A friend of mine recently sent me a long message commenting upon this year’s change of direction in the blog towards doing book reviews. His general conclusion was “great to read, but likely bad for business”. I think I probably owe my readers an explanation.

Around mid-2015 my attitude to daygame had changed. From early 2009 right through to the end of 2014 I’d felt like I was on a journey of self-improvement. I was very clear what I wanted – shag lots of birds and become a skilled player – and set myself walking that path. There was always doubt over whether I’d achieve my goals, but the goals themselves were very clear [1]. Most of you can relate to this because you are either walking down that path yourselves or have, like me, completed the journey.

This is why my memoir series ends at the close of 2014. It’s the end of that particular journey.

Since then I’ve been daygaming for the fun of it with no real end goal in mind. Lacking any sense of a project it became increasingly aimless. I’d already banged enough girls, I was experiencing heavily diminishing returns in improving my technical Game, and it all felt rather like treading water. Well, considering how much fun I was still having, perhaps the better metaphor is it felt like relaxing in a jacuzzi. But, importantly, the sense of forward motion had stalled.

From mid-2016 I started to get increasingly long periods of daygame revulsion and by mid-2017 was barely even approaching. For two years my subconscious was telling me to change tack but I hadn’t yet figured out what the next project was to be. So I kept at the old routine of Euro Jaunting and chasing skirt. I’m not complaining, I still had a great time.

Rapidly losing my interest in doing or writing about game, I set myself to writing Daygame Infinite. It would be the final distillation of all my daygame experience, written while I still had enough motivation to complete it, and leave a permanent mark. I believe it was a success.

Blogging was badly impacted by Infinite because (i) all my good ideas were saved for the book (ii) writing it took all my creative energy with little left over (iii) Since it’s publication a few months ago, I don’t have anything left to say, as Infinite is still recent and there’s been little time for another round of new ideas to occur to me.

If you want to know about daygame, get Mastery, Infinite, and Overkill. It’s ALL in there and in a far more polished and systematic presentation than this humble blog. By all means read my blog, I do like having a readership, but if your goal is to get good at daygame then those three products are the obvious choice.

There is, however, the culture of daygame. For most of us, daygame is a hobby (even a way of life) and we like to be in the mix chatting and reading about that hobby. It’s pleasant. It feels like a community. There is a growing world of daygame culture, such as other blogs, YouTube channels and podcasts. I personally don’t pay any attention to that stuff anymore but I used to, and enjoyed it while I did. My blog and YouTube will continue to contribute to the cultural side of daygame and I intend to pick it up more next month when I start travelling again.

I suggest you don’t conflate the cultural side with the instructional side. Both are good, but they aren’t the same thing. My major recent contribution to the culture side is my memoir series.

If readers are interested, I’ll continue this line of thought in another post explaining why I’m doing the book reviews and how it fits into Game development.

[1] Even when mission creep expanded the goals, I always knew the next one.