#oneaday Day 991: Last Man Standing

So, having hit one thousand daily posts before me (he did start first), Mr Ian Dransfield has officially bowed out of the daily blogging business. I don’t blame him at all — he notes that the prospect of continuing even on a weekly basis feels like “giving myself work I don’t want to do” so has chosen instead to jack it in altogether. A hearty congratulations to him for having put up with it for so long, though — a thousand daily posts is a massive amount of stuff to evacuate from your head on to the page. Believe me, I know.

Since I’m coming up behind Ian and closing in on that elusive post number 1,000 as the last man standing, this has naturally got me thinking about the whole business, too. Specifically, it has me thinking to myself “is it worth still doing this? Am I actually enjoying it?”

And, I have to conclude once again — this isn’t the first time I’ve asked myself this question — that “yes” is the answer to both of those questions. In the last 991 days, I don’t think there’s been a single time that I’ve resented my self-imposed obligation to write this blog. There have been days where it’s been difficult to think of something to write, sure, and there have been days where other distractions have meant I haven’t written it until a ridiculous hour in the morning (I think 4am was the latest after having watched several episodes of Firefly while in conversation with someone over the Internet) but I’ve certainly never felt like it was an unwelcome obligation. Quite the opposite, in fact — although it usually ends up being the last thing I do each day, it’s something I often find myself thinking about over the course of the day’s activities and looking forward to actually sitting down and writing. It is, as I’ve said many times before, a cathartic means of self-expression for me, with the happy bonus that I’ve got to know a number of thoroughly pleasant people in the process. Moreover, a number of people who already knew me have got to know things about me that they might not have done otherwise.

Like Ian, my life has changed immeasurably since I started writing this blog. I have changed jobs several times — going from primary school teacher to unemployed bum to part-time, low-paid games journalist to legitimate, properly-paid games journalist. My relationship status has changed several times — my wife and I split, signalling the start of the darkest period I’ve ever been through in my life; I met someone, that didn’t work out; I met Andie, that did work out (right? Hopefully. OH GOD WHAT IF— [*slap* — the Rational Part of Pete’s Brain]). I went to America several times for various reasons (PAX East, family time). I’ve moved several times — from Southampton back to my childhood home in Cambridgeshire, then onward to my current situation in Wiltshire (and hopefully back to Southampton at some point in the near future). I’ve re-established contact with some friends; lost touch with others. And I’ve discovered anime.

Alongside all these various upheavals, the one constant in my life has been this silly little corner of the Internet that I call my own, with the tens of thousands of words I’ve tapped onto it at ungodly hours in the morning, usually from my own computer, but sometimes from my phone, sometimes my tablet, sometimes my netbook. This blog has been someone I can always “talk to”, to offload thoughts and memories both pleasant and painful, and to share those things with anyone who will listen. It’s been an immeasurably valuable experience for me, and thus I have absolutely no intention of stopping right now.

I realise that by saying all these things now I am effectively sabotaging my own “YAY 1,000 POSTS” post, but eh, whatever. With Ian’s departure from the journey, it felt timely to say them now. Doubtless inspiration will hit me at about 2am on Day 1,000 and I’ll have something amazing to share with you.

Until then, though, it’s business as usual, I’m afraid. Thanks for continuing to read, like and comment, and I’ll see you again tomorrow!

#oneaday, Day 336: Being For The Benefit Of Mr. @shoinan (And Any Other Prospective #oneaday-ers)

The few of us who are still flying the #oneaday flag are closing in on the grand finale. 365 posts of non-stop bollocks, some of which might have been entertaining, some of which may have been utter nonsense. If you haven’t checked out the fellow survivors’ blogs yet, I encourage you to pay Jen, Mat, Mike, Krystian, Ian and other Ian a visit and support the awesome work (and endurance) they’ve shown over the last year. Give ’em a big hand, or whatever the Internet equivalent of applause is.

Now: to the point. I have tagged @shoinan in this post because he was specifically asking about it on Twitter at some indeterminate point in time that I’m confused about due to intercontinental time zone drift and watching Scott Pilgrim until 1:30 in the morning, then getting up at 7am to record a podcast. But this post is directed at anyone who wants to be Awesome Like Us.

#oneaday is something I intend to keep going with once my year is up. The others may feel differently. For some it feels more like work, for others it’s a good habit that they’ve got into. Some are persisting out of sheer bloody-mindedness, some are passionate about the whole thing and want to succeed in it as a creative endeavour. In fact, most of us have fallen into some or all of the above categories at different times. And those who dropped the project partway through the year all did so for completely valid reasons, too.

It’s a challenge, make no mistake, but it’s one you largely set the rules for yourself. The only rule that everyone needs to abide by is this:

Post something—anything—at least once a day for a whole year.

Exactly what “something” means to you can be anything at all. It can be a photo-based post (I’ve done a few of those in the past). You can set yourself a minimum of at least a paragraph. Personally, I try to write at least 500 words a day, and in the last *mumble* days I’ve also been doing my comic daily, too. (All right, I couldn’t be bothered to check. But I know it’s over a hundred days now.)

But there’s no hard and fast rules about how much you need to write, how good it needs to be or even what it needs to be about. The whole point of the exercise is to get you (yes, YOU) writing. Writing anything. Posting anything. Getting into the habit of being creative regularly. Creativity is something you need to exercise, just like your muscles. Spend your time not being creative and you’ll stagnate, but it doesn’t take long to get back on track. And there’s no better way to exercise the creative bits of your mind than coming up with something—anything—every single day.

The other side effect that you might find is that it’s a good outlet. I’ve had a shit year, by all accounts, and I know that one thing that has really helped me deal with said shit is writing about it, getting my thoughts out of my head (where they’d fester and eventually explode) onto the page. Saying things and knowing people are reading them—even if the things I’ve written aren’t specifically aimed at anyone (or are, in some cases)—helps. It’s a form of therapy.

I’m not saying you need to have something going on in your head to enjoy success at #oneaday blogging. But it certainly gives you something to write about, and I believe it’s a healthy thing to do, too.

So for those of you interested in participating next year, I’m fully intending on continuing to take part and helping to co-ordinate everyone’s efforts, too. Keep an eye on these pages for further details, and in the meantime feel free to get started whenever you like. If you do, be sure to let me know that you’re on the case and I’ll be sure to throw up some links.

Not in a vomity way. That would be weird. You know what I meant.

Anyway. Now it is time for pancakes. I hope those of you reading this who have a creative itch that is proving difficult to scratch will certainly consider joining me on another year of #oneaday blogging next year. Good luck to those of you who are in for the ride.

#oneaday, Day 319: Report This Post, It Contains Opinion

There is an increasingly popular—and increasingly worrying—tendency for games journalism and writing about games (which some people are keen to point out are two different things) to be judged as “broken” or “lame”.

On paper, you can perhaps understand why this is. Gaming is one of the most popular subjects for wannabe writers to pebble-dash the Internet with, and there are so many people out there who want to do it “professionally” that a good 90% (I made that up) of gaming-focused sites out there can’t even pay their writers, however awesome they are. As such, there is a lot of crap out there, but it’s generally quite easy to spot, and there’s certainly no need for sites like this.

Fellow #oneaday-er and all-round lovely grumpy chap Ian Dransfield of Play Magazine wrote an impassioned rant on this subject. I highly recommend you go and read it. Now. Go on.

I agree with the Dransfield. No kind of journalism should be homogenised, automaton-written garbage. It should have scope for individual opinion and comment, and certain outlets should have the opportunity to develop distinctive “voices” on the matter. It’s worked for our newspapers for years, after all—for all the shit everyone gives the Daily Mail about their bizarre and often misguided opinions, at least they stick to their guns. Similarly, were the Daily Express ever to write about anything other than Princess Diana, the nation would be in uproar.

One of the things that bugs me most about today’s games journalism is the plague that is N4G. For the uninitiated, N4G is a community-driven news-aggregation service. Community members may post articles to a “pending” queue, and they then have to get ten “approvals” in order to show up in the main news feed.

Fair enough, you might say. It separates the wheat from the chaff, surely. And surely the people who have approval rights must all be published professionals, right?

Wrong. Anyone can submit any page to N4G with no requirement that the article be your own. Get three articles approved by the community (a simple case of rounding up ten Twitter/Facebook friends to help you) and voila—approval rights. This then means that your opinion has as much weight as someone who’s been doing the job for fifteen years.

This may still not sound unreasonable. So let me show you the drop-down menu of options available for “reporting” an article if you believe it to be “inappropriate”:

Yes, you have read that correctly; one of the options for reporting an article as unworthy of appearing in the N4G news feed is that it is “lame”.

N4G is seen as a primary means of promoting games-related articles, and sure enough, it does seem to generate a lot of hits for sites, so I can’t fault those people who do take advantage of it to get more readers to their sites—fair play to you. I can say with some honesty, though, that I have never used it as a place to go to find out the latest news. The whole thing is too chaotic, too run by people who write comments after reading only the headline and not the article and—ugh—it makes me mad, I tellsya. I can’t take it seriously in the slightest.

My main issue with it is one of the things Dransfield points out in his article: who are these people to say what is and is not “relevant”? What gives them the right to brand something as “lame” simply because it doesn’t have “HALO IS A REALLY COOL GUY” in the headline? What gives them the right to ignore a supposed “duplicate article” on a subject which offers some opinion or additional facts over and above what has already been written first, in haste?

Absolutely nothing. Traditional news outlets and even longer-established specialist press (such as publications for music and films) aren’t held to account in the same way. But games journalism, being a younger industry, seems to be held to entirely different standards, and judged unnecessarily harshly. There is a lot of negativity surrounding the games press, and not enough positivity. Trolling and flame wars are particularly prevalent on articles about games, and platform-specific articles seem to bring out the very worst in the community.

Here’s food for thought then: in a world where we’re so concerned about free speech a goodly proportion of the Twitter population in the UK (and beyond) is supporting the legal fees of someone they’ve never met, why are we so harsh on this particular breed of writers? Why shouldn’t they be able to write what they feel, rather than what will “get hits”?

If you would like to share this post with the community, then please feel free to make use of the buttons below.