Top Indie Game Development Blogs

Are you interested in game development? Are you just starting to make games (like us) and want to find out as much as you can about how to design, build and promote your game? Well then it's time to put on your reading pants and get stuck in! Presenting my list of the very best game development blogs around:

The Best of the Best

Make It Big In Games

Top notch articles from Jeff Tunnell about the business of making & selling games. Exceedingly high average quality of posts.  A must-subscribe.

As an Indie game developer that is going to spend your own money to make a game, it is extremely important to decide which market you want to tackle, and that really comes down to what game you want to make. I believe it is incredibly important to only make games that you are passionate about. All game development gets hard, and when the going gets hard, the only thing that will get you through it is passion. Read full post

Lost Garden

Superb writing on art & design in games, with the fantastic bonus of giving away actual art resources you can use in your own games! Infrequent posts but totally worthwhile.

Out of all this discussion about graphics, never lose sight of the big picture. The single most important thing is for you to finish your game. Iterating towards completion is the root of all practical knowledge about game development. Putting a complete game in the hands of player is how you'll learn to make your future games shake the world to its core.

If you are telling yourself "Oh, I can't complete my game because I don't have an artist," be honest with yourself. You are making excuses. Graphics are not an impediment to making a great game. Do what ever it takes to finish your game. Read full post

The Bottom Feeder

Jeff Vogel has been making old-school single player RPGs since 1994 but only started blogging this year. A treasure trove of insight for indie game developers already, and will only get better.

I am going to give full sales results for our game Geneforge 4: Rebellion. I am not the first Indie developer to reveal this sort of information. However, most public sales figures come from projects that were either blockbusters or disastrous. But our games have never landed in either pool. I have been doing this for a living for almost fifteen years. I make good money, but I'm not a rich guy. At the same time, I have been unusually successful in this business, if for nothing else that I HAVE done it for a living for a long time. Read full post

The Forge

Interesting business-themed articles, particularly about charging models for MMOs, microtransactions & virtual goods.

Despite my obvious affection for virtual asset sales in a free-to-play model, I don’t think the decision to go free-to-play or subscription (or one of a myriad of other business models for MMOs) is that simple. It’s not purely about whether you’re reaching a larger audience and I don’t believe it’s a given that you’ll make more money, overall, with the free-to-play model. I think it’s largely dependent on the game you make and the audience that ends up developing for it. Read full post

Untold Entertainment Blog

Covers a variety of topics but what I really love are the rants (example below). Love the epic rants. More please!

You wouldn’t wax philosphical about how you’ll dilute the intellectual property or how the fanbase will criticize you for selling out. You’re running an advertising-based world, and as far as advertising goes, Coke is the holy grail. You will relax your muscles and allow the Coca-Cola corporation to ram its fistfuls of hot, sweaty cash wherever it so chooses. Read full post

game poetry

Great all-rounder blog covering business & technical advice with a slant towards Flash games.

The ultimate question for a sponsor is, “How much traffic will this game drive to my site?” The quality of your game is ultimately only important with regard to its potential distribution/viral spread, and its viral spread is only important with regard to how many clicks this will generate. But the CTR is crucial as well. A game with 1 million plays and a 5% CTR is not as valuable to a sponsor as a game with 600,000 plays and a 10% CTR.

So show your sponsor what kind of CTR your game can drive. Put in some placeholder branding. Show where the links will be. If you’re willing to offer some exclusive content, show the sponsor — make one version with the content unlocked, and another version with it locked and what the link back to the sponsor’s site to play this content will look like. Don’t wait for a sponsor to request these things. Read full post

Worth A Look

MochiLand: Mochi Media run this community blog that showcases top flash games and content written by game developers themselves. Example

DESIGNER NOTES: Writings by one of the designers on Civ 3 and 4 – I particularly like the longer posts. Example

Photon Storm: Focused on flash game development and marketing. Definitely check out the example. Example

8-Bit Rocket: Covers a bit of a wide variety of things (from Atari retro to Flash to Silverlight), perhaps too wide! Example

Flash Truth: Flash games, particularly the business side of things; some great stuff. Example

Emanuele Feronato: Flash games & more. A little too much filler but I found the 'numbers' posts to be excellent. Example

Streaming Colour Dev Blog: Some great posts about (not) making money in the iPhone space. Example

Ludus Novus: Really, really like the column he's writing for GameSetWatch, follow the blog to find out when they are posted. Example

Freelance Flash Games News: A mixed bag of flash gamedev related stuff. Example

Gaming Your Way: Frequent gamedev tips & other nuggets. Example

Made That Cool Game

2D Boy Blog: Creators of World of Goo.

Kloonigames Blog: Creator of Crayon Physics Deluxe

Cliffski's Blog: Creator of Democracy / Kudos

Wolfire Blog: Creators of Lugaru / Overgrowth

Braid Blog: Creator of Braid

Suggest More!

I'm always on the lookout for quality game development blogs, so if you know some I haven't covered please leave a comment! Any that make it into my RSS reader and survive my next RSS-pruning massacre will be added into this post.

Update

Plenty of good gamedev blogs suggested in the comments. Check out these worthy additions to the list:

Michael James Williams: Very focused blog with excellent AS3 tutorials, including a full series showing how to make an avoider game.

Mr Sun Studios: Another blog focused on AS3 game tutorials, with a big backlog of articles.

Trent Polack: Excellent game design blog, in particular check out the game design round table posts.

Iain Lobb: Only just subscribed but it's pretty good so far- a mix of flash and general game design.

Tales of the Rampant Coyote: Excellent blog covering design & development of RPGs of all kind. Nicely focused!

Troy Gilbert: Another good one with plenty of reading in the archives.

That should satisfy your RSS cravings for a while!