The GDC Vault service has released several new free videos from the Game Developers Conference 2011, this time featuring a collection of strategy game talks covering StarCraft II's e-sport aspirations, a behind-the-scenes look at League of Legends, and a panel examining the future of the strategy genre.

These talks join recently-debuted free videos including GDC 2011's social game developers rant, sessions from successful indie startups and industry veteran Don Daglow, in addition to GDC 2011's classic postmortem series and a slew of other sessions from throughout the history of the Game Developers Conference.

The following video lectures are the newest highlights to be made available for free from GDC 2011:

- When Blizzard set out to create StarCraft II, the studio had to reinvent the rules of one of the most popular competitive games of all time. In "The Game Design of StarCraft II: Designing an E-Sport," lead designer Dustin Browder outlines the obstacles Blizzard had to overcome to make the game suitable for spectating and high-level competitive play.

- Riot Games' Tom Cadwell and Steve Snow discuss the development process behind the studio's hit MOBA title in "League of Legends Postmortem -- Beta, Launch and Beyond." Here, Cadwell and Snow "discuss the three major areas that were particularly challenging: Recruiting a team without a reputation or a product, interacting with an existing audience with large expectations, and organizing teams to be successful amidst the distractions of a live game."

- In "Strategy Games: The Next Move," a panel of strategy game experts discuss rising trends, overlooked innovations, and the overall trajectory of the strategy game genre. Speakers including writer Tom Chick, Civilization veteran Soren Johnson, Civilization 5 lead designer Jon Shafer, Robot Entertainment's Ian Fischer, and Blizzard's Dustin Browder discuss the implications of free-to-play, online persistence, and more to offer insight on where strategy games are headed.

As the group behind the leading worldwide gaming conference, GDC organizers remain committed to making the event's best current and historical lectures available for free to the global game community, and will continue to release new free content throughout 2011.

Full GDC Vault access is available to GDC 2011 All-Access Pass holders, speakers, and All-Access Pass buyers to other GDC events for the rest of 2011. (Subscribers having issues accessing content should contact GDC Vault admins.)

Individual Vault subscriptions not tied to All-Access passes are now available in a limited-edition Beta invite process -- those interested in signing up to be invited in on a first come, first served basis should visit the GDC Vault website.

In addition, game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company. More information on this option is available via viewing an online demonstration.

GDC organizers are also committed to making more archival content free for all during 2011, following a successful 'GDC 25 Chronicles' digitization project. GDC historian Jason Scott has signed on for the rest of 2011 to continue digitizing the extensive Game Developers Conference archives, with his 'Tales From The GDC Vault' series.

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“We couldn’t believe our eyes. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry,” said Eddie’s mother Malin Hägglund to local paper Västerbottenskuriren. Earlier this week the family had decided to have lunch at Swedish fast food chain Frasses in the Ersboda district of Umeå.

When Eddie opened his box to look for the regulation toy included in the meal he was happy to discover a sheet of temporary tattoos. It was when looking through these his parents were shocked to find a swastika among the tattoos. “Eddie is a huge fan of tattoos, but we thought this was a very strange tattoo for a child and that it was wrong of the shop to buy in this product,” said Malin Hägglund to the paper. 

According to news agency TT, the owners of Frasses have expressed regret over the incident and say that they believed the product had been imported from China and that the swastika had thus been included by mistake. 

The swastika, an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, is most commonly associated as a symbol of the Nazi party in Germany and was adopted as the state flag of Germany in the 1930s. It is now outlawed in the country if used as a symbol for neo-Nazism.

In eastern culture however the symbol features in a number of Asian languages and the word originally came from the Sanskrit word svastika, meaning any lucky or auspicious object. The Local’s attempts to reach the CEO and press spokesperson for Frasses have so far proved unsuccessful.

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EA is trying very hard to sell gamers on a service they don't seem to want, at least judging by comments online. The publisher has been offering sales on past games, early access to the Battlefield 3 beta for those who pre-order, and now we know that you'll be using EA's Origin service even if you buy the game at a physical retail location. The latest weapon is a simple one: if you pre-order Battlefield 3, you get a free game from a list of three.

A friend who had already pre-ordered the game was pleasantly surprised to receive the following e-mail, which he forwarded:

As a special thank you for pre-ordering Battlefield 3 early at Origin, we're offering you a bonus PC digital download game. Please apply the code below at the shopping cart to redeem one PC Digital version of one of our recommended shooter titles: Mass Effect 2, Dead Space 2 or Medal of Honor. The price will be reduced to $0 after applying the code at your shopping cart. Hurry—this offer is only good for the month of August, and is exclusive to Origin customers only. See below for more details.

That's not a bad deal, and it's my professional recommendation that you pick up Mass Effect 2 if you haven't already played it (although Medal of Honor is severely underrated if you're into military shooters). On the other hand, EA is beginning to sound like a pitch man on late-night television, screaming "but wait, there's more!" in an effort get you to take out your credit card and buy their game... through their service.

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Happy Monday all! Since I've cleaned up my old posts some, I've decided to revise some of my old freebies. Everyone seemed to really like Baby Boy, so that is the first kit that I decided to revamp! The kit contains 40 elements and 21 papers. Not all elements or papers are shown in the preview. Among the elements are beaded stars, bows, buttons, tags, frames, strings, cute little turtles, and more! The preview is linked to the store. While the Valentine's Sale is still going on, you can snag it for $2.79.

Here are some super cute layouts from my Creative Team. Click on the previews for a better look, and don't forget to check out their blogs this week for some great freebies! Don't forget to check Guest CT Shelby's blog for a freebie this week too!

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If we were matchmakers unstuck in time, we would introduce Chopin the composer to Chopin Script font. Nineteenth-century Monsieur Chopin is known for major innovation to the Polonaise, a low dance of Polish origin, while Twenty-first century Chopin Script is a digital descendent of the script face Polonaise created in 1970 by the late Phil Martin of Alphabet Innovations.

Chopin and Chopin Script have more than a word in common. True, one Chopin started as a child prodigy while the other bounced from Photo Type to TrueType to OpenType format, but they both possess the soaring qualities of diehard romantics and they are both multi-lingual, thanks to the font's inclusion of specialty characters that make setting possible in French and English. We can thank Quebec-based designer Claude Pelletier for that, and for digitalizing Martin's Polonaise beginning in 1999.

Pelletier also preserved the calligraphic pedigree of Polonaise. Nothing is vertical. Upper and lowercase characters flow to the right as if just coming off the pen, and more than one character sports the tiny upward flick of ink applied by aficionados of the English Roundhand lettering form also known as Copperplate Script.

A low x-height makes Chopin Script appear smaller than its set height. The characters display best at 24 points and up, allowing the thinner strokes to remain visible. The font includes full sets of upper and lowercase characters, numerals and punctuation, monetary and math symbols, and the aforementioned accented and diacritic vowel substitutes extending its use to more than one language.

Computer-formatted scripts always arrive with baggage. Type the word "Grass" in Chopin Script and you'll discover a work of art with the cap "G" tickling the belly of the "a". Type "Splendor in the Grass" and you'll encounter problems with uneven spacing between the "p to l" and "d to o" while the "l to e" and "t to h" connections don't quite flow. Digital fonts are made in a manner where micro-customization isn't possible unless hundreds of alternative characters are on offer. If the text application you are using doesn't offer manual kerning, keep an eye out for problem character pairs, especially if you are trying to simulate a hand-drawn feel.

Spacing problems aside, every font lover should have Pelletier's delicate script at the ready, if only for the beauty of setting words like "Howl" and "Moon" or writing a tasteful dinner invitation for that lovely new neighbor. No matter what comes your way, we say leave Arial at the office. Chopin Script is the perfect partner in the slow dance of romance.

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The Ambassador program that grants owners of the Nintendo 3DS 20 free downloadable games ends tonight at midnight. Handheld owners who connect to the Nintendo eShop by 11:59 p.m. ET tonight will get the free titles.

The games will come from the Virtual Console: 10 NES titles and 10 Game Boy Advance titles. The original Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda are among the games available under the program. The program was launched as a "thank-you" of sorts to consumers who purchased the 3DS. Starting tomorrow, the price of 3DS will drop from $250 to $170.

In a recent interview with Game Hunters, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime admitted missteps with the launch of 3DS, which has experienced slow sales thus far. "We needed to have key franchises and stronger first-party titles," Fils-Aime said.

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Today is the final day for current 3DS owners to register for Nintendo's 3DS Ambassador program – an initiative which was announced to try to soften the blow brought on by the company announcing a massive 3DS price drop just a few months after launch. As a way of making up to early adopters, head honcho Iwata himself has written a personal letter of apology to all 3DS owners, and Nintendo have decided the best way to prevent people rioting (well, actually, it may be a little bit too late for that - Ed) over the price drop is to give them 20 free games downloadable virtual console games. As you may expect, there's no catch, with the only condition for entry being that you access the shiny new eShop before midnight tonight to be registered automatically as a 3DS Ambassador (you can find out how to download and access the eShop here). Kind of makes you feel important...

The price drop is basically Nintendo's solution to the below-expectation sales of the 3DS in it's first few months. In fact, over in Nintendo's home country of Japan, a survey showed that people's number one reason for not buying the system was that it was deemed "too expensive". Even though the sales of the 3DS are comparable to those of the original DS' launch, Nintendo have decided to spur things along a bit by dropping the price it sells the systems to retailers at by a third. The good news is that this has led to yet another price war between retailers, with some stores slashing prices today, and some announcing they're going as low as £115 starting tomorrow.

The Ambassador promotion starts with ten NES games, which will be hitting the eShop on the 1st September, followed by ten Game Boy Advance games at the end of the year – although only half of them have been announced so far. The first half of the first batch of games you'll be able to loot yourself come 1st September includes these NES classics:

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Gentium is a typeface family designed to enable the diverse ethnic groups around the world who use the Latin, Cyrillic and Greek scripts to produce readable, high-quality publications. It supports a wide range of Latin- and Cyrillic-based alphabets.The design is intended to be highly readable, reasonably compact, and visually attractive. The additional ‘extended’ Latin letters are designed to naturally harmonize with the traditional 26 ones. Diacritics are treated with careful thought and attention to their use. Gentium also supports both polytonic and monotonic Greek. Gentium Plus now includes more extended Latin glyphs (Unicode 5.1), archaic Greek symbols, and full extended Cyrillic script support. Download the new Gentium Plus fonts here

The Gentium and Gentium Plus font families currently include only regular and italic faces, but Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic give a preview of what a whole range of new weights will eventually look like. The 'Basic' fonts only support a limited Latin character set (no Greek or Cyrillic). Gentium Book is a companion family to Gentium that is altogether slightly heavier, and better suited for some publishing needs. It supports only the Basic character set at present, but will eventually match the full Gentium character set. More info and download link here The Gentium font families are freely available and may be used by anyone at no cost. They are released under the SIL Open Font License, a free and open source license that permits modification and redistribution. Our hope is that it will stimulate literature production and elevate extended Latin alphabets to greater parity with the basic Latin alphabet. We also hope it will encourage other type designers to appreciate and support those fascinating and beautiful extra letters.

 

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Have you ever known about the existence of Nunavut? A small region in Canada with one of the lowest population rate of the world? Probably not. Only 0,01 people live there per km2, mostly Eskimo. The citizens of Nunabut speak four languages — French, English, Innuinaqtun and Inuktitut. Nothing spectacular so far, right?

Few years ago the government of the region has decided to design a new typeface to enable its 28.000 citizens to use all four languages in a uniform manner. The result is a beautiful, rich and professional sans-serif free font. The family includes a bold, heavy, italic, light and regular weights. Examples.

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The games industry is in the throes of its traditional summer drought, with new releases slowing to a trickle, forcing many players to return to previously played titles or – perish the thought – venture outside. Yet those saving money for the winter silly season could do worse than take a look at the wealth of free titles available.

There can be few better ways to avoid the sun's rays than to sit in a darkened room playing Valve's tactical shooter Team Fortress 2, relaunched as a free-to-play title on PC and Mac. It's hard to imagine a more charming and well-balanced multiplayer game. Its appealing art style – not a million miles from Disney/Pixar's The Incredibles – is a breath of fresh air in an arena rife with ultra-realistic guns and gore.

Smaller studios are also producing fascinating content: Sweatshop, funded by Channel 4 and developed by Brighton-based creative agency Littleloud, is a gently educational and oddly charming browser-based strategy game that tasks players with managing underpaid and overworked employees on a factory production line.

Other independently developed gems include Fotonica (Santa Ragione, PC/Mac), a hectic, first-person sprint through abstract environments, requiring dizzying leaps between wire-frame platforms; Dead Cyborg (Endi, PC), an impressively crafted and beautifully presented adventure; and Don't Take It Personally Babe, It Just Ain't Your Story (NaNoRenO, PC/Mac), an exceptional anime-styled visual novel dealing with sexuality in the internet age, penned by Ontario-based writer Christine Love.

In mobile circles, meanwhile, the latest trend is the "freemium" pricing model, with developers offering free downloads in the hope that satisfied customers will shell out for additional content – commonly in-game credits or unlockables that make progress quicker and easier. The addictive Monster Mayhem (Chillingo, iPhone) is one such title, with players using a variety of weapons to hold back advancing tides of zombies, werewolves and assorted menaces.

Relentless Software, the developer behind the well-liked Buzz! series, recently made its App Store debut with the terrific Quiz Climber (iPhone), with players competing against Facebook friends to answer as many multiple-choice questions in a row as possible. The element of one-upmanship makes this ruthlessly addictive. A description one could also apply to Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint (Zee 3, iPhone), which throws out the rulebook and benefits greatly from it, as well as a level of design polish all too rare among its mobile peers.

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