This is much more difficult now than it used be. Corporations are wising up, they know all the tricks, and their employees are much more prepared and careful. A lot of it is just learning by example too.. when someones blog or resume is exposed, everyone else in the industry reads all about it so they try not to make the same mistakes.
Most gaming developer veterans are careful what they write about, but the best information comes from new hires, interns, and egotistical braggarts.
You can call these "leaks" if you want to.. but they're more like discoveries. Leaks would be something that you confirm from an inside source and usually it's very specific information that's supposed to be confidential.
With all of the recent gaming and information leaks, I figured I would share how some kinds of video game related leaks are discovered. The internet sleuthing site "Supererogatory", for example, made EXTENSIVE use of these techniques for pretty much all of his posts.
1. At the top of your arsenal will be Google Alerts.
Starting out, let's say you want to find some older information on Google. You would use very specific searches like the following:
inurl:resume "Blizzard Entertainment" - the URL has the word "resume" in, and Blizzard Entertainment is a keyword on the page.
Useful for finding those unknown www.brandonsmith.com/resume.html specific sites.
site:cghub.com "David Grexton" - for searching specific sites, especially forums, for any posts that contain this users name.
filetype:pdf resume "Bethesda Softworks" 2011 - for finding PDF or DOC files (typically resumes) with specific information for recent dates.
There are also specific keyword searches, like "Blizzard Entertainment" "Unannounced MMO" or "Blizzard Entertainment" "Next Gen MMO" but these can give you a lot of information that are too many to filter.
Now, most of the historical Google information has already been found or discovered by others. But, what's so great about Google Alerts is that it will automatically email you as soon as a NEW Google entry is made. So, if someone adds a new resume with specific keywords, as soon as Google crawlers capture it, you're notified. Google Alerts is an awesome tool for finding new information, especially when you're filtering by document types or specific keywords.
If you have a Google Alert for just "unannounced game" for example, you'll get too many Google Alerts daily.. so you want to make your alerts as specific as possible.
2. Another great tool is www.LinkedIn.com.
If you want to do any useful searches, you need to sign up with an account.
Google used to be a great search engine for LinkedIn, but they've changed their system and have severely restricted Google crawlers now. For example, you could create Google Alerts like site:linkedin.com "Blizzard Entertainment" and you would be notified immediately when a new account was created with Blizzard in their credentials. You can't do that anymore now. :(
Now, you have to manually search LinkedIn and just keep track of employee names yourself. If you search for "unannounced mmo" blizzard or "next gen" for example, you can find all of the Blizzard employees who are working on the game or have worked on previous unannounced titles. You also need to be creative with your keywords: unannounced, untitled, unnamed, *titled, *announced, next gen, nextgen mmo, secret, project, etc.
If you want to get invited to see more information about a user, all you need is a 3rd degree of separation. There are TONS of employees, industry contacts, and especially recruiters who have a "Will Accept All Invites" policy. Create yourself a name and account, and then do a search for recruiters or keywords like "accepts invites", "all invites", etc. In a couple days, you could quickly generate 100 contacts on your LinkedIn account, with 3rd party connections to all major game developers. This gives you open access to their LinkedIn accounts, and you can typically see more information than what would be available in their public profiles.
3. http://whois.domaintools.com
What's great about this site is that it creates an individual Google-searchable page every time a new domain is registered.
If you type, site:whois.domaintools.com blizzard you can see most domain names with Blizzard within it's title or description.
It's not the most reliable website for historical webpages, but it's great when you create a new Google Alert using the site:whois.domaintools.com command. You can be alerted any time a new domain registration is created within whatever parameters you set.
Sometimes you need to get a little creative.. don't use "Blizzard Entertainment" for example, but rather search using their Administrator or Technical Contact names. Or, have active searches for "DomainsByProxy" or other Proxy companies that hold domains for private entities like many of your favorite game publishers.
More to come..
