Earlier this year, I played through a bunch of 2000s flash games. I found a lot of gems (maybe I'll write them up someday), but one of the most exciting parts about the whole ordeal was stepping back into the past and reading old blog posts from the early 2000s. I wasn't at all sure any of those sites would be up still, to be honest, so it was a pleasant surprise to be able to wade into the waters of 20-year-old discourse and see what people were playing or talking about at the time. Some of them, like TIG Source or Jay Is Games, I knew about — but many I did not! They tend to link out to each other which makes finding them surprisingly easy once you've started. And as you play games, many of those designers have their own blog sites as well, which adds to the pile. In particular I was inspired by the blogs of cly5m, Terry Cavanagh, Tim W., and many others — there are so many!
Of course, not everything has survived. Many sites have shuttered entirely, and even the big ones that survived have taken down reams and reams of their old writings (i.e. GameSpot has deleted their entire features column, IGN won't let you go back earlier than 2018, etc etc). But it's hard to be too upset. Given the current landscape of games writing, it's amazing to me that anything at all has survived.
The more I've been thinking about the ghostly ephemerality of games writing — especially writing about small games — the more despairing I feel. Almost everything is being swallowed by the vast sands of Twitter, where it can never be found again. How will anyone, myself included, ever know anything at all about this period of games? The AAA writings, perhaps, will be fine (although there's cause for concern there as well, as sites stare the cliff of financial extinction), but the landscape of writing about small, experimental games has all but vanished. It strikes me as a crisis!
And then I found these old, death-defying blogs from the early 2000s. Not reliant on any media platforms to hold them afloat, they've kept the lights on for decades now. It was very inspiring.
Which brings me to this blog. I've been itching to write more in general anyways, but have been feeling increasingly annoyed / uninspired by Medium (where I used to send out my thoughts), so I thought I'd make my own site. And here it is :) I hope to post a round up of what I've played and thoughts each Sunday. And perhaps other writings as well? Time will tell haha.
See you soon~