An Idea For The Community

#1 we have this great thing, this internet. it's a good medium for this type of 'zine.

tdn could be a good place for it too.

though again you need content....

#2 The idea is good but GarageGames has such a huge and brilliant community that we dont need that sort of thing

#3 I think this is a great idea. It should be on the web, in email, ebook, or RSS format. We do have a great community, but so much is going on that it is hard to keep up. Most of you probably remember our developer newsletters. Every year we make a renewed effort to send one at least once per month, but by the end of the year, runnign the site, and jsut keeping up with our GG tasks pushes it to the side. Maybe this year...

-Jeff Tunnell, GG

#4 This has been done with 3dgamestudio, however that online magazine is free, maybe check it out the format is quite well thought out IMHO. It certainly helped me out in my 3DGS days, i think it is called ACKNEX USER MAGAZINE.

#5 Well, when I purchased torque and downloaded stuff, I entered my email and CHECKED to be on the 'newsletter' list. Maybe getting the newsletter out more frequently (dont think I have ever received one in fact) would be a nice way to start this. Getting the 'inside' details going on at GG out once a month would be nice. Just a thought.

- John

#6 I would be most interested in the tutorials aspect. It would be a great way for the more advanced users to help out with educating the rest of us.

#7 Great idea. As for revenue I really suggest going the online ad route. Get the zine out there for free, expand your subscriber base, and charge advertisers for 'inserts'. If you have good enough coverage people/publishers will pay you money to advertise games/tools/etc.

Check out http://www.escapistmagazine.com/ for a good model.

Also I would also think about doing a podcasts and not limiting the discussion to GG but opening it up to indies in general (with a focus on GG).

-Unk

#8 Thank you all for your comments, especially you Jeff.

I always enjoyed those newsletter GG sent out. They were informative and gave a little extra inside feel. I know GG is very busy, so maybe this could help them out as well. I defintely plan on having it as a downloadable PDF, RSS is very possible too. Podcasts is something I haven't messed with much, but is also another medium.

Advertising would be nice. I dont plan or want to charge people for it. I'm not looking at this as a money making venture. That's what my job is for. :) I want this to be part of my contribution to the community. There will be charges though and if I have to, I'll pay them out of pocket. Maybe there could be some donations too that might come through from people.

I want to be open too all the indie market, but strong emphasis on GarageGames since they've spearheaded the indie movement here as of late.

Well guys keep the comments coming. I want to hear as much feedback as I can. I'll start laying some things out for it and expanding on this, and post more details later. Keep it coming guys :) If you have any questions, ask me here for email me in my profile.

#9 I think it's a great idea. I was going to do it myself. I've been working on it behind the scenes for the last couple months while doing the weekly recaps of plans. I say go for it! I would volunteer for it myself but if you've read my weekly recaps, you know I'm not the greatest writer nor example for the community. If you got Jeff Tunnell thinking it's be cool that you do it, you should do it. I will stop writing these weekly recaps. They are a lot of work for one person and if there's a whole team doing a whole monthly magazine, that's WAY cooler. At least I thought so, which was why I wanted to do one. I do have one request as a member of this community: please don't only put in the flashy stuff, there are so many cool projects and people that don't have flash but they are amazing. I think they deserve to be written about as well.

And I have one piece of advice: stay ahead of your due date. :) I was doing the recaps at the end of the week and that left me with no room for anything to go wrong. Things due go wrong, like for me, my mother in laws had to go to the emergency room 3 weekends in a row. I finally wised up and skipped the last two weeks so I could write the highlights for each day at the end of the day instead of the end of the week. Man, it's so much easier to pace yourself when writing. Plus, you have time to go back and rethink what you've written before you go to print. Plus, it's WAY less stressfull to be ahead. I know you will plan for this, I am just telling you as a reminder of how important it will be for you when it's 6am the morning of the print and you are still working on the magazine. It's sucks.

I'm so excited that someone is pulling a whole team together for this!! It's really deserves a whole team. I can't wait to see the first issue!!! Anything besides writing reviews on peoples projects that I can do to help, count me in as a volunteer!!

I will have to at least do another weekly plan highlights to help get the word out about this!! Maybe a few more until everyone knows!!!

#10 @Anton:

Keep doing the weekly recaps man. I enjoy those :) I'll defintely take you up on your offer for help :) Email me at the address in my profile and we'll start talking. Let me know what you have and we'll join forces :)

#11 I'd written a nice long reply then thought, I'll click notify me when new comments are posted.. Guess you can work out the rest :P

So to summerize. Yes I think this is a great idea.

If possible, even though the mag is mainly TGE focused, try to include news/reviews/interviews from outside of TGE as well. TGE content could still be the lions share of the mag as thats the purpose behind having a TGE mag, but it would still be nice to read that odd bit of information from the indie/commercial space in general, at least if its noteworthy.

Tutorials/code snippets are a good idea, but don't focus too much on these. After all TDN will be containing more and more as time goes by. I'm sure theres some unique content that would work though. Magazines have had coding tutorials and tips in them for a long time even with the web competing. They just need to be focused. Perhaps a section aimed at beginners and a second tutorials/snippet covering a more advanced topic?

My main interest in the mag however would be news/reviews/interviews. News may be already covered to an extent by the GG website and individually by plans. But this is still a lot of info to filter through and risk missing something worth reading. A mag would bring key news to light and especially items that may not have ever been announced on the GG website or plans, but on other websites.

Review wise, well you could go to town on this. A section on TGE games in development with thoughts/opinions on how the concept sounds. A section on TGE games released with reviews of how well they played, good/bad points etc

Then you could have a section on new tools to for TGE/.t2d etc Someone creates a map editor *cough*constructor*cough* include reviews of it. If you're lucky once the mag takes off you might get to see early releases in order to review it before anyone gets their dirty hands on things. You could also include reviews of free tools, for example tools that might make working with T2D easier such as a datablock builder, or image stitcher.

The amount of content that could be put in this section is mind blowing. One thing it does allow is for you to get ahead content wise. Because in many cases the info in this section may not be time critical, you could build up 6+ months of articles. Then if you have a scoop ona tool, drop that in, if not you've got backup material to drop in, which will become important when one of your team doesn't manage to turn in an article for the next issue and you're short.

Interview wise, this is something that can be really interesting to other developers. If you do interviews with TGE developers and or game teams For example MaxGaming, 21-6 or just selected individuals perhaps Joe Maruschak, Andy Schatz, anyone from garage games etc etc Again you could build up lots of interviews which arn't time critical to plug the gaps when you're short one month. But likewise you can slip in interviews with someone talking about their latest game which is to be released soon, or any interview that is immediate in time.

I'm sure there are many indie developers that would love to get a chance to pimp their project in an interview and talk about why they love doing what they're doing. But it doesn't have to end there. Once the mags up and running, perhaps someone at GG can set you in with a few contacts in the serious games market or the education market. Think anyone working on a simulation with TGE such as NASA or schools utilising TGE in teaching. These interviews are not often found on other sites and would make an awesome addition.

Anyhow, from the lenght of my "summerised" post (after losing the first :P) I think you can probably guess I'm really behind the idea. If you have the time or are willing to make the time to setup a mag like this then go for it.

As you pointed out revenue is important if you're to keep this going long term. In the future if you can pay those that submit articles even if its a token payment, it will help keep things ticking over. So look into advertising. Adverts for tools/games/TGE itself can all be included in the mag. Then you have all the other none tge but still game related ads that could be included. But however you do it, keep a good balance between content and ads. The ads should be there to keep the magazine running :)

A subscription to the mag in the early days may be a bad idea, but if the content reaches a high enough standard, I'm sure many people would be willing to pay. Even if its just a small amount liek you say $1.99 might not be much but enough readers and it mounts up.

Look into RSS feeds for the mag, I'm not sure if its possible or not, but something along the lines of podcasting but with PDF's rather than mp3's would be nice. You could subscribe to the mag rss feed and have the next issue auto download. If thats not possible (not sure if any end user progs support it) then just an rss feed pimping the new release and taking you to the download page would be great.

One thing to consider is format. PDF is a good standard, but it would be nice if you didn't stop there. For example if you did the mag in LaTeX with Lyx or something similar, then you coudl export HTML versions, PDF versions and also versions suitable for reading on mobile devices. For example my palm can read PDF's but the pdf prog really sucks. I'd much rather convert a html feed with isilo to read on it, or even download a palm ebook. If you create the magazine with the appropriate tool (latex for example) you can automate the process of creating the various formats.

#12 Anton:
Got your email, I'll email you back this afternoon.

Gary:
I did the same thing with my earlier post. Hit "Notify..." before submit.

Some very nice ideas. I would like to expand out and reach more than just GG users. Who knows maybe there is some indies out there who haven't heard of Torque and this could show them the light so to speak.

The tutorials, wouldn't be a main part of the magazine, but maybe try to have one an article. Major emphasis would be the reviews, news, interviews, maybe postmortems if I could get people to submit them.

Product reviews will be something very big. This could include any tool deemed useful for indies. Game reviews would be a nice addon. I feel this is something that could beneficial to indie developers. This way besides just showing their game off in their blog, it'll get out there to some people who maybe don't read the blogs, or even come to the GG site. Advance copies would always be nice ;) but I don't know how possible that'd be.

Interviews is definetely something I'll have in there. I always enjoy reading the interviews people post here. This way you can get a more in depth view of the developer/community member and get to know them. Also this could be another way for them to advertise their game.

Postmortems, same thing. I think postmortems are great. A person can learn alot from postmortems. This is probably my favorite feature from Game Developer. There is several that could be generated here from the community. Minions of Mirth (I believe Josh posted one), Andy Schatz Tycoon: Venture Africa, and more are always games from within the community. Maybe they'd be willing to submit at first, then it could expand to cover any game as long as people is willing to submit them to the magazine.

Advertising, like I said is the way I want to go. GG doesn't charge for their content for the community, so why should anyone else? I think I could make enough from advertising to cover server costs, bandwidth, advertising of the magazine itsefl, maybe Constructor so I could review ;) (j/k) but other costs associated with running a magazine such as this. I don't forsee nor plan on the subscription, unless it takes off and has a reader base of 100,000 readers and everyone agrees to pay to make it better :)

Formats are another thing I've been reading on. PDF definite, HTML version as well. I'll look into LaTeX and Lyx. Whats a good format for mobile devices? RSS feeds are going to be used, in some form or fashion. They are the next big thing for the 'net so why stay behind the times?

Love the comments guys, anyone else have anything?

#13 PICTURES! *Eats paper wads full of pictures*

#14 Hey!!! GREAT Idea Chip!!!
I'd like to help, if I can, but I don't have much time, so if you think of a way in which I can help, E-Mail me.
here are some ideas, hope they help:
Make a "Tutorial of the month", one advanced and one for begginers, and add links two four of the "Months Best Tutorials" or something of the sort.
Add a "Monthly Screenie" with a screenshot from a currently-in-development game from TGE/T2D/TSE.

good luck,
Lee-Orr

p.s - I believe OpenOffice can make PDF's & HTML, I'll look into it.

#15 I believe OO can. I've looked at LaTeX, and I may go with it as well. I'll email you after while, and talk with you about a few things with the magazine. I like your ideas though :)

#16 Just a quick post for Anton and Lee. I've emailed you guys. If you didn't get it let me know and I'll send it from a Hotmail account, rather than my webserver.

#17 Chip - I e-mailed you back, so check you inbox.
btw, I think the most efficient way for communication will be IM's.

Lee-Orr