Anonymous Guest asked:

hi yuuko from nichijou! i was a follower of your twitter for awhile back. Stopped now because twitters bad. I've been interested in pursuing indie games crit, or similar works for awhile, but im sending this to ask (considering what projects you do) your own reflection on indie games crit, or at least its viability as something other people can pursue. def a shit load of luck involved in success isnt there?

success in games crit is basically entirely luck and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. the avenues for traditional employment have radically shrunk even in the last year (and there were barely any before that), and independent success on somewhere like youtube is entirely dependent on an algorithim you have no control over.

the small amount of success i've found has entirely came from being a recognised face on twitter, making friends, sharing my work, reading their work, being in essentially a classic blogging community. twitter still basically functioned that way even tho it technically killed blogs. but now that functionally as any sort of permanent community or way to grow an audience twitter is deader than dirt i genuinely dunno what advice to give. not gonna lie i'm pretty scared about my own work with abnormal mapping and how anyone on earth is gonna find it now lmao.

which is all very depressing! sorry i don't have a more cheery answer, simply the way of the world right now for anyone working in criticism. that said i do think it's worth doing if you think it's fun. i believe in it! i enjoy it, and i think it's worthwhile. i wish there were better structures to support it but alas, it's bad out there.

my best advice would be to find communities, wherever they are. maybe there's discords you're in, maybe there's folks on cohost, i don't know where your online home is in a post-twitter world, but to make and share your work in those spaces. criticism is always best as a communal thing, because ultimately it is an ongoing discussion, and i think the youtube throwing videos at the wall til the algorithm deigns to choose one grind is hell on earth lol. i think that's how i'd go about writing games crit if i was starting today, and just do it for the love of it i guess.

if you do want to chase the luck-based hell of finding success the best way is unfortunately youtube. and that's saying something because it's so much worse than writing used to be, it's algorithim driven and it takes 20 times as long to produce because you have to edit video as well as write criticism. plus there is no video game criticism community, there are at most small hubs of interest based on overlapping topics or more likely brands. fire emblem youtube, pokemon youtube, kingdom hearts youtube. if you wanted to do the cynical thing, that's what i'd do, find a specific niche that is already popular and keep chasing it until your channel hits the algorithm rotation. i personally would not want to, because it's such an awful grind and chances are still so low that you break out anywhere, but this is unfortunately the Path to growing an audience in games criticism in 2023. truly it sucks out here lmao.

anyway that's my whole spiel, apologies for the ramble and please don't be dissuaded! my frustrations are with capitalism and the collapse of media criticism as an industry that you can say exists, not that oh it's pointless to try. i hope you can carve out a way to balance doing criticism in a way that's healthy and enjoyable with the stress of trying to share work online!!!


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