The Blog is away! I repeat, the Blog is away!
Welcome, friends, to the overhauled Rogue Moon website. By “overhauled” I mean I’ve added some pretty pictures, tweaked the colours, and fixed the broken css formatting. Groundbreaking stuff, I know, but at least the site isn’t giving that php error anymore. 😉
Why now? Well, I’ve got a new game in development, Cults of the End Times, a Lovecraft-inspired card game, and I want a place to talk about it in more than 240 character bursts. And Facebook straight up sucks.
So here I am, trying to get back into that hottest new trend – text blogging.
*Touches earpiece*
Oh, wait…wait…ok, I’m receiving word from my producer that I’ve been misinformed. Apparently, what the kids are actually into these days is video. Words, I’m told, are outdated. It’s all about snapchatting yourself smearing marmite on your genitals for a live audience, I’m told.
Well, I’m going to do that, too.
Not the marmite bit, no no. I have to save something for the marital bedroom.
No, I’m just going to make some videos and post them on the old internet tubes. Get hyped, people, for long-winded videos on dry topics spoken in a mild tone of voice.
I expect it to be a great hit with “the youth”.
Really though, I’m doing all this because Alexis Kennedy and Lottie Bevan told me to.
Sort of.
Kinda.
Well, they talked about how great and important it was/is for indies to practice “open development”, how in this here Indiepocalypse we can’t rely on Steam or game review sites to get us an audience, we have to build one ourselves, the old fashioned way, by directly engaging with and building up a fan community.
Which sounds like hard work. And, frankly, a bit unsanitary.
Talking to people? Ugh. What if they want to talk back to me? Sounds awful.
But I am nothing if not willing to sell out completely.
So, against my will, I’m diluting my pure artistic vision and leaving my auteur’s cave to dispense my wisdom to the unwashed masses.

Just kidding, of course. 😉 I like talking to people, mostly. Some of my best friends are people.
It does take work, though, to blog and vlog and I dunno, whatever the next thing is called, clog probably. It takes time, and effort, and it’s a little bit terrifying, to let it all hang out. Marmite notwithstanding.
A big part of the reason I failed to get this kind of thing going when I was developing System Crash was because I talked myself out of it.
“This isn’t interesting, no one wants to see this,” I told myself. “When I have some art, that’s when I’ll show the world.”
Well, the art and gameplay only came together in a polished form toward the very end of the project, so that meant I kept quiet and worked away in isolation for the most part.
And, of course, that meant that when I was nearly ready to launch and want to start building up a following, it was too late.
System Crash has done ok, it’s made its money back (finally). But who knows, if I’d been better at marketing, maybe it would have done much better for me.
So this time, after nodding along with Lottie’s talk she gave at some conference somewhere on open development, that they were kind enough to share on twitter, I slapped my rhetorical fist into my rhetorical palm and said:
“I’ll do it! I’ll blog the shit out of it this time!”
And here we are.
So if this turns out to be a horrible, awful, thoroughly-embarrassing-for-all-parties affair, well, we know who to blame, eh? Those damn Brits and their irresistible Pokemon analogies.
Seriously though, I think this will be fun. And maybe even lucrative. I like to blather on, and this is a marketing model which is supposed to monetize my blather into sweet, sweet sales.
It’s a match made in Heaven. Or, at least, one of the various Afterlives.
Stick around, friends. 🙂
And, while you’re here, I’ve scattered around some links to the newsletter and RMS discord server, like candy artfully arranged along the path into the foreboding woods. You should definitely click those and/or come chat to us.

After all, when has taking candy from strangers ever hurt anyone? I think that’s the saying, right?
-Gareth out