Building Browsergames

Winding Down

Building Browsergames launched on April 14th, 2008 – almost exactly 11 months ago. In that time, the site has accomplished a lot – we wrote a tutorial, interviewed multiple game creators, and managed to get post-mortems from a handful of different and unique games – like BlackSwordRPG, Booze Quest, Battlemaster, and many others.

Building Browsergames also got a little more public – starting up a Twitter account, becoming a member of 9rules, and forming the PBBG network along with Browser-Based Game Zone and BBG Universe.

I am pretty happy with where Building Browsergames has gotten to – but lately, I’ve been noticing something. The more time I spend writing, the less time I spend creating. At the beginning, Building Browsergames was a fun side project – and now, it’s morphed into a chore. By focusing so much on writing about games, I’ve distracted myself from what I really love – which is creating games.

With that in mind, Building Browsergames is changing gears. I won’t be writing on Monday, or Thursdays – I will now be writing only when I feel I have something useful to say. There won’t be any forced posts or shoddily written tutorials, rushed out under a deadline.

I don’t want Building Browsergames to die. But at the same time, certain circumstances in life have made it impossible for me to maintain a consistent update schedule without severely compromising the quality of my writing – which is not something I want to have happen.

I still want to publish content from other game developers. The PBBG/browsergame niche is so small that there are very few places for a developer’s voice to be heard – and I want Building Browsergames to continue to be one of those places.

With that in mind, the doors are open – anyone who wants to can register for the website, and submit articles for review. I promise to read and review everything that’s submitted, and publish as many viewpoints from as many developers as I can.

I still have plans for Building Browsergames – they are just on hold for now.

I’m extremely grateful for everyone who has e-mailed me and supported me on this – I’ve gotten to talk to some of the developers that I look up to most, in addition to discovering just how many people out there had a passion for developing PBBGs. I’m glad I was able to take it this far, and I hope that things will continue with other people’s contributions.

Luke is the primary editor of Building Browsergames, and has written a large portion of the articles that you read here. He generally has no idea what to say when asked to write about himself in the third person.