.
Kellee Santiago is a Venezuelan American video game designer and producer. She is the co-founder and former president of thatgamecompany. Santiago was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and raised in Richmond, Virginia, where Santiago played video games from a young age and was encouraged by her software engineer father to experiment with computers. While attending New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, she became active in experimental theater, planning to pursue it after earning a master's degree in the Interactive Media Program of the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. However, Santiago became involved in video game design and produced Cloud, a game developed by Jenova Chen and a student team. Its success sparked her and Chen to found thatgamecompany upon graduating, and she became the president.
Humble Bundle, Inc. is a digital storefront for video games, which grew out of its original offering of Humble Bundles, collections of games sold at a price determined by the purchaser and with a portion of the price going towards charity and the rest split between the game developers. Humble Bundle continues to offer these limited-time bundles, but have expanded to include a greater and more persistent storefront. The Humble Bundle concept was initially run by Wolfire Games in 2010, but by its second bundle, the Humble Bundle company was spun out to manage the promotion, payments, and distribution of the bundles. In October 2017, the company was acquired by Ziff Davis through its IGN Entertainment subsidiary.
Broken Age is a point-and-click adventure video game developed and published by Double Fine. Broken Age was game director Tim Schafer's first return to the genre since 1998's Grim Fandango, and was released for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Xbox One platforms. The game was developed in two acts; the first was released on January 28, 2014, and the second was released on April 28, 2015. A retail version of the complete game for Windows, macOS, and Linux, published by Nordic Games, was released on April 28, 2015. A Nintendo Switch version was released on September 13, 2018.
The Ouya, stylized as OUYA, is an Android-based microconsole developed by Ouya Inc. Julie Uhrman founded the project in 2012, bringing in designer Yves Béhar to collaborate on its design and Muffi Ghadiali as VP of Product Management to put together the engineering team. Development was funded via Kickstarter, raising US$8.5 million, becoming one of the website's highest earning projects in its history.
Video game development has typically been funded by large publishing companies or are alternatively paid for mostly by the developers themselves as independent titles. Other funding may come from government incentives or from private funding.
Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is a 2012 platform game developed and published by Black Forest Games for Microsoft Windows. It is the successor to the 1987 Commodore 64 title The Great Giana Sisters and sequel to the 2009 re-imagining Giana Sisters DS. The game was funded through crowdfunding website Kickstarter, reaching its goal of $150,000.
Fist of Awesome is an independently developed video game by Nicoll Hunt funded through Kickstarter, and is described by the developer as a time-travelling-lumberjack-em-up. Hunt was one of ten indie game developers chosen via Twitter to receive Ouya consoles for development. Fist of Awesome is one of the ten pre-selected indie games to be made potentially available for the Ouya.
A microconsole is a home video game console that is typically powered by low-cost computing hardware, making the console lower-priced compared to other home consoles on the market. The majority of microconsoles, with a few exceptions such as the PlayStation TV and OnLive Game System, are Android-based digital media players that are bundled with gamepads and marketed as gaming devices. Such microconsoles can be connected to the television to play video games downloaded from an application store such as Google Play.
TowerFall is an action indie video game created by Maddy Thorson through her company Maddy Makes Games. In the game, players control up to four archers in a multiplayer platform fighter. It was released on the Ouya microconsole in June 2013 and was later ported to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Linux, OS X, and Windows as TowerFall Ascension and to the Nintendo Switch under its original title of TowerFall.
Madeline Stephanie Thorson is a Canadian video game developer, known as one of the lead creators for the video games TowerFall and Celeste, developed under the studio Maddy Makes Games. Since September 2019, Thorson has worked as Director of R&D at Extremely OK Games.
Bleed is a platform video game developed by Canadian indie studio Bootdisk Revolution. The game was originally released for Xbox Live Indie Games on December 12, 2012. Bleed was later released for Windows and OS X on February 22, 2013 through Desura and the developer's website, and through Steam on July 3, 2013. In 2017, Bleed was ported to the Nintendo Switch. A sequel, Bleed 2, was released on March 8, 2018.
That Dragon, Cancer is an art video game created by Ryan and Amy Green, Josh Larson, and a small team under the name Numinous Games. The game is an autobiography based on the Greens' experience of raising their son Joel, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer at twelve months old. Though only given a short time to live, Joel survived for four more years before succumbing to the cancer in March 2014.
Whispering Willows is an indie adventure horror video game developed by independent developer Night Light Interactive for Ouya in May 2014.
Thralled is a platform puzzle video game about an 18th-century runaway slave and her baby escaping the Portuguese slave trade. The game began as a senior project in the USC Interactive Media & Games Division and later became an Ouya exclusive after being discovered by Kellee Santiago.
Elysian Shadows is an upcoming multiplatform indie 2D role-playing video game in development by GyroVorbis. The game is set to be published by WaterMelon, which previously developed and published the Sega Genesis title Pier Solar and the Great Architects in 2010. The development of Elysian Shadows has been chronicled in a YouTube series titled Adventures in Game Development. Elysian Shadows has been marketed as a "next-gen 2D role-playing game" (RPG) due to its hybrid 2D/3D graphical style.
Night Light Interactive, LLC is an American video game company founded in 2012 and based in North Hills, California that has developed the video game Whispering Willows.
itch.io is a website for users to host, sell and download indie video games, indie role-playing games, game assets, comics, zines and music. Launched in March 2013 by Leaf Corcoran, the service hosts over 700,000 products as of April 2023.
