Sweater Weather and Pumpkin Spice
We are slowly but surely getting to the end of summer, and you know what that means: Pumpkin pecan waffle candles at Bath & Body Works; Pumpkin Spice Lattes at Starbucks; sweatpants and hoodies around the house... Sweater weather is almost here, and I’m so ready for it.
I’m also hoping to get back into a more predictable blogging routine. I’m still doing a lot of work on the backend, given that I’ve got around 375 old articles that I’m slowly transitioning to Squarespace. But once that wraps up, I can spend that time writing new posts instead.
Anyway, I just thought I’d lay out a few updates on where things are right now. More specifically, I’ll touch on three of the main topics I blog about: Video games, reading, and writing.
Author’s note: I should have stuff for a more family-centric update next month; we’ve got our “big” ultrasound in a few days and seeing Baby Goomba again will merit a special post.
A change in perspective
My video game habits have changed a lot over the past 6 months. Part of that is the fact that I’m playing Xbox with my brother several times a week. (He survived an almost-fatal skiing accident in February, and spending time together has become more of a priority since then.)
I haven’t touched Destiny 2 in months, and haven’t actually “completed” one of Destiny’s seasonal stories or expansion campaigns in about 2 years. So, after an incredibly drawn out “on-again, off-again” relationship, I might finally have broken up with Destiny. Instead, my brother and I are splitting time between a few games:
Rocket League, which remains one of the most entertaining co-op games
Sea of Thieves, which now has over 200 hours of story content!
And Overwatch 2, which I never got into but now realize it’s one of the coolest shooters of the past decade.
Besides that, I’m chipping away at Tears of the Kingdom (the new Zelda game) and goofing off in Pokémon Gaia, which is an emulated GameBoy Advance game I can play on my phone.
Sort of a funky period, really, but I’m loving all of these games for different reasons. Things might change in the coming months, and they will definitely change in January when Baby Goomba is born. But for now, this is just kind of where things are.
Writers are readers at heart
In terms of “other stuff,” I actually finished reading The Dream Architects: Adventures in the Video Game Industry. The author, David Polfeldt, is the managing director of Massive Entertainment, the studio behind The Division (and currently developing open-world games for Star Wars and Avatar).
It was a fascinating read. Unlike something like Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, the author isn’t just telling stories about making games — he gets deep into the weeds, sharing his thoughts on the psychology of being creative or the different levels of art in gaming (visual art, programmatic art, audio art, etc.).
He also talks through how to build a team and company, how to manage hundreds of people, and how to be an intermediary between big egos, whether that’s inside a creative team or as part of a large multi-branch conglomerate.
There are also deeply personal stories about depression and self-doubt, and even how the process of making art can ruin relationships and private lives.
Polfeldt holds nothing back, and his quirky Swedish charm made even the “slow” chapters engaging to read.
Author’s note: I’ve also been going through the oldest Legend of Drizzt novels by R.A. Salvatore. I just finished book three, and am about to start the original trilogy which came out before I was born. These are classic fantasy works I haven’t read since I was in middle school, so it’s been a lot of fun (and nostalgia) enjoying them again.
Routine writing update
At this point in time, I’m slowly chipping away at my ongoing-yet-completely-redone worldbuilding project. You might be tired of hearing about it at this point (I’m certainly tired of writing updates about it.) but things are going well.
In some ways, the months-long experiment with anthropomorphism helped a lot. I spent time distilling a lot of my core civilizations into caricatures, and also imagining things like fashion and architecture — details I hadn’t gotten around to even though they could have big, very cool influences on how I approach writing future stories.
I am dedicating August to going back through my “history of the world” documents and trying to craft, edit, and polish all of them into a brief overlook of how the world came to be, how key cultures rose (and fell), and how the world changed to become the current setting I’m writing about. After that, it’ll be time to rework the different fantasy races; I’m actually looking forward to that part, because a lot of it will be reviewing the anthropomorphism ideas and seeing what, if anything, I can keep or recycle for this project. Once that’s done, I’ll get back to mapmaking.
The scale keeps growing, and so do my dreams. But with enough work — and actually sticking to my self-enforced deadlines — I’ll be ready to start writing short stories sometime in October.