Welcome to Fullbright.

Hi there.

Why don't we talk about why I'm making this blog? There are about two reasons.

The first is that I want somewhere to put out my thoughts on video games. I've been looking for a place like that for a while.

My first shot at it: starting in September 2004, I published three issues of the quarterly print zine The Journal of the Compugraphical Video Entertainment Medium (dig the joke title.) I wanted to write out a bunch of high-minded thoughts I'd had about narrative and game design and the role of the player and the player character and politics and gender and motivation in video games. So I did. But I wanted to take the air out of it a little, so I hamstrung it with that overlong pretentious title, Kinko'sed the entire thing, and started selling and giving away copies. I managed some good material in there, like interviews with Greg Kasavin of GameSpot, Jacob Andersen of Io Interactive, and Craig Hubbard of Monolith. I made a couple bucks off of it, got the title known around town a bit, and started writing about games for a local paper, which lasted about six months or so.

But after three issues, the zine had run its course, and I moved out of town so I stopped writing for the paper. I was looking for a new place to continue writing about games, so I hooked up with Idle Thumbs, a transatlantic website about video games and the industry. I was really into it at first and put up a lot of material, posted news, reviews, opinion pieces, helped with the site artwork, and so forth. That lasted almost six months. By now I've realized that the editorial process at Thumb is completely broken, and I'm not interested in the site much anymore. Again a homeless writer.

So, here I blog.

Second thing: I'm not much satisfied just writing about the game industry at this point. I'm much more interested in the hands-on design and development side of games. Flat out, I've got to be all up in the games industry, helping it happen. I'm working on becoming a level and scenario designer, and I want to use this space to talk about the nuts-and-bolts stuff which that entails. I want to talk about design philosophy as well as the ins and outs of making successful playspaces for specific systems. And I want a place to paste up material from the levels I'm working on for my portfolio and to hash out the processes I'm going through there. I'm looking at a progress diary. A video game blog.

-What will you find here?-

+ Media and commentary on pieces I'm constructing for my level and scenario design portfolio
+ Thoughts and commentary on game design issues and the games industry
+ Thoughts and commentary on specific games I've been playing

I don't know if I'm just doing this for myself or for an audience, but I hope that if you are reading this, you're interested in the same things I am, and that you'll get something out of this blog. Not that there's anything here yet. But soon.