Monday, January 7

Setting Some Goals

It's a time of year traditionally dedicated to proudly proclaiming a set of Resolutions about how you will improve yourself that inevitably fall by the wayside by the end of January as things settle back to normal after your Christmas blowout.


Rather than set myself some New Year's Resolutions in that vein, I've decided instead to set myself some Games Design Goals instead. I'm not promising anything, I'm not changing the way I live my life (no matter how short-lived!), I'm just going to state for the record what I hope to achieve with Codename: Vacuum this year. I might achieve them, I might not, but I'll certainly try and it'll be interesting at the end of the year to look back and see how successful I've been in meeting them.


Creation and Play Goals


My goals are pretty simple for Creation and Play, now I'm back, I'd like to establish myself as a regular blogger again. The aim is to blog once a week on a Monday morning. I expect to miss a few due to holidays and illness/laziness, but I'd like to blog at least 45 times this year. I've hit 60,000 page views for the blog now over its 3 year history of stats. I'd like to get above 80,000 by the end of this year with a few extra followers to boot.


Codename: Vacuum Goals


I'm really pleased with the progress I'm making on Codename: Vacuum, the next stage is to get it out in the world. I'd like to get copies to my previous gaming buddies in York and Bedford by the end of February and then several copies to blind playtesters by the end of May. I hope that I'll be able to incorporate their feedback and have a print-ready game (sans artwork) by the end of November, when I need to decide whether the game is good enough to publish and if it is, what route to take to market.


There's a fair amount or graft needed to reach those goals, but if you don't set yourself something challenging you'll just fanny on interminably. Wish me luck!

6 comments:

Hoopy said...

Good luck!

Jackson Pope said...

Hiya Hoops and Brett,

Thanks for your support guys. Brett: You just have written it down! We're gonna hold you to that now...

As for playing Codename: Vacuum, once I've got some rules written up I can send you some PDFs if you like?

Cheers,

Jack

Unknown said...

Jack -

My name is Andrew and I'm a relative newcomer to this site, but as an aspiring board game designer I am quite interested in the content. After reading this post, I did some research further back in your blog to see what Codename:Vacuum is all about, and I'm really into it.

Anyhow, I have a game review site - dicetemple.tumblr.com - which I also host on gameboardgeek and fortressat.com, and was interested in getting a prototype if you were willing to supply one. I know the game is early development, but I thought it would be fun to be part of playtesting and check out what was going on so far, as well as give a sneak peak of things to come on my site.

If its too much of a hassle I understand, prototypes can be cumbersome to duplicate, but let me know. Either way, good luck and keep up the awesome blog! Reach me at maloney_andrew_t(at)yahoo.com

Jackson Pope said...

Hiya Andrew,

Thanks for the offer. I hope to have some review copies ready by May, so I'll add you to the list.

Cheers,

Jack

Mavis Cruet said...

I'd also love to do a blind play test.....

Jackson Pope said...

Hiya Mavis,

Cool - thanks I'll add you to the list!

Cheers,

Jack