The Weekly Sitreps will be going away until next year - unless I have something that just can't wait until January 7th, 2009. So let me take this opportunity to send out some holiday wishes on behalf of the entire team here at GDNet. Be safe, be merry and I look forward to seeing everyone in 2009.
Now then - epic Sitrep!!
GameDev.net Book Series
Feast your eyes at last on the cover of the first book to be released in the GDNet book series. This is what John and I have been teasing for the better part of the last half of the year - although it really wasn't very hard to figure out initially since an Amazon.com search for both our names together would bring up all 5 (now 4) titles.
These books have collected all the articles from the past 10 years published here on GDNet that have been big hits. A few appear as they do online, most have been revised and updated, and still more are completely original works only available in these tomes. We're really happy to be working with Cengage Learning on this project and to bring our resources offline for the the first time in a major print publication.
This book, Business and Production: A GameDev.net Collection, will be released in January, followed shortly by its three brothers. We hope it will make another valuable addition to your library.
When everything is said and done and all the books are on the shelves, I'll be posting a journal entry about the entire editorial process these books went through, from conception to publishing.
Updated "About Us" Page
You old timers may have forgotten it's even there, but plenty of newcomers and companies looking to get in touch with us stop by and check out the About Us page. This page hasn't changed for nigh upon 6 years, despite the huge amounts of change GDNet has gone through in just the past two years alone. After getting fed up with people trying to get in touch with staff members who were no longer actively involved with the site, I sent Richard a new design to implement.
So what's changed?
- Organization Chart - while this chart has been around for a while, it's never really been posted anywhere but here in my journal
- Team Positions - now you can clearly see how the team is structured, with the Owners, followed by the Ops Team, followed by the Staff and Moderators. (Tiffany Smith, News Editor, has yet to be listed. Sorry Tiff we'll get you up there!)
- Team Pictures - Seyi and Richard are digging to find pictures of themselves that they like :) Mine is going to be change and Lissa's will be up soon too
- Site History - This section of the page will also be updated soon as well to include all the pictures from the Facebook album detailing the evolution of the site
The GDNet Facebook Page is slowly but steadily creeping up to the 1500 fan mark, just passing 1400 today. It would be so awesome to close out the year with 1500 fans so keep spreading the word!
Speaking of fans, I added a new album to the page a few days ago containing pictures of people wearing the GDNet "I Make Games" t-shirt. No, this has nothing to do with the contest I announced last month (epic fail there, BTW) however if you'd like to add yourself to the album, just get a picture of you wearing any kind of GDNet tee shirt and upload it to the fan pics section. I'll then take it and add it to the album.
Publishing Schedule Updated
Take a gander at the publishing calendar (also found embedded at the top of my journal), now updated through January of 09. As always, dates are subject to change but you can at least look ahead and see what's coming down the pipe. We've got a real smooth editorial process going around here nowadays, so '09 should bring you all a steady stream of articles and reviews, plus of course some big site changes that will have a huge impact on the way we present articles here on GDNet. I'm excited about that and you should be too. Trust me.
New Resources
After my total failure at full event coverage for MIGS and VGXPO leaving nice big gaps in the schedule, we've finally got some new articles and reviews out for you all to consume.
- Maya 2009 - We review Autodesk's "other" market-leading 3D modeling and animation package.
- Pecha Kucha Night - A series of lectures with 20 slides, 20 seconds each - this is a Pecha Kucha. Come see how the first event of this kind hosted by the NY IGDA chapter turned out. Video coverage included
- Making Music Interactive(Music4Games.net) - Louis-Xavier Buffoni is a Software Developer at Audiokinetic, and a part-time musician. He was deeply involved in the development of the Interactive Music feature set in Wwise and explains how it was created
I've looked up events from the entire first half of 2008 to see if any are recurring for 2009 and so far this is what I've dug up. Please drop me a line if I'm missing any!
- LA Games Conference @ Los Angeles, CA, United States - April 28, 2009 to April 29, 2009
- London MCM Expo @ London, United Kingdom - May 23, 2009 to May 24, 2009
- NLGD Festival of Games @ Utrecht, Netherlands - June 6, 2009 to June 14, 2009
- Game Education Summit @ Pittsburgh, PA, United States - June 16, 2009 to June 17, 2009
- Game Horizon Conference @ Gateshead, United Kingdom - June 23, 2009 to June 24, 2009
