Gamasutra Member Blogs: From Google Play to the Law of Conservation

In highlights from Gamasutra's Member Blogs, our bloggers write about diverse topics, such as why Google Play can be better than the App Store, why games should follow the Law of Conservation, and more. Member Blogs can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while invitation-only Expert Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- are written by selected development professionals. We hope that our blog sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information, check out the official posting guidelines. This Week's Standout Member Blogs Google Play is better than the iOS store (in our case): A Dangerous postmortem (Linh Ngo) After six months of selling Dangerous on iOS, Google Play, Amazon App Store, Mac App Store, and its own website, Binary Helix has learned some lessons that may be of interest to new developers. In addition, the team debunked some well-worn Android myths. Game usability testing for indies: It's easier than you might think! (Part 2) (Maria Sifnioti) Maria Sifnioti offers tips for conducting usability sessions for your mobile game, examining usability session design. Here she give examples from A Clockwork Brain, Total Eclipse's most recent game for iOS. Getting into making games (Adam Bishop) Want to start making video games but don't know where to start? Adam Bishop has a few suggestions. Systemic consistency and the Law of Conservation (Brent Gulanowski) Too many games don't adhere to internally consistent logic. Brent Gulanowski argues that this makes them dumb. For games to realize their potential, they need to be smarter. They need to be based on meaningful rules that can be mastered. They need to follow the Law of Conservation. Principles to adopt on the way to a featured app (Bora Kutlu) Delivering quality content that stands out from the crowd in the App Store or other similar platforms is quite a challenge. Bora Kutlu says the creative process involved in getting from a "really cool idea" to the final release of the app has to be managed effectively.