Let me tell you about a blog…
I started this blog because I thought I was supposed to. The advice is: if you want to make and sell a game, you’ll need a blog to go along with it.
Why? To grow a community around your game, to let potential players be involved in the journey from the beginning, to show them the ins and out, ups and downs and everything in between. It’s great advice, and I imagine that it’s a key feature of many a successful games crowdfunding campaign.
So that’s what I did, back in March I wrote my first post – I began exploring my game through the blog, this blog.
But I’ll be honest, that didn’t really interest me very much. I wrote about ending games, inspiration, and the magic of board games – all enjoyable to do, but all lacking something and all with reference to Drop Zone Chocks Away. But I quite quickly got tired of my own voice (yes, the irony of this post isn’t lost on me). At the same time, I was diving head first into the games design world on Instagram. I was connecting with wonderful people, who were full of insight, expertise and kindness. People offered support and guidance through post comments and DMs, and I realised that this community that I had joined was so much bigger and brighter than I could ever have imagined. People like Max Kosek, Carl Robinson and Benjie Talbott – all willing to offer support to someone who knew nothing about very much at all, but was daft enough to ask the question, and someone they had never met before.
I wanted to build a community through my blog.
But I think I started trying to build the wrong one.
I wanted to build a community through my blog, yes. But I think I started trying to build the wrong one. There was a far more interesting set of ideas to explore and learn from. Those were the ideas and the journeys of the fellow creators that I’d found on instagram. There was so much that piqued my interest in the snippets of conversations I’d had, I wanted to find out more. I wanted to blog about games design, not about my game.
One criticism that could be levelled at me for wanting to blog about how to design games, is that there’s so much guidance out there already. I’m new to this game, and I’ve probably little to offer when compared to the seasoned experts. And it’s true, there really is so much out there. Far smarter and more experienced people than I have been writing about games design for decades. You can find it in numerous blogs, youtube channels, podcasts and books. They are all incredible sources of knowledge for anyone wanting to design games, find them and check them out (no really do, they’ll make you a better games designer).
So what I can offer the community?
Here’s where I think I might offer the community something different. I want to capture experience and journey. I want to meet and understand the people behind the games, to find out what drives them forward. That’s what’s interesting for me, that intersection between playfulness, designing games and taking them out into the world. and the real people doing it. I want to paint a vignette of a moment in games designs. That feeling of launching your first kickstarter, that moment when a new idea hits you in the middle of the night, that tiredness that you feel when your sat with the piece of a broken game trying to bring it back together.
I want to meet and understand the people behind the
games, to find out what drives them forward.
That’s what you’ll find here. I hope to take any reader of this blog deep into the depths of what it’s like to be a games designing in 2024 (and beyond). I’m going to do this through continuing my blog post style of ‘conversations’ and interviewing those of us who are going through pivotal moments in our design careers. The posts are simple to do, they allow a depth of discussion around an idea and really bring out insight into the people who I now call my community.
I want to be a broad church, so anyone who’d like to explore an idea with me, you are more than welcome here. In fact, if you’ve just read this and are thinking, maybe I should DM Joe and see if he’d like to talk about “insert thing here“. Then do it, please, I’d love to hear from you. You don’t need 100 games and £100k kickstarters under your belts, I just want to talk to you; with your wonderful brain full of ideas, and heart full of passion for bringing more games and playfulness into the world.
And maybe, from time to time, I might drop in a subtle hint that I’m designing and launching games too (have you signed up to playtest Drop Zone yet?). But that’s just the side project for this blog, the main bulk of my work now is to tell the story of this moment we’re all in. So that we can learn, laugh, cry and be playful together.
What should you do next?
If you can do one of the following, perhaps roll a die to make your choice, I have no preference they’ll all help me find new people to talk with.
- Roll 1 or 2: Find this accompanying post on Instagram, and share it with someone else.
- Roll 3 or 4: Subscribe to the Blog using the button below this post.
- Roll 5 or 6: Be brave and DM me, and tell me what you’d like to talk about.
Particular thanks goes to Carl, I was brave enough to ask for a conversation, and he was kind enough to say yes. If he hadn’t, then this first conversation wouldn’t exist, and probably this one too. Make sure to check out his work on Instagram!
Oh yeah, and if you rolled a 2 or 3, then subscribe below!
