To whom it may concern,
Welcome to my auspicious return to "the scene". If you're unfamiliar with me look in the Editorial section back to the dawn of time and you'll find some inane ramblings. You may also find some ancient reviews of mine perhaps (I still giggle over the fun I had lambasting BMX XXX) if you turn the filters to GC and REALLY OLD. If you've been on the scene long enough to remember me, yes, I am still as much of a self-righteous, long-winded and opinionated blowhard as ever... just now my chronological age has begun to sneak up on the geezerly "get off my lawn" opinions I had way back when.
Forgive me if I may be a bit disoriented, but things have changed a wee bit since I last contributed in any meaningful way to a site. The web is a bit of a different place now, as anyone with a web connection can post their thoughts to a blog (complete with free hosting, mind you)... somewhat posing a watered-down threat to "reputable sites" in the same way that scene sites were stealing from pay sites way back when. Shoot, in the day we paid for that hosting and we needed to broker our own deals for ads if we wanted to avoid putting a dent in our pocketbooks, and we fought an uphill battle to garner industry connections and get invites to events or evaluation games.
Danged whipper-snappers these days don't know how easy they have it! We didn't have the TwitterBook or FaceSpace! We worked boards diligently on other sites trying to get nibbles through cross-links or we'd work to grease the palms of other sites with promises of linking back to them or whatever we could think of to suck someone in. We also didn't have nice site back-ends for publishing our content into a database. Oh no! We hand-crafted our HTML and manually made our links and we liked it! Shoot, back at the start it was wild when I coded up a JavaScript powered form that you could type your content into that would then spit out the HTML for people to email me so I could then upload the page via FTP and link it up within the site through the front page and main section pages with much diligence and care! Even when the original DB-backed incarnation of this site made its unholy debut (an effort in learning Cold Fusion and SQL that ultimately contributed to getting me fired from my full-time job) with primitive DB design and god-awful beginner code that was progress somehow... we were pushing the edge of what people did for free on the side.
But no, I'm not bitter how comparatively easy people have it now... someone had to expend blood, sweat, and tears to get the ball rolling. You pay extra to beat the curve and it was a hell of a time back when you could count the truly known sites and people in the scene on your fingers and toes. Now it is certainly simpler to get going but in the end your content has to be that much more remarkable to be heard above the chattering of the crowd. I think I love the Despair.com Demotivator that says it the best: "Blogging: Never Before Have So Many People With So Little To Say Said So Much To So Few". Amen.
I hope to get back to contributing in some capacity, with my advanced age (all of 35... so over the hill!) and two lovely girls (for those who remember, the birth of my first prompted my departure from the scene over 8 years ago) perhaps I have a new perspective to offer as a gamer with kids. If you have ideas for things you'd like to see be sure to let me know. I have as much to blather on about as I ever did, just at some point a real job and family really took away the spark to put it cohesively into print. Perhaps it is time to get the brain out of mothballs and begin pissing people off once more. Now THERE'S a motivator...
Bah, but being on people's bad sides can sometimes be an effective way to keep them reading.
Bah, but being on people's bad sides can sometimes be an effective way to keep them reading.
This is true. Why else does GP make sure to post in EACH and EVERY RFN talkback thread?
Shoot, in the day we paid for that hosting and we needed to broker our own deals for ads if we wanted to avoid putting a dent in our pocketbooks, and we fought an uphill battle to garner industry connections and get invites to events or evaluation games.Well, some things haven't changed.
Erm, umm, I hate to tell you but that's my actual name. :P:Oh. I was thinking of Rick Powers.
Trust me, in my mind since I've never had any direct ties to anyone or any company in the industry I've never had any reason to want to be someone else. I figure when you go to so much trouble to establish yourself why give the credit to some non-existent pen name.
To Justin Nation: Did you recently write to Peer Schneider on facebook, or something?
I can't think of another Nintendo enthusiast site from which a writer could literally have taken an 8 year hiatus, come back, and have the site still be around (and even still have some of the same people on staff, for crying out loud).
I can't think of another Nintendo enthusiast site from which a writer could literally have taken an 8 year hiatus, come back, and have the site still be around (and even still have some of the same people on staff, for crying out loud).
Yeah, lord don't you people have lives/jobs?!?!?
Once the sh!t hits the fan at work once more I'm sure I'll need to pull back some once again or whatever but once you get the bug to share your thoughts and annoy people... tough to give it up in a lot of ways.
To Justin Nation: Did you recently write to Peer Schneider on facebook, or something?
Yeah, and he gave me a quote from the IGN offices about the context of how my name has been invoked there before that cracked me up!
To Justin Nation: Did you recently write to Peer Schneider on facebook, or something?
Yeah, and he gave me a quote from the IGN offices about the context of how my name has been invoked there before that cracked me up!
Ah cool. I was just wondering because he recently mentioned it on the "To Catch An Editor" podcast.
