Essential Resources for Game Designers

In this topic, I want to present a selection of resources that are directly related to the design and development of games. First of all, this information will be useful to beginners or future game designers who are only thinking about choosing a profession, but perhaps their professionals will find something useful or interesting for themselves. In addition, I assume that readers are fluent in English, which in our time is considered almost by default for IT professionals, present or future.
So let's go.

1. Sloperama


Perhaps the most useful resource, which can be recommended to future game creators. Tom Sloper, a game designer with great experience, describes in detail all areas of the game building, while simultaneously answering readers' questions. The design of the site itself can shock modern IT people with its structure and frames, but the information itself, divided into lessons, is very valuable, and, most importantly, completely free. The lessons cover all aspects of game design: the possibility of selling your ideas, writing a documented game design, the workflow and stages of creating games, preparing for a career as a game designer and choosing an educational institution, proper presentation of resumes and tips for presentations, pitfalls and success rules, testing games and career opportunities, indie development and legal protection of their ideas and projects, as well as much, much more. Moreover,

2. GameDev


The largest gaming community on which you can literally find everything related to creating games: tips and tricks, answers to questions and ranting about anything, modeling and drawing lessons, technical details and nuances of game engines, platforms and programming languages , vacancies and ... and ... Oh yes, I already said that - you can find everything there!

3. Gamasutra


Another very popular resource among igrodelov resource . Industry news, developer blogs, constantly updated job offers, digital issues of the specialized magazines Game Developer (paid) and GameCareerGuide (free).

4. GameCareerGuide


This site is related to the Hamasutra and belongs to the same company, so the materials are similar on both, but gamecareerguide is more student-oriented. Here you can find a description of specialized schools, academies and colleges that future game designers can enter. This section, unfortunately, will be of little use to domestic readers, as All schools listed are in English-speaking countries. Also on the site you can free download games created by students of various schools.

5. Nerfbat


Nerfbat is the blog of Ryan Schweider, the game designer of the notorious 38 Studios. In his blog, he publishes brief rules-lessons for beginner game designers of MMO games. In addition to useful instructions, you can find 15 laws of online communities on the site.

6. Gamedev.stackexchange


A resource completely similar to stackoverflow.com. Does not need special explanations. Everything is extremely simple. You ask a question - get an answer.

7. Devmaster


This site with a rather large community is focused primarily on specialists in working with computer graphics. Here you can find materials on shader programming, rendering, lighting. And on the forum you are very likely to get an answer to any question regarding igrostroy. An additional advantage of the resource is the availability of a database for game developers, in which you can find a description and links to game engines, 3D software, books, development resources, game companies.

8. Moddb


The largest community of game builders. A huge number of mods, all kinds of manuals and lessons, news, blogs and videos, links to indie games, as well as just a huge database of game companies and engines.

That's all for now. I will omit the presentation of books on game design, because there are a lot of them, and for this you can issue a separate topic. Meanwhile, those who wish to read specialized literature can use the list of books on Tom Sloper's site described above. Thanks for attention.

Update
Other useful resources suggested by users of the Habrahabr:
- dtf.ru
- gamedev.ru
- flashgameblogs.ru
- flashgamedev.ru
-gameinstitute.ru

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