What Do The People Want?

Let's not mince words: While I'm busier right now than I've ever been in terms of producing content and publishing work, you wouldn't know it to look at these blogs.

In a lot of ways, social media has replaced the personal blog as a way to get one's work out onto the web - there's no way I would've seen the growth in web presence, visibility and professional connections I've had over the last two years in the pre-Twitter era; and while I'm immensely grateful for it I do feel like something has been lost (from me and from other folks) in terms of permanence and a "hub" for interacting with fans (or with cretins who just show up to cause trouble - sometimes that's fun too.)

I'm in the process of changing that.

As you may know, the current version of the Game OverThinker - my current main "creator-owned" project - is coming to an end (a little more slowly than I had hoped, because complications spring eternal) and will be re-launched sometime in early to mid 2015 as a newer, more ambitious creation possibly entailing more than one ongoing production. But I've also come to the decision that I want to produce more independent content related to topics other than video games - that I want to establish a presence (primarily but not exclusively through YouTube and/or similar venues) where my voice is my own, top to bottom.

And that likely means establishing a site of my own.

Not "just" a blog, but a space where I can manage and catalog all of my work for ease of access, so that (for example) folks who find me via Game OverThinker can immediately and easily also find my work for The Escapist, my independent videos and articles, my social media presence, etc. I don't 100% know what form that site will take (I'll probably have to engage the services of a site-builder and/or maintainer - though this is NOT a solicitation for that job) and I'm not 100% sure how I want to run/fund it (Patreon is obviously an option, but I'm not ready to pull that trigger yet.)

BUT! Just to get some feelers out there: What would you, folks who read these blogs or follow me or my work in various spaces, like to see in such a space? I mean both in terms of content - would you like to see longer-form movie reviews? Retro-reviews? Commentaries? Game reviews? Let's plays? Vlogs? Comedy business? You tell me. I can't promise I'll do every single thing people want me to do (and I have some ideas of my own, already) but it'd be nice to see what the general mood is.

So, fire away!

Read more »

Escape to The Movies: DUMB & DUMBER TO

So that happened...

Once upon a time, Jim Carrey ruled the world.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Dumb & Dumber To: Just Dumber

Read more »

Escape to The Movies: BIG HERO 6

It's a winner.

ALSO: Spoilerific pieces laying out why INTERSTELLAR doesn't work... GO!

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Big Hero 6 - Meet Disney's Animated Avengers

Read more »

Escape to The Movies (Early!): INTERSTELLAR

Sorry, not very good.

Better news? You'll be getting another episode on Friday in the usual spot.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Interstellar - Doesn't Live Up To Its Own Name

Read more »

Big Picture: REMEMBERING THE REAL JACK THOMPSON

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Remembering the Real Jack Thompson

Read more »

Escape to The Movies: OUIJA

Yeah, I know. Nobody cares. But this is what happens when your publishing schedule is bound up in "week of release" embargoes.

Here's a fun thing about AVENGERS 2, though!

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Ouija - Just A Lame Cash-In

Read more »

Rebuilding

So. It's time to let fans, followers, readers etc know where things stand and are going with these blogs and my general web presence (after you check the latest update, of course)...


Firstly, if you're not already following me on Twitter, please consider doing so even if you never use the service yourself (speaking wise.) I'm not exactly what you'd call a "convert" to the power of social media, but I find Twitter to be a genuinely awesome tool. It's the immediacy of it that I like, and the way the character-limit forces me to get to the point when sharing a thought. The idea of essentially tossing a thought into a public square and having it "hang" there for others to see and respond to at their convenience suits my style, and is one of the reasons you've seen fewer small/random blog posts here - why draw out into a tedious blog what I can Tweet and reach more people more concisely?

However, blogs and personal-sites have a certain usefulness as a "hub" for making all of one's work link together - and also, as has become more necessary recently - a place to put material that (for whatever reason) is unable to find a proper home. On the other hand, as much as I tend to get stuck in my ways vis-a-vi technology, the fact is systems like Blogger, Tumblr etc are not conducive to the web presence I need (and want, frankly.)

So. Right now, the plan looks like this: At some point in the near(ish) future, this blog (and also the seperate/dedicated Game OverThinker blog) are going to either go away or go "dormant," to be replaced by a singular site that's more like, well... a SITE as opposed to a blog (though there will still be a heavy blog/newsfeed component.) My hope - and make no mistake, this is all very preliminary - is for this to be part of a new paradigm for my online presence, and can make (hypothetical) new avenues I've been looking to explore for awhile like merchandising, Patreon, etc more easily implemented (these would be, at least for now, based around projects outside of material co-produced for/with The Escapist.)

As for The Game OverThinker, I can now clarify more of what the plans are for that series going forward. For those who've been keeping track, I think I've made it quite clear that the "arc" that the series is in the midst of now is a kind of climax for the series in it's current incarnation. It will end, likely on or around it's 100th episode sometime this year or early next, time depending. It's a series I'm immensely proud of, both in terms of where it brought me and what I've been able to do with it, but the time has come to reshuffle the deck and relaunch.

What I wanted to clarify is that that many people have assumed that this means an "end" to the narrative/storyline/"sketch" aspect of the series entirely, and with things moving forward behind the scenes I can now say with some confidence that this is NOT the case, at all. What the series will move away from (at least primarily) is the presence of a constantly foward-moving narrative "arc," and into something more episodic in nature. I can't be more specific about how this "works" without giving away the ending of the current series, but suffice it to say that you can look forward to the main Game OverThinker series being predominantly focused on opinion-piece presentations (think my friend Jim Sterling's JIMQUISITION show, though not 100% on that model) with other characters like Ivan, OverThinker, RetroThinker, etc. onhand as supporting players - not quite "comic relief," but exaggerated alternative voices to break up (or bookend) the occasional drawn-out nature of my soapbox-soliloquy.

But did I say "main" series? I did. Part of the desire to relaunch Game OverThinker in this way was the realization that some of these characters, personas and voices were suited to saying certain things and performing certain functions that I wanted to make more use of but didn't necessarily want to overwhelm the series itself. So my plan (very beta at this point) is to have shorter series/vignettes specifically built around these personas that play to their strengths. More details to come on that front, but you may get a taste of things in these last few episodes of the current version.

FINALLY: As you've no dobut surmised, a lot of my time and effort recently has been taken up dealing with the same unpleasantness that's been derailing many other voices in the so-called "geek culture." And while I'll always speak up when I see/hear something wrong being done around me, I've come to the conclusion that what can be "done" about matters like these on a one-to-one social-media plane has been, well... done. Instead, I've decided to turn most of whatever percentage of my attention had been going toward such things toward something more ambitious and (hopefully) helpful: I'm going to write another book.

This new book will NOT be a follow-up to Brick-By-Brick. This will be more a work of recent historic/cultural/political analysis and commentary on the last decade of gaming-culture - specifically changes in the business, development, aesthetic and fandom of video-games and gaming over the last decade and a half, roughly beginning with the immediate cultural impacts of The Bush Era, 9-11, Iraq/Afghanistan, The Obama Era, the rise of the Tea Party, drone-paranoia, Wikileaks, Snowden, etc on this side of entertainment culture and it's manifestations today. More details to follow.

So. That's where we are moving forward. In the meantime, I'm going to get back on track with keeping this place updated with news stuff and not just my new videos. For example: Did you hear about DOCTOR STRANGE? That's a pretty big "get," innit?

-- Bob.

Read more »