#oneaday Day 762: That New Beginning

I'll say this again at the end, but please keep quiet about everything mentioned in this post until I've announced things publicly tomorrow. Thank you for your understanding!

All righty, here's the deal with my new job: starting today (well, likely with the first visible "result" tomorrow) I'm the Site Editor of Rice Digital — https://ricedigital.co.uk.

If you're not familiar with Rice Digital, this is a site that is focused on Asian video games and popular culture, emphasis on the games side of things. Rice has always had a store attached to it that typically sells limited editions of PQube's games, but the scope beyond that has varied somewhat over the years. Right now they've got preorders for the upcoming Gal*Gun Returns and Root Film; in the past, they've also done various bits of merchandise, figures and the like, and I believe the plan is to head back in that direction at some point.

Anyway. My role is on the editorial side of things. Aside from the store, Rice is a site with things to read on it! It's been largely "leaderless" for a few months but has been doing steady traffic thanks to a talented bunch of freelancers who have been keeping news stories and features flowing in the absence of anyone actually steering the ship. I will be taking charge of that rowdy bunch and writing a bunch of my own stuff, with a mind to carving out the site a nice, distinctive online identity as a place where people can go to find good-quality writing, news stories, interviews and other interesting stuff that relates to Japanese and Asian video games and broader popular culture.

I had several meetings today where we talked about various ways in which we can potentially achieve that, so I've now got to figure out ways to make those work and see how things go. As such, the overall "format" of the site is likely to be somewhat in flux while we get certain things established, but we already nailed down some interesting ideas in our initial meetings today, and I have plenty more brewing at the back of my mind. Long-term, hopefully I'll be expanding into doing some video work also — both fronting it and working with the freelancers to ensure we have some stuff to offer the audience.

This shouldn't affect MoeGamer and my work on YouTube, since the purpose of MoeGamer and the purpose of Rice Digital are both quite different from one another, despite sharing a subject area. The people in charge are well familiar with what I do — indeed, it's one of the main reasons they hired me — and have said that things should be absolutely fine to continue as they are; I'll just obviously have to ensure that things I'm doing in one place aren't cannibalising the other. I don't see that being a problem, however; if anything the two will support one another well. Obviously I will let you all know if anything is likely to change, but signs are positive right now. So thumbs up for that.

With all that in mind, I encourage you all to follow Rice Digital in your… reading things of choice, follow them on social media (which I won't be in charge of, as there's a Person For That) and check in every so often to see what the team and I have been up to. I should be starting to edit and post some things on the site from tomorrow, so watch out for my name — and be a good Internet citizen and like, comment, share and all that other gubbins so I get to make numbers go up and the people who pay me money like me more.

Last thing: I haven't publicly announced this yet — I'll likely do so tomorrow — so please don't say anything "out in the open" (on Twitter etc.) about this as yet. Once I've shared the news publicly on Twitter, it's all good, but until then, keep shtum if you please!

Once again, a big thank you for all your support; as I mentioned above, the work I've been doing on MoeGamer and YouTube has played a big role in getting me to this position — and your ongoing support of what I do in those places has been a big motivating factor in holding myself to a high standard and putting out work that I'm genuinely proud of. In a very real sense, you've all helped me get this potentially ideal day job — now I just have to jump in and seize this opportunity firmly so I can prove myself to the money men!

A sincere thanks; couldn't have done it without you all.