April 2023

Hey everyone!

Last month was super fun, and I did one of the most interesting things that I have had the chance to do in my professional life. A couple of my friends had asked me back in February if I would want to take a session for them on everything that I know about game design, and just explain it all in 8 ish hours. It was an interesting proposition. To talk to someone who knows a lot about a certain domain and to get them to explain everything that they know about that particular domain. Just from a concept point of view I think I’d love to do this with domains I am interested in. But back to prepping for this thing.

I spent a bunch of time in March thinking about IF I wanted to do it and if I would be able to do. Some of the things that I had to accept were a) I cant cover everything. So I decided that I wanted to cover the fundamentals, the first and second principles of behaviour. b) I can use this as a moment to structure my own knowledge about making games. It isn’t always easy to connect everything that I know but this felt like as good a time as any to structure it. c) This will probably take more preparation than I estimate.

All of those were true. Especially the third one. One would think that presenting to your friends shouldn’t freak you out, but I feel like there is something about the act of presenting that is always a little bit stressful. And when someone you care about is paying you good money because they trust you, the pressure is even higher. After confirming that I will be doing this, we decided on a time at the end of April and I got started building the material.

The overall session lasted over 10 hours across two days, and it was intense, but it was truly one of the most fun things I have done. There is a certain marathon-esque quality to things like this. Hard when you are preparing and hard when you are doing them, but amazing to have done. And as a side benefit I now have multiple different talks that I can potentially give about game design.

Among other things, Kahran and I finished second season of our podcast. THAT FELT AMAZING. I cant believe we are that far in. And now it also feels like we are getting more in the groove. I bought a new mic so next season onwards, the sound will be even crisper.

Charu and I continue to chug on with our gpt game, making more and more progress. Game making is hard. Mostly because it is a whole lot of unknown unknowns.

And another thing I did is remove all the instagram posts from my account. I want to start a new art project. I needed a fresh start for that. So now I’ll be starting to work on that project. God knows when it will happen, but I am excited.