GMTV

I would like to show you some still images of what you are going to see in episode five.  The first image is a picture of the new section titled ‘Spotlight’ it replaces the old ‘GML in 4 Minutes’ segment, you will learn more about it when episode five is released.  The second picture is an interview with Tom Russell, creator of Russell’s Quarterly, Tom is a very talented writer and a person who isn’t afraid to try something new.  The final picture is simply a review of the game, Jumper 3, created by YoMamasMama.

What do you think?

GMTV launches new website, episode 5 screenshots included is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Other changes include layout tweaks, removal of adverts from the YYG wiki, and relicensing all content under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license.

“As some observant users might already have noticed, we have merged the GMPedia Wiki into the YoYo Games Wiki. I am very excited about this. The SysOps of GMPedia have agreed to become SysOps of the YoYo Games Wiki. YoYo Games is very happy that they are willing to put their previous work and future energy into turning this Wiki into a place where developers can find all they need to know about the use of Game Maker. I hope you will all support us in the quest.”

Previous coverage: YYG Wiki still changing, YYG wiki and GMPedia to merge?

YYG/GMPedia wiki merge now official is taken from: GameMaker Blog

The GMking staff is extremely geographically diverse, which makes communication and decision making processes much harder.  Many of our staff have an 8 hour or more time gap (which probably explains why some of us are such night-owls .).

The blog also has a few other posts to date detailing development of their projects.

How does the GMking staff stay in touch? is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GMKing on openness:

In a post on the recently launched GMKing network blog Robin Monks, a co-editor of MarkUp, gives a brief insight into the decision making process behind the magazine.

Matthew from GameMaker Magazine:

The owner of GameMaker Magazine Matthew Haigh has launched his own blog on which he writes about his GameMaker projects and those of others. Like the magazine it could do with an extra proof read.

Blog watch is taken from: GameMaker Blog

As part of the agreement, GMking will provide resources and services to GMTV necessary to continue and improve upon their core goal: providing high quality, information-rich, audio-visual media to the Game Maker community. Additionally, some of the writers from the popular MarkUp Magazine, also produced by GMking, will be assisting in the writing and production of future GMTV episodes.

GMTV will complement and expand GMking’s services to the Game Maker community as well, making this a relationship that is truly beneficial to both sides.

Robin Monks, who represented GMking for the negotiations for this merger stated, “I think this will benefit the entire Game Maker community. By uniting forces, the newly expanded GMking Network will be able to produce even more content tailored to the Game Maker community.”

GMking is a thriving community of volunteers who produce content for indie game developers and users. GMking has served the game development community since 2004; and continues to produce relevant, quality material to educate and inform.

GMTV is a fast moving and informative Game Maker video podcast with a focus on producing quality content for users of the popular Game Maker game creation platform.

GMTV now part of GMking is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GMKing under DDoS attack is taken from: GameMaker Blog

The show is, as before, hosted by MarkUp editors Robin Monks and Eyas Sharaiha. Topics discussed include the re-writing of the GameMaker runner in C++ (including “glog” abuse!), the insecurities of GameMaker and the release of the obfuscator. Also covered is the success of the YoYo Games competitions in revealing the extent of GameMaker users talents.

It isn’t exactly fun and games, and I think it does get a bit dull after a while – perhaps a musical interlude between each topic or some pre-recorded reports (such as for the competition results) could have provided some variety. However, it makes a good listen if you want to catch up with all the Game Maker news from the past few months.

3rd GameMaker Podcast is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Two episodes of the podcast were released in June last year, however they no longer appear to be online.  The podcasts included discussion of the latest GameMaker developments and community topics.

GMKing Podcast to return is taken from: GameMaker Blog

This isn’t the first time that a site has tried to do this for GameMaker. There is already gamemaker.info, a site which Robin from GMKing describes as “flawed in it’s presentation”. Personally I find Simon Donker’s GameMaker.info a useful place to catch up with the latest news from GameMaker sites – for a start it is much easier to use it than go to the slow loading YoYo Games glogs – and it is also easy to modify.

I also use iGoogle as my homepage. A customised version of the Google search engine which also displays RSS feeds and widgets, although I use this more for keeping tab on news, sport and weather and my personal sites (vain I know) than GameMaker related matters. I do have a handful of other blogs on there, but it’s nice to have all the GameMaker stuff in one place – up to now this has been GameMaker.info. ((STOP PLUGGING THAT SITE!!))

The main difference between GMinfo and GMPlanet is that whilst .info displays only post titles, a description and link to external posts GMPlanet displays entire news articles on a single page – it is basically a blog which takes its posts from several sites. It’s basically a blog that takes the place of several sites.

Planet is a middle-man. It doesn’t create content it displays it. Kind of like YoYo Games and YouTube I suppose in the way they benefit from the work of others (this is not an anti-YYG post). The difference between these user generated content sites and GMPlanet is that often material found on YYG and YT cannot be found anywhere else – a member of the public has chosen to upload and showcase their Mario clone or happy slapping incident – whereas all the content on GMPlanet can be found elsewhere. On the sites from which it was taken.

.info sends a fair amount of traffic our way, it is the third biggest referrer to Game Maker Blog and we are also their most popular site. The biggest difference between the concept of the two sites is that .info results in a user clicking onto your site to find out the full story, whereas Planet shows the surfer the full story from the comfort of their own webpage.

Whilst it is too early to see the true effect that planet could have on GMB and other sites this isn’t a doomsday scenario, despite what I said yesterday. Individual sites will survive with traffic from existing users, links ins and from search engines. Unless of course the aggregator sites start achieving higher search rankings taking away surfers who would have otherwise found the original gmnews or gmtech website.

Why am I concerned about a possible decline in traffic? Firstly traffic is one of the few ways we can judge whether or not people like what we are doing and changes in traffic levels can help us decide if we are going down the right road. We also get feedback through comments, planet includes the textual content of our articles and not the comments form, and votes and sinks – again which can only be done on the direct site http://gamemakerblog.com. Obviously it is also better for us financially if someone views an article direct on our site because of the possibility of increased ad revenue. I will unashamedly admit that the income from GameMakerBlog alone covers all my hosting costs, however only just.

Obviously some sites saw the possibility of sites like planet coming, the GMTutorials.com posts for example only show the first few sentences of article content before trailing off because, says Robin, they have “set their rss feed to be ‘teasers’” before explaining that it is a technique used by publishers “to sucker users into their sites”. Fair enough in my opinion, but I actually think GM Tutorials are doing themselves a disfavour by providing so little of the article as a teaser.

It’s an interesting issue. One that I will certainly monitor in the future.

Interesting too is that whilst I was drafting this post at 11:30 pm on Friday night (don’t I know how to have fun!), a couple of people commented on the whole gamemaker.info/gmplanet issue. Firstly Blijbol as a response to the first mention of GMPlanet asking what was wrong with GameMaker.info and secondly Dan Eggers from GMTV who wanted to know more about the GMPlanet site and why I said GameMakerBlog was ‘doomed’.

Hopefully this post will have explained those questions.

GMPlanet Dilemma is taken from: GameMaker Blog

And a nice link to GameMaker Blog as well

GMKing Yellow Red Green Blue is taken from: GameMaker Blog