GDC is a great place for developers to share insights and ideas with each other for one week a year. Ubisoft wants to create the GDC experience year round with a new blog directed at developers.
The new blog is called Engine Room and it was created “as a result of the employees’ desire to spread their knowledge and expertise beyond Ubisoft.” This isn’t like the PlayStation blog where developers talk to gamers about their new products and what not. This is squarely targeted at developers who want to learn from other developers the tools of the trade. That doesn’t mean that regular gamers shouldn’t read it, quite the contrary, as any gamer who is interested in the technical side of making games will find something here.
Engine Room is really cool in that Ubisoft is making it an “open platform.” What this means is that anybody, even non-Ubisoft employees, can comment or even publish a post if they’re signed up and follow the blog’s guidelines. The hope is that anybody involved in the game industry – programmers, artists and developers – will use this new platform to share ideas and collaborate on new innovations. For any interested developers who wants to submit a blog post, you only need to send them to [email protected].
I wholeheartedly recommend that developers take advantage of this to learn more about the art of making games from their peers. Game creation is a collaborative process that needs more ideas like this to keep it fresh. I commend Ubisoft on taking a proactive approach in helping to cultivate the developer community.
Ubisoft threw together a quick video that has their employees talking about technology and what it means to them. It’s pretty neat, so check it out.