A New Kind of Game Design Journal by Independent Designers
"After Journey's End" Volume 1 is out!
Hey all, so in the past months I reached out to some game developer friends and organized a Game Design Journal! It’s also Substack-based - you can learn about it and subscribe for free here:
The general idea behind it was that I wanted to start something that could collect writing from multiple independent game designers, reflecting on games they’ve already released, but outside the framework of a business-y ‘postmortem’. Rather I wanted readers to see how it is that game designers work through problems - or, what game design is really like, in a more informal setting without the posturing of e.g. a talk or something.
Too often game design is framed as this golden ticket to getting rich, if only you can figure out the right genre to make a game in, and copy enough good ideas! These problems stem from a variety of things. But, the future to new, enriching games is in the scattered and worldwide group of small-scale designers who take their craft, art, and historical context seriously, rather than in people who view it as a means to an silly end, like becoming a millionaire, shaking hands with Hideo Kojima, proving all JRPGs suck, launching their merch-waste empire, etc.
This journal project doesn’t just surface new writing by independent designers - I want the posts to act as a ‘nexus’ to the designers’ other writing. There are a few other types of game-writing aggregation available (like Critical Distance) but their focus is more towards criticism/reviews/analysis. There’s lots of designer blogs if you know where to find it, but it’s quite hard unless you’re ‘in the scene,’ I guess. Each post in After Journey’s End links to the designer’s other writing, if they have a blog.
Anyways hope you enjoy and stay tuned for an eventual Volume 2! Wahoo!
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