Why blog?
To offer a parallel to others venturing down the path of games design. If others can take something away from my experiences, to be inspired by my successes, to avoid repeating my failures, then so much the better.
But mainly I blog for myself. Sometimes it's good and healthy to pluck out a thought from the swirling mass and try to fix and give a more solid shape to it in the form of the written, published word.
Why make games?
Feeling the creative impulse - a desire to share an idea, feeling or experience I've had - the different mediums come up one after another offering themselves to this process. With each having its own strengths, it'd be a shame to close myself off to one avenue of expression. With game design I don't have to do that. Designing a game is a synthesizing process whereby the different mediums might come together under one banner, reinforcing and inspiring each other in the process.
Games are recent things, and questions about the artistic potential of games are more recent still. Whereas a new painter, writer, musician or filmmaker is faced with a daunting archive, filled floor to ceiling with past masterpieces that set the bar in their art, the game maker is faced with something more akin to an open field of boundless potential, expanding as far as the eye can see. At a time when this potential is being increasingly recognised and explored, it's exciting to be starting down this path.
