Yesterday, I did something for the first time since I was 13

I can write pretty passable HTML and CSS. My knowledge of PHP is limited. I still don’t understand arrays. Object Oriented Code sounds clever to me. That last game I wrote was nearly 30 years ago (it was a simulation of a gold mine on the Spectrum. It would fit a free-to-play design well, now I think about it).

I’m not expecting to release anything for a long while, if ever. But I am spending more of my time on game design these days. My focus is designing the long-term game: the retention loops that add fun and longevity to the game without which a F2P game can’t thrive. I want to get my hands dirtier with the core elements of game making.

I don’t expect to be a coder. I expect to work with people who are more talented, more practiced and more focused than me. I do expect to understand the building blocks of their job. It’s why I hand-coded the whole of www.nicholaslovell.com by hand, but am now working with an external designer to redo it, probably in WordPress. It is crazy to build a website by hand but, by crikey, does it teach you a lot about the process.

Now that I understand the process, I am much better at commissioning websites and advising people on how to improve them. That’s why I fired up GameMaker yesterday.

I’ll let you know how I get on.