Why Write a Game Design Blog?

Ultimately I'm writing a design blog in order to grow as a designer. It's easy to spout theories and ideas when you're shouting at the darkness, but much more challenging and interesting when you receive criticism and input from your peers.

Also, I'm writing it because I think it'd be very difficult to break into the game industry without any formal training. I've been tinkering with a private UO server for about four years, trying out various ideas / social experiments, but that's about the extent of my resume.

There's certainly some bleedthrough between my current career as a graphic designer/web developer. Coding ability, graphics, and probably most importantly an insight into human behavior and interaction. I think a lot of the knowledge from marketing and web experience design can often be applied to game design. "Don't make me think," a common thought for web interface design, sort of lead to one my earlier posts, "Don't make me repeat myself."

Much of game design, I think, just comes from playing games and analyzing them: what worked, what didn't, and why. That's where a lot of my theory posts have/will come from. You play something, then think "That was fun, but why?" or "That sucked monkey balls, but why?" Analyze the good and bad parts of the game and why you reacted to it the way you did. The more complex the game, the more you can learn from it. 

Every now and then, my friends and I get into lengthy discussions about whatever game we're playing, or get into talking about what we consider to be really fun games. These tend to differ, but there are similarities. I have this annoying tendency to make assumptions about what people think, which usually leads to a quick boot to the virtual head.

Still, with just years of theory and discussion and gameplay under your belt, it's tough to compete against folks that have a degree in game design, or years of actual development experience, you know? So, among my solutions is to start this blog, and get to know the community that I'm so interested in. I'm currently following about 23 game design blogs via RSS, and I comment whenever I think I have something useful to contribute to the conversation, or a question to ask.

I'm hoping to get a few tiny game designs on paper soon, shooting for something I could develop in maybe half a year. I'll probably blog about that, too, and maybe eventually slap together a pretty eBook about it (which, i suppose, is where the graphic design degree finally pays off).

Short version: Lacking formal training & formal experience, I'm doing this the hard way.

I welcome anyone to critique anything I write. Please feel free to challenge my beliefs and ideas, it's the best way to learn. I promise not to take it personally if you tell me I'm full of shit.