Gamasutra Expert Blogs: From Unexpected Results To The Future Of Online Moderation

[In highlights from Gamasutra's Expert Blogs, industry notables write about diverse topics, including unexpected mid-development scenarios, EA's approach to social games, and the future of moderating online games."] 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 - Unexpected Results (Michael Carr) Unexpected scenarios often reveal themselves when debugging a game; these situations can be useful or just plain silly, and Michael Carr suggests developers record and release these mid-development bloopers to share with their fans and the rest of the industry. - Going Indy (Robert Madsen) Going independent can certainly be a viable career path for developers, but it takes a lot of work to make independent development run smoothly. Robert Madsen breaks down the essential skills needed to run a company on your own, emphasizing not only adept development skills, but also good business sense. - Puzzled: EA's Recent Strategy On Zynga, Playfish, EALA, Pogo, Jamdat (Kris Morness) Looking back at Electronic Arts' approach to entering the social games market, Kris Morness expresses confusion regarding the way the publisher handled its RTS team at the EALA studio. - Indie Devs, Please Market Your Games! (Michael Rose) After receiving some unsettling emails from indie developers, Michael Rose urges these developers to market their game on their own in order to attract attention among the sea of other titles in the market. - Why Human Moderation Isn't Enough In A Web 2.0 World (Rebecca Newton) Rebecca Newton takes an in-depth look at the current moderation techniques for online games, suggesting the sheer scope of these modern games is too large for a handful of moderators to handle. Instead, she suggests developers look into complex community management software to tend to the needs of an online player base.