Rebuilding

So. It's time to let fans, followers, readers etc know where things stand and are going with these blogs and my general web presence (after you check the latest update, of course)...


Firstly, if you're not already following me on Twitter, please consider doing so even if you never use the service yourself (speaking wise.) I'm not exactly what you'd call a "convert" to the power of social media, but I find Twitter to be a genuinely awesome tool. It's the immediacy of it that I like, and the way the character-limit forces me to get to the point when sharing a thought. The idea of essentially tossing a thought into a public square and having it "hang" there for others to see and respond to at their convenience suits my style, and is one of the reasons you've seen fewer small/random blog posts here - why draw out into a tedious blog what I can Tweet and reach more people more concisely?

However, blogs and personal-sites have a certain usefulness as a "hub" for making all of one's work link together - and also, as has become more necessary recently - a place to put material that (for whatever reason) is unable to find a proper home. On the other hand, as much as I tend to get stuck in my ways vis-a-vi technology, the fact is systems like Blogger, Tumblr etc are not conducive to the web presence I need (and want, frankly.)

So. Right now, the plan looks like this: At some point in the near(ish) future, this blog (and also the seperate/dedicated Game OverThinker blog) are going to either go away or go "dormant," to be replaced by a singular site that's more like, well... a SITE as opposed to a blog (though there will still be a heavy blog/newsfeed component.) My hope - and make no mistake, this is all very preliminary - is for this to be part of a new paradigm for my online presence, and can make (hypothetical) new avenues I've been looking to explore for awhile like merchandising, Patreon, etc more easily implemented (these would be, at least for now, based around projects outside of material co-produced for/with The Escapist.)

As for The Game OverThinker, I can now clarify more of what the plans are for that series going forward. For those who've been keeping track, I think I've made it quite clear that the "arc" that the series is in the midst of now is a kind of climax for the series in it's current incarnation. It will end, likely on or around it's 100th episode sometime this year or early next, time depending. It's a series I'm immensely proud of, both in terms of where it brought me and what I've been able to do with it, but the time has come to reshuffle the deck and relaunch.

What I wanted to clarify is that that many people have assumed that this means an "end" to the narrative/storyline/"sketch" aspect of the series entirely, and with things moving forward behind the scenes I can now say with some confidence that this is NOT the case, at all. What the series will move away from (at least primarily) is the presence of a constantly foward-moving narrative "arc," and into something more episodic in nature. I can't be more specific about how this "works" without giving away the ending of the current series, but suffice it to say that you can look forward to the main Game OverThinker series being predominantly focused on opinion-piece presentations (think my friend Jim Sterling's JIMQUISITION show, though not 100% on that model) with other characters like Ivan, OverThinker, RetroThinker, etc. onhand as supporting players - not quite "comic relief," but exaggerated alternative voices to break up (or bookend) the occasional drawn-out nature of my soapbox-soliloquy.

But did I say "main" series? I did. Part of the desire to relaunch Game OverThinker in this way was the realization that some of these characters, personas and voices were suited to saying certain things and performing certain functions that I wanted to make more use of but didn't necessarily want to overwhelm the series itself. So my plan (very beta at this point) is to have shorter series/vignettes specifically built around these personas that play to their strengths. More details to come on that front, but you may get a taste of things in these last few episodes of the current version.

FINALLY: As you've no dobut surmised, a lot of my time and effort recently has been taken up dealing with the same unpleasantness that's been derailing many other voices in the so-called "geek culture." And while I'll always speak up when I see/hear something wrong being done around me, I've come to the conclusion that what can be "done" about matters like these on a one-to-one social-media plane has been, well... done. Instead, I've decided to turn most of whatever percentage of my attention had been going toward such things toward something more ambitious and (hopefully) helpful: I'm going to write another book.

This new book will NOT be a follow-up to Brick-By-Brick. This will be more a work of recent historic/cultural/political analysis and commentary on the last decade of gaming-culture - specifically changes in the business, development, aesthetic and fandom of video-games and gaming over the last decade and a half, roughly beginning with the immediate cultural impacts of The Bush Era, 9-11, Iraq/Afghanistan, The Obama Era, the rise of the Tea Party, drone-paranoia, Wikileaks, Snowden, etc on this side of entertainment culture and it's manifestations today. More details to follow.

So. That's where we are moving forward. In the meantime, I'm going to get back on track with keeping this place updated with news stuff and not just my new videos. For example: Did you hear about DOCTOR STRANGE? That's a pretty big "get," innit?

-- Bob.