I want to say up front that I'm not affiliated with Critical Distance professionally, though I am personal friends with a couple of people who work there. I have also directly benefitted from the site's weekly curated roundups since 2020; every time Critical Distance has boosted one of the pieces I've published, whether it be my own writing or a contributor's writing, that piece has seen a major upswing in traffic. I said it before in my shorter call-to-action, but No Escape would simply not be what it is - whatever we are now - without Critical Distance's influence.
However, backing away from the personal for a bit, I want to talk about the objectively positive things Critical Distance has done for games media as a whole.
- Critical Distance has published weekly "where's all the good games writing" lists since April 2009. If there is a longer-running week-by-week archive of critical articles from across the industry, I know I haven't seen it.
- Its "where to pitch" section has links and contact information for places new writers can pitch to—a place where new writers can stretch their wings.
- Its "Critical Compilations" series brings in writers from all across the industry to curate and comment on what they believe is the best writing about a single game, hands-down. Each Critical Compilations entry is a compendium of incredible critical work. See Cian Maher's work on The Witcher 3 and Autumn Wright's entry on Breath of the Wild for examples.
- They hold large archives of Kotaku UK's work, as well as that of Kill Screen and ReadySet ZAM.
Losing any of this would mean losing years of history. Games media's institutional memory is already poor; we simply can't let it get poorer. Please consider donating to Critical Distance at the link below and if you can't, please, please share widely.
