Gamasutra Expert Blogs: From Hotline Miami to XBLIG's death

In highlights from Gamasutra's Expert Blogs, industry notables write about diverse topics, including the death of XBLIG, why Hotline Miami is an important games, advancing social games. 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 RIP Xbox Live Indie Games (Robert Boyd) Robert Boyd looks at last week's Top 20 best-selling XBLIG titles, a list that paints a bleak picture of the Xbox Live Indie Games service. Advancing social games (Josh Bycer) Josh Bycer hopes to answer the latest million dollar question: How can you convince regular gamers to play social games? Sometimes, it feels good to fail (Tom Curtis) After playing hours and hours of Firaxis' XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Gamasutra news editor Tom Curtis has come to appreciate games that allow, and even encourage their players to fail. Why Hotline Miami is an important game (Rami Ismail) Hotline Miami isn't so much a game about violence as it is a game about walking back to your car, wading through the bodies of those you killed for no other reason than that someone told you to. Survival horror, then and now (Luis Guimaraes) Luis Guimaraes provides an analysis on classic survival horror games not by what they objectively are, but by what the hardcore fans saw in them years ago, sticking with most of them until modern days.