This is the first in a projected series of blogposts leading up to the reveal of my current project. However, they are not meant to hype or detail that project in any way, but rather detail and discuss some topics I have and am still learning along the way which might be of general interest to others.

The most important lesson of all is believe in what you do. Now, this sounds rather obvious, but lets talk about my own previous gaming projects in a very open and honest way.

I have failed at making games. Now, I know that I have the talent and creativity to make games, and to a certain extent, I have a certain amount of programming skills in a wide variety of languages. Anything I can't do, I can easily research and implement quick enough. However, there is something missing in me. Something intangible that some might deem to call "ambition", or maybe possibly "passion".

Why did I make games? Did I really want people to play them? No, I don't think so. For the most part, I made games to prove to myself that I could do them. And that is the crux of the problem - whenever I progressed far enough into a project that I could honestly say to myself: I understand now how this works, I can make it - then I had no real interest in continuing.

As soon as I learned platformer physics and made a demo, I was satisfied. As soon as I made a Zelda-clone in textmode, I was satisfied. As soon as I made a random generated dungeon with ore streams, I was satisfied. As soon as I made a dynamically configurable MUD codebase, I was satisfied. And as soon as I made a custom scriptable game engine with an advanced syntax all on my own, well, you can see that I haven't been working on SEx:Engine for a while.

In making games, I am a failure. I am a success in posing challenges to myself and achieving them, however. My hard drive is full of rather nice unreleased tech demos of board games, a 4k zombie killing co-op game, solar system generators, and the like. However, I have no interest in completing them.

So - what can we learn out of this? Look at what you are doing and think about what you are really getting out of it. Am I disappointed at all of the time I "wasted" with game programming? Of course not! I had hundreds of hours of left-brain fun, I have met interesting people, and I wrote articles on game design which were well-recieved, which is rather ironic, but I do admittedly have more talent in designing that actually implementing.

However, that is not what I want to be remembered for when I die... although I wouldn't mind people playing a game of splattertag in my honor - actually, it would be a fun thought to add an easter egg with a splattycorpse in it if a certain admin code was entered... to beannounceed in my last will and testament.

So, what do I want to be remembered by? And how does this "passion" or "ambition" work, how can you awaken it, and how can you build it up in everyday life?

Stay tuned for the next blog entry, where I talk about how to choose the one idea which can change your life forever.