[...] Self-promotion, bloviating, and pontificating [...]

Alas, the answer is to celebritize yourself.

Alas, this is true. Luckily, the internet lends us certain advantages that we lacked in the brutal arena of high school social politics. Ideas are more important than beauty. How often do you get that sort of chance? How often do we get to set all the terms with our writing? We’re back in the world before television. Abraham Lincoln can be president again. I can get old, without losing my ticket. That is some seriously powerful juice, my friends.

When you talk to broadcasters who haven’t lost their enthusiasm for the practice or entertainers who do it for the love of what they are doing, a common thread that emerges is that they do it for the audience, not (only) for themselves.

From “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”: “The assumption that someone is watching is vital to everything we do. To have that taken away would mean death.” If you’ve ever stood on a stage, and been caught up in the feedback loop of audience appreciation, you understand this intuitively. You perform better with an audience. They become a part of the performance, in a very real sense.

But if they’re good, then maybe you’ll get recognized, hired, promoted, celebritized… and then you get to the hard part, which is doing actual good work.

You know, I’m glad I didn’t announce that I was looking for a job in any forum where anyone might actually rapidly glean contact information for me, because, good heavens, as it was, I still ended up with more interviews than I scheduled. And I’m not even a celebrity. My peak of glory was a profile in a magazine for teenage girls in Australia, and the theme of that month’s issue was “Fake fake fake: Why celebrity is so faux.” While I am certainly not going to complain about being held up as an example of a woman classier than Paris Hilton, really, who isn’t?

Seriously, I can’t stress this enough, if you have the skills, there are jobs. If you really want to break in, LEARN TO TO DO THIS WORK. And I mean WORK. This isn’t a game. Sure, it’s better than writing billing software, but what isn’t? Part of why I love this work is because it’s challenging. I was a Senior Programmer for years before I became a game programmer. Where do you go from Senior Programmer? Geriatric Programmer? If you’re like me, you’re hungry for something deliciously difficult and cross-disciplinary. Forget believing three impossible things before breakfast. If you can DO three impossible things before breakfast, this is good work for you.

Why put it online? Because if there is even a small expectation that someone else will read it, then I’ll actually put effor into it. There’s a feedback loop created even if no actual feedback is ever generated. It works purely on expectations. And it’s provided a way to start and hold conversations with other bloggers.

Ideas in, ideas out. I’m signed up for class and eager to learn.

I really don’t expect anyone to ever find my personal blog (let alone read it) outside of friends and family, and I often even HOPE that nobody does! So why do it? I enjoy this type of musing, and I like the blog format better than forums from the very respect that it does kind of make it YOUR “radio show” … with listener calls (comments) if you choose.

For me, at a point in life where many friends have moved to remote corners of the planet, it’s a convenient way to have a conversation amongst us all. But I’m also inspired when mere acquaintances, and sometimes even strangers, chime in and leave a comment.

It really is more about the audience moreso than having a platform from which I can vomit my genius onto the starving masses below.

[...] I was reading Raph’s entry today on self-promotion, bloviating, and pontificating and I realized that I, for a long time, have been in good practice in all three areas of skill — though woefully behind the times in my application of said skills. And though I have graduated to the grand title of software curmudgeon (I prefer the second defintion: irascible and cantankerous suite me much better than ill-tempered), the one thing I have learned in this software world of out-sourcing, in-sourcing, innovation, bubbles, bursts, paradigms, and fads is that one must keep oneself relevant. [...]

“Friendly Debate: the ancient Greek philosophers could gather around a fountain and discuss all manner of topics with like minded people, but where do we in the modern world have the same option?”

Where I live, everyone assumes that I am the authority when it comes to gaming. Not just on what games to buy, but the issues within gaming itself (Hot Coffee, etc.) I’m comfortable with that, because I’m nothing more than a big fish in a very small pond. Truth is, I barely scratch the surface of what there is to know. GO is about me having a place to encourage conversation about gaming (which is why there isn’t just one author) so I can learn from the people around me.

Darniaq is money. I’ve always been blown away with his analytical skils in essay. Reading the RK and Psycho blogs is a mandatory thing for me not just because I like you guys, but because you take me places I’d never find on my own – and I learn while I’m there.

That’s the real power of blogs for me: having that group conversation, being exposed to people and ideas I’d never find IRL or on my own, and finding more and more excuses to buy the first round of drinks at the next gathering. Blogs won’t change journalism in the long term, but they will (and already have) changed the communication of ideas.

I think the other major issue is a misunderstanding about what blogs are. Most people see them as a place where emo kids can whine about how unfair life is. I’ll admit, that’s what kept me from starting up my own blog for a while. Finally I realized that after reading Damion and Scott’s blogs for a while that you can have intelligent conversations on a blog, so I started my own. I usually refer to my own blog as a “professional blog” to distinguish it from the masses of personal blogs out there. I usually keep personal posts on my blog to a minimum in order to avoid confusion.

Why do I blog? Because for online game developers it’s important to talk to the community. There have been numerous community sites that we’ve spoken on in the past, starting with the infamous Lum the Mad site. Now that the sites have splintered and fractured and there are so many of them, I found myself posting the same thing over and over again. Better to focus that attention in one area to get the message out and interact with the community. And, sure, it also serves as a great tool for self-promotion. Maybe it is a bit of hubris to think that I have something important to say, but perhaps I’m guilty as charged. I’d like to think my screeds have helped to change opinions in the past.

Anyway, some people are always going to be “behind the times”. I read a reply from Ernest Adams on the first link you posted. I remember Ernest writing in 1997 that any real game designer should have a library card, because the Internet isn’t a good replacement for a trip to the library. Of course, that notion is pretty laughable these days. Nothing against Ernest personally, but it seems he doesn’t embrace change as fast as some of the rest of us. Just as long as we can still get the info we want the old fashioned way, things are fine. I just hope that these people aren’t surprised when the bloggers take their stuff and discuss it outside of their control (and possibly even outside their notice).

[...] Comments [...]

Overall, I’d like to think that blogs are a sign of a larger change we’re seeing in the technical world, where individuals are viewed as more than just the sum of their technical skills and previous accomplishments. Blogs seem to be a good way to measure the more organic things about a person that are otherwise hard to see.

The question I have is where to draw the line. A blog is a personal space where a person can express themselves (and also exercise their writing skills). If I have to worry about what I say, it some how feels like it defeats the original purpose.