I’ve re-started my “daily blog post” mission for this blog, and it’s strange how difficult it is to break the habit. I just gotta keep publishing these posts. It’s kind of like a public promise I’m giving – and I want to keep that promise.

Creating this sort of habit works for pretty much anything: whether it be game development or using Twitter… it’s hard to break when it has come a habit.

We all have experienced this – making decisions based on gut feeling. It can be small or big things in your life, but at some point you cannot rationally tell why you chose to act the way you did – it was just a gut feeling. Or hunch. Or intuition. Call it whatever.

In game development (or game business), do you trust your instincts?

How much you trust them?

Have you tracked how successful your instincts have been? (Tracked rationally, not just on “gut feeling” way of tracking, but actually putting down stats…) I haven’t tracked things down, and now as I think of this, it’s quite hard to say how much my hunch plays role in me doing decisions.

I’d say that I’m the sort of guy who tries to be pretty objective (like that could ever be possible) – and rather than guess what works, I like to test it (or see if somebody else has tested it). But, every now and then I might get into a situation where I just gotta trust my instinct and do quick decisions based on what I see the best way. There might not be a good rationale, but it “just feels right”.

For example, today I wrote a blog post… but deleted it. My gut feeling was saying that it wasn’t the right time for that blog post. So, I deleted it. I can write about that topic later, but now wasn’t the day for it. Was it the right decision? Don’t know, but my hunch was telling me that it would have been the wrong decision to publish that post today.

How’s your hunch working for you? You ever listen to it? Or always?

In yesterday’s post about best feature, I commented how fun it was to smack your opponent outside the actual gameplay.

Then… several guys reported the same: how they enjoy outside gameplay stuff where you can pester your competitors.

Are we – as players – evil?

Are game designers/developers/producers evil… when they create things which we can use for stuff like this?

(Or are we all just creative? Or both?)

I got some emails and comments about the ethics of getting paid to promote something via mailing list. Some people asked if it’s unethical thing to do?

I agree that I could have worded the thing better, but basically… here’s how the story goes.

Let’s suppose you subscribe to some mailing list. Let’s say it’s some game dev mailing list.

When you subscribe to the list, you are announced to get information about news, and products, and promotions and whatnot.

Then you start receiving the emails.

You might not realize, but the game dev mailing list owners get money to show ads and promote stuff in the list. The stuff that you’d hopefully like (since it should be targeted). And if you don’t like it… you can always unsubscribe from the list. All power is within your hands, and nobody else never gets your email (it’s solely only in the game dev mailing list database – as long as you choose it to be).

Now… what I was working on is just the same. Just switch “game dev” with “gamer stuff” and things are pretty equal.

Of course if you have a mailing list where you’ve promised to email only material that’s related for example “Japanese fighting games” and then suddenly start promoting “action race games” or “new game development kit” then of course you are breaking a promise you’ve made to your audience. (Even though some might like the kit news, what they really expected was a new Japanese fighting game).

Anyway.

It’s good that there’s ethics in this world… especially in dealing with emails. Everybody hates spam. Especially when there’s 2078 spam emails in your inbox.

I finished reading a management tips ebook written by a friend of mine. I thought this quote I picked from the ebook was inspiring:

“Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.”
- Uknown

Just read comment from one of you readers:

hi, im new here, this is my first post to this blog, i just ask to this blog owner, what is your target to build this famous blog with million traffic? does it including for making money? can you reply my question to my mail? thanks very much for your apreciation, i pursiate that if you want to reply my answer,

While I won’t be answering via email, I thought that the question was so interesting that I just had to write the answer here, in a specific blog post.

So… why do I do this stuff? (stuff here meaning writing this blog)

Here’s some things that have happened to me after I started writing this blog:

• I’ve got some pretty cool contacts ranging from producers from top notch companies such as EA, Sony, Relic, and many more
• Even cooler: I’ve come to know many, many more indie developers than I did earlier
• Almost million unique visitors have been here on this blog (that’s pretty cool)
• I’ve got job offers from some nice places (even from here in Finland, and we don’t have many companies here)
• I’ve got to work with various really interesting companies and I’ve been able to help people out
• There’s people saying that they like the site content (that’s like the best thing to hear)
• I’ve got some decent deals and got some decent income from various places
• I’ve managed to share some pics of our dogs
• I’ve learned a lot

But… none of these is the main reason why I like to (do gaming stuff and) update this blog. The “thanks” part is of course really nice (and can’t blame for any $$$), and even though there’s like million people who have came here, the main reason why I do this stuff is:

• Because I like doing this stuff.

It’s just simple as that.

I like writing this stuff. It really didn’t matter to me whether there was 1 or 1000 or 1 million people reading this stuff. I… just like doing this and now have been doing this for like 4 years or so. When the site traffic went up, I continued writing. When it got down, I continued writing. When it got back up again, I continued writing.

I guess this is no different from you guys who read this blog: you also like doing indie stuff and will be doing that even if you were the last person on earth. (Hey, that’s a good definition for indie I’d say)

We just like doing this stuff and keep on doing as long as it’s fun. Right?

It sucks to be ill. Especially when you’ve promised to deliver something yesterday. I promised to get Dead Wake community version out this weekend (aimed for yesterday, but said that I’d do it “on Sunday”). Well, guess what – now I got this fraking fever and a sore throat.

I feel faint and bad due being ill, but I feel much worse for not being able to do what I promised.

This sucks.

Every now and then I meet some dude who has a weak handshake. It feels something like a dead fish greeting or something. Not necessarily a totally bad thing, but kind of sends a bit bad image about the guy. Similarly, I occasionally meet some people with a really firm handshake (strangely enough, they are often pretty old folks).

It gives you a strange feeling when a somebody gives you a lousy handshake, and on the other hand – when you meet somebody (almost) stranger giving a firm handshake you immediately form an opinion about him. A firm handshake gives me a sign about a strong person (businesswise), a weak handshake about a weak person.

What your handshake tells about you?