Farewell, Game Developer Magazine…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 7, 2013

1994 kicked all kinds of butt.

I was finishing up school, and starting to get serious about what I wanted to do with my life. The idea of making games for a living was just starting to appear feasible. So I supplemented my formal education by learning all I could about making video games. After all, I’d been doing it as a hobby for years, I may as well get serious about it. But with the awesomeness that was the “Shareware” scene turning guys like id Software into massive successes, where a tiny team of nobodies could shake up the industry, it was clear the future was bright. After all, only a couple of years earlier they’d announced that the video games industry had surpassed Hollywood in revenue… that is, if you only counted box office receipts.

I read lots of books on various aspects of game development. And occasionally magazines would have an article about the subject. And I could find a few things on usenet, using my university Internet connection. At school, we had a (short-lived) “game development club” where we’d get together and swap information on making modern video games. A lot of it was PC-centric (and DOS-centric), but there was a lot to know about how to read joystick input, send sounds to the Sound Blaster card, set the colors on VGA cards, etc. After all, this was the age where you had to do it all yourself, as there was no Windows 95 or Direct X to abstract out the hardware for you.

With years of formal computer science education almost behind me, and the explosion of the video games industry, it seemed like a “dream job” was possible, and if nothing else… there was nothing to stop me from making games! Why couldn’t I go head-to-head with the Doom / Wolfenstein 3D guys?  The shareware revolution was at hand. Technology was getting exciting, yet was down-to-earth enough for a common programmer to dive in.

One day during the spring, while perusing a store and looking to see if the latest issue of Computer Gaming World was in, I spied a new magazine. “Game Developer,” it said on the cover, with a corner marker that announced it as the premier issue.  The subtitle was, “Programming for Fun.” PERFECT! I bought it immediately, and settled down to read all about the making of Doom and of Iron Helix, using OLE, how game distribution (then) currently worked, and how some guy used Genetic Algorithms to create optimal spacecraft piloting in a simulation (something I actually used myself at one point).

I still have that magazine in my collection. The above is a scan of the cover. The pages really are starting to turn a little yellow, now. The information inside has aged even more poorly, though it’s not completely without value today.

To be fair, I didn’t know if there was enough of an audience out there for a (then) quarterly journal about game development. I was doubtful the magazine would last two years. But I dutifully went to the bookstore to get the next issue. And the next.

And now, almost twenty years later, the final issue of the magazine has been printed. It’s done.

I can’t say this is unexpected. Print magazines are going the way of the dodo and not very slowly, either. Game Developer Magazine is merely the latest to succumb to the failure of print. In this last issue, they even do one of their famous post-mortems… on their own magazine.

The weird thing is that the magazine has been a constant through my game development career. I actually landed a “dream job” at a game studio in the fall of 1994 (probably around issue 3 of the magazine’s run), and at some point they started making subscriptions free for game developers. And they had tons of free issues at GDC, and there were always issues floating around in the halls of SingleTrac.

The mag transformed from a hobbyist periodical with aspirations of addressing a professional audience to a full-on industry periodical (losing the “programming for fun” motto, as it implied development as a hobby, and an emphasis on programming that they wanted to eliminate).  And it wasn’t too far behind me, as I, too, made the transformation from aspiring newbie and hobbyist to veteran of the games industry. Therefore, it’s hard for me to tell if the magazine made the shift in tone from wide-eyed newbie / hobbyist to jaded industry veteran, or if it was just me. But it did feel like it changed in those first few years.

Still, the articles were often useful, the post-mortems – although predictable – reminded us of the common mistakes and the best industry practices.

In recent years, there’d been a shift back. As indies began to dominate the scene, the magazine seemed to get a little bit of its old fire back. The games business became new and exciting again. Or again, it could have just been me.

And you know, I wouldn’t mind recapturing the spirit and feel of 1994 again. Maybe it was just me, maybe it was a cultural thing throughout the gaming community encouraged by the boom in gaming and some recent technological breakthroughs. I dunno. But I would suggest there are a lot of parallels between 2013 and 1994. The gaming world is perhaps more exciting than ever, with new technology well within the reach of any developer, and distribution – while crowded – is as wide-open as it has ever been.

More importantly, while it was nice to receive a regular update full of news and professional advice, the community of game developers that was lacking in 1994 is going like gangbusters today. Game Developer Magazine filled a critical role that was missing with the existing technology and culture of the era, when good info was sparse and hard-to-find, and developers didn’t have many convenient ways to stay in communication and build on that community. Now – that role is filled a hundred times over, and it’s more of a problem of finding the right community and the right information from an ocean of it. The need is gone.

But I think I’ll still miss it.

Filed Under: Biz, Books - Comments: 9 Comments to Read



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