Gamasutra Member Blogs: From Handling Feature Creep To Crafting A Fair Fight

[In highlights from Gamasutra's Member Blogs, our bloggers write about diverse topics, including how to deal with feature creep, summaries of recent academic studies, and how games don't always play fair.] Member Blogs can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while invitation-only Expert Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- are written by selected development professionals. We hope that our blog sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information, check out the official posting guidelines. Here are the top member blogs for the week: This Week's Standout Member Blogs - Scope Creep - Or, What Kind Of Fries Did You Want With That? (Robert Anderson) Using his own experience as a guideline, Robert Anderson explains the dangers of scope creep, and how teams should react if their project begins to spiral out of control. - Computer Science Vs. Game Development (Or Which Degree Should I Get?) (Robert Walker) Robert Walker offers insight to help students decide between pursuing a degree on game design or one in computer science, weighing the pros and cons of each and outlining the skills they tend to nurture. - Games, Aggression, Health And Driving - A Summary Of Three Recent Academic Papers (Ben Lewis-Evans) Ben Lewis-Evans aims to help others penetrate dense academic writing by providing in-depth summaries of three papers examining violence, health, and driving skills among video game players. - Multi-Player Betas As Marketing Tools (David Hughes) With more and more online games offering access "betas" prior to release, David Hughes examines what a beta means today, and how they can be used as a marketing tool for retail products. - Playing Fair (James Youngman) James Youngman looks at challenge in games, arguing that players should never have to fail in order to learn how to succeed, pointing out examples of how games don't always play fair.