The next week is going to be decidedly hectic for me, so I probably won’t be posting on the blog much until after Christmas (although if I see something I can write about quickly I may well do that).

Those of you with a concern for my well being may be interested to learn that my girlfriend and I will be moving out of our apartment very, very soon. Possibly as soon as this Wednesday. A huge thank you to everybody who has helped us stay here over the last year - we couldn’t have kept our heads above the water without you. We’re not out of the woods yet, but this is a step in the right direction.

Oh, and this is the last personal post I’ll be making on this blog. Ever. Roll on 2012, roll on change.

That means game journalists have a whole weekend to post whatever bullshit they’d like.

“CALL OF DUTY 9: WE HAVEN’T PLAYED IT YET - WHY IT’S OUR 2012 GAME OF THE YEAR”

“YOSHI FACE SPOTTED IN YOGURT, SORT OF”

“WHAT ROCKSTEADY CAN LEARN FROM MARIOKART 7”

Oh look, I’ve changed the blog’s name. Again. Yawn.

Except - oh, look! - it’s been changed back to the name that was chosen in a moment of rage-induced frustration nearly two years ago! The name that resulted in hate mail, angry tweets, a short-lived parody blog, and calm suggestions from well-meaning folk who thought I should “tone it down a little.”

I did tone it down. First I changed the name to GJAIF, an easily-forgotten acronym that sounded like an Australian greeting delivered by a man with an oversized tongue. Then, later still, I changed the name to the shorthand “GameJournos”, which doesn’t mean anything other than “game journalists”, which still doesn’t mean anything because… well, you know the rest.

At some point during those changes and transitions and attempts to Play Fair writing the blog got boring, because while I continued to tone down my snark/anger/etc. and try to open a dialogue with game journalists, they continued to pull shit like this. And this. And this.

I bit my tongue, and I kept the vitriol inside where it could quietly fester as a (stolen “Futurama” joke - Ed.). It stopped being fun.

So I thought to myself, when did I last enjoy writing the blog? When I look back and think of the Good Times, what times do I remember? And then it came to me - the time when I wrote whatever the fuck I wanted for an audience of one. The time when whatever was on my mind went on the blog. The time when people bitched and moaned about how “petty” I was being. The times when I didn’t dignify these comments with a response because, and I say this with love, fuck you.

Plus, y’know, game journalists have proven time and time again that actually yes, they are incompetent fuckwits. The blog name is as apt now as it was when I first pulled it out of my arse.

I’m sure some people out there are going to see this as a cry for attention, or an attempt to get more eyeballs on my ad-less, donation-button-less Tumblog. Possibly there are people out there who think I’m throwing away months of hard work, going back on some kind of “promise” they might imagine I made some time ago. It’s likely that there will even be people - obsessive, deranged people with nowt better to do - who will spend about an hour or two on Twitter talking about my blog, then capping it with a tweet about how my blog ultimate doesn’t matter and that they shouldn’t be reading it anyway.

To these people I say, again, fuck you.

Read the blog, don’t read the blog. Give a shit about game journalism or don’t. Or possibly somewhere in between. Whatever you may think, this blog isn’t for you. It was never for you. It was for me. It’s time to start writing for my key demographic again.

Stay incompetent, fuckwits.

Love and kisses,
~Ben 

I spent most of last week lifting heavy boxes and not being anywhere near a computer, so I haven’t had the opportunity to actually blog (although I have been tweeting a fair bit). In fact my sole post last week was this reblog of a We Hate Games post.

This week is going to be equally busy. I’ve been doing a lot of writing work elsewhere and it’s eating into the time I can commit to this blog. I recently had an article I wrote for The DamnLag on the subject of game journalism reach the frontpage of /r/gaming, which is a bit of an achievement, and apparently it received well over 40,000 pageviews. So there’s that.

I’m also working on shooting a second episode of PortsCenter. For those of you who don’t know, it’s my planned webseries focusing on interesting and unique ports of videogames. The pilot focused on the PSone version of Doom, and the second episode looks at a handheld port of a popular RTS from the 6-bit 16-bit era.

Of course as with the first episode pulling everybody together to actually make it is difficult, which is one of the reasons I’m trying to get a full season funded so I can buy my own equipment and produce episodes more quickly. Watch the pilot, and if you like it please consider pledging a few bucks. I’d really like to get this show made. It’s a subject I’m particularly interested in, and judging by the responses I’ve had it looks like a lot of you are interested too.

It’s a quiet week for the blog, as I have been preoccupied with pulling myself up by my bootstraps. Or something. In any case, I’m not spending as much time as I’d like behind the computer doing writey things. Apologies for the interruption in service.

I invite you to email me anything you spot that you might consider bullshit, and I’ll hopefully get around to posting it on Thursday or, more likely, Friday. Try to include a screengrab if you can.

Disqus, the service I use to enable comments on the blog, is apparently having some technical issues preventing me from approving comments. If your comment gets queued for moderation, please be patient - I’ll approve it as soon as I’m able.

Cheers.

Update: Ah, it’s working again. Carry on, wayward sons.

Next week is going to be an interesting week. Y’see, for the last few months I’ve been sitting on a fairly sizable amount of inside information about a fairly large gaming news site. It’s probably a name you’re familiar with, but it’s probably not the one you’re thinking of. Starting Monday I’m going to start distributing that information in bits and bobs - one clump of stuff each day. 

I don’t want to over-sell it, especially considering Monday’s installment isn’t necessarily going to make you shit your pants, but it will get bigger as the week moves on. By Friday I might just have changed your entire perception of the site in question. Alternatively, I might not have. Hard to say when it hasn’t happened yet.

This isn’t a screengrab of a website followed by some snarky commentary. This is “internal emails given to me under cover of darkness” stuff. This is “actually had to do some work to connect the dots and put it all together” stuff. And it’s going to be interesting.

See you on Monday.

Guess who wants to start blogging again? I mean, properly blogging?

Apologies for the lack of posts. I’ve been focusing on finding a job. If you have a problem with that, go fuck yourself.

Thanks for your time.

Rather last minute, but it turns out I won’t be home for much of the day tomorrow and so won’t be anywhere near a computer until 6pm PST at the earliest.

BUT! I encourage you to send in tips, links, articles, hats, bands, hatbands, stands, band stands, and clamps. The best way to do this is to send me an email. You can also hit me up on the Twitters if you like.

Oh, and later this week I’ll finally be making a follow-up to that Rock Band DLC video I did a few months ago.

See you tomorrow!

Hello, everybody!

The blog’s been more or less on silent running for the last few days while I launch another project - it’s called Five-Dollar Fiction, if you’re at all interested - but normal service will resume tomorrow.

In the meantime, here is some music.