That strikes me as rather egotistical and categorically unsound.

Another huge problem is when you start a blog you immediately become the mascot of the company, and can either make the company look better (rare) or worse (common). Because of that risk, companies demand you do not have a blog or interact with anyone at all. In fact, most game companies restrict their developers from ever talking to the press or even e-mailing anyone using their company e-mail without first having it cleared by PR.

Regarding the quality of dev blogs, they’re mostly meh. Most of them are independent game designers, or ex-community managers or armchair designers. That said, we do read blogs and they are interesting for their POV. Most of the time bloggers just don’t understand why what they crave is not realistic or good design.

So true. So very true.

@Tesh – love the “rockstar designer” comment. In the book, Good to Great, the team analyzed “rockstar status” CEO’s and found that their stocks, performance, and the performance of the company fared far less than CEO’s who were brought through the company and had a true humility and passion for their companies – instead of the ego-centric self promotion traits. The latter traits focused on good things for the individual, bad things for the company. They also discovered that pay scale for CEO’s had absolutely no bearing on their performance or the performance of the company. They found that CEO’s with humility and passion, who were paid far less but had reasonable vision and the capability to execute far outperformed the insane multi-million dollar rockstar CEO’s.

Sadly – I am butchering an excellent book for any organization (or person thinking of starting an organization) with early morning, lazy paraphrasing.

Point is, look at all the “rockstar” game designers and their recent titles.
‘Nuff Said.

The industry’s “best and brightest” won’t work through the industry until compensation and working conditions mirror effort, talent, education and experience.

Sorry for being so far off topic.

Game designers need not blog if they don’t want to – but painting them with a brush to those who do as somehow lesser than the ones hiding in their ivory towers is absolutely rediculous and irresponsible. In ANY industry, transparency and communication – from a straight business perspective – is paramount in today’s Gen Y consumers who live their lives texting, twittering, blogging, and being in constant communication with one another. Maybe they aren’t your core consumer yet, but they will continue to grow up that way. Ignoring how they communicate to one another and the businesses they wish to associate with is the most common and idiotical of errors.

Case in point – we are working on an email database for our customers. In the old days we had people fill out ballots, snag their emails, and provide them with information and extra value. It’s hard to get people to take that time anymore, everyone is in a rush. Now, in a location, you can text message to number code to a specific number and you get signed up automatically. Takes 5 seconds, and the information is rolling in… because that is how our customer base communicates now. Instant, easy, convenient, electronically. Before we had to rely on staff to approach people at the till to ask them to take the time. Now there are table tents and small signs throughout the store that they can do while they are browsing. Heck, people sign up without ever entering the store because there is a poster in the window too. The world, although resistant to change by us old fogies, is rapidly doing so all around us. Those who adapt will end up winning in the end. Those that play ostrich will not.

In 5 years, every designer worth their salt will be required to have a public blog so customers can relate, understand, empathise, and promote them. Consumers don’t just buy a product because they like it, or find it useful – they need to relate or respect the company that produces that product first. Something as easy as 20 minutes a week can accomplish that without a 100M marketing budget. It will catch on. Especially in an industry that is built around technology, social gaming, and cutting edge crap.

Then again, we’re still a young industry who once praised John Romero (one of the classic examples of a “rockstar” designer), and who still has an annual party to worship ADHD, bling, blood, bo0bs and superficial *digital celebrity* worship. (E3, or even PAX.) That too many game devs buy into their own hype and the “mystique” of the industry only fuels the HR stupidity. It’s the worst sort of inbred self-reinforcing lowest-common-denominator culture.

Also, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, those currently in the game industry aren’t necessarily the best and the brightest. They are more likely to be those with more “passion” and tolerance for crunch (so, those willing to be abused for their interests, rather than those demanding fair compensation for their competencies). The industry needs people like Nick Yee (his Daedalus Project blog is brilliant), but even he’s off doing something else.

It may just be that some of these “armchair” designers are those who *would* be expert designers, if they could put up with the industry, or if it were a meritocracy, rather than an inbred “good old boys network” of little boys who aged without growing up.

I know it’s tough to have an original idea that no one’s at least thought of, but if they don’t get discussed and talked about, someone can have a great idea that just falls by the wayside because they don’t think it’s worth anything.

To be perfectly honest I started out just hoping that people in the industry would read my ideas and think some of them were good, implement them and make games I’d like to play again. There’s been a rash of games that just … suck (to me, anyway) and I’m just not excited about gaming much anymore.

But then I started my company with the hopes of making it a bona fide studio one day to bring my ideas to life because I figured that industry people were so protective of their own ideas and so egotistical that they’d never accept ideas they didn’t think of on their own. Not saying everyone is like that, but apparently if you haven’t shipped 6 AAA titles, you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Really? In my career industry I see very busy people blogging up a storm, writing articles for magazines, presenting at conferences, and writing books. Successful people are by nature very busy people, doing lots of different things, and especially communicating and thinking about what they do.

Most game designers don’t blog because most people don’t blog. There’s nothing particularly special about working in the game design industry that makes it more (or less) likely they would blog as compared to other industries.