So how is the view from way up here? It’s great actually -- we’re really happy with how Cataclysm is going so far, and we have big surprises on the horizon. On the other hand, there are details you can see at ground level that you can’t make out from 10,000 feet.

When we started these blogs, the idea was to foster developer communication to the players without some of the inherent problems of posting in forums. Some players have pointed out recently, and we totally agree, that the blogs up until now have been from a very high vantage point. We looked for topics with universal interest that would feel important and newsworthy. That has worked overall, but we also feel like we’ve lost something from when I used to be down in the metaphorical trenches talking to players in the forums.

The Game Prodigy strives to provide game design articles and discussion that are immediately practical to readers. We believe that a game design resource should be as useful to game designers as a programming how-to is to an engineer, or a style guide is to an artist. Game design discussion should be useful, concrete, and understandable.

Game Design in itself, not game programming, not project management, but just deciding what to build, is a difficult problem in itself. There are common problems in game design that have been solved, and designers should have access to those solutions from other games and developers instead of having to retrace the same steps.

For this reason, at The Game Prodigy we focus less on theory and more on results. We look at case studies of successful designs and see how we can use them in our own games. We discuss the merits of different designs and what platforms they are appropriate for. We avoid talking about designs in a vacuum, instead saying, “This design was used in this context and produced this result.”

As I work towards completing my own game, I’ve been thinking a lot about finishing projects in general. I’ve noticed that there are a lot of really talented developers out there that have trouble finishing games. Truthfully, I’ve left a long trail of unfinished games in my wake… I think everyone has. Not every project is going to pan out, for whatever reason. But if you find yourself consistently backing out of game projects that have a lot of potential, it could be worth taking a step back and examining why this happens.