My name is David Logan, I'm from Melbourne, Australia. I'm a game designer of both video games and tabletop and while I haven't got the talent or abilities of a writer i enjoy putting together stories and just generally letting ideas run wild. I'm very much an optimistic dreamer which is my gift and at other times my curse as getting stuck inside your own head can be time consuming and i'm constantly putting things on hold to write down other ideas and projects which can last days at a time.
My father always drummed into my head as a child that when you have a good idea you should write it down because you may forget it and as you get older those ideas can stop coming if you don't keep exercising them. As a result i'm currently sitting on 15 mmo designs, 13 mobile game designs and just over 100 tabletop game designs, i'm not quite sure this is what he had in mind. Also what he failed to mention back then was that there's a certain amount of pain and misery in knowing that not all of your ideas will see the light of day because there simply isn't enough time to do everything especially not with all the pit stops to keep writing additional project ideas down. One day i'd like to look at building up multiple development teams to get more of my ideas completed faster but that requires some moderate level of success first to get organised.
When joining steemit I was conflicted between the choice that i presume many of us face at first. That of remaining anonymous and perhaps speaking my mind more freely and with less fear of scrutiny and that of being myself and sharing things that i'm working on which i couldn't do anonymously. After looking around for a few hours I see a very positive energy being spread among users on steemit, there is a good community building and great potential here to just be yourself and meet like minded individuals.
What I decided is that i'd like to try blogging things that i'm working on it's not something that i've done in the past but it could be a good change for me. I've been working from home since i was 20 and i've just turned 32, while i'm fairly introverted and enjoy my quiet days I find that there is something very counter productive in the whole process. That is occasionally you'll just hit a wall or get hit by a wall and sometimes when your stress is too high to handle it the natural reaction can be to retreat and take a respite before you pick yourself up and try again. However when you work from home and your days blur into each other it's possible to retreat for longer then you should, this happened to me after my kickstarter failure and it's something i'd like to avoid happening ever again. I figure you've gotta talk about these issues to overcome them as hiding from them just puts them on pause and exacerbates the problem because you're just adding more time lost to the equation which makes it feel even more challenging.
As for cryptocurrency I invested heavily in it twice, I even had a room full of mining pcs for 6 months many years back but after losing all of my money to both mt. gox and cryptsy over the years I'm currently holding nothing. Which is pretty regrettable seeing as how things turned out and wondering what beach paradises i could be sunning myself on these days with those coins :) but such is life, money wouldn't change my dreams and goals to design games, granted it would certainly make things easier. I believe that challenge and resistance strengthen us so perhaps the reward isn't in the goal but the journey to it as there is much to improve in myself and a shortcut to the end may mean I will fail to develop into my full potential.
Back in 2009 i cofounded a website for League of Legends called Leaguecraft, it was exciting watching it grow and it kept the lights on for a few years but it took me away from the work I wanted to do because it required so much time to manage and it always felt like we were improving somebody elses game instead of my own. The sites offline these days as we've all but moved on but it certainly was a wild ride and i'm grateful for the experience.
https://www.facebook.com/Leaguecraft/
I'm an admin of an Australian gaming clan which has had hundreds of active members over the years. Gaming in a big clan can be very time consuming but as a game designer it has given me some amazing and unique experiences with regards to long term content creation in mmos. Most notably a few years back our clan joined the British empire in naval action and we recruited heavily, up around 150-200 members if i recall. At the time clans could capture ports and set the 2 hr defense windows to a time of their choice. Being Australian we set our defense window to something like 9-11pm Australian each night and everyday we'd fight in clan wars and secure more ports for the British empire and every night we'd defend the ports from attacks but as we'd recruited most of the Australians in the game there wasn't many clans with the capacity to match our fleets except on weekends. After a month of this the British empire was the largest faction in the game and our clan held around 50% of the British empire ports under our protection and had some of the largest ship building capacity. We were also key members of the British council, a player made alliance of British clans to better organise against outside nations I loved this concept at the time. For us it was a core part of the game but completely invented by the players and it helped Britain remain more organised then some of the other nations I believe. Eventually the game devs had to rework the timer mechanics to stop our growth but most of us welcomed the rest and some weeks later we moved on to other less consuming games. It was some of the most extreme gaming i've ever done but a thoroughly enjoyable experience and a great look at how leaving design room for gaming socialisation can improve and create game content as well as the negative affects of failure to make swift balance fixes such as how limiting the amount of players in a clan to more reasonable levels or limiting how many ports a clan can be in control of might have resolved the issue.
I'm currently working on my company Crit Publishing again with plans to launch 3 tabletop card games this year but my wife and I are expecting our first child in May and it feels like time is working against me now more than ever. It should be a very exciting and stressful year but i'm certainly looking for to it.
https://www.facebook.com/CritPub/
If you're still reading keep in mind that while i'd like some followers as i've just joined and have none on Steemit that i'm also looking for people that i can follow to improve the content that i have access to view on steemit. So feel free to introduce yourself in the comments and i'll be sure take a look.
Thanks for taking the time to read my introduction, I look forward joining the community.