One Year of Gamedevtuts+!

We're proud to be celebrating the one year anniversary of Gamedevtuts+ today! Over the course of the last twelve months, we've published over two hundred gamedev tutorials, we've welcomed many new members to our team (including a new editor), and we've learned a lot about making games together. In this post, we'll take a look back at our first year...

Balloon image by Robb Whiteman, from The Noun Project.

Happy Birthday Gamedevtuts+!

The site continues to change almost every week as we make dozens of little upgrades over time. I'd like to highlight just two here:

The Redesign and the Hub

Here's how Gamedevtuts+ looked on launch day:

We had a slight redesign at the end of last year - check out the difference:

And earlier this year we launched Tuts+ Hub, a brand new interface for all the sites on the Tuts+ network:

Big thanks to the Tuts+ design and development teams for all their hard work, continually revising how the site looks and works!

Welcome Christer Kaitila

Those redesigns are good examples of big front-end changes, but we've had an even bigger change behind the scenes: a couple of months ago, we brought Christer Kaitila on as a new editor!

Aside from being a long-time Tuts+ writer, Christer (also known as Breakdance McFunkypants) is the man behind #1GAM, the author of The Game Jam Survival Guide and Adobe Flash Stage3D Game Programming, a contributor to IndieGames.com, and the creator of around 30 games. A perfect fit for us here, then.

Your Favourites

Anyone that runs a blog won't be surprised to see that the posts that get the most traffic overall are roundups:

Hey, that's just how the web works. But I'm really happy to see that our most popular category, by far, is Implementation, as we consider this to be the core of the site in many ways.

Putting roundups aside, let's look at the most popular posts across various different sources.

Search

Every month, more and more people come to the site via search engines (well, via Google - sorry, Bing). Here's a few that cover topics gamedevs seem to be looking for:

Social Media

I think it's interesting that each social network had a different favourite post - they really do all support different audiences!

Most clicked on reddit: Simulate Tearable Cloth and Ragdolls With Simple Verlet Integration (see discussion)
Most upvoted on reddit: How to Build a JRPG: A Primer for Game Developers (see discussion)
Most clicked on Facebook: How to Get the Most Out of a Game Jam
Most Clicked on Twitter: 9 Tips for Indie Developers I Learned at GDC 2013
Most clicked on Google+: How to Succeed at Making One Game a Month

Other Stats

Just for fun (well, I think it's fun), here are some other posts that stand out for their stats:

Most comments (tutorial): Use Quadtrees to Detect Likely Collisions in 2D Space
Most comments (article): Tell Us What You Want on Gamedevtuts+ (Thanks for the feedback!)
Most watched video on YouTube: The demo from Make a Splash With 2D Water Effects
Most popular playable demo: Bombing Chap (watch the full tutorial)
Longest tutorial: Creating Isometric Worlds: A Primer for Gamedevs, Continued (and that's not even including the first part!)
Longest series: Make a Match-3 Game in Construct 2

The Team

Our writers are awesome, and deserve to be celebrated - people come to this site for their tutorials and articles, after all, not news posts like this one. Without their knowledge, wisdom, and hard work, we'd have nothing to post here at all. I love working with such a talented, experienced bunch of gamedevs!

Some of our authors wanted to say a few words to mark the occasion:

Kyatric

Happy birthday Gamedevtuts+!. A year and going strong with awesome content, great articles and tutorials touching on a lot of the fields that make up game making. It's thrilling to be able to be part of the writers for this great website.

It's hard to pick a top article amongst the already massive amount of tutorials, but for beginners I would highlight Tips For a One-Man Gamedev Team: What to Do Before Even Touching a Computer, as well as its comment section - it can be a great time saver if you are taking your first steps into game making.

Steven Lambert

Wow, has it really been a year already? I remember when the site first launched, I couldn't wait to read all the great articles about something I was passionate about. Then I was able to contribute to that knowledge by becoming a writer. It's been a pleasure.

I especially enjoyed writing Making Your First Game: A Walkthrough for Game Developers, as I was able to compile all the great resources and knowledge I've learned over the years into one place. Looking forward to another great year of articles.

Check out Steven's tutorials
Follow @StevenKLambert on Twitter
Visit Steven's blog

Fernando Bevilacqua

When I started developing games, I wish I had something like Gamedevtuts+ to help me out! It's the perfect place to learn about a ton of gamedev subjects, since you are free to pick the topics and study them in the pace that best fits your skill level.

It's priceless to learn from the experiences of other developers, no matter the article (I couldn't pick a favorite). For me it's a great pleasure to contribute to and be part of this!

Paul Suddaby

It's been a year already! I'm glad to have been a part of this site since the very beginning. It's a great resource for game developers and a ton of fun to write for.

For anybody just joining us now, take a look at https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/start-here--gamedev-4296 for a great primer of what is offered here on Gamedevtuts+.

Jeff Berry

Hard to believe darn near a year's flown by since my first article! As both a reader and contributor, I hope everyone's made developmental strides or at least enjoyed a read or two. Looking forward to seeing what the future has in store for us.

Favorite post: #1GAM: How to Succeed at Making One Game a Month

Dan Schuller

Watching Gamedevtuts+ grow to become a really useful resource for game developers has been great. The range and depth of the articles now is formidable! It's helped foster a community of devs making great things and I've enjoyed being involved!

The standout articles for me have been the Jump Point article by Tomislav Podhraski - it's nice to see something going beyond the basic A* implementation - and the Swing Physics tutorial by Jamie Fristrom (https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/swinging-physics-for-player-movement-as-seen-in-spider-man-2-and-energy-hook--gamedev-8782) which I picked up a few tricks from! I'm looking forward to seeing what's to come in the next year.

Check out Dan's articles
Take a look at Dan's new book, Make your RPG

Jamie Cross

It's been a great experience and a real honor to write for Gamedevtuts+. My favorite piece to write so far is the tutorial series Angry Snowman: Build an 'Angry Birds' Game From Scratch.

The positive response I've had from writing for the site lead me to teaching a full GameSalad class: Introduction to Mobile Games Development on Udemy.com. I look forward to writing more for Gamedevtuts+ in the coming years!

David Silverman

Knowing the site's been around a whole year just makes me wish I became part of it sooner. Contributing to the site really made this a fantastic year for me and every time I release an article and get such great feedback from the community, it just excites me to write even more. Cheers to another great year!

My favorite article of the year was Indie or Core? How I Found Myself at GDC 2013, because I struggle with many of the same questions Porter did when he wrote this, and it's always nice to see another person's perspective.

Here's to Next Year!

With this team of gamedevs writing (and editing) for the site, our design and development teams' continual improvements, and the various plans we've been working on, I think we're in for a great second year.

Thanks for reading Gamedevtuts+, and I hope you enjoy what we've got in store!