Since Lemmy is a terrible influence, I’ve been convinced to give RSS another go as a means to get at the ~~news that interests me~~ interesting stuff that I’d otherwise miss. It’s actually working surprisingly well, so I thought I’d share some gamedev-specific resources that I’ve subscribed to so far.
My current approach for the feed is to subscribe to basically anything that looks interesting, then prune it later if it turns out to be no good or be too spammy. So I’d very much appreciate suggestions of blogs, magazines, video channels, podcasts, whatever is RSS-able!
READING MATERIAL
Magazines
- MCV / Develop Magazine - News, interviews etc from around the UK gaming industry
- Game Developer (née Gamasutra) - Lots of interesting news and articles among the nonsense here but I can’t find a way to sub to only certain categories, so may be too spammy. We’ll see.
Blogs
- LOSTGARDEN - Self-described as “a rare treasure trove of readable, thoughtful essays on game design theory, art and the business of design” and it’s not wrong
- Keith Burgun Games - Basically a personal blog that includes devlog updates, general musings on gamedev, and a podcast
- Blobs in Games - Technical articles that mostly go over my head but are interesting to read through anyway to see what sort of thing actual smart people get up to
- Brandon Cole - Game reviews and other articles from the perspective of a blind gamer who works as an accessibility consultant. Really interesting read, and audio versions of posts are included.
WATCHING & LISTENING
Podcasts
I don’t really do podcasts but would like to get into them more, so any recommendations for this section very welcome!
- The Clockwork Game Design Podcast / Strategy Can Be Fun - By Keith Burgun who I mentioned above already, a combo of discussions and interviews around game design
- Building The Game - “the ins and outs and ups and downs of being game designers in a documentary style”
- Deep Listens - Subbed to this because it described itself as taking deeper dives into what makes games great, but haven’t listened yet so we’ll see
- The Game Dev Advice Podcast - Basically what it says on the tin
Videos
Did you know you can still subscribe to YouTube channels via RSS? This should help with the problem of YT trying to decide what we actually want to see, versus what we’ve literally told it we want to see. So far I’ve RSS-followed:
- GDC - An excellent resource that you all no doubt already know about
- Going Indie - Video essay type content on the business side of games, from a guy who started his own indie studio
- Ask Gamedev - Despite the name this is more of a showcase channel for indie / solo games, but it’s fun for a bit of occasional inspiration
- Grant Abbitt - Actually a 3d modelling channel focusing on Blender but the way he explains things has been invaluable for me and my game
Plus a couple of devlog channels by members of this community that I’d like to make sure I don’t miss:
- QueenOfSquiggles - Making a magical farming sim inspired by Slime Rancher (shoutout @[email protected] )
- JulianH - Making a story-based game about the very far future, with some definite Outer Wilds vibes (shoutout @[email protected] )
If any of you reading this have your own devlog channel, please share, I’d love to check it out too!
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For anyone thinking of joining the RSS revolution, I’m trying out Inoreader which I’d seen recommended a fair bit around Lemmy. Not too sold on it yet, but the free plan is a decent enough start.
interesting stuff that I’d otherwise miss
An alt idea to RSS is to have a private Discord server and "follow" all the official #news from other Discords you wanna follow. Then find an existing RSS bot to fill in the blanks :) You can even categorize the feeds per-channel.
Good point! Personally I can't think of much worse than having a load of news notifications in my chat app, but everyone's different and this could be a great solution for people who prefer everything in one place. Thanks for the tip!