1048: HELLO

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Hello! I'm back. Yes, it's me. You know, Pete. The guy who runs this blog. I'm not writing in character or being creative any more. Well, I am being creative. Sort of. Just not in quite the same way I spent the last month. It's back to my normal ramblings from now.

It occurs to me every so often that I write an absolute buttload of words every day. Seriously, if we could power the world on words, I could probably power a small city on the number of words I produce each day. I don't have to produce this many words each day, as only a portion of them are for paid employment but, you know, I like it. So I do it in my spare time, too. You probably knew that already, particularly if you've been following this blog for even a fraction of the 1,048 days I've been writing daily nonsense, or if you've been good enough to check out what I've been doing with the rest of the team over at Games Are Evil.

Occasionally I get the urge to write something for a purpose a little bit less amorphous than that of this blog, and consider writing a novel, or a game, or something else with lots of words in. Unless I specifically set myself a target, though, those things can and do fall by the wayside. My hard drive and Google Docs account are filled with half-finished (or barely-started) novels; I have at least a few awesome game intros that I've made, too. (There's also one three hour-long game called The Adventures of Dave Thunder that was lost to a catastrophic computer failure a few years back, which I've never quite forgiven Sony for, even if it was my own fault for not backing the bastard up.)

Recently, a games writer released a 50,000 word ebook on the subject of a single video game. I'm not a big fan of the writer in question, to be honest — and no, there shall be no bitchy blog post explaining why, they just rub me up the wrong way — so I have very little intention of actually reading (let alone purchasing) said book. However, what I have found is that the mere existence of this ebook has given me a bit of a nudge to start on something that I've been considering doing for a while. Said nudge is a result of the ineffable law of Well If They Can Do It I Certainly Can Too combined with the fact that I knocked out over 50,000 words of creative writing over the course of the last month without breaking too much of a sweat. Which is nice.

This is what I'm going to do: I'm going to write a book on the subject of the visual novel medium. Regular readers will know that I'm hugely enamoured with this largely Japanese subgenre of gaming, and you may even check in regularly on my weekly "READ.ME" column on Games Are Evil each Sunday. The visual novel medium has a lot in common with anime, but is very much its own distinct thing. And there are books on anime out there — so why not visual novels?

READ.ME is by far my favourite thing to write each week (scathing reviews of particularly awful mobile apps aside) and thus I figured it's a natural extension to 1) write more about something that I genuinely love and 2) spend some time delving deeper into the background of the medium and its cultural context. Rather than focusing on a single game for the entire book — which is probably possible in many cases, given the depth of their narratives — I have decided to take a "collected essays" approach in which I tackle a selection of different titles, each of which exemplifies a particular theme, narrative style or tone. This gives me the excuse to play a wide variety of different titles as well as write more about the ones that I've already played (and, in some cases, written about) to death. It also means that the complete project can be broken down into smaller, more easily-manageable targets rather than being a single, daunting task.

So yeah. That's the plan. I've already started, having bashed out 2,500 words on Kana Little Sister today (with more to come when I've seen its other endings) and lined up several other chapters while their subject matter is fresh in my mind. We'll see how it goes. To Scrivener!

1015: JARNAWRITINGLIZMZ

The discussion surrounding the recent "Games Journalists Might Be Corrupt" debacle continues, it seems, with a recent piece by Ben Kuchera over on the Penny Arcade Report summarising nicely why it's an issue worth discussing. I don't really want to get into that conversation again right now because it's already being researched and reported on by people with more time and resources on their hands than me.

What I do want to talk about, though, is the ancillary discussion which always crops up any time Issues surrounding "games journalism" crops up — that is, a matter of what is "games journalism" and the divide between "journalist", "blogger" and any other definitions you'd care to give.

I saw an interesting quote earlier today on Twitter. I forget who it was from so I can't link to it, unfortunately, but it read something like this:

"Don't get into games journalism because you like games. Get into it because you love writing."

That's exactly the reason I enjoy writing about games — because I love writing, as the 1014 posts prior to this will attest. I mean, sure, I love games, too, but I could love games without wanting to write about them, and yet I voluntarily compose thousands of words on the subject every week — here, over at Games Are Evil and for my day job. If I didn't love it, I wouldn't do it.

There's something of an air of snobbery surrounding writing about games, though, and it's all to do with that "J" word. When outlets like Polygon publish a piece like this, you get people expressing genuine surprise that someone has "done some actual games journalism". For sure, well-researched investigative pieces are very much worthy of note and should be praised — but just as in regular newspapers, they are not the be-all and end-all of writing. In mainstream culture and current affairs, we have plenty of critical and opinion pieces alongside the deep-dive investigative pieces — so why is this sort of thing looked down upon in games writing?

It's the obsession with that "J" word. "Journalism" carries with it certain expectations — specifically, reporting and investigation, and perhaps uncovering some facts that might not have come to light otherwise. But there's just as much value in someone composing an in-depth personal response to something they've played in detail, or indeed an opinion piece on a pertinent current issue in the industry.

It's not "one size fits all", in short, and I think part of the problem in the "writing about games" sector (whatever you want to call it) is that too many outlets are trying to be one size fits all. We see sites like VG247 posting articles on everything from the latest DLC drop for Call of Duty to sales figures via who has got a new job on a magazine — something which the vast majority of gamers who are not involved in the industry probably wouldn't give a toss about. We have sites like GamesBeat experimenting with a review format that features feedback from a games critic, a business analyst and an academic, and it's not entirely clear who that's for.

We need greater focus and less generalisation. The outlets that are good at "real journalism" such as Kuchera's Penny Arcade Report (and to a lesser extent Polygon) should keep doing what they do because it's important — and it'd be good to see more outlets focusing on this side of things with properly-trained staff. But at the same time, the sites who are effectively "magazines" as opposed to "newspapers" should keep doing what they're doing too. Their work is no less valid or important, but their purpose is different — while the "journalistic" outlets' primary purpose is to inform, the "magazine" outlets' primary purpose is to entertain. There's a degree of crossover between both, of course, but I can't help but feel that focusing on either one or the other rather than ending up doing a half-assed job at both would benefit everyone in the long run.

I actually wrote a piece on this subject a while back regarding the ever-controversial Kotaku, a site which consistently draws heat for its seemingly "irrelevant" articles and often irreverent attitude. I still stand by what I say in that post — if Kotaku was more honest and open about its target audience (18-30 year old men) and tailored its content accordingly, then I feel it would be a better publication as a result.

It's also what I'm trying to do over at Games Are Evil with a limited team and resources. We're not under any illusions about being the first to report on anything or the most timely with our coverage, but in acknowledging that fact and taking a more "magazine-like" approach — weekly, focused columns punctuated by brief news snippets on subjects that are a little "off the beaten track" and regular features such as our daily Song of the Day — I feel we're building a better, more distinctive publication rather than yet another "me too" blog, and one that I'm actually pretty proud of so far.

Anyway. The "games journalism is broken" discussion will probably continue in perpetuity, particularly given recent events. I do know one thing, though, and that's that I am really glad I am not Lauren Wainwright right now.

1013: Heads Up

Thought I'd give those of you who care a heads-up as to my impending plans: for November I will be doing something very similar to what I did last year, which is not participating in NaNoWriMo officially, but still taking the month to write something purely "creative" every day, and hopefully ending up with something at least semi-coherent. Note that because this will be harder work than the bollocks I spout every day for normal posts, the stickmen will be taking a short break while I write it. They'll be back in December, though.

Last year, the result of my productive november was a project called Wasteland Diaries, which you can read from the start here. This was an interesting experiment, in which I just started writing and "improvised" my way from start to finish. I didn't plan out where the story was going in advance (and that probably showed) — but in the end I feel that helped a bit with the deliberately confusing, mysterious nature of the whole thing. I specifically wanted the reader to be thrown off a bit by what was going on, and what better way to do that than by not knowing myself what was going to happen next?

I knew that attempting to keep that going for a whole month would be a difficult challenge, though, so gradually I introduced new elements — the other characters, the shifting narrators, the meta-plot — until eventually, by probably about halfway through the whole thing, I had a vague idea of where it was going and where it was going to end up. Perhaps not the best way to write a piece of fiction, but eh. It worked. Kinda. Of course, there were a few points where I remembered that I'd left a "plot hook" back in the first few chapters that I promptly hadn't resolved at all and now had no idea what to do with, but for the most part… yes. It worked.

This year, I already have an idea ready to go ahead of time. I haven't planned anything specifically, but I have at least thought about it. What I might do is figure out the beginning, midpoint and ending before I start and then work my way from one to the other over the course of the month. That strikes me like a good idea.

Naturally, I won't be sharing any details of what it's all about beforehand — if you want to find out what it is, you'll have to read for the whole of November. (Or, you know, look back on it afterwards and read it all in one go.) I'm quite excited about the basic idea behind it, though, so hopefully that should come across in my writing.

Decisions to make now, though. Character names? First or third person narrative? How much should I aim to write per day? What word count should I try and end up with? (To date, I'm still not entirely sure how many words a typical novel has in it… and I guess it varies a lot anyway. Also, am I aiming to write a novel? Or just an extended piece of fiction? I don't know. We'll see how it goes.)

Well, whatever happens, it should be an interesting month if nothing else. Plus I know a few of you out there enjoy my creative writing, so I hope you will like this project.

#oneaday Day 941: Scrivenings

I've been spending a bit more time with Scrivener, a writing tool that I picked up a while back and then didn't do much with for a little while. Having paid actual money for it, though, I figured it was high time I delved into it and actually started using it for a project rather than it being one of those things that just gathers (virtual) dust as a symbol of past good intentions.

I decided that the project I was going to use it for was a visual novel. Regular readers will know that I find this simple but effective form of interactive storytelling to be a fascinating medium, and I have been toying with the idea of writing one for quite some time, usually falling at the first hurdle when I remember I have little-to-no graphical talent, which somewhat precludes me from incorporating the "visual" bit.

But, I figured, no sense worrying about graphics if there's nothing for them to visualise. So I decided to actually start writing it, and to use Scrivener to plan it out in advance.

Now, when I write, I must confess that I rarely go through a formal "planning" process. This is probably fairly evident in these daily blog posts, which tend to spew forth directly from my brain and out of my fingers in some sort of hideously unorganised stream of consciousness. But it's the way I've generally worked on more formal pieces over time, too. During A-Levels and university, I never "planned" an essay on a piece of paper beforehand. I never used the "outline" function of Word, I never scrawled things on Post-Its and then moved them around. I just wrote, then tweaked, fiddled and moved things around once I'd written a first draft. It worked for me.

Mostly.

That approach doesn't work so well with long-form fiction, whether you're attempting to create a linear narrative for a novel or a non-linear branching narrative for a game or visual novel. I have a number of stalled novel projects on the go simply because I'm not entirely sure where they're going. In some cases, I have an idea of what the end might be, but it's the stuff in the middle I haven't figured out. How to get from the beginning to the end, as it were.

So, as I decided to start work on this visual novel project (which, like an irritating PR agency for a company making an iOS game you don't give a shit about I'm "not ready to talk about yet") I also figured that I would give this whole "planning" thing a shot. I recalled seeing the spectacularly comprehensive flowchart for Katawa Shoujo (mild spoilers within), and knew that if I was going to put together even a relatively simple VN project, I would have to figure out some sort of way to keep it organised.

Fortunately, Scrivener has delivered just that brilliantly. In order to plan out the basic sequence of events, I've used the "corkboard" facility and its special mode where you can drag around virtual index cards as you please. I've written short synopses of each scene on each index card and laid them out in a logical fashion to depict the various routes the player might be able to take through the story. Each index card then corresponds to a separate "subdocument" in the whole Scrivener project, allowing scenes to easily be split up and composed a little bit at a time rather than simply being confronted with a daunting blank page and no idea where to start.

Then there's pleasing little touches that help with the actual writing process, too. When writing in "Script" mode (which I'm using to compose the VN), simple keyboard shortcuts allow you to easily switch from writing actions to character names to dialog and back again. You can create links to other subdocuments or your research (which you can also store within your Scrivener project). You can split the editor window so you can refer to a piece of source material as you write. And when it's all done you can "compile" your project ready for publishing as a physical product, ebook or other format.

I've barely scratched the surface of the features it offers, but already I can see it becoming an essential part of the writing process. Progress on the VN project is going well so far — I've synopsised (huh… according to spellcheck that IS a word) the whole of the first "act" of the game and am now starting on in-depth scripting for each scene. Following this, I'll work on the various diverging paths through the narrative and hopefully end up with a suitably comprehensive document ready to plug into Ren'Py and then flutter my eyelashes at someone who can draw. Following that, who knows? Perhaps I'll have a finished game one day.

#oneaday Day 683: Debrief

So, for the last 30 days I've been doing (almost) nothing but creative writing on here. What have we learned?

Firstly, I remembered that creative writing is fun. Not that I'd particularly forgotten that fact, but I've always enjoyed it, ever since a young age. It's actually knuckling down and doing it that can be the stumbling block for many, though — which is, I guess, what projects like NaNoWriMo and what I was doing here are all about. Once you discipline yourself to do something, then you can do it, no problem — over the course of the last 30 days I've churned out over 30,000 words of creativity. Whether or not they're any good is another matter, of course — but they're there, and once they're there, they can become a starting point to something else, even if that "something else" turns out to be something completely different, simply spurred on by what you've achieved previously.

Secondly, improvisatory storytelling is fun, although not necessarily the most practical way to write something coherent. As I said at the start of the whole exercise, I hadn't planned anything out, created any characters, settings or overarching plot — I was making things up as I went along. This was probably evident from any number of plot holes that I'm sure are still in there, and points where I retroactively made something relevant, perhaps not in the way I'd originally intended. Why? Because when I originally wrote something, I'd had one thing in mind, only to come up with a Brilliant New Idea a couple of days later that made the original something either irrelevant or very difficult to fit in to things.

Thirdly, tenses are a bugger. I made a conscious decision once I introduced Evie's narrative to distinguish the two narrators through their use of tense, but it was so easy to naturally shift to the wrong one throughout the course of one chapter. I'm pretty sure I spotted it every time it happened, but if there are a few examples of incorrect tenses, then I apologise.

Fourthly, I already knew this, but stream of consciousness is a fun way to explore characters. With stream of consciousness writing, you can create an interesting, compelling character and narrative without any other characters being present. The majority of Adam's story was just him, for example, and Evie didn't speak much until later. The characters' internal monologues can provide interesting ways to explore the way they think and feel without having to have conversations with others to make things explicit.

I picked up on the whole "stream of consciousness" thing back at school when we read Jean Rhys' Jane Eyre prequel Wide Sargasso Sea, a book which explores exactly what happened to Mrs Rochester before she became the scary woman in the attic. I can't remember a huge amount about the book itself, but many things I've written since that time have taken the first person stream of consciousness approach, as it's a style in which I enjoy writing. Other influential books from my past include the Adrian Mole series — diary-style writing is often pretty similar to stream of consciousness, after all, though there has to be something of a suspension of disbelief at times as few real diaries would include complete word-for-word transcriptions of conversations that had happened — and (don't laugh) John Grisham's The Rainmaker, which was the first book I ever read that wasn't written in past tense.

On the whole, I'd say the experiment was a success. Tucked away in my Google Docs account right now is 14,455 words of another story I'm writing — and this one I have mostly planned out, or at least have some "key events" and characters in mind. One day I might actually get around to finishing it — and since I find myself with a bit of free time on my hands at the moment, I guess there's no time like the present. As such, assuming no-one suddenly phones/emails me on Monday and hires me, I will start doing a bit of (non-blog) writing each day in lieu of having an actual job. Who knows? Something awesome might come of it. At the very least, a creative project which has been on my drawing board for about a bajillion years might finally come to fruition, which will be satisfying. And, frankly, given some of the dross out there which does make it to publication, I'm pretty sure I can do better. I mean, I know I'm not the perfect writer — no-one is, and to assume so is both arrogant and very, very stupid — but I like to think I'm pretty good, at the very least. And also, you only get better through practice, right?

The one thing I can say about the last year is that I've got a ton of experience writing. I mean, I know I did the year before too, what with contributing to sites like Kombo and GamesAreEvil as well as writing this nonsense every day, but this year it's been my actual full-time job, and for the vast majority of that time I've had the privilege of working with some talented editors who know their craft and give good feedback. Too many outlets these days settle for getting things published as quickly as possible rather than taking their time over ensuring everything is as good as it can be. This year, I've picked up a bunch of little tips to ensure good-quality output. Even if I've had to spend the whole year professionally spelling words like "theorise" and "colour" incorrectly. (Love you, USA.)

So, where to from here? We'll see. It's a weekend coming up (it is, right? Losing one's job causes one to immediately lose all sense of what day it is, in my experience.) so that will be spent attempting to relax and unwind after, frankly, what has been a particularly crappy week. Following that, on Monday, as I say, I'll be setting aside some time to do some non-blog writing every day in lieu of actual work, and seeing how that develops. And from there, who knows?

On the job front, there are several irons in the fire at the moment, so hopefully something will come of (at least) one of them. Now I have a bunch of experience under my belt, hopefully I won't find myself spending a year out of work again. Because that sucked a big pile of donkey dick. An actual pile of it. And I have no desire to return to that situation. So I won't.

Hopefully, anyway.

Enough rambling from me. Have a pleasant weekend, all.

#oneaday Day 681.5: RIP GamePro

[Apologies for the interruption to the ongoing story — it will end tomorrow. This needed to be said today, though.]

Today, an era came to an end, as the announcement came that GamePro in its current form would be no more as of December 5, 2011. Both the website and the new quarterly magazine have been shuttered, and all of us on staff suddenly find ourselves without a job. The GamePro brand itself will be folded into PC World, where it will most likely die a quiet death, unnoticed.

This is, of course, suckitude of the highest magnitude, but it wasn't entirely unexpected. It is tough times in the super-competitive publishing industry, particularly in the overcrowded video games market. I shan't pretend to understand the business reasons behind the closure of GamePro when we were enjoying viewing figures the likes of which the site had never seen — but it seems to be something of a sad truth in today's games journalism industry that nothing lasts forever. If you want job security, it ain't the sector you should get yourself into.

What has been touching is the amount of support people have shown for GamePro on Twitter and various other social networks today. The magazine and site was a lot more widely-known than I thought — at times I'd wondered if UK journos and industry types were even aware of it — and everyone, it seems, was sorry to see the back of what had, after all, been a fixture in gamer culture for many, many years, particularly in the U.S.

GamePro, of course, has personal meaning to me, too. My brother spent ten months giving both the magazine and its web presence a much-needed shakeup (see his blog post today for more) and made it something that was interesting and relevant to the modern gamer. And once he left and I had the opportunity to jump in on news reporting duties, I know my contributions played a part in the site's growing success — growth that has been sadly cut short by today's news.

While I'd never met many of the GamePro team face to face, it was a close-knit bunch of people who got on well together, from what I could make out, anyway! I felt like a valuable member of the team despite being halfway across the world, and I always felt like my hard work was appreciated — which is why I continued to work so hard and contribute as much quality content as I could to the site. I made a distinct effort to not cover the same stories that all the big news blogs did — that's counter-productive. Rather, I took inspiration from sources such as GameSetWatch (which, coincidentally, also died today), Kill/Screen and numerous others to dig up interesting nuggets of information on fascinating indie titles, peculiar happenings in gamer culture and opportunities for discussion and debate. I was happy with the approach; I feel it gave GamePro a unique take on the news which wasn't just a case of rewriting press releases and rewording stories from other sites. And on the occasions where I did write stories based on press releases, I made a conscious effort to actually write a story rather than just reword the press release. I'd read up on the background of the companies involved, find out precedents for interesting events and throw in some interesting trivia if I had some to hand.

And now it's all over. I'm sorry to see GamePro go, but I'm hopeful that the staff will be able to find themselves suitably awesome positions to move on to. As for me? I couldn't say. Working for an American site has been a great deal of fun but it's had the side-effect that I'm known more in the States than I am in my own country. While I'd hope my experience and output would speak for itself regardless of the geographical location of the site on which it was published, I do wonder which side of the pond any future writing gigs might come from.

With that, then, ladies and gentlemen, please raise your glasses and toast the late GamePro. You'll be missed.

#oneaday Day 630: Over My Shoulder

I've been blogging since July of 2008. Actually, that's not quite true — I've been blogging a lot longer than that, but had a couple of other websites prior to this one. To my knowledge, only one of them is still there, and that was a somewhat abortive effort. This site, then, represents one of the most consistent creative endeavours that I've ever undertaken.

For what, though? What is it achieving? I'm certainly not making any great effort to ponce around with anything like search engine optimisation and the limit of my attempts to "drive traffic" consist of auto-posting each entry to Facebook and Twitter as a link for people to click through to. And yet, here I am, day after day, writing something for anywhere between — most weeks — 20 and 100 people. 24 of you readers are subscribed by email, meaning you get a daily dose of nonsense posted direct to your inbox (and possibly don't count against my views count, you bastards, unless you actually do, in which case you're not bastards, and I don't really care anyway) and I have no idea how many more might be subscribed via RSS.

As I've said on a few other occasions, though, the main reason I'm writing all this gobbledegook day after day is for myself. I'm not sure if I'll be looking back on this content in a few years time and figuring out something profound about myself or not, but I certainly like having it all there — and knowing that there are 629 daily posts before this one (and a few more irregular ones prior to that) is quite satisfying.

I like reading back old things that I've written. I don't keep all old pieces of writing that I do, but I have some knocking around that date back to my school days, which are a good few years ago now. It's sometimes interesting to look back and read your work and consider what might have been going through your mind at the time — or what inspired you to write a particular work.

I think the oldest piece of writing I've still hung onto is the Woolworths notebook that my friend Edd and I took on holiday to Gran Canaria. It was 1992, and we were in Year 7. That holiday was memorable for all sorts of reasons — the cockroach attack in the middle of the night, the discovery of Mortal Kombat and X-Men in the local arcade, our first experiences snorkelling. And most of it is entertainingly chronicled in the dodgy handwriting of the 11-12 year old me.

The way you write changes over the years, even if you're not a writer and if you don't do it often. Old people using computers forget how to use capital letters and punctuation (except the exclamation mark, which they use with gay abandon) while some develop a clear sense of style and voice according to who they're writing to. When you're twelve, however, most of your writing is written in the same register, however many English lessons on formal and informal letters you might have had. My old notebook is a fine example of this, sharing details of stupid in-jokes that Edd and I had at the time, the context of which has been mostly lost to the mists of time save for the written record of the fact that we did indeed compose a short song called "I'm an egg-timer" together and that we found it inexplicably amusing to hum the theme tune from the Whiskas cat food advert while descending a water slide.

Don't ask. I have no idea.

I wonder if in twenty years' time — firstly, will this site still be around or will we all have switched to something like the OASIS platform in Ready Player One? — I'll still be writing in the same manner. Perhaps I will — in some senses, even though I'm (painfully) aware that I'm thirty years old, in others I feel like I haven't grown up a whole lot. There's still a ton of things about the world that I don't know or don't understand, and a lot of people seem to have a firmer grasp on them than me — or, more likely, simply do a better job of hiding the fact that they're overwhelmed by everything out there.

Arguably part of this feeling of "immaturity", for want of a better word, is writing this every day. When I'm writing some nonsense here, I can just sort of "let go" and channel that twelve year old kid who felt the need to chronicle everything on a holiday with a friend. I'm under no obligations to write in a particular style or follow the AP Style Guide or whatever (though you'll notice I do make an effort to spell and punctuate correctly, typos aside) so I can just sit back (well, forward, otherwise I can't reach the keyboard) and type whatever is in my head onto the virtual page in front of me.

This is a nice feeling, and that's why I do this day after day. I appreciate those of you who keep coming back to read my ramblings, I really do. But the act of writing, of self-expressions, of, in some cases, being able to write things that are difficult to talk about out loud — that's why I do it. It makes me feel good, makes me feel like I have an outlet and am free to express myself however I see fit. And sure, anyone reading can and will judge me based on the things I write. And that's fine, because after all, I'm posting all this for public consumption. But more than that, this is something for me. This is me. And if you've come along for the ride here and read the last six hundred and whatever posts, you probably know me pretty damn well by now.

If, however, you're new, the archives are on the right hand side. I'll see you in a few months.

#oneaday Day 614: Joining the Fold

It's with some pleasure that I welcome a very good friend of mine to the blogging fold. A big hand, if you please, for Mr Kalam Abul. Kalam's a good buddy from my days working for a certain fruit-based computer manufacturer's retail outlet, and we both have plenty of unpleasant experiences to talk about from our time there, but now's not the time for that.

Kalam plans on using his shiny new blog as a form of free therapy — and that, to me, sounds like an excellent idea. After all, at times, it's what I do here. Talking about stuff is good. If you don't have anyone to talk to, though — or no-one you feel comfortable talking to, or if you don't necessarily need to "talk", more just "get things off your chest" — then writing is an excellent outlet. I know that the last 614 days of writing something every day — though it's been a struggle sometimes — have provided me with a means to vent my inner frustrations into something vaguely productive rather than sitting around moping, being upset, crying, punching sofas (apparently) or stabbing badgers. This is good.

Self-proclaimed social media experts and people who read Mashable would probably come along right now and say that blogging's not about the individual person, it should be about your audience, your community, the blogosphere and other pretentious-sounding phrases. You know what I say to those people? Sod off. Your own personal space on the Web is yours to do with as you please. You can vent your frustrations, or you can attempt to provide a "service". You can express yourself, or you can inform. You can even do all of the above. You don't necessarily have to have a particular "structure" or theme in mind (though it sometimes helps) — sometimes all you need to do is write.

If I had to pigeonhole this blog, I'd be pretty hard-pushed to do so. The most frequently-occurring topic is likely video games, of course, and that's probably unsurprising. It's something that's in my blood and that I've been involved with for almost as long as I can remember — and it's something I'm involved with professionally now, too. But I certainly wouldn't describe this place as a video games blog. There's all manner of other nonsense amidst the rampant enthusings regarding Xenoblade Chronicles and Deadly Premonition. There's honest stuff, creative stuff, weird stuff, experimental stuff, stuff that didn't quite work, stuff that I'm incredibly pleased with and stuff that makes me sad to think back on. All of it's important, and, particularly since I started this daily posting business, all of it reminds me where I've come from and — maybe, anyway — where I'm going.

I can certainly say for a fact that this time last year I wouldn't have imagined that I'd be sitting here right now — though it's probably fair to say that this time the year before I wouldn't have imagined that I'd have been sitting where I was this time last year, if you see what I mean. Sometimes things that you take for granted are more fragile than you think — but sometimes the reverse is true, too.

I'm in a reasonably good place right now. I can't complain too much. There are things I want to achieve and things that I could do better, but after surviving a year best described as "traumatic", I'm happy to take things a bit at a time and let this place track my progress — either directly or indirectly.

As for Kalam, well, buddy, I hope your site helps you find the same sort of inner calm that writing here has done for me. And if not, don't hold back. Everyone loves a good rant.

#oneaday Day 583: Creative Breakfast

I've reached a decision. Once all this moving stuff is over and done with I'm going to start writing these entries in the morning. There are many reasons for this, chief among which is the fact that by the time it gets to late evening I'm knackered and have already spent the day doing my day job which involves, yes, writing.

Part of this is sheet stubborn determination to not let tiredness and lack of creativity beat me. It would be easy to say I was fed up and tired of writing stuff every day. I'm not; it just feels a bit like it sometimes, particularly when it gets to 11pm and I haven't written anything — and often haven't thought of anything to write.

So the plan is thus: get up, eat breakfast, indulge in "creative breakfast" by writing blog in the morning. That way 1) it's out of the way in the morning and 2) my mind is already in a good mindset for writing.

It also helps avoid filler entries like this one which follow 4 hour drives.

So night night! Look forward to the new regime starting soon.

#oneaday Day 541: Kombo Broken

It's a sad day today as I hear from my good buddy Ryan Olsen that Kombo.com is no more, with the URL now simply redirecting to GameZone.com, who purchased the site a while back.

Kombo.com holds some particular personal significance for me, as it does for many of the great friends I made while working for the site. Compared to many of the grizzled old veterans who had been working on the site since 2005, I was a relative newbie, only joining the team last year.

As most of you probably know by now, last year was Not a Good Year. Having been forced out of a job I genuinely loved by bullying management at the end of the previous year, finding employment in a primary school 40 miles away from where I lived, discovering that yes, Aldershot is indeed a shithole, even when dealing with 8 year olds, I quit my job in March of 2010 to attend PAX East (to this day quite possibly the best few days of my life EVAR) and around a similar time I started contributing to Kombo.com as a news editor. A short while after PAX East, my wife and I separated and I found myself alone in a flat I couldn't afford with no job and seemingly no prospects of finding one that wasn't supply teaching — a career path which would have likely ended rather abruptly with me flinging myself off the nearby Itchen Bridge had I pursued it.

As time went on and my finances dwindled, writing for Kombo every day — even if it was at US-friendly, UK-antisocial hours — gave me something stable to cling on to. This was something I desperately needed during those difficult months. There were many days when I found it very difficult to function as a normal human being, so badly was I hurting. But when it came to time to sit down and work my shift at the virtual news desk, that all went away for a few hours. It was just me, GamesPress, a lot of Chrome tabs and the Worst CMS In The World.

One of my favourite things about working for Kombo, though, was the people I had the good fortune to meet as a result, all of whom I'm happy to count among my friends today. All of them have gone their separate ways since September of last year, when most of us departed from the site due to its heading in a direction that wasn't for us (with some of us forming our anarchic rainbow unicorn collective The Big Pixels, still ably maintained by Geoff Calver). But we all still talk to each other daily — through email, through Twitter, through Facebook, through G+. It's great to see that Kombo, despite being a relatively small site compared to the giants out there, managed to give a lot of people the foot in the door they needed to pursue a career in various parts of the games industry. Some went into PR. Some went into development. Some still write on a hobbyist basis while pursuing other careers, and I write professionally.

It's also been nice to see that diverse members of my groups of friends online knew the name Kombo — even people that I wouldn't necessarily have expected to. The site will be missed, and not just by those of us who wrote for it. It's the end of an era and — sadly — the end of some people's portfolios (archive.org notwithstanding) as the old content seems to have vanished altogether.

Kombo.com gave me a leg-up into the industry and it's part of the reason I write about games as my full time job now. I'll miss it, and I invite you to doff your caps and raise a glass as its flame goes out for the last time.