Austin GDC next week

John Hattan and I will both be in attendance at AGDC next week, so if you'll be at the conference as well, drop me a line via any some form of communication and I'll be sure to look for you. Or, if you have a GDNet "I Make Games" shirt, that's a great way to be spotted as well. I'll be wearing mine on Monday, then a GG shirt on Tues (since they're having their Not-IGC party that night) and a Game Institute shirt on Wed. If anyone has a session or few they'd like covered, you can list them in the comments - I only attend sessions along my own tracks of knowledge, which are mostly business and production, with design and basic programming thrown in for good measure. So if it's not something I can understand, I won't cover it. But I'll try my best! Coverage will be posted the following week.

Almost 10 years

Have you guys thought lately about the fact that the site will be a whopping 10 years old early next year? That's like 50 in web-years! Well, rest assured that we on the staff all know about it and we're planning lots of cool things for 2009. Wheee!

New Resources

• Your Portfolio Repels Jobs - Jon Jones, an Outsourced Art Production Manager, warns "I look at game artists' portfolios on a regular basis. These websites are usually designed so poorly that I close my browser out of disgust. They're even bad enough to turn away potential employers, regardless of the quality of the artwork. Tragic!" How can artists avoid this pitfall? Jones gives web design advice sure to make landing jobs successful on Notes on Game Dev.


• How Can We Make People Play Less? - Programmer Circo Continisio believes that MMORPGs are addictive, and not only should they not be, but that game designers are obligated to live by a code of ethics and design games that are profitable for the company but not harmful to players.

New Events

• GameON: Finance 2.0 @ Toronto, Canada - October 28, 2008 to October 29, 2008


• GameCity 3 @ Nottingham, United Kingdom - October 30, 2008 to November 1, 2008


• Game Connection Europe @ Lyon, France - November 5, 2008 to November 7, 2008


• International Digital Entertainment Festival @ Melbourne, Australia - November 13, 2008 to November 16, 2008


• Game Industry Summit Russia 2008 @ Petersburg, Russian Federation - November 21, 2008 to November 23, 2008


• DIG London Game Conference @ November 27, 2008 to November 28, 2008


• 2K Bot Prize @ Perth, Australia - December 15, 2008 to December 18, 2008


• Game Connection America @ San Francisco, CA, United States - March 24, 2009 to March 26, 2009