Gwen

Dumbass in a dumb land

  • She/Her

I was born in the late Holocene and I've seen some shit



Campster
@Campster

So I made a post last week where I was trying to brainstorm a new way to cover indie games, and I think I took my first shot at it tonight so I'd be curious for feedback.

Basically, instead of being mostly concerned with the video output ("It's a YouTube channel! How do I make a good video!?") I went back to basics and tried to focus on my writing by turning my thoughts on a game into a Medium Post first, then a video that is built out of that script.

The result is this Medium.com post, complete with images and videos to make it feel like a genuine feature, as well as the accompanying YouTube video that'll go up alone on the YouTube channel.

I think this approach has a number of benefits:

  • Needing to be a functional article keeps it short and focused
  • Focusing on my writing will improve the criticism itself
  • I can still lean on images and video as needed just as I always have without needing to explain complex systems or visuals with prose
  • It pushes me away from being a "YouTuber" (which was increasingly untenable for what I do) and towards being a general media-savvy critic who can handle both video and written content.

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in reply to @Campster's post:

that WAS a very fun little read. i think the words "cover indie games" is appropriate here--you're going over the themes without doing your own spin/twist on it. comparatively low stakes. as long as you're doing it about something interesting to you, i think there'll always be something special and easy about writing to showcase, rather than to dissect

not to completely imply this wasn't criticism, more that it's right between the "i have nothing to say about this game" and "i have a very complicated thing to say that will take some time to explain" a la your dives into other games of each year in Children of DOOM, which are short-ish but thorough

It's not SubStack, basically.

I mean, really, with the blog-o-sphere dead it's a place where people who want to run a blog can run can do so, complete with publications where multiple authors can contribute, etc. It's basically "What if Wordpress wasn't a thing you ran on your personal website, but a service?"

And then it has a few minor extras like being able to search across topics/authors to either find things to read or find an audience by algorithmic association. The usual social media engagement glue. Which is stuff that sucks, but it's there.

I debated going back to a Wordpress blog on errantsignal.com but it turns out I lost the domain at some point in the past few years and now it's squatted by a company that, as far as I can tell, is itself bankrupt and gone. So.

This got me to try out the game, which was worthwhile if only for the line "but I like to think that since I remember it so fondly, we made the most of it".