This blogging thing is a neat game. But what does social media have to do with game design? When creating a computer game you must "Learn and Respect Marketing" and start talking about your game! BTW: The book "Inbound Marketing" has been critical in my learning the marketing of a blog.
The Infrastructure:
Obviously I recommend Google for your blogging infrastructure. Turn everything on, and hook everything together. A gmail account is easy to obtain. With that same login you get a blogger account. Create a webpage to support the blog at sites.google.com. If you get stuck hooking them together you can turn to youtube for a tutorial (also a google site, btw!). Turn on Analytics and Adwords. The Adwords account has a keyword tool which is fun to play with even if you don't intend to spend any money. At least play with the Keyword tool in the "Reporting and Tools" section. It will help you pick keywords for your posts.
You may get lucky and receive a coupon for $100 in Google Adwords. I tossed in an extra $10, and that has been the entire ad budget for this blog. It also netted me an entire series of posts called The Adwords Experiment. I turned those blog posts into a free step by step document called "The Cheap Fast Guide to Google Adwords". It's a great place to start for a newbie to marketing looking for some help.
The loot:
Google Adsense provides the loot. Sort of. The higher your numbers, the more readers and viewers and clickers you have the more actual money that you make. This reward makes you pay attention to your Google analytics information. It makes you want to drive your numbers higher. But you will quickly find out that they really don't pay you very much. Check out thetrafficblogers forum board for tips and ways to make money online.
The Prestige:
The Google Analytics numbers are fun to make go higher without the reward of money. Seeing the %Change column with a green up arrow makes you happy. Much like an up arrow on a ticker symbol on the stock market. Seeing a red down arrow makes you sad. They provide emotional feedback to the user which inspires better behavior.
Literally a Game:
By the time this blog gets posted I will have been on Empire Avenue for a couple months (I have a large backlog of scheduled blogs). EA is a wonderful intersection between social media, finance, and games. It runs like a stock market, based on your social media activity, with achievements, leader boards and other game mechanics. EA really peaked my interest lately.
The Source:
Reddit makes a good source for traffic for your site, your game, or your blog. As 'the front page of the internet' it can be a powerful tool for finding folks who are interested in your game idea. Redditors are very vocal and can be great for feedback, QA, suggestions, tips, etc. You can even find CC artwork, coders, and others who are interested in working on your project. We're going to discuss Reddit a bit more over the next couple weeks. Check out my next post about driving Traffic with Reddit.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
The game designers "Hello World".
I made and published a game tonight. It is just slightly more innovative than the tutorial that taught me how to make it. Thanks Joseph for the link to StencylWorks.
Monday, September 19, 2011
198+ Game Design Resources
The best way that I can help you get started in game design is to assist in finding resources. I don't have all the answers, but I do know where to find some of them. Occasionally knowing where to get an answer is just as good as knowing the actual answer. My goal is to provide you with links to 101 game design resources... Ready? here goes:
1 - 35.) Joseph Burchett
That one link contains a list of 35 resources for game designers. I could copy all the links and claim they were my own... But I won't do that, because its actually better for you to know Joesph. He is the host of GameDevRadio.net. And you should be paying attention to him.
36 - 97.)Learngamedesign.org Has moved to http://gpwiki.org/
This page is still in it's infancy. I have even added a few links to coding resources to the Wiki myself, with all these links being added in the future. The creator of this site has big plans that start with a wiki and end with you learning game design.
98.) Top 50 Game Design Blogs
I'm not sure what being a computer technician has to do with game design blogs. But hey it's still a great resource. Maybe this one should raise the count by 50? Nah...
99.) Game Development Blogs
Along the same lines as number 98, but with some really esoteric heavy math/coding blogs. Collision detection is not something that every gamer is going to want to read a blog about... But a few of you might.
100.) Game Dev Map
Lets say you want to work for an existing game developer and you want to find out where they are. Here is a comprehensive map of game developers world wide. This website tends to link to medium large companies. Scanning the Boston entry I can see a lot of the smaller design houses missing. So this may not present a complete list. Searching your local community may be helpful.
101.) Reddit.
No, really. Reddit is an amazing source of information on games and game design. If you can get past the attitude and the name calling and the Karma, you can find some really great stuff.
102 - 198+.) Amit's Game Programming Information
The count stopped at 198. There are a lot of links on Amit's page. Mostly geeky and esoteric information, but all interesting nonetheless. I have not clicked on every link on this site, which is why it's after the 101 links I promised. Most of the sources are older, some are even links to the internet wayback machine, but they all have quality information.
I apologize for making you click a link to click a link. It would have been a lot more impressive to list each link out, and would have taken very little time to make a super impressive wall of links. BU taught me to cite my sources and a lot of these links are not my own. It would have been easy for me to make it look like I had found them all on my own. There is, however, a big problem with listing 101 links on one page. They can become overwhelming very quickly. So take them in bit sized chunks. Need more? Check out these podcasts.
1 - 35.) Joseph Burchett
That one link contains a list of 35 resources for game designers. I could copy all the links and claim they were my own... But I won't do that, because its actually better for you to know Joesph. He is the host of GameDevRadio.net. And you should be paying attention to him.
36 - 97.)
This page is still in it's infancy. I have even added a few links to coding resources to the Wiki myself, with all these links being added in the future. The creator of this site has big plans that start with a wiki and end with you learning game design.
98.) Top 50 Game Design Blogs
I'm not sure what being a computer technician has to do with game design blogs. But hey it's still a great resource. Maybe this one should raise the count by 50? Nah...
99.) Game Development Blogs
Along the same lines as number 98, but with some really esoteric heavy math/coding blogs. Collision detection is not something that every gamer is going to want to read a blog about... But a few of you might.
100.) Game Dev Map
Lets say you want to work for an existing game developer and you want to find out where they are. Here is a comprehensive map of game developers world wide. This website tends to link to medium large companies. Scanning the Boston entry I can see a lot of the smaller design houses missing. So this may not present a complete list. Searching your local community may be helpful.
101.) Reddit.
No, really. Reddit is an amazing source of information on games and game design. If you can get past the attitude and the name calling and the Karma, you can find some really great stuff.
102 - 198+.) Amit's Game Programming Information
The count stopped at 198. There are a lot of links on Amit's page. Mostly geeky and esoteric information, but all interesting nonetheless. I have not clicked on every link on this site, which is why it's after the 101 links I promised. Most of the sources are older, some are even links to the internet wayback machine, but they all have quality information.
I apologize for making you click a link to click a link. It would have been a lot more impressive to list each link out, and would have taken very little time to make a super impressive wall of links. BU taught me to cite my sources and a lot of these links are not my own. It would have been easy for me to make it look like I had found them all on my own. There is, however, a big problem with listing 101 links on one page. They can become overwhelming very quickly. So take them in bit sized chunks. Need more? Check out these podcasts.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Mzo has plans for learngamedesign.org
@jspringfield211: What are your plans for Learngamedesign.org? May I ask a couple questions and blog about your plans?
@mzo: I have kind of a 3 phase plan for the learngamedesign wiki at the moment. 1) Collect resources, mostly in the form of urls.
2) Organize everything in a very step by step format to act as an alternative to books/schools for everyone to learn freely
3) Turn the entire thing into a game itself. Still brainstorming but ill use the wiki itself for a design doc!
Last but not least I'm looking to add a chat/forum to the site to increase involvement, trying this: convore.com
Do you have an inspiration about that you want to base the site on?
gameful.org has been a big inspiration. I like some parts of Khan Academy. This online hypnosis course.
Do you consider learngamedesign.org to be a 'project'?
Absolutely, one in which I hope to engage others to contribute and mold. It was created to empower. An iterative approach.
Do you have any kind of strategy laid out, or timeline to implement your ideas?
In doing the most recent Exploring Design podcast I realized I should make a good resource as a school alternative. I'm taking the same approach I take with game design. Focusing on the core mechanic and iterating. Timeline is "ASAP". The core mechanic is providing the resources and guidance for dreamers who don't know how. Game design is for everyone!
I plan on getting at least the core wiki stuff "finished" by the end of the month. That means collecting and organizing. I'd like to use the wiki itself and chat/forum to keep everything I'm doing as transparent as possible to elicit feedback. Part of me would like to take the "Would you guys like to see from this?" but that often leads to a lot of nothing. Vision!
Right! Avoid a 'design by committee'. There is no reason to think of this project as a 'fire and forget'. Curate the resource after 'launch'.
that was supposed to be the "What would you guys like to see from this?" approach lol ;)
Exactly. I'm a big fan of the "release early, update fast" approach. The wiki is the prototype. Gamejamhq is a similar idea. Twitter itself is a good example of a community helping steer a minimal product. RT's, hashtags, etc. A wiki offers enough flexibility to act as a minimal way to flesh things out. I'm a web dev so I can build custom later.
I could have spent a lot of time "pondering" what to build. Instead I used my iPhone at a bbq to setup the domain & wiki! Which speaks to how I feel about game design. STOP HESITATING, JUST MAKE THINGS! Can't steer a docked boat! Rather than worry about "competing" with similar sites I'm simply incorporating what they have. Pixelprospector for example.
'Pretotyping' fits really well to that philosophy, because you can just jump in and do it no matter your experience level.
Yeah! Keep index cards in your back pocket like I do. I'm considering creating a "pretotyping" kit for EveryGame for iPhone
Who out there in game design land would you love to have input from on this project?
Self taught indies, educators ( http://q2l.org/team ), consultants, gamejam vets to name a few groups that could help.
Thank you so much for chatting with me! I'm really excited to see learngamedesign.org get up and running! I'll make sure to plug it with the Boston Indies crowd.
Thanks for being interested and excited! Don't think I haven't seen your contributions to the wiki, you rock! :D Fantastic! Boston seems to have a great scene especially for jams. Keep up the good work on your blog as well.
Ha! I certainly wasn't trying to be sneaky about it! I've already written up a blog post about it 101 Game Design Resources. It's scheduled for next Monday and we can certainly add more to the wiki then.
@mzo: I have kind of a 3 phase plan for the learngamedesign wiki at the moment. 1) Collect resources, mostly in the form of urls.
2) Organize everything in a very step by step format to act as an alternative to books/schools for everyone to learn freely
3) Turn the entire thing into a game itself. Still brainstorming but ill use the wiki itself for a design doc!
Last but not least I'm looking to add a chat/forum to the site to increase involvement, trying this: convore.com
Do you have an inspiration about that you want to base the site on?
gameful.org has been a big inspiration. I like some parts of Khan Academy. This online hypnosis course.
Do you consider learngamedesign.org to be a 'project'?
Absolutely, one in which I hope to engage others to contribute and mold. It was created to empower. An iterative approach.
Do you have any kind of strategy laid out, or timeline to implement your ideas?
In doing the most recent Exploring Design podcast I realized I should make a good resource as a school alternative. I'm taking the same approach I take with game design. Focusing on the core mechanic and iterating. Timeline is "ASAP". The core mechanic is providing the resources and guidance for dreamers who don't know how. Game design is for everyone!
I plan on getting at least the core wiki stuff "finished" by the end of the month. That means collecting and organizing. I'd like to use the wiki itself and chat/forum to keep everything I'm doing as transparent as possible to elicit feedback. Part of me would like to take the "Would you guys like to see from this?" but that often leads to a lot of nothing. Vision!
Right! Avoid a 'design by committee'. There is no reason to think of this project as a 'fire and forget'. Curate the resource after 'launch'.
that was supposed to be the "What would you guys like to see from this?" approach lol ;)
Exactly. I'm a big fan of the "release early, update fast" approach. The wiki is the prototype. Gamejamhq is a similar idea. Twitter itself is a good example of a community helping steer a minimal product. RT's, hashtags, etc. A wiki offers enough flexibility to act as a minimal way to flesh things out. I'm a web dev so I can build custom later.
I could have spent a lot of time "pondering" what to build. Instead I used my iPhone at a bbq to setup the domain & wiki! Which speaks to how I feel about game design. STOP HESITATING, JUST MAKE THINGS! Can't steer a docked boat! Rather than worry about "competing" with similar sites I'm simply incorporating what they have. Pixelprospector for example.
'Pretotyping' fits really well to that philosophy, because you can just jump in and do it no matter your experience level.
Yeah! Keep index cards in your back pocket like I do. I'm considering creating a "pretotyping" kit for EveryGame for iPhone
Who out there in game design land would you love to have input from on this project?
Self taught indies, educators ( http://q2l.org/team ), consultants, gamejam vets to name a few groups that could help.
Thank you so much for chatting with me! I'm really excited to see learngamedesign.org get up and running! I'll make sure to plug it with the Boston Indies crowd.
Thanks for being interested and excited! Don't think I haven't seen your contributions to the wiki, you rock! :D Fantastic! Boston seems to have a great scene especially for jams. Keep up the good work on your blog as well.
Ha! I certainly wasn't trying to be sneaky about it! I've already written up a blog post about it 101 Game Design Resources. It's scheduled for next Monday and we can certainly add more to the wiki then.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Minecraft 1.8 Valuation
I have noticed something odd while running my Google Adwords Campaign. A lot of people click my links to look at my Mojang Valuation post. Way more than anyone clicks on my other Google Ads. So let's see if people are getting what they want out of my blog. This calls for more Minecraft!
On 9/7/2011 Minecraft had
12,970,119 registered user
3,373,290 purchased
On 9/8/2011 Minecraft had
xx,xxx,xxx registered user
x,xxx,xxx purchased
On 9/9/2011 Minecraft had
xx,xxx,xxx registered user
x,xxx,xxx purchased
On 9/10/2011 Minecraft had
xx,xxx,xxx registered user
x,xxx,xxx purchased
Don't mind me I'm just recording some information here for a future blog post. : )
I want to chart the sales of Minecraft... All of them. And I have sneaky and devious ways of gathering that information. I'm making a spreadsheet with sales data for Minecraft over 2010 and 2011. Once the data has been collected and pretty chart will be made. After that some kind of sneaky integration with either this blog or my website.
A live updated chart or graph of Minecraft sales would be really awesome. I would need some kind of super awesome web code Guru to help me out with that. I know a few people to contact directly but any Minecraft loving web code junky volunteers?
On 9/7/2011 Minecraft had
12,970,119 registered user
3,373,290 purchased
On 9/8/2011 Minecraft had
xx,xxx,xxx registered user
x,xxx,xxx purchased
On 9/9/2011 Minecraft had
xx,xxx,xxx registered user
x,xxx,xxx purchased
On 9/10/2011 Minecraft had
xx,xxx,xxx registered user
x,xxx,xxx purchased
Don't mind me I'm just recording some information here for a future blog post. : )
I want to chart the sales of Minecraft... All of them. And I have sneaky and devious ways of gathering that information. I'm making a spreadsheet with sales data for Minecraft over 2010 and 2011. Once the data has been collected and pretty chart will be made. After that some kind of sneaky integration with either this blog or my website.
A live updated chart or graph of Minecraft sales would be really awesome. I would need some kind of super awesome web code Guru to help me out with that. I know a few people to contact directly but any Minecraft loving web code junky volunteers?
Monday, September 5, 2011
The new stage of game design to do first...
There is nothing new about Pretotyping except using the word. At Gameloop Boston #gl11, during the Prototyping panel professional game designers discussed the various methods they use to prototype a game. Flash, Game Maker, Unity are all the rage right now in big design companies to get their ideas down into a playable form before coding a new game. And then there was one guy at the panel whose main prototyping experience was using a D&D dry erase battle mat before ever coding anything... Yeah, that was me.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Closing Market and economics thread of posts.
The posts for gamers about real world markets, got little to no interest. Only one person commented, and his suggestion was 'skip it'. So we're going to discontinue that line. Diablo III is coming up soon, and I do love Auction House action so perhaps instead of discussing a real market, we can talk an in game economy. I think I might track particular items prices over time in the AH as an experiment. Instead of writing about general D3 AH tips and tricks, like Markco, I'll do some specific research and see if there is any value in it.
For right now take a look at the Diablo 3 Gold Guide. Written by the Author of Just My Two Copper, Markco Polo. It should grow into a really great community.
For right now take a look at the Diablo 3 Gold Guide. Written by the Author of Just My Two Copper, Markco Polo. It should grow into a really great community.
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