Woo! Site revamp! Slightly more professional than the old site, and easier for me to update I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on a variety of game related topics lately, and I really want to make the effort to clearly articulate those thoughts. So the purposes of this blog are threefold:

  • Develop a writing style, and figure out what my preferred content will be.
  • Spotlight nifty bits of game design or tech things.
  • Chronicle thoughts, ideas and things I may want to revisit later.

I mean, I’ve been dying to throw a blog together for a while, but I never really had much to say. In this past year there has been a ton of things that have really motivated me to write:

  • Have plenty of post-mortem stuff from Sum Fighter that I want to put into words before I forget it.
    • Also a few XNA and XBLIG development and post production tips.
  • Finally ticking off my New Years resolution of “be more active in online communities”.
  • The enjoyment I have gotten out of blogging for LudumDare and 1MonthGame. Although it was a relatively small amount of blogging I loved the experience.

I guess the final spark was a call to arms from a Brainy Gamer podcast:

Its impossible to play everything and it’s silly to even try, I go back to the arcade era, and I remember when we all played the same games. Even when the Atari and later the NES arrived with a flood of games, it still seemed like we all basically played most of the same games, we had a common set of experiences. Now if you consider that the market includes mobile games, social games, flash games, PC gaming, console gaming, and etc, we have a flood of games in an increasingly fragmented market. I think if we had to identify common experience games we’d be hard pressed to do it. There’s now more than a single “audience” out there for games.

…To me, all of this is to suggest that now more than ever, we need smart informed people writing thoughtfully about games. Now, this isn’t just a matter of more hands on deck to cover the spectrum of games from casual to hardcore … I think it’s more about shedding our predjudices about genres and platforms and target audiences. I think its about finding ways to respond to games outside the existing frames of mechanical analysis, buy it or rent it advice, numerical scores, or other familiar methods of responding to games. More informed or alternative critical responses might be generated by other voices (outside of mainstream game journalism), and we need those voices in the conversation.

…What I am trying to say is, if you see yourself possessing such a critical voice, but you’ve remained on the sidelines because you see the writing about games space, hopelessly over populated, I encourage you to consider jumping in and adding your voice, add your perspective, add your point of view, become part of that broad conversation, that I think is necessary if we are to get beyond the kind of standard “play it, talk about it for five minutes and move on to the next game cycle” which I think we are mired in.

Reflecting on this, I know I’m offering another game developer voice amongst a sea of many, but it’s a voice I want to develop. All in all I’m not sure how this blog will end up. It could be a development journal, an attempt at game critiques, or even a smattering of random tech tidbits. At the very least I know the blog will help me find my voice, reflect on experiences, and let me flex my writing muscle a little bit.

“The unexamined life is not worth living”