It’s only a matter of time before the benefits of web 2.0 are recognized and adopted by the games industry, and those times they are a coming. Kongregate is a flash games hub with social networking-style community features allowing game developers to connect and interact with players and players to easily connect with and play against their friends. Developers are free and welcome to add their own games to Kongregate (great for online RPG, RTS and casino games developers)and are even compensated via shares of any microtransactions or advertising revenue while keeping full rights to their games. A great start to the future of casual social gaming.

Read more: Kongregate

Garage Games recently announced the new 1.5 release of the Torque Game Engine, every indie game hacker’s dream engine come true. TGE 1.5′s major new features include the popular Torque Lighting Kit integrated into the package, oodles of updates and optimizations for the MAC OS X platform and the inclusion of the handy 3D visualization tool, ShowTool Pro. The lighting kit is an exciting addition, as it was previously a third-party add on, the lighting kit as been re-factored and updated to better integrate into TGE and gives users a quick and easy way to integrate more complex lighting into their projects. Dynamic lighting, dynamic light blending on terrains and major updates to the TGE waterblock system are a good good thing. The upgrade isn’t free unfortunately, but, hey, it’s the first time Garage Games has asked owners to pay for an upgrade in 6 years, so, cut ‘em some slack. They are offering current customers a good upgrade deal, so there’s no reason NOT to upgrade developers!

Read more: Torque Game Engine 1.5 available now

Independant game developer Wolfgang Deutsch has posted a thought-provoking rant over at his games and software development blog, On Programming, taking the industry and more specifically, programmers within the industry, to task over their seeming lack of appreciation for quality coding practices. As one would expect from a blog about coding practices and software development, coders take the brunt of the rant for ignoring proper coding practices within their implemented code and for many times simply substituting hacks in-place of actual tested code. Also included is a stern warning for producers to pay more attention to their project’s souce code, keeping an eye out for apathetic or just plain pathetic comments or notes explaining hacks to the source that just may end up in the final product. Though I’ve heard many excuses from many conferences, blogs and presentations on what ails the gaming industry, this is honestly the first time I’ve heard a rant against the coding practices of the industry’s developers. I have to admit, though many points in Deutsch’s post do ring with some truth to my ears (er, eyes), I think these are but some of the many problems that ail the mainstream gaming industry.

I’ll end this with a random quote from Wolfgang’s rant on the lack of quality coding practices within the games industry..

The real reason for exploding costs in game development is incompetent software developers. I am sorry to say. It’s not the big, all encompassing, unrelenting and unchangeable advancement of technology and refinement of consumer taste and expectations, neither is it those “risk averse” publishers who won’t finance your creative idea. No, it is simply incompetence. Our skill in devising reliable and flexible software architectures is, to put it mildly, severely lacking.

Read more: Game dev rants about the lack of quality coding standards within the industry

Digg has become a powerhouse in the social linking world and with that power comes many imitators, some good, many bad. We’re happy to have found a good one, recently released and covering game development and the games industry only. Registered users are able to add and vote on stories from around the games industry, from technical talks to gossipy blogosphere rumours. Best wishes on a job well done DevBump.

Read more: DevBump – A Digg-like system for game developers

Those Rockstar fans in or around San Diego on September the 28th will be lucky enough to see a presentation sponsored by Rockstar Games and IGDA San Diego, titled, “The Characters of Table Tennis“. Wolfgang Engel, author and senior developer will discuss the real-time graphic algorithms used in Table Tennis, as well as the shaders used to mimic skin, sweat, eyes, eyelashes, cloth and the various hair-types. The event will take place Thursday, September 28th at Qualcomm Auditorium in San Diego, California.

Read more: Wolfgang Engel presents the characters of Rockstar’s Table Tennis

The indie gaming world was abuzz after Microsoft announced it’s independent and student game development tool, XNA Game Studio Express, allowing aspiring game creators the ability to begin developing their own games for Windows XP and Vista at no charge. The most exciting bit of news from that announcement was the ability for game creators to develop for the Xbox 360 console starting this holiday season 2006 as part of what MS are calling the XNA Creators Club. This will be a subscription-based service, requiring a yearly subscription of $99, a low fee for any student or bedroom coder who wants to see their creation running on an Xbox 360. To follow that up today, Microsoft has announced the beta release of XNA Game Studio Express for Windows XP and Vista, leading up to the final release at the end of this year with XNA Game Studio Professional launching Spring 2007. Coinciding with today’s beta release, GarageGames has announced the enrollment program for their Torque X beta program, which will include both the Torque Game Builder engine and the Torque Shader Engine, which were developed in conjunction with XNA Game Studio Express.

Read more: Microsoft releases Game Studio Express beta | Garage Games