Ok. I’ve been spending a few months now thinking I want to do something videogame-newsy but between the mess that is the internet in 2023 and my frankly shitty health, what can I do?
Over that time I’ve been playing about with different iterations and variations of what’s now become Bobbins’ Olde Tomb Of Videogames. It’s been a few different things as I try and wrestle out what’s achievable, hopefully useful and maybe sustainable.
After some fiddling and thinking about what I personally miss, I settled on an old web style news post that’s pretty much a quickfire series of links to things. It’s quick to read, quick to explore and quick to write. Folks can browse it through the web, via RSS or get the digest sent to their inbox, so it stays free and accessible. Kinda like the bottom half of someone’s newsletter but without the blurb and without having to negotiate someone else’s platform locking the posts away somewhere.
Crucially, it’s not super limiting on what can be in there. Games, videos, web toys, articles, they can all have a place. Don’t like that particular thing? You’re literally one sentence away from the next.
That last bit is important to me because what I’d like if I can keep this place going and get a tiny bit of pull to it (I’m honestly not after building a site and chasing numbers, I write here for about twenty people these days! The days of me doing numbers are behind me, but it’d be nice to be able to get a game under more folk’s eyeballs, you know?) then folks can just drop me a line, say “hey Rob, I’ve started working on this”‘ and providing it’s nothing egregious and I’m fine with showing it to other people, in it goes.
And, importantly, it doesn’t have to be a finished game. I mean, I’ve got no interest in becoming a press release recycling corner anyway and tbh, if someone sends me one then I probably won’t read it. But I want people to have their game seen in the early stages if that’s what they fancy. I want people to be able to start something, get some eyes on it and hey, if it doesn’t progress to the end, no biggy. There’s always another game. It’s also for people that don’t really have an avenue for that normally because doing anything in 2023 is swimming against the tide.
Obviously, for that to have any impact then I dunno, probably needs more than 5 readers or something. So whilst I’m happily popping contact details on there now, it’s one ideally for the future if things pick up any. But also, there’s no harm done if someone is happy with just a few extra eyeballs, you know?
Now, it’s me so I’m going to prioritise the stuff I like and get personally excited by, the tomb isn’t built to be a massive news engine, I don’t want it to be rote, I don’t want it as an avenue for people who already have plenty of avenues and I don’t want to be keeping up with schedules and stuff either. Got an embargo? No thanks, there’s other sites happy with that stuff, godspeed and good luck and all that. Got a jam entry you’re happy with and reckon someone might like? Yeah, go on then.
Basically, I’ve done my time in the news mines, this one’s personal.
Will this work out? I honestly don’t know! There’s a lot of unknowns here. It’s dependent on my health which is why I’m saying updates will be “regularly irregular” because I can’t promise a fixed schedule, doubly so given the stuff I’m forever dealing with in recent years. Doing anything and getting any traction isn’t much easier in writing than it is in games — this is hardly the golden age of blogging! Will not punting it on A Platform like Substack or whatever be the death knell? I don’t know. Maybe just nobody will care anyway! Is there even any breathing room for something short form where I want people to visit other sites, not stay on mine?
Nothing ventured though, right? If it works, I get a nice relaxing hobby doing something I like, some folk get some eyeballs on their work and that’s a nice result. If it doesn’t, well, no harm done.
So, let’s see how this one goes.
