Blog / Writing Update

It’s been a while since I wrote a general blog or writing update, so I figured it was time to do one considering my posts have dried up a little this year and I wanted to explain why. Although this blog was originally established to support my writing, it quickly became dominated by video game related content – previews, reviews and the occasional opinion piece / rant.

But you may have noticed less video game content over the last year or so compared to previous years. That’s not because I’m losing interest in video games – hell no! – there just hasn’t been that many games coming out that I’m actually that interested to play.

When I look back at my old E3 posts there were always several games I’d be excited for in the future, but over the last few years, that number seems to continually reduce. Like I said, it’s not a question of losing interest in games in general – because the games I am excited about, I am pretty f**ing excited about – it’s just that the number of games I’m interested in seems to get less every year.

I think it might be because so many games lately seem to be driving in the same direction – the ‘live service’ model or whatever you want to call it. So many AAA games are becoming bloated, messy, micro-transaction infested behemoths that make me feel tired just thinking about them. I’ve written many times about how I’m turned off from buying a game because of how f**king complex the initial release of AAA games have become.

Multiple release dates, multiple editions – so many that you need a f**king spreadsheet to work out what you’re paying for and when you’ll actually get to play it. And yes, I know there are still plenty of games that aren’t like this, but it feels like a lot of games I’ve thought about picking up over the last year or so I’ve immediately backed off when I’ve seen that store page listing 4 different release day versions. I ain’t got time for that shit.

I also recently started a new job, so I have even less time for that shit. I remember back when Mass Effect 3 released and I talked about how all the release day DLC bullshit made me not want to buy the game (and I kind of wish I never did) but things haven’t really improved since then – they’ve actually gotten worse. But I guess it must work, right? I mean, they wouldn’t keep doing it if it wasn’t, would they?

And now we’re entering a glorious new age of subscription based services and a push towards live streaming games to your f**king phone. I don’t know why the f**k anyone would want to stick a control pad to their phone so they can squint at the new DOOM, but I guess someone, somewhere must be excited about it.

Anyway, aside from this video game drought, I’ve also been busy working on my books. I finished writing TF, TM & TE a while ago, and since then I’ve been formatting all of my older works into e-book format, ready for release. I don’t know when (or even if) I’ll be releasing them yet because I’m still waiting to hear back from some publishers, but if those approaches fail, I’ll probably aim to put out one new e-book every month or so.