Game Developer January Issue Gets Zombified, Front Lined

The latest issue of Game Developer magazine, the sister print publication to Gamasutra.com, and the leading U.S. trade publication for the video game industry, has now shipped to subscribers and is available from the Game Developer Digital service in both subscription and a new single-issue formats. The cover features for the January 2006 issue twin our postmortem for the issue, for Wideload's Stubbs The Zombie, with the eponymous Stubbs' attempt to consume our 2005 Front Line Award for the best video game tools. In the first of these, Wideload Games' Alexander Seropian, a former Bungie co-founder, discusses using a unique model for game development which has generated significant buzz in the industry. Similar to many Hollywood studios, the company only hires select core staff and outsources the brunt of the work to contractors. Thus, Seropian lays out the ups and downs of his cost-effective model, sharing how it helped his team ship Stubbs for the Xbox. Following on from this, Game Developer's coverage of its eighth annual Front Line Awards aim to single out those companies and products that have made significant strides in the battle to get developers home on time. Along with a panel of respected industry judges, the magazine has awarded the leading tools, hardware, and book for their excellence, and inducted one distinguished tool into the Hall of Fame, for which the award results have also been announced online - though the magazine has further information and mini-reviews of the winners. Alongside this, Holger Gruen discusses the use of the GPU and vertex buffers to create memory efficient details in vibrant game worlds in his technical article 'Making The Grass', Blitz Games' Philip Oliver analyzes the problems with having your developer's strengths pigeonholed in the Business Level column, Noah Falstein interviews Double Fine's Tim Schafer in his regular design column, Mick West looks at the concept of mature optimization in his monthly programming article, and there are also new audio and art columns, product reviews, news, and art features. Worldwide paper-based subscriptions to Game Developer magazine are currently available at the official magazine website, and the new Game Developer Digital version of the issue is also now available, with the site offering six months and a year's subscriptions, alongside access to back issues, all for a reduced price. There is now also an opportunity to buy the digital version of January 2006's magazine as a single issue. Newsstand copies of the magazine will also shortly be available at North American outlets including Fry's Electronics and Barnes & Noble.