Game Developer Magazine to Cease Print and Digital Publication

The news that Game Developer magazine is ceasing print and digital publication is quite sad. Sure, Gamasutra will be publishing some of the content that has historically appeared in Game Developer — but it’s not going to be the same.

The demise of Game Developer is indicative of the financial pressures on trade publications in nearly every industry, and on content development as a whole. What compels anyone to create compelling content when the financial rewards continue to dwindle? This is a much larger question that all of us will be grappling with in the years ahead.

Game Developer emerged around the time we were scripting and developing content for Wing Commander III (and that’s a long time ago!). Moving from PC games running on Intel 486 chips, to the first generation of 32-bit consoles, to the later generations of Playstation and then Xbox, to the Wii, to browser-based games, to free-to-play, social and mobile — Game Developer covered all the changes in the industry, providing insightful development post-mortems, field-specific columns, industry surveys, and so much more.

While the totality of Game Developer‘s coverage might be duplicated across multiple distributed channels (and we’re dubious about that), its centrality to the game development community will be sorely missed.

Articy:Draft

Articy:Draft may well be the best interactive authoring tool created so far. We didn’t have time to play with it in closed beta, but the software is now up on Steam Greenlight, and you can vote to make Articy:Draft available on Steam.

The current cost of the software runs close to $500, but if it goes to Steam, the cost should decrease. If you subscribe to Game Developer magazine, you can read a lengthy review of the software written by Tobias Heussner (unfortunately, the article hasn’t been made available online yet). Google Articy:Draft for more information, and follow the developer, Nevigo, on Twitter to stay up to date with the tool.

The next time we’re back on an interactive project (or during a hiatus between academic semesters, if we’re ultra-ambitious), we plan to be taking a long look at Articy:Draft.

Story-Based Self Tests as an Instructional Tool

Read a brand-new article composed by co-author Nick Iuppa exclusively for this site, on some of the work he’s been doing for clients the past couple of years.

For more “tales from the trenches” like this new article, check out our books End to End Game Development and Story and Simulations for Serious Games, both published by Focal Press and available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

CryEngine 3 SDK Free For Non-Commercial Games

While we’re on the subject of powerful game engines that are now free for non-commercial games (an umbrella most  serious games and simulations would fall under), Crytek has released a free downloadable SDK (software development kit) for its (previously) proprietary CryEngine 3 game engine.

CryEngine offers about everything you could want in a game engine, and the developer community is robust. We’d love to hear about serious games or simulations being developed using CryEngine.

MASTERING CELTX Available for Pre-Order

Co-author Terry Borst’s new book Mastering Celtx is being published by Cengage Learning, and can now be pre-ordered at any of your favorite booksellers (brick-and-mortar, and online).

Celtx describes itself as an all-in-one media pre-production tool. For years, novice and professional screenwriters have had to spend a good chunk of change for either Final Draft or Movie Magic Screenwriter in order to compose and distribute professional looking screenplays. Celtx is open-source and free.

Celtx’s redefinition of pre-production workflows is something to look at if you’re creating a serious game, independent game or simulation.

Check out the Twitter feed for the book: @masteringceltx.

Q&A with Christy Marx

Christy Marx is the editor of the new Focal Press book Write Your Way Into Animation and Games (with several chapters contributed by End to End Game Development authors Nick Iuppa and Terry Borst).  She was kind enough to answer a few questions about the book for our readers.

Q: Tell us a little about ‘Write Your Way…’ and its mission.

Game Writing and Storytelling

Before we worked on serious games, we worked on commercial videogames, including the blockbuster space adventure games Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV.  Game-Central just completed a podcast with co-author Terry Borst about game writing and storytelling:  you’ll find some discussion about serious games, and a more general discussion of games, story and their intersection — along with the walk down Wing Commander memory lane.

Listen to the Game Central podcast with Terry Borst

April 2 – ArtsLab UNM

Just a reminder about co-author Terry Borst’s Digital Lunch presentation on the book’s central topic at UNM ArtsLab Mon., April 2, 12 noon.

Listen to ‘Cinemascope’ book discussion

Even if you missed the live broadcast of the half-hour interview with co-author Terry Borst on KSFR-FM’s ‘Cinemascope‘, you can listen here to the audio recording. Just click on the embedded MP3 link to stream the interview.  Learn more about the book and its co-author.

Speaking at UNM ArtsLab April 2

Co-author Terry Borst will be speaking at the University of New Mexico’s ArtsLab Friday, April 2 at noon, as part of their ongoing Digital Lunch series.

The topic will be End to End endGame Development, published by Focal Press.  The talk will include a quick sampling of serious game output, and discuss some of the unique issues faced by developers of serious games, persuasive games and simulations.

If you find yourself in Albuquerque on that date, please come!