Author: by Staff

In our weekly Best of Member Blogs column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game community who maintain Member Blogs on Gamasutra. 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 author a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra's sister publication, Game Developer magazine. (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 - Fixing the iPhone App Store (Eric Su) Despite the great overall success of the iPhone's App Store -- in fact, largely because of it -- competition has become so great that in order for a game to make it onto the bestseller's list, it must either be a well-known license or sold for almost nothing. Eric Su looks into the issue in depth, and suggests a solution. For his effort, Eric will receive a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra sister publication Game Developer magazine. - Informational Interviews for Prospective Jobs (Deborah Marshall) Looking for a job? GarageGames' Deborah Marshall shares tips on how to use the "informational interview" as a prospective employee to make sure a company is the right fit, and to prepare for the real interview. - A (gameplay) thorn in my side (Josh Bycer) "So bad it's good" is a descriptor more often associated with films than with games -- with films, you can just sit back and cringe. When it does refer to games, it tends to be used to describe games with an awful story but passably enjoyable gameplay. Here, Josh Bycer writes about Rule of Rose, a game where that relationship is flipped. - Game Design Questionnaire (John Mawhorter) In a light but fun post, John Mawhorter assembles a collection of data points that, together, may give a sense of a person's game design ethic -- and turns them into a questionnaire to be filled out in the comments section.