Some Links for Everyone!

Hello hello! Sorry I'm a day late! Not much has been happening in the realm of game design for me this week, so I wanted to use this week's post to give back some knowledge to you folks! Unfortunately, the article I was going to write is not done just yet, so I decided I would post some links to articles that have helped me out a lot instead! Hopefully these links can help you all out too :)

I'm gonna sort these links into a few categories. In keeping with the theme of the blog, all links will focus on game development in some fashion, particularly indie development. Several of these links go to articles on Gamasutra.com, which you probably should bookmark, if you haven't already. It's the premier source of information for game developers of all stripes.

Game Design

Mark Overmars' 'Designing Good Games' - This paper was written by Mark Overmars, who was the original creator of the Game Maker software. In it, he discusses good practices for designing games. It's particularly interesting for its strict definition of what a 'video game' actually is (Sim City would not be a game, by its standards, for instance). This was one of the first pieces I ever read about game design, so its near and dear to my heart :)

Jon Jones's gamepitches.com site - This is a great resource for finding GDDs and other design assets from game studios throughout history. The site has tons of reference material for your own design work (especially if you are being formal about it). Check out the early design document for Grand Theft Auto (at the time called Race n' Chase), for instance. I highly recommend this site.

Assets

Jason Yu's 'An Examination of Leitmotifs and Their Use to Shape Narrative in UNDERTALE' - The asset section pretty much exists just for these articles :) This is an excellent 2-part series about the construction of the soundtrack of Undertale, written from the perspective of a classically trained musician (but related through language that anyone can understand). I personally started looking at my own crappy little music pieces through a whole new lens after I read these articles. I think anybody who makes their own game music will benefit from what Yu has to say here.

Programming

Pete Shinners' Line by Line Chimp Example - I've already mentioned this on the blog, but it bears notice here, as well. This is the ultimate one-stop crash-course in Pygame by the creator of Pygame himself, Pete Shinners. It assumes a basic knowledge of Python. If you want to get involved in making games with Pygame (which I wholeheartedly recommend), this is the starting point.

Lars Doucet's 'Flash is Dead, Long Live OpenFL!' - Haxe is one of the most interesting programming languages available right now, and this article by the creator of Defender's Quest offers a great, enthusiastic look at the advantages and disadvantages of using it. It is mainly written for those who have been developing in Flash, but even if you've never written a line of Action Script (I sure haven't), this article has a great deal of good info. Read it, and then get to making great cross-platform games with haxe! :)

The Games Business

David Galindo's 'How Much Do Indie PC Devs Make, Anyways?' series - This frank look at making it in the indie games business, presented by David Galindo of Cook, Serve, Delicious! fame, offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at indie financing. The author honestly looks at his successes and failures during his quest to make it in the business. Highly recommended. Should be required reading for those who want to be independent game developers.

Tanya X. Short's 'The Secret to Scrappiness' - This is a great article that is equal parts inspiration and sound advice. Its all about finding your own way to survive in the games ecosystem. Short talks about the ways she had to get creative in order to carve out a place for her company in a world of low discoverability and information overload. Read the whole article, it is definitely worth it.

Independent Developer Resources

J. Kyle Pittman's 'Booth Hacks' series - In this series, J. Kyle Pittman covers an under-discussed detail of marketing your game that is crucial to indie devs - setting up a booth at conventions. This is a very specific set of articles, but they're just what someone like me (who has never even been to a con and who fears the idea of running a booth there with passionate fervor) probably needs to read. Check it out!

Jeff Vogel's entire blog -  I honestly probably don't need to direct my readers to Vogel's work, but I feel I would be remiss if I didn't mention the godfather of all indie devs, on the off chance that you haven't heard of him :) Just about every article on there is loaded with wisdom, even if some are outdated by this point. I recommend just browsing through the archives and reading what jumps out at you. Jeff Vogel has produced a lot of content, so there's surely something there that will help you.


There ya go! A few quality links from across the web that I've come into contact with in my time :) There are lots more articles that I've read that have helped me, but that I didn't include for one reason or other (almost always that I forgot the name and couldn't find it :/ ). I hope you all get something out of these links!

See you later!