Hello everyone! It’s that time of year once again, when I celebrate getting a year older and, at the same time, celebrate my own little nook of the Internet being a year older too. This year I am 40, and MoeGamer is seven.

If you’ve been following MoeGamer for a while, you’ll have doubtless noticed things are a little quieter around here than they have been. In today’s post, I’d like to talk a little about why that is — it’s nothing to worry about! — and reassure you that this cosy little corner will continue to be A Thing for the indefinite future.

And if you’re relatively new to the site, I invite you to catch up on the story behind its creation in this post, and check out my post from last year about why independent creators like me are doing important work in games writing.

Important things have happened, though, so let’s talk about those! The chief reason I’m not doing as much work here on MoeGamer these days is because I have a new day job: I’m the site editor over at Rice Digital, an online publication that focuses on Asian popular media including anime, manga, video games and anything else that might be of interest, like VTubers.

What does my work as site editor involve? Two things, mainly: firstly, editing, as the name suggests. I have a group of lovely writers who contribute regularly to Rice Digital, and it’s a pleasure to go over their work with the metaphorical red pen and help their knowledge and opinions shine for the rest of the world. Each of them have their own distinct specialisms, even within the niche of Asian popular entertainment, so it’s always a pleasure to read what they have to say — and often learn something about fields I don’t know much about.

Secondly, of course, I write. I write a lot! I write about eroge, I write about returning to Final Fantasy XIV after a long break, I write about puzzle games with tights fetish artwork in them. I write about new stuff every day, and it’s a never-ending challenge that I absolutely love. I love to write — especially about the things I’m passionate about — and for it to be my actual job is a genuine dream come true.

As you can probably imagine, spending all day squeezing out my brain-juice to find things to write about for Rice Digital leaves me fairly tapped out by the end of the day, so I made a very deliberate decision shortly after starting with Rice to considerably scale back my other projects online — primarily so that I could have a bit of time to myself in the evenings and at weekends.

What this means for MoeGamer is that it’s a return to the format I had several years back: focusing entirely on a single main feature at a time, without other daily articles. This allows me to give the feature in question — at the time of writing, the ongoing Atelier MegaFeature — the time and attention it deserves without applying unnecessary pressure on myself. That way I can still do what I feel like I do best without churning out “content” for the sake of “creating content”. I’m not a “content creator”; I’m a writer.

I do also intend to return to the Fatal Rewind retrospective I was doing on Bizarre Creations a while back, but things have been quite busy recently, and I haven’t found the time to give both that and the Atelier feature the aforementioned time and attention they deserve. If and when things calm down a bit, I’ll make some time to continue with that as well, because I’d love to finish that off.

In the meantime, of course, don’t forget that there’s well over a thousand articles already here on the site, and you can get a random one picked for you by choosing “Anything!” from the menu up at the top of the site (or in the “hamburger” menu if you’re on mobile) — I’ve made a distinct effort to make everything here on the site as “timeless” as possible, so hopefully you’ll stumble across something you find interesting along the way, even if it’s months or years after I originally posted it. Told you I wasn’t a “content creator”.

Alongside MoeGamer, I am, of course, continuing with my Atari A to Z series on YouTube, as you’ve doubtless seen. These three series are important to me, and they are, I feel, the main thing I do that makes my YouTube channel unique. And I’ve had some lovely people stop by in the comments on those videos, too — I’ve even inspired the creator of two of my favourite Atari 8-bit games to finally develop the third game in what was originally intended to be a trilogy of titles!

At some point in the near future, alongside Rice Digital I will be starting a retro gaming related project as part of the day job, too. Atari A to Z will continue when this gets underway as it will be more “generically” retro rather than focusing on a specific platform, so please watch out for that when it launches.

So that’s about it for now. I’m having a fantastic time; the day job really is a dream come true for me, so while I’m sorry I don’t have as much time to write things here and hang out with the WordPress community on a daily basis, I hope you’ll stop by Rice Digital every so often and check out what we’re up to over there — I think a lot of you reading this will very much enjoy what we do!

MoeGamer’s not going anywhere, though, don’t worry, and I’m going to complete the Atelier MegaFeature if it’s the last thing I do — and even if Gust manages to slip out another Atelier Ryza title before I finish things off completely! It’s one of the most ambitious, substantial things I’ve ever done, I’m super proud of what I’ve created so far — and I’m damned if I’m giving up having come this far on the complete journey. So please look forward to more!

In the meantime, thank you for your continued support here on MoeGamer — and I look forward to seeing you over on Rice Digital!

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