Underlost, By Tyler Rilling

I am Tyler Rilling, a designer and web developer based in Wisconsin, and sometimes Seattle.
This site is in a constant state of change, and may appear broken from time to time. Sorry about that.

My Next Thing

For some time, I’ve held onto jadedgamer.net, unsure of what to really do with it. At the time it seemed like a good domain to have for something. It started as a gaming blog. A place for me to post share my comments on links I would find through out the day. Something along the lines of Daring Fireball, but with less Apple, and more video games. Surprisingly, it takes a rather large investment of time and discipline to maintain.

I kept this up for about 6 months before I realized tumblr was better for my situation. Tools for posting were just quicker compared to Movable Type or Wordpress. Over time I decided it would just be easier to merge it with my existing blog. The site again became dorminet.

Fast forward two years. I thought about selling the domain. I did get a couple offers. I became disinterested with the idea of having it be just another video game news site, in witch the content would be so fleeting. I wanted it to be something that could withstand some amount of time. Something that would still be interesting to read years for now.

About the time I had received my tickets for PAX Prime 2011, I realized something. I was looking at it wrong. The primary focus of the site shouldn’t be the games themselves. No, instead I decided to go after something most sites overlook. The love of video games.

Quickly I slapped something together as PAX drew near. I spammed the link through my 3DS, letting anyone I met via StreetPass know of the new site. Of the 800 or so that saw the link, about 300 actually visited the site. Not bad for such a tacky marketing ploy. About 150 even left their thoughts.

After returning home, I refined the idea, renamed it to a more suitable name, and built a new prototype. After pitching it to a few other developers, they thought it was an interesting concept as well. That brings us to today. So just what is it, or what will it become?

  • A Life Well Played asks a simple question. Why play video games? Nothing else. This isnt a question for just the first issue. The entire focus on the magazine is to discover why we play games. We’ll be talking to producers, developers, modders, and gamers alike.

  • It will be a print magazine foremost. I want to create something people will want to keep, and proudly display. There will be a PDF version available, and I think you’ll like some of the interesting interactive HTML5 features Im working on for the web version, but print will be the main focus.

  • The first issue will be a limited run, somewhere between 1000 and 2500 copies. If they sell out, we’ll look into doing a reprint.

  • I hope to get the first issue released by May 2012. This is not a set date (yet) and may change. The first issues success will determine how frequently new issues (and reprints) are created.

There are still a lot more details to follow, and we’ll have a list of the interviewees soon. A lot more details will be revealed in January 2012. For now, I ask to follow along on twitter (@jadedgamer) if you would like to learn more. I can promise you won’t be spammed, and you’ll be the first to know more about the initial release.

Posted by Tyler Rilling on December 7, 2011