One of the most pleasurable parts of what I do for my various creative projects is research… and sadly, this is one side of things that it's abundantly clear a lot of professional writers in the commercial press seemingly don't bother to engage with a lot of the time.
I am fascinated by the history of video games, and so it's always a pleasure to write one of my historical retrospective pieces for a MoeGamer cover feature, and now that I've tweaked the format of Atari A to Z to have an introductory "piece to camera" before the gameplay starts, I've been adding some more substantial research to the mix there, too, rather than just raw, unfiltered gameplay impressions.
My favourite thing about research is that sometimes you come across connections that surprise and delight you. Just today, I discovered that you can actually trace a direct line between the things I'm covering on Atari A to Z and the things I cover on MoeGamer, and that made me unfeasibly happy. I won't spoil exactly what that connection is just yet… you'll find out in a few weeks. Puyo Pop Fever is involved.
Research may be time-consuming and it may be frustrating when you run into a "dead end", as sometimes happens — particularly when you're dealing with lesser-known stuff, or things from an era before the Internet. But when you make these connections and have the opportunity to share what you've discovered with the people who enjoy your work… it's a feeling like no other. Getting someone to go "huh, I never knew that" is one of my absolute favourite things, and I'm hoping there will be at least a few of those moments in the coming weeks!
For now, though, I've kept myself up until half past midnight researching old Atari 8-bit games, so I probably better get some sleep if I want to record all the videos I have planned for tomorrow! Sweet dreams…
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