TechTV Help Site of the Week!

GameDev.net has received accolades from numerous sources. Nearly every game development book published in the last several years praises GameDev.net as the best place on the Internet to learn about game development. We've been mentioned in many magazines and other periodicals. We've even been featured on television, being named as TechTV's Help Site of the Week in November 2000.

Who is behind GameDev.net?

Nowhere will you find a team of people more qualified to run a game development website than the group of people that brings you GameDev.net. Our staff members have been producing high quality game development sites since 1996, and together we have over 30 years of website and online community development experience. And to top off our qualifications for running the largest game development website: our staff members have written game development books, have written numerous articles for magazines and online publications (including GDNet!), are regular game industry event speakers, Microsoft MVP's, or simply work in the games and simulation industries. In the end it means you get a site driven by people with the experience and knowledge to provide a quality resource for the games industry.

Click here to view our full company hierarchy

Almost all of the original founders of GameDev.net are still around today. Many have been drawn away from active duty as the site has grown beyond their original hobbyist dreams and slowly become a recognized entity in the game industry, but they are still contributing time and effort towards the site. As founders and owners, they retain the final say in regards to GameDev.net, and continue to oversee the development and direction of the website.

"Act as if it were impossible to fail."
"To succeed, it is necessary to accept the world as it is and rise above it."

"Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I cannot accept, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those people I had to kill today because they pissed me off and also, help me to be careful of the toes I step on today, as they may be connected to the ass that I may have to kiss tomorrow."

"There are three types of people in this world.. those who can count, and those who can't." -Read it off of some website...

Operations Team

Tasked with the day-to-day operations of GameDev.net, this team of staff members have all been involved with the website since its inception in the late 90's / early 21st century. Following the direction of the founders and using their own visions to help shape the site, they all work hard each and every day, striving to bring GameDev.net up out of its hobbyist roots and into the mainstream game development community.

Melissa "frizzlefry" Astle President / Marketing & Sales Director	Drew "Gaiiden" Sikora Executive Producer / Newsletter Editor	Richard "superpig" Fine Technical Lead	Oluseyi Sonaiya Business Director

GameDev.net Staff

Past Contributors

Nick Murphy - Founder, inactive
Ernest "TANSTAAFL" Pazera - Founder, inactive
Heather "felisandria" Holland - Programming reference section
David Michalson - Site developer

GameDev.net was created with the sole purpose of providing a public site where game developers could freely exchange information. This site isn't powered by a large corporation. It is powered by game developers, real people with real experience and education in their fields. And lastly, it is powered by you the viewer, who may some day find a topic you'd be interested in sharing with the rest of us.

This site contains technical articles that have been written by literally hundreds of people across the world on various topics and varying skill levels. Chances are, if you're looking for it, we have it. If we don't have it, let us know and we'll try to find someone knowledgeable in that area to write about it.

This site contains news. We keep you updated on the latest happenings in the game development world. If a game development team creates a break-through technique in the far off nether regions of Siberia, disconnected from the world and surrounded by miles of nothing but ice and snow, with the only mode of travel being a pack of trained Yetti's pulling a broken-down Florida oranges crate with two brooms attached as skiis, we'll find some way to get that info to you! (okay, okay.. perhaps that's pushing it slightly, we may have trouble finding more than one Yeti). Let us put it in a different way, if it matters to you.. you'll hear about it from us. 'Nuff said.

This site is about community. We do our best to make the environment friendly to all walks of life in the game development world. We're all game developers in some form.. is there anything easier to get together behind than the pursuit of creating the ultimate game? We look forward to talking with you all out in the discussion forums.

History

Devgames.com  Game Prog. 9x  Sweet.Oblivion

GameDev.net has a rather interesting history. Starting from a conversation between Dave Astle of Sweet.Oblivion and Mike Tanczos of Game Programming 99, an idea of the owners of several of the largest game development sites in the world to join forces was forged. At first we thought small, deciding to create a simple resource page which would merely link to each other's prime material.

After contacting John Munsch of DevGames, the possibilities were blown into the stratosphere. Not wanting to create merely a portal page, Munsch insisted that our sites join forces to create one large site. Discussion between the people behind the sites began, quickly leading to an agreement to launch a game development site which would come to make even so-called 'mega-sites' look small.

Realizing the potential of an existing Affiliate group created by Michael Tanczos, which consisted of the three previous sites and the Game Development Search Engine, Wotsit's Format, and Demonews, discussion further escalated to include those sites. This resulted in an agreement on varying levels between all the sites to assist each other in the creation of the new site, which we dubbed "GameDev.net".

The domain was snatched up, and design and layout discussions began in early April. By the beginning of May, development on the site would begin at a feverish pace. Slating our original launch at June 1st, we realized that an effort of this magnitude would be impossible to achieve in that short of a time. Development would continue up to our finalized June 15th launch date.

GameDev.net v1 6/99-12/99

GameDev.net would undergo many changes over the next few years. We soon added several major sites to our family as hostees, including NeHe Productions, the best place on the web to learn about OpenGL, and Wotsit's File Formats. The original design, shown above, was replaced in January 2000 with GameDev.net v2. At the same time, to meet the growing popularity of our forums, we launched new forum software which we had developed in-house to be more tightly integrated with the rest of the site. A year later, the forums were updated, with a new look, new features, and numerous bug fixes. With the launch of the new forums, the staff began to look at other areas of the site that could be improved, and it became clear that a complete redesign was in order. On June 20, 2001, 5 days after our second birthday, GameDev.net v3 launched, with a new, sleeker design, featuring tight integration of all our content. What else do we have in store? You'll have to wait and see.

GameDev.net v2 1/00-6/01