When was the last time I went an entire day without hearing the word “Twitter?” I honestly can’t remember. Clearly the twitterers (twits?) have won — so I will join them. That’s right, you can now follow Groundswell Games on Twitter.

You can tweet me directly using @gswellgames. If you want to follow along but don’t want to join Twitter, just turn your attention to the new Twitter Updates section in the sidebar, or subscribe to my Twitter feed via RSS.

There you have it, I’m a twit. Want to know the best part? I think I like it. Blogging causes a certain amount of performance anxiety for me, but tweeting is quick, easy, and fleeting. If you’re interested in keeping up with the ins and outs of my game development exploits, Twitter is your best bet. Even better, my Twitter feed should start including an update every time I publish a new blog post.

My goals as a new Twitter user? 1. Keep it relevant. 2. Avoid Twitter jargon in everyday conversation — I may be jumping on the bandwagon, but I don’t have to ride shotgun.

Tweet tweet!

Ah, the holidays. Nothing is better for turning optimistic productivity into an overwhelming sense of “I accomplished nothing today.” My blogging pace has suffered, as you might have noticed, at the arrival this funny thing we call December. It’s a time when the routine balance between personal and professional inevitably tilts one way or the other — and neither direction favors hobbies.

Nevertheless, I’m making some progress on my side project. Currently I’m working to model and texture the main environment for the game. Though this project is far less demanding on the artistic side, the work still has me looking at quite a long list of required assets. But today I found some good advice on art for indie games.

I programmed some of the basic mechanics for this project back in the summer when I first had the idea and was playing around with Unity, so once the main environment is finished, I’ll be able to focus on level design and refining the gameplay. From there it’s user interface and sound.

Yeah, there’s still a lot to do, but this project is so compact compared to my main one that I might just have a chance of finishing. At this point I remain optimistic. More details to come — as soon as I finish my shopping.

I’m sure all of you who regularly read my posts (thanks) are probably wondering when you’ll actually get to see something other than a little blue man and a crate. In fact, how can you be sure that I’m really developing a game at all? I haven’t mentioned its name, given any insight into characters or plot, or even shown any concept art. My blog’s appearance is pretty bare; it’s just a stock Blogger template. I haven’t mentioned a web site. The list goes on.

So when can you expect me to deliver something real? I’m working as hard as I can (damn that day job) to create something reasonably professional for you. I don’t want to embarrass myself, after all. The truth is I’m learning as I go, and that means a good deal of trial and error.

Beyond the tortoise-like pace of development, my real hesitation is a desire to promote this video game in a meaningful way. The blog is obviously a part of that strategy — an experimental way to build an audience (tell your friends) and a game at the same time.

Now, one approach to the blog would be simply to post every asset I create one at a time. This would lead to a wonderfully long list of posts showing off disconnected, even random pictures of boxes, trees, buildings, people, animals. It would also leave no surprises for the game itself. If you’ve already seen all the locations and read about all the characters’ inner-most secrets, why would you play? (If you are interested in random pictures, you will transfixed by this endless slide show.)

So I have to control myself. I will want to post pictures of everything, but, no, the trick is to write interesting (and I hope enjoyable) posts while establishing a controlled leak of information that will help build a grass-roots interest in this game I claim to be creating. I mean, how could it not work?