Why Gamasutra Is Changing Its Name To Game Developer

The long-running games industry site Gamasutra is rebranding, and starting Thursday, August 26, the website will henceforth be known as Game Developer. Gamasutra is adopting the moniker of its now-defunct sibling publication, Game Developer magazine, which left print in 2013 (such game magazine closures are sadly common in recent years). The rebrand comes as a move toward professionalism – even though the online publication itself appears to have always remained so – which seeks to shed some underlying connotations associated with the name “Gamasutra.”

Gamasutra began in 1997 and has remained largely focused on the development side of video game industry coverage. The rebrand will come with a new name, logo, and website, but it appears the current staff remains intact. This change to Game Developer appears to be an internal desire for change, one that puts some distance between the publication and the Kama Sutra, which the soon-to-be-obsolete name is a reference to. Though the Gamasutra brand isn’t pointedly offensive, its association with the ancient Sanskrit book of love is, perhaps, at times mildly uncomfortable.

Gamasutra’s own announcement of the change points toward awkward conversations involving the site name, as well as a more important admission of the mixed messaging that might come across when Gamasutra reports on the widespread sexual assault issues in the games industry. There is nothing inherently wrong with the Kama Sutra itself – it’s merely an ancient instructional text on ways one might find fulfillment through emotional and physical love – but the play on words involved in the Gamasutra website title does admittedly cling “to a late-90s “LOL SEX” connotation,” in the words of Game Developer publisher Kris Graft.

Game Developer Rebrand Is A Big Modernization Step

The domain jump from Gamasutra to gamedeveloper.com isn’t just a modernization in terms of publication title, but in medium as well. The current Gamasutra does appear to show its age, though Graft points out that it’s much better now than how it used to look with “some kind of weird, brownish-beige color, accented with low-res gradient green.” A facelift for the site itself is a nice accompanying factor for a rebrand, a move that already comes with some inherent risk from a business standpoint. The move certainly seems like a smart one for a publication involved in the coverage of an industry increasingly aware of its longstanding workplace harassment issues.

Game Developer’s change in aesthetic and name seem to signal an entirely new era of growth for the nearly twenty-five-year-old website. Graft teases a new addition to the site’s team, but assures readers that the content will remain consistently focused on developers and the creative process. Gamasutra has generally been consistent and reliable in its coverage of the industry, and a move away from the tongue-in-cheek website name in favor of Game Developer is undoubtedly a move that makes sense.

Source: Gamasutra

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