For the sake of being crystal clear, I'd just like to point out issue #17 has been ready and finalized since friday in the evening.
Long story short: Brandon (the founder of VP) was flying to SF for GDC on Saturday, so the release got pushed further. In the end he thinks releasing the new issue on Monday, when most people would be back home/work after the weekend and able to actually read it, would be best.
Since VP has been contributing lots in giving exposure to both Indie Game Developers the Magazine itself, I've refrained from posting the new issue here in advance of VP.
What do people think about making this a monthly feature? Seems it would be easier to garner support and exposure if it was more of rare bird. Not to fly in the face of tradition, just figure it might be a more sustainable option.
I'm not sure man, I thought (and am still thinking) about the release schedule a lot myself. In the end (though I don't pretend I have all the
"right" answers) I just settled on "the more, often the better".
I believe the real point about the TIGSource Devlog Magazine is getting the attention of as many people as possible on the awesome projects on these boards. This is aside from schedule considerations. For instance, I'm trying to bring more exposure in many ways (some of which forum users might not be fully aware of). But that's an unrelated subject I guess.
You see, even if I made a new issue per month, I still couldn't feature 4 times as many games in a single issue vs what I do with a weekly or bi-weekly schedule. That would still be 15-20ish projects, 25 tops as a reasonable estimate.
With a
major difference. If you pick the 25 most interesting/promising devlogs of the last month, smaller and weirder projects have much of an higher chance of being dropped in favor of featuring the more shining stuff. I.e. more issues equals more projects being shown off, given the same amount of time.
And this brings us to the most important point: total amount of readers. A more frequent serrated schedule makes for more overall readers. This is HUGE, in my humble opinion.
While one could argue a more polished monthly feature (a rarer bird, so to speak) would be more attractive, in the end I believe getting an higher number of eyes on an higher number of projects is still preferable.
Sorry for the long-assed post. TL;DR; When I rebooted the Magazine I settled on trying and releasing a new issue as often as I could, hopefully once per week, less often if external factors come in the way.
But definitely, I'd like to hear everyone's opinion, so let us know what your own take!