Hi igamesnews,
I’ve never been one for goodbyes, but here we are.
In the six months since I’ve started here, I’ve frequently professed my love for “B” games, the ambitious, gritty, and easily broken titles that stick in your memory for years. Games like this make you wonder what form they could have taken with a little more time and budget, but it’s worth remembering that their weirdness is a product of the same conditions. At best, B-games have enough support to implement their ideas without being weighed down by the pressures of blockbuster success. They’re built to be just good enough to lay the foundation for the next game, making them wonderfully imperfect.
These games are products of studios navigating a dying economic machine, by creatives with an interest in subsistence, slow growth, and an acceptance that not everything can be breakthrough – despite what most shareholders and all venture capitalists will tell you . Unfortunately, this is not the primary model our industry has opted for. Instead, like Microsoft’s recent purchase of Activision Blizzard and the countless stories about crunch coming out every year, this industry has embraced the myth of infinitely increasing profits backed by reliable formulas.
These ideas have penetrated the basic logic of our lives from the corporate culture. Success isn’t real unless it’s the greatest achievement. Your home is not enough until all desires are fulfilled. Even then, you deserve another, don’t you? This approach leads not only to overconsumption, but also to constant dissatisfaction.
It’s the dissatisfaction that drives executives to push writers beyond their limits year after year, demanding that 15 do the work of 150 without understanding that it’s not only impossible, but undesirable. These same leaders throw tantrums when their poor strategies fail. “The formula works, just do it.” They demand without being aware of the fact that the need has already been met by someone else. On my worst days, I worry that this approach, championed by venture capitalists, will destroy every single publication I happen to like.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the answer to this dissatisfaction lies in giving up all material consumption, in realizing the beauty of what you have, or in investing in the power of friendship. Nor does it mean accepting the world as it is. It’s about imagining something better and giving yourself the grace to miss it. Sometimes it means going away to try something new.
If I’ve learned anything from my work here, it’s that if you have only one interest in staying alive, you have to give yourself the grace to fail. I made 103 posts on Kotaku dot com in about as many days. Some of them were good, most were fine, and there were quite a few real failures. These failures were made in front of an audience of millions. This was definitely a learning experience.
But sometimes I failed because of my own values. Those were the hardest days.
And despite them, I kept going. I got my mind back on what was important and pushed forward again. Six months ago I said:
And what do I want to do? Well, that’s easy. I want to imagine and then do a better world, one that is utopian and hungry. A place where good criticism and good storytelling and good community give people the tools and the language to materially improve their own lives. All of this is embodied by a website that makes people on the road to writing good about machines that beep-boop better people. And I think igamesnews can be this site. And as long as I’m here, I’ll do everything I can to make sure this website has sharp and beautiful teeth.
When I look at this website on its best days, I see a beautiful broken smile – broken teeth that have been filed to points. It’s not what I imagined, it couldn’t be – after all, I didn’t work here alone – but it’s something stranger, better and unmistakably alive. There’s good reporting, good storytelling, and lots of weird blogs here.
Good people too. Much to my chagrin, Lisa Marie has become one of my closest friends while also being an excellent editor. Carolyn pushed me to look further and think more deeply about everything I’ve written here and she was always there for me when things got bad. Alexandra is a great editor and one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. I am very lucky to know her. John has become a true mentor and friend, despite the fact that I turn his old bones to dust every time we talk. And Patricia took an incredible risk for me, for which I will be eternally grateful.
And I’m confident that my cohort will be here at igamesnews, and the new generation of writers that we belong to will continue to see it as an odd beacon – present, nonetheless. I’m curious to see what they do with the place. As strange and occasionally difficult as these last six months have been, I can’t help but love this B-website. It’s a wonderfully imperfect place. I hope the herbs that own it don’t ruin the whole thing.
eat shit. And Godspeed, gamers.
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