Gamasutra Member Blogs: From Essentials To Inflation

In highlights from Gamasutra's Member Blogs, our bloggers write about diverse topics, including how to make games like Nintendo, the essentials of level design, and the ever-increasing budgets and development periods for big budget games. Member Blogs can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while invitation-only Expert Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- are written by selected development professionals. We hope that our blog sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information, check out the official posting guidelines. Here are the top member blogs for the week: This Week's Standout Member Blogs - How To Make Games Like Nintendo: Mentality (Tim Tavernier) Tim Tavernier examines what contributes to Nintendo's unquestionable success in the industry, and suggests several guidelines for developers to follow in order to make games that have prominent mainstream appeal. - Is This Good For The Company? (Isaiah Taylor) Isaiah Taylor takes a look at the supplementary products that accompany major releases, including films, comic books, novels and more, and questions their influence on the games industry at large. - Killing Two Mutalisks With One Thor: Starcraft 2 Multi-Player Analysis (Josh Bycer) As Starcraft 2 players explore the intricacies of the game's complex multiplayer, Josh Bycer weighs in, offering his opinions on the delicate balance between the game's three diverse races. - Level Design Lesson 2: Knowledge Is Power (Raymond Benefield) In part of his series of blog entries examining the key elements of level design, Raymond Benefield emphasizes the importance of teaching players about the key features of a multiplayer map. - A Curious Stage In Development (Marc Bell) Game budgets and development time have skyrocketed, and Marc Bell wonders if this expansion is worth supporting; in this piece, he examines several recent big-budget games and compares their scale to games from previous generations.