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JarretRedding.com
June 22, 2009

Over the past two years my gaming time has been in strong decline.  I used to lead two guilds and a CS:S team.  Now I spend most of my time at the gym and working on web projects.  When I do get to play its usually not for to long.  Hour at most.  Instead of playing games like WarHammer, Guild Wars, or even TF2 or L4D I find myself playing smaller games like Peggle, Bejeweled Blitz, and Plants vs Zombies.  Games that are short, simple, to the point.  I can play them for a hour without getting completely sucked in and staying up to 1am trying to pwn some noob face.  Easy to pick up, easy to put down, and still very fun to play.

With the SageInfinite project coming to a close I was looking to see what my next project would be.  So as I’m playing Plants vs Zombies it came to me.  Why not create a site dedicated to the little guys.  The small games that are fun to play, but just not really promoted because they aren’t huge releases with next gen graphics.  There are thousands of these games out there but most of the time you just kinda find them by accident.

A site to showcase and review these games, and perhaps maybe some good, free mods for other popular games.  And just for fun lets make that a video review.  But why stop at PC? 360, Wii, and PS3 have tons of games in their respective arcades that are fun and go unnoticed.  I played Bionic Commando Re-armed the other day and had a blast.  Why not make videos of those to?  Facebook has a couple of great game apps, and the potential to host even more so why not throw that into the mix.  And MySpace….eh…forget that cluster$!*# of a website.

I’m pretty sure by now you get the idea.  I enjoy these games and hopefully I can expose them to more people so they can enjoy it as well.  Still in the early (and I mean early) planning stages for now.  Right now I’m working out the best method to capture the games on PC and Console.  Console will be more challenging indeed because of the equipment I will need to buy.  I did a test with Hypercam this weekend and I’m having a problem with the speed of the video.  For some reason everything I record looks like its being fast forwarded.  I’m pretty sure I will figure it out soon.  I also still need to figure out what to call the site…that would help lol.

I believe this will be my first site where I do a full template in Photoshop instead of creating the graphics as I go along.  That seems like the most efficient route to go.  I’ve never done it before though so I’m looking forward to it.  I also need to figure out what CMS to use.  I like the ease of WordPress, however, theming for it may be a pain.  I currently use Expression Engine as my back end CMS.  Its a very open system and highly flexible.  Theming for it is extremely easy.  However, its not supported like WordPress.

I’m looking forward to start this.  This will be the first personal project I’m doing.  Hopefully I don’t get bogged down doing something else :( .  I’d love to collaborate with others if you have ideas or can bring something to the table.  If your reading this you should know how to get in contact with me so just hit me up if you want to talk.