Wow, it's been quite a holiday break. Officially, I suppose I didn't get a break (except those 4 days we actually closed the office), but when my wife is on vacation, I pretty much join her, and don't feel guilty about it.
So many cool presents,
so much awesome relaxation and accomplishing of nothing. I can't even guess how many movies we watched.
But now the new year has started, and we all know the rules for that: You make up a bunch of lofty goals and behavior mods. Then you ignore them. A new year always feels like a fresh start, and it's always exciting. In addition to the whole numerical newness, I think the fact that we have that huge wad of vacation and holiday time, and such great excess and indulgence, I think that's why it feels so much like starting over. You work all year to get to that sparkling blast of joy and fun, then when it's over, with the last champagne cork popped, reality sets in. It's time to work again. I think it's anthropologically significant that most of the biggest holidays are in the middle of winter, but that's a whole other story.
My goals? They are big as always. I'll share some. I intend to release
something every single month of 2004. 'Something' can be as minimal as an add-on world, though. I qualify it as anything worthy of sending out the announcement newsletter. I've written up plans of just what I will be releasing for almost every month, and there's a lot in there that should be surprising and fun (obviously we couldn't release a whole new game every month...). On top of that, there will be one improvement to the website each month. They may be too small to notice sometimes. I'll think you'll notice when I get up the improvement I have in mind for this month. But the main thing is to get me focusing on making the website better and easier to use. Once it's up and working, I tend to just forget about it and dive into more game development. A website should always be an ongoing project.
There's lots of other stuff, of course, but those are the kickers, businesswise. I am hoping to really overcome my inertia problem, Hamumu has been feeling sluggish for a while. One part of work I always enjoy is planning (designing games of course being the ultimate! I do that purely for entertainment), so these first couple of days are great. Too bad they're under the looming pressure of getting my recordbooks up to par! I've got a lot to do...
