Development Diary #1

Hey everyone, just a quick update on the progress of Act of Treason.

I won’t share too many mechanics on the game this time as I haven’t had a chance to try out my latest changes yet – that will be in two weeks or so. Once I try a new mechanism, I’ll fully dissect what worked, what didn’t, and why. But honestly, this week I was so focused on laying the groundwork for the promotion that I didn’t have much time for anything else.

Global Progress Chart – blue arrows show recent progress

As you can see above, we have a lot of work done, unfortunately it’s taking a while! Each of these projects is a major project. The ‘three tier’ system is completely unfair. I might update it to levels 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100%. It’s easy to track progress for me and you! (It’s actually live on the site now -> you can check it out at the bottom of the about page)

Last week was mostly geared towards preparing for my next playtest. The design pieces are finished there. The important conceptual work was done, I just needed to do the tedious part of the work by cutting out about a hundred cards and stuffing them into sleeves. This week was mostly devoted to website updates, and a few other little things like cleaning up the wording and appearance of things (cards, website, rules, whatever), and creating new promotional artwork.

Just one of many updates on playaot.com

Now don’t get too excited, this isn’t a complete overhaul of the web page. Ultimately I still like my website design very minimalist, so this is just a small quality of life improvement. For example, a ‘featured wall’ (as seen above) on the about page will be added. I think this featured wall is important because it provides an ‘information hierarchy’ that is very easy for new readers to follow.

We don’t do this consciously – but we are constantly assessing our surroundings and categorizing the importance of all the information we find. The little unimportant things we don’t track, and the really important things we do. For example, the number of lights in a room may not be that important. The number of people may be the most important, or closest, or people of interest. They all fit on that spectrum. The displayed walls provide examples of things the uninitiated show that these things are ‘very important’. Otherwise, there is just a sea of ​​information and readers can quickly become frustrated and rightly so if they can’t find the information they are looking for. But more importantly, users are not shown what is considered important.

Why is this necessary? Without this, you send the message that essentially all the information contained on this site is of equal importance – and this is simply not true. You don’t provide directions, which can be very annoying to readers who just want answers to the simple questions of “What’s this about”, or maybe “Where can I learn more?”, or maybe even “I’d like to buy one of these because I already just learn from other places.” These are likely the three most common questions new website users have when they first visit a website (I haven’t done the research, but, you know, they’re likely true or pretty close to the truth). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve visited a website with a simple question: “What is this Business, Product or Brand About?” and the website seems intentionally vague. What, where, how, why, when and who should be answered somewhere on your website, not necessarily in that order.

Another interesting snippet from the website

None of this is new. Many websites do something similar, flagging important information to users. This is very exciting for me because it is a new world that I now have to open up and think about.

Oh, I also added analytics to this site – which I can’t believe I didn’t add before. I still don’t know what I did well. But at least so far I’ve managed to run some basic analyzes and reports. So hopefully I can develop it in the coming weeks and get it up to speed before I start rolling out serious ads.

I have to say that things have started to progress rapidly with the Treason Act, and it is very difficult to pinpoint why. I think there are actually many factors that all form the basis of my motivation to start working. I thought Jordan B Peterson with his Self Actualizing Suit was very helpful – you can learn more about him in an opinion piece I’ll be releasing soon. I think my exercise regimen has helped a lot. I find having a little extra time outside of work really helps. And I think the added burden of responsibility helps – having responsibility for other people who depend on you really changes the dynamic of the situation. Altruism kicks in and you’re no longer just doing it for yourself, you’re also doing it for the people you love and those you want to support. This is one reason why married people tend to earn more and be more prosperous – they tend to have more children, and thus more responsibilities.

Anyway that’s enough for today. Thank you for reading and see you next time.

Game Online

Gaming Hub

Game online adalah jenis permainan video yang dimainkan melalui jaringan internet. Game ini memungkinkan pemain untuk berinteraksi dengan pemain lain secara real-time, baik itu dalam bentuk kerja sama, kompetisi, atau eksplorasi dunia virtual bersama-sama.