Hello? Is This Thing On?

I am the Warden!!

I said... I am the Warden!!!

Anybody? Hello?

As much as I like to think I'm an independent person, there's that human need for acceptance and participation. Online, that means having followers and people posting comments on your blog, responding to emails, and inundating you with replies upon replies upon replies. When you're developing a new game, reading these text-based representations of human contact can be a huge boost to both your work and your confidence.

But it's been really quite around here. Especially with the backers.

(Before going any further, I want to make something perfectly clear. My intent is not to throw a tantrum, but to express and verbalize in an effort to gain an understanding and clarity on the topic, much in the same way blogging about game design issues gives me greater vision to tackle the task and complete it.)

Just over half of the Director-level backers for the Kickstarter project have responded with details - vague or in depth - for their marks and not a single one has sent in any legitimate playtest comments other than "looks good after a quick read-through." The deadline for playtest comments has come and gone and there's less than a week left until the deadline for the Director's submissions. (Note: This deadline is more of a request rather than an absolute so I can have a leg up on the workload ahead.) Now that Killshot has entered its last three months of production before the scheduled release in August, this has become a huge concern for me.

Website or Blog?

I am the Warden!!

After a long weekend plus an extra day away from work to handle the pain of a long weekend trying to do stuff you're not supposed to do, I'm back at getting ready for Killshot's release in August. After making some updates to the Broken Ruler's blog and the Killshot page in particular, I'm looking at purchasing a domain name for Broken Ruler Games to step things up a notch.

I'm left wondering which direction I should take the Ruler. Using a simple blog has been effective and saved me time and energy keeping an online profile and there's no reason to ditch it for an actual website at the moment, yet there's nothing a blog can provide in the way of a website's flexibility. But it also comes down to cost. A lot of independent game publishers start off with blogs to keep their costs low - why spend money on a website unless you have the traffic to make it worth the effort? Right now, I'm literally on the fence for this one, so I'm turning to all of you for advice.

What do you think? Blog or website?

Hope Is Paralyzing

I am the Warden!!

Before I begin, I want to make something perfectly clear. Looking at the title of today's post, you'd think I was about to get all dark and depressing, wouldn't you? Far from it. What you'll read today is actually my own inspiring tale of rising up to overcome oppression and the tribulations of life.

We have a little saying in my house: Hope is paralyzing. It's something my fiancee uses a lot and it's one I've come to agree with, though I've turned it into something a little more positive than her original version. As many of you know, we're going through a rough patch in many regards. The accident was just the catalyst sending it all into a spiraling black hole threatening to break us apart into nothing more than atoms in space. As the readership on this blog can be a bit scattered (some of you are friends, others are backers of my work, and a small percentage are random people stumbling onto this blog because you did a search on the Matrix and started clicking around from there), I'll give a little back story helpful to my overall point.

My fiancee has epilepsy. A rather severe form in that it's brought on by stress, plus some mild reactions to florescent lighting typical in many work places. Despite her best efforts, she has been unable to maintain any employment for any significant amount of time. When my accident happened, the stress of dealing with this compounded her condition and sent her into a near nervous breakdown - she's in her mid-20s. So the two of us are at home: while I'm yet physically unable to meet the demands of my previous occupation - press operator - and still overcoming certain cognitive issues and internal demons, she's been put on indefinite medical leave by her doctors in fear any additional stress could either induce a massive grand mal seizure capable of putting her in a coma or killing her. In the words of Albert Einstein, I shit you not.

As you can imagine, we could certain use a healthy dose of hope right about now. (Or any time within the past 18 months, actually.) But while this time has not exactly been a piece of cake, not all of it has been spent wallowing in tears and brooding over what could have been. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely days like that and one of them befell us recently, hence the reason for today's post. I'd say the majority of the time is spent holding each other up to stand and face whatever comes our way.