05.21.06
Tour de blogs
I’m not sure why I’m doing this, but I’ll just link to this now because I think it’s the most hilarious and inspiring article about game design I’ve ever read. Well, or rant. Or… panel discussion? Whatever it is, it made me wish I had been there. Those people just all seemed to have unique outlooks on game design and the state of the industry; I was expecting the usual “we need more females” and “online publishing is the way forward” rants, but then every one of them took me by surprise and offered something I hadn’t considered before.
I just took a sort of blog sweep today, starting with an column on Gamasutra and following a link from there to an interesting blog, then from that to another blog, etc. The one I linked to above was probably the 5th or 6th blog in that chain. Some of the blogs were really depressing (I mean when you’re well underway to devote your life to an emerging art form, you really don’t want to be told that it’s already dead and that your life will be ruined if you ever get a job in the industry), but others were more uplifting, and then some were just downright inspiring.
I got a ton of ideas, and while I was reading, I discussed the ideas, observations, and arguments put forth in the articles I read with some of my equally game-design enthusiastic friends over MSN, and a lot of great stuff was bounced back and forth. Some things were rather theoretical and unapplicable, other things were concrete enough to be immediately applied to our existing game concepts. I really wish I had a real game studio to put to work now. With all this input, I could make one hell of a game tonight.
