Hello there, everyone! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? There have been some interesting changes in my professional life that mean I’ll likely be posting here a little more from hereon — and with those changes in mind, I’m probably going to also make some tweaks to how I do things around here, too.

So let’s talk about those things in turn, if you’ll indulge me for a moment or two.

Exciting new professional things

The first and most obvious change that you, dear reader, may already be aware of is that I’ve hung up my editor’s cap over at Rice Digital. In contrast with my previous departures from online publications, which were all out of my control for one reason or another (that I won’t bore you with right now, since they are many, varied and occasionally make me furious), this time around it was by mutual (and amicable) agreement.

Essentially what had happened was I was effectively working two jobs at once: I was holding down the fort on Rice Digital on a daily basis, but also working for the fine folks over at Evercade on digital content, social media and print media such as manuals. This had been a workable arrangement for a while, but in the last year or so, the Evercade side of things had stepped up considerably thanks to some ambitious projects that I’ve been an increasingly important part of.

Therefore, I decided that in order to ensure I didn’t end up doing a half-arsed job on either thing that I was working on, one of them had to give. And I decided that the Evercade side of things was the thing I cared more about — and which, perhaps more importantly, I felt was of more continued value to my ongoing employment. So I decided to go all-in on that side of things.

Rice Digital isn’t going anywhere, meanwhile; it’s been left in the very capable hands of my successor Molly, who is doing a fine job taking over after me. I may even contribute over there now and again, but as of a few weeks back, it’s no longer my responsibility.

What that does mean from now on is that if you buy a new Evercade cartridge, the manual will likely have been written by me. And if you see social media posts from Evercade, those are often by me also. And I also write stuff on their blog every so often when there’s time to. And there’s some other secret projects in the works, too!

So that’s what I’m up to now.

What does that mean for MoeGamer?

I’ve been a bit frustrated for a while with the state of today’s games press, the difficulty that social media algorithms present with building an audience and just generally the sense of apathy that people online in 2023 seem to bring with them. Vapid, short-form, attention-deficit content is fashionable, and I hate it.

As tempting as it is to just say “fuck it” and leave everything behind, I do always enjoy having somewhere to actually leave some thoughts and start some conversations with people, though. And that’s why MoeGamer’s sticking around. However, I am going to make a few changes to how I do things around here.

The main change is that I’m ditching a “structured” approach in favour of something a bit more casual, conversational and, well, blog-like. As much as I’ve enjoyed writing the Cover Game features and MegaFeatures over the years — and as proud of them as I am as self-contained, in-depth explorations of individual games or series — they have, to a certain degree, stifled what I feel I’m able to enjoy in the world of gaming. I end up feeling obliged to play certain things so I can meet my own self-set quota of Stuff To Write About, and that sometimes ends up being less than fun.

So that’s going out of the window… for now, at least. Gaming should be enjoyable, and writing about gaming should be enjoyable, too. So taking a less rigid approach to my hobby will help me remember that.

To that end, expect articles on MoeGamer to come out at irregular intervals, when I feel like I have something to say. The site will be a less formal “gaming site”, and more of a personal blog that just happens to primarily be about gaming.

A single article won’t necessarily be a fully comprehensive “review” of something; it may just be some musings on an aspect of a game that I’ve noticed while playing. With that in mind, I’ll continue to use the All Games page to act as an index of everything I’ve covered, so if you want to quickly find out everything I’ve ever said about something I’m playing, you can easily do that.

This should hopefully free me up to be able to engage with the WordPress blogging community a bit more again, which is something I miss — I simply haven’t had time to do that in the past, but this should mean I have the opportunity to reconnect with some of the fine and lovely people I used to chat with on a regular basis.

At some point, I may need to switch MoeGamer from WordPress.com to a self-hosted solution, largely because I’m running out of space to store images. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, though, and hopefully it won’t affect anything that I’ve already built here. There may be some interim solutions I can figure out in the meantime, too. But for now, well, here I am.

Oh, and don’t forget to subscribe over on YouTube for video fun, too.

It’s good to be back!

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Want more Pete? Check my personal blog I’m Not Doctor Who, and my YouTube channel ThisIsPete. If you enjoy what you read here, please consider buying me a coffee.

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