Editor's Choice

"Though not a member of the industry yet, I was familiar with the four-step publication process: Go to a publisher, submit your game, get rejected, repeat. It's a fairly simple cycle, and honestly, isn't that bad if you don't take the rejection personally. ... The response (well, the lack thereof) I received was unexpected."

Blake Schreurs goes through the process of creating a game, submitting it to a publisher and writing about it so you don't have to.

"One of the most popular questions gaming industry professionals receive is, "How can I get into the gaming industry?" And in the last few decades, some institutions have come forward to answer that question."

Mur Lafferty asks, "Do Degrees Matter?"

"The agreements themselves are long and complicated, written in a mix of legalese and hyperbole, with sentences like: 'We exclusively own all now-known or hereafter existing rights to Submissions of every kind and nature throughout the universe until the end of time, and are entitled to unlimited use of your Submissions for any purpose we can think of.' If it's difficult for a layperson to make sense of TOS contracts, you can imagine how impossible it is for a kid - assuming he reads the thing in the first place (which, let's be honest, hardly anyone does)."

Sara Grimes uncovers the truth of data mining in children's games.

"'People who treat the CAs as run-of-the-mill volunteers are making a big mistake. That person in the [conference] shirt is your next stellar employee, co-worker or even boss,' Harlick says. As a freshman CA in 2004, I was astonished at the number of industry veterans enthusiastically putting in their time with the bright shirts. This will come as a great shock to many gaming starlets, but the industry is not always that stable; the company I'd worked for had folded, and, though technically a full-time developer, I joined the program out of financial need. But for many vets, this isn't the case."

Erin Hoffman takes a peek at the heart underneath the bright shirts of GDCs volunteer staff.

"It's cold. It's really cold. As cold as what the pair of them did to the people in that school, and you're struck at a profound level of how sad it is. Not just that people would die like that, but more because the horror of the mindset you'd have to enter to treat real human beings as nothing more import than two-dimensional sprites. Why would someone go and do something so pointless?"

Kieron Gillen breaks his silence about Super Columbine Massacre.