I hate blogs. Unfortunately our team web guru has convinced me that they are a necessary part of promoting a website and since this is everything he cares about at the moment I decided to help him out a bit by putting a few words together for our first post. The reasons I hate blogs are quite simple. Blogs generally require a highly personal approach of the text, a very vivid description of one’s immediate reality and a very relaxed style of writing. All of this sounds more like a chat among friends over a cup of tea or a few beers, depending on your preferences, and certainly not something of high public interest. But as the ratings and the number of site visitors clearly prove me wrong I can only say I have completely missed the trend-train this time. Come to think of it I’m happy I missed it because the idea of highly personal stories and beliefs placed on public display in an impersonal environment such as the internet gives me the general impression of dirty clothes being washed in public. And there is always the fact that I don’t care enough about some complete stranger’s common, boring, everyday existence in order to waste a few minutes of my time to read about it.

But I’ve been told that this is not your common, “I had a normal day, read all about it” blog, but something special, extraordinary, with a mystic twist to it. We are creating a game and in the same time we are keeping the interested visitors informed with our progress, our problems, our struggle. I’m guessing this meant to create a bond between developers and consumers and in the same time add some sort of sentimental value to the product as you literally see it grow in front of your eyes. So basically we are pregnant and you assume the role of the concerned father. It was an immaculate conception, fortunately, but we can watch the little monster grow and tend to its needs together. What do you say? Because to tell you the truth I’ve always been fond of game communities, both from a gamer perspective and a developer point of view. In the first case you can take part in building a game brick by brick without being necessary to be fully committed to the project, you can advance your own ideas and see then taking shape, you can debate with others certain aspects of the game and eventually you can end up feeling that a small part of the game belongs to you. On the other side, as a developer, you sometimes feel like a little kid drawing with chalk on the pavement a game to play with your friends. You feel responsible for the quality of the game because it will eventually reflect on the quality of the experience you and your friends are going to have. It’s not such a solitary, independent action as it may seem.

So if for establishing a tight, responsive and friendly community I must write and tend to a blog or a dev diary or whatever the name is, then I’m going to set aside the instinctive repulsion towards this form of expression and I will make sure you guys are always informed and always up to date with what we are doing. Because in the end the most important thing for both you and us is to have fun and I want you to have lots of fun playing this game and I want us to have lots of fun creating it for you.

Tags: blog post, blogs, pixel toaster studios, web promotion

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 1:19 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.