Overwhelming Options

Today I got up, I went to work, I came home. I sat in front of my computer and caught up on my social sites and daily news sites. Then, I was at a bit of a loss at what to do next.

I had given up playing video games for the next month in an effort to force myself to do other things, but I hadn't really thought about what I'd be doing instead of gaming. I mean, I have general plans of what I'd like to accomplish, but the simple act of filling all my free time was a bit overwhelming.

I checked my Firefox bookmarks to see if anything else online looked interesting. I had gotten into the habit of bookmarking articles that looked interesting but were too long to digest at that moment. It was somewhat lazy, but at least I had a record of them to come back to when I had a chance.

I picked Ernest Adams' No Twinkie Database of bad game design choices to check out. I actually began to explore his site a little more, and found his list of quotes for designers to be inspirational. I also stumbled across a link to download an old design document template created by Chris Taylor, designer of Total Annihilation and (one of my personal favorites) Dungeon Siege. The template is exhaustive but easy to use with many comments from Taylor explaining the entries.

In all, not a bad haul for the first evening. This week I'll use the template to help flesh out some of the game ideas I've had bouncing around in my head for a while.