i sometimes like to imagine a website where people write articles on indie, obscure, untranslated, and alt games forever. a "hg101 but good and open to everybody who wants to write well" kinda deal. i've joined efforts that want to do something like this, but they have completely failed because the people have no idea how to organize writers (esp those who won't be on any payroll).
it'd be nice to see people write about the alt-games on itchio, visual novels that are still untranslated and obscure, 3do stuff, cd-i thingies, atari titles, iunno. just interesting obscurities where people can pool in different works from different places together.
i'd be remiss to mention zine efforts like Indie Tsushin, old website greats like Jay is Games, the herculean Digital Antiquarian chronicling everything interactive fiction history related, and the grand solo efforts of Kimimi, but i'd like to see more variety.
there are a few japanese sites that do partially fulfill this niche:
- Game Catalog is a free-to-edit wiki where people are free to write up and evaluate games. they range from really early games to classics to new popular titles. they get pretty opinionated and critical, but they're so in-depth that i've used it for my own articles. really great stuff.
- Mogura Games is a japanese website cataloging indie and doujin games. staff and freelance writers are paid to explore and write up about the up and coming titles. i check this site once in a while to see what's hip. it's really an interesting site whenever it doesn't kill my fucking firefox. lots of variety.
i have, at times, considered organizing this. but i realize doing game dev that my soul is not in writing about these games forever. i mean, sure: i'd do it once in a while and it's still fun. but i don't view myself as a critic, let alone an interesting one. i'm more interested in being an amateur historian when it comes to writing -- and i definitely don't want to write stuff like this forever.
i want to design games lmao.
(even when i write proper posts, they betray my desire to pilfer design principles and ideas from the titles i'm analyzing.)
but it would be fun, i think, to see a website like this develop and foster an interesting community of players, designers, and writers talking about all kinds of game design. that's the kind of paradise i'd like to see, rather than people discoursing in their own spheres and not being able to engage with other folks' thoughts.
