Game Developer May Issue Showcases Deadly Creatures Postmortem, Game Engine Showdown

The May 2009 issue of Game Developer magazine, the sister print publication to Gamasutra and the leading U.S. trade publication for the video game industry, has shipped to print and digital subscribers and is available from the Game Developer Digital service in both subscription and single-issue formats. The cover feature for the issue is an exclusive postmortem of Rainbow Studios' open-world action game Deadly Creatures. The article offers insight on the challenges and successes experienced by the THQ studio while developing its well-received sequel. The piece is described as follows: "Original, adult-oriented games on the Wii are a rarity, and even fewer games possess the rather odd arthouse aesthetic of Deadly Creatures. Rainbow, known for its racing games, organized a small team of developers to build a creepy-crawly action-adventure original game for the Nintendo Wii." The issue also includes "Gaming the System," a feature collecting practical career tips on getting ahead for those already working in the games industry: "What does it really take to get ahead in your chosen field? A group of pseudonymous game developers shares uncensored, occasionally brash, opinions." In addition, Javier Blasquez offers some guidance on asynchronous programming: "Traditional asynchronous coding models increase responsiveness, but can complicate certain kinds of algorithms significantly. Javier Blasquez of LucasArts provides a method for for simplifying asynchronous operations considerably through the use of coroutines in C++." Furthermore, industry veteran and former Game Developer EIC Mark DeLoura offers a useful and detailed survey of nearly 100 game developers on their opinions of currently-available major game engines, including Unreal, Source, id Tech, Unity, Torque, and others. And as usual, our regular columnists contribute detailed and important pieces on numerous areas of game development -- this issue, we include Bungie's Steve Theodore on developer ages, Noel Llopis on unit testing, Maxis' Soren Johnson on designing fairness, LucasArts' Jesse Harlin on audio design documents, and Matthew Wasteland with his monthly humor column. Worldwide paper-based subscriptions to Game Developer magazine are currently available at the official magazine website, and the 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 and PDF downloads of all issues, all for a reduced price. There is now also an opportunity to buy the digital version of May 2009's magazine as a single issue.