Game Developer's October Issue Debuts With Bulletstorm Postmortem

Author: by Staff

The October 2011 issue of Game Developer magazine has shipped to print subscribers and digital readers, and features an in-depth postmortem on Epic and People Can Fly's Bulletstorm, as well as features on reactive programming, the origin of Tekken, and much more. Game Developer magazine is the sister print publication to Gamasutra and the leading U.S. trade publication for the video game industry, and this new issue is now available from the Game Developer Digital service in both subscription and single-issue formats. In the October issue's exclusive postmortem on the over-the-top shooter Bulletstorm, creative director Adrian Chmielarz of People Can Fly discusses the challenges and surprises the team encountered during development. Perhaps one of the biggest surprises for the Polish team at People Can Fly was the strong audience reaction to the game's ridiculous, foul-mouthed dialogue: "Do you know any swear word in a foreign language? German, French, Polish? When you say it out loud, no biggie, right? Not a problem to use it during a family dinner, I assume? "That is how all the f-bombs sounded to us. Being Polish, all the strong language in Bulletstorm was just exotic and fun to us. We did not feel its power. In other words, Epic thought this is what we wanted and respected our creative vision, while we had no idea this vision was a bit more than we really wanted. "It was only at the end of the development, when I read the Polish translation of the game, that I realized how dirty we were. I swear a lot. A LOT. And yet still I ...kind of blushed." Elsewhere in the October issue, game programmer Gary Dahl outlines the essentials of reactive coding in a feature titled "Reactive Game Architectures." Here, Dahl explains how reactive programming offers a new way about thinking about code, focusing more on expressively describing in-game events. Dahl illustrates these ideas using Microsoft's Rx and explains in detail how this approach influences game programming. This issue also includes a pair of features written by Game Developer's own editor-in-chief, Brandon Sheffield. The first article breaks down the top 20 companies, services, games and concepts that have changed the trajectory of the games industry, and the second article includes an interview with Tekken game director Katsuhiro Harada about the origin of the classic fighting franchise. As usual, the October issue features the magazine's regular columnists and special guests from the forefront of the games industry, including Peter Drescher, Soren Johnson, Steve Theodore, Kim Pallister, Matthew Kumar, Jesse Harlin, and Matthew Wasteland, who all contribute detailed and in-depth pieces on various areas of game development. Game Developer magazine is also proud to announce its very own iOS app, which allows readers to download and read their purchased issues of Game Developer on their iPhone or iPad -- see the iTunes App Store for more details. Worldwide paper-based subscriptions to Game Developer magazine are currently available at the official magazine website, and the Game Developer Digital version of the issue is also now available, with the site offering six months' and a year's subscriptions, alongside access to back issues and PDF downloads of all issues, all for a reduced price. There is now also an opportunity to buy the digital version of October 2011's magazine as a single issue.