An Important Update

Hello everyone, just a relatively quick one today, as I wanted to update you on a few things.

As you’ll know if you’ve been paying attention recently, I have a new day job working over at Rice Digital as the editor. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a dream job. I spend my days getting paid to write things, make videos and go through other people’s work with a virtual red pen. I hope those of you who have stopped by have enjoyed what I’ve been doing over there — there’s plenty more to come!

Taking on that role has led me to think carefully about a few things, though, so I wanted to outline exactly what I’ve been pondering recently — and let you know what that means for my “passion projects” around the Internet.

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The short version is, quite simply, that I don’t intend to stop doing what I’m doing, but I do intend to scale things back a bit. Initially I thought just scaling back YouTube would be enough — indeed, I mentioned as much to Patrons the other day — but with the amount of stuff I’m doing for Rice each day I think I need to dial it back slightly on MoeGamer as well.

The main reason for this is that I don’t want my passion projects to feel like a chore or an obligation on top of my work throughout the day. I love writing, and I especially love writing about games. I’m absolutely thrilled to have taken on a position where I get paid to do what I love — it’s been a long time coming — and thus I don’t want to put myself in a situation where I end up resenting something that I enjoy by giving myself too much to do at a time.

This is only becoming an issue now because of that job change. In my previous day job, where I was bored out of my mind for at least 85% of each working day, I could make the time to work on MoeGamer and even YouTube during the frequent moments of “downtime” every day. And I did! Now, however, I’m working a job I’m genuinely enthusiastic and excited about — and that means I’m keeping myself busy for the entire working day… and sometimes a little beyond, I must confess!

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With that in mind, since MoeGamer and my own YouTube channel are the things I do in my free time, those are the things that need to scale back somewhat. There won’t be any substantial changes to the way I do things — I still intend to focus on deep dives into overlooked and underappreciated games — but there’ll just be a little less of it; specifically, here on MoeGamer there won’t be daily “big articles” for the moment. Instead, I’m going to focus on the larger projects I have underway. Right now, that means the Atelier MegaFeature and Fatal Rewind: A Bizarre Creations Retrospective.

Focusing on these larger projects means I can take the pressure off myself to find something new to write about every day — something which I already have to do over at Rice! — and instead focus on doing what I think I do best: multi-part, in-depth analysis of things that deserve more attention, perhaps peppered with other occasional bits and pieces as I have the time and energy.

Alongside this, I’ve been looking at YouTube and determining what best to do over there. While I enjoy everything I do over there, there are some clear “winners”, and that’s the three Atari A to Z series. short;Play in particular doesn’t pull particularly big numbers unless I play something with tits in it — or something which has crossover interest with the Atari A to Z viewers, such as the recent Rescue on Fractalus remake. And while Evercade A to Z is a good way to showcase the games on the various platforms, it’s essentially duplicating some of the stuff I’ve done here on MoeGamer in a different format.

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As such, short;Play is going to take a break for an indefinite amount of time — perhaps with occasional one-off episodes as I find things I particularly want to show on video — while Evercade A to Z… I haven’t quite decided yet. I will either press pause on Evercade A to Z or the Evercade articles here on MoeGamer… or perhaps both.

As I think about this right now as I type, it occurs to me that it might make a bit more sense to pause the articles and continue with the videos, since the Evercade A to Z series, again, has some crossover with the Atari audience who make up the bulk of the visitors to my channel. But at the same time I am trying to reduce my own workload somewhat.

Anyway. Here’s the plan. There are several steps.

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  • Next week all video series will take a one-week break, except for The MoeGamer Podcast, which we’re recording a new episode of over the weekend. I will post a video announcing this break over on YouTube just so no-one wonders why I’ve suddenly disappeared.
  • From right now I will commit to a Monday and a Friday article on MoeGamer — Monday for Fatal Rewind and Friday for Atelier. (Depending on how busy my working Friday is I reserve the right to push the week’s Atelier article to the weekend!)
  • From the week after next YouTube will feature Atari A to Z, Atari ST A to Z and Atari A to Z Flashback, plus possibly Evercade A to Z if I have the time and/or energy. short;Play will be taking a break. At some point in the near future, one of the Atari A to Z series will take a break and be replaced with an Atari Jaguar-centric series.
  • From right now you can find my daily writing about Japanese games and popular culture over at Rice Digital, and on Rice Digital’s YouTube channel. Please subscribe, follow and all that good stuff! I’ll be sharing Rice Digital stuff via Twitter each day, too, so if you have the time to give me a few clicks (and reads and views!) that would be much appreciated.
  • From an indeterminate point in the future that is yet to be agreed I’ll be beginning work on a brand-new retro-centric project as part of the day job, so the retro stuff I’m no longer posting here will end up there instead, where I get paid to do it!

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This is a lot of words to say “I think I’m overworking myself” and I apologise if any of it sounds like I’m making excuses. I’m super-proud of what I’ve achieved both on MoeGamer and on YouTube — and now on Rice, too — and I’m forever grateful to all the people who stop by every single day and have helped to make my pet projects a big success, at least in my eyes. But sometimes you just need to say “whoa, chill out a bit”.

So that’s what I’m going to do! Thank you for your time and understanding — and thank you for all your support over the years MoeGamer has been running. It’s that support that has helped keep me going — and me keeping going is what allowed me to finally end up in this dream job.

In short, this is not the end, by any means — my stuff will just be a bit more spread out between a few different places now. But you’ll likely find there’s at the very least the same amount of stuff to read and videos to watch each week — and probably even more! That sounds like a win for you; it’s definitely a win for me.

Once again, thanks for your understanding — and I hope you continue to enjoy my work for a long time to come.

Pete Davison

3 thoughts on “An Important Update”

  1. Sounds like a sensible way forward Pete! So pleased for you with getting the Rice Digital job, but you could definitely burn yourself out writing all the time. And you need to find time to play games too! All the best.

  2. Congrats on getting a dream job! I bet that really feels fantastic. I agree with the above human, this sounds like a great way to move forward. Whatever happens and whatever comes next, I enjoy your content and wish you all the best. It’s definitely important to find a balance that works excellently for you.

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