Gamasutra Expert Blogs: From Going Indie To Boycotting Steam

In our weekly Best of Expert Blogs column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game development community who maintain Expert Blogs on Gamasutra. Member Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while the invitation-only Expert Blogs are written by development professionals with a wealth of experience to share. We hope that both sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information about the blogs, check out the official posting guidelines. Here are the top blogs for the week: This Week's Standout Expert Blogs Guide To Becoming An Independent Game Developer Alistair Doulin If you've made the decision to go indie, or you're just idly considering it, Alistair Doulin's primer of key independent development concepts is worth a read. And it's worth noting that many of his tips apply just as strongly to larger-scale development. ESD Publishers Boycott Valve's Steam Service. Seriously? Derek Smart It's almost impressive how much controversy Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 2 has managed to drum up from nearly every conceivable corner -- including, unexpectedly, digital distributors. Longtime developer Derek Smart explains why those companies are barking up the wrong tree, and how Steam got where it today. How To Project Decals David Rosen In another of his supremely practical technical pieces, Wolfire founder David Rosen lays out his method for inexpensively projecting decals onto complex geometry. Comparative Ludology: A Case Study Using The Sims and Total War Taekwan Kim How are The Sims and Empire: Total War alike? What could they learn from each other? Probably more than you think, in both cases. Taekwan Kim offers a compelling analysis stretching from the macro level to the micro level. Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design Mark Venturelli Casual game design has not yet been sufficiently addressed in serious analytic writing, argues Mark Venturelli, who aims to start correcting the problem with this adaptation of a presentation from this year's SBGames in Brazil.