Wow, it's been over ten years now for Red Blob Games. I had started experimenting with interactive diagrams in Java back in the early 2000s, and wrote a blog post in 2007 about why I wanted them. My early experiments weren't entirely satisfactory. Although Flash applets worked better than Java applets, they both produced the diagrams alone, not the whole page. Once HTML5 became widely available in 2011, I started learning how to make interactive diagrams with it. I concluded that HTML5 would let me create the unified experience of interactive text+diagrams that I wanted. I started Red Blob Games in late 2011 to explore this style of interactive articles, which Bret Victor called "explorable explanations".

Screenshots of various projects I've worked on in ten years

Five years ago I wrote about the first five years of Red Blob Games. One of the big realizations is that my best pages (pathfinding, hexagons, procedural map generation) came out of topics I was using in real projects. And I had run out of topics for big tutorials.

My "greatest hits" were in the first five years. What have I been up to in the second five years?

So what's next for me? What goals do I have for the third five years? I don't know. I usually switch gears in life every ten years, but I don't have something else in mind right now. I'm definitely slowing down on writing explanations (whether interactive or not), but I don't see myself stopping. I have lots of other projects I want to do, including ideas for more tutorials, and I want to find a better balance between doing things for me and writing pages to share with others.

8 comments:

Shivram wrote at March 28, 2022 9:09 PM

Congratulations! Wishing all the best for another decade of useful tutorials

Oliver wrote at March 29, 2022 1:05 AM

Congratulations! And thank you for the tutorials, your efford and trials to improve everything - I really like it! :-)

Daryl wrote at March 29, 2022 10:55 AM

I discovered your pages about a year ago when I quit my job to pursue indie game dev full time. Since then I've come back to learn from and reference them many many times. Many of my future game dev aspirations involve your articles.

I consider your articles the gold standard of interactive learning and reference. The world is a better place with RBG.

Thank you!

Alex wrote at March 31, 2022 12:24 AM

Thank you for your carefully curated explainables over the years. Your blog is an invaluable resource and I am always happy hear about what you have been working on :)

Ten years is a big milestone, here's to the next ten to come! :D

Anonymous wrote at April 02, 2022 2:39 PM

Congratulations and thank you! Your tutorials and explanations have been very helpful!

Anonymous wrote at April 12, 2022 4:11 AM

Congratulations from a former tower defense and mmorpg developer in Germany, who found your tutorials incredibly helpful, and who has kept reading your blog despite moving on to boring enterprise Java development as their (much less stressful) day job years ago ;)

Amit wrote at April 14, 2022 8:28 PM

Thank you everyone!

Sri Nutmoon wrote at July 15, 2022 9:35 AM

Looking forward to whatever you do next. Your path has been an exceedingly inspiring and principled one to follow in all aspects! Best of luck!!!