Monday, January 6

2014: Setting Myself Some Goals

Like I did last year, I'm setting myself some goals for the year. As I mentioned last week, I had mixed success with my goals last year, I aced the blogging ones but made pretty poor progress on the games design ones. So this year, I'm going to stretch myself on the blogging ones again, and reign in my designing goals to something a bit more realistic.


Games Design

I want to make some decent progress on Vacuum, and Dragon. I want to get Zombology to the state where I can consider hawking it to publishers or going it alone (again) and I'd like to do NaGa Demon again in November. I'm thinking print and play again, I felt it was a great success this year.


Blogging

I want to blog every Monday for the year, plus a bunch more posts in November for NaGa DeMon. I managed 76 last year, so let's say 75 for 2014. Last year's page views were the best ever by quite some stretch and also included my best two months ever, both better than the reddit month which I thought was completely unbeatable. I'd targetted 20,000 views for the year but ended up getting over 35,000. This year's target is 40,000 over 10% growth. My blogger followers went from 49 to 56 last year, a gain of seven. I'm hoping for another 10 this year. As you can see these are all a stretch, hopeful they'll encourage me to do more on the blog and continue building an audience, which might help if I ever have a game to actually sell in future!


Gaming

I've had in my head over the last 7 years a goal of playing as many games as there are days in the year. I've managed it 4 times including 2013. My goal for 2014 is to do it again. I'd also like to end the year with no games in my collection that I haven't played in over a year. Exceptions for games that I own for sentimental reasons (i.e. Reiver Games' games and games that I've received as gifts for certain things) and games that we own as a family (that I'm not particularly keen on playing). I'm going to use this to focus my collection on games that I actually play (or want to play). So I'll probably get rid of a few more of the ones that aren't seeing any action.


It's good to have something to aim for, something to stretch me and stop me just coasting along.

6 comments:

GamesBook said...

Maybe make goals more definite and measurable "I want to make some decent progress on Vacuum, and Dragon" means what exactly?

Jackson Pope said...

Hiya Derek,

A valid point. How about:
* I want to get Vacuum out to a few more playtester once I've changed a few things.
* I want to make at least four versions of Dragon.

Cheers,

Jack

Unknown said...

Hi Jack,

Just a comment, you mention followers, I don't actually follow you from the 'blog' follow but subscribe to your blog's RSS feed from within Feedly. I mention it as you may not realise you may already have more people following you than you think!

Also, just to follow up on GamesBook's comment, your goals are light but as they are personal in nature maybe you dont want them to be truly measurable. If you do consider making them 'SMART'... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria

Always read with interest when I catch up on your blog a couple of times a month on Feedly.

take care

Richard

Jackson Pope said...

Hiya Richard,

Long time no see! I hope you and yours are all well and thanks for reading. I use followers as a proxy for engaged audience, I'm sure that there are plenty of regular readers who aren't blogger followers, but it's an easy way to see whether my regular audience is increasing, static or decreasing.

I'm aware of SMART goals (I work as a Project Manager), but they feel a bit too worky for my hobby/passion, so I play fast and loose with my goals here!

Cheers,

Jack

Unknown said...

Hi Jack,

Been a long while! We're still playing relatively regularly and you come up as a topic of conversation every so often :-).

I mention SMART slightly tongue in cheek :-P.

Keep them fast and loose :-).

Cheers

Richard

Jackson Pope said...

Hiya Richard,

Say hi to everyone down there! Fast and loose it is :-)

Cheers,

Jack