News specific to the GamintaFiles site such as changes to the layout or if I take a break from posting.
Gaming is like an old friend to me. It’s always there, always ready to please me when I am interested. Unfortunately, that time is not now. I made a conscious decision to make some big changes in my life. These changes, for the most part, preclude gaming. I can’t say I will never post again, but the odds are low. I will probably still play games casually, but I no longer have the time to really get into them hardcore and write about them.
Diablo 3 has officially launched, and there are a bunch of things I want to write about it on Slash ‘n Blast, my blog about RPG builds. I do not think I can keep up with that as well as GamintaFiles, so this site is going to have a little bit less activity for some time. I will still be posting interesting topics here but probably not at the same frequency as before. Part of the reason I started this blog was because I had a lot of free time while waiting for Diablo 3 to come out.
Basically, I tried to get at least one post out every two weeks. For the next month, it will probably be quiet here. That will change once I have a handle on Diablo 3 though. I might post some stuff here about Diablo 3 if I can think of anything interesting to write about it. The elephant in the room is the real money auction house, but that has been discussed to death on many other websites and forums. I do not have any other ideas yet.
I want this blog to be about interesting topics in the game industry, but I feel like I have been posting too much news without discussion. Occasionally news might warrant discussion, but most times it does not. That means I will rarely be posting news on this blog from now on. I cannot keep up with all the news going on all the time. It requires a full time team. I could choose to post news for specific games I am interested, but I want this to be a general blog not about specific games. Posting news takes time away from me posting more interesting articles, so I definitely do not want to get stuck writing news posts to keep up.
I will still post news if I think it warrants discussion. Some news is about a controversial issue in the industry, and that will be fair game for a post. For example, Blizzard adding a Real Money Auction House to Diablo 3 would be okay if I talk about how this will influence the gameplay and the consumer. At the same time, posts about the Skyrim Creation Kit being delayed again and again would not be okay. There is nothing there to discuss, just news. I probably posted too much about Skyrim in general. I will try not to focus on one game too much in the future.
I sat down today to write a Daily but just did not see anything interesting to write about. I thought it was a good idea at the time, but I think some days there just will not be much to write about. Actually, I did come up with some ideas, but I want them to be longer than a short daily post. I can not call them dailies if they aren’t posted daily. Instead, those regular normal length posts will be in the General category. These will be more opinion heavy. I state some news of the day and write my opinions on them.
Then, there will be the Features category that will be for longer posts. These posts I have thought a lot more about and maybe do some research on. Like my other blog, I do not really want to have a schedule. It makes me think of the blog as work. And it is not, because I do not make any money out of this at all. I am more than willing to write about video games on a schedule for paid work, but I am far from that right now.
I just uploaded the new header image. When I think of intelligence, I think of spy satellites taking photographs and transmitting sensitive information. This is actually a picture of the Hubble Telescope from NASA. It’s not a spy satellite but looks close enough.
I am also using a cropped down version as my new Gravatar. On this particular theme, it will not showed up unless I post a comment, but that is okay. I want my online persona (when I post on other people’s blogs) to be centered around my GamintaFiles blog. All my gaming discussion will be connected to it in some way.
With the basic website stuff done, I am ready to start writing. I am still deciding which topic to start with first. I think I might revisit the blog post I did on the Gamespot blog. I could polish it up a little, update it for the current day, and put it up here. In any case, the first real post should be up sometime next week.
This is my new blog about video game issues, the game industry, game design, and maybe some philosophy too. Over the years I have frequently had a lot to say about various goings-on in current video game culture. Usually, someone would create a discussion on a forum or I might create one myself. In either case I usually had so much to write that people complained my posts were too long. Some even said to “put it on a blog, not here”.
Last year, I did just that and created a free Gamespot blog. However, I didn’t have the motivation then to write anything. I had this whole schedule planned but only wrote one article before abandoning it. I also didn’t like the setup of the Gamespot blog page. It seemed a little bit buggy, and you don’t get much control over how it looks. I would also like to get into writing about the game industry. Having a link to my own blog on my resume will look better than having a link to a Gamespot blog.
About six months ago I started Slash ‘n Blast. It is a blog about RPGs and hack ‘n slash games. I had just picked up Torchlight and was really excited to do a blog about it and maybe Diablo 3 later. Only a month into it, I was already getting bored. This time I just forced myself to keep writing stuff, to keep spending just a little time on the blog each day. Somehow it worked out because I am still writing new posts for that blog. Last month I decided I to restart my general game industry blog with renewed vigor.
So what about the name? Well, it comes from the name of that failed Gamespot blog. GamintaFiles is short for Game Industry Intelligence Files. The idea is that my blog will provide intelligence on the game industry. Each post is basically a “file” with intelligence. It is a simple name but long. For the second iteration of this blog, I decided to shorten things down. I did a Google search for Gaminta and GamintaFiles, but the name didn’t seem to be used. A few foreign language websites were listed that had “gaminta” in the text. Hopefully, it is not a bad word in some other language.
I need to make a few basic pages, make a header image, and choose a background color. Then it is off to the new posts. I have lots of plans for this blog in the future. I hope you will stick around.
Game Industry Intelligence Files 