''Game Developer'' was a magazine for

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

creators, originally started in March 1994 by Miller Freeman, Inc as quarterly, later bimonthly, and finally monthly. In each issue, industry leaders and experts shared technical solutions, reviewed new game development tools, and discussed strategies for creating innovative, successful video games. Monthly postmortems dissected the industry's leading games, from AAA console to social and mobile games and beyond, and columns gave insight into deeper development practices from across all disciplines, from design, to programming, to art, to business, and audio. It was closed in 2013 as part of a restructuring at parent company UBM Tech (part of

UBM plc UBM plc was a British business-to-business (B2B) events organiser headquartered in London, England, before its acquisition by Informa in 2018. It had a long history as a multinational media company. Its main focus was on B2B events, but its p ...

) that included the closing of all print publications owned by that company.

The magazine contained articles on professional game development topics relating to

game programming Game programming, a subset of game development, is the software development of video games. Game programming requires substantial skill in software engineering and computer programming in a given language, as well as specialization in one or ...

, art, audio,

quality control Quality control (QC) is a process by which entities review the quality of all factors involved in production. ISO 9000 defines quality control as "a part of quality management focused on fulfilling quality requirements". This approach plac ...

design A design is the concept or proposal for an object, process, or system. The word ''design'' refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, and is sometimes used to refer to the inherent nature of something ...

, and production. Monthly columns from industry veterans offered in depth discussion on a variety of topics. It had articles by notable

video game industry The video game industry is the tertiary industry, tertiary and quaternary industry, quaternary sectors of the entertainment industry that specialize in the video game development, development, marketing, distribution (marketing), distribution, ...

figures and reviews on game development related

book A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, ...

s, tools, and

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

packages. The back page "Soapbox" was also a popular feature but moved to sister site to Gamasutra circa 2004. It was replaced by a splash art page called "Thousand Words" and then replaced again with a regular column "Arrested Development". ''Game Developers most popular feature was probably its monthly "Postmortem" column which discusses the recent development of a

with the top five each of "What Went Right" and "What Went Wrong". It provided a frank, first-hand account of the lessons learned in the development process. The first Postmortem was featured in October 1997 and written by Andre Vrignaud on '' Dark Sun Online''. Starting in 1998, ''Game Developer'' recognized exceptional game development tools with their "Front Line Awards" which were given annually. Winners included software (such as Photoshop and VTune),

game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games which generally includes relevant libraries and support programs such as a level editor. The "engine" terminology is akin to the term " software engine" u ...

s (

Unreal Engine Unreal Engine (UE) is a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter video game '' Unreal''. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of ...

), middleware ( Havok physics), hardware (

GeForce 3 The GeForce 3 series (NV20) is the third generation of Nvidia's GeForce line of graphics processing units (GPUs). Introduced in February 2001, it advanced the GeForce architecture by adding programmable pixel and vertex shaders, multisample ant ...

), and books ('' Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice''). ''

Gamasutra ''Game Developer'' (known as ''Gamasutra'' until 2021) 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 maga ...

'', the sister publication

web site A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, education, ...

of ''Game Developer'', acts as an online resource for game developers, as well as a job posting board for employment in the game development field. It was not part of the closure that resulted in ''Game Developers cessation and continued some features from the magazine. ''Gamasutra'' rebranded itself to ''Game Developer'' on August 26, 2021.

References

External links

''Game Developer'' Magazine official site

Archive of all issues
at GDC Vault
Front Line Awards official site
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130602003904/http://gdmag.com/frontlineawards/ , date=2013-06-02 Monthly magazines published in the United States Defunct video game magazines published in the United States Informa brands Magazines established in 1994 Magazines disestablished in 2013 Defunct magazines published in San Francisco Professional and trade magazines Video game development

Contents

See also

References

External links