For over a decade GameDev.net has been a well-known and respected resource across all fields of game development, and we thank you for your interest in contributing your own knowledge and experience to share with the rest of the game development community. As a published author on GameDev.net, your member profile will display a badge to let others know of your contribution, and a list of articles you have published will be included in your profile as well to let people interested in your topics follow you for new content. You will also receive points towards being able to moderate submissions from other authors if you wish to help foster new content.
First and foremost, all authors are required to create an account here on GameDev.net so that your articles can be linked to your account, moderators can be notified of your submissions, and you can edit your articles. Once you have completed this step, you are ready and able to submit content.
You begin by creating an article using the submission form. The draft stage is perfect for beginning the process of writing your article here. Whenever you save an article as a draft it is visible only to you and the moderation team, so you can take the time you need to get the article finished without having to worry about doing it all in one go. If you already have the article completed, then the draft stage is where you check that the article shows up looking the way you want it to prior to making it public. Either way, you should also use this time to check that the article meets our content guidelines (see below) to avoid any problems in the next step.
For more details on using the article submission form, please read this help article.
If your content is already an entry in your developer journal here on GameDev.net, you can submit it directly to the moderator review stage using the Promote To Article link.
Once you are satisfied with the article as it appears on the site you can choose for it to be published and made public. Before this happens, and within 24-48 hours, a moderator will look over your article to ensure it falls within our content guidelines. This is not a technical check, nor a grammatical check - it's only to ensure your content, including images and file attachments, is suitable for our audience to view. We will email you any issues via the account in your profile, otherwise the article will be approved and you will receive notification that the content is now publically available and open for peer review.
The peer review process can be more lengthy than the previous moderator review - here both moderators and users granted the privelege will review your article for both technical and grammatical issues. This process is meant to make your contribution as robust as possible and all critisicm should be taken (and given) constructively towards this goal. Reviewers can comment suggestions on your article and you can edit your article to take these comments into consideration if you so choose. Eventually, reviewers will individually vote to either approve or deny your article. For every denial vote the reviewer will submit feedback to go along with their vote. This feedback, as well as the number of approval/denial votes and the members who made them, will be visible to all readers. When you have received three votes of approval, your article will be marked as Peer Reviewed.
If your article receives three votes of denial it will be moved to a private closed section and flagged for additional review. Articles can be denied for serious reasons such as suspected plagiarism, abusive language or offensive material. Articles can also be denied for reasons such as missing images, erroneous code or unclear sections - things that were pointed out by reviewers but not addressed by authors in a timely manner. Closed articles can be resubmitted for publishing approval by the author and will begin the peer-review process anew if the reasons for denial have been suitably addressed.
Once an article has been marked Peer Reviewed, a badge next to the title will let readers know that the content therein has been vetted by knowledgeable members of the GameDev.net community and these members will be listed. As a peer reviewed author, you will receive a reputation bonus and, depending on your repuation score, the ability to moderate other contributions under peer review if you have not been granted this privelege already.
Please note that an article does not have to attain peer reviewed status to be considered published or valid content. We respect that contributors have the knowledge and experience necessary to submit accurate and informative work, but at the same time we recognize that mistakes are easily made and missed even through multiple self-reviews by the author. The peer review process helps to ensure that any issues, if they exist, are found and, if not corrected, are pointed out to inform readers of their existence.
Please read the following sections carefully. These guidelines are in addition to our Terms of Service and Contributor Agreement. For more information on some of the terms used below make sure you are familiar with how the article submission form works. Do not be afraid to submit if you feel you may be in conflict with these guidelines - any ambiguity will be dealt with during moderator review.
Images
All images to which you own the rights to must be uploaded as Media Resource attachments. The option to link to external images using the "img" tag may only be used for images which you do not own and have permission or free license to do so from the copyright holder. This is to minimize the number of broken images that may show up in the content as the years go on.
Acceptible image formats include GIF, JPG, PNG and BMP.
Downloadable Files
For the same reasons, any source or included files for the content must be uploaded using the article submission form so long as you have the right to do so. Relevant files for which you do not own must be externally linked unless permission or free license is granted by the copyright owner for you to upload.
All file attachments must be in ZIP format.
There are several different types of content you can contribute. If you don't think your submission falls under any of these categories, we suggest you email the editor to ensure that your content will be a good fit for the GameDev.net audience. For more specific information on how to best compose these various content types, including structure and formatting guidelines, see this help article.
Topical Article
This type of content will focus around specific techniques, methodologies, languages, fields of game development, etc. Examples include designing levels for First-Person Shooters, working with new DirectX features, learning the ins and outs of a specific API, exploring the basics of game design, managing teams with Scrum, etc.
Code Snippet
If you have a handy piece of code you would like to share that doesn't need 1,000 words to explain, then you should consider submitting it as a code snippet. This will give you a standard template to adhere to and give easy access for others to download and share your snippet across the community.
How-To Guide
If you would like to give instruction or advice on how to use a library, engine, tool, etc. then you must do so without promotion in any way. These articles should be written towards current owners and users and should not include any information related to purchase or download other than a link to the main web site. Authors of these articles may include anyone who is associated with the subject of the how-to guide, as long as this is declared within the article and non-promotional conditions are met. All guides should be tagged "how to" and titles prefixed with "How To..."
Product Review
We welcome your thoughts on products (including books) available for game developers, both payware and freeware. Help spread the word about a great tool or warn people away from a buggy engine. Product reviews must be tagged "Review" and follow the structure guidelines. We will judge if the review is unbiased, non-promoting (there is a difference between praise and promotion) and balanced. Authors of these articles may not under any circumstances include anyone who is associated with the product being reviewed.
Video Article
Articles can be submitted with embedded video from supported providers such as Vimeo and YouTube. They must at least include in the article body the same description featured on the video host site. While some people may read faster than others, everyone must watch a video at the same pace so it is essential that they are properly edited and kept as concise as possible. We suggest you plan your video and script your dialogue as much as possible. Any obvious rambling, empty space, and other signs of lack of editing will not pass review.
External Content
The option to provide a link to external content is available and falls under the following usage conditions:
We have always required full accountability in our published authors, and this means no pen names, nick names or screen names may be used for the Author Name attached to your work. If you are not comfortable attaching your real name to your work we are not comfortable publishing it. We recognize however that many of our popular community members are recognized by their forum name rather than their real name, so we do allow your GameDev.net display name to be used in the author field as long as you have filled out the Full Name field of your member profile.
While our community comes from all over the world, GameDev.net is an English-language site. All articles submitted must be written in English. If English is not your primary language do not worry - while the moderator review stage will not catch many small grammatical errors, if it is obvious you are not used to writing in English we will use this stage to work with you on cleaning the wording up. If you would like to seek help in translating your article or are interested in translating one of our articles, please contact the editor.
Authors are required to choose a license for their article that defines the use of content being submitted to GameDev.net. This is for your protection as well as ours from potential litigation and we suggest you fully review all available licenses here. By default the GameDev.net Open License is selected.
If you didn't do it earlier in this document, this is a reminder that you review our Terms of Service and Contributor Agreement documents. You must agree to both when you submit your article for moderator review.
If you are unclear on anything mentioned above or have thoughts on how to improve the article system, please email our editor Drew Sikora with your questions and concerns. Thank you for helping to improve GameDev.net and expand the available resources for the game development community.
The Submission Process
First and foremost, all authors are required to create an account here on GameDev.net so that your articles can be linked to your account, moderators can be notified of your submissions, and you can edit your articles. Once you have completed this step, you are ready and able to submit content.
1. The Draft
You begin by creating an article using the submission form. The draft stage is perfect for beginning the process of writing your article here. Whenever you save an article as a draft it is visible only to you and the moderation team, so you can take the time you need to get the article finished without having to worry about doing it all in one go. If you already have the article completed, then the draft stage is where you check that the article shows up looking the way you want it to prior to making it public. Either way, you should also use this time to check that the article meets our content guidelines (see below) to avoid any problems in the next step.
For more details on using the article submission form, please read this help article.
If your content is already an entry in your developer journal here on GameDev.net, you can submit it directly to the moderator review stage using the Promote To Article link.
2. Moderator Review
Once you are satisfied with the article as it appears on the site you can choose for it to be published and made public. Before this happens, and within 24-48 hours, a moderator will look over your article to ensure it falls within our content guidelines. This is not a technical check, nor a grammatical check - it's only to ensure your content, including images and file attachments, is suitable for our audience to view. We will email you any issues via the account in your profile, otherwise the article will be approved and you will receive notification that the content is now publically available and open for peer review.
3. Peer Review
The peer review process can be more lengthy than the previous moderator review - here both moderators and users granted the privelege will review your article for both technical and grammatical issues. This process is meant to make your contribution as robust as possible and all critisicm should be taken (and given) constructively towards this goal. Reviewers can comment suggestions on your article and you can edit your article to take these comments into consideration if you so choose. Eventually, reviewers will individually vote to either approve or deny your article. For every denial vote the reviewer will submit feedback to go along with their vote. This feedback, as well as the number of approval/denial votes and the members who made them, will be visible to all readers. When you have received three votes of approval, your article will be marked as Peer Reviewed.
If your article receives three votes of denial it will be moved to a private closed section and flagged for additional review. Articles can be denied for serious reasons such as suspected plagiarism, abusive language or offensive material. Articles can also be denied for reasons such as missing images, erroneous code or unclear sections - things that were pointed out by reviewers but not addressed by authors in a timely manner. Closed articles can be resubmitted for publishing approval by the author and will begin the peer-review process anew if the reasons for denial have been suitably addressed.
Once an article has been marked Peer Reviewed, a badge next to the title will let readers know that the content therein has been vetted by knowledgeable members of the GameDev.net community and these members will be listed. As a peer reviewed author, you will receive a reputation bonus and, depending on your repuation score, the ability to moderate other contributions under peer review if you have not been granted this privelege already.
Please note that an article does not have to attain peer reviewed status to be considered published or valid content. We respect that contributors have the knowledge and experience necessary to submit accurate and informative work, but at the same time we recognize that mistakes are easily made and missed even through multiple self-reviews by the author. The peer review process helps to ensure that any issues, if they exist, are found and, if not corrected, are pointed out to inform readers of their existence.
Content Guidelines
Please read the following sections carefully. These guidelines are in addition to our Terms of Service and Contributor Agreement. For more information on some of the terms used below make sure you are familiar with how the article submission form works. Do not be afraid to submit if you feel you may be in conflict with these guidelines - any ambiguity will be dealt with during moderator review.
Attachments
Images
All images to which you own the rights to must be uploaded as Media Resource attachments. The option to link to external images using the "img" tag may only be used for images which you do not own and have permission or free license to do so from the copyright holder. This is to minimize the number of broken images that may show up in the content as the years go on.
Acceptible image formats include GIF, JPG, PNG and BMP.
Downloadable Files
For the same reasons, any source or included files for the content must be uploaded using the article submission form so long as you have the right to do so. Relevant files for which you do not own must be externally linked unless permission or free license is granted by the copyright owner for you to upload.
All file attachments must be in ZIP format.
Content Types
There are several different types of content you can contribute. If you don't think your submission falls under any of these categories, we suggest you email the editor to ensure that your content will be a good fit for the GameDev.net audience. For more specific information on how to best compose these various content types, including structure and formatting guidelines, see this help article.
Topical Article
This type of content will focus around specific techniques, methodologies, languages, fields of game development, etc. Examples include designing levels for First-Person Shooters, working with new DirectX features, learning the ins and outs of a specific API, exploring the basics of game design, managing teams with Scrum, etc.
Code Snippet
If you have a handy piece of code you would like to share that doesn't need 1,000 words to explain, then you should consider submitting it as a code snippet. This will give you a standard template to adhere to and give easy access for others to download and share your snippet across the community.
How-To Guide
If you would like to give instruction or advice on how to use a library, engine, tool, etc. then you must do so without promotion in any way. These articles should be written towards current owners and users and should not include any information related to purchase or download other than a link to the main web site. Authors of these articles may include anyone who is associated with the subject of the how-to guide, as long as this is declared within the article and non-promotional conditions are met. All guides should be tagged "how to" and titles prefixed with "How To..."
Product Review
We welcome your thoughts on products (including books) available for game developers, both payware and freeware. Help spread the word about a great tool or warn people away from a buggy engine. Product reviews must be tagged "Review" and follow the structure guidelines. We will judge if the review is unbiased, non-promoting (there is a difference between praise and promotion) and balanced. Authors of these articles may not under any circumstances include anyone who is associated with the product being reviewed.
Video Article
Articles can be submitted with embedded video from supported providers such as Vimeo and YouTube. They must at least include in the article body the same description featured on the video host site. While some people may read faster than others, everyone must watch a video at the same pace so it is essential that they are properly edited and kept as concise as possible. We suggest you plan your video and script your dialogue as much as possible. Any obvious rambling, empty space, and other signs of lack of editing will not pass review.
External Content
The option to provide a link to external content is available and falls under the following usage conditions:
- The Teaser Paragraph must include an adequate description of the link
- The link must be to a content source for which you do not have permission to repost
- This content source may be an individual article or a page that lists individual articles - so long as those articles all fall under the same Article Category chosen for the link
- Authorship must be given to the actual content owner. This can be a website or individual
Authorship
We have always required full accountability in our published authors, and this means no pen names, nick names or screen names may be used for the Author Name attached to your work. If you are not comfortable attaching your real name to your work we are not comfortable publishing it. We recognize however that many of our popular community members are recognized by their forum name rather than their real name, so we do allow your GameDev.net display name to be used in the author field as long as you have filled out the Full Name field of your member profile.
Foreign Language Submissions
While our community comes from all over the world, GameDev.net is an English-language site. All articles submitted must be written in English. If English is not your primary language do not worry - while the moderator review stage will not catch many small grammatical errors, if it is obvious you are not used to writing in English we will use this stage to work with you on cleaning the wording up. If you would like to seek help in translating your article or are interested in translating one of our articles, please contact the editor.
License
Authors are required to choose a license for their article that defines the use of content being submitted to GameDev.net. This is for your protection as well as ours from potential litigation and we suggest you fully review all available licenses here. By default the GameDev.net Open License is selected.
Terms and Conditions
If you didn't do it earlier in this document, this is a reminder that you review our Terms of Service and Contributor Agreement documents. You must agree to both when you submit your article for moderator review.
Questions? Comments? Feedback?
If you are unclear on anything mentioned above or have thoughts on how to improve the article system, please email our editor Drew Sikora with your questions and concerns. Thank you for helping to improve GameDev.net and expand the available resources for the game development community.