In November 2008, three bored friends, recent college graduates, started a blog. As Andrew said Thursday, it was born out of both shambling careers and a desire for communication. We plugged away at our gaming blog, starting a few features, aborting a few others, until we felt the need to expand.
So we expanded. Widened the aperture of our discussion to include entertainment, technology and, most importantly, food crimes. Of course, this required fresh blood and renewed vigor, so we enlisted some good friends to bolster our ranks. They’ve served us well.
I wrote a lot for this site. Two years of Audiosurf Radio. A dozen or so Battle.blog entries. Countless op-eds on gaming, television, music, theatre. Reviews on everything from a book about bike-riding by David Byrne to a B-list fantasy game about turning into a dragon (copy provided by the publisher for review purposes). It wasn’t all gold, but it wasn’t all crap either. And I’ll take that.
I also regularly contributed to our podcast – even taking on the hosting duties after Robert departed. One regret is not having the time or resources to properly market it. We always felt it had immense potential but never quite found the audience it deserved. Also…I’m still waiting on that digital soundboard.
To our readers: thank you so much. We did our best to scare you away with overly-navel-gazing manboy game talk. We tried harder to win you over with in-depth interviews with bright minds from the indie gaming scene. Then we invited our friends over to write some stuff our non-gamer friends might enjoy. Thank you for joining us, whenever you climbed aboard.
To friends of the site – developers, PR folk, etc. – thank you for your time and respect. Despite much self-deprecation, we always tried to take our endeavors seriously (especially if someone else’s time or product were on the line). Some of the site’s highlights included interviews of generous length and kind retweets and links from a variety of outlets. The Internet can be a scary place, and it’s comforting to find kind strangers out there.
And to the staff: it’s been a blast. I am proud of the work we did here and of the work that it has either allowed you to do or will drive you to do in the future. And I’m honored and grateful that you etched out time in your schedules to contribute to our project.
Seeing that it may be a bit of time before I have a platform to “properly” review something, let me pass judgment on a few things real quick:
- Louie, now in its second season, still rules.
- You’re an idiot if you’ve never watched Deadwood.
- I still can’t believe The Killing got me.
- Monday Night Combat is an amazing way to turn one hour of leisure time into four hours of leisure time.
- The Pale King is book of great ideas with some confusing passages and bizarre editing choices – which makes sense ‘cause Yo It Wasn’t Finished.
- I work in theatre, I teach theatre to kids and young adults, and I like theatre: but I’m not a huge fan of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
- Turntable.fm is the shit.
- I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: go play Portal 2.
- The Kills. The Kills.
- And Ender’s Game is still my favorite, no matter what Orson Scott Card does.
So long and thanks for all the hits!
