I was featured in Michael Walbridge's latest "Game Anthropologist" column over at GameSetWatch, in which he takes a look at our "blogging community," in which I'm really happy to be included along with many of my most favorite colleagues.
Essentially, Walbridge noticed that we sort of all have our blogrolls in common, that we link back to each other religiously, and, with the commenters involved, essentially get to have a discussion in progress at all times. Most of the bloggers he featured have "day jobs" as journalists, so one of the things he asked me was, why keep SVGL, when it provides me no monetary recompense and I already have a career in game writing?
What I told him on the phone was that I like having a repository for freeform thought, utterly subjective observations that don't really have a place in my fulltime work. As much as I'd love it if my job was just rambling my opinions all day (a common misconception about the job in general, I think), it's not - but that doesn't mean I don't still have the itch to share and air thoughts like the ones I do here.
Another reason, though, is well-encompassed in Walbridge's thorough round-up, as he loops together some common observations from all of us. It's that community sense, like we're all shaping something together, a sort of breathing collective. I like seeing that documented here!
Reading this made me wax nostalgic for the Aberrant Gamer's heyday; I revisited some of my old columns to see how my writing's evolved. Since my first columns I have learned to be a bit more succinct, at least (thank you, Crecente)! I might like to revisit some of the Aberrant Gamer's earlier topics to try and make my points more clearly - rebuilding an old sculpture with new tools, if you will.
Speaking of our community, it was apparently my old (and lugubrious, if I may say so myself) column about Haunting Ground that motivated Fullbright's Steve Gaynor to check it out and write his thoughts - if I re-wrote my Haunting Ground column, I really would like to think it would turn out as well as his did, but I'm not sure. This is largely what I meant to say about it, so read this, please.
