Gamasutra expert blogs: From Amnesia to rental cars

In highlights from Gamasutra's Expert Blogs, industry notables write about diverse topics, including reflections on indie hit Amnesia from the game's designer, interface lessons from a rental car, and more. In our weekly Best of Expert Blogs column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game development community who maintain Expert Blogs on Gamasutra. Member Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while the invitation-only Expert Blogs are written by development professionals with a wealth of experience to share. We hope that both sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information about the blogs, check out the latest official posting guidelines. Here are the top blogs for the week: This Week's Standout Expert Blogs Amnesia - Two years later (Thomas Grip) Two years have now passed since Frictional Games released Amnesia: The Dark Descent (pictured). The studio's Thomas Grip shares some thoughts on sales, piracy, modding, and the future of the company. On business decisions for indie games (Shay Pierce) Shay Pierce applies a classic (and important) quote from Jon Blow to give some perspective on the current debate surrounding Steam and Greenlight, and adds a few thoughts of his own about the rapidly-changing landscape of indie games. The recipe for good AI (Jon Shafer) Former Civilization lead designer Jon Shafer looks at how to put together a good AI, from a game design perspective. An interview with Michael Schrage, Rolling Stone's first video game journalist (Steve Fulton ) Steve Fulton speaks with one of the pioneers of video game journalism, Michael Schrage, Rolling Stone's first writer covering the industry. Interface (and other) game design lessons from a rental car (Lewis Pulsipher) Recent experiences with a rental car brought home to Lewis Pulsipher the importance of familiarity in the game interface. The word "intuitive" is often used in connection with interfaces. As far as he can make out, intuitive in this context just means "familiar."