Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Back

It has been over three years since I posted to this blog. I guess if you are looking for a daily feed you are pretty disappointed. But, daily posts are clearly not my blogging style. There are several problems with daily posts. First, it is a major challenge to come up with something worthwhile to say every day. And if one is forced to write something every day they will become shallow in their observations. Second, I prefer to write when I feel like writing. This is because I like to think about things and hold off writing until I have something that I think is worth saying. And, third, if you write everyday, then the posts you wrote a year ago are probably no longer worth reading.

My approach is to take a longer view of blogging. I write when I have something to say. And I write things that are, hopefully, as worthwhile to read years later as they are on the day I post them. I view a blog as a long term effort where I share my thinking about various topics. Sometimes you can see how my thinking evolves on specific topics. Sometimes I can see how my thinking evolves. Hopefully, the things I write will stimulate your thinking about the topics that I write about as much as they stimulate my thinking..

This particular blog captures my evolving thinking about video games. If you are interested in my thinking on more general topics, you can check out my main blog Ranting and Reflecting . I think about a lot more things than video games. And that blog captures a wider range of topics. I also contribute, on a regular basis to LinkedIn forums such as the American Philosophical Association forum and The Future Role of IT. You will notice a similar style on Ranting and Reflecting. I start thinking about something, post a few bits about it, and then disappear for a while. If you look at this from the perspective of daily blogging it makes no sense. But, if you look at it as a record of thinking that evolves over decades, it makes a lot more sense.

Now that I am back on this blog again I am going to do three things. First, I am going to review what I said before and see if it needs any reflection or commentary. Then, I am going start reviewing the foundation literature of video games. Along the way I will toss in some observations about where the field of video games has come from and where it is going. In the past five years or so I have reviewed over fifty scholarly books and articles for The Association for Computing Machinery's online review journal Computing Reviews  and I have played way too much World of Warcraft . So, it isn't like I haven't been doing anything. And since video games are only one of my many interests I have been involved in a lot of other things as well. But my style of work is to work on whatever I happen to be interested in until I am no longer interested and then drop it and come back when I am interested again. I think it is time to pay attention to video games again.