Local game studio Spry Fox made Triple Town, an ingenious matching game for Kindle, Facebook, and Google+. Then alleged game designers Marc Tardif (formerly of Gearbox Software) and Tom Mustaine (formerly of Ritual Entertainment) at Escalation Studios in Dallas ripped it off, including its monetization strategy, and published it as Yeti Town for iOS. Their reward: acquisition by global casual publisher 6waves Lolapps. It’s sad to see thieves and copycats like these guys at Escalation Studios rewarded for their treachery.

Yeti Town, 6waves Lolapps' first iPhone game, looks terribly familiar

Yeti Town, we know you from somewhere. Ah-ha! You look just like a Kindle-turned-Facebook (and Google+) game we know, Triple Town. It's no wonder that

One year ago my friend Ray and I said, “Hey, why not adapt Sesame Street into an interactive Kinect TV show?” He and I wrote a proposal and it happened. This is why I’m working for Microsoft: because sometimes the shortest distance between a big idea and a shipping product is an enormous corporation willing to bankroll creative people.

Microsoft's Sesame Street team-up

Interactive episodes of Sesame Street are being developed by its creators in conjunction with Microsoft.

In case you haven’t heard, Arc Dream is releasing my book Delta Green: Strange Authorities next month. It collects all my Delta Green horror fiction from over the years in one fat volume. I’m really glad to get this stuff back into print.

Arc Dream Publishing Presents ‘Delta Green: Strange Authorities’ by John Scott Tynes

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ARC DREAM PUBLISHING PRESENTS ‘DELTA GREEN: STRANGE AUTHORITIES’ Coming January 2012: A Collection of the Award-Winning Cthulhu Mythos Horror Fiction of John Scott Tynes 21 December 2011…

Microsoft Studios has shipped our first iOS game, Kinectimals. We also shipped My Xbox LIVE for iOS where you can manage friends, messages, review and compare achievements, and modify your avatar on the go. I’m really glad to see us going where the gamers are instead of being restricted by orthodoxy.

Microsoft Releases First iPad, iPhone Game

At long last, the temptation to develop games for a rival mobile platform was too much for Microsoft. Kinectimals is Microsoft's first game for Apple's iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch family.

This year’s Humble Indie Bundle of great indie games is live. Spend a few bucks to benefit the developers and charities alike. It’s a really great set of titles that you get on PC, Mac, and Linux including Steam download keys for everything. Fantastic!

The Humble Indie Bundle #4 (pay what you want and help charity)

Pay what you want for a collection of awesome games, and help support two charities. All of the games are DRM-free and support Mac, Windows, and Linux.

For fifteen bucks, you get both the printed and PDF versions of The Unspeakable Oath 18, 19, and 20 — the revived version of my old Call of Cthulhu gaming magazine. That’s a massive discount so if you want to catch up on what we’re doing with the magazine these days, this deal is your best chance.

The Unspeakable Oath Bundle | Loot!

My friends at Xbox LIVE Arcade are sponsoring a new award for the Independent Games Festival. The XBLA Prize awards a publishing contract and funding to release the winning game on LIVE Arcade. I’m glad to see them reaching out to the indie community in a new way.

Gamasutra – News – IGF Announces Multi-Year Partnership With Microsoft For 'XBLA Prize'

IGF organizers have announced a multi-year partnership with Microsoft that will give one Independent Games Festival entrant a guaranteed, funded first-party publishing slot on Xbox Live Arcade every year.

I took the plunge this morning and removed Kotaku from my newsreader. I’d already winnowed down my daily gaming news sites to just Kotaku and Gamasutra, and at this point Kotaku posts so much stuff every day that I don’t feel like it’s worth keeping up with. Particularly given that my current focus is making games for four-year-olds, learning about the latest developments in hardcore games just doesn’t feel like a priority.

Gamasutra brings me more good news: my XBLA game Full House Poker, released early this year, has crossed the 400,000 player mark. I think we’re a lock for bestselling XBLA game of 2011. This puts me in my happy place.

Gamasutra – News – In-Depth: Xbox Live Arcade Sales Analysis, October 2011

Our examination of October 2011's Xbox Live Arcade debuts includes charts and Leaderboard data showing the performance of titles like Orcs Must Die! and NBA Jam: On Fire Edition.

Gamasutra wrote up part of my talk at NYU Poly yesterday. They left out the parts about Pirates of the Burning Sea and Full House Poker, but given that I was talking about character culling to reduce lag and incompatible NAT scenarios respectively, I can’t say that I blame them.

Gamasutra – News – Microsoft's Tynes Helps Kids Kinect With Project Columbia Prototypes

In a fascinating lecture, Microsoft's John Tynes shared the challenges in prototyping child-focused Project Columbia's Kinect UI, and told students a yen for problem-solving is essential to game development.