Developed by Daylen Yang, Stockfish is a free and open-source chess app for Mac based on the Stockfish chess engine.

The app does a couple of interesting things: it’s Retina-ready and it can go full-screen, so you’ll enjoy a chess game on your MacBook Pro’s display without distractions. It supports two-player games and it’s got exporting capabilities and keyboard shortcuts. But more importantly, it comes with advanced chess analysis that lets the computer tell you who’s winning and calculate the best move. I’m fascinated by the technological premise: the app can let you choose to optimize analysis for maximum performance so that more cores will be used to compute chess analyses; even the amount of memory to use can be adjusted. It should be pretty impressive on a new Mac Pro.

Stockfish is free on the Mac App Store and open-source. The Stockfish engine is available here.

From Lee Bradley’s profile of Simogo at Eurogamer:

Go back a decade, however, and the art, design and audio half of Simogo wasn’t even interested in making games. In the early 2000s, while working as an animator on movies and commercials, Simon Flesser felt that games were in a pretty uninteresting place. Then, in 2004, the Nintendo DS arrived with its touch-sensitive screen and a new set of inputs. His imagination was lit.

I loved Year Walk last year, but I still haven’t played DEVICE 6. I remember how different Another Code felt to me when it came out in 2005, and Simogo’s games have the same effect – they are uniquely designed for a platform and a multitouch screen, rather than just tweaked for them.

Great piece by Jordan Kahn on iOS 7 game controllers:

The launch for the first few controllers to hit the market was rushed, developers are disappointed and still trying to catch up, and manufacturers are limited in pricing, features, and quality due to Apple’s MFi program requirements. What does Apple have to do to overcome a rocky start to its game controller program which is supposed to control quality? And how are manufacturers limited by Apple in building better controllers at a fair price? We’ve dug into Apple’s MFi program and talked to developers and companies building the controllers to find out.

According to Kahn’s story, Apple rushed game controllers to market with dev kits that were made available to developers a month before public availability. There are several other issues of device fragmentation (why couldn’t Apple pick one controller spec instead of two?) and supplier requirements that suggest game controllers have been an afterthought for Apple thus far.

I had moderate hope for game controllers, but the launch has been disappointing. As I wrote in June:

Will Apple ever develop a culture and appreciation for gaming as a medium, not just an App Store category? While others (namely Microsoft) are trying to add more media and entertainment layers on top of existing game infrastructures, Apple is in the opposite situation — running the largest media store and selling devices that are increasingly used as gaming machines, but that still lack the catalog and support of dedicated home consoles.

Does Apple understand gaming? As a platform provider, do they need to?

Read the details in Kahn’s piece, and compare it to the development of a controller from a company that knows gaming – Valve. Apple sees iOS 7 game controllers as accessories and not an integral part of the experience, which, in a way, may be for the best after all.

To those of us raised in the world before social media, it is a given that the “real” world is the one in which you sit in traffic on your way to pick up the dry cleaning. Our connection to this world is the chief measure of our sanity. But if we’re honest about it, reality is hardly so simple now. When a guy like George Yao can plow through an anesthetizing day of mortgage regulations only to return at night to a digital fraternity where he is loved and celebrated, with friends who share his daily experience, who’s to say which is real and which is illusory? If a game can make you famous, if it can yield genuine friendships and even a new career, then why shouldn’t it become, at least for a time, the epicenter of your life?

From the NYTimes’ profile of Jorge Yao, a former top player of Clash of Clans. See also: the WSJ’s article on Supercell from October.

Great picks (I have to buy 868-HACK now). I particularly liked Leigh’s take on Ridiculous Fishing:

Pixelly-looking indie game with distinctive physics-oriented mechanic and chippy music goes gangbusters. Not news, anymore. But it’s hard to feel blase about Vlambeer’s success when they keep trying so hard to pay it forward. Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail is a genuine pillar of his community, sharing thoughts on competition and pitching in writing, making the Presskit() tool to help fellow devs reach the media, and showing care for colleagues in public spaces. The success of Ridiculous Fishing, at a fixed $3 price point that had no intention of experimenting with popular free-to-play models, became an important example of how the industry mustn’t leap to assume that micropayments always lead to a more valuable experience for players.

Aside from being a story with a happy ending, Ridiculous Fishing is just a good iOS game. If I had to compile a list of my must-have iOS games for 2013, Ridiculous Fishing would be my top pick.