So as the title suggests, I will be explaining why I made this blog in this post. I have a few reasons and I’ll try to keep them separated into individual paragraphs, but be warned; I tend to blend topics together and tie everything together.

Firstly, I think having a personal website will really encourage me to finish my games. This is something I have great difficulty with. I have started over 50 games, each with the intention of one day releasing, yet I’ve only managed to get 3 ”finished” and exported to a single runnable file. Two of the three aren’t even properly exported, because I couldn’t (and still can’t) figure out how to export java projects from eclipse with the images and sounds included in the jar file. Hopefully having this website will encourage me to export my games, and when I don’t know how, to learn.

Another reason I had for creating this website is because I wanted a place to write ideas down, in a more permanent way than on paper. Ideas about game development, and about other topics. I find writing my thoughts down (or typing them down in this case) really helps me get them straight in my head. Even writing this post has helped me figure out exactly why I wanted to make this blog and what I want to use it for. It may seem like I’m just writing down my thoughts, and to some extent I am, but most of this is being made up as I write it. I certainly didn’t have a distinct number of reasons for making a blog before I made this one, but I do now!

Yesterday I watched some videos from the 2014 Steam Dev Days conference, including this one, which talks about marketing your games. It got me thinking about my pitiful excuse for a website which I had before this one and gave me some inspiration to make this one. One thing the speakers talked about in the talk was practice, and its importance. Although they didn’t specifically speak about the importance of websites or blogs, they did all agree on the fact that marketing your games is essential for their success. They also all believed that the marketing of your game is not something to do near the end, but something you should be thinking about, and doing, during and even before you start development. Personally I’m not too worried about marketing my games, yet, as I’m not quite skilled enough to make actually fun games. Still, I think it’s still a good idea to get some practice with writing about games, and when I eventually feel my games are worth money, I’ll have both the architecture in place, as well as the practice under my belt.