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Reading the Morning IndieDev Newspaper

While I've found some tutorials and classes to take in learning IndieDev, I wasn't sure if there should be something I read every morning. Here's my current morning IndieDev Newspaper.

Game Developer, Staff

December 17, 2014

6 Min Read

Reading the Morning IndieDev Newspaper

No clue. No clue where to even begin when I started learning about making games.  I didn't know what to program in, nor anything about theory and design.  While I started to read books and take classes for my own personal education, I didn't know what my morning readings should consist of.  Now, I'm starting to get somewhere.

indiedev_newspaper

Out with the Old

Knowing what's going on in the world, is important.  Watching ISIS take over the area my unit deployed to for 15 months (I caught the tail end of that deployment),  that was news.

But news like that gets me down, so I stopped reading the news.  In an effort to increase productivity, I shut it down.

It's a trade off though.

I didn't even know there was a police shooting 20 minutes from my house and the killer had yet to be caught...
 

In With the New

So what do I fill my morning reading time with now that the bothersome news is on my blocked websites list?

Well, after I do my systemized morning social media checks, I fire up Feedly and go through my morning headlines and feeds.

Here are my current feeds in their organizational layout:

Business

  • GetResponse - I recently switched from Aweber to GetResponse (I'll update my resources eBook for 2015 at the start of the year).  I think email marketing is important because all my marketing education told me so.  The blog puts out some good ideas, not just with email marketing, but with marketing in general too.

  • Wistia - I'd like to make enjoyable videos about my company, and I tried making one here.  They do it really well, and give good tips.  I'm hoping to make more in the upcoming year.

  • Entrepreneur on Fire Podcast -  I think IndieDevs are Entrepreneurs too, so if there's a headline that catches my eye, next car ride I'll try and listen to it.

  • Michael Hyatt - I wrote about this blog here.

  • Occam's Razor  - I'm really trying hard to learn Google Analytics. I love numbers and data.  Someday, I hope to write a guide about how IndieDevs can leverage it.  This blog has helpful ideas and tutorials on using it.

  • Seth Godin - I wrote about this blog here too.

  • Social Media Examiner - This blog covers all the Social Media channels and has tons of great advice.  I usually click an article daily.

  • Smart Passive Income - Pat Flynn got me interested in marketing.  He actually specializes in Niche site creation, and his teachings are a major reason why I've adopted the term IndieDev in my blog posts (still hoping to rank in Google one day!).

Comics

  • Awkward Zombie - I enjoy webcomics about video games that are easy to jump into.

  • Penny Arcade - You can't just ignore this webcomic when a whole video game expo is named after it.  Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's weird, sometimes it's tasteless.

  • The Oatmeal - There's some funny, tasteless and weird comics in this one too

  • theMeatly - This is better than the Memes I've created.  Everything this IndieDev writes about I can relate to.

  • Three Panel Soul - This started out as a Video Game webcomic, similar to Penny Arcade, now it's about mostly the life of an artist.

Game Dev

  • Gamastura Feature Articles - Gamasutra articles rock.  There's just...a lot.  I feel like I'm missing out on good articles, but I can't read them all, this helps separate them a little more.

  • Gamasutra News - But then again I want to see all of them and choose the ones that are interesting...

  • Unity Technologies - This is what I program in, so if there are updates, I like to know ASAP.

  • IndieGames.com - It's all about Indie Games.  Great feed to subscribe to.

  • GamesIndustry.biz - Kind of like Gamasutra.

  • Develop - Kind of like Gamasutra too.

Artists

  • Artstation Magazine - I like art, but have an engineering background.  I'm trying to learn it though.  There's some really fascinating art here, and tutorials to boot.

  • Shader Forge - I guess this isn't art, but a log of bug fixes on one of my favorite Unity Plugins is here.

Blogging

Design

Gaming

  • Polygon - Full - My only source for Video Game news, and even then, I have to limit myself.

My Sites

Other Indies

  • The Behemoth Blog - A consistent IndieDev blog I've found.  I've mentioned that the Behemoth rules in marketing.  I'm taking notes from them.

If there's one thing I've read from the marketing blogs, it's that you should be consistent in your blogging.  It took me about one year to get my rhythm down, and commit to blogging weekly.  The Behemoth is the most consistent of the other Indies I've researched.

Christianity and Gaming

I'm a Christian, but man Christian Video Games aren't the best right now.  So I'm trying to get ideas and thoughts about it.  I added sites below about 2 months ago, but I haven't searched them deep for entertainment or knowledge.  Maybe I will in the future.

Looking for More

So these are my morning feeds, but as I still consider myself a new Indiedev, I'm looking for more.  This list also doesn't include newsletters I'm subscribed to, I'll get to those in the future.

If you have a suggested site, or you update your own pretty regularly, I'd love to check it out, leave it in the comments below.

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