In this round-up, Gamasutra highlights some of the notable jobs posted in its industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Sega of America, 2K Marin and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site’s daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, ’serious games’, independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

Demiurge Studios: Senior Game Designer
“Demiurge Studios is seeking a talented, experienced Senior Designer to help lead our internal design team. A focus on communication, organization, iteration and polish are all critical attributes for our ideal candidate. Prior experience leading a team of designers and a demonstrable portfolio of game/level design across different genres are requirements for this position. If you can deconstruct reflex; if you can engineer adrenaline; if you can architect fun – we want to speak with you.”

Rainbow Studios: Senior Producer
“Rainbow Studios, a subsidiary of THQ, is one of the largest video game developers in the Southwest and develops premier original and licensed titles for current and next generation console systems. Rainbow’s video game history includes the critically acclaimed Motocross Madness PC series, the award-winning ATV Offroad Fury, top-selling Splashdown, the highly praised MX franchise, the blockbuster Disney-Pixar Cars titles, and the critically acclaimed Wii title Deadly Creatures, along with the soon-to-be-released MX vs. ATV Reflex.”

Relic Entertainment: Environment Artist
“Your friends will call in the middle of the night, cursing you. When you see them, they’ll wear sunglasses to conceal their bloodshot eyes, and they’ll be alone, because their romantic interests left them without even texting goodbye. They won’t be able to stop playing. It’s a terrible fate, but I’m afraid it’s what we want. And we need your help.”

Sega of America: Senior Online Interactive Developer
“The Senior Online Interactive Developer will design and develop interactive online content including web sites, banners, promotions, games and other applications for the Sega family of web sites and other initiatives. The Senior Online Interactive Developer will be a part of the Online and Community teams as well as collaborate closely with cross-functional teams within the organization. This person will also manage staff and resources as necessary.”

2K Marin: Engine Programmer
“2K Games seeks the talents of a seasoned and passionate programmer who enjoys a collaborative and creative work environment and is looking to work with like minded professionals to create a truly amazing game. Improve, maintain, and optimize the engine. Contribute to the design of a wide variety of enhancements to the Unreal Engine.”

To browse hundreds of similar jobs, and for more information on searching, responding to, or posting game industry-relevant jobs to the top source for jobs in the business, please visit Gamasutra’s job board now.

Smart App Store shoppers can pick up a lot of good games on the cheap this weekend. Discounted titles include Gameloft’s wartime FPS Modern Combat: Sandstorm, the point-and-click adventure port Beneath a Steel Sky: Remastered, and Vogster’s robotic RTS Robocalypse: Mobile Mayhem.

• Modern Combat: Sandstorm ($6.99 -> $4.99)
• Robocalypse: Mobile Mayhem ($2.99 -> $0.99)

• PDC World Darts Championship ($4.99 -> $0.99)
• Pool Star Online with Earl Strickland ($1.99 -> $0.99)

• Beneath a Steel Sky: Remastered ($4.99 -> $2.99)
• Yumsters! 2 ($0.99 -> Free)

• Sentinel: Mars Defense ($0.99 -> Free)
• Darkest Fear ($3.99 -> $0.99)

[Credit goes to Cheap Ass Gamer for reporting many of this weekend's featured titles. All sales are temporary, and could end at any point during the weekend.]

Storm8 publishers a lineup of popular multiplayer online role-playing games for the iPhone and iPod Touch, including World War, iMobsters, and Vampires Live.

The suit, filed by Washington resident Michael Turner, alleges that Storm8 engaged in the practice of “accessing, collecting, and transmitting without notice or consent the wireless telephone numbers of iPhone users who download Storm8’s games to their iPhones via Apple’s App Store.”

Furthermore: “The wireless telephone numbers of users’ phones are not used or necessary to play any of Storm8’s games, yet Storm8 has written the software for all its games in such a way that it automatically accesses, collects, and transmits the wireless telephone number of each iPhone user who downloads any Storm8 game. It does so without disclosing this to any user before or after the fact.”

Storm8 acknowledged this behavior in August, claiming that any harvesting action was the result of a bug that had been fixed in a software update.

The suit, however, alleges that no such activity could take place as the result of a programming error. “Storm8’s characterizations of its practice of harvesting phone numbers as a ‘bug’ and an ‘oversight’ are false,” the lawsuit reads. “Storm8 could not have accidentally harvested its users’ phone numbers — it used very specific and specialized software code to do so.”

Storm8 has not responded to Boing Boing’s requests for comment.

OpenFeint Gold will spotlight one OpenFeint title each month, and will promote the chosen game extensively on partner websites and on the OpenFeint dashboard across all supported games.

The first title to get the OpenFeint Gold treatment is Subatomic Studios’ acclaimed tower defense title Fieldrunners. Fieldrunners has previously been recognized by Apple as an App Store favorite, and recently saw a release on the PlayStation Portable as part of the PSPminis program.

“I am personally very excited to bring this program to our game development community,” said Aurora Feint founder and CEO Jason Citron. “When we launched Aurora Feint: The Beginning, on July 11 last year, I was delighted to get recognition from all over including game of the year on the iPhone and this is our way of recognizing other incredible quality games.”

Fieldrunners will be promoted by OpenFeint throughout the month of November. Developers may apply for OpenFeint Gold candidacy beginning in December.

The anthropomorphic heroes, demons and Nazis that litter the world of musician Daniel Johnston’s marker drawings seem like the perfect fodder for video games.

Touching upon ideas of alienation, capitalism, distorted ‘Americana’ and over-muscled dudes punching each other really, really hard, his artwork — swathed in the psycho-surrealism that’s been prevalent since the early years of 8-bit Japanese development — is still rooted in the adolescent male fantasies that have populated gaming for years. The transition into interactive entertainment almost seems obvious.

Artist Peter Franco and developer Steve Broumley [flanking Johnston in the picture above] agreed. Friends and acquaintances (via Peter’s wife, who works directly with Daniel and his family), the ex-Midway developers released Hi, How Are You?, a game featuring the art and music of Johnston, in late September.

The game, featuring old school puzzle mechanics reminiscent of Marble Madness, has seen generally positive reviews, the most glowing of which have surprisingly been from mainstream outlets like The New York Times.

FingerGaming spoke with developers Steven and Peter immediately after their meeting with Daniel in Austin to celebrate the launch of the game. We talked about everything from their decision to develop for iPhone to the surprising ease of pitching a game based on the work of someone that doesn’t even own a computer.

And then… we spoke to Daniel.

Part One: The Developers

How did you guys come together on this project?

Pete: Steve and I have been making games for over 30 years combined. Our careers first crossed paths at Iguana Studios here in Austin, TX in the late 90s. Since then we have worked together at several companies, including Acclaim, and Midway Games.

My wife, Heather Olson had been working with the Johnston family for over 5 years, helping promote Daniel’s art by creating art prints, t-shirts and collaborating on PR events around the Austin area. She had been talking with Dick Johnston (Daniel’s brother) for a while about someday doing a video game consisting of Daniel’s art and music.

Steve and I left Midway several months apart and we each started our own indie development studio. Steve started the tech oriented Smashing Studios and I started the creative DrFunFun. At the beginning of the year we both decided it was the perfect time to join forces and develop a game based on one of our favorite esoteric and reclusive artists.

Was Hi, How Are You always intended as a vehicle for Daniel’s work?

Pete: Absolutely. The intention was to try to figure out a way to combine Daniel’s music and art in a way that hadn’t been done with any other popular music figure. We brainstormed a few different game play ideas, but we always intended to put Daniel’s music and art front and center. His universe is full of unusual and bizarre characters that beg to be brought to life.

The intention artistically was to bring Daniel’s marker art to life. If you’re familiar with Daniel’s marker art, you’ll see the vivid (sometimes garish) colors, the rough outlines and the primitive drawing style. Those are all things that we strove to maintain. The “cut-out” style cinemas were also done in a fashion that we feel resonates with Daniel’s lo-fi world.

Why the choice of platform?

Steve: The Smashing Studios tech involved behind the game was developed on the PC with cross platform support built in from day one – in fact we can edit and play the full game on PC using an Xbox360 controller.

Our initial thought was to develop the game for Xbox 360-Live-Arcade (and this is something we may still pursue in the future), but both Pete and I are avid iPhone/iPod-Touch gamers and we noticed that there aren’t too many indie titles as unique as ours that exist on iPhone. So we thought – what the heck – let’s give it a try and bring something new to the platform!

So why was this Marble Madness-esque game play system such an appropriate framework for Jeremiah and co?

Steve: I’ve always been a big fan of 80’s classic arcade games such as Marble Madness, Q-Bert, Frogger etc so I naturally gravitate towards that kind of old school game design. In addition I really like physics driven game play and the tech theory behind it — yes, I’m a big math geek. So from a tech stand point I attempted to combine all these different flavors.

Now one of the hardest things to do well on the iPhone (especially for a 3d game like this) was of course the controls – what works well with two analog sticks such as those found on Xbox 360 controller, does not translate very well to an accelerometer/touch screen as on iPhone. Pete and tried out a ton of control schemes before we settled on the current implementation.

Pete: We definitely approached it from the aspect of trying to make a fun game first and foremost. Having developed lots of games between the two of us, we have learned the lesson that you can have the best intentions in the world, but if the game isn’t fun, no one is going to care.

So we took inspiration in games that we found to be fun and casual, and that would translate well to the iPhone. That’s how we landed on our game style, which is a bit of “Mario-meets-Qbert-meets-Marble Madness”. Marble Madness itself almost seemed to be a Daniel Johnston inspired game with some of its bizarre enemies and surreal situations.

And you mentioned an ongoing discussion with the family? Daniel is so famously tech-averse — was it at all difficult selling them on the merits of a video game?

Pete: I think ordinarily it would have been pretty difficult. However, Daniel’s brother Dick ended up trusting us a lot largely in part due to the years they’ve collaborated with my wife. We are Daniel Johnston fans and this project came from a sincere place. I think once we got started, they could see that. So ever since then, the tech was merely looked at as an exciting new way to spread some of Daniel’s overflowing creativity.

How involved was he in the development process? I ask because he’s been prodded a few times and his answers range from completely unaware to enthusiastic.

Pete: We’ve worked closely with the Johnston’s in the early phases of the project. The Johnston’s started by giving us unrestricted access to all of Daniel’s artwork to pour through. This was at first overwhelming. His art is filled with a myriad of characters that all played a role in the fight between good and evil.

So we turned to a great book that Daniel’s brother, Dick Johnston had given Heather called “The Life, Art, & Music of Daniel Johnston” by Tarssa Yazdani & Don Goede. It is essentially an encyclopedia of all of Daniel’s characters, concepts and motifs that he uses in his art. Studying that book helped ensure that the fiction we created in our game fit in line with his ideas and concepts.

Regarding Daniel himself, when we showed him the game several months ago, he thought it was a riot when he saw Satan come down from the sky and turn poor Jeremiah into a frog. When we showed it to him again just today, he said the same thing as if he was seeing it for the first time.

That’s pure Daniel Johnston.

Part Two: Daniel Johnston

I spoke to Steve and Peter. They were really excited to hang out with you and said you were impressed with the game they’ve made.

The game?

Your game. The iPhone game based on your art.

Yeah, it’s like a little game that you hold in your hand. Very cool. It’s pretty complicated, actually. I also had toys made, last year. They want to do more! [laughs]

And someone wants to make shoes.

Have you been pleased with the positive reaction? It’s been written about on the Guardian and New York Times websites.

The New York Times?!? Really? Wow. Wait… you mean the album?

No, no. The ‘little iPhone game’.

Oh, good! I didn’t know. What did they say?

I… don’t recall exactly. I think the tone was pretty positive.

Good, good.

It features your artwork and music, so it’s very much a tribute to you.

Yeah.

But otherwise, it’s a traditional, sort of throwback puzzle game.

Uh-huh.

…I guess.

Well…

I don’t have a computer, I need to get one. I want to get one for at least my dad, so he can use it.

Anyway, do you play games?

Well, there’s a few. [Galactic Invaders] and those big, 3D dimensional games. Air Force and Army games are my favorite. The Terminator games are a lot of fun. I was watching one one time, and it had people standing in front of you and off to the side and you had shoot stuff but, I didn’t care. I was shooting my own people. Gunning them down. [laughs]

Did…

I remember seeing a Journey game at Astroworld, back when I worked there. [laughs]

[laughs] Awesome. Did you ever play pinball as a kid?

No, I could never figure out a pinball machine. A jukebox machine, yeah.

How about the Guitar Hero and Rock Band stuff, have you ever been exposed to any of that? You’d like the new Beatles: Rock Band.

No, I’ve never seen any of that. I know they released the albums again, I want those.

Apparently Kurt Cobain is wearing your Jeremiah shirt in the new Guitar Hero.

Again?

The little digital Kurt Cobain, in the video game.

Oh… neat. That’s so cool. That’s wild. I love his music.

You’ve obviously been a passive participant in the development process, but would you be willing to play a larger role in the creation of future games?

Oh yeah. Well, some of the stuff they’re planning to do, uh… I don’t know what to tell them, how I would help them. I think the only way they can make a game about me would be to make one of those huge arcade games. That would be cool, in five dimensions that the Terminators can see in.

Every Thursday, FingerGaming rounds up the most popular free iPhone and iPod Touch applications, as current that day on the iTunes App Store. This week’s top titles are:

1. Eliminate Pro
2. Real Racing GTI
3. World War
4. Rat on the Run
5. Super KO Boxing 2 Free
6. Family Guy: Uncensored Free
7. Fling Free
8. Hangman Classic Free
9. Spikey’s Bounce Around
10. Link4 Online

ngmoco’s free-to-play FPS Eliminate Pro has replaced Firemint’s Real Racing GTI as the App Store’s top download in the Games category. A free points promotion puts Storm8’s World War at third place in today’s rankings, while Donut Games’ Rat on the Run drops to fourth.

Glu contributes a pair of top-ten titles this week with its free demo versions of Super KO Boxing 2 and Family Guy Uncensored. Fling Free falls from fourth place to seventh in this week’s chart, as Spikey’s Bounce Around debuts between Hangman Classic and Link4 Online at ninth place.

Last month’s iPhone Game Jam saw the creation of several interesting game concepts, and the creative team at Riptide Games liked their entry enough to flesh it out for a full App Store release. Gravity Sling is available as a free initial download, with the game’s later levels unlocked through an in-app purchase.

In Gravity Sling, players will use the gravitational pull of nearby planets to guide a lost astronaut back to his space shuttle. Different planets will have unpredictable effects on inertia, making for a new challenge with each level.

The first 15 levels of Gravity Sling are playable for free, and an additional 30 levels can be purchased for 99 cents. Riptide plans to release additional level packs in the future, along with an update that will include a level editor.

Former Bullfrog dev and Populous designer Glenn Corpes has put the finishing touches on his high-speed multi-terrain iPhone racer, originally revealed back in May. Ground Effect ($3.99) is now available for purchase from the iTunes App Store.

Ground Effect puts players in the pilot’s seat of a terrain-skimming ekranoplan vehicle. Each of the game’s 14 tracks pits players against seven rival vehicles in a race to cross a series of checkpoints located across land and sea.

Ground Effect features 10 different vehicles to choose from and over 70 square kilometers of racing terrain. A video taken from a recent preview version is below.

95 percent of Gameloft’s sales during the third quarter came from mobile game revenue; the company releases games on phones, smartphones and other mobile platforms like Nintendo’s DSi. The remaining 5 percent of its sales, it says, are related to sales of console games.

In the mobile gaming space in particular, Gameloft says it’s seeing rapid growth, with revenues from the segment up 17 percent during the year’s first nine months — largely due to successful iPhone titles and to strong performance of its Java and Brew games, it says.

The company’s revenues are fairly evenly distributed across North America, Europe and the rest of the world, with contribution percentages at 31 percent, 38 percent and 31 percent respectively. Notably, Gameloft saw its strongest growth in other markets, with third quarter revenues up 29 percent in Asia and South America.

“In the long term, Gameloft is in an ideal position to benefit from the rapid development of digitally distributed video games on mobile phones and consoles, as well as from the major innovations introduced by companies such as Apple, Nokia and Google,” said the company in a statement.

[This news item was written by Leigh Alexander and originally appeared at FingerGaming sister site Gamasutra.]

Few visual novel games are available in the English language, either, giving North American gamers little first-hand experience with the genre. Thanks to the ease of publishing in the App Store, however, visual novels have flourished on the iPhone. The platform has hosted ports of successful PC games like Gift and Memories Off, and many titles are available for purchase in North America, though they often lack English language support.

Daidai Inc’s My Neighbor Girl, released today, is one of the App Store’s few visual novels to feature a full English translation. Even more remarkably, it also includes English dubbing for the dialog sequences — and it’s drop-dead hilarious.

Before I get into that, though, let’s cover the basics. My Neighbor Girl is a fairly standard stat-raising game, similar in concept to Konami’s Tokimeki Memorial series or the Princess Maker games. You’re a junior-year high school student (or a “third grade of high schooler,” as the game puts it), and to your surprise and delight, the cute girl who sits next to you in your homeroom has asked you to help her study. Eeeee! Her name is Mana, and she’s, like, totally into you.

Gameplay begins after each class day, during which neither you nor Mana learn anything. Mana will do all of her learning at the library, with your coaching. You’re kind of a crappy teacher, though — your “coaching” involves telling Mana to study a certain subject, after which she’ll do her best to learn something.

Mana’s stats will rise faster if she focuses on a particular subject that catches her interest. If you can read her interests well enough on a daily basis, her “love” meter will gradually rise, and then…well, the demo ended before I could find out, but seeing as how the game is rated for ages 17 and up due to “frequent and intense sexual content or nudity,” I have at least an idea. Given Apple’s standards for content, though, you shouldn’t expect anything explicit.

The gameplay may be typical of the life simulation genre, but My Neighbor Girl is unique in that its English translation was created in-house by its Japanese developer. The result is as awkward as you might expect, with bad grammar and spelling mistakes available in plenty.

The best part is that Mana speaks her lines aloud. Word-for-word. Phonetically.

Set the in-game voices to Japanese, and Mana will be a typical squeaky-voiced anime schoolgirl. Switch the voices to English, and suddenly you’re being seduced by Cooking Mama. There are few joys in life that compare to hearing a professional voice actress stumble through lines like, “Oh, it is time of closing a library.”

My Neighbor Girl’s appeal extends beyond the humor factor, though. It also offers rare insight into what makes the visual novel genre compelling. Even with the shaky English translation, it’s still fun to watch Mana’s stats go up, and there’s always a hint of suspense in the moment before you find out whether your daily lessons are a success.

Gamers outside of Japan are given few opportunities to experience visual novels. Thanks to the iPhone and My Neighbor Girl, North Americans are finally able to catch a glimpse of what makes an obscure genre such a phenomenon, while enjoying a few laughs along the way.

The full version of My Neighbor Girl is available for $9.99. A free Lite version is also available.