Wrote about what it means that Concord — a game that famously nobody played — has become one of the primary lenses through which video games are discussed today. (Also some stuff toward the end about what's next for ReaderGrev...) www.readergrev.com/p/marathon-n...

Liked this bit. Related thing I think a lot of the modern internet, media included, me included, are guilty of is attributing a cultural event or trend to a handful of threads on Reddit or, at worst, a single popular post. In reality "players" have never been more fragmented, non-monolithic

Have heard some of the terms of these prediction market x entertainment product deals and it's shocking that they cracked down because these are basically set up to be gamed.

The long and short of it is: we are looking to bump our Patreon support up by about $100/month to reach a point where we can become truly sustainable. If just 20 people signed up for our Circle tier ($5/mo), we would hit that goal in no time at all. www.patreon.com/c/critdistan...

I got real mad and wrote about EVO.

I agree with the small caveat that calling this "discussion" is generous. Twitter / Reddit etc is the biggest losers imaginable just saying "LOL CONCORD 2" over and over again. There are guys on the Highguard sub who post 50 times a day about how they're glad the game failed. Bottom 1%ers.

I still don't think Next Fest solves any real discoverability issues given the number of games participating, but I'm gonna try to check out some while I can.

Wrote about what it means that Concord — a game that famously nobody played — has become one of the primary lenses through which video games are discussed today. (Also some stuff toward the end about what's next for ReaderGrev...) www.readergrev.com/p/marathon-n...

readergrev

It's awesome that new indie sites are focusing on reporting, reviews, and analysis But long before these new pubs, indie media focused on service, fandom, and community paved the way -- and continues! I'm thrilled to see @onemorecatch.site building on that legacy with this beautiful Pokémon site

The real scandal of the Epstein saga is not that a billionaire cabal that pulls the strings of all world decisions. It's that there's a billionaire class with infinite resources. It's a network, not an organization that orders up wars and earthquakes on demand.

At the Council on Foreign Relations on the Upper East Side if anyone wants to roll up and scrap

I wrote a piece for the @newyorker.com on Trump’s pantomime United Nations www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

Sometimes i write what i think is a really good lede and then pause and realize it makes no sense for the story im writing. Anyone else?

➰⚽ ➡️ 🗞️

You will never in 100 years guess what game this is about

Hello my online bubble

Let’s play “Guess The Editorial Board”! No prize for winning.

Inscrutable ad. One passing mention of the thing being advertised and the rest is "we're going to finger this guy's butt." What are they doing over there at Microsoft? www.eurogamer.net/call-of-duty...

on the one hand this guy doesn’t know what a bubble is. on the other he just coined the term “online bubble”

Nobody’s around to take credit for this anymore — and I doubt they would, because the backstory is a bit 🫣 — but I think some of Nirvanna The Band The Show’s biggest exposure to a certain audience came from Polygon.

Read an entirely new description of a person last night.

They have to know how people are going to use this image right...

Incredible reveal, thought I’m not sure what, if any, explanatory power this has barring further reporting. We don’t really know enough about the dynamic here (though we certainly know more now). I guess I’d love to know what folks in dev/publishing make of this?

NEW: Highguard studio Wildlight's secret financial backer was Tencent, sources tell me www.gamefile.news/p/tencent-hi...

Need to find a job ASAP because it doesn’t make sense to keep paying for a dogwalker for Milly if I’m home all the time, but she loves our walker so much.

I literally played it last night! It was alright! There are people clearly devoting a lot of time to this game and getting good at it!

Milly is wearing her smartest hanky today

Sending pitches day 🤞

On Baby Steps: www.arcadence.com/fallson/

Coming back from Seoul with flavored Marlboro menthols like a prehistoric hunter dragging a hunk of mammoth into the cave except the tribe I’m feeding is guys I play video games with

"But I do think culturally we are back to brunch." This month in Dialogue, @austinwalker.bsky.social goes long on craft, industry, and doing the work.

Trying to watch the Marathon dev stream and I cannot believe how annoying this Burnt Peanut guy is. Unbearable.

I blogged about why I avoided Binding of Isaac because of its depiction of cleft lips and other birth defects, and how a recent conversation with its creator changed my mind.

I think I am all take’d-out on best business models for games.

Woke up and the first thing I saw was a take and now I’m pissed.

Folks have been enjoying @autumn-wright.com's interview with @austinwalker.bsky.social! I want to point out that it exists because of subscribers, who enable our writers to produce things that other outlets would deem unpublishable, like 10,000 word interviews. Subscribe: unwinnable.com/subscribe/

Sort of opposed to writing stuff just based on bad social media comments but who is going to write the “not everything is Concord” blog? Saw someone getting upvoted on Reddit for calling Relooted “hero shooter slop.”

🧵 1/ It’s hard to find hope amidst so much collapse. But in the wreckage of today’s crises, people are also powering solutions — and The 51st, backed by the community of D.C., is one of them. Will you help us build a local newsroom that a billionaire can’t break?

For years, the first newsletter I read after waking up & getting the kids to school was @ishaantharoor.bsky.social’s WorldView for the Washington Post. Nothing else in mainstream US media gave readers foreign perspectives on US news. Jeff Bezos and Will Lewis killed it. Today was its last edition.

I'm constantly getting offers to host paid casino articles on ReaderGrev and I'm half tempted to allow one for an exorbitant fee and just put a bunch of disclaimers in the text that you should never, under any circumstances, open the article or click anything on it.

“MacDonald has done something no English-speaking reporter has before her: told the story of Nintendo, in detail... She has gotten inside the mind of Miyamoto, and the intangible miasma that has made video games what they are today” Thank you @plante.bsky.social🙏 www.vulture.com/article/shig...

Looking to talk to 2XKO folks for a prospective story 💬

You’re telling me this isn’t a playable word? Get out of here man.

At that stage of laid-off-edness where I’m wondering if I ought to be producing short form vertical video

This is a sweet deal and even if it wasn't, being a subscriber helps keep one of the longest running independent games and culture publications thriving into the future

There’s a reference in Soderbergh’s Black Bag to a “Call of Duty: Pacific Theater” — a game that I don’t think exists. Why?

Oh so media workers aren’t allowed to enjoy the Super Bowl during layoffs huh? 🤦‍♂️

Hi Will, hope this email finds you well — big fan. I write a niche newsletter called ReaderGrev, in which I occasionally run pieces as part of a series called Exit Interview,