Sometimes, there is work you need to do, whose value you understand, and this understanding motivates you to do the work.

And sometimes, you do things for no reason at all, in the hopes that you’ll find something valuable in them.

I think the One Game a Month Thing is leaning towards the latter.

So in the day since my last One Game a Month post, already commited to making one game a month, I’ve thought of new reasons to do so:

I need practice talking about programming

I’m not real comfortable talking about programming, but it’s becoming more and more important that I can do so for my regular job — I can’t just work on my own and describe my progress in high-level, metaphorical terms anymore, because my co-workers and my boss now actually care about the technical details of what I do.

My regular projects like Tinselfly and Operetta are in tedious, heads-down places where they’re not real interesting to talk about, but having a new project a month will give me plenty of technical things to mull over in my journal.

It can be a family thing

I’ve occasionally made noises to my wife and brother about teaching them programming stuff, but sadly I never got around to prioritizing it. This is a good excuse to do that.

I can make game-like things that aren’t games in the technical sense

Specifically, I’m talking about that Celestial Stick People tablet app I’ve been threatening to make. It would be nice to get that done, and while I’m at it, revise the book since The Game Crafter now prints nice card-sized books for you.