http://queue.acm.org/listing.cfm?item_topic=Game Development&qc_type=topics_list&filter=Game Development&page_title=Game Development&order=desc http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1483106 The video game industry earned $8.85 billion in revenue in 2007, almost as much as movies made at the box office. Much of this revenue was generated by blockbuster titles created by large groups of people. Though large development teams are not unheard of in the software industry, game studios tend to have unique collections of developers. Software engineers make up a relatively small portion of the game development team, while the majority of the team consists of content creators such as artists, musicians, and designers. Articles Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:10:31 GMT Walker White, Christoph Koch, Johannes Gehrke, Alan Demers 1483106 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1483105 I used to be a systems programmer, working on infrastructure used by banks, telecom companies, and other engineers. I worked on operating systems. I worked on distributed middleware. I worked on programming languages. I wrote tools. I did all of the things that hard-core systems programmers do. Articles Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:10:29 GMT Jim Waldo 1483105 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1331296 One thing that becomes immediately apparent when creating and distributing mobile 3D games is that there are fundamental differences between the cellphone market and the more traditional games markets, such as consoles and handheld gaming devices. The most striking of these are the number of delivery platforms; the severe constraints of the devices, including small screens whose orientation can be changed; limited input controls; the need to deal with other tasks; the nonphysical delivery mechanism; and the variations in handset performance and input capability. Articles Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:49:28 GMT Mark Callow, Paul Beardow, David Brittain 1331296 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=988409 It has been a long journey from the days of multicolored sprites on tiled block backgrounds to the immersive 3D environments of modern games. What used to be a job for a single game creator is now a multifaceted production involving staff from every creative discipline. The next generation of console and home computer hardware is going to bring a revolutionary leap in available computing power; a teraflop (trillion floating-point operations per second) or more will be on tap from commodity hardware. This leap in power will bring with it a leap in expectations, both on the part of the consumer and the creative professional. Articles Wed, 05 May 2004 16:31:12 GMT Nick Porcino 988409 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=971594 Back in the mid-1990s, I worked for a company that developed multimedia kiosk demos. Our biggest client was Intel, and we often created demos that appeared in new PCs on the end-caps of major computer retailers such as CompUSA. At that time, performance was in demand for all application classes from business to consumer. We created demos that showed, for example, how much faster a spreadsheet would recalculate (you had to do that manually back then) on a new processor as compared with the previous year's processor. The differences were immediately noticeable to even a casual observer - and it mattered. Having to wait only 10 seconds for something that previously took 20 or more was a major improvement and led many consumers and businesses to upgrade their PCs. Articles Tue, 24 Feb 2004 11:42:21 GMT Dean Macri 971594 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=971593 If you've been following the game development scene, you've probably heard many remarks such as: "The main role of graphics in computer games will soon be over; artificial intelligence is the next big thing!" Although you should hardly buy into such statements, there is some truth in them. The quality of AI (artificial intelligence) is a high-ranking feature for game fans in making their purchase decisions and an area with incredible potential to increase players' immersion and fun. Articles Tue, 24 Feb 2004 11:41:00 GMT Alexander Nareyek 971593 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=971592 Computer games (or "electronic games" if you encompass those games played on console-class hardware) comprise one of the fastest-growing application markets in the world. Within the development community that creates these entertaining marvels, multi-language development is becoming more commonplace as games become more and more complex. Today, asking a development team to construct a database-enabled Web site with the requirement that it be written entirely in C++ would earn scornful looks and rolled eyes, but not long ago the idea that multiple languages were needed to accomplish a given task was scoffed at. Articles Tue, 24 Feb 2004 11:39:15 GMT Andrew M. Phelps, David M. Parks 971592 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=971591 Wish is a multiplayer, online, fantasy role-playing game being developed by Mutable Realms. It differs from similar online games in that it allows tens of thousands of players to participate in a single game world (instead of the few hundred players supported by other games). Allowing such a large number of players requires distributing the processing load over a number of machines and raises the problem of choosing an appropriate distribution technology. Articles Tue, 24 Feb 2004 11:38:07 GMT Michi Henning 971591 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=971590 The hardest part of making a game has always been the engineering. In times past, game engineering was mainly about low-level optimization - writing code that would run quickly on the target computer, leveraging clever little tricks whenever possible. Articles Tue, 24 Feb 2004 11:36:18 GMT Jonathan Blow 971590 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=971589 OK, so I admit it - not only am I a total closet gamer geek, I admit that I actually care enough to be bitter about it. Yep, that's right - this puts me in the "big-time nerd" category. Curmudgeon Tue, 24 Feb 2004 11:33:58 GMT Josh Coates 971589