Well, it’s 2017 now. I have been thinking about branching out a little on here for a while. This blog started as a development blog, because I thought that was the thing you did when you wanted to be an indie game developer. Back then I was using Microsoft XNA and just trying to learn C#. I only had the most basic grasp on a few other programming languages at the time, a few versions of basic, some rudimentary C++, a smattering of LISP and Pascal. I could make some sense of the code if I saw it, but lacked the fluency to really write much. I figured that C# was probably going to be around for a while, so I might as well focus on that. As it turned out C# has persisted, and become fairly popular, which is nice since that means there are always lots of answers available when I have questions. Now I typically use a combination of simple visual scripting with a graphical state machine system and very small C# scripts that do only one or two things, but do them well and predictably. The current tools for game development let you do a lot with small, well planned, effort. I wouldn’t say that it is easy exactly, but it is easier than it has ever been.
So that is sort of how the development part of this has gone.
At some point I started writing about video games in more abstract and non specific ways. I would write about remembrances of particular games that I think are important. I would write more generally about the industry and the culture surrounding video games. Mostly I would just write. Consistently, at least once a week, I would write something. Videogames was just a topic I knew well. A resource I could mine for words on a regular schedule. Videogames were never really the point. At least not for me. Writing was the point. Writing had to become a habit. I experimented a bit, and tried to “find my voice”, whatever that means. I also put every post out there in public so I couldn’t be precious with them. I rarely edit, and when I do, it is for readability and clarity, not content. I have written a few sentences that are real clunkers, and they will stay that way until this small corner of the internet is scoured from history.
Here is what I think I will do going forward. Most of the time it will be the usual nonsense. A write up about an old game that only I care about. A commentary on something in the larger gaming culture that I think I might have a take on. Some of it might be personal, some of it not as much. I’ll check in from time to time on my own work, art or development related. Once in awhile though, I will write something very different here. I might just post up a short story from my childhood, as I shakily remember it. Or I may, from time to time, post up a short bit of fiction that probably has very little to do with videogames. These I will write at times other than a few hours before I post them. I will edit them slightly more rigorously. I may even edit them and repost them with the changes.
I still love videogames, and I like talking and writing about them more than I like most other things. And when I say that I mean all the things. That exist. In the world. It’s sort of a problem. Anyway, I will continue to write and post at least one piece a week, but they might not all be about videogames. Some of them might be about bikes.
So that is sort of how the development part of this has gone.
At some point I started writing about video games in more abstract and non specific ways. I would write about remembrances of particular games that I think are important. I would write more generally about the industry and the culture surrounding video games. Mostly I would just write. Consistently, at least once a week, I would write something. Videogames was just a topic I knew well. A resource I could mine for words on a regular schedule. Videogames were never really the point. At least not for me. Writing was the point. Writing had to become a habit. I experimented a bit, and tried to “find my voice”, whatever that means. I also put every post out there in public so I couldn’t be precious with them. I rarely edit, and when I do, it is for readability and clarity, not content. I have written a few sentences that are real clunkers, and they will stay that way until this small corner of the internet is scoured from history.
Here is what I think I will do going forward. Most of the time it will be the usual nonsense. A write up about an old game that only I care about. A commentary on something in the larger gaming culture that I think I might have a take on. Some of it might be personal, some of it not as much. I’ll check in from time to time on my own work, art or development related. Once in awhile though, I will write something very different here. I might just post up a short story from my childhood, as I shakily remember it. Or I may, from time to time, post up a short bit of fiction that probably has very little to do with videogames. These I will write at times other than a few hours before I post them. I will edit them slightly more rigorously. I may even edit them and repost them with the changes.
I still love videogames, and I like talking and writing about them more than I like most other things. And when I say that I mean all the things. That exist. In the world. It’s sort of a problem. Anyway, I will continue to write and post at least one piece a week, but they might not all be about videogames. Some of them might be about bikes.