A Journey Begins
For those of you who don’t know, this journey began for me when I was laid off from my job for over four months a little over a year ago. This “journey” being the creation of this website and all of its content. At first this started as a way to give myself a hobby of some kind during the “Great Quarantine of 2020”, because I simply had no other options available to pass the time. Nearly everything closed down, I couldn’t go watch a movie, or even go out to eat at a restaurant. I know, woe is me right? Well I’m not telling you this to get your pity, so please save it for someone who needs it. The point is what else was I to do? To avoid going absolutely insane during this time I decided to vent my frustrations through a passion of mine, video games. They are something I personally know a lot about, and happen to have many opinions on as well due to the fact that I have been playing them for the last 20 years as I’ve grown up. They are, and will always be a huge part of my life.
Since I have started doing this I have made a point to put a great deal of effort and thought into everything that goes live on my website. Everything that I personally publish here is something that I wholeheartedly believe, and may try to persuade you to believe as well. Most importantly I intend to write deep, thought provoking pieces that encourage discussion on any given topic.
The best way I’ve found to do this is by posing what may come across as philosophical discussions about the industry to many. These most important talking points are turned into what I call my “prophecies”. These “prophecies” usually are my favorite to write, but also end up being quite time consuming, because they require the most effort. I will use these to make my strongest stands in opinion on any given topic. While many will likely view them as loudmouth putdowns, slander, or what have you, the goal is never really to make a final stand on a specific topic, rather to spark a much needed conversation about what I view as important, and often overlooked elements in the industry.
My Mission
My goal here is simple. What I plan to achieve by building this website is to normalize quality, thought provoking content about gaming. I like to think that video game readers look for more than trendy top ten lists and catchy headlines that ultimately lead to a mindless read. There seems to be this constant race to put out endless content no matter how recycled and unsophisticated it ends up being when it comes to most video game news entities.
Believe it or not, I am aware what age we live in, and that getting clicks is how we measure success in most of these cases. However, would it be so wrong to pay quality writers to put out quality content regularly rather than paying any Tom, Dick, or Sally with a keyboard 5 cents a word (if you’re lucky) to make up listicle after listicle. Now, of course that’s not to say I’m against the publishing of top ten lists, I actually have a few up already, but I think we can all agree we don’t need the gaming industry’s news cycle to turn into a niche market BuzzFeed replicant.
I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe I just don’t understand how all of this works just yet. However, I am capable of looking at requirements for available writing gigs with these larger companies, and better yet their employee reviews. It’s a joke to say the least. No wonder there’s such a lack of good reads out there when the requirements to keep your job are at least 10 articles per week. How could anyone come up with 10 articles per week for the rest of their lives and actually be putting out an inkling of quality content? On top of that, you add that their company is rated a two out of five stars on major hiring websites its really beginning to throw up some red flags. That’s not to mention the ease that you can find endless employee reviews just like this one:
“Honestly, this company is getting worse and worse. They pay so low that it’s almost a joke. However, because it’s a desirable field, they can get away with it. They also want to require more and more of writers but barely pay more to compensate. They want to be seen as a high-level site, but their business model of content, content, content and not retaining good people because they don’t pay enough doesn’t allow for that.”
If you really dive into things like I have here there’s really no way to not understand why the large gaming news sites have lost their way and are more often than not caught publishing hot garbage.
A Call to Action
I’ve decided it’s time to stand up against these larger companies and begin to normalize publishing more quality content rather than focusing on the quantity I can put out. And to think, it only took a once in a lifetime global pandemic to give me the push I needed. If you happen to find yourself in a similar mindset, and you’re a quality writer that’s not afraid to publish your provocative opinions about video games by all means reach out to me. You can easily contact me through my website or on Twitter. Whether you want to write full time, or just have something you want to get off your chest one time, you will be given the opportunity to write for my website, and of course your name will be attached to any piece that is published.
I have recently had my website revamped and polished up and am looking forward to really going all in on this. I hope to begin to grow a community around me that welcomes tackling the hard questions as well as creating a dialogue about them. For those interested, I am open to working with anyone that has the ability to do this, and do this well. I still work a full time job, so I don’t have the time to put out as much content as I’d like to as it is. I’d be happy to accept all the help that I can get in rolling out more QUALITY content. Some differing opinions would be a nice touch too so we’re not all stuck listening to just me complain all the time. It’s time quality overtakes quantity, and we finally get something entertaining to read that isn’t just the news of the week.
