The Top Game Design Blogs Monday, October 15, 2007

While writing another post, I started analyzing the list of game design blogs that I read. My Google Reader subscription list contains no fewer than 26 game design-related feeds (this doesn't count the gaming-related feeds that don't talk specifically about design):

1. Dan Cook's Lost Garden (Videogames)
2. Raph Koster's blog (MMO)
3. Jamie Fristrom's GameDevBlog (Videogames)
4. Dave Sirlin's blog (Videogames)
5. Brian "Psychochild" Green's blog (Videogames)
6. The multi-authored Gone Gaming blog (Board Games)
7. Joshua BishopRoby's Ludanta Retero (RPGs)
8. Corvus Elrod's Man Bytes Blog (Videogames)
9. Damion Schubert's Zen of Design (MMO)
10. Peter B and psu's Tea Leaves (Videogames)
11. Jesper Juul's The Ludologist (Academic)
12. Chris Bateman's Only a Game (Academic/Videogames)
13. Attacks of Opportunity (RPGs)
14. Mike Parker's GameDevMike (Videogames)
15. Ari Järvinen's Games Without Frontiers (Academic)
16. Greg Costikyan's Games * Design * Art * Culture (Videogames/RPGs)
17. Jonathan Degan's Journal of Board Game Design (Board Games)
18. Jurie Horneman's Intelligent Artifice (Videogames)
19. Kenneth Hite's LiveJournal (RPGs)
20. Mike Doyle's Art Play (Board Games, specifically, art)
21. Richard Bartle's QBlog (MMO)
22. Troy Costisick's Socratic Design (RPGs)
23. Surreal Software's Surreal Game Design (Videogames)
24. Aureia Harvey and Michaël Samyn's Tale of Tales (MMO)
25. Darius Kazemi's Tiny Subversions (Videogames)
26. Warren Spector's blog (Videogames)

And this is a list that has been refined over about two years (when I started becoming an RSS addict). Some blogs just stop being updated, some have a few good posts but didn't stay interesting, et cetera, et cetera.

For my own analysis, I've broken down the blogs into five groups: academic, board games, role-playing games, video games, and video game blogs that focus on MMO's. Half of the blogs I read focus on video games, with a good smattering of representatives from the other major areas. Interestingly, I'm reading 5 MMO-focused blogs even though the last MMO I actively played was a mud called Tsunami back in college. The thing is, I don't have the time to really get into an MMO, but I think MMOs are paving the way for the next big evolution in videogames.

So if you have any interest at all in reading about game design, I would recommend starting with any of the blogs in my list, especially those first ten or so. And be sure to let me know if you find a good one I've missed.