Game Linchpin

Game Linchpin was the name I used for my game development blog and an earlier version of this personal site, inspired by Seth Godin’s book Linchpin. It is now closed. Selected writing has been preserved on Pashley.org.

Situation

During the late 2000s and early 2010s I was building game prototypes and had recently moved from game development into web work. Game Linchpin was the blog where I published about both — game development technique, web development setup, tools, and the process of building a practice around independent work. The tagline was “Share knowledge with video game development and production experts.”

What I did

I wrote about game development post-production, continuous integration, OSX setup for web development, disk utilities, and the prototyping process. The site also had pages for portfolio, an about section, and a “How Can I Help?” section intended to attract other contributors. The multi-author concept never took off — the write-for-us page was dropped and the site remained a single-author blog.

Relationship to the archived writing

Several posts originally published on Game Linchpin now live on Pashley.org, including notes on Jenkins CI, OSX disk usage, Carbon Copy Cloner, Synology DiskStation recovery, and the SHU game software project management presentation. A post on Pinterest pins and some other entries have not been carried forward.

What happened

Game Linchpin is no longer active. I wound down the blog as I moved further into eCommerce, web platforms and later product leadership. The domain is no longer registered. The writing that mattered has been carried forward into Pashley.org.

Lessons

Running a multi-author blog intended to attract contributors taught me that content communities need a critical mass of active writers before they become self-sustaining. A single-author blog with consistent publishing is more reliable than a platform hoping for contributors who never arrive. I also learned that maintaining a public practice — publishing what you build and learn as you go — creates a useful record even when the projects themselves do not ship.

Further reading

• Linchpin Manifesto — The Seth Godin-inspired manifesto that gave the blog its name.
• Early Days — A post about the game development setup and prototyping process.
• Installing Jenkins as CI builder on Windows — A migrated Game Linchpin post.