Taking Stock

Today marks the end of my first three months of blogging. I was going to pause and take stock after the first month... but I guess I got carried away! It's been good on the whole (Binky not withstanding) and I'll certainly keep at it for the time being.

This is a good opportunity for people to influence my choices of topic, if they'd like. Anything I started talking about and never finished? Anything at the fringes of discussion that I could bring into focus? No guarantees, but I'm fairly malleable when it comes to rambling! I plan to stay on games and play as my central topic, but I will inevitably stray into religion and philosophy of science from time to time.

Some thanks. To Corvus for being the first person to make me feel welcome in the world of blogging, James O for equal parts insight and mild irritation (it's the itchy sand in the oyster that makes the pearl...), Dhruin for being a longtime supporter of my work (possibly the only one!), Richard for much needed offline moral support, Kim for unquantifiable but heartfelt reasons, all the people whose blogs' comments I pop up in from time to time - and especially those who reciprocate here - and lastly to Matt for bullying me into doing this in the first place.

Oh, and to all the people who helped make the book #263,372 in Books on Amazon.com - it seems like just the other day that it was at #1,442,531! :)

Comments

[Corvus]

It's been a great 3 months! I look forward to continued exploration on audience models and their impact on design.

Also, more talk about squirrels.

[Jack Monahan]

Well you might be pleased to know that upon introduction to this blog a week or so ago, I immediately purchased your book on Amazon. My review (surprisingly the first!) is on the site now--please continue your highly engaging and well considered commentary on game design.

[c.robinson]

i visit your blog daily in hopes of overhearing your sage wisdom on game design, and it's very enjoyable. thanks for posting. *slinks in the cold shadows of the internet*

[James O]

Yes, it has been interesting. I do enjoy reading academic-oriented game blogs, especially when they update almost daily :)

[Dhruin]

I check daily (or have since Peter Nagy pointed it out to me)...as a "hardcore" player, it's refreshing to be challenged to think in different ways and about different gaming "needs".

[Chris]

Thanks for the kind words everybody!

Corvus - there will be inevitably be more talk on audience models, but since so much went into the book, it will take time to build the material to take the next model forward. In the meantime, there's always analysis of current game titles in terms of audience models if this is interesting to anyone! :)

Jack - thank you so much for the review on Amazon! I really appreciate this!

James - "academic-oriented"... I don't know if that's a complement or an insult! :)

[James O]

Academic-oriented meaning devoted to the study of games and ludology/ludography, as opposed to simple news coverage of new games or systems.

[Matt Mower]

I was waiting for a "but not least" but it didn't arrive :-)

Glad you're enjoying it. I'm looking forward to more exploration of the models underlying gamers (since it's the psychology that you employ that is of most interest to me).

What will you be writing about in 12 months time do you think?

[Chris]

In 12 months? It's hard to say. This new approach in terms of skill sets seems viable, but to proceed we need a means to test or measure people's skill sets, or a way of relating existing games to the skill set system.

Since I'm about to start work writing and editing a multi-author book on game writing, the audience model work may take a while to advance. Still, I'm sure it will continue to tick over in the background.

[Chris]

Made it up to sales rank #155,836 today - a new record! :)