Postmortem - Vigil Games'
Darksiders

Four developers with a cracked laptop monitor and a dream — that's the legend of Darksiders' creation. How the team went from there to over 120 people and a completed game under THQ is the reality, and the team shares some very honest moments here, from concept art trouble to lessons from playtesting.

Top 30 Developers

2009 was an interesting year, with social shakeups and mid-lifecycle consoles. Though the money was down a bit in 2009, the professionalism, quality, and innovation had never been higher. In this non-empirical list, we share our choices for the best game developers of the year.

An Artist's Eye

Does the Golden Ratio have application in game design? These two trained artists say so. Rob Kay was lead designer of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and Andy Tudor was lead designer on Need for Speed: Shift, following classic art training - so they may know what they are talking about.

Machina Ex

For Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the team needed an intuitive method for designers to implement gameplay. It fell to Luis Sempé of Eidos Montreal to create the tools, and here he shares his advice for the creation of a state-driven gameplay system.