E-Newsletter?

[aamesxdavid]

UPDATE: List of Potential Sections and Contributors

Game Development: Project Showcase

Elysian Shadows

Programming: Tutorial/Discussion/Theory/etc.

Arce
avansc

Game Design Graphics/Design/Sound/etc.
Reviews: Write-up on a currently-released game
Tech/Hardware:

GyroVorbis

General/Off-Topic:?


Community Projects - I'm calling you out!

GroundUpEngine
trufun202 (If you ever get that free time back! )
JS Lemming
cndr
short
combatant936
X Abstract X

And that's only the first half of the front page of that forum. All you artists have plenty of cool stuff people want to see too, show it off!


I feel like this would have been suggested before, but I couldn't find anything.

Has anyone thought about putting together a newsletter of the combined talent of the community? There seems to be enough content with all of the projects going on to keep a good pace for one. As it stands, updates are done through threads, which are great for comments and conversations, but can be difficult to keep up with and go through for the actual update parts of the thread.

And not just projects, but any development/design topic you would want to write about. Tutorials maybe. Essentially, it could be like a "highlights" kind of thing for the forums, with extra bits that you think would go better in the newsletter than on the forums.

I don't know, it was just a random thought I had after going through two other newsletters this week that quite frankly aren't as inspiring as posts here are. If there's interest in this, we could go into details of the form it would take, distribution, etc.

[hurstshifter]

I think this sounds like a fantastic idea.

[pritam]

<Pritam> Well boys and girls, let me tell you a story of ---
*Falco dramatically kills Pritam with a sharp pen

[dandymcgee]

That would be sweet. We should definitely give it a try.

[XianForce]

I'm all for it =D, Sounds great =p

[Ginto8]

Sounds awesome. I'd totally read it ALL the time.

[eatcomics]

Sounds awesome. I'd totally read it ALL the time.

I'd read it twice, and I'm sure thomas would love to be involved! I don't really get into the whole journalism thing, but I would definitely read it :D

[Thomas_Bates]

Well, I've worked on online newsletters before with my Organization (Version Writing Organization) which is similar to a publication firm, and I headed up the News System for OSA, which is a community devoted to Cybernations, but I'm not sure what is being asked of here? I'm not a huge programmer, I'm just beginning, I could interview people, and things of the sort, but what do you have in mind for the gist of the entire thing?

[eatcomics]

Um, just a newsletter on people's games with interviews and stuff about their latest updates, um maybe we could have people write up some edjukation articles for the paper. And whatever else people can think of

[aamesxdavid]

Okay, since there seems to be interest, I'll try and expand a bit.

As far as content, I'd like it to be very similar to the forums:

-A "Game Development" topic that showcases a certain project (or more than one if desired)
-A "Programming" topic with a tutorial/discussion/theory/etc.
-A "Game Design" topic with some sort of write-up about graphics/design/sound/etc.
-Perhaps a review section about any released title, analyzing it from a developer's perspective
-A tech/hardware section?

And I'd love to hear any ideas you guys have. I'd even be open to a "General/Off-Topic" section for someone to just talk about something not in a specific topic, or the latest hilarious IRC convo (It's ES-community inspired, after all). As far as the format, I'm partial to PDFs, but if someone thinks something else would work better, I'm all ears. As for frequency, I'd say monthly is a good starting point to feel things out. If we end up getting lots of people contributing, we might be able to pull off a bi-weekly. But I don't want it to be too beholden to a schedule - the important thing is that we have good content that everyone will enjoy.

Which is where the tricky part comes into play - people to contribute. This sure as hell wouldn't be an interesting newsletter with me trying to act like I know more than I do.. I do enough of that at work. So this is time for the pep talk:

Readers and writers here would not be mutually exclusive. There are lots of people here with varying degrees of experience in an even greater range of disciplines. Nobody here knows everything that you do (except maybe avansc ), which means you have something to contribute. Maybe you use a programming/scripting language or library or IDE that some people here aren't familiar with. Maybe you use a specific program for art or sound that other's don't, or you have a neat trick you use in one. Not to mention, regardless of your experience, you certainly have an opinion in some sort of design. Hell, maybe you just have questions and we could have an FAQ section.

So, thoughts? Any other section ideas? Any brave souls want to step up and say they would potentially be willing to contribute if this gets off the ground? I'll start with myself for listing levels of experience in the above categories:

Programming: Pretty nooby, but I've got a solid base in a few languages, and used a few game/3d engines.
Art: Practically non-existent, but I know my way around a couple of 3D modeling programs.
Audio: It's what I do for a living - I could go on for days about it.
Design: I've got opinions just like everybody else. And I work with professional designers, so I have a reasonable idea of what goes into it.

Fill your own in if you like, add sections, toss in ideas. I probably forgot shit, so if there are any other questions regarding implementation of this idea that I may have actually thought of, ask away. And if I didn't think of it, I will after you ask, and pretend I already did.

[Thomas_Bates]

Well,

Programming: Ultra noob. I know very basic C++ things, not much else.
Art: I'm no graphic designer, but I know a lot about art, art, like Da Vinci and Dali.
Audio: I've yet to find a decent audio studio for linux, I made a few intro/outro things for a radio show called Opticast that was never produced due to eatcomics. Thats right, I called you out.
Design: If you mean newsletter design: I published the newsletter I made by using a combo of GoogleDocs and iframe, but this sounds different. I've also used Scribd, which looks very good, but I'm not great at fancy things.

Formatting: I could format the paper, and put articles together.
Author: I write articles, usually reviews of Open Source Software like Ubuntu 10.04, Zoho, and things like that. I'm actually a Creative Writing person, eat has seen some of my writing.

This is a programming based newsletter, I think someone with more experience should handle it.

[Arce]

This is a very interesting idea, and I am definitely interested. I cannot speak for the whole of the ES team (yet) but this could have a pretty cool outcome.

My only question is...Can we find somebody willing take charge of and actually compile these articles? Tbh, I'm not nearly proficient enough with any desktop publishers to do something like this with adequate justice to the content. Also, whoever does decide to will not need a deep programming knowledge--they won't be actually writing the articles, after all. Just somebody able to catch obvious spelling mistakes and provide a nice format.

[hurstshifter]

Could use GoogleDocs to have multiple people contribute to this effort.

[aamesxdavid]

Can we find somebody willing take charge of and actually compile these articles?

I suppose I should have mentioned that I would be willing to do this. I wasn't just coming up with an idea to give someone else lots of work.

Certainly, if someone else really wants to do this, I would have no objections.

Could use GoogleDocs to have multiple people contribute to this effort.

I've only very briefly used GoogleDocs, so I'm not sure of it's formatting capabilities, but if we have multiple people who want to work on layout, this certainly seems like a valid option.

Oh, and:

Design: If you mean newsletter design: I published the newsletter I made by using a combo of GoogleDocs and iframe, but this sounds different. I've also used Scribd, which looks very good, but I'm not great at fancy things.

Sorry, that was actually about game design, as a section of the newsletter.

[eatcomics]

I made a few intro/outro things for a radio show called Opticast that was never produced due to eatcomics.

Due to me, wtf you're the one that when I was ready said you either didn't like the recording thing, or you didn't feel like it, the times you wanted me to do it I was sick or busy! (or just too damn lazy but that was only like 2 times) and the website never got up, hardly my fault, I don't see why we should even do one without a website.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it
but Yeah I guess I can help on the writing about other projects, or like FAQ or something