I've spent the past few weeks adding blog support to my non-game, lifestyle-supporting product, The Journal (http://www.davidrm.com/thejournal/). Blog support is in testing now, with the plan to release it before Xmas.

Before I started work on this new feature, I had never really considered keeping a blog. I've kept a daily journal of what I'm working on personally and professionally since 1993, but I never considered making any of that rambling narrative *public*. The closest I came were a series of semi-weekly .plan posts on Garage Games when the Paintball Net project still had a pulse. Having now made it easy to keep a public blog, though (at least via Blogger and LiveJournal; so far; more coming), suddenly I find myself considering it...

So...do you keep a blog? Have you ever thought about keeping one?

I can see a few advantages to having one:

* Provides a way interested readers (other indies, players, etc.) can keep up with what you're working on.
* Helps maintain a journaling habit, by giving you an audience greater than "just me".
* Provides you a forum for your more off-the-wall thoughts and ideas.

What does everyone think? Are you against blogs, maybe? Let's hear those opinions! :)

-David

Honestly, this blog (http://www.wibsite.com/wiblog/dull/) is the perfect expression of my feelings about blogs.

I do, but it's not really that interesting. Probably even more dull than the one ggambett mentioned ;)

The main reason I wanted to start writing one is to share the experience I'm gaining doing what I do. I've made plenty of mistakes programming and design wise, and it seems a shame for other people to have to go through the same.

I think it's something nice to have for people who are interested. If they don't like it, they don't have to read it :)

I've considered starting my own blog on several occasions, but the whole thing strikes me as being vaguely narcissistic and that keeps me from acting on that impulse. Also, I don't feel like I have the time to regularly write the kind of entries I would want to write.

Originally posted by ggambett
Honestly, this blog (http://www.wibsite.com/wiblog/dull/) is the perfect expression of my feelings about blogs.

LMFAO!!! This has got to be one of the funniest things I've ever seen! I'm still laughing!!

Blogging has been going on for decades. I think it's hilarious that once somebody attached a funny sounding name to the activity that it suddenly became popular.

I don't have a blog, but I have nothing against them. Blogs come in different forms. Some are platforms for pundits and industry critics, some are really .plan files, some are online diaries, and some act as news aggregators, regurgitating or deep linking to new things on the web. Most have a little bit of each. Slashdot is sort of a public repository blog when you think of about it. A blogpository, if you will.

Blogging gives you a vehicle for adding freeform site content. If you don't have a blog, everything you add to your site needs a purpose. But if you have a blog, just blather away, opine on the business or other sites, or talk about your day. Don't have any news? Mention somebody else's news. It's easy, quick, up-to-date "content." If you find a way to be interesting, it's a good way to get regular visitors to your site.

On the negative side, making a successful blog requires -- besides interesting things to say -- commitment. With the exception of joke blog sites like Gabriel's dullest blog in the world, it takes daily or at least weekly effort to keep a blog updated. Like many team game development projects, it's easy to lose steam and fall apart. It's hard to garner new blog visitors when they see yours is updated infrequently, no matter how interesting your posts are.

Blogging can take less blatant forms, too. On my website I have a news box where I can post what's going on at Gearhand Studios. If I wanted to, I could update this every day. I don't, because I'm just pretty sure I couldn't say something interesting and topical every day. At least not in it's current format. It's definitely worth thinking more about.

I journal everything I do, different journals for different topics, and I've been doing it for years. But I don't have a blog and don't intend to. Its not that what I'm journaling is all that personal, its just that I'm aware of the fact that no one else care's what game I'm programming or playing, or what we plan to get the kids for Christmas.

I do like blogging because I think journaling is a valuable part of personal growth. Most folks would never write in a journal, but have jumped on the blog bandwagon just to be part of the crowd.

I think blogging is on a bubble about to pop though. Its a fad. I can see following a blog or two of people who are interesting to you. I read asharewarelife religiously. But the masses of teens and young adults creating accounts on blogger.com are soon going to step back and say.. "why am I wasting my time with this"

I don't "BLOG" because that's the stupidest sounding name for an online journal or WEB LOG i've ever heard.

I'm just sitting in irc the other day, and i hear some people say blog several times in a conversation, and i'm like WTF is a blog? and they say, you know, a blog, you keep stuff written down in it, you know, like a 'web log'

Geeze. Stupid computer geeks.

BTW, DavidRM i'm not calling you a stupid computer geek, unless you're the guy that actually came up with the stupid term "blog" ;-)

I blog inconsistently. My biggest problem is having something relevent to say.

A blog without reader comments is really just a .plan file.
A blog with comments is a chat forum where one person picks the conversations and does most of the talking.

Hmm...that line of reasoning would make the Dexterity forums Dan McDonald's blog. :)


There are a lot of crap blogs out there, no doubt about it. But there are also many that are quite informative and useful.



(PS - I'm kidding Dan! Don't point that thing at me!)

- DavidRM -
The closest I came were a series of semi-weekly .plan posts on Garage Games when the Paintball Net project still had a pulse.

The obvious inference is that Paintball Net no longer has a pulse. What happened?

I run a blog of sorts (http://devlab.flashbangstudios.biz/)on physics/game experiments. It's a great way for me to escape the often-mundane tasks of our company's projects. Our game's recent release has reduced my updates to infrequent, but I still add something every now and then (for awhile, I was updating 2-3 times a week with new content).

As for blogging on more personal topics, I don't have the urge. Although, I think it's because I use IRC and other mediums to ramble on about random things. I may chuckle at people who blog what they had for dinner, but, honestly, I tend to announce those sort of things on IRC myself.

I think a well-done blog is not too unlike the .PLAN files. It gives you (as a developer) an informal vector of communication to your customers. It's not as direct, nor as two-way, nor as time consuming as forums. But it's informal and easy to update.

As a gamer anticipating a new release, I like to hear notes and thoughts about the development of an anticipated game. I'm hungry for information about how the thing is going to finally end up, what features will finally get in, and whether or not it will meet my needs as a player. That's where something like a Web Log or .plan file serves a great purpose - it keeps me interested and feeds my anticipation. And then I go talk about it with my friends.

Now I'm not necessarily interested in what the developer had for dinner, or his political views, or other meaningless anecdotes. However, if it's tied in with the subject of the game in development (like Michael Abrash's classic columns for Dr Dobb's Journal), I get a kick out of it.

LOL, Welcome to my blog everyone, I hope you enjoy your stay...

I've been skeptical of blogs ever since it became cool without me knowing what it was. However recently I’ve been really enjoying Thomas Warfields, and Scot Miller's blogs.

I don't see much blogging in my future though. I tend to be a poor source of ideas, but I quite enjoy being a foil for other peoples, hence I am destined to be a perpetual commenter on other peoples threads and blogs :)

I've not only considered starting one, I also was well on my way to creating a blog site for developers many years ago. I came to my senses though and realized it wasn't going to be a very successful project, with other services being free and with developers being notorious for not updating more than once every few months.

I don't have a blog because of the reasons already mentioned in this thread. It's a huge commitment, no one really cares what you write, and if you don't have anything genuine to contribute, it feels (and often is) egotistic/narcissistic, etc. I used to have a personal site that worked fairly well and allowed me a format where I could insert ramblings and opinions while keeping the site's main content on something other than myself (games, programming, etc). I've toyed with starting that back up once CB is out the door and has a following, but until then there's really no reason why anyone would want to regularly read what I have to say (and I'm far too busy to say much). That parody dull blog is pretty how much how most blogs look, and who in their right mind would want to read that?

David nudged me and said I might want to pipe up on this one. So blame the following post on him - I have a lot to say about bloging :-) (And I'm also one of the people who kept nudging him to put bloging features in The Journal after he mentioned the idea to me. But I want it for something besides LiveJournal.)

I've been using one for or another blog for years now. I started with doing it on MidnightRyder.com as the Developer's Files, then moved to LiveJournal doing a more personal blog, then finally I've moved over to Garage Games .plan files (which are still pretty much blogging in a lot of ways - a real .plan file has not chance for interactivity, but the web based versions do.)

For those who follow my Garage Games .plan files (the novels that they are) ya' know that I'm really open about my opinions of the game business, what's going on in the company, and in my life that relates to games / game development / the game company. Sometimes I stir up some crap with my opinions (but not often) because of my almost no holds barred opinions on things. (Take note of that word Almost - it's important ;-) Most of the time I just bore the hell outta people ;-)

My motivation for doing it is to share my thoughts about stuff going on, share information about what I'm up to (since sometimes it's easier to just post it there, then say email four different people to tell 'em what I've been up to lately. I actually make an attempt to keep in contact with Indies that I've met anymore.), sometimes I plug products that I've ran into that impress me (The Journal has had more than one plug in there for instance), and sometimes I set down to talk about one thing, and suddenly I begin rambling as my thoughts begin to organize themselves through the process of putting them on virtual paper. There's lots of reasons I do it.

I first started doing it in 1999 with my own site. I posted on there, and no one ever posted any replies. So, it became the first of my 'scratch pads' for keeping my brain together. I was talking with a business contact at Microsoft (I've still got a contract with 'em for some technology), when she mentioned something I had said in my developer's diary. This produces:

Warning 1: If you do business online, don't say bad things about people you do business with. Even when no one ever responds to what you say, you ARE NOT talking to the wall. Some one is listening. Sometimes it's the wrong person.

I also did it in my GG .plan file one time to, giving someone at GG the wrong impression of what I though of them with an off-the-cuff remark I made. This brings about:

Warning 2: Anything you say can and will be used against you. In the case of GG, it didn't work out that way - a quick email exchange cleared up the missunderstanding. However, I have heard comments about TrajectoryZone come back to me from odd places, picking out only the uncomplementary things I've said about my own product, not the good stuff. And sometimes it gets really skewed (someone recently said TZ really just ThinkTanks with hovertanks. Really. WTF?)

Eventually, I moved away from the Developer's Diary format I was using, and started posting more personal information at times. Then a relative of mine gave me a free access to LiveJournal (I don't know if you still have to have an invitation to get on there now or not). I quit the Developer's Diaries entirely (and much to my surprise about 4 months later, I started getting email asking when I was going to update again was. Remember - you aren't talking to the wall! ;-) and moved over to Live Journal and started posting much more personal stuff. Slowly, all my friends and family became Live Journal members, or just online vouyers for mine and my wife's LJ's.

Warning 3: Everything you say about yourself, friends, or family will eventually end up as part of the rumor mill. Usually coming back to you in the worst possible fashion.

My wife and I are open people, and discuss anything that comes to mine. The same principle applied to our LJ's. We started getting some.... interesting questions and some interesting rumors about us (in any facet of life you'd like to choose - what we think of our friends, our sex life, whatever. Pick a topic, I think I heard something come back to me about it at least once.) Eventually, it became worse - a small family feud broke out, and suddenly one person was literally using the journals as new fodder to hurt people (us in particular) with the info there, by trying to produce new and interesting rumors that were much harder to shake.

At that point, my wife and I quit using LJ entirely. I had already started using my .plan file at GG from time to time. I quit doing ANYTHING personal in my .plan files for a while (but I've resumed, to a certain extent. I only post what comes in contact with games.)

As a business person, blogs are a good and bad. Sure, people can keep up with what you are doing. Unluckly, people can keep up with what you are doing. Anything resembling a schedule posted in a .plan or blog will become set in stone. You will endure all sorts of questioning as to why it's not ready.

Plus, the longer you do this, the more people that start watching what you do. I find out that people read my GG .plan that I would have never expected. Some press, some game players, some professional game developers, etc. Not just fellow indies like I had planned. Since I'm slowly starting to show up in more online and print press from time to time, more people do things like search me out - and find the .plan files. Anything I've ever said bad in them will resurface is someone is really interested enough to read through all the volumous posts I put up there.

So, these are a great tool for a lot of stuff ranging from business contacts to keeping up with people to marketing. Lots that you can do with it and use it for. But proceed with caution - the more successful you become as an Indie, the more people will look at it.

My solution - I put all my strictly personal thoughts in The Journal, any business information or deals that are even slightly sensitive, etc. go in there too (actually, I use it for more than just blogging - it's a record of EVERYTHING, except for online posts and email. And don't tempt me ;-) Then I posts stuff that more 'fluffy' in my .plan files - I might hint at things, but, lots of stuff goes unsaid. (probably a good thing anyway - I write A LOT of stuff already ;-)

I think blogs are good. Use 'em. Just be cautious with 'em. If I can convince David to include a way to post to my .plan file from The Journal (nudge, nudge), I'll surely use it too. Plus then GG won't loose my .plan file when I hit post anymore ;-)

-----

Sheesh - I talk WAY too much sometimes! Sorry!

Heh, to go along with what Ryder said... you NEVER KNOW who might read what you have to say. Although sometimes they get to it in the strangest ways.

Case in point: I used to have a personal website where I'd use to vent some of my anger at the world, and occasionally I'd talk about my parents, since I knew that they would NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS find my site.

Well... they never would have except for the fact that I was updating it once just before work and left right afterwards but forgot to close the screen on my home page. I knew I did halfway to work too, and I knew my Dad would already be on the computer and if he saw it, well, it was too late. I came home, and, sure enough, we had a nice little fight and I almost got kicked out of the house. Kinda wish I was. It's been two years since, and I'm STILL here (but not for much longer, THANK NEO!).

In case you're curious what I said, I uploaded it here (http://www.omnipen.net/dev/121301.htm). I'm on my own computer now :D, besides, he already saw it. Nothing TOO harsh, it just kinda revealed some things about me I wasn't really certain I really wanted to or not yet. Didn't give me much of a choice, I guess :).

I never used a "Blog", but it sounds like a .plan? I keep something like that on GarageGames. I usually delete the old ones cause when I go back to read them, I usually feel pretty stupid about what I wrote and what I thought I was going to do heh.

I have a blog, and I'm writing it for a couple reasons:

1) I am developing a plugin for 3ds max, and thought it would be cool for others to see what that's like. Us plugin writers aren't all that common, so I thought it would be an interesting tale.

2) My blog is also a way for me to learn (a) how to write and (b) how to put down my thoughts.

As far as these two purposes go, I think I'm succeeding more at (2) than (1). I find it hard to think up topics to write about. Sometimes my entries are spaced quite far apart. But I think I'll keep at it, because I think both of my purposes listed above are worthwhile. I've been working on improving myself in certain areas, and I think this blog will help.

henning

http://www.archonus.com/blog.html

Even browsing a couple of forums a day takes too much time. Maybe if I could read, write and think at 1000 times my normal speed it would have more appeal. I don't know why I'm replying to this, I should be going to bed... the day is just far too short. I just know I'll be dead before I do half the things I want to do in life. Blog be damned.

You need to look at RSS aggregators. They eliminate the effort of keeping up with blogs. And many non-blog sites have RSS as well.

John: If you are deleting the old ones, you are missing part of the point behind doing it :-) Don't feel embarassed because you posted some pie-in-the-sky plan in your .plan file. Leave it there as a point of reference, self eduction / discovery (As in - get to know how you think and how you have matured over the years when it comes to planning), and possibly as an area that you can go fishing for ideas the next time you can't decide what game you want to work on next - something you said before may trigger a new idea :-) Not all of blogging / .plan files has to be about other people - it can be useful for you too.

Henning: not to try and push David's product, but, one of the amusing things that it has for helpin' teach you to write more / better is writing prompts. It gives you a task to do, like write for 10 minutes. Kinda cool - I don't use it though. Obviously I don't have much of a problem writing lots of stuff ;-)

Thanks... uh... Midnight Ryder. (That sounds funny to say). I currently use the personal edition of CityDesk, which is free. It's good in that I can make my blog look like the rest of my website.

Anthony: I just looked at the game screenshots on your site, and I think the clay style looks great!

You need to look at RSS aggregators. They eliminate the effort of keeping up with blogs. And many non-blog sites have RSS as well.

Like Anthony wrote... reading the Dexterity forums already takes me way too much time per day, and I shouldn't even be reading that thread, since I'm tired and need to sleeeep. :-]
I have added "a shareware's life" into my bookmarks but I think I only read it once..

I have a Livejournal. It's mostly for personal stuff, but I talk about whatever I feel like when I post in it.

More often though, I use it to keep up with friends, because of the whole access-privilege setup they have.

I figure that once I have a product ready and put up the company website, I'll include some form of blog there for news and development updates. Maybe some pontification too :p