A new year begins

Happy 2012!

I've been on break from doing music, writing for the blog, and all sorts of work for the past 2 weeks. I had a relaxing break with one of my friends over for one of the week playing League of Legends everyday. I got to hang out with some of my other friends, go out for lunch, and play some games. It felt like forever since I had a real vacation like that. Christmas is over, the new year began, all my friends and family are back in school, work, army, and it's time for me to get back on track. I have one more composition and 4 more arrangements for one of the projects I'm working on before we publish it on Xbox Live Arcade. I'm hoping to get things done this month, I'm really not sure how long this last composition will take me. In other news of music, I seriously need to finish that Street Fighter Mix and move on to new stuff. This year, I hope to accomplish a lot more than I did last year. Here's the resolution I had in 2011 and the one I made for this year in 2012.


Reflection of 2011’s resolutions

1) Land a job in the Interactive Entertainment Industry, or at the very least Editorial relating to the industry
-Worked for an online game company for 8 months before getting laid off. This took up 2/3rd of my year. It was good for work experience and it wasn’t that hard, but it reinforces my desire to work in design and not publishing for the game industry.

2) Produce as much composition/mixes/covers of music as possible
-Meh, I felt like I could’ve done a LOT more than what I did in 2011. I did music for 8 games. 5 of them were for Game Jam competitions, 1 got cancelled (sadly), and 2 I’m still currently working on to have published. Then there are the experimentations I had throughout the year which you can see on my FB profile videos. What probably held me up the most (besides the job I had) was the Street Fighter mix I was working on. I should finish it and not do anything that long again unless needed.

Also, got two games I did music for published on Xbox Live Arcade!

3) Get serious in developing indie games and set up an awesome portal to my work
-I failed hard on this one. I started on one of my games, but I didn’t get to continue since I’ve been mostly working on writing and music. I also didn’t get a site setup and don’t feel like making one until I have at least one of my own games complete to put up on there.

4) Draw a lot! Traditional, digital, anything! I must get back into art again. Video and Photography too.
-Failed miserably on this one too. I did draw a little in the beginning of the year, but I simply didn’t have enough time to draw all the time. It’s saddening…I hope that changes this year since I’m buying a new tablet.

5) Beat as many videogames as possible AND continue to write design analysis for each one. One more step towards becoming a game designer~ (Beat 18 games between graduating and now).
-This is what I possibly excelled at the most in 2011. I completed 66 games and wrote 28 game reviews posted on Metacritic (on the user side of course). I didn’t do those write-ups for each game, but I still plan to. And even though I didn’t, I know I learned a lot because I can point out the many flaws in level designs, programming, mechanics and concepts as well as a game’s strengths that made it so fun or thought provoking. I want to continue this quest, because it’s productive AND fun!

3 out of 5, somewhat good I guess?


New Year’s Resolution for 2012:

1) Seriously this time, I want to draw more
2) Setup those sites and pages (put together portfolio)
3) Produce/Mix more music than I did in 2011 (Did 27 in 2011)
4) Work on those games, I got 4 ideas waiting to be spawned
5) Continue my quests in playing and writing those games!

We'll see how I do this year~