Gamasutra

A strategy game design blog - read this regularly!

Viva Pinata - An artificial life game based on living pinatas. Fascinating!

Planescape: Torment - This game looks like it has an amazing story.

RIT Game Dev Club - Here is the forum.

300 Game Mechanics - Holy shit. You need game ideas? You got game ideas. This is sorta like antimosity. Details on using this guy's ideas: http://www.squidi.net/three/about.php

Sins of a solar empire - This is the kind of game that makes me drool.

Gamasutra's best of 2007 - There is some inspirational material here.

The Future of Realtime Strategy - A fascinating article about creating real time strategies with more of a focus on actual strategy and less on tactics. The comments posted by other people about the article are also excellent. I think the best points of the article are made on the last two pages. This relates to Antimosity and the "scroll bar strategy" game mechanic.

gamasutra board games - Lessons: Don't limit your audience. Include cooperative, PVE, as well as PVP aspects. Interesting mechanics here. and here.

Penny Arcade: Sins of a solar empire and Hegemonia - I wish I had played Hegemonia to better understand what they are talking about in this forum post, but the tidbits about two players dividing up tasks in a real time strategy is fascinating. I always thought it would be awesome to have team RTS's where one team controls one army and the team members have different responsibilities like officers in a real army. One guy would be the engineer in charge of base construction and layout, one guy would bea sort-of Human Resources officer in charge of unit training, upgrading, and deployment, and a third player would be a captain (or whatever rank) on the ground actually commanding the troops in battle.

More games I desperately need to check out when I get some time, if I ever get some time - E.V.E. and Jumpgate evolution
The only thing I dislike about games like these is that if they hadn't already been made and I owned a game company, then I would have made them and I'd be rolling in dough.

Five Prescriptions for viral games - Tips for designing games that Sell Themselves.

This Gamasutra article on storytelling in sandbox games is what originally lead me to discover Dwarf Fortress.

Mind Control games - A game designer with lots of cool ideas. They made Oasis, which was featured in gamasutra. Also, it seems they sell some kind of development tool.

Nine Paths to Indie Game Design Greatness - Perhaps the most profitable part of this article is the page with tons of links to free, cheap, or open technology for game development.

Casual Games Manifesto - has some good tips on how to become a successful casual games developer.

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