Oh Hey…I Almost Didn’t See You There

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!

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Thoughts of an Aspiring Music Snob: Week 117 - Queen, and the Conclusion

Chris has been trying to compensate for his lack of musical knowledge by immersing himself in one new artist each week. At the end of the week, he would write up a brief summary of his opinions. You can read about the origin and parameters of this project here.

The final installment requires a bit of reflection. I'll try not to be too self-indulgent, but I am listening to Queen this week, so that might be difficult. 

It is with sadness and a tad bit of relief that I'm ending this written feature after nearly two years' worth of writing about new music (well, new to me, anyway). But it's also with not a small amount of pride; I've managed to go above and beyond the original point of this project, which was to teach myself a little bit about popular music. This is not to say that I'm a music snob yet, but I'm ready to advance to the next level. An "intermediate music snob" perhaps. 

When I started this project, it was to acquaint me with some of the bigger names in popular music and start to piece together its history. After 117 weeks and some change, the project has evolved to the point where I'm able to look into more niche genres and lesser-known acts, and start to connect the dots myself. I'd still hesitate to even begin to call myself an expert, but I realized when I could easily place Faust within the context of post-war German avant-garde music, or the Pretenders within the context of the post-punk era that gave way to 80s "alternative" rock, I was not really a neophyte any longer. 

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All Good Things...

Dear readers: It is with mixed feelings that I announce to you that Charge Shot!!! will cease updating this Sunday after the posting of our 100th and final podcast.

The editors and writing staff came to this decision unanimously after lengthy discussion, though we didn't do so lightly. Increasingly busy schedules and waning interest in the unpaid, weekly grind made it a necessary choice, if not an easy one.

And now that the time comes, I find myself not knowing quite what to say. This site started when three bored college friends, frustrated by lack of career options and afraid of falling out of touch, decided to spend their free time writing about video games.

It ends nearly three years and more than two thousand posts later, having carved out a tiny corner of the internet for itself, and having done some things I'm pretty damn proud of: we've done some great interviews with indie game luminaries, we've gotten press passes and sent some people to conventions, and we've done some very good op-ed and news writing that could go toe-to-toe with anyone's, anywhere. I used it, to my benefit, in my last job interview. I've gained some of the unique tightrope-walking skills that come from evaluating and critiquing the work of my close friends, while also maintaining my friendships with those people. It hasn't caught fire and it barely makes enough ad money to pay for itself (and neither of those things were really the point), but it has been rewarding in completely unexpected ways.

To the writers who made it all happen: it has been my pleasure. To the readers, especially those who have stayed with us for most of this ride: thanks for stopping by. Continue...

Blogging About the Blog: A Note on Charge Shot!!!

Hey guys!

If Google Analytics is to be believed, there are quite a few of you out there who come to our merry little site on a pretty regular basis - you're well acquainted with our crack writing team, our regular features, and our rakish good looks. Thanks for reading! You all make this worthwhile.

For the rest of you, the brand-new readers and the people who have been around for just a little while, I wanted to take a second to show you around and tell you about all the stuff we're doing. I'll keep it short.

Most of our posts (and we try to have at least one, if not two a day) are editorial or review-style writings about the pop culture issues of the day, we do have quite a few running features that you should know about: First up, Chris Holden guides you through popular music from the perspective of an outsider every Monday in Thoughts of an Aspiring Music Snob, and you should read it whether you're an aspiring music snob or a full-on Pitchfork acolyte.

Our next feature runs on Monday afternoons, and it comes courtesy of our own Alex Boivin: take pleasure in his pain while you read the hilarious, masochistic Decade of Dreck posts that take on the Rotten Tomatoes-sanctioned list of the 100 worst movies of the '00s. The other side of that coin is snootier, but no less essential: Jordan "Jordasch" Pedersen's Art House in the Middle of the Street, which combines a love for classic film with a love for flimsy puns.

If none of those features are doing it for you, you could always read stuff that our talented writers do elsewhere - Andrew Pankin covers baseball in what I assume is great detail over at Thoughts About Baseball and Life, and relative newcomer Giaco Furino wants to combine poetry with partying in a way that Science said couldn't be done over at Giaco's Poetry Party. Or maybe if you just want to be like "what just happened" you could go look at the webcomic that Craig and I do called Hey Look, It's Cranston!

Last but definitely not least, Craig, myself, and a revolving door of third parties all get together to bring you After the Jump, our weekly pop culture newscast. It's an hour-long show full of cussing and diversions peppered among genuine insight, and you owe it to yourself to subscribe to us on iTunes.

That's all the big stuff! You should also make sure to enjoy our new, much more readable mobile site for use on iOS and Android phones, follow the site on both Twitter and Facebook, or subscribe to our ever-updating RSS feed.

There you have it - every possible way to enjoy our ever-expanding library of great, thoughtful writing by great, thoughtful people. As always, thanks so much for reading, and thanks even more for commenting (which I'm sure you'll do!). Continue...

Sunday Reading: The Friday Meme is Dead, Long Live the Friday Meme

Did you miss our site on April 1st? FOR SHAME. We're pretty broken up about it, but we still wanted to show you our gag for this year: a fansite for teen pop sensation Rebecca Black and her hit single "Friday."

We figured we hit this meme on the very last Friday where anyone would think it was funny, so good for us! But yesterday's hilarious joke is today's passe, sigh-inducing fad - let our Friday site stand, then, as the Official Headstone for last week's flavor. Continue...

Thanks For All The Fish

Dear Charge Shot!!!,

There’s no easy way to say this, so: I’m leaving you.

Look, it’s not you. Nor is it me. It’s my contract. I’m taking a temporary position working for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Baghdad, and working for The Man means no blogging. I doubt I’d have time, anyway.

See, I knew you’d start crying. That’s why I brought all this whiskey.

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Puzzle Bots Giveaway Time!

Not everyone who reads this site plays games.  And I’m willing to accept that not everyone who reads this site even likes them.  But I’m fairly certain that most of our readers like free stuff.  Legit, free stuff. 

So we’re running a contest!  We came into possession of some codes for the indie adventure game Puzzle Bots, from Wadjet Eye Games and plan on giving them away.

Puzzle Bots, recently featured at the Penny Arcade Expo as part of the PAX 10 Indie Showcase, has garnered much attention for its fun puzzles and old-school cartoon art style.  Five different robots must escape through seventeen different levels.  It plays like a point-and-click adventure meshed with Blizzard’s old Lost Vikings series.  Each robot interacts with the environment in a unique way – be it pushing, pulling, or picking things up – and you’ll need to combine their abilities in order to break out of the lab.  My favorite is Ultrabot because he just pushes stuff and, oh I don’t know, his name is Ultrabot.

You can enter to win a digital copy of Puzzle Bots by tweeting @ us via Twitter or by writing on our Facebook wall. (Sorry, MySpace users.  You’ll need to get with the times if you want to win this sweet prize.)  Make it something about the game or robots.  Humor is appreciated though not required. 

The window for submission ends at 11:59 PM EST on Friday November 5, 2010 Sunday November 7, 2010.  After that we’ll put all of the submitted names in a hat (or some sort of digital equivalent) and pick five winners.  That’s right, five. 

What are you waiting for?  Enter our first ever contest!

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Sunday Reading: Shameless Self-Promotion

In my humble opinion, it’s been a banner week for Charge Shot!!!.  Despite being an increasingly busy cadre of liberal arts grads, our writing staff has churned out some excellent material in the past week.  I spent the better part of this week in a dark room watching runs of a century-old Russian play, so I tried to catch up yesterday and immediately felt overwhelmed by quality and quantity.  I invite you to feel the same:

For reasons only he can explain, Pankin reviewed Aragorn’s Quest.  It’s a Wii game that caters to Lord of the Rings fans.  I’m not sure I knew those were a thing.

Chris was sick earlier this week, and his mom found out via the Internet.  This caused him to ponder the Internet phenomenon that is simultaneously knowing a lot and very little about the people you know: “…we should be careful in assuming that, just because I know where my friends are at this very minute via FourSquare, that I actually know what's going on in their lives. “

Confused about Schrödinger’s cat?  Stephanie breaks it down in this week’s Science Corner.  Apparently anything I haven’t observed concretely exists within a cloud of probabilities.  Except brontosauri, I know they don’t exist.

It may not be the most popular opinion in the world, but Andrew’s pretty sure we should lay off all the Internet piracy.  “Pirates seem to live in a weird, wacky world where the ease of copying data, as well as that data's relative intangibility, means that it shouldn't cost anything,” he writes.  “…you realize that this shit ain't free, right? It didn't spring fully-formed from the hard drive of Zeus. A bunch of people worked on it, spent money on it. They need money, your money, to be able to do other things in the future.”  Amen.

Rob’s had it UP TO HERE with his the Nike+ running add-on for his iPod.  Seriously.  He’s done with it.

In other news, Joey’s got your mobile news covered.  Jordan’s trying to reconcile his own tastes with those of Pitchfork.  I’m trying to reconcile my love for Ender’s Game with my disgust at the author’s political views.  Our Mad Men, Jersey Shore, and Bald Mountain columns continue.

Oh yeah and did I mention we sent Boivin to New York Comic-Con?

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Nights on Bald Mountain: 2 Much Horror Business - Prologue

October begins tomorrow and in the immortal words of Donovan, it "must be the season of the witch". That's right, Charge Shooters!!! It's time for the second annual installment of Nights on Bald Mountain!

For those of you new to this site, last October I undertook a personal crusade to acquaint myself with horror movies. Twenty-or-so years of being a huge wuss had kept me away from the genre and the many films, both good and bad, that audiences the world over have been acquainted with for generations. I thusly resolved to watch a horror movie every day and record my experiences here on Charge Shot!!! for all to see.

From The Hunger to The Shining, I kicked horror cinema's ass last year and emerged from the bloody pile of corpses I left in my wake an honest-to-blog horror movie expert. And I'm doing it again this year! This year, I'm adding a feature called But Was It Scary? wherein I'll give a succinct and honest summary of whether the day's movie actually sent shivers down my spine. After last year, I'd say I've got nerves of steel, but who knows what a couple dozen or so more horror films could do to me?

I've got enough movies queued up to last me the month but if you out there have any recommendations or, dare I say, challenges than by all means tweet them to me (or email the editors if you're Twitter-impaired) and I'll do my best to watch them!

So stop by tomorrow and all thirty-one days in October at noon for a new write-up of a selection from the canon of horror cinema! Tomorrow's entry is Wes Craven's classic A Nightmare on Elm Street! See you then!

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Everyview

What would you think if I told you that there was a Web site that would review anything and everything? Maybe you would say “how do they find the time” or “they probably can’t review everything” or “how did you get into my house.”

If you thought the second thing, I can tell you that Everyview doesn’t review everything, but it comes pretty damn close. They reviewed the most recent Pokémon games. They reviewed Wendy’s Premium Fish Fillet. They wrote one for an exercise machine, they write them for movies, and they reviewed every one of three different limited-time Mountain Dew flavors. And I thought our scope was wide.

Anyway, you can now find them linked in our Affiliates section in the right-hand sidebar. While you look for that, I’ll be whipping up a batch of moonshine Red Bull in my bathtub in hopes that they’ll decide to review it.

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“Hoppy” Easter from Charge Shot!!!

Writers’ Jukebox and the After the Jump podcast will both return next Sunday.

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My Petty Grievances

Here at Charge Shot!!!, sometimes we like things. Other times, we hate things. It’s a balance that works for us. I know what you’re thinking, though – why can’t I read a Web site where people hate everything?!

Well, first I’d make the obvious joke and point you to Pitchfork, but right after that I’d tell you to go read My Petty Grievances.

Shannon, a dear friend of the blog and the site’s proprietress, definitely has a healthy helping of disdain for lots of stuff, including leashed kids, people who are dicks, and emo Facebook statuses – you should really go over and read for yourself. Keep the hate alive!

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Book Allowance

Did you know that blogging is in our blood? It’s true. Our very own Craig has his very own sister who has her very own blog, and if you like our coverage of books I just know you’re going to like it too – it’s called Book Allowance, and from now on you can find it nestled in our sidebar along with other blogs of repute.

The premise is simple – with only $25 per paycheck to devote to books, our intrepid heroine sallies forth to find what’s most deserving of your hard-earned cash, and then tells you about it. All things considered, it’s a pretty sweet deal.

Anyone else out there want to swap links with us? I know we’d be just pleased as punch to hear from you – as always, we can be reached at editors@charge-shot.com.

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Happy New Year!!!

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Happy Whatever-You-Celebrate from Charge Shot!!!

We at Charge Shot!!! would like to wish you a Happy Holiday Of Your Choice – be it Christmas, a belated Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Wookiee Life Day. 

We hope you enjoyed our Charge Aught!!! discussions of the decade (if you haven’t caught up, what are you waiting for?).

Our staff exhausted after weeks of decade-judging deliberation, we figured it’d be a good idea to give everyone a break until the new year.  However, you can still expect some scattered content starting this Monday.  Perhaps Cranston has something to say about the holidays.  Or maybe I’ll drum up some Flash games for you to play while waiting in airports.  Be on the lookout for more Decade of Dreck posts, as well.  They’re taxing but well worth the effort.

Regularly scheduled programming will resume at the start of 2010.  Until then, Safe Travels and Happy Holidays from Charge Shot!!!

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Charge Shot!!! Turns One

One year ago today we started a blog. You’re reading it right now. Please continue, and thanks.

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Happy Thanksgiving from Charge Shot!!!

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Charge Shot!!! 2.0

Oh, hi there. I didn’t see you come in. You have to stop doing that.

You might notice something a little… different about the ol’ blog today, yes? Maybe it lost weight, or got a new haircut, or maybe it is ushering in a new epoch of Charge Shot!!!, bitches.

Where we were once a dude-infested nerd-factory, deigning to write about video games and only video games, we are now expanding our outlook to include the other forms of media that you, the erstwhile reader, consume every day. Games still have a place here, near and dear to our hearts, and we hope not to lose those of you who we have attracted in the last nine months or so – we’ll still do features and interviews and reviews about games, our daily roundup of gaming news will continue, and our podcast will stay exclusively game-related.

Among those game posts will be other things, though – stuff about television and movies, music and books, gadgets and technology. To deliver these, we’ve brought on a whole slew of new writers who we hope you’ll enjoy as much as we do. Because of all these new faces, we’ll be posting twice most weekdays, three times if you count our gaming news link round-up. You guys, that’s almost twice the Charge Shot!!! you got before. It seems like a good deal to me.

You’ll also notice our brand-new layout, which we all think is head-and-shoulders above the old one. The new color scheme is light, very readable and more inviting. The navigation bar at the top (and bottom) of the site brings important things like our podcast and RSS feed to your immediate attention, while freeing up enough space that we have completely eliminated one sidebar. As a result, the content can breathe a little better, and we managed to make more space for advertisements while keeping them unobtrusive and tasteful. Cha-ching!

So, lots of changes, but hopefully nothing changed for the worse or changed for the sake of change. Please, if you have any suggestions, criticism, praise or witty asides, shoot us an email at editors@charge-shot.com, or simply leave a few words in the comments section. This has been a fun project for us over the last few months, and I think we’ve done some solid work in trying to entertain you. Hopefully it’s all uphill from here.

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the times, they are a-changing

Sad news Sunday, everyone.

Rob Kunzig, a gentleman and a scholar, has announced that he’s taking a break through the month of August. He doesn’t do this lightly – for him, it came down to a choice between writing for Charge Shot!!! or writing a cover story for the Washington City Paper, something that could potentially forward his career.

So he’s taking a break.

Let’s talk short-term. Craig and myself will continue posting on our regular schedule, with me taking Mondays and Thursdays and Craig handling Tuesdays and Fridays. We’ll try and figure out something to do on Wednesdays, while giving up Saturdays. The podcast will come back next Sunday and continue for the foreseeable future.

In the longer term we’re thinking of doing some retooling, the details of which we’ll clue you in on as we figure it out. In the meantime, keep on coming back, and we’ll keep trying to entertain you.

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charge shot!!! and ethics

Last week, something exciting happened. Charge Shot!!! was sent its first ever review copy of a game, Telltale’s Tales of Monkey Island. We were thrilled – it was another first for us, and another baby step in the direction of success! I was going to do a write-up of the game for today, pre-empting Demo Monday, but Saturday when I was checking up on Marginalia I saw something that gave me pause – our topmost ad banner proudly displayed a giant advertisement for Tales of Monkey Island itself.

One of game journalism’s most troubling realities is the innate conflict of interest caused when major game review sites accept advertising money from the very people whose games they are reviewing. Charge Shot!!! has never been big enough to worry about this – studios are hardly lining up to advertise on our 100-hits-a-day blog, or to give us swag. But as we stumble toward legitimacy, I think it’d be good to air our opinions on the subject.

First, why does this conflict exist? Part of the problem is simply that game sites have precious few avenues to profitability – most money on the Web is made through merchandising or advertising, and game review sites don’t lend themselves to in-joke T-shirts as do webcomics.

Traditional papers, back when they used to make money, actually had a physical product to sell and made much of their cash through subscriptions. Not so game journalism - it may have had its humble beginnings in the pages of EGM and Nintendo Power, but it came (is coming?) of age in the everything-for-free Internet era. The very notion of paying for an IGN Insider subscription, for example, seems ludicrous to me, since I can go to just about every other game site on Earth and find similar content for zero dollars and zero cents.

And thus, a conflict is born. Since most game sites tend to cover games and game-related news, they’re naturally going to attract advertisers with games and game-related products to sell. An ad for the latest Mario game is going to give you more bang for the buck on 1up’s homepage than it would if published in a magazine called Boats Quarterly, a fictional magazine for Boating Enthusiasts. While game studios are eager to push their products via game sites, advertisers in other industries seem almost wary of the space. Yes, you’ll sometimes see an ad for an iPod or some Energizer batteries, but the ratio of  ads for games to ads for anything else is so lopsided that these sites couldn’t possibly stay afloat if they cut the game studios off.

The casualty of this conflict is objectivity. While I genuinely believe that most writers in this field are trying their best to give their honest opinion, there are definite downsides to biting the hand that feeds you. Some publishers are more egregious than others – Tomb Raider publisher Eidos has put an embargo on bad reviews of its games recently and not so recently. Of particular note is the Gamespot/Kane and Lynch controversy, which is best summed up here. Basically, the rumor mill had it that Jeff Gerstmann, a Gamespot reviewer with a ten-year history at the site, was let go after giving Eidos’ game Kane and Lynch a negative review at the same time as Eidos was paying for full-page ads for the same game on the site. The particulars of Gerstmann’s firing never came to light, but given that several other Gamespot writers quit just afterward citing editorial censorship seems to suggest that the rumors are true.

In short, no matter how objective many of the larger game review sites would like to be, their situation demands that they sometimes kowtow to publishers to keep their livelihoods.

What’s the solution to this problem? I don’t know. While I’m heartened by Charge Shot!!!’s small successes, I’m also glad that we’re not nearly big enough to need to worry about such things. This gig doesn’t put food on any of our tables, so I’m hardly qualified to recommend an alternative to the current system. It’s no skin off of our noses if Publisher X decides to cut us off because Publisher X isn’t the one who signs our respective paychecks. As long as we don’t want any money from this enterprise, we can be as brutally honest as we want.

I realize this is not an equitable solution for everybody.

I can’t honestly say whether Charge Shot!!! is more or less objective than any other game site on the block – we’re sometimes just as gushy and fanboy-ish as anyone on an Internet message board. Regardless, I think it’s important for writers such as ourselves to be honest about this problem, to discuss its merits and flaws, where it works and where it doesn’t. Some will always be content to ignore it, but the surest way for game journalism to earn respect in the eyes of its critics is to talk about its problems, address them and move past them.

My pure, unfiltered opinions on the first chapter of Tales of Monkey Island will go up this Thursday, regardless of the ad banners to their left.

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