What's this about?

Dear The Internet,
I'm a bright guy. I catch on quick to things. I never quite manage to be the best at them, but I'm at least competent at anything I've set my mind to learn how to do. So... I wanna make a video game.

This video game is going to be terrible at first. Truly awful. But I shall learn with the internet and make it better and better, and document this gradual evolution in blog form, for all to see. I shall do all this because I have a plan, that plan is in terms of achievable commitments, and each step is something productive that I'll be able to care about.

So this is part introduction, part open letter to the public, part business plan, and part memo to myself. Monday through Friday, between 5 and 8 pm, I'm going to either look up something about video gamery, or I'm going to work on something related to my video game. Before midnight, I'll have a post up on this blog about what I learned and/or did. The going may be slow at first, but the progress will be cumulative and I'll be making it regularly. Every time I have something approximating a "level" or "chapter" or anything that has a clear beginning/middle/end, I'll find a way to make it available to the internet somehow or another. Even if I have to email it to people one at a time.

During the day Monday through Friday, I'm looking for a job. Whenever I get one, however long that takes, I'm going to reduce my output to Mondays and Fridays, giving me the work week to make one and the weekend to make one. I'll make more if I can, but I'll make at least two every week. If I'm not working on it twice a week, it's not my hobby any more and I've given up. The least I can do is wrap up what I did each time to publicly document my progress.

I'm also going to make what I call the Twenty Dollar Millionaire Promise. Until or unless I have a million dollars, anyone who gives me twenty dollars can have free access to all results of this project, except of course selling them to other people for your own profit. Unless you do work for me, I guess. Then you can totally have a share in how things come out, because you put your own creativity into it. Oh, but if you just give me advice in the comments or say, "You should do this, that, or the other," I'll take it as friendly advice freely given. Or constructive criticism, at the firmest. Any firmer and you're just being a dick, so please don't.

I'm going to have to put a warning on my front page about adult content, I guess. That will be priority number one. Then I'm going to look up how to make a video game: I've Googled it and have some promising-looking results. Anyway, selling "everything forever" for twenty bucks is a low entry point, which means I'll be selling bits and pieces of this game for even tinier amounts. If I can figure out how to set it up, I'll sell it for fifty cents when it's text-based. A dollar if I ever make it a side-scroller. Two dollars if I ever get it to the level of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Let's see... five dollars if I get it to Doom-ish quality (that third dimension is a pain), but four if we only get to the Legend of Mana 2^1/2 -D phase. For ten dollars, you'll get something Morrowind-ish, I suppose, and if I can make something as expansive and detailed as Morrowind all by myself, then I'll be very happy with myself. After I make a million dollars, well, you'll probably have to pay retail price for a finished product. Because if I haven't made a finished product with a million dollars, then damn, what the Hell have I been doing?

So that's my plan. Wish me well, folks! I'm going to spend the rest of the weekend diving into this, and we'll see how things go between now and Monday.

- T