29-05-2002 15:11									#1
	Second "Voluntary Homework Assignment" Put an end to popups!

Ok...here's the task. Read really fun and interesting articels on how developers develop games and on how the the economics of the whole industry work. Then come back and comment on how some of thius stuff relates to Team Candy

Here's the link: http://www.avault.com/developer/

(If you've all already read these cool articles...just squash me!)

	29-05-2002 22:39									#2
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Excellent articles, and many with lessons we can use. Too much to comment adequately in a single posting (I read all the articles back to back), but I'll mull it over and see if I can distill something that doesn't sound like maniacal ramblings...

-=Vel=-

	30-05-2002 01:17									#3
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

understood. There are a host of positive and negative lessons in there.

One positive thing that was interesting was to hear that even "big budget" games don't always have that big of a crew on them. Another was that they favor self-publishing until you get a name.

For you in particular, the article on how to be a designer is relavent. Several positive items there (they mention that being a creative writer helps make a better designer). some cautiuons too (how to keep yourself busy once the fun brainstorming part of the project is done.)

	30-05-2002 14:48									#4
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GP, I took a look at the designer article and found it pretty... stupid. No, that's not the right word. Geared toward an twelve year old geek audience, perhaps.

I can't imagine people who are doing this for real need to have all that "designing is work too, not only cool fun!" pointed out to them. So listening to others on the team is a good thing? I'll be damned. The author skips on all the interesting pieces (yeah, being a good manager is, well, good. Tips 'bout what a good manager actually is and does would've been better though.)

I was really unimpressed by that article. Perhaps the other are better, I didn't check up on them.

	30-05-2002 20:54									#5
	Inflate your Upload Space

It was pretty funny when he said for people to go look at management books in the bookstore!

Yeah...some of that stuff is pretty obvious. But I think an article written for wantabe hoobyists would be different than for people already in the trade. I think that people vary in their amount of "savvy". Some of the stuff on economics of game publilshing is interesting. He's got some actual numbers in some of them. Are they the best articles ever? No. Do they shed some knowledge/offer an intersting point of view for Vel? Yes.

Umm...I thought the stuff where he talked about the actual tasks of a designer (big emphasis on writing, for instance) and the phasing of the project (research and creative design lasting only for a month, for instance) were illumintating. I didn't know that stuff...

Do you have some better articles. Would love to see stuff that was even a step up...

	30-05-2002 20:56									#6
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Some other interesting points in his articles:

-has figures (based on his own experience) on downloads versus sales
-has insights on why you might want to design for low-end systems
-some good insights on how to package a submission for a publisher

	31-05-2002 08:37									#7
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Interesting articles GP. I read a couple of them and thought that they had some good info in them, particularly the one about prepping a demo for a publisher.

For those of you interested I find that some of the gamasutra articles have valuable info in them. I usually read postmortems or design related articles, but they have articles covering a wide range of game-making related topics.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/article_display.php