Column: 'Blogged Out: Of Democrats, Darwin and Rocking Out'

In this week's Blogged Out, Gamasutra's look at recent web log posts in the game development community, regular columnist Jim Rossignol focuses on Darwinia developer Introversion's post-GDC write-ups, continued reaction to Guitar Hero, and Manifesto Games' Greg Costikyan's vision of a more democratic games industry, as extracted below from his blog: "Gamers should be able to 'bubble up' cool stuff; developers should talk to their fans, and purposefully shape their development to respond to the enthusiasm of the people who love what they do. Conventionally, retailers have contact with consumers, and understand their behaviour best; they talk to publishers, and publishers decide what to commission on the basis of what they hear from retailers. Developers operate in the dark, trying to feel out what consumers want, in a bizarre game of blind-man's-buff, seeing what pitches get shot down by publishers and what do not. It's all--well, fucking insane, given the existence of the net. There's no need for this three-distance-removed signalling. Gamers and developers need to find a way to talk--and to get the intermediaries who, when you get down to it, are useless and overpaid overhead, out of the equation." You can read the full Gamasutra column (no registration required, please feel free to link to this column from external websites).