Spiderweb Software – Jeff Vogel Starts a Blog

When not working on a new game or remastering one of his old ones, Spiderweb Software’s Jeff Vogel will now be blogging about the art of designing and selling video games. The blog’s first entry is purely introductory in nature, but we’ll see where it goes from there. Check it out:

When someone starts yet another unnecessary blog in 2021, that person has a moral obligation to explain why anyone should give a shit what he says.

Hi. My name is Jeff Vogel. My wife and I run a tiny indie computer game company called Spiderweb Software. Indie means we don’t have a publisher, or resources, or money, or hope. We’re just humble toymakers.

But here’s the thing. We’ve been doing it non-stop for 27 years, longer than pretty much anyone else. When you get a World Record in something as goofy as this, it’s still a World Record.

Also, I’ve been writing about video games and the video game industry for 25 years, usually paid. My writing has been read by millions of people. Which is hard to do when you write about video games.

And people should write about video games. It’s a hundred billion dollar a year global industry whose work is just about the only thing keeping countless people from COVID-seclusion-madness. Perhaps video games shouldn’t be important, but they are.

This blog will focus on video games, mostly. The designing of them. The business of selling them. But there will also be lots of tangents into things my math-addled game-designer brain finds interesting.

I plan to get into politics as little as possible. Whenever I’ve shared my political opinions publicly, I have regretted it. Though, in this crazed online mental environment, wanting peaceful corners free from hot political takes is itself a hot political take.

So I will try to make this useful to people who care. I promise that my takes will be at least a little spicy. If I seem clever, be assured I am not and really doing this to shill for my games.

I write on an uneven schedule, but I try to make things I write worthwhile. If you’d like to hear when I have some free words available, subscribe here. Subscribing is (and will probably always be) free …