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Find the fun (even if you’re not making DOOM)

July 30, 2024

John Romero, in “DOOM Guy”:

As a game designer, playing the game is essential, not just to test out the features you’ve created, but to find the fun. Sometimes, that fun isn’t in the things you thought were features, as was the case with the early Wolfenstein, or worse, the features are getting in the way of the fun. This is why completing an early “first playable” of a game is so important. “First playable” is an industry term and defines the point at which the core loop of the game is completely playable. For a first-person shooter, that core loop is often something like this: Players and enemies can move, shoot at one another, take damage, and die.

I set a timer for 10 minutes and the goal is to grab a book highlight and share some thoughts on it. That makes it a little bit of a game. It makes it a little bit more fun.

I haven’t written on here in a bit. I want to find the fun in it though. I’ve continued writing daily, though more back to private writing. I was writing in Google Docs for a few months and have recently given Obsidian a second try and have been really liking it this time around. It’s gotten to where it does increase the fun of writing.

Or maybe it’s the engagement of writing? In any case, I’m enjoying pulling up a weekly note and filling in daily prompts. While not Morning Pages as prescribed by Julia Cameron, my daily writing in Obsidian does seem to accomplish the idea of being windshield wipers for the brain.

One of the prompts I fill in daily is around my information diet. So I just try to write down 1 thing I read, 1 thing I listened to, and 1 thing I watched lately. Over a few days repeating this, I realized that it’s the section that’s the most publish-able of my private notes.

And I have a place to publish them. So I may as well post here.

Different blogs through my life have been a place where I’ve been able to find the fun in writing.

(Though not as fun as playing or making DOOM. Oh on that note, check out this video I made where I loaded DOOM textures into the world with the Vision Pro.)

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Doom GuyJohn Romero
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