I recently circulated a few questions to some veteran video game developers I know about their experience and their insight into video game development. The 1st response I received is from Stuart Harrison who has been programming games since 1995. Stuart is currently a Lead Programmer at Sony Computer Entertainment and continues to be a top game developer.

I’d like to thank Stuart for his contribution and please read on to find out what Stuart had to say…

I’ve collected a list of all of the video game bloggers I’ve found so far. These cover a broad range of topics include developers, producers, artists, designers, business and I’d wholly recommend adding them all to your favourite RSS reader.

All video game production projects need documents, whether it’s a four page description for an iPhone game, Xbox Live Indie Game, Flash game or a 65-doc library for a AAA multi-million selling game on PS3, X360 and every other platform. On all video game development projects, similar problems come up: people don’t read docs, people read docs but find them confusing, docs don’t get updated or the updates don’t get acted on. Fortunately, there are some ways you, as a game designer (or as whoever’s writing a doc) can help.

(mobile post)
There’s an interesting post over on GameProducer.net about how Juuso uses Twitter as part of his game blog that I wanted to emulate here.

I use my @GameLinchpin Twitter feed largely to auto-post new articles from this blog. This is done automatically when I hit publish so it’s the best way to keep up-to-date. Simply follow us and you’re all set.

I also follow other people in the games industry, not companies, and join in chats there and also RT (re-tweet) anything I find interesting and relevant to game development. I also follow events such as #e3expo, #develop2010 and #gamescom and RT interesting items too.

As Juuso says, you really need a client to use Twitter as the basic web service really doesn’t scratch the surface of what’s possible.
I use Tweetdeck on my iPhone, Home Mac and work PC as it’s by far the best app. I use Twitterific on iPad as TD isn’t very good yet.

If you’re starting out, start by following me then go through my lists and add people from there. Most people will follow you back and it’s a good way to kick start your Twitter addiction.

Hashtags are pretty much like public chat channels, you simply follow a hash tag and you join the conversation. This can be an amazing way of getting involved in a community. I’ve met lots of people on these channels who I continue to chat with on a daily basis. Find a channel, add people for the channel as they’re obviously interested and engaged in that subject.

I follow:
#xblig – Xbox Live Independant Games
#gamedev – general game development
#iPhone – broad iPhone chat
#leanstartup – small business bootstrapping

Event specific ones pop up too such as
#gamescom
#develop2010
#e3expo

Joining Twitter was one of the best things I’ve done for. Long time and I’d consider it pretty much mandatory for game debs to keep up with a rapidly changing industry.

Which people and #hashtags do you follow?

By special request I’m going to dig deep and put together a series of posts on Video Game Production, covering the whole cycle from end-to-end to hopefully share some of the knowledge I’ve acquired over the years and get your feedback too on what you think. This will include elements from numerous training courses and also hard-earned best practice learned from doing the job and working with amazing people.

Don’t miss out: join the RSS stream or follow us on Twitter and be ready. Tell your friends to join too.

I’ll aim to cover the following topics in the series: