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Clint Hocking (of Far Cry 2) wrote a similar article last month, using the design of reload systems as an example:

http://www.edge-online.com/fea...

One of the other external links from the Wikipedia article has more information: http://www.edge-online.com/fea...

(I added the other one mentioned in the summary to the Wikipedia page, though.)

I don't think there exists a single pro gamer that uses Intel graphics hardware.

I am fairly certain if Intel started sponsoring professional gamers, if they haven't already, that there would be an increase of pro gamers that use it.

Also, if Direct X is so essential and magical then why don't consoles use it?

Xbox uses DirectX 8. Xbox 360 uses DirectX 9.0c. Xbox One is purported to use DirectX 11.2.

"Xbox" is basically a shortened version of "DirectX Box" that stuck while trying to name it.

The XBox division has gone back and forth between profit and loss over the years.

http://www.edge-online.com/news/microsofts-xbox-division-loses-229-million/

The enterprise market really is the bread-and-butter for Microsoft. That is what really amazes me. They seem to be alienating the enterprise market in many ways currently.

Why is that movie theaters seem to be about the only business that not only doesn't understand or even attempt to follow supply and demand with their pricing of both the attractions and the food, but seem to publicly admit that they don't think supply/demand makes sense? If nobody wants to buy something I'm selling, the price is too high. Any sane person in the world would lower their price. That's the whole idea behind supply and demand. But what do movie theaters do? Jack up the price even more, and claim that they need to do so to survive. On what crazy planet does that even begin to make sense?

Popcorn is CHEAP. Why would you charge $7 for it and then complain that nobody buys it?

Sodas are CHEAP. Why would you charge $5 for it and then complain that nobody buys it?

I don't know about theaters around the country, but where I live we have "cheap nights" on Tuesdays, where movie tickets are a good deal cheaper than usual. And typically the theaters are packed full on that night. Every other night? You could count patrons in a given theater without running out of digits on your hands/feet. And even *THAT* doesn't tell theater owners that their regular prices are too high?! Your theaters are packed full on cheap nights because the price is easier to swallow. It shouldn't cost a family of four over $80 to go have a movie night, yet that's exactly what it cost a friend of mine to take his family to a movie on the weekend. Hell, it cost me and a friend, just two of us, almost $50 to go see 48 fps Hobbits a couple weeks ago. Almost $50 for two tickets and one popcorn/drink/chocolate combo. That's way too much money, and that is exactly the reason movie theaters are struggling, yet they just don't get it.

Supply and demand. This is an insanely old concept that pretty much everyone seems to understand. Except movie theater owners. WHY?!

Look at video games, and Valve's Steam store in particular. They've publicly discussed a few times over the past few years how they have seen insane increases in revenue whenever they have big sales on games, on the order or 40x increase in revenue in one case! Here's what I think was the first article discussing it back in 2009: http://www.edge-online.com/features/valve-are-games-too-expensive/

Movie theaters' own cheap nights prove that supply and demand is warranted in their market, just like any other. If they would lower prices of everything, tickets and refreshments/food, they'd see way more people, and way more money, come their way. If only they'd take their heads out of their asses.

It's not to distort the numbers, it's to give developers realistic expectations. If you're not a major player, this is what you should expect. If you happen to own Angry Birds, great. Everyone else, on the other hand, is scrambling for the scraps. (80% of iOS developers are competing for the last 3% of revenue in the game market, for example.)

Fun fact: 13% of developers on the BlackBerry platform earn more than 100k/year from their apps

Hate on RIM all you want, but smart developers know where the money is.

I'm afraid the BB platform has changed far too late to attract any developers

You haven't been paying attention. Developers are flocking to the platform. RIM's outreach efforts (combined with an incredible suite of tools) have been wildly successful. There have been a few high-profile games studios that have praised RIM's new platform and tools. One example Galaxy on Fire 2 HD was ported to the PlayBook by a single engineer in one day. The web is loaded with examples like this. It's a great platform for developers, both financially and technically, and developers that have taken a few minutes to consider the platform have decided that it's exactly where they want to be.

Surface could be a failure like Xbox or it could be a complete disaster like the Kin.

FTFY. There is no call to try to paint the Xbox as anything other than a money-loser. It has lost money in recent quarters to add to the historical losses. It may be the darling of advertisers and M$ boosters, but was only in the black a short part of its life and has now returned to being in the red.

Moving into hardware is a bold move for M$, but it's an area that the have not proven themselves in. It's also an area where the are as likely to anger partners as not.

You don't know what you're talking about. Testing costs $80-$100 per person hour. $40K is a team of 6 people testing for two weeks. What's unreasonable about that?

I see nothing in there that specifies that. You made a vague statement and now you're just picking the most expensive thing you can think of so no one is putting words in you're mouth, you're just moving the goal post.

And it sounds like Microsoft is will to change their mind when it suits them. http://www.edge-online.com/news/minecraft-prompts-change-xbla-update-process

Which implies to me it isn't that expensive and they are just milking developers for all the cash they can just like they do with customers.

$40,000 is a realistic price? http://www.edge-online.com/news/schafer-console-patches-cost-40000

Sorry but that's just fucking ridiculous given they probably don't even pay a tester that as a annual wage.

http://www.edge-online.com/news/mojang-turns-publisher

When it comes to the PS4/720, not me. For one, the 3DS ecosystem is doing very well for Nintendo, especially in Japan (look at http://www.edge-online.com/news/mario-kart-7-and-3ds-top-2011-japanese-charts, top 3 selling games for 2011 in Japan were 3DS games, and the 3DS outsold all other consoles combined)

Also, the Wii U is doing what Nintendo is doing best - taking old technology and putting a new angle on it (I think they call it something like "lateral thinking in old technology"). This works for them, because they can provide top-notch quality games using cheap, older (i.e. profitable) hardware, which is more often than not good enough for most gamers. In this generetion, I'm especially optimistic, because gpu progress the past 4 years has not provided the killer app of DirectX 9c (I mean things like tessellation is cool, but it really does not make games look that much better). Games on the Wii U will be able to look very good even compared to games developed for the more expensive and later gen gpu PS4.

My understanding, based on an editorial in Edge earlier this year, is that GfW just plain flat-out doesn't work. Not in the sense that its limited user base makes for poor multiplayer or that it has insufficient publisher for its downloadable games service, but in the sense that it does not reliably allow you to download games or play online.

Gotta agree with 'not the first': Invicible Tiger has been out a while now (pretty good too).

Notably on the PC I had Descent with full 3D enabled by 3dfx and shutter glasses many many moons ago.

Nintendo have:

Nintendo has blamed piracy for a 45 per cent drop in DS game sales in Europe between April and December 2009...

Thats the significant part in your post. Sales are down 45 percent. This is the main indicator of piracy in the DS market. The 2nd one is the prices of the games that are released. The price of DS games (even AA titles) now drop after a few weeks whereas a few year back those prices would be the same for at least 6 months. 3rd indicator is the game catalog. We get fewer niche games because they don't sel enough to warant distribution. (the latest Phoenix Wright wasn't released in the BeNeLux region because of this)

The drop in DS game sales is one of the main reasons for Nintendo to relaase their 3D handheld in 2010. They want a new platform thats free of R3, M3 or other 'development tools'

Nintendo have:

Nintendo has blamed piracy for a 45 per cent drop in DS game sales in Europe between April and December 2009... Last June Nintendo monitored ten overseas websites that allowed people to illegally download software. It found that games had been pirated a total 238 million times, translating into one trillion yen ($10.7 billion) in lost sales.

And Sony, EA, Activision, Microsoft et al have all claimed the same thing at one time or another. They seem to be smartening up nowadays, though.

The statistics that have been published are how many pirates vs. customers the game has, and those have been accurate.

And the numbers are almost certainly not accurate, anyway. Some people DL several versions of the same game - some people buy several copies. Some people lend games to people, thus making customers into pirates, and some people lend copies to friends, making a single pirate into a counterfeiting ring. The actual numbers are completely impossible to determine by any means other than watching what every single person in the world is doing every second of every day.

"Games are not overpriced."

The plural of anecdote is not data.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/valve-are-games-too-expensive

I practiced driving in Carmageddon. Now, no old ladies with a walker or any cow is safe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmageddon
http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/the-making-of%E2%80%A6-carmageddon

Now, get off my road!

http://www.edge-online.com/blogs/next-gender-gaming

No, shithead, I actually went out and found out what the expected sales were for the game.

"While in the short-term the Xbox 360 version of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 may surpass New Super Mario Bros, in the long-term New Super Mario Bros will easily become the best selling title released in 2009 with expected lifetime sales exceeding 15 million units worldwide."

Please note that the numbers were made by research firm, and an independent one at that.

Your experience means nothing as it is based on nothing. And, your numbers and guesses mean nothing because they are based on nothing but your own ignorance. Go out and find some numbers by a research firm and get back to me, dumbass.

"There's more technical complexities to being able to put local prices in," he added. "You have to do that for every product in every country and you then have to deal with currency fluctuations.

That is a load of crap because they still have to manage costs for all countries and factor in tax for those countries that charge them. Somewhere there has to be a database of costs per points at MS. How can it be hard to pull through that currency amount to the front-end rather than a numerical value which, when someone buys those points, a system has to calculate their cost anyway.

Sony can manage this while giving away their online services for free. I can't believe people are dumb enough to buy into the points scam.

That's the way it is - it's profitable for the company with no downside. The only option is for employees to show that it will cost them in the long run through turnover and training new employees. Alternately, unionization or government regulation are the only other options.

The problem isn't capitalism, it's just bad management at that specific develooper. Here's part of interview with someone from one of the most successful developers right, Infinity Ward (who did Call of Duty 4 and Modern Warfare 2).

we schedule our projects well so there is never a feeling of "oh crap, this whole project is going to hell"; we reward our employees for their hard work with significant royalties; we usually make games on a relatively fast (but not rushed) two-year dev cycle; we almost never have forced crunch - in fact I've worked one full Saturday plus a few scattered weekend hours in the entire six years I've been at Infinity Ward.

I'm not a executive, but I would think Rockstar would be better off by hiring the best, paying them well and not overworking them so they can have a low turnover. I keep reading the same articles about "crunch time" and underpayed employees then later I read about the same companies having financial problems (EA in particular but also Rockstar).

Good call. UFO was like an X-COM tv series. I'd love to see a modern take on it.

Give it to Joss Whedon or Christopher Nolan. :)

Um technically, the original X-COM was a partial homage for the UFO TV series and the book Alien Liaison by Timothy Good, or at least that's what the game's creator implies in this article.

Oh and no disrespect to Whedon or Nolan, but IMHO J. Michael Straczynski would be a much better person to head a UFO TV series reboot.

"The full Natal hardware/sensor combo always looked like an expensive proposition in a market where Microsoft really needs to turn a profit," said tech website Digital Foundry. "The notion of offloading the processing to the 360 CPU in the name of lower costs and easier upgradability makes sense.”

If this is true and they start cutting corners is it even going to work as good as in the demos? Sounds like it'll be pricey so they're gonna have to get it right upon launch.

From one of the articles "one of the developers spoke about the game seems to cover this. Virtual Heroes, the producer of American's Army, is providing this game. It seems like they have already produced a couple space sims ("Race to Mars" and "Virtual Astronaut"), but I might be wrong.

LOL reviews are one of the most important factors I base my purchases on. And here in the UK I go by Edge Magazine which I have been reading for 16 years.

I can trust their reviews. Anything they give a 9/10 is a must buy (if you like the genre) and the rare 10/10 are no brainers. There have only been a handful of 10/10 in the magazines long history, including one this month: Bayonetta.

Edge Magazine: http://www.edge-online.com/magazine

For shame, how could you forget Demon's Souls? Even notoriously-harsh-towards-PS3-exclusives Edge UK managed to give it a 9/10 as *the* dungeon crawler to have this generation. God I can't wait to pick it up. Not to mention Uncharted 2, neck-and-neck with Super Mario Galaxy as the highest-rated console exclusive. The 360 was hands-down the console to have at the start of this generation, but that lead has long since vanished.

Thanks for using the UK and the exchange rate to boost your profits, cunts.

http://www.edge-online.com/news/xbox-360-elites-price-cut-arcades-raised

I'm sure the reason they haven't done this all over Europe is because they're only popular in the UK so they feel they can get away with this.

Are you telling me it's taxes are just enough that Sony has to â299 for the PS3 in the EU and $299 in the US and that it has nothing to do with the euro being worth more therefore allowing them to make a bigger profit for no additional work?

Or why MS may be raising the price of the of the 360 arcade in the UK depsite the fact manufactuer costs are probably lower as is inflation? I'm sure it has nothing to do with the increase on the pound over the dollar and therefore a small rise means a larger rise in profits. http://www.edge-online.com/news/xbox-360-arcade-getting-a-price-increase

Then don't buy the goddamn things. They sell them for what they do because people are willing to buy them at that price. That's called "what the market will bear." If they could sell three times the units at half the profit per unit to make 1-1/2 times the profit then they would. They are selling them at what they believe is near optimal price for maximum profit.

Corporate taxes are a joke. They just get passed on to the consumer anyway, and they make businesses less competitive internationally. But it is politically rewarding to go after the big evil corporations and for them to pay their way.

Bullshit.

Are you telling me it's taxes are just enough that Sony has to â299 for the PS3 in the EU and $299 in the US and that it has nothing to do with the euro being worth more therefore allowing them to make a bigger profit for no additional work?

Or why MS may be raising the price of the of the 360 arcade in the UK depsite the fact manufactuer costs are probably lower as is inflation? I'm sure it has nothing to do with the increase on the pound over the dollar and therefore a small rise means a larger rise in profits. http://www.edge-online.com/news/xbox-360-arcade-getting-a-price-increase

The fact is nothing will ever be good enough for corporations as long as it's cheaper elsewhere. Even if they paid no tax in the US, if the over all cost was cheaper in India they'd go there.

What they ought to do is allow companies to go where ever they want but the directors have to live where the majority of their employees live.

They pulled the ad when they found out it changed the load time. They had an agreement with the ad provider that any ads would match the game's aesthetic, too.

That's actually a completely fair question. I had read that but couldn't recall where, so I searched for it and couldn't immediately find it. I did find this study which claims the opposite:

http://www.edge-online.com/news/study-claims-pc-market-largest (Link to a summary since the full original report is expensive)

So I don't have facts and figures at hand to substantiate my assertion. However, there are some interesting issues with the report. It claims that nearly 200m gaming-class PCs were sold from Q3 2005 to Q3 2008, while nearly 75m PS3/Xbox360/Wii consoles sold in that same time frame. I'm not sure that a gaming-class PC is always purchased for gaming, however; most new PCs could be considered "gaming-class" even if there's no intention of purchasing them for games. Consoles on the other hand are almost always intended as games machines.

The number of hardware units sold only determines the largest potential market for game software, but the number that actually matters is the number of software units sold. If the "potential" market for PC games is 2x the console market but console versions of a game outsell the PC versions by 5x (that number is in line with what I remember reading) then any business trying to survive would be foolish to focus on the PC.

I really hate console gaming. I don't like controllers, I prefer keyboard and mouse, and I prefer the depth to games developed specifically for the PC. But there are many, many more people who would love to play games from time to time and don't want to do it on a tiny screen; consoles make that possible, and spares people from the technical hassle of dealing with Windows and drivers and patches, etc.

I found that after the DRM and rootkits I actively don't buy sony anymore. But it looks like so far there's not much interest in Europe anyway: http://www.edge-online.com/news/uk-indie-retailers-downbeat-on-psp-go

I think this pretty much sums up mobile games and pretty much any other very cheap quick gaming markets.

Some people do make money and some games are good but the vast majority of these markets are full of shit games and aren't making money.

Mobile phones especially suffer from this, imo, because the hardware just isn't made for gaming. Even the iphone is shit. It has no buttons and I don't care how many imaginary buttons you can put on the screen, it's just not the same.

Another problem is that the games are shallow and cheap. People don't value them. They won't pay decent money for them and they don't really care about them. There won't ever be much money to be made out of people like that.

Stardock won't install spyware, unless they want to flag themselves as one of the biggest hypocrites on the planet. They co-authored the Gamers Bill of Rights with Gas-Powered Games. Number 6 states:

"Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won't install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their express consent."

Because it says to developers that people want their games but they're not willing to pay for them. So rather than putting money towards making games better they put money towards DRM and various methods to stop people from stealing them.

This is why we're left with less variety and very samey games full of shitty DRM. There is no benefit to the community as a whole when people download games.

It has and will continue to lead to companies cutting corners to save money which includes shipping jobs over seas. So all these teens thinking they can get into a job making something they love (games) will lose their opportunity because of their actions.

As more jobs go to India, then Indians will have more money and buy more games and games sales will continue to grow over there as they have already (by 300%). http://www.edge-online.com/news/scee-india-grew-300-percent-200809

Then those teens will find themselves with no games to buy anyway. Not because of money but because no one will cater to them anymore.

And it just goes to show how lazy teens are. I was able to afford tons of NES/SNES games. Some that I rarely played even because I just bought them because I might like them. It's not because my parents were rich but because I went out and earned money. When you don't pay taxes or have bills you'd be amazed how far a little money goes and it doesn't kill kids to go out and mow lawns or do various odd jobs to earn cash and as an added bonus maybe obesity wouldn't be a problem in the states.

Thanks to my odd jobs I was able to have the games I want as well as, clothes, cigarettes and alcohol and it feels much better to have more things than your fellow students through hard work than being a thief.

You do realize that a lot more software is sold for consoles than PCs right? The console gaming market is huge, mostly because you just buy a console and any game out for that console will work out of the box

That is the usual console propaganda made by console manufacturers and big retail publishers that want to push people into the locked down console market by using skewed numbers, namely retail sales of the PC platform vs the combined retail sales of the three major consoles. Here are the advantages that consoles have in that comparison:

* Console sales grouped together into one single big number.
* Only counting retail sales heavily favors console games, because maybe half of the PC sales are digital nowadays.
* Advertising focuses on consoles because the profit margins are larger for publishers due to the closed down platform.
* Doesn't include subscription services (MMORPGS, etc) which is common on the PC platform. Leading to the following point.
* PC games have a larger time spent per game and person due to mods, community and general openedness of the platform.
* PC games are easier to pirate which means that game piracy is more focused around the PC. (While the effect on direct sales can be discussed, one thing is certain. And that is that PC have a higher percentage of the pirated game hours played)

most people I know have a cheap dell with integrated video that couldn't handle something as simple and old as Quake III.)

And yet in the last 3 years 196 million gaming PCs were sold compared to 74.7 of the top three consoles (http://www.edge-online.com/news/study-claims-pc-market-largest. Another big market is the handhelds that also are larger than the console nowadays.

Update: Due to a miscommunication, we had updated the original piece, stating that PC and Xbox 360 Survival Packs would be paid. However, Valve again contacted Edge to say that it hasn't ruled out the possibility of the price being "$0.00." Sorry for any confusion.

From what I understand, Microsoft requires DLC to be for-pay; Valve's stance, reiterated on January 14th, has been that free DLC is a more effective sales catalyst. And then you get the guy on RPS claiming that Gabe emailed saying PC DLC is "free".

What 'directx 10 on xp' hack, I'm imagine. Where's the link?

Like I said, the only "hacks" I've seen are for specific games, and don't actually allow you to run DX10 on XP. EX: Shadowrun / Halo 2, Crysis.

So they whine. And? Last I checked the RIAA has a whole campaign dedicated to stopping P2P and it's not working, I don't think a bit of whining from EA will suddently kill all P2P.

In fact I doubt they'll really check numbers before whining. They know whining gets nothing done but it's an easy way of telling shareholders "See? It's not our fault that we're losing money, it's the pirates and we're doing our best to stop that!"

Of course DRM doesn't work, it's the same as those airport security idiocies. Just a facade.

Recently Slashdot linked to an article listing the Gamer's Bill of Rights.

This list was created by a publisher called Stardock, best known for Galactic Civilizations and Sins Of A Solar Empire. The list makes tons of sense, and it's doubtful if the PC gaming market will survive if publishers don't heed the wisdom of its suggestions. I never even heard of this publisher before Gal. Civ., but now I'm becoming a fan due to their benevolent attitude toward gamers. Boycotting clueless publishers isn't enough because there will always be people who will buy the game anyway. Instead of showing publishers what they can lose (which might not be a lot to them), show them what they can gain. Show them the profitability of treating customers well by giving the good publishers a chance. Also, don't underestimate the innovation of indie games.

The only reason Sony let this happen was to try to have the platform classified as a 'computer' in the EU - because of tax.

Sony tries so hard to lock up its platform that their offerings were laughable...
http://www.edge-online.com/news/kutaragi-details-ps3-computer-claim

Videogames: Edge
Science/Tech: New Scientist
The real news: adbusters

Actually no, dating sims[...]have no sex (or not much, and in a very limited way).

Or am I just a prude who's getting worked up over nothing?

No, I think you have a valid concern. I can be a porn hound with the best of the them but when I want to read about computer games or car modding it narks me that I'm bombarded with 'glamour' pictures. You should see the shit you get in car modding mags these days.

I think it has as much to do with the sudden power of the editors and other staff members. It's like the sad state that guys go through as soon as they get a bit of money to spend on the art budget. You also see it in music videos. Sad no-name rap group gets told they can spen $X on a video and get some women bumping and grinding, like it's some sort of badge of honour. Gee well, done guys, you got enough $ to hire a pretty girl to stand near you for a change.

If you really want a computer game magazine you should buy Future Publishing's Edge. It's written for and by adults in an adult style and doesn't go for the prurient. Stear clear of the sad wankers because if the need to show you some tits to make you buy their mag then their editorial must be shite.

Since the piece originated in Edge magazine I suppose that little factoid is meaningless. In case you have never read it: Edge is by far the best computer and video gaming magazine in existence. They writers are not always objective--they are fans after all--but they are independent. They might praise one system and condemn another, but it feels like they are doing it because they believe and not because someone paid them off. It also is, as far as I know, the only one you can safely read in public because of the fantastic art-direction.

Their web-presence is not really representative so I urge you to check it out on a news-stand if you ever have the chance. In the recent tenth anniversary issue they had a story on the origins of the magazine. According to official gospel it was not launched to make money, but to simply be the best gaming mag in existence. I cannot judge whether or not this is true, but it certainly feels that way. And yes, I am a fanboy, but a truly well done magazine is such a rare thing that I simply have to cherish it.

Do yourself a favor and subscribe to Edge magazine. It's a British affair, but they'll ship to the US.

Yup, Starbreeze was formed out of the former demo group Triton, the creators of, among others, the legendary Crystal Dreams and Crystal Dreams II demos.

Back then, Triton captured the essence of module tracking with their FastTracker & FastTrackerII, a very advanced implementation of the old amiga protracker concept. Their Fasttracker was, for many years, the biggest rival of Scream Tracker and Impulse Tracker, and a lot of musicians preferred it's simple but efficient interface above all other trackers.

When Triton became Starbreeze, they had a lot of problems finding publishers for their first game 'Into The Shadows'. Parts of that never-published game were used in 'Sorcery', a 1st person RPG to be published by Gremlin Interactive, but also these plans did not go forward, as Gremlin was bought by Infogrames and they traditionally fucked up one more development studio. Finally, Swing Entertainment (Conspiracy Games) had the courage and the guts to publish the now 3rd person RPG 'Enclave' on 3 platforms, and the game gained reasonably good acclaim. Unfortunately, Swing went bankrupt 3 months later. Starbreeze is now said to be working on Enclave 2.

E3 was pathetic. The few women in the gaming profession who weren't booth-bimbos seem to be surviving on a diet of low-grade mortification. Video games have the potential to be the defining medium for the 21st century, but only when they stop be exclusively marketed towards young men's most insipid fantasies

I'm not someone who thinks that the numbers have to be equal, either - I, like Henry Jenkins of MIT, think that there are reasons why boys are more interested in video games than girls, the most important one being the loss of public space for boys' unsupervised play. Video games answer a call for a need that young (10 to 15 year old) boys have particularly strongly in the US. In the most literal sense, it's OK for adolescent males to have a 'treehouse' that's boys-only - girls do the same, and it's an important part of social development to have gendered playspaces. At that stage, I can understand the gap.

However, at a place like E3 that fact is irrelevant. That the industry talks to itself with depictions of T&A is pathetic. It feels deeply unprofessional, and the attitude, I think, is stunting the potential of videogames. The average PS2 owner, for example, is 25 years old - the industry should be getting smarter.

As far as Ziff-Davis goes, their gaming magazines are weak. The best general magazine for gaming I've ever read is Edge, from the UK. No US magazine comes close to such intelligence, production values, actually useful reviews (yes, lots of pans - in fact, more pans than praise), and good, literary-quality writing.

If you are in the UK then a good place to start is to read a magazine such as Edge which has lots of adverts for positions in it's recruitment pages (along with yearly features about how others have gotten started working within the industry).

I guess another source of good information is the Gamasutra website.

I have friends who have gone on to work for games companies and they are encouraged to tell the company about other good people... So just knowing someone who can certify your qualifications is one of the best ways to go.

In the UK, Future Publishing produce a games magazine called Edge. A friend recently moved to the US, and tells me that it is not available there on newsstands, but that its technical articles are published three months later in the US magazine NextGen.

Edge gives an average game a 5 out of ten. I have seen games get 1, and it is common for games to get 2 or three. It is very rare for a game to get 10, I think the last game to get a 10 was probably Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Edge covers all formats, only reviews what it considers the very best releases each month (8 to 12 titles), and is highly respected by the industry. It is supposed to be a magazine for the games industry as well as the hardcore gamer.

One thing is their favour is that they don't usually carry adverts for games. Whether this is an editorial decision or a consequence of their review policy I don't know. They also don't review things until they are in the shops - they only review final code. For a taste of Edge, have a look at Edge Online.