Personal website
August 5, 2018
Hey everyone. Today I thought I’d talk a bit about my blogging experience so far, as well as some of the benefits and downsides to keeping a daily blog. Firstly, the challenges with blogging. I find it difficult to find topics to write about sometimes since there are days where there just aren’t any significant changes to Dagers High. Part of the reason I am writing this post right now is because I haven’t been able to think of a post to write about (when in doubt, go meta). Another challenge is actually getting words on the page. Sometimes, I end up re-writing a sentence many times because it doesn’t sound good enough. Ultimately though, I have found that it is much more efficient to barf a bunch of ideas onto the page and then go back and edit them. While this might not be the best idea for other pieces of writing, the nice thing about blogs is that I can go back and edit any of my posts at any time. I feel like I haven’t been taking full advantage of that and should probably worry less about making mistakes in my writing. Finally, scheduling is a problem. My goal has been to write a blog post every day; which, while I have technically missed a few days, on average I have written a blog post/day since mid-july (I consider this a win). The main challenge with this is the fact that writing blog posts is heavily dependent on having ideas, which I usually think up throughout the day and write at night. At one point, I fell into a really good rhythm of writing the next day’s post in advance, giving myself a one-day buffer to use just in case.
In the end, these challenges have been completely worth it. I’ve gotten a lot out of keeping a blog. Firstly, it makes me reflect on the process of designing my game and justify every change. If I change something about Dagers High, I have to first make sure it works, and then justify it later on my blog. I feel like I am a much better designer when I take the time to do this reflection since it prevents me from making a silly or short-sighted change. Secondly, it serves as a record of everything that I have changed with the game. By looking at an old blog post I can immediately know what I was thinking at that time, and have a memory of how the game evolved. Finally, this blog is a huge motivator that pushes me to actually do stuff every day. Even though I enjoy game design, working to complete a project like Dagers High is a lot of work that isn’t always fun. There is a lot of time spent manually adjusting cards in Inkscape, printing them, and cutting them out. Because of the sheer number of iterations I have been through, taking the time to be organized and have updated digital files can take many hours. Not only does the blog force me to keep organized, it also is a reason for me do the work that is needed for the game.
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