Hey there

It has been a while since my last post. Due to personal reasons I’m going to take a break with game development for a while. Though I still have a very strong love towards PBBG design burning inside of me I can’t seem to enjoy it that much any more. It may partly be some sort of burnout but I think other personal problems in my life may also be a cause of this lack of motivation.

It’s really weird. I don’t enjoy playing and creating games any more but I strongly want to enjoy it. When I go through my old stuff I notice that game development (and definitely not playing games itself) has been an interest of mine since I was much younger, more than I could remember.

Currently I’m 17 years old (I’ll be 18 in November) and the first time I remember creating some sort of game I must have been 7 or 8. I would draw creatures on little pieces of paper and tape them all around the house (or the toilet mostly) and I really can’t remember what the rules were. I remember it must have been some sort of trading card game. I used a lot of eyes in the “images” and one eye on the back (if I remember correctly) — like pokemon cards would have a pokéball on their backsides. I guess they would also have had an attack value or something of that kind … I think I used quite large numbers (but rounded ones).

So now, 10 years later, I feel like game design and development is an important part of me. Although I really want to enjoy it I can’t seem to make it work. I’m going to take a break and when I’m ready I’ll be back.

I don’t know when I’ll be back. It may be tomorrow, in a few months or never (I doubt that though).

Take care everybody and don’t forget me!

Have you seen the news today? Anything about politics? Anything about Muslim extremists? I saw the news today. I’ll tell you what I saw. I saw people, both male and female, talk in riddles and ask the same questions over and over again without listening to the answer. Those people, politicians, Muslim extremists, anti-Muslim extremists, journalists, … They didn’t care about who they were talking to. They didn’t care for the answer. They didn’t care for the message. The didn’t care about building something valuable with the person they were speaking to. They only cared about making a point.

Read more…

I justed checked in to TED talks to get my weekly portion of awesomeness. You just have to see this.

There’s much to think about here. Instead of sharing my own thoughts on the subject though, I’m going to let you draw your own conclusions. Please leave a comment with your thoughts!

Just a lil’ something of my own, Summary:
1. We need to create more games that engage players to change the real world.
2. How are we going to do this? How do we create that ‘link’ between the real world and a virtual world?
3. How can we get the most out of it? How can we step our game up from experiment to full-powered life-skill-teaching game?

One of my concerns lately is the quality of new browser games (facebook, Evony, …). I’m afraid that money will always be more important than good education…

It is an important question for all PBBG developers. The answer can show us where we want to go or give us insight in how we create our own games. It can remind us what our goal is, an image we should always keep in our minds.

Goals and motivations can differ from one person to another. Knowing where we stand is important though. That’s why I asked 9 developers to answer the following questions:

1. Why did you originally want to make browser based games?
2. Why did you choose browser based games over other media?
3. Why do you make browser based games now?
4. Why do you still make browser based games, instead of going to other media?
5. Why should, or shouldn’t, people play browser based games?

This was not a scientific survey or anything like that but rather a glimpse of the minds of some fellow developers. Some of them already have games online for quite a while, others are still creating their first PBBG.

Maybe their answers, and my view, can help you to answer those questions for yourself.

Read more…

I am very happy to announce to you a new service to bring PBBG developers closer together, PBBG snippets!

This was a collaborative project between BBGameDesign and Building Browsergames. Visit bbgames for a little bit more info.

If you have anything to share, contributing is easy, so don’t hesitate!

Visit PBBG Snippets