5 Comments
Mar 27Liked by Adrian Hon

Great to read your thoughts. numbers, and there are still a few of our posts I haven't read yet and would like to circle back to. It's also good to read as I'm considering to restart my own newsletter and thinking about what I want to write about. I'll be looking out for the blog updates and the book too (I read non-fiction too)! Thanks.

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Mar 26Liked by Adrian Hon

Hello from the general public 👋🏻 haha! Looking forward to reading your upcoming blog posts as I enjoyed reading your comments in the old CS Discord.

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I'm trying to walk the line. I wrote about games as a a job between 2000 and 2010, then took a long break. Over that time, I concluded that video simply is the superior presentation format and that most game-related writing is doomed, particularly longer reviews. Show-and-tell is the natural format for game coverage.

But I have zero interest in playing the Youtube game as there are already a lot of excellent outlets producing gaming videos. Some, what's left unexploited?

The idea came when I was playing demos during Steam NextFest - are these not the same as those lovely backroom demos we used to get at E3? At least, those were among my favourite gaming memories. So I decided to launch a newsletter that combines demo previews, short-form writing, and vide gameplay.

Much like you, I'm mainly focusing on organic growth, though I have some other ideas. But I will not become a social media ambulance chaser, courting opaque algorithms and trying to be an 'influencer'. (and I'm appalled by the complete absence in gaming videos of journalistic ethics, and an over-abundance of faddish pile-ons to chase audiences).

Game writing is in an interesting space where I think experimentation is crucial, because what used to work in the past no longer does. There are exceptions: the quality of in-depth game industry and game philosophy writing is so much more and better. To think that Edge and GameIndustry.biz (okay, and Gamastura) used to be lone bastions in a sea of fanboy hype.

The fanboy (and girl) hype is still there, but it's moved to Youtube and Discord, leaving game writing to elevate the intellectual stuff and forge new paths.

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