As I move CubCrossing.com from SquareSpace to Tumblr, I’ll be archiving my old posts here. Don’t get excited. This place is still dead. Visit CubCrossing.com or Twitter for new stuff.

–

Here’s a video of the IndieCade session I participated in — the Iron Game Designer Challenge. 3 teams were asked to rapidly design a physical game given both a theme (Amish people) and a material (bananas). My team took home the winning prize :)

Designing Biba has been a huge challenge, and I was beginning to question my commitment to physical play. But this session cast off any feelings of doubt I was carrying. Physical play is capable of making people smile and laugh in a way that no purely digital game can. I can’t ignore that.

Given this renewed understanding of the world, I’ve put my big side project on hold. This could be seen as another excuse to avoid venturing out on my own, but it’s not. I know that because I’ve made more progress on my new side project than any other one I’ve attempted. Its release is inevitable :)

Just give me another week or two and I’ll have something pretty to show you :)

As I move CubCrossing.com from SquareSpace to Tumblr, I’ll be archiving my old posts here. Don’t get excited. This place is still dead. Visit CubCrossing.com or Twitter for new stuff.

–

I’m down in Southern California to attend IndieCade – a festival and conference celebrating the independent game development community. I’m disappointed that I’m not bringing anything to show; Biba is still in a weird state of preproduction (not that it’s easily demoable anyway) and my other project is currently fighting a war in the name of jitter-free fixed timestep update loops (translation: it looks like ass). Nevertheless, I’m here to meet new people and get inspired.

But will I fit in…? :-\

As I move CubCrossing.com from SquareSpace to Tumblr, I’ll be archiving my old posts here. Don’t get excited. This place is still dead. Visit CubCrossing.com or Twitter for new stuff.

–

It’s 1am. I’m paper prototyping and programming almost simultaneously. I’m not ready to call it a victory just yet, but evidence suggests that I’m steadily overcoming the dirty hump I described a few weeks ago.

It’s hard to get started on a solo side project. It’s even harder to maintain that initial momentum. Fear is one factor, but my friend Ken gave me insight into an equally relevant element – our day jobs.

Intuitively, I believed that having an unsatisfying day job would motivate me to work on side projects in my spare time. But that’s not true at all.

The opposite is true.

Having a satisfying day job creates an abundance of motivational energy that can then be channeled into side projects. I feel energized after a productive day at work. Stress, blockers, political drama, low momentum, and a general lack of productivity during the day sucks that energy up.

Sometimes the negative forces at play in our day jobs are beyond our control. But simply being aware of this relationship was enough to get me going.

Indie superstar Jake Birkett tweeted some other tips you may find helpful:

Dev Motivation Tip: Set your desktop wallpaper to a screenshot from your current game. (link)

Dev Motivation Tip: Print out an optimistic projection of your 1st year sales on all platforms and stick it on your noticeboard. (link)

As I move CubCrossing.com from SquareSpace to Tumblr, I’ll be archiving my old posts here. Don’t get excited. This place is still dead. Visit CubCrossing.com or Twitter for new stuff.

–

A few weeks ago I patted myself on the back for overcoming my fear of making things. I didn’t know it then, but I’ve been lying to myself :) The truth is this: I have overcome my fear of making things with other people. But I’m terrified of making things on my own. Not only that, but I need to make things on my own to feel happy and fulfilled.

I have no excuses. But I am discovering, bit by bit, the nature of this fear. I’ll share with you a couple lessons I’ve learned so far.

It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this:

1. Ideas are not only worthless — they are harmful. The more time I spend fleshing out an idea in my head or on paper, the less likely it is that the idea will ever get implemented. Push for daily iteration, and take as little time to think through an idea as possible. Explore ideas by prototyping and playtesting (code that shit up!), not by running thought experiments or writing documents.
2. Dreading the code is far more draining and time consuming than coding itself. I’m no software engineer. For me, programming is more frustrating than it is rewarding. I give myself every reason I can think of to avoid it. But if I spent as much time coding as I do thinking about not coding, I would be sitting on a mountain of finished games. It takes less time to code up an idea than you think (unless you’ve been thinking for far too long and your idea has grown far too big). Stop worrying about the future, live in the present, and focus on building tangible things.

Muster up the strength and push through! Whoopah!

As I move CubCrossing.com from SquareSpace to Tumblr, I’ll be archiving my old posts here. Don’t get excited. This place is still dead. Visit CubCrossing.com or Twitter for new stuff.

–

I was just commenting to the others that the only person I know that uses emoticons in a completely true-to-life way is you. Most people aren’t really smiling when they post a smiley. But I am quite certain you are doing exactly as your smiley suggests.

– Fouad

Staying true to yourself is hard. But every little moment counts :)