Then, as far as blogs go, regardless of who writes it, Moorgard, Carrottop (one word or two?), or Jesus, you have to evaluate the ideas objectively and take what you think is worth taking away from it. As with any job, you have to continually evaulate yourself and your ideas to get better, if you assume you, or anyone else has all of the answers then you probably suck and are just oblivous.

Chuckie: Are we gonna have a problem here?

Clark: No, no, no, no! There’s no problem here. I was just hoping you might give me some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the southern colonies. My contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities, especially in the southern colonies, could be most aptly described as agrarian precapitalist.

Chuckie: Let me tell you something -

Will: Of course that’s your contention. You’re a first-year grad student; you just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably. You’re gonna be convinced of that ’till next month when you get to James Lemon. Then you’re going to be talking about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That’s gonna last until next year; you’re gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin’ about, you know, the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.

Clark: Well, as a matter of fact, I won’t, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social -

Will: “Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth”? You got that from Vickers’ “Work in Essex County,” page 98, right? Yeah, I read that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or do you, is that your thing, you come into a bar, read some obscure passage and then pretend – you pawn it off as your own, as your own idea just to impress some girls, embarrass my friend?

Clark: [looks down in shame]

Will: See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you’re gonna start doin’ some thinkin’ on your own and you’re going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don’t do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a f***in’ education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!!

Who’s the better designer in the industry today? Someone who can quote from Raph Koster’s “A Theory of Fun” or Richard Bartle’s “Designing Virtual Worlds” or someone who can come up with come up with original ideas? Are original ideas even that great an idea? Even if they are, does it matter how great the ideas are that a designer can come up with if they can’t actually communicate or implement those ideas into the context of a game?

That applies to pretty much everyone that works on a game. Dev working on the UI layer is very different then network for example. This is another example of why game credits have little to no value.

Even when one is on the inside it is typical to not know what many people do, even when they are on your team. Internal communicating what works and does not work is a large challenge for an organization. Communicating the same type of information to customers just adds to that challenge. At some point there will be a common vocabulary that will set in but that is still being created.

Except for this blog, of course, which you can trust implicitly. But you knew that already!

We of course knew that! Besides, right and wrong when it comes to blogging and theory isn’t really possible. It can be right for you and wrong for Ryan. What works for me at my job doesn’t necessarily work for the guy next to me. In fact, it frequently doesn’t.

Is there value to game blogs? I’d say, “yes, a whole lot” for two reasons. One, I write one and I’m bias. Number two, however, is much more tangible (and by tangible I mean theory). Players seem to love them. If no blog written by one professional developer never helps another I think it helps a game as a whole with customers. We love direct access to developers even if we don’t know what you do specifically. It comes back to the whole situation about how engaging your community directly can increase your profits.

It is, in a way, like a mini-fan faire. At the real thing you and I met, talked shop and that gave me an idea of who you are and what you do. It also increased my confidence (and by association the guild I lead’s confidence) in your product. We got a lot out of that experience and became far more partisan to EQ2 (at the time) and to you. Since we can’t do that all the time a blog is like the next best thing!