Gamasutra Member Blogs: From designer-friendly programming to the hardest mobile game

[In highlights from Gamasutra's Member Blogs, our bloggers write about diverse topics, such as companies taking advantage of game jams to analyze new talent, the drawbacks of being indie, and more.] Member Blogs can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while invitation-only Expert Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- are written by selected development professionals. We hope that our blog sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information, check out the official posting guidelines. This Week's Standout Member Blogs Designer-friendly programming 101 (Clarence Simpson) Gameplay programmers are the conduit between design and programming, argues Clarence Simpson. If you are one, make sure to follow a few simple, engine-agnostic rules to manage the technical realities of game development while also keeping your game designers happy. Neuroscience in video games - Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Sebastian Alvarado) TNeuroscientist and Ph.D. candidate, Ian Mahar, discusses some of the neuroscience seen in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Play testing a game design the low fidelity way (Chris Khoo) Recent missteps during development forced Chris Khoo to re-evaluate the core game activity design. Learn how Chris Khoo and his team's low fidelity play tests helped firm up the design and instill deeper confidence. Did we make the hardest mobile game ever? (Alex Nino) After analyzing the Traffic Wonder leaderboard, Alex Nino and his team found out that the game could the hardest game on the app store. DOA: Why I Am Alive Fails to Make Your Pulse Race (Nick Masercola) I Am Alive has a lot of interesting ideas, but Nick Masercola believes that poor design decisions rob the game of the emotional heft it wants to have.