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Watch live streamers play developers at their own games for charity
Erin Robinson Swink, developer of the hand-painted space-physics game, Gravity Ghost, has a simple reason driving her passion for green energy and environmental advocacy: asthma. "I remember how awful it was needing an inhaler as a kid," she says. Air pollution -- driven in large part by burning coal -- contributed to her respiratory disease. Today, Robinson Swink is combining her love of game development and clean energy for a three-day event called Beat the Dev on Twitch. The show is live now, and it promises to feature developers behind Borderlands 2, Uncharted 3, Super Meat Boy, Octodad, Nuclear Throne, Journey, Darksiders II and 17 others playing their own games against a lineup of live-streamers. Donations made during the event will benefit The Sierra Club and its clean-air, green-energy advocacy efforts.
'Gravity Ghost,' a game that heals, heads to PlayStation 4
Gravity Ghost is currently in development for PlayStation 4, but it's already a success. It launched on Steam in January, offering physics-based platforming tucked inside of soothing, spiraling gameplay and wrapped in a touching story. Ivy Games founder Erin Robinson Swink of course hoped that people would enjoy Gravity Ghost, but reception to the game still surprises her five months after its release. She's mostly touched by the emotional reaction many players describe on the game's Steam forums. Gravity Ghost helps people deal with loss in a visceral way. "It's not a forum where I usually see people sharing personal details from their lives, but there are multiple posts like this," Robinson Swink says. "One reviewer said the game changed how he felt about his reaction to losing his grandfather.... Another ended their review with this: 'My mom died last year, and in some weird way, this helped me deal with that? I can't explain it, but it... well, did.' My jaw just dropped when I read those."
