Game Developer (website)

Game Developer (known as Gamasutra until 2021)[1] is a website created in 1997 that focuses on aspects of video game development. It is owned and operated by Informa TechTarget and acted as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer prior to the latter's closure in 2013.[2]

Site sections

Game Developer publishes daily news, features like post-game post-mortems and critical essays from developers, and user-submitted blog posts. The articles can be filtered by topic (All, Console/PC, Social/Online, Smartphone/Tablet, Independent, Serious) and category (Programming, Art, Audio, Design, Production, Biz (Business)/Marketing). The site has an online storefront for books on game design, RSS feeds and the website's Twitter account.[3]

Trade Center Resource

While it does post news found on typical video game websites, Game Developer provides articles for professional game developers on the disciplines of design, audio, public relations, and art. The site encourages professionals to publish blogs in order to share their expertise with other developers. The editorial staff also takes part in conducting interviews with developers and hardware designers, such as Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii,[5] Nintendo 3DS designer Hideki Konno,[6] and Portal writer Erik Wolpaw.[7]

Post-mortems

Project post-mortems, articles in which developers recount the successful and unsuccessful elements of a specific game's development, provide direct insight in all aspects of game design and educate other developers on various risks and important tips. Many post-mortems have been published, ranging from independent games such as Okabu and The Path to major studio projects such as Ōkamiden and BioShock. There are currently over 150 collected post-mortems dating back as far as 1997.[8] There have been unusual post-mortem articles published, including "A Story of GameLayers, Inc." that reveals the tumultuous development and eventual cancellation of a Firefox toolbar-based MMORPG,[9] and "What Went Wrong? Learning from Past Post-Mortems" that details the most common mistakes that developers make as admitted in the articles.[10]

Guidelines

Game Developer offers the opportunity for users to publish blog articles on their website. To ensure a high standard of quality, interested authors are required to collaborate with their editorial team. Contributors retain the rights to their content after publishing it with Game Developer.[11]

Users are also allowed to comment on articles, but there is a strict set of rules. Comment guidelines are designed to keep user discussions of a given article on the topic and prevent comments from devolving into[12] flame wars (hostile interactions on the Internet), as seen on other community-driven websites where comment regulations are looser. Users are encouraged to post only constructive thoughts that add to the conversation.

screenshot	Game Developer website screenshot (2024-12-18).webp
screenshot alt	Screenshot of Game Developer website with latest news section, headline section of design, and additional section of design and business features on the right side and a banner ad for email list subscription
url	gamedeveloper.com
type	News and information for video game developers
owner	Informa TechTarget
launch date	1997

Game Developer (website)

Site sections

Trade Center Resource

Post-mortems

Guidelines

GameSetWatch

IndieGames.com

Interviews

Features

Reviews

Awards

See also

External links

References