For the majority of 2011 we have had no producing GameMaker magazines until the recent launch of indie(Function). However, Game Maker’s Digest will apparently be “returning this summer” according to a very short email sent to forum members last night.
Game Maker’s Digest produced 8 weekly issues around this time last year and is run by George Ortiz who has gone by names including the Raven and Frederick Watson but currently uses the alias Brian Fetcher.
Originally Game Maker’s Digest magazine was to be produced by GMIndie alongside their “GMIndie magazine” but the latter did not release any further issues. GMIndie then disbanded but its news blog lived on and was taken over by Bret Hudson who now runs indie(Function).
Digest started using a bizarre subscription-only system whereby issues could only be downloaded by registered users at their forum but this unsurprisingly proved unpopular and was soon scrapped.
As well as the relaunched magazine there will also be this year’s version of the the poorly conceived Game Maker Survey 2010. With 10 months of zero activity from the “GMDigest” and “Brian_Fetcher” twitter accounts hopefully some of this time has been spent ensuring the survey is better designed so the results are meaningful.
Having multiple aliases livens things up, but there’s always a reason for it.
I have talked to Brian/George on Skype about the survey. I have seen it. The first questions on it were bad so I made my suggestions and it was changed. I was told that there were 150 questions that had to go down to 20.
‘Can’t blame the guy though. He has only the perspective of an end user, whereas I could tell him right away what was useful to any developer. One question was, “how good do you rate the performance of the Game Maker Runner: 1 – 5”. Not useful. Or: “What suggestions do you have for improving the speed of the runner?”. How on earth will any end user know that without source code. “Are you happy with the price increase?” – answers to that can be predicted …
Since my initial feedback, he has worked alone. We will wait and see.
Posted a large PDF over a year ago. After I made it public George started deleting whatever forum posts he could from the Frederick accounts at YYGF and GMC. The information remained in Google’s cache for a while but obviously no longer does over a year later (some posts are screenshoted in the PDF though).
See http://nakedgm.posterous.com/updates-679 obviously some of the links will be invalid now because of the deletions/expired domains etc. but it was all accurate at the time (over a year ago). I don’t have any further comments to make on this matter either, people are free to form their own opinions but for me, and many others, this matter has long been decided.
Um, wtf do you mean Brian’s real name is George Ortiz? Where the hell did you find that info?
Plus, how did he record radio shows with Frederick if he was another guy? I remember recording with the two of them, there’s no way he was able to speak two different voices during the recordings. But, whatever, believe whatever bullshit you can pull out of your ass.
-Bretboy129 ~ Bret Hudson
Touché on Sabriath’s last comment, i guess that why most GM Magazines tend to fail at some point..
I would love to chime in and say something troll-like, but I’ve already used up all of my sarcasm for the week. I only have one rhetoric question to ask…
How much news can GM actually bring to the table in order for people to have a positive attitude toward making a magazine?
As TV said, thanks for the warning. I’d rather digest undercooked chicken than this tripe-to-be.
Thank you for warning us 😉
Hopefully they learn from their mistakes. That seems to be the biggest problems with the majority of these magazine developers – they don’t.