We’ve written before about the benefits of keeping a gaming journal or diary. You can read the original post here, but in short:
- Keeping a gaming journal promotes mindfulness. It forces you to reflect on how you’re feeling when you’re playing, and the content of the experience you’ve just had. Is a game annoying you and you’re not fully conscious of it? Or more positively, are you noticing new ideas and interesting game design?
- You can read back what you’ve written. This is helpful for reminding yourself of what just happened in a game if you’re taking big gaps between play, or how you felt the last time you played (helping break gaming addictions).
- It’s fun to tell stories. For those who like writing, or being creative, then keeping a diary is great practice! And who better to practice on, and tell stories to, than yourself?!
There is no set format that you should write in, but for those looking to get started and needing some pointers, we have developed a free template that you can use. You can access it here. It should be pretty self-explanatory, but we’ve provided an example of how to fill it out just in case.
As you can tell from the example given, there is absolutely no pressure to write reams and reams. You can be as detailed or as concise as you like – this is something entirely for you, so make of it what you want. Personally I like to write a few words to describe my emotions (both positive and negative) and then a very short paragraph to explain what underpins them. If something particularly interesting happens in the plot, or I see something about the design of the game that is notable or unique, then that gets added too.
So what are you waiting for? Make a copy and give it a go!
