10. Atlassian Blogs

Atlassian is the company that built JIRA and a ton of other development tools with the wonderful price tag of free. While there are “better” tools available, they come at a cost to the user, and those built by Atlassian are perfectly serviceable. They get the job done. Plus, you can pay for them if you really want.

In any event, they run a blog. More specifically, likeso many other blogging platforms, they run an aggregate of blogs; pieces written by several different people from different backgrounds and development disciplines all dumped into a single space. One can usually find something interesting there and failing that, they can always read the latest release notes for JIRA while sucking down their first coffee of the day. That Save button sure likes to migrate around a lot.

Atlassian Blogs Homesite

9. Jonathan Blow’s Braid Blog

Jonathan Blow is an independent developer with a sterling record of making games. His two games thus far, Braid and The Witness, are excellent. He also happened (as both these games have been available for some time by now) to keep a running developer’s blog on them. While these won’t be updated ever, they make for interesting reading for one curious about minutiae related to the production of games they’ve enjoyed. Braid is the simpler of the two games, but one can also find his Witness blog with minimal effort.

Jonathan Blow’s Braid Blog Site

8. Lucas Pope’s Return of the Obra Dinn Blog

Somewhat annoyingly and tragically, Lucas Pope’s developer blog is made up of separate posts on some damned internet forum. So rather than simply reading his thoughts on the development of Return of the Obra Dinn, one occasionally comes across someone else’s opinions on the subject. While this isn’t necessarily a hardship, I personally can’t stand this kind of thing. I just want to know what the game maker thinks, not what some outside observer who knows nothing thinks. That said, Lucas Pope has produced several excellent little games, such as Papers, Please, and his dev blogs are worth checking out.

The Return of the Obra Dinn Blog Aggregation

7. ThatGameCompany’s Official Blog

Compiling this list, I immediately said to myself I would not provide any links to what are in reality just a news feed for a specific company, or something operated by a marketer of some sort. Advertisers and marketers are not to be trusted; I believe this, because I am deeply familiar with their work. As a shameless individual myself, I quite easily recognize other shameless individuals.

However, ThatGameCompany is such a remarkable studio (based on their output) I am determined to break that rule almost immediately. Not only does one find the required news announcements regarding releases there, but one will find real blogs as well, from real people making real things. Not just the marketer one tolerates over drinks at the end of the day, knowing damned well they’re just going to demand everyone do Jager shots and vomit thirty minutes in.

ThatGameCompany Blog

6. The Ludologist

This is a truly bizarre collection of games research and studies. The name is derived from the Latin term ludus, meaning to play, or a game. Just looking at the frontpage today, I see a study exploring the way mouth-breathing white supremacist types interpret Skyrim’s story. Another details game stories and plots related to ecological disasters, such as Horizon Zero Dawn. While almost certainly chock full of academic garbage entirely divorced from the game making process, this kind of nonsense, once in a while, provides an opinion which is of value. True, it is a rare event. But all the same, one should keep an eye out. At a bare minimum, a visit to this site will entertain, if not inform. It is possible one could encounter a study conducted by someone who has made a game, too. Those would be more valuable to read.

The Ludologist

5. RKadeZone

Penned by an excellent fellow I have had the pleasure of working with, this blog sports not only words but projects. This dude loves games. More than that, he seems to love programming and evangelizing about it. He hosts tutorials, he has a GitHub where he shares his projects, and he shares all kinds of How-To documents on, well, how to do things related to games development. Beginners trying to bust into games development by putting together projects of their own will find a lot of value here. The focus is on the Python programming language, which I’m about to dig into myself. I don’t suggest blogs I don’t read.

RKadeZone Homesite

4. Medium

Medium is the bloggers blog site. Covering any topic anyone would ever want to read, including several no one would ever want, game industry blogs and publications are hosted here. I also blog here, though again, not only in terms of gaming. Come for the games, stay for the philosophical treatises on the application of Kant’s Categorical Imperative to game industry ethics. Or don’t, honestly. Kant is a boring fellow. In a rare act of absolutely shameless self-promotion, one can find my game reviews and other ramblings here. They’re only moderately more boring than Kant. In addition to my own inane ramblings of course, one can also find other crazy people blogging about what makes games great for them.

Medium Disrupted Games Blog

3. Gamasutra

Gamasutra has always concerned itself with all aspects of making games, including the less glamorous portions; those portions include actually making games. While they also include blogs from marketers, monetizers, and other project management types, developers and testers often post blogs here. The site is hideous and always has been, but it is (relatively) functional both as a blogging platform and as a jobs site, though I personally haven’t had any luck on it. I honestly wonder if the jobs portion of the site even works, though I have noticed it is occasionally updated.

Gamasutra Blogs Homesite

2. Agile Game Development

This blog is run by a fellow named Clinton Keith and has mostly to do with organizing teams and applying different models and methods to making games. Occasionally deeply funny and always interesting, he explores (often through example) some of the ways in which team leaders and business folks get lost in a swamp of their own making. Idealists, perhaps, will not find this blog particularly charming. But the pragmatist will find themselves nodding along, thinking about better ways to do things in reality, rather than simply on paper. Pragmatists often make the sign of the cross at flowcharts and organizational hierarchy flows, for instance. Flowcharts and pie charts are the devil, Bobby.

Agile Game Development Blog

1. GameDev.Net

Another blog aggregation site, GameDev.Net deals exclusively with game development. One can find troubleshooting options for renderers in Unity, discussions on the death penalty in game design, and a variety of game announcements here. I’ve trolled through this site, along with Gamasutra, for what feels like decades by now. Ironically, I would scroll through both while at my game development jobs, bored blind awaiting build machines powered by asthmatic hamsters. They did the trick. The blogs, I mean. Not the hamsters. Sometimes the hamsters died, and no build got itself built. These statements will make more sense after reading more blogs or spending years making games.

GameDev.Net Blogs Site

The trick with blogs is finding a great writer who also happens to do interesting things. The two do not always meet, but so long as one is interested in most (all) aspects of games development, this list should absolutely satisfy. Failing that, one should be able to find at least one writer of interest from all these possibilities. If an interesting person can’t be found among them somehow, one can always settle for following me. Cheers!

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