Verbs.

Sometimes, I like coming up with new ways of coming up with ideas. Check it out:

Games are ultimately built on verbs, right? In shooters, you shoot. In platformers, you jump. In Braid, you turn back time. I think interesting games often have interesting verbs.

So... maybe to come up with ideas, all you need to do is combine unlikely verbs. Next time you need a game idea, come up with 50 different verbs, then start mixing and matching and see what comes out.

Dreams.

It's 3:00 am. I can't sleep. But I can't stop dreaming.

One thing that I haven't (but at the same time, have) been doing a lot of is dreaming. I've spent the past few years dreaming of who I want to become, but not much dreaming about what I want to do - specific things that I want to accomplish at some point in my life.

As I'm laying here, trying every way I know how to get to sleep, ideas of "doings" have come into my brainplaces and I might as well write them down. Some of these are definites, some are maybes, some are "it'd be kinda cool if's," but they're all dreams of things I want to do in my life.

• Live of off 60% of my income. That would leave 10% to church, 10% to short term, emergency fund type savings, 10% to long term type savings (retirement, kids college, etc.), and 10% just to give away at some point (in small or large doses, depending on God).
• Lead a small group of middle school or high school boys.
  
• Be a part of a professional video game - enough to get me on the credits.
• To be credited as a writer on some sort of art, be it film, TV, novel, video game, etc...
• At some point, to work with my wife in the sense of a job.
• To own my own small company for side projects (works well with the previous idea).
  
• Write a book (about what, I haven't the foggiest, but it'd be cool).
  
• Live the somewhat urban life.
• Live a somewhat rural life.
• Have a spiritual retreat weekend.
• Get married to the love of my life.
• Sing a solo in a musical. Maybe not a lead part, but that one character who shows up in Act 2 as being really important who gets a song or two to themselves.
  
• Institute some non-cheesy rites of passage for my son.
• Write a story that gets adapted to multiple media.
• Have best friends and hang out with them frequently as I have a family and as my children grow up.
• Assemble a team of some of the best people I know to accomplish something. (In other words, to have an excuse to bring together the talented people I've known over the years (and will continue to meet) for one (or two, or three) awesome project.)
• Build a dream house someday on some property with a good deal of woods.
• Own two dogs. At the same time.
  
• Have a Japanese themed kitchen, complete with tea set, bamboo placemats, chop sticks, and plates.
• Give away a car.
• Speak at a camp. (Like church camp.)
  
• Speak at a conference. (Like GDC.)
• Take a homeless man out to dinner.
• Write a certain number of words per day. (Starting small...)
  
• Meet with someone further behind me in their journey once a week. Buy them coffee.
• Meet with someone further ahead of me in their journey once a week. Let them buy me coffee sometimes.
• Be an above average dancer. Especially with my wife.
  
• Be an okay swordsman (i.e. learn to fence; not the creepy-foam-swords-in-a-park-on-Thursdays kind of swordsman.)
• 
  

I might edit this in the next few minutes as I get more ideas, but I'm gonna go ahead and post now anyway.

Man, I wish I could sleep.

A new tradition

Hi everyone.

It's Christmas.

Yay.

14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
"Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.

15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring ^[a] and hers;
he will crush ^[b] your head,
and you will strike his heel."

So... the snake's head has been crushed.

That should be a new Christmas tradition. Every child should get a small snake skull in their stocking and they should all get to crush it, thus symbolizing what Christ has done for us.

Okay, maybe not.