Game Developer magazine is a monthly trade periodical for the video game industry. The magazine is available free to qualified game professionals in the USA, and paid paper subscriptions and a paid digital edition are also available. Individual issues can be bought at Gamasutra. Game Developer was launched in March 1994 and is now distributed to 35,000 readers, mainly in North America.

The magazine contains articles on professional game development topics relating to programming, art, audio, quality control, design, and production. Monthly columns from industry veterans offer in depth discussion on a variety of topics. It has articles by notable game industry figures and reviews on game development related books, tools, and software packages. The back page "Soapbox" was also a popular feature, which moved to sister site to Gamasutra circa 2004. It was replaced by a splash art page called "Thousand Words," and then replaced again with a regular column "Arrested Development."

Game Developer's most popular feature is probably its monthly "Postmortem" column which discusses the recent development of a computer or video game with the top five each of "What Went Right" and "What Went Wrong". It provides a frank, first-hand account of the lessons learned in the development process. The first Postmortem was featured in October 1997 and written by Andre Vrignaud on Dark Sun Online.


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