I’ve been thinking about putting a new site together for a long time now and I’ve finally said to myself, “Enough! This puppy is going up TODAY!” I’m really excited about this actually. I’ve been wanting to post theories about game design and thoughts, philosophies, and interesting observations that have to do with the creation of video games as a profession. At first, my instinct was to post all this on my company site, www.fenixfire.com, but was always reluctant to do so as that site is more about our projects and announcements, not personal inflections of putting games together and what an indy developer goes through on a daily basis. A separate, dedicated makes more sense to me and allows for more clarity, even if it means having to manage two sites.
Anyway, I’m just getting started and I already have a bunch of new topics to post here, so it won’t take long to populate the hell out of this site. Check back often, especially if you work in the game industry or are looking to break into the industry. I can tell you from about 20 years of industry experience (man, that makes me sound OLD!) that there is nothing else I’d rather be doing and love the daily challenges and rewards that making games for a living provides. This is my way of giving back to an industry that has given me so much.
One last note – the name of the site is “Design Dojo”. I chose this name because game design is a deep and endless art, much like music composition, and therefore I consider myself a student of game design. Learning game design through my own practice and also through the the teachings of others, both in playing the games and in researching books and blog posts, is a very zen-like path for me. Also, like any zen activity, it is important to be able to tune the outside world out of have an inner focus, to be able to look at your game with blinders on and understand the most minute subtleties in all aspects of what makes your game great. This is the way of the Design Dojo.
Thank you for reading,
Brian
