Hello guys!

I believe the topic/suggestion I will introduce may have been discussed a few times, but I want to bring my 2 cents. I haven't planned what I'm gonna write (except for the suggestion itself), so lets see what comes up.

GameDev.net is a reference for game development for a long time, since GPMega days. I've never been a heavy poster, but used to read and follow the forum a lot (#1 source for game programming info, both technical and design). Then I leaned more to a corporate career for many years, while sometimes doing a little game programming as a hobby, and didn't follow the gaming scene much more.

Comparing GameDev.net from back then to today, I noticed an increase in articles: there used to be articles back then, but for me GameDev.net was a forum with some articles as reference, and now it seems to be an article database with a forum. I'm not saying this is BAD, I'm just saying it's different. But it doesn't feel very much alive anymore as a community.

The Game Programming and General Programming forums were the main forums back then, and they still seem to be, but with much less posts. This is understandable: back then we didn't have StackOverflow (and related) to find the solution to 95% of our programming problems, so most people would ask the questions on forums (or IRC). And GameDev was strong on that (when the topic was game programming, of course).

Another big change, besides StackOverflow, was the market itself. Back then Windows games were dominant, and now they are dying (lets not discuss this please, but as much as I hate this fact, since I'm a PC gamer - but yes, they are dying), and the mobile gaming industry is totally dominant.

Some may call it (the mobile/tablet gaming) a trend. Well, it might be, but I highly doubt it - well, unless you call a 10+ year multi-multi-multi-billion dollar a trend. In that case you could call Windows, Linux and Mac gaming a trend also. Mobile gaming will not die anytime in the next 5 years, actually it will only grow - and a lot.

Now I arrive on my point: hundreds of mobile games are being released every single day, several thousands are in production, and there is a legion of mobile developers. Then shouldn't GameDev.net shift a bit of its forum focus towards this market? This is still game development, I'm not saying to GameDev.net become a cooking website. Just give a bit more focus on mobile.

Let's create a community on this: there is not a dominant forum on mobile game development - GameDev.net could be it.

How to achieve it? Well, that is hard to answer, but for starters I would suggest: create an iOS sub-forum, Android sub-forum, Windows Phone sub-forum (or "Others"), Indie Mobile Gaming Scene sub-forum. Get people who know those markets well to post content, answer questions, create tutorials (informally, on the forum, similar to how NeHe started, and not formally published peer-reviewed articles), ...

Sorry for the long post, I just wanna see GameDev shine even more .

And hopefully my forum age/id will increase the credibility of my post: I'm not a kid recently seduced into mobile gaming buzz.

Best!

- Pedro / Rottz / RoTTer

(EDIT: Just to make it clear, all my suggestions are strictly related to the FORUM/Community part of the site. I would rarely read the articles back then, and I rarely read them today, so if there are a lot of articles on Mobile Gaming, which I dont know, good, but thats not my point)

Holy moly.. Yeah, a user id of 452 is pretty damn old.. I first of all want to thank you for the commentary. Second of all, I think there is a lot of wisdom in your words. I would love to have a more substantial discussion about this because for some time I've wanted to rethink the forum topics.

I would hope that we don't substitute articles for forums, but that the two go hand in hand. Our end goal is simple.. be an awesome place to share game development information between developers.

Hey Michael.

I'm just waiting a bit for more people to jump in the discussion, I think they're shy :P. Come on people. Thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

If I didnt want a discussion I would have emailed GDNet directly :)

Well, continuing on the topic:

Certainly the articles must not die. Not even reduce, I believe: I think it's great to have a vast repository of more formal and well-written content. But for GDNet as a whole I think the forum part must grow to make people return every day (or hour, or minute) for more information, more questions, more debate. Articles are great, but people probably visit here once a week to check the articles, not every minute.

I like the idea of "hand in hand" you mentioned, I had never thought about that. Make somehow the forums and articles interact more (again, NeHe comes to my mind). When I read your "hand to hand" idea I imagined something like this (just brainstorming here): a series of articles on how to make a complete game (mobile, of course :P), and for every article posted a forum thread is opened for questions and discussion, and the next article of the series can be influenced by this discussion, and even reference information, images or parts of code from posts on the forum, this way making people go to the forum thread (and vice-versa, people reading the forum thread would go to the article to get more structured information).

What did you have in mind when you mentioned the article / forum collaboration? Was it something like this?

Best.

I think I'd like to have other's chime in before I pollute the discussion with my own ideas. =) Each article does have it's own discussion via comments, but not a forum thread.

My suggestion is exactly to bring new people here to the forums - since GDNet focus isn't mobile, there probably arent many here currently. I dont have the numbers, but certainly today is the time in history where there are most game developers in the world. But they are mostly working alone, or in their isolate silos, and using Google + StackOverflow when they need any external input.

GDNet could be the #1 source of information for those newly arrived developers, as long as there are different elements here that people can't find on Google + StackOverflow.

The first biggest advantage I can see is the sense of community: GDNet (mostly the forum part) is a community with information, while Google + StackOverflow are strictly sources of information (OK, SO has some community elements, but it doesnt feel like a community at all).

Other advantages of GDNet to the lone wolf (who only uses Google now):

- GDNet has a marketplace for images and sound, and that is essential for indie devs that are actually making commercial games, and not a hobby. GDNet didnt have this, this must be something "new", and I love it. It just needs more demand, so there is more supply. An active forum with people making commercial games (that is, the mobile devs again) could solve that.

- GDNet has well-written, structured articles. In Google+SO you usually find solution to specific problems, and not decently written articles with an introduction, explanation and conclusion.

- GDNet has forums and articles on other sides of the game development cycle (ie, business)

To conclude, I touched subtly on two subjects on this post that I want to stress a bit more:

1) 10-15 years ago, the vast majority of people on GDNet (and any other game development source), including myself, were hobbyists. They were learning to program, learning how to make a simple game, discussing ideas of more complex games, making a prototype or an incomplete game just to practice, etc, but VERY FEW were actually making commercial games, because back then there wasn't an easy way to distribute your game. Now we have many channels (mobile, Steam, XBOX...), so it is certain that the number of professional game developers increased A LOT (I had stated generically about game developers on my first post, but more than that, the key here is game developers making real COMMERCIAL games).

2) And to make a full commercial game, you need several resources. Google+SO are good for the technical part, but for the rest there aren't established sources. And GDNet has the potential to concentrate all those resources under a single roof (some on the forum, and some outside, such as the marketplace and the articles). I'm talking here about activities such as: idea discussion and gathering (what game to make? where are requests of games, lists of successful recent game styles and elements, etc); common images and sfx database, both free (such as http://opengameart.org/) and paid; where to subcontract someone to do specific art to your game (concept art and real art); where to get some testers for your game; etc. You can find a place for each of these activities, but not a single place where you can do all that. And I guarantee: there are thousands of people (or small teams) doing these activities every single day to release a commercial indie game (mostly mobile, but also Steam/XBOX games).

Well, again a long post, but hopefully with more discussion elements :)

Best,

- Rottz

Again, I don't see us actively pursuing mobile developers but we will of course be offering more services for people to take advantage of in addition to discussing and learning about mobile games.

Just to be clear, revamping what we focus on in terms of topics is always on the table. I'm always looking for ideas on ways to bring new people into the fray. We have always taken an "if you build it they will come" approach.. but at this point in time being fairly late in the game with mobile I think promoting it is a necessity.

A simple first step in my opinion would be creating a full "Mobile" forum section, and inside forums for each mobile technology, as I suggested on the first post.

Mobile (section)

- iOS Game Programming

- Android Game Programming

Future (I dont think there would be enough people as of now for these):

- Windows Phone GP

- Indie Mobile Gaming

A second step I believe would be getting some active and knowledgeable people on those subjects to answer questions, post new content, start new discussion, create some tutorials...

I agree, the mechanics of mobile games, mainly due to the new inputs is so different it has become another branch, if not another era of game development, it totally deserves a new discussion platform. Here's my 50 cents, maybe you could collaborate with big mobile dev forums like xda-developers? (unity3d forums are also sizeable iirc) Add some inter-linking, I think it's totally appropriate given how the subjects (app and game development) touch a lot.