Once in a while I find something surprises me by both the fact that it exists and because I’m probably the last person to know about it, hell, why didn’t anyone tell me about this before?!?!?!?. As of recently, this something has been the Game Developer magazine.

The Game Developer magazine is a thin little publication – with both print and digital (PDF) versions – with articles on the craft of, well, game development. The surprising part, however, lies on the pure quality of the magazine’s content, packaged in what seems to be an independent, honest-to-god straightforward bag of game development goodness.

Consider this. You’re looking at your game elements’ life cycle update() and postUpdate() methods, and wondering how should each method deal with each specific step of the frame update cycle, and whether you’re doing the right thing. You’d like to discuss this with someone else. And then you open the magazine and you find someone talking about the same subject for 4 or so pages. It’s unadulterated programming porn.

(This actually happened yesterday.)

More importantly, you don’t have to be a professional game developer to appreciate the content offered in its monthly installments (hell, I’m not one myself). However, if you need to do any kind of visual programming, or if you’re really just interested in the art of game development, this magazine is the real deal; it covers it all, from art to programming to marketing. And because it’s so thin – it’s usually around 80 pages – it’s easy and quick to read it every month. The noise is nowhere to be seen.

The magazine is available in really cheap subscriptions. You can preview a sample online too.

You have no excuse. Go subscribe to it now.