Since 1999 we have regularly published articles and tutorials written by the GameDev.net community - without these contributions our platform would not be the great resource that it is today. Click below to learn more about how to submit your own article or tutorial.

Create a New Article

The Submission Process

All authors must have a GameDev.net account.

1. The Draft

Submit an article using the submission form. The draft stage is perfect for beginning the process of writing your article here. Whenever you save an article as a draft it is visible only to you and the moderation team, so you can take the time you need to get the article finished without having to worry about doing it all in one go. If you already have the article completed, then the draft stage is where you check that the article shows up looking the way you want it to prior to making it public. Either way, you should also use this time to check that the article meets our content guidelines (see below) to avoid any problems in the next step.

2. Moderator Review

Once you are satisfied with the article as it appears on the site you can choose for it to be published and made public. Before this happens, our editor will look over your article to ensure it falls within our content guidelines. This is not a technical check - it's only to ensure your content, including images and file attachments, is suitable for our audience to view. We will contact you with any issues through your profile. Until the date on your article all links to it will 404 for anyone not staff, mods or yourself.

3. Approval

Once your article has been reviewed for publication and technical and grammatical issues have been addressed, you article will be marked for publishing.

All published articles will show up in the Article archive. Articles that our editors believe may be of interest to the community - and demonstrate a high level of quality - will be marked as featured and shown on the front page.

Once published, GameDev.net members can comment and/or review your article. All reviews and comments will be publicly visible.

You can continue to edit your published article to make improvements, update it, etc. Moderators and staff will be able to see your edits and make additional corrections as necessary.

Articles can be denied for serious reasons such as suspected plagiarism, abusive language or offensive material. Articles can also be denied for reasons such as missing images, erroneous code or unclear sections - things that were pointed out by reviewers but not addressed by authors in a timely manner.

Authors with approved articles will receive a reputation bonus and Pixel points. 

Content Guidelines

Please read the following sections carefully. These guidelines are in addition to our Terms of Service. Do not be afraid to submit if you feel you may be in conflict with these guidelines - any ambiguity will be dealt with during moderator review.

Attachments

Images and Videos

All images to which you own the rights to must be uploaded as Media Resource attachments. The option to link to external images may only be used for images which you do not own and have permission or free license to do so from the copyright holder. This is to minimize the number of broken images that may show up in the content as the years go on. Acceptable image formats include GIF, JPG, PNG and BMP.

Videos may also be uploaded. Alternatively, using Youtube and Vimeo links, authors can embed videos directly from the external sources.

Downloadable Files

For the same reasons, any source or included files for the content must be uploaded using the article submission form so long as you have the right to do so. Relevant files for which you do not own must be externally linked unless permission or free license is granted by the copyright owner for you to upload. All file attachments must be in ZIP format.

Content Types

There are several different types of content you can contribute. If you don't think your submission falls under any of these categories, we suggest you email us to ensure that your content will be a good fit for the GameDev.net audience. 

Topical Article

This type of content will focus around specific techniques, methodologies, languages, fields of game development, etc. Examples include designing levels for First-Person Shooters, working with new DirectX features, learning the ins and outs of a specific API, exploring the basics of game design, managing teams with Scrum, etc.

Code Snippet

If you have a handy piece of code you would like to share that doesn't need 1,000 words to explain, then you should consider submitting it as a code snippet. This will give you a standard template to adhere to and give easy access for others to download and share your snippet across the community.

How-To Guide

If you would like to give instruction or advice on how to use a library, engine, tool, etc. then you must do so without promotion in any way. These articles should be written towards current owners and users and should not include any information related to purchase or download other than a link to the main web site. Authors of these articles may include anyone who is associated with the subject of the how-to guide, as long as this is declared within the article and non-promotional conditions are met. All guides should be tagged "how to" and titles prefixed with "How To..."

Product Review

We welcome your thoughts on products (including books) available for game developers, both payware and freeware. Help spread the word about a great tool or warn people away from a buggy engine. Product reviews must be tagged "Review". We will judge if the review is unbiased, non-promoting (there is a difference between praise and promotion) and balanced. Authors of these articles may not under any circumstances include anyone who is associated with the product being reviewed.

Video Article

Articles can be submitted with embedded video from supported providers such as Vimeo and YouTube. They must at least include in the article body the same description featured on the video host site. While some people may read faster than others, everyone must watch a video at the same pace so it is essential that they are properly edited and kept as concise as possible. We suggest you plan your video and script your dialogue as much as possible. Any obvious rambling, empty space, and other signs of lack of editing will not pass review.

External Content

The option to provide a link to external content is available and falls under the following usage conditions:

• The Teaser Paragraph must include an adequate description of the link
• The link must be to a content source for which you do not have permission to repost
• This content source may be an individual article or a page that lists individual articles - so long as those articles all fall under the same Article Category chosen for the link
• Authorship must be given to the actual content owner. This can be a website or individual

External content you post will be listed on your profile as a contributed work but noted to be an external link. At any time this link can be removed by GameDev.net without permission of the original contributor. Before submitting an external link we suggest you contact the content owner about republishing on GameDev.net, or notify us to contact the content owner.

Authorship

We have always required full accountability in our published authors, and this means no pen names, nick names or screen names may be used for the Author Name attached to your work. If you are not comfortable attaching your real name to your work we are not comfortable publishing it. We recognize however that many of our popular community members are recognized by their forum name rather than their real name, so we do allow your GameDev.net display name to be used in the author field as long as you have filled out the Full Name field of your member profile.

Foreign Language Submissions

While our community comes from all over the world, GameDev.net is an English-language site. All articles submitted must be written in English. If English is not your primary language do not worry - while the moderator review stage will not catch many small grammatical errors, if it is obvious you are not used to writing in English we will use this stage to work with you on cleaning the wording up. If you would like to seek help in translating your article or are interested in translating one of our articles, please contact us.

License

Authors are required to choose a license for their article that defines the use of content being submitted to GameDev.net. This is for your protection as well as ours from potential litigation and we suggest you fully review all available licenses here. By default the GameDev.net Open License is selected.

Terms and Conditions

If you didn't do it earlier in this document, this is a reminder that you review our Terms of Service. You must agree to this when you submit your article for moderator review.

Questions? Comments? Feedback?

If you are unclear on anything mentioned above or have thoughts on how to improve the article system, please contact us with your questions and concerns. Thank you for helping to improve GameDev.net and expand the available resources for the game development community.