I’ve been asking people what they want to read about on this blog, and most people who are interested at all have asked me to write about my games and how I developed them. I only have one current game that is far enough along to discuss without fear of having the idea stolen, and it’s a game that has actually had a pretty large impact on my focus. As you’ll see, what started out as a simple game design ended up changing my entire site, and birthing a few other games.

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This article isn’t going to teach you how to make a game.
It won’t hold any super-duper scripting tricks.
What I want to cover is the basic thought and planning process I use to design a game.

Now in all honesty, I am FAR from traditional in my work habits. I juggle more designs then I am actually capable of building, I drink while I work and I cut a lot of corners. But I do have some traditional habits that I think are always good to abide by.

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So I got wordpress installed late last night, posted a first blog this morning and assumed I had found the easy-as-pie solution to get this new site up without having to do any work.

So much for that.

Firstly I didn’t want to take too much time familiarizing myself with the template system, so I looked around for a theme that was close to what I wanted, and found a few potential layouts. But I just didn’t see anything I REALLY liked.

After 30 minutes or so I said ‘fuck it’ and decided to start dissecting a theme that at least had a sepration in menus for pages and blogs.

SIX hours later I have some fancy stuff in the top menu and my header and footer templates are pretty much completely rewritten. And I haven’t even gotten into the individual pages yet.

I guess the moral is, there is no such thing as an easy way out when it comes to designing a site yourself.

Why the hell am I blogging?

Isn’t that something that only emo kids who need attention do?
That’s what I used to think. Then I was referred to Steve Pavlina’s blog.

Steve’s site is pretty much focused on self help and productivity, two subjects I never really had any interest in. I have a pretty popular website already called Psycho Goldfish Creative Media, and it makes enough money to pay the bills (barely), so up until now I have been pretty focused on that and never really realized I could be doing a lot more than I am.

Steve’s blog got me to realize two key things. Initially I realized I really need to build multiple sources of income rather than keep my eggs in one basket. Secondly I realized I needed to provide some kind of value to my users.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think PG provides a lot of value for people who want to play free games, and I’m working on adding some multiplayer and community stuff that will really amp the value up. I just needed something else to base a second source of income on.

My first thought was to fulfill an old dream of mine and start up an online magazine of sorts, possibly focusing on the promotion of web gaming. It would have the value of a game index, the insight of a magazine, and the potential to earn a little money in the process. But aside from some extra cash, I didn’t feel like there was any value in it for myself or the web game industry.

Then it struck me.

I can not even count how many ideas I have for game development. I have a ton of tricks I have learned over the years, and not enough time to apply them all. I feel like I have this library of concepts and information that is just rotting away and will be outdated by the time I ever get around to them.

What if, rather than making all these ideas and using all these concepts, I started my own blog and provided some information and inspiration for other people?

Over the years I’ve had my fair share of people seeking me out for help and advice with Flash games. I’ve always enjoyed helping the smarter people who know what to do with the advice, and I always feel bad that I can’t take the time to teach the less experienced people who ask for my help.

This blog would allow me to help a lot of people and hopefully provide some value to a lot of people. It’s not going to be a real money maker, but maybe I can inspire more people to make some innovative games and I can feature them in my web magazine.

Suddenly I find myself wielding a double edged sword, where I can build myself that second source of income, while at the same time, help the industry that I love so much.

So within minutes of these epiphanies, I registered a few domains, got a copy of wordpress and here we are.

If you are looking for flash help or advice, this is the place. If you are looking for games and gaming news, head on over to the all-new Web Game Magazine site.