Life and jet lag have made getting this written difficult, and I even ended up writing the first draft of this on my phone.
In an attempt to maintain momentum on my yearly goals and to keep them fresh in my mind, I will be doing monthly reviews of my progress. I have not settled on a format so next months may be a little (or a lot) different. Also, originally I had thought that I would do it as the last post for the month, but since I am trying to write ahead somewhat, it will be the first post of the month sort of how the first post of the year is a previous year review and a new goal setting post.
This is the review for January.
Goals
- Write 3 Blog Posts Per Week And Publish 2 – The publishing has been mostly on schedule even though the writing hasn’t quite been. A couple posts short, and I did not quite have the buffer I wanted for the year’s first disruptive event but still going strong.
- 1 Game Designed, Created, and Released Per Quarter – Not sure how this is going yet. I have not finished the first paper prototype yet because it is a lot of writing. I feel like it should be a little further along so it may need to get a higher priority on time. I am however constantly getting good ideas from the book I am reading on game design.
- 1 Book Read Every 2 Months On Game Design – I could not have picked a better book nor a worse book. It is so rich with great ideas and suggestions but also so long it may count for 2 books all on its own. On page 120 something of 520 or so pages and already 5 days into month 2.
- 1 Article Read Or 1 Video Watched About Game Design/Creation Per Week – Mostly overlooked this month among all the other goals and things in my personal life, although I did at least watch 1 good video and read 1 good post. This definitely needs more attention and I should probably schedule it into my week better.
- Get 100 People Reading Evolving Developer – No known progress other than creating more content for this future audience to read which is important. I did sort of identify gamasutra as potential audience center so possibly getting some articles posted there or commenting on articles that are posted there may enable some audience build up.
What Went Right
All posts where published on time (except this one). Learned a lot about game design from reading and watching a talk and was able to apply it immediately on the game I am currently working on.
What Is Not Perfect Yet
I did not get as much reading done in the book on game design as I would like. There is 0 posts in the buffer at this moment. Did not finish the paper prototype of the game. Did not watch a video/ read an article every week.
Corrective Measures
In order to get to where I would like, I am going to set aside a specific time each day for writing, for reading, and for working on the game. Even if this means getting up earlier every morning so that I can stick to my goals for the year.