Nerfbat: Recently Added Links

I link to a lot of sites, but I link to each of them for a reason. I’ve added a number of different sites recently, and I though it would be worth noting why each of them got added to my wonderful list of important links. Let us begin…

Game Dev School: This is an excellent new site by Paul Hoza, a developer from Colorado who I met a number of random times at Colorado Game Dev meetings when I lived out there. The site discusses video game development and design, as well as related topics of discussion. Tagline: “Video game design & development articles and school information”

Design Synthesis: I have no idea how I had never seen this one before. It’s somehow managed to stay off the link lists of most other blogs, but I managed to discover it to my delight. It discusses game development and related topics and, more importantly, the writer seems to like pirates almost half as much as I do (which is a lot). Tagline: “A collection of gaming thoughts, various and sundry topics, whatever is in my head or at my fingertips.”

Creating Passionate Users: Found via Mining For Fish, is a site that focuses on what its title implies: creating passionate users. It’s quite useful, even if not all of it applies directly to game development, and the articles linked from Mining For Fish are nice little gems. Tagline: Unknown

The Escapist and The Escapist Lounge: This is an online magazine about game development. It’s something I’ve been reading for a while and simply forgot to link. Some of the articles are a bit lengthy for online reading (people have a shorter attention span online), but they’re all worth checking out. The Lounge is a blog for the magazine, and I’ve been favoring it over other industry blogs such as Terra Nova lately. Tagline: Unknown

Faith – Blogs: Faith is a virtual world project that several people are working on, and this is the blog that each of them participates in. There are a lot of good reads on the site, and their project (Faith) seems interesting although there’s not much information about it. Tagline: “The next step in Virtual Worlds”

Gaming Bitch: No, I don’t just call her that, she does. This is the blog of a single female gamer, so you might want to go over there and see what she has to say before trying all of your best internet moves on her. Not much to read here yet, but a great start. Tagline: “Single. Female. Gamer.”

Lost Rambling: Yet another of the new blogs to now grace my links list. Like some of the other new blogs, not much to see here yet, but it has a lot of potential and there are already a few posts worth reading. Tagline: Unknown

Tide’s Horizon: Yet another member of the game blogger boom, this one has had a constant stream of new posts since its inception last month. Many insightful posts already, and I forward to reading more. Tagline: “notes on game design, business, writing and anything else I can’t fit on a napkin”

Bannable Offenses: One of the funniest MMO blogs out there. This one started this month, and already has a slew of angst-filled posts about a GM and his experiences with players. Knowing what I know about player petitions to GMs, I would wager that this is actually a member of the industry in the CS department, though these are likely the things he’d like to say and do to the customer, otherwise he would have been fired long ago. Tagline: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Seriously. One bad comment and say hello to a 72 hour ban.”

Dan Rubenfield: A new member of the SOE Bloginati, Dan has been a game designer for a good dozen years and is now a Lead Research and Development Designer for DC Online. Tagline: “Development Notes”

Saavedra’s Blog: The gaming blog of EverQuest II designer Steve Kramer. Good stuff, even if someone else told me about his blog before he did. That’s why he’s way down here at the bottom with Dan (who is at the bottom because he doesn’t link to me. Reciprocity, bitches). Tagline: “A gaming blog for Game Designer Steve Kramer”

There are a lot of new gaming blogs lately, and that’s a good thing in my mind. The more opinions and insight, the better we’ll be for it. Yes, believe it or not, I visit every link there at least every other day. I think I’ve become addicted to reading blogs like people are addicted to reality TV, except that I’m becoming smarter for doing so while the others become dumber. I do highly recommend checking out each of the sites I linked. They’re on my list for a reason.