Monday, January 1, 2024

2024 Plan

It's time to talk about my 2024 plans!

This post expands upon what I went over in my 2023 Recap blog post here. You can read that first to learn about the context around some of these goals.

Before I get into goals, here's my updated art improvement image (open the image in new tab to zoom in and view it fully):

So as I mentioned in my previous post, my goals will be less drawing-focused than they may have used to be. A lot of my goals still involve drawing, but I won't have any goals like drawing daily or posting drawings monthly.

My goals this year will focus a lot more on projects overall. I want to keep working on The Nays as usual, so I want to again try to make at least 2 Twines this year. If I get farther, great, if not, at least 2!

I also really want to write more Eventures again. Now that I'm on track and have proofread all of the existing ones, I'm hoping I can dive in and start to rewrite more and finish more of those beginning ones. At minimum, I want to write Complex.net and potentially the Frank Lady Eventure. Obviously I'll want to do more.

During our bi-weekly Nay Days, we usually don't actually work on The Nays, but instead play games or talk. I'd like to organize those a little better and maybe get back into talking about The Nays and maybe writing or at least planning Eventures during those if we can. If we can do more full day chats where we write, that'd be great, but life will likely get busy again like last year so I'm not promising anything.

And then now that I've read all of the Eventures, I'd like to really dive in and connect more moments and check on overall consistency as much as I can. I would also like to go back and write the scripts for every Eventure Trailer. This will help me recap myself on where the story was at so I can rewrite parts more quickly without having to reread everything every time that I want to write. I might even record some of the voice overs for them after I've written them.

While I know I said I wasn't making drawing-based goals, I do want to revisit my Nay-A-Day project where I draw full body drawings of characters that I don't have a detailed drawing of yet. I'm not committing to how often I'll do them or anything (certainly not every day), but I do want to do at least a few more of these throughout the year. So my goal can just be to try and do a few of these when I feel like drawing something! And then I do also want to just sketch for fun without it being a project. So I'll try to draw when I'm feeling motivated to!

And then I really want to work on games more, so the rest of my goals will be game dev-related. First, I want to just work on a game this year. That could be a whole game on its own, which I've been brainstorming ideas for, or it can just be to revisit Compass Nays and make progress on that. I'll have more information about this after I make a decision.

Going along with games, I've been working on a game dev portfolio and resume, so I'd like to finish those. I've been making game dev vlogs that I'm putting on there, so I'll continue to make these when I'm motivated as well. This goes into my goal of wanting to talk about my projects more. I'm not really going to make it a goal of a certain number I want to finish or anything, but I'll want to make a few throughout the year.

And going along with talking about my projects, I'd like to attend more game dev meet-ups and talk to people about games. There's a local game conference called GDEX that I'm thinking I might try to attend this year. I basically just want to talk about games. Usually I'd be pressured into attending these for job hunting, but because I'm in a position with a stable job that I enjoy, I'd like to get back into this more with a different perspective and how I wished networking was. I'd like to genuinely make friends and connect with people who make games for fun, rather than the stress of asking for a job. This might force me to talk about my projects more with people too. So my hope is that I'll be able to attend one at least this year!

I also have been wanting to publish a game on Steam. So my thought is that I can go through the process and learn how it works by taking one of my Global Game Jam projects and put it on there for free. I basically just want to have a game on Steam and know how it all works. That way, if I ever sell a game in the future, I'll have this part under my belt.


So overall, here are the goals I'm working towards:

  • Write at least 2 Eventures.
  • Create at least 2 Twines.
  • Write (all of?) the Eventure Trailer scripts.
  • Draw a few Nay-A-Day drawings.
  • Make a game (either progress on Compass Nays or a new game finished).
  • Finish game dev portfolio and updated resume.
  • Create a few game dev vlogs.
  • Attend GDEX (or another local game convention).
  • Publish a game on Steam.

I know this looks like more than last year and I said I'd try to do less, but most of these are fairly straight-forward and not super intensive. This will just help guide me to creating projects and continuing to work towards my life goals now that I'm in my 30s.

So anyway, I'm looking forward to 2024! I feel a lot more focused and I know what I want to do, so I'm excited to make progress on my projects with this plan.

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