I have been asked this question frequently of late.
It is a good question.

Where to Developers get their info?

You can take official courses in universities, and from organizations like Full Sail and Digipen (and LA Film School, and Art Institute, and check your local university).  Or you can get a traditional degree in computer science, graphic design, and make sure to pick up classes on game development and interactive design.This is a great way to go if you are nearing, or just finished high school.

What if you already way beyond that?

What if you have heard how easy tools like Flash, Unity3D and Torque are to use, and you want to know more.

What if you are just curious?

What if you just need to do some research, but don’t really need a working knowledge?

Well, guess what, you have arrived at a time just when a golden era of community supported development is on the rise. or if you like sound bytes

Let google be your guide, teacher and mentor

In other words “If you want to do something with a technology, someone somewhere has likely done it already and  have bogged about it, and likely shot a video tutorial posted on youtube and vimo”.

Instructing you : opposite directions

Over the past 2 years there have been two completely divergent trends: 1 away from centralized sites with specific topics, and 2, seemly contrary, the emergence of generalized sites with tons of information on how to do everything.

For developers, or the developer curious, or the would-be developer, improvements in google allow anyone to  find whatever they are looking for, no mater wherever it is. Why is this earth shattering? well, in the stone age, before google (like 1998), if you wanted to know how to do something, you likely had to physcially travel to a centralized repository of information, and manually search through physical materials(it was called a LIBRARY). Interesting thing, there is a branch of science, and at least 2 industries and business models that exist to support that method of finding out how to do something.

But now it is the 21st century, and thank the internet we don’t have to do THAT anymore. As liberating as libraries where, free internet search engines are a tru quantum leap.  Now most info comes from individual sites, found through specific google searches. If we want to know something, we google it. If an individual wants to know ANYTHING, all they have to do is google it. (Sidebar, there are some interesting behavior shifts going on. Now you do not need to understand, or know how to do something before embarking on that thing, you can just google as you go. Think of it as Just-in-time-Know-How).

Back in the library days, information had to be researched, gathered, co-lated, and organized in a manner that made it easy to search by humans. Developers of technology spent large portions of their budget on documentation and training. Now with internet search technology, as soon as someone learns how to do something they can post it on their blog, or create a youtube video. Anyone anywhere on the internet can find that tasty tidbit of information. (assuming the author uses good keywords, and the searcher does to)

It takes a community to raise a game developer

How does this notion applyto game development? Most organizations that make technology for game development now-a-days rely on “their community” for a large poart of information, education and training materials. For a given technology there will be a main wiki, a primary forum, but then also dozens to thousands of individual blogs and websites. Excellent examples are the communities that support the Unity 3D , and Flash (action script) technologies. The best way to find out anything about these technologies is to start with google. Of course there are some basic tutorials provided by the purveyors of each respective technology, but the tutorials found on the web are specific to each individual goal.

Is it all coming back together?

The flip side of this is the emergence of websites like ehow, howstuffworks.com, soyouwanna.com, etc.. A few years ago people started to notice that the ad revenue for youtube videos that provided tutorials was very different than the rest of the whole site. Ad sellers, and buyers, learned that you where much more likely to sell something to someone asking the question “how do I”. This has coincided with a re-emergence of the  good old yankee inclination to tinker, referred to in it’s current incarnation as “the Maker Movement”.

Both of these methods of learneing are supported by a growing internet culture of “learn & teach”. When people learn something, figure out how to do something, they blog it, tweet it, shoot videos of it.. These blogs, tweets and videos feed both the individuals, and the big web sites like ehow.

Another emerging trend: professional Micro “how to videos”:

There is a small community of videographers and writers, mostly in and around Hollywood, that shoot short video tutorials. “Microproductions” I think they are called. The deal is, when a website like ehow encounters a prospectively profitable set of “how to” queries, they will contract a videographer to go film a bunch of very short how to videos. A videographer that specialises in this, is often a TV or Cinema camera opertor between jobs. They will get hired to shoot several dozen how to videos each day. Each individual video might only net 20 bucks or so from the site (like ehow). The production quality does not have to be high, and they can be done in masse. So a single day’s shooting can net a few hundred bucks, if the videographer is efficient and can direct the subject well.

Also some technical writers are turning to this business model. LearnMeSilly.com is a successful example of how technical instruction may be done from now on. One of that web site’s principals created some,  tutorials for Unity 3D. Now the author is publishing  a book.

The book will get published and find its way into Libraries.

I coined this phrase a year or so ago “Welcome to Early 21st century pop culture, now with video tutorials!”. (reference to www.knowyourmeme.com).