Aerothorn on 11/6/2011 at 00:37
I recently started a new gaming blog ((
www.augmented-vision.net) Augmented Vision) and in doing so realized that a bunch of you folks probably also have blogs of some sort. I need some good internet reading material, so please share 'em here!
I know, I know, blogs are so 2007.
Yakoob on 11/6/2011 at 13:00
I never quite got on the blogging bandwagon, both as a writer and reader. It always felt to me to be equivalent of walking to a random person on the street and asking them to tell you a story. And why is that one person's story any more important than the other 6 billion? There is some stuff I've written before but never really published online because I've figured, eh, no one will care and Im not gonna be one of those guys spamming his link on every forum he posts/every signature desperately trying to scramble for "followers..."
But then again I do have a lot of webspace I am not doing anything with so maybe it's worth putting some of my ramblings there every now and then in case I am the lucky "one in a million" bastards who makes it big :P
Aerothorn on 11/6/2011 at 15:59
It's only a "random person on the street" if the blogger is totally unknown to you. Often people read the blogs of folks they know in some context (that what this topic is for!). Other times they filter the blog by common interests or the blog's specific focus. As for "Why should I care?" the answer is the same as with any non-fiction book: it all depends on the quality of the writing and the thought the author put into it.
demagogue on 11/6/2011 at 19:07
I never took off with a blog. I had a page where I could have done it, but just didn't stick.
The kinds of blogs I like reading are either (1) people from completely different walks of life from me; usually meaning another country, some village in Malaysia or Chad or Tuvalu or wherever (anywhere with enough English to get by; but sometimes I'll surf foreign language blogs and translate them)... Just reading about their day to day stuff gives me a better idea what real life is like in those places, as opposed to what you might think from the media or history. I especially like travel blogs, where a person from one country I don't know much about travels to another country I don't know much about -- like an Indonesian guy studying in Egypt, and read about his culture shock; then you get like a double-dose of insight.
Then (2) articles on some topic that's interesting to me and they're consistently insightful... especially if it's some topic I don't have a clue about and I'd never have any exposure to otherwise, like Computer Vision or Aircraft Design, botany or genomics, theoretical physics, game design of course. And philosophy, law, & politics blogs are sort of standbys, things in my own domain.
Koki on 11/6/2011 at 19:14
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
I recently started a new gaming blog
Thank you, that is exactly what the world needed.
SubJeff on 11/6/2011 at 20:27
Agreeing with Koki.
Aerothorn on 12/6/2011 at 22:02
Koki's helpful insight is the exact reason I hadn't started one till now. And then I realized that was stupid.
I want to be a good games writer - maybe professionally, but at the very least I just want the skillset. And I'm never going to get there if I don't actively write. I assume audience when I write, so why not stick it up on the web? In short: it's portfolio building, and thankfully no one is obligated to read it if they don't want to.
I also realized that there may be a million gaming blogs, but there's still room for fresh material and fresh viewpoints.
SubJeff on 12/6/2011 at 22:54
Ok, fair enough - there is always space for a fresh voice. If you come of with some interesting stuff then why not? Even I've though of doing one but I've not got time nor anything especially interesting to say that hasn't been said or isn't being said in some way elsewhere. I suppose one could aggregate a bunch of themes or ideas but meh
Aerothorn on 12/6/2011 at 23:56
True! I can't make any promises about radical new thought, though I can say that I'll probably be writing things that haven't written elsewhere, simply because almost all blogs focus on "trending" news (contemporary big events) whereas I'll be less temporally focused.
But, as I said, it's really a personal project - I'd say vanity project, except it's for skill-building rather than attention.
Honestly, though, I just linked it in the first post to start the roll off - I really do want to see other people's. I know TTLG's population isn't what it once was, but there have got to be a FEW people here other than (
http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/) Robert Yang.
Muzman on 13/6/2011 at 00:18
It's not really a blog as such, more a collection of (brief) perma-death Stalker playthroughs.
(
http://manydeaths.blogspot.com/)
I haven't updated it in a while, as you can see, but I hope to sooner or later. I was effectively a writing exercise when I was in a more writerly mode. Now life's all about pictures so I've left it alone for a bit. It occurs to me that situation should probably be reversed (ie write this when the day-to day is visual stuff instead).
It's kinda torn between how to be entertaining and still explain things to people who have no idea what's going on, which is a problem that often solves itself if you just relax. Also it took a few goes to really get to grips with playing for the project (notes, pictures etc). But, as the title suggests, flinging yourself repeatedly against the metaphoric wall of the game is kinda the point, so some of the early dud playthroughs seemed like part of the overall.
Aaand all that is rather beside the point for discussion of blogging about games really.
