Links

Arcade Flyer Archive

http://www.arcadeflyers.com/
"We are a repository for arcade related promotional flyers that are used by the arcade industry to promote the sales of their games. These flyers capture screenshots, pictures of cabinets, descriptions of game play and concept art. They are a slick promotional presentation of video game history."

Art of Computer Games Design

http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/game-book/Coverpage.html
Sue Peabody's electronic edition of Chris Crawford's 1982 book, The Art of Computer Games Design.

Brief Timeline of Video Game Music

http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/video/vg_music/
A history of video game music, from Pong to the PS2, complete with video clips and audio clips.

Centre for Computer Games Research

http://game.itu.dk/
"Computer games are an important part of contemporary culture. We need new research to understand the nature of games, their structure, their function and their impact. At the Centre for Computer Games Research we research game aesthetics, game design, game spaces, game worlds, gaming cultures, and learning in games."

Computer Games Developer

http://www.learndirect-advice.co.uk/
Learndirect career profile

DevSource

http://www.devsource.com/
"Developer resource, Microsoft programming, Visual Basic and .Net development"

DiGRA: Digital Games Research Association

http://www.digra.org/
"Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) is a non-profit, international association of academics and practitioners whose work focuses on digital games and associated activities."

EA: The Human Story

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_spouse/274.html
"My significant other works for Electronic Arts, and I'm what you might call a disgruntled spouse... "

Education Arcade

http://www.educationarcade.org/
"The Education Arcade represents a consortium of international game designers, publishers, scholars, educators, and policy makers who are exploring the new frontiers of educational media that have been opened by computer and video games. Our mission is to demonstrate the social, cultural, and educational potentials of games by initiating new game development projects, coordinating interdisciplinary research efforts, and informing public conversations about the broader and sometimes unexpected uses of this emerging art form in education. In short, we want to lead change in the way the world learns through computer and video games."

ELSPA: Entertainments & Leisure Software Publishers Association

http://www.elspa.com/
"ELSPA (the Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association) was founded in 1989 to establish a specific and collective identity for the British computer and video games industry."

Evaluating Java for Game Development

http://www.rolemaker.dk/articles/evaljava/
"The purpose of this project was to examine whether the use of Java for games is advantageous compared to the current languages of choice, C and C++. This is not an easy question to answer, and as you will see in the report, the answer will depend on several project specific issues. The main target group of the report is professional game programmers with little or no knowledge of Java, who wonder whether Java would be beneficial in future projects. The report generally assumes that the reader is skeptical about Java. The focus of the report is on games intended for retail; not on Java applets."

Flipcode

http://www.flipcode.com/
Daily game development news & resources

Gamasutra: The Art & Science of Making Games

http://www.gamasutra.com/
"Gamasutra.com has been the leading game development site since 1997, providing daily news about the game industry; original features and technical articles written by industry professionals; comprehensive job board for game developers on the web; video-captured footage from sessions at the Game Developers Conference; directory of game developers and companies providing services to game developers; directory of schools and training programs relevant to game developers."

Game Culture: thinking about computer games

http://www.game-culture.com/
"The Game Culture website has been developed as a central information resource for academics, developers, gamers and others interested in the significance of computer games as a cultural phenomenon."

GameGirlAdvance

http://www.gamegirladvance.com/
"GameGirlAdvance (GGA) is a weblog and online journal that brings alternative perspectives to videogame culture. We want to analyze various aspects of gaming but also we want to put it into context, into the larger arena of modern pop culture. We're interested in what makes games fun, what makes games interesting, what we can learn from games, and what forces convert perfectly normal people into rabid gamers. We're also interested in music, film, and fashion. And girls. We love girls."

Game Journalism

http://www.gamejournalism.com/
"Electronic games are an important part of our economy and culture, with growing significance as an entertainment and advertising medium. Game journalism is also maturing and evolving, and an effective gaming press is critical to both the industry and gamers. At GameJournalism.com, our mission is to recognize, encourage and support excellence in game journalism."

Game Studies: the international journal of computer game research

http://gamestudies.org/
"Game Studies is a crossdisciplinary journal dedicated to games research, web-published several times a year at www.gamestudies.org. Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games."

GameTutorials.com

http://www.gametutorials.com/
"Welcome to GameTutorials.com. Over the past 5 years we have been bringing you hundreds of programming tutorials from beginner to advanced. We will continue to offer you new tutorials and are proud to present new products and services which will increase your learning speed, ease and efficiency. Come join the hundreds of thousands of people and find out why GT is called a 'Programmer’s Paradise.'"

Games Journal: A Boardgaming Monthly

http://www.thegamesjournal.com/
"The Games Journal is a monthly web-based publication concerned primarily with boardgames. It came into being mainly as a way of archiving the articles that were written for The Games Cafe, a now defunct website. Our intention is to provide a forum for articles about boardgaming in general although we also publish reviews about specific games as well as puzzles and original rules."

Games Music

http://mstation.org/games.php
"Computer games music includes just about every genre of music - from basic beeps through pop, rock and electronica to lush symphonies. How do you make it? What do you use? How does it go together? We thought you might be interested in answers to some questions so we polled a few companies and got good replies from Computer Artworks in England and Lost Boys Games in Amsterdam (now Guerilla - Aug 03)."

GDSE: Game Development Search Engine

http://www.gdse.com/
"The only engine you'll ever need"

Guardian Games Blog

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/
"Welcome to Gamesblog, the new computer games weblog from the Guardian. Our aim here is to talk about games in an entertaining, adult way, and help enjoy playing games on whatever gadget you own - PC, games console, handheld device or mobile phone."

IGDA International Game Developers Association

http://www.igda.org/
"The International Game Developers Association is a non-profit professional membership organization that advocates globally on issues related to digital game creation."

IGDA Quality of Life White Paper

http://www.igda.org/qol/whitepaper.php
"The 90-page "Quality of Life in the Game Industry: Challenges and Best Practices" white paper was prepared by the IGDA's Quality of Life Committee, representing a wide range of game development professions and companies. The white paper discusses the problems and consequences developers face when trying to maintain a career in the industry and the solutions for establishing a better work/life balance."

Internet Archive: Software Archive

http://www.archive.org/details/software

The Software Archive is designed to preserve and provide access to all kinds of rare or difficult to find, legally downloadable software titles and background information on those titles.

Internet Archive: Game Video Archive

http://www.archive.org/movies/gamevideos.php
"The Internet Archive's Game Videos Archive was set up to archive all kinds of rare or difficult to source, legally downloadable video files relating to videogames."

Internet Archive: Computer Chronicles

http://www.archive.org/movies/computerchronicles.php
The complete archive of this PBS award-winning series about technology. "Hosted by Stewart Cheifet, Computer Chronicles was the world's most popular television program on personal technology during the height of the personal computer revolution. It was broadcast for twenty years from 1983 - 2002."

It's All Noise: Composing Music Good Enough for Games

http://www.mp3.com/games/feature_itsallnoise.html
" Some of today's best music is being written especially for video games. What makes games the perfect vehicle for a great soundtrack? To answer this question (and many others), we went straight to six of gaming's leading veteran composers. Here, you'll read their words while having the opportunity to listen to some of their work."

Journal of Game Development

http://www.jogd.com/index.html
"The lack of game-specific research has prevented many in the academic community from embracing game development as a serious field of study. The Journal of Game Development (JOGD), however, provides a much-needed, peer-reviewed, medium of communication and the raison d'etre for serious academic research focused solely on game-related issues. [...] JOGD will serve both the game development industry and academic community by presenting leading-edge, original research, and theoretical underpinnings that detail the most recent findings in related academic disciplines, hardware, software, and technology that will directly affect the way games are conceived, developed, produced, and delivered."

Ludology.org: videogame theory

http://ludology.org/
"Ludology.org is an online resource for videogame researchers"

Ludonauts

http://www.ludonauts.com/
"Exploring ludic media"

MemoryCard: squinting critically at the game industry

http://memorycard.blogs.com/memorycard/
"MemoryCard is written by Mia Consalvo, an assistant professor in the School of Telecommunications at Ohio University. As you can guess, cheating and digital games is a current favorite issue of mine. Other fun topics include women and games, the structure of the game industry, and the role of Japanese culture in game design/playing/the industry."

RoleMaker: An MSc Project by Jacob Marner

http://www.rolemaker.dk/
"The thesis is about the design and construction of a system called Role Maker. Role Maker is not fully specified nor fully implemented. Only those parts of Role Maker needed for the thesis has been made. The thesis has been made to demonstrate my ability to design and implement a game project at the scale of commercial games today. Implementing all of Role Maker is a larger project than possible within the time allocated for a Master's Thesis. Instead of scaling down Role Maker to something that has nothing to do with a commercial game, I have chosen to limit the thesis itself only to cover a partial specification, design and implementation of a larger and more complete system."

Slashdot Games

games.slashdot.org
"Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff that matters."

Social Impact Games

http://www.socialimpactgames.com/
"Entertaining games with non-entertainment goals (aka serious games)"

Terra Nova

http://terranova.blogs.com/
"Terra Nova is a collaborative weblog experiment. It is about an emerging social phenomenon called "virtual worlds" -- computer-generated, persistent, immersive, and representational social platforms [...] Posts at Terra Nova will offer news and opinions regarding the social, economic, legal, psychological, and political aspects of these worlds. We will feature scholarship, insights, and data relevant to the study of virtual worlds. There are several good websites and mailing lists out there for those who develop virtual worlds (e.g. Gamasutra, MUD-Dev) and several good websites for those who spend leisure time in particular virtual worlds (e.g. Stratics, MMORPGdot) We're not aspiring to accomplish either one of those objectives."

Video Game Museum

http://www.vgmuseum.com/
An online museum devoted to archiving screenshots, advertising material and more, for computer, console and arcade games.

Video Game Music Archive

http://www.vgmusic.com/
An archive of midi files hosted by permisission of the midi sequencers. Be sure to read the FAQ on acceptable use.

Water Cooler Games

http://www.watercoolergames.org/
"Water Cooler Games is a site about video games with an agenda. It is about games that go beyond entertainment. Water Cooler Games explores the emerging field of games want to do more than simply being fun: they want to make a point, share knowledge, change opinions. This includes new genres such as advergaming, newsgaming, political games, simulations and edutainment. If you think that video games have a strong potential for communication, persuasion and education, come and join our discussion by the Water Cooler."

Why We Play Games

http://www.xeodesign.com/whyweplaygames/
"As Player Experience Researchers, we see a huge gap between most usability and market research reports on gaming and what players actually experience. As Designers, we also see a huge opportunity for game developers to spawn player emotions beyond frustration, excitement, and fear. While players may check "good graphics" on a survey; our cross-genre, contextual research on why adults play games reveals a much more interesting story."

Wired Magazine

http://www.wired.com/wired/
"WIRED delivers the intelligence readers need on the topics that matter most: Technology and innovation. New media. Arts and culture. Business. Global Politics. The best new products and more."

WomenGamers.com: Because Women DO Play

http://www.womengamers.com/
"WomenGamers.Com welcomes all types of gamers: female, male, young, old, with a passion for many different kinds of games. Our ultimate aim is to establish an environment where women gamers can be integrated with the rest of the gaming community [...] We also believe in the necessity of providing in-depth, accurate information about gaming and game contents to gamers, and to those who have the responsibility of buying games for their families."