Best Of Member Blogs: From Colorblindness To Experimentation

In our weekly Best of Member Blogs & Comments column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game community who maintain Member Blogs on Gamasutra, or post responses to them. Member Blogs can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while invitation-only Expert Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- are written by selected development professionals. Our favorite blog post of the week will earn its authors a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra's sister publication, Game Developer magazine. Similarly, we will choose one blog comment, responding to either a Member or Expert post, and its writer will also receive a lifetime subscription. (All magazine recipients outside of the United States or Canada will receive lifetime electronic subscriptions.) We hope that our blog sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information, check out the official posting guidelines. This Week's Standout Member Blogs - On World of Warcraft's Color Blindness Patch (Reid Kimball) Accessibility concerns -- even relatively straightforward ones like color-blind options and comprehensive subtitling -- are frequently overlooked by developers. Reid Kimball, who designed Doom3[CC], the closed-captioning mod for id's 2004 FPS game, discusses some important considerations. For his effort, Reid will receive a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra sister publication Game Developer magazine. - GDC 2009 Coverage (Jim McGinley) Jim McGinley continues (concludes?) his scattershot GDC coverage. In some instances, it contains flashes of brilliance and is probably the closest anyone has come to Gonzo reporting of a video game trade show. Well done. - Expanding IP Through Design (Jeff Beaudoin) Film adaptations of novels and other works have frequently served as fertile ground for some of the most well-regarded film directors in history -- but game adaptations of films are nearly always cheap cash-ins. Jeff Beaudoin highlights some examples of games that have used their source material as a springboard rather than a blueprint, and suggests more developers take a similar approach. - Is There Now a Functional Language of Game Design? (Bart Stewart) Any mature creative form has an established and understood language of creation and appreciation -- but do video games have the same? Bart Stewart poses a few questions around that topic. - Opinion: Get Your Wine and Cheese Party Off My Game (Logan Margulies) The debate about whether games are art -- and whether games should be art -- has become reinvigorated of late (possibly one time too many). With games like Braid demonstrating that deliberately and consciously artistic games can see commercial success, Logan Margulies argues that critics shouldn't demand those experiences at the expense of more traditional types. This Week's Standout Blog Comment - Raigan Burns on Jim McGinley's GDC 2009 Day 4.3: Experimental Gameplay Sessions This week's highlighted blog comment comes from Metanet's Raigan Burns, responding to Jim McGinley's aforementioned GDC 09 coverage as part of a conversation with McGinley about the finer points of game mechanics and the nature of "experimentation" in games.