Advice

How Blogging Helps Your Career #11 – The Rough Draft

by

(The roundup for the “How Blogging Helps Your Career Series” is here)

Show me a person who never edits their writing, and I’ll show you a liar, an incompetent, or someone who walks on water recreationally.

It simply doesn’t happen.  We have to try things out and screw them up.  We have to experiment.  We have to get writing out of our head so it’s out and then we can improve it.

Show me a person who writes but never has to just “get something out of their head” and I’ll show you a rarity.  I have to keep a book of ideas just to keep myself from getting preoccupied.

We have to get our ideas out of our head.  We have to see them.  We have to look at them once they’re not rattling around inside our skulls.  Once they’re out we can refine them.

This is where a blog comes in.

Your blog is a rough draft – and a socially acceptable one at that.

Read more

Behold The Marketer: Your Unexpected Future In Gaming

by

So as I watch the fallout from the PS4, watch Kickstarters rise and fall, and eagerly await my Ouya so I can play Sela the Space Pirate since my phone is old, I’m speculating on the games industry once again.

I’m not even sure we can call it one industry anymore.  it’s kind of like lumping Pengiuin, Lulu, Kinkos, and the Canon printer division together and calling it “Publishing.”  Yes, technically true, but you’re really dealing with a pretty broad range of subjects.

But that industry, as broadly as we define a place where Angry Birds and World of Warcraft are lumped together, is one that’s important.  It’s one that’s growing.  It’s one that we professional geeks want a piece of.  It’s just hard to know where to find that piece when Ninjas can fight fruit or each other.

But one piece some of us should look at is marketing.

Read more

Channel A: The Life of a Card Game

by

(A guest post by Ewen Cluney)

494bb2c8ce284dcb939e61f3f268ce41_largeI hit on the idea for Channel A during the ridiculous rush of inspiration that came from discovering Cards Against Humanity. I’d had tremendous fun playing CAH with my friends, and being that rare creature, a tabletop RPG fan who isn’t much into board games, I desperately wanted to explore this new design space of card games that are more about words and social interactions. I also wanted to make something that was less Cards Against Humanity (“A clandestine butt scratch.”) and more in keeping with my own shiny anime-inspired aesthetic.

Read more