The articles in this category mainly present my thoughts on the state of the software development industry in general, or the game development industry specifically.

Developer-Player Communication, Part II

The flow of information between developers and players -- and in general the entire interaction between those two groups -- is an aspect of the game development process that tends to be an afterthought. In some cases, the concept is entirely ignored. In my last post I hilighted three reasons ...

Developer-Player Communication, Part I

Why are some studios open and eager to talk about their upcoming projects, and others notoriously close-mouthed about the same subject? Talking about what's in the pipeline can have a beneficial on the community surrounding a studio and a particular game, which can be a useful thing to build up ...

Excellent Communications Skills

"Excellent communications skills" is one of those throw-away, wishy-washy little bullet points you see on a lot of resumes or job listings. As you may gather from my tone, I think the line is vacuous rhetoric. Modern software development in any nontrivial capacity requires us to be able to relate ...

Facing the Reality of Software Development

Last weekend, Jeff Atwood wrote about the origin and signifigance of "Coding Horror," the name of his blog. Though the name and logo were literally borrowed from the book Code Complete, Jeff points out that there is a deeper meaning: One of the most striking and memorable things about Code Complete, ...