Oh Jesus, Why Is This Jerk Making Another Stupid Blog
im too old for tik tok lol
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When someone starts yet another unnecessary blog in 2021, that person has a moral obligation to explain why anyone should give a shit what he says.
Hi. My name is Jeff Vogel. My wife and I run a tiny indie computer game company called Spiderweb Software. Indie means we don't have a publisher, or resources, or money, or hope. We're just humble toymakers.
But here's the thing. We've been doing it non-stop for 27 years, longer than pretty much anyone else. When you get a World Record in something as goofy as this, it's still a World Record.
Also, I've been writing about video games and the video game industry for 25 years, usually paid. My writing has been read by millions of people. Which is hard to do when you write about video games.
And people should write about video games. It's a hundred billion dollar a year global industry whose work is just about the only thing keeping countless people from COVID-seclusion-madness. Perhaps video games shouldn't be important, but they are.
This blog will focus on video games, mostly. The designing of them. The business of selling them. But there will also be lots of tangents into things my math-addled game-designer brain finds interesting.
I plan to get into politics as little as possible. Whenever I've shared my political opinions publicly, I have regretted it. Though, in this crazed online mental environment, wanting peaceful corners free from hot political takes is itself a hot political take.
So I will try to make this useful to people who care. I promise that my takes will be at least a little spicy. If I seem clever, be assured I am not and really doing this to shill for my games.
I write on an uneven schedule, but I try to make things I write worthwhile. If you'd like to hear when I have some free words available, subscribe here. Subscribing is (and will probably always be) free ...
The Exile III screenshot brings back so many good memories. The Exile games, exactly how they were at release with their graphics, resolution and controls, still hold up as excellent roleplaying games and an excellent user experience even in 2021. It's crazy to me how there are rougelike RPGs that have been in early access/alpha for years developed by a full team of experienced people with modern knowledge, workflow and technology; and these games still don't hold a candle to the Exile trilogy. I hope that sometime this century there will be a stable port to Windows 10 (and/or beyond) as the only way I found to revisit these memories was by attempting and only partially succeeding at running Windows 98 in a virtual machine.
I remember many happy hours playing Exile: Escape from the Pit in the late 90's. My mom had a Mac, which at the time meant that it was nearly impossible to find any games that would run on it. Fortunately, Exile was there for all my dungeon-crawl needs :D