Quality Of Life - Not So Bad?

The picture to the left is from the June/July issue of Game Developer magazine, and it deals with 'quality of life' in the game biz - tying in nicely with the fact that me and Holly just got back from Europe, where we went to my sister's wedding and visited Helsinki and the rather beautiful Tallinn, Estonia - most relaxing.

Anyhow, work running Game Developer magazine, Gamasutra.com and the Independent Games Festival is as busy as always - though I'm still totally digging it, despite the fact that I'm becoming a little more of a biz guy and less of a journalist. But I wanted to mention a couple of new things we're doing which are, I reckon, rather cool.

Firstly, Game Developer Research has been going really well - we've launched two reports so far, and they've both been extremely well received by government, tools companies, and publishers. Actually, we're just hiring up to do lots more research through the rest of this year and into next year. As the site explains:

"Game Developer Research was formed in 2007 by the editors of Game Developer magazine to bring a new level of empirical measurement and high quality prediction to the video game research market. The group has published two full reports so far: Game Developer Salary Report: 2004-2007 (April 2007) and The Game Developer Census 2007 (June 2007)."

Related to this, we just launched a new weblog called WorldsInMotion.biz, "...a Game Developer Research-related venture that looks at where games, interaction, and multiplayer worlds meet online. Game Developer Research will be covering the rapidly expanding area where games and online worlds interact, and has set up an Online World Atlas where it will be profiling many online world applications that game industry professionals may not be so familiar with." So, like... fun!