Develop was a UK magazine dedicated to game developers in the industry similar to the US magazine Game Developer, it published 11 issues a year, one a month except December and January where there was one issue for both months. After 188 issues it was merged with its sister title MCV to become MCV/Develop but it kept the MCV issue numbering.
For most of its run the magazine was divided into the following 3 sections:
Other subsections included:
The information we have about the circulation (number of magazines sold) are listed below:
During its run it went through a number of different publishers:
In 2007 some of the interviews from the magazine were also posted on the website, for those we will provide a link in the table below of all the interviews we know about:
| Issue Number | Interview Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 075 | John Romero | Design Doc - Emotion in games |
| 075 | Gordon Hall | Michael French talks to Rockstar Leeds boss Gordon Hall to find out more about the Develop Award-winning team’s first ten years of business, and plans for the future. |
| 076 | Torsten Reil | Michael French speaks to NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil about the company’s decision to move into full game production and how procedural content is helping its small development team build a new IP… |
| 076 | Chris Ambler | QA teams across the industry need to focus on professionalism, says Electronic Arts UK’s testing boss Chris Ambler… |
| 076 | Serkan Hassan | Black Rock Studio’s Serkan Hassan provides an invaluable glimpse into how the team behind critically-praised franchise MotoGP recently aimed to please both casual and hardcore players with its latest release… |
| 077 | David Edery | With Xbox Live Arcade’s three-year anniversary nearing, Michael French spoke to the platform’s Worldwide Games Portfolio Planner, David Edery, to get an update on what the service can offer developers… |
| 077 | Tony Beckwith | A year after acquisition, how is Black Rock Studio changing under the guidance of Disney and how does that play into House of Mouse’s plans for games? Michael French spoke to Tony Beckwith, studio chief, and Disney’s VP of European production Ed Bainbridge to find out… |
| 077 | Keita Takahashi | In this extract from his book Inside Game Design, Iain Simons talks to Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi about his work ethic, how he comes up with ideas, and his thoughts on the video games medium… |
| 077 | Paul Sheppard | ITI Techmedia’s Paul Sheppard says that developers need to improve their game design process at pre-production stage and offers a up a more methodological approach… |
| 078 | Harold Ryan | Ed Fear spoke to Bungie’s studio manager Harold Ryan to find out why the team has gone solo… |
| 078 | Jim Bambra, Alex McLean | Managing director Jim Bambra and technical director Alex McLean talk to Michael French about what’s changed for Pivotal in its year’s as an internal team and as it works on a next-gen title… |
| 079 | Mick Morris, Richard Scott, Andy Emery | Develop caught up with the heads of three service companies to talk about recent changes in the field and how developers should approach the outsourcing process… |
| 079 | Gavin Cheshire, Adrian Bolton | Codemasters has been a mainstay of the UK development scene, but now it has big plans for the future focused around new technology, new IP, and new talent. Michael French paid the exec team a visit to find out more… |
| 163 | Sam Barlow | Following the runaway success of his first indie release Her Story, Sam Barlow discusses why he left triple-A to develop on his unique vision for the game |
The Build section of the magazine is the most relevant to the purpose of this site as it covers the technology of how games were made at the time.
| Issue | Article | Topic | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 075 | Rethinking game AI | AI | What are the implications of AI.implant’s new no-costing licensing model? |
| 075 | MMO Engine Round-Up | Engine | When it comes to MMOGs, at least there’s plenty of middleware to choose from |
| 075 | Arcade Fire | Indie | Stainless Games’ Ben Gunstone offers up some key advice on making games for Xbox Live Arcade… |
| 075 | Heard About: Heavenly Sword | Audio | John Broomhall talks to Ninja Theory’s Tom Colvin and SCEE’s Garry Taylor about the audio production of a PlayStation 3 epic… |
| 075 | Epic Diaries | Unreal | Another fantastic E3 for Unreal Engine 3 |
| 075 | Championship Management | Production | Managing a next-gen project can feel like trying to tame Godzilla, but there are software solutions and fashionable paradigms that claim to make your life easier, discovers Ed Fear. |
| 076 | Emergent emerges | Engine | The final pieces of Emergent’s online game technology puzzle are soon to be announced, but that’s not all… |
| 076 | Heard About: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | Audio | John Broomhall talks to Electronic Arts UK’s Adele Cutting about the audio production for Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix |
| 076 | Life in the engine room | Engine | More and more studios are looking towards licensing existing technology to help them produce their game. But, asks Ed Fear, how do you choose which engine, and is it really the panacea it may seem? |
| 076 | The door is OpenKODE | Mobile | Mobile developers now have a way to sidestep tricky platform fragmentation, says Ideaworks3D’s Tim Closs… |
| 077 | Lets get connected | Networking | Most games offer some sort of online features but, surprisingly, there’s less traditional networking middleware available than ever before, discovers Jon Jordan |
| 077 | Parallel Lines | Hardware | Multicore architectures are everywhere but it’s proving difficult to make them sing. Scottish middleware company Codeplay has an idea |
| 077 | Virtual Heroes are Serious about games | Unreal | Mark Rein profiles a new Unreal Engine 3 customer… |
| 077 | Heard About: Sega Rally - www.developmag.com | Audio | John Broomhall talks to audio director Tim Bartlett on the rebirth of Sega’s racer… |
| 077 | Poetry in motion | Motion Capture | It might have been around for a relatively long time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the motion capture industry is slowing down as it reaches maturity. Ed Fear takes a look at the latest movements in the field… |
| 078 | Locked and bloated | DRM | Nothing’s completely secure, but in a digital, connected world, it’s well worth ensuring your content is as protected as possible, says Jon Jordan |
| 078 | The Emergence of Emergent | Engine | Piece by piece, Emergent Game Technologies is building the next generation of middleware, Jon Jordan discovers… |
| 078 | EPIC’S UE3-BASED PC GAMES ALMOST GOLDEN | Unreal | Your monthly update on what’s new in the world of Unreal Engine… |
| 078 | Heard About: The Club | Audio | John Broomhall talks to Bizarre Creations’ lead audio designer Mathias Grunwaldt about the sound production on a new IP for Sega… |
| 078 | The Brain Drain | AI | Ed Fear looks at the field and sees what today’s consoles can do to train our games’ brains… |
| 079 | MULTITALENTED | Programming | Ed Fear looks at how the increasingly contradictory nature of development – with studios asked to make one game for a variety of different machines – has impacted the industry… |
| 079 | All part of the process | Production | As projects get bigger, more complex and distributed around the globe, making sure your production and asset management tools are as sharp as possible is becoming critically important, says Jon Jordan… |
| 079 | Out-the-box town planning | Engine | French middleware company Gamr7 is aiming for automatic city generation… |
| 079 | HDFILMS signs UE3 for animated series | Unreal | HDFilms has selected Unreal Engine 3 to develop Chadam, its new short- form 3D animated Web series to be distributed by Studio 2.0 |
| 079 | Heard About: 2008 – BRING IT ON | Audio | John Broomhall toasts the past year of game audio and looks forward to 2008… |
| 079 | Killer Characters | Art | Develop offers an overview of the character animation tool market |
| 163 | AI’s next frontier | AI | With all the advances already made in video games AI, where is there left to go? Craig Chapple asks the experts where the technology goes next |
| 163 | Creating Believable AI | AI | Experts pitch in with their top tips, tricks and things to consider when creating AI |
| 163 | Keeping your game on track | Production | Developing a video game is no small endeavour, and tracking its progress is essential. We find out how version management tools can help |
| 163 | DAW of a new era | Audio | With 2015.1, Wwise is striving to bridge the gap between video games and digital audio workstations |
| 163 | The sound of No Man’s Sky | Audio | John Broomhall speaks to Earcom’s Paul Weir about the excitement surrounding Hello Games’ intriguing title |
| 163 | Preparing for Windows 10 | Engine | We look at how Marmalade has worked with Microsoft to introduce Windows 10 support to its popular tools |
| 163 | Unreal Engine 4 mods take off | Unreal | Million-selling indie game Ark: Survival Evolved opens up new commercial opportunities for modders. Epic Games tells us more |
| 163 | A recipe for greatness | Unity | We catch up with Bossa Studios to find out the origins of its wacky new IP, I Am Bread (Unity) |
Recurring journalists include:
Every month in the directory section of the magazine one specific tool is given a brief review
| Issue | Tool | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 075 | Autodesk | Mentions 3D Studio Max 9, Maya 8, MotionBuilder 7, HumanIK |
| 076 | PROFX | Described simply, ProFX is a middleware solution for generating and rendering procedural textures – but such a description belies the technology that powers it. |
| 077 | SILO 2.0 | Organic sculpting applications are all the rage these days, but it’s fair to say that few can offer the value-for-money that Silo does at $150 |
| 078 | TECHEXCEL DEVTRACK | DevTrack is TechExcel’s project issue-tracking tool, comprehensively managing issues as far reaching as: new features, QA reports and IT activities. (Clients include Activision, Electronic Arts, Sammy Studios, Sony Online Entertainment, Vivendi Universal) |
| 163 | Haxe | Game Engine |
Every month a game development studio is profiled with interviews and photos, giving an excellent insight into both AAA and indie studios!
| Issue | Studio | Location | Games |
|---|---|---|---|
| 075 | 3D CREATION STUDIO | UK | Project Gotham Racing 4 (Bizarre Creations), The Club (Bizarre Creations) |
| 076 | SIDE | UK | Heavenly Sword, Dragon Quest VIII |
| 077 | LOCALSOFT | Marbella, Spain | WiiSports (Wii), Final Fantasy IV (GBA) |
| 078 | MILESTONE | Milan, Italy | Evolution GT (PS2, PC), SCAR - Squadra Corse Alfa Romeo (Xbox, PC, PS2) |
| 078 | SPECIALMOVE | Glasgow, UK | Recruiter |
| 079 | PEPPERMINT P | Surrey UK | PR agency for studios: Firebrand Games, Rovio Mobile, Rockpool Games |
| 163 | Roll7 | UK | OlliOlli 2, Not A Hero |
One of the sections I love about the magazine was the interesting “Family Tree” diagrams that focussed on one city every month, here is an example of Liverpool:
it was either sponsored by Amiqus or just an entire Advert by them, but either way it provided very interesting information as the games industry is full of mergers, aquisitions and new studios being formed by former employees of other studios.
Develop hosted an annual game development awards ceremony which was highly coveted in the industry, especially in europe but was also known worldwide. From 2003 until the present day the awards were judged by a panel of 50+ industry professionals across a laerge number of categories (18 in 2005) 1.
It is held in London every year and the first was at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington on August 27th 2003 2.
From 2001 Develop had a website at the url http://www.developmag.com which later changed to http://www.develop-online.net/ in July 2009.
It was initially (2001-2004) a very basic website with a very brief description of the main articles, circulation information and a media pack containing circulation information to attract advertisers.
In July 2005 they redesigned their website to include much more information including news which mostly linked to gamasutra articles before switching briefly to Next generation and theneventually posting news articles of their own. A PDF download of the latest issue was available but only after filling in a form to get it emailed to you.
The Develop magazine had some great cover art throughout the years, we will list a couple of our favourites below. We don’t have all the issues so apologies if your favourite is missing.
Issue 37 advertises “Vivarin” a game development supplement to help with Game Crunches (for PS2, Xbox or Gamecube developers):
Issue 40 shows the dream ‘Superstar developer” who makes millions: