June 1 Mag Update

We've been working hard getting advertisers, articles, and an interview. Unfortunately we have missed our deadline to put the publication out for June 1. The publication will be linked here with a full update as soon as it happens. We apologize, but two maning a magazine publication with 5 articles has turned out to be a bit more work that originally thought. Top it all off with Real Life interfering with some of the workload itself as well and you have a later than planned publication.

Please hold tight and hopefully we'll get it out soon.

Magazine Update

Things at GCZine have been buzzing coming up on our deadline for the June 1st issue. We have a good collection of 5 articles covering varying topics that were breifly discussed on the blog here. You can expect a Tools of the Trade at $0 type of article as well as a web presence gentle tips article. The web presence article is planned to continue on beyond this first issue to cover more ground. I'm going to put up another poll relevant to the magazine. I want to be able to do some preleminary reports to our advertisers at GameDev, Garage Games, and Cartoonsmart.

Cheers!

You need web presence...

Due to the amount of design work I'm currently doing between our new site, the magazine, a companies website, three sports team sites, my other business website, a gaming guild website, and a couple browser based games....... I've been digging up some interesting stuff. One site I've come across is particularly nice. It has alot of freebie tuts, but has a plus membership with many many more. The site is the Tuts Plus network. There is section for photoshop tutorials, vector tutorials , net tuts, audio tuts, flash tuts, and ae tuts (after effects). There are tutorials for everything from logo design to websites from scratch. Photoshop digital painting to photo enhancing. I have even come across a design process tutorial for a couple things. I haven't gone across all the network yet sticking mostly to PSDTuts+ and NETTuts+ mostly.

This I feel is a very valuable resource for even game creators due to a web presence for their projects and their team. If you don't look the part of a professional why would anyone believe you are. I'm cutting blogs short as longer more in depth articles will be going into the first issue of the magazine coming June 1st 2009. Unfortunatley for you guys I can't go dumping all my wisdom and knowledge out on the internet at the usual rate so that I have something to offer to you in the magazine. I also have another writer, who is also an original follower of the blog, working on the magazine for me. We are hoping to release about a 14 page magazine to start carrying 4 articles, a featured developer article, and some helpful advertisments. We'll be making a huge deal about it here on the blog which will eventually point at the new website when it is completed and the blog will then seize further growth.

A time for growth!

GCZine has began pulling resources to work up our first printed issue. We do not have a release date, but will notify everyone once it becomes available. Also in the works is an official site that is not a freebie blogger site. We will be working on a weekly released E-Version that will grant members a single news feed article a week most likely. This site will become the official home and this blog will be no longer used once it goes live. Some minor features hoping to be placed in the folds include:
Weekly Articles
RSS News Feeds on the site from other major game dev sites
Focused advertisment from the companies you want to see
Events calendar centralizing schedules of multiple events to one spot for your convenience
The Editors Blog
Still under consideration are a Forum and Competitions

GCZine will most likely be keeping its name for the growth although some name changes were considered. We are hoping to keep this dream alive and growing so we can continue to provide you with information, education, and entertainment from the indie dev communities. We will be putting forth an affordable marketing campaign to encourage new members to join our ranks. I am looking at several publisher opportunities and do not know how the subscription of the magazine will precisley work, but details will come as they are available.

Thanks for your support so far and we hope everyone can keep us moving.

Are you part of the Nethernet?

I have had a rough weekend with my son being bitten by a dog and then I have gotten strep throat. In the meantime due to some of the spare time this provided me with I was able to finally test drive a game that truly got my attention from out of nowhere. The game at this time requires you to use FireFox and is an add on/toolbar for the browser. It transforms your browser into a sort of passive game. You level in certain classes that can provide you with special abilities. It layers on top of existing websites allowing you to leave awsms or attacks, place guard dogs, build quests or do them, and even portals to other sites. you earn data points and pings based upon activity which allow you to purchase the tools as well as armor upgrades etc. I've been amused by the game and have it running on all my computers just to get a little extra out of it. So check it out at http://www.thenethernet.com/

Back in the office!

I'm back in the office from my vacation and happy to be back. Unfortunately I was limited to my access to the internet so I do not have an article to provide the readers that are showing up regularly. Until I can pull in more writers I will be easing back the deadlines for articles to every other week rather than every week. This will hopefully allow me to cover a greater circle of information with less rushed articles. I am by no means a professional writer and want to provide everyone with the highest quality articles I can. I am talking with several Indie Dev's like myself about becoming writers for GCZine. This will not only allow me to work more on the sites future development away from a blog site to a true domain with magazine formatting and advertisements. I am planning on posting a poll to determine our traffic and to see what kind of regular visiting I can expect. Please fill out this poll honestly and I hope you continue to visit us.

Happy Easter!

I will be going to Massachusetts over the Easter break. I will be out of town from the 9th - 13th so next weeks post may be delayed. The holidays for some reason get me thinking about the current industry genre standard. Whats the top genre right now? What sells the best today? What are the predictions for the future of said genre?

A personal analysis would probably have you guessing the MMORPG is still the top genre for games. I don't believe this is so. It does make a lot of money when done correctly and marketed properly, but I don't think it is an industry leading genre. FPS are still high on the totem poll in popularity because they are quick, action packed, and multi player. RTS seem to have tapered off a bit taking a lot of Sim style games with them. RPG is still a popular choice for those of use who like long stories with heavy adventure and extended playability and replayability. You have a new breach of RPG which feels like a FPS would which I personally deem Army Killers. You play a character that can take out dozens upon dozens of enemies in a single swing of his/her sword. So I started digging. There has to be a demographic that can hint to us, the independant developers, what we should be looking at doing.

Believe it or not finding a demographic for game genres is not an easy task at all. After reading several dozen sites I wasn't that surprised to see that Platformers and Fighting games have fallen to almost the bottom of the charts along with vehicle sims (flight/racing/etc.). MMORPG is still high on the charts as are RPG, Action, and Action Adventure games. FPS is pretty close to topping it out from various readings. Puzzle games are hot and get alot of attention. Take advantage of XNA being Windows, XBox, and Zune friendly and you can take advantage of the xna creator club to make some money. All in all this is still my opinion as I couldn't find a true demographic to go by. If anyone has more luck than me in finding something feel free to email me and it will be linked from the site.

Thanks all and have a Happy Easter.