5 ms·

The Big List of Game Postmortems - from indie to AAA

82 points by speednoise 15y ago

btn 15y ago
For the most part, this is an incomplete index of Gamasutra's postmortem articles. A complete list of their articles can be found at: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/postmortem/ http://www.gamasutra.com/features/postmortem/
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  Quite a few of the late-90s post mortems (post morta?) were collected in a book called Postmortems from Game Developer, which I learned about from Coding Horror. http://www.amazon.com/Postmortems-Game-Developer-Developers-Top-Selling/dp/1578202140 http://www.amazon.com/Postmortems-Game-Developer-Developers-... There's a kindle edition too. Recommended reading IMO.
  - xsmasher 15y ago
    Seconded. There's some technical content in the postmortems, and a lot of practical observations on teams and project management.
- xpaulbettsx 15y ago
  Super Meat Boy's postmortem was a great read - the team basically were ten steps away from bankruptcy before the game hit and became massively popular
resnamen 15y ago
Here's a good developer's postmortem from Secret of Evermore. I am including the web archive link because the original site is now hijacked by online casino spam. There are lots of interesting nuggets about the scripting language developed for the game, banging against hard limits with cartridge sizes, multiple domain-specific compression schemes, etc... He also talks about the making of the soundtrack, which was the first project done by the then-19 year old Jeremy Soule, who has gone on to developing the soundtracks for big games like Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, etc. http://web.archive.org/web/20080701132130/http://www.super-nes.com/evermoreinterview.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20080701132130/http://www.super-n...
- RodgerTheGreat 15y ago
  That sounds really fascinating, but I'm having a hell of a time loading the page. Do you know of any other way to get ahold of that postmortem? Can you pastebin a text-only version or something?
  - ComputerGuru 15y ago
    http://pastebin.ca/2103365 http://pastebin.ca/2103365
    - resnamen 15y ago
      Thanks for that.

82 points by speednoise 15y ago

btn 15y ago

For the most part, this is an incomplete index of Gamasutra's postmortem articles. A complete list of their articles can be found at: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/postmortem/ http://www.gamasutra.com/features/postmortem/

jacques_chester 15y ago
Quite a few of the late-90s post mortems (post morta?) were collected in a book called Postmortems from Game Developer, which I learned about from Coding Horror. http://www.amazon.com/Postmortems-Game-Developer-Developers-Top-Selling/dp/1578202140 http://www.amazon.com/Postmortems-Game-Developer-Developers-... There's a kindle edition too. Recommended reading IMO.
- xsmasher 15y ago
  Seconded. There's some technical content in the postmortems, and a lot of practical observations on teams and project management.
xpaulbettsx 15y ago
Super Meat Boy's postmortem was a great read - the team basically were ten steps away from bankruptcy before the game hit and became massively popular

resnamen 15y ago

Here's a good developer's postmortem from Secret of Evermore. I am including the web archive link because the original site is now hijacked by online casino spam. There are lots of interesting nuggets about the scripting language developed for the game, banging against hard limits with cartridge sizes, multiple domain-specific compression schemes, etc... He also talks about the making of the soundtrack, which was the first project done by the then-19 year old Jeremy Soule, who has gone on to developing the soundtracks for big games like Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, etc. http://web.archive.org/web/20080701132130/http://www.super-nes.com/evermoreinterview.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20080701132130/http://www.super-n...

RodgerTheGreat 15y ago
That sounds really fascinating, but I'm having a hell of a time loading the page. Do you know of any other way to get ahold of that postmortem? Can you pastebin a text-only version or something?
- ComputerGuru 15y ago
  http://pastebin.ca/2103365 http://pastebin.ca/2103365
  - resnamen 15y ago
    Thanks for that.