Updates and New Year Plans

With it being new year’s, I figured I would give you guys an update on what is going on with the site and any plans and changes I intend to make in the future. This the time for self-reflection and change so what better time to do it.

First things first, I am going to try to increase the rate at which I upload new content. I feel like I have been getting better at this, but still feel like I could be doing more. Some of that is due to things going on in my personal life and other times it’s due to lack of motivation. Sometimes I’ll buy a new game, play it intending to review it and then never do because I just wasn’t all that enthused on it. I was going to do a review on the new Mario and Rabbids game and never got round to it because I just found it boring.

In fact, most reviews of newer games I do end up being my least favourite things to write. It feels like I’m doing so out of obligation rather than a genuine want to do it. My favourite reviews I wrote last year were on older games or stuff I wanted to talk about. I loved working on the Lords of Shadow review trilogy, and I want to do more stuff like that.

Which is why going forward I’m going to look at more games that I genuinely want to talk about. Suffice to say that means you’ll be seeing a lot more retro titles covered, but I will also review newer titles as well if I feel I have something to say on them.

This also means that I can dip more into my backlog. There are games I have been meaning to play for years and never really got around to it. This gives me the opportunity to finally do that.

I also want to write more long form content like personal retrospectives or more pieces on complete series or compilation reviews. The compilation reviews were pains in the ass to do, but I also really liked doing. Plus, it lets me cover more games in one go as a bonus.

I’ve also noticed I work a lot better with short form projects rather than long form ones. Reviewing trilogies or small sets of games rather than big series retrospectives that go on for a while. So from now one I’m going to try and focus more on those in the future.

This also means that the Yakuza Files is now on indefinite hiatus. I do like the Yakuza series, and I will go back to it someday, but as the games have gotten bigger it’s also become a bigger chore to review them. it’s gotten to a point where I need to take a dozen mental notes while playing them. That’s no fun and doesn’t make for an entertaining review.

I’m also not doing news coverage on conferences or events anymore. I feel like when I did those I tried to be opinionated and snarky and that wasn’t fair. Games journalism already has enough opinionated assholes and I would just be another one screaming into the void. That just isn’t me.

But I’m not just cancelling things, I’m also bringing things back. Namely the movie reviews. Yeah, I used to do those a few years ago but then stopped. It was for 2 reasons. One I tried to do it weekly and got burnt out very quickly, and 2 this is a videogame site, it felt weird doing movie reviews.

But I have been meaning to bring them back for a while now but still wanted to keep things on theme. So, I thought it would be better to do a series based around videogame movies or media centred around videogames in some way. I don’t know when I’ll get around to that, but I’m thinking around when the new Mario movie drops.

There are a bunch of other things I want to work on to, but I’ll leave those as a surprise. Hopefully this gives you some idea of what I’m planning in the future.

To be honest, this year has been rough for me. I won’t go into details, but my personal life has been in complete chaos for the past year, and it’s taken a toll on me mentally. This is why I want to do more with the site, I want to be more proactive and try to make something of it. I may not succeed but I can certainly try right.

I don’t know if the next year will be better or worse, but all I can do is keep going. So here’s to the new year, and whatever it may bring.