State of the Will - 2023
Overall 2023 was fine. It was a better year than many of the previous years which is a pretty low bar considering the state of the world. This year was full of growth, learning, and patience with myself and others. I had some good and bad work changes, I had some interesting opportunities, as well as passing on a few big jobs.
Year of Craft
This year was the Year of Craft. I set a few abstract values to tackle, and put my growth as a creator as a priority. My biggest goal with Year of Craft was to deconstruct my processes with both my writing and game design to finetune many of those decisions.
For game design this largely happened at the beginning of the year and the end of the year with two very different projects. Fire for Light was wrapping up development and the Storybook was moving into editing by the fine Julie Ahern. As this moved through development I dissected several of design choices I had made, and looking more closely at them in a vacuum I wasn’t very thrilled with how the mechanisms spoke to one another. This led to some last minute conversations about the foundation of the game. Of course, we went to Kickstarter and ended up canceling the project. Greenbriar, as a company, then went through quite a few changes and it never ended up going live again despite another 2 months worth of work. I still hope this game finds a home, and last I spoke with the owner of Greenbriar Games he was trying to make it work someway - but it’s out of my hands.
This whole process made me reflect on working under timelines. I was in charge of my own timeline here and largely with Astro Knights as well. While they were different circumstances, I’ve come to realize that the external handing off of projects is integral to my process. Without a deadline I’d likely iterate forever.
Around September I was hired by Restoration Games to work on an unnamed project. I got to work with the amazing team over there including Brian Neff, Noah Cohen, Rob Daviau, and Justin Jacobs. Those are amazing people (another thing that turns out is important to my process) who provided nothing but support and set me up for success. Since I was starting on this project I put every step under the microscope from onboarding meeting, to note taking, Blue Sky Phase (the concept, not the platform), etc. It was a great project that I ended up playing in person with the team at PAX Unplugged.
The biggest lesson here was that I had taken down notes and ideas to incorporate that ended up not being a priority in practice. Some of those things should have been a priority (and ended up being in the final product) and some shouldn’t have (that ended up being stripped) and I very carefully watched my clock and timeline due to the lessons above.
On the opposite side of the craft coin was writing. This is where a lot of my energy into the theme went, allowing me to examine writing skills I needed to improve. I sent a short story to Jason Sizemore to get some feedback on what needed work, and I put my nose to the grindstone to improve my general prose as well.
Over the course of the year I wrote a novella called Starward Sons, and then rewrote it. And started to rewrite it a third time for NaNoWriMo before deciding to shelf it for a while - which helped as I got deeper into holiday crunch time. I also worked on several short stories; Sometimes a Body racked up a few rejections, I gave my local writing group a dark sci fi story called No One at the End of the Galaxy which they decided was a bad name and to call it Eyes Lonely as the Dark which was the right decision.
Minor craft goals also included doing more artsy crafts. Minion and partner both take part in generally artsy and crafty things - painting, drawing, collages, etc. and while I take the time to be at the table and art with them I don’t take part in those specific activities. This year, I wanted to do that more and… I didn’t. A lot of this came down to poor timing - but if the goal was to make more time for that then I failed to find that time.
I did get to hit another minor goal which was to “craft my space” and by that I meant to decorate my areas more. In particular I had a good year putting stuff on the walls in my office, and rearranging shelving units to better suit me. This one I’ll call a win.
Finally, one of my goals was to craft better records. Thoughts, plans, meeting notes, etc. This is something I wanted to do at the beginning of the year then put off and put off and put off. So, finally here we are. I said I was gonna do this and even though I pushed it off for 365 days I’m here now and this is the beginning of better records. What’s that mean? There’s a blog on my website now. I signed up for Substack back in October to prepare myself, but then they decided to give Nazi’s a platform.
Multiclass
At the beginning of the year I was still the Creative Director at Greenbriar Games, and was finishing up work on Fire for Light as noted above. I had also just wrapped up a game design for a TikTok influencer that I’d been put in touch with through Multiclass Consulting - a company of friends who provide sales, marketing, logistics, etc. insight to growing game publishers.
Turned out to be a great time, and even better for me when Greenbriar began to wind down. One of the owners of Multiclass reached out to me about a job, and I came on board. So far we’ve helped quite a few growing publishers and went to several conventions. It’s some good company, and I’m helping bring in some other folks we can help in 2024.
Game Design
TikTok influencer? Yes. Though the bulk of this project happened in 2022, by January I was bringing this party game to my gaming group to playtest. The game is a bunch of fun and reminds me a lot of the old AEG game Pretense with a bit more variety that would've been a stellar mass market product.
I already mentioned a lot of the work I did on Fire for Light and the mystery Restoration project. Also this year I did a lot of the groundwork for a new iteration for a game I’ve had in my pocket for a while that I’ve “cleverly” called Cluternatural - a coop deduction game where players are monster hunters. And finally I’ve started working on a roleplaying game with Brandon O’Brien that, surprisingly, has nothing to do with Kamen Rider.
Writing
Without a plan for writing this year, I let myself float from project to project as my attention span saw fit. As I rotated through my short stories I firmed up the sorts of stories I wanted to tell, which is where the bulk of changes came to Eyes Lonely as the Dark which was, originally, a very sad story about the pains and suffering in isolation. Eventually grew into a story about a person surviving despite the extraordinary isolation he’s gone through. This new lens helped me put a lot of the stories I’ve been writing into perspective.
Finally, for writing, I decided that in 2024 I’ll return to longer form novels in an attempt to find representation with all these new skills I’ve sharpened. The problem? I have two very different novels in my hand that are vying for my love and attention. I began snowflaking one of them which became a bigger and bigger story the more I dove into it - which means I’ll likely take the other one on first to get it done.
That’s a Wrap
A mostly neutral year with some surprises, including new obsessions of the One Piece Card Game and Disney’s Lorcana in the tabletop place. I also reunited with my love Alan Wake which I finished just a few days ago and would’ve been my Game of the Year if not for Baldur’s Gate 3 which I’m sure is no surprise. I survived my first COVID infection in March, and had a brown Christmas in Minnesota. I played 8 games of Spirit Island over a weekend with a good friend, and spent a week on an Alaskan cruise. Overall, I’m fine with saying goodbye to 2023.