Jeff-Vogel

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Showing posts with label ego-massage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ego-massage. Show all posts

Friday, 10 February 2012

Four Things To End the Week.

Posted on 15:18 by Unknown


One.

I have a big article about the indie games biz up on Gamasutra. I'm quite happy with how it turned out. Enjoy!

Two.

Everyone all justifiably atwitter about how Tim Schafer raised upwards of one million dollars on Kickstarter to make a new adventure game. It's a great proof-of-concept for the whole publicly funded game thing. If Tim Schafer couldn't pull in some coin to make an adventure game, nothing else has a chance.

I think it's brilliant, and it ties well into what I said in my Gamasutra article. The secret power of indie devs is to exploit underserved niches. Expect other Kickstarter-funded games in future. I only hope the results match the expectations.

Three.

Heaven forbid that I should be thought to criticize Notch or Minecraft. (I won't even point out that the whole end boss/enchantment/potion/combat system is taking the game in entirely the wrong direction to please exactly the wrong group of people.)

But, about this.

Hey, I wouldn't presume to give them advice. But, after I make my 30 million dollars, I'm not going to rely on Anonymous to finish my games for me. Just sayin'.

Four.

Every once in a while, I read someone's critique of OK Go as a band, focusing on the fact that they basically fine and only have one decent single. (Don't click that link. You've seen it already.) But that misses the point. They aren't a band. They're much more interesting than that. They're a meme-generation factory, and really good at it.

So here is my legally mandated one link a year to an OK Go video. Yeah, like you have something better to do with three minutes and fifty-four seconds.

Look for my next link to them in roughly fifteen months, when they play some pleasant and non-threatening power pop by shooting kittens out of a cannon into steel drums, or whatever.
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Posted in ego-massage, humor, indie, linking to things i like, minecraft | No comments

Thursday, 28 April 2011

Mixed Bag Of Fun

Posted on 17:24 by Unknown
I have been putting the final touches on Avadon: The Black Fortress for Windows in the hope of releasing it next week. I have also been shepherding the game through beta-testing on the iPad. The rest of my time has been spent trying to convince myself that I'm not having a heart attack. Also, wishing they made office desks with hutches with space in the middle for a large iMac.

(Boy. It would be funny if I really did have a heart attack now. People would link to this blog post and go, "Wow! Irony!" in the same way everyone gets totally tickled to find the Facebook page of a recent mass-murderer. And remember, if I do die, and you pirate Avadon, I will then be able to totally haunt you and I'll be floating by the ceiling when you use the bathroom, making spooky noises.)


(I'm just sayin'.)

In the meantime, if you want to satisfy your cravings for hearing me discuss finer points of computer design in my weird voice, you should go here. It's a Podcast Interview for The Veteran Gamers, and it turned out OK. It should be worth your time, as I talk very quickly.

Finally, as I write this, the Playstation Network has been down for eight days. What's up with that? Networks go down. That's what they do. But eight days? Wow. Can you imagine the apocalypse of sleep-deprived horror going on at Sony now? Something crazy much be wrong.

Normally I wouldn't care, because most of my gaming is single-player, but my PS3 is my Netflix device. I can't watch Netflix on my XBox because the fans in that thing sound like a jet engine powering up. And Netflix on the Playstation requires PSN to work. Because everything about PSN has always been designed from a place of deep hate.
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Posted in avadon, design, ego-massage, humor | No comments

Thursday, 31 December 2009

Listen to Me Talk.

Posted on 15:04 by Unknown
The Active Time Babble podcast at 1up.com has a new, long interview with me. There's a lot of stuff about Avernum 6 and a few tidbits of information about the new game I'm working on. Just the thing to help you not work.
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Posted in avernum, ego-massage, indie, interview, spiderweb software | No comments

Tuesday, 10 March 2009

Welcome To Jeff's Ego Pit!

Posted on 23:48 by Unknown
(Tap. Tap.) Is this thing on?

Hello. I am Jeff Vogel, and this is my blog. I have noticed, over the last few years, that many other successful Indie game writers have their own blogs. They tend to be full of interesting thoughts. I have lots of interesting thoughts too. About game design, about running a games business, about things I feel are funny, and so on. So here they are. I hope some people read them, and that this isn't a gigantic waste of time.

I run a profitable independent game company, and I have done so since 1994. This is a very long time to do this sort of thing. Indie game development, despite the occasional glorious success like Castle Crashers or Braid, is a really tough field to make money in. But I have managed, even though I make RPGs with laughably low budgets and simple graphics. Or, perhaps, BECAUSE I have laughably low budgets and simple graphics.

My blog's title represents what I feel is the highest aspiration of the Indie developer: to be a bottom feeder who has found a reliable food supply. A few Indie developers strike it rich, but most of us who do this for a living survive by finding a small, neglected market (retro single-player RPGs in my case) and workin' it like we mean it.

As time goes on, I will write about running an Indie game business, the process of making the games, and pithy comments on new and successful titles. In addition, I will repost some of the old Grumpy Gamer columns that have been lost forever to time. Most of them are outdated and lame, but some of them are still good and relevant. Along the way, I hope to give some information and tips that fans or aspiring designers might find interesting.

Finally, if you have read this far, I thank you, and my self-esteem thanks you.

On to the show.
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Posted in ego-massage, games, indie, introduction, rpgs | No comments
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