So, apparently, I'm the SE mod now.
I haven't thought too much about specifics, but I'm interested in seeing what can be done with the forum. We've had some great discussions about software design and even programming language design there in the past, and I'd love to see that become more of a regular fixture. For now, I have no idea what to actually do, but I think it's a shame that SE is so low-traffic and relatively invisible.
I suspect that the description is a bit off-putting (eww, UML!) so I'll definitely be looking to have that changed sooner rather than later. Any other SE regulars have any thoughts on what you'd like to see there? (Is there even such a thing as an SE regular? Heh.)
In utterly unrelated news, we've started an internal development log project. Everyone is expected to weigh in semi-regularly and keep tabs on what they're doing, provide some screenshots, etc. For now it's purely internal and we expect mainly to use it for postmortem analysis and just plain nostalgia, but there's a chance that someday we might cull out the best material and use it for PR/some kind of "making of" documentary.
I think it's a really good direction to take, for a number of reasons. First, I'm just a nostalgic kind of guy, so I will be religiously stealing content from the project and archiving it for my own personal recollection (hey, gotta have something to talk about in the rest home some day). Secondly, I'm a firm believer in the idea that self-awareness is critical to solid performance. If we're not paying attention to what we do as a team, and if we don't go back and analyze our own work from time to time, we risk falling prey to a horde of unrecognized weaknesses and failings. Being able to learn from past experience is vital.
And, of course, there's the whole documentary side. I think the realities of life in the game development world (and even the realities of game development in general) have shamefully low visibility in general. For something that has become such a huge piece of our culture, games aren't really widely understood. It would be great to see more honesty and openness about what exactly we game developers do all day - and not just so the general public can understand the work, but because that level of awareness will help expose our problems and weaknesses in the industry as a whole.
Plus, I really, really want an excuse to walk around in a shirt that says "Game Developer is the new Rock Star".
