1566: Project MoeGamer

After some umming and ahhing (and not being able to get to sleep again) I decided yesterday to flip the switch on my little side project. I haven’t done a huge amount of promotion or anything for it yet — though I guess this post counts — because I knew I was going to be away for the weekend. But I did feel like I wanted to get it out in the wild and ready to start tinkering with over the next few weeks.

If you haven’t already seen it, I present to you MoeGamer. It’s a site inspired by my love of Japanese games — particularly those towards the more “anime-ish” end of the spectrum — and is intended to be a repository of articles I’ve written regarding games I’ve been playing. I’ve deliberately kept it free of any sort of “structure” for the moment — i.e. it’s not intended to be a news, reviews and preview site — to allow for full creative freedom, and so far I’ve populated it with a selection of articles that have previously been seen on this site (with some minor edits) and one longer original article on the visual novel Kana Little Sister that I haven’t published anywhere before.

My intention for the site in the short term is simply to use it as an outlet for writing about Japanese games in as much detail as I enjoy. Realistically, I know that I’ve been quite lucky to have the freedom I’ve had at USgamer to post my weekly JPgamer column, and I also know that despite the reputation I’ve built up as a result of both JPgamer and my reviews of various Japanese games, it will take a fair bit of fighting at any mainstream site to be able to do the same. In other words, as much as it would be an ideal situation for me to be hired by a site to be their resident Japanese games expert, I know that, given these games’ distinctly “niche” status (i.e. they’re not necessarily huge traffic magnets except when they’re embroiled in some sort of controversy) I will almost certainly not be writing about them on a regular basis unless I really fall on my feet.

And so, MoeGamer.

What I do with the site in the long term will depend on response and whether I have the time and inclination to continue working on it. I have several ideas of things I’d like to do — I’d like to experiment with video for one thing, and if I manage to attract a reasonably sized audience I’ll look at some form of making money from the blog, be it through ads, crowdfunding or something like Patreon — but whether or not any of these get implemented will depend on how much time I have to spend fiddling with the site going forward. The same is true for whether I spend any money on the site; at present, it’s simply a free WordPress blog, but if it proves to be worthwhile I’ll happily purchase a domain name and premium services to make it more customisable.

As it happens, in just under two months I’m going to have a whole lot of time to fiddle around with the site, for better or worse. While I’m not exactly relishing the prospect of finding a new job, I am enjoying that early buzz of getting a new website up and running and looking forward to seeing whether or not it’s something that is viable to keep doing as a side project on the side. At the very least, I doubt I should have too many problems keeping it open as my go-to place for writing about games and archiving stuff that gets lost in all the OneADay posts here, but part of me is hoping I can grow it into something bigger, too.

We’ll see. It’s far too early to ponder right now, and I’m not in a position to do much with the site over the next couple of days — I’m in Kent with some friends playing board games and drinking cider. It should hopefully be a nice period of unwinding after a stressful week.

For now, then, there’s a selection of articles on MoeGamer for your weekend reading — several of which, as I’ve said, longtime readers of this site will recognise — and from early next week onwards, you should hopefully see a whole bunch more there.

In the meantime, please take a look, leave a comment, click the Like button on stuff you’re interested in and feel free to share anything you enjoy. And I can keep writing about the stuff I love.