Sometimes I do stupid things for which I completely don't have time. This blog, dedicated to the second of the only two things that have never bored me, is partly the result of such a decision. The first thing is capoeira, and I write about it elsewhere.
Here I will write about games from the perspective of both a player and a game developer. I’ve been playing games since I was five years old, which means that by the time of writing this post, it’s been 37 years. I registered my game company seven years ago, and I started my first job at a game development studio in 2014. It wasn’t strictly a production role back then, but for two years, I had the chance to observe the craft from the inside. Two years later, I landed my first job as an actual game developer… and maybe someday I’ll write about the rest of that story here. For now, I’d like to focus on writing about games.
The direct motivation for starting this blog was… wait for it… participating in a recruitment process for CD Action. Is the game industry in such a bad state that I’m dreaming of a career as a columnist earning 150 to 300 zł for an article that may or may not get published and usually requires hours of preparation, research, writing, editing, and revisions?
Probably not. I still have a few games to make and release. Besides, this work brings me immense joy. Writing also makes me happy, and until now, I’ve been practicing it on my blog about capoeira. However, I feel like I’ve exhausted most of the topics I currently have something to say about there. And yet, I still feel the urge to write.
I wrote a test assignment, which was an essay on the topic, “Can a game be good without gameplay?” 4,000 characters. I quickly wrote something that I thought was decent and asked my friend, columnist Mateusz Witczak, for feedback.
As you might guess, the feedback was VERY constructive. Mateusz made me realize that I still have a lot to learn. Let me quote his summary:
“The text is okay, though it would benefit from taking a deep breath, organizing it a bit, and cutting out a few show-off moments. However, its biggest problem is something else. You’re not leveraging your biggest advantage over the audience: the substantive knowledge you’ve gained from working in gamedev. I’d love to learn from such a text what gameplay is, what systems and mechanics are (since readers don’t like definitions, we’d have to explain these concepts through examples). Additionally, I’d like to see references to your personal experiences—both as a player and a game developer. What’s the USP of this piece? It’s a trap topic that has been written about many times before, and aspiring authors who choose it will likely repeat the same diagnoses. In my opinion, you should use this opportunity to emphasize your perspective and strengths as much as possible.”
And he’s right. I won’t publish my draft from the assignment here, but when I read it now, the text feels very generic. I’ve seen something like it many times before. Of course, CD Action simply ignored me, but the need to write remains. And this blog is here to fulfill that need.
Because… damn it… who’s going to stop me? And maybe, just maybe, someone will learn something along the way? Maybe that someone will only be me. And that’s perfectly fine.