The more I think on stuff like this, the more I realize I need a blog to scream into the universe about politics and non-media culture. I doubt anyone would read it, but my mind is constantly drowning in a need for a pressure valve against the unending everything that is right now.

LLM nonsense is self-evidently bad on its face, but something that genuinely unnerves me is how much some people seem to desperately want a frictionless experience. No characters they dislike, no uncomfortable subjects, no barriers to exactly the thing they want.

When you're in an obviously corrupted system long enough, it's never because no one has tried to fix it from the inside. It's that everyone who's tried has had the system outlive them.

Everything I've found time to read is already fantastic. Unwinnable is always stellar, and definitely worth making time and space to subscribe and read. In particular, @rubeck.bsky.social on Final Fantasies' relationships with kingdoms has stuck with me.

Apropos of nothing, I'm still kind of baffled by gaming communities' weird parasocial relationship with publishers and megacorporations. Like, all of the payola accusations against critics or complaints that they follow embargos are always against the critics.

I want to be kind. It feels terribly strange and saddening that the society I live in makes that so difficult sometimes.

I have so many issues with LLM-generated nonsense replacing human creation, but something I haven't seen spoken about a lot is that bad stuff is good. Having a world where I see writing that disappoints me is instructive. It's the kind of thing that grabs my brain and shakes ideas loose.

Hey game crit people. I want to write more game crit, which means I should also read more game crit. I'd love recommendations, either from yourself or others, and preferably nothing paywalled until I can sell enough work to afford the paywalls.

The thing that really gets me is this wouldn't work with any other thing either. We build things with additional tolerance so we aren't running our machines at 100% capacity at all times either. Like, anyone who's worked with any machine knows you never redline it constantly.

A reminder that we're dead keen for pitches. Got a bunch in here already, but if you have a dream story, or a story only you can tell, chuck it in the form. Also we're looking for illustrators! We have some onboard already but we need more! Any Qs slide into my DMs!

Even being as generous as possible and taking him at his word, it's very telling that he implores the listener to understand that even when accused of horrifying crimes, members of ICE deserve to maintain their rights and a fair trial. Something that we are provably seeing detainees being denied.

If anyone has any openings or freelance opportunities for game reviews, I want to get back into doing that more this year. I would also be open to TV, anime, comic, manga, and film. I love criticism as a medium, and would be happy to share my skills to get to put more of it out there.

For CNN I'm looking to talk to young men (feel free to interpret "young" broadly) who are actively sports betting sober—as in, you made a conscious decision to abstain for your wellbeing or you quit gambling—but are still sports fans. If that's you: Hannah[dot]keyser[at]cnn[dot]com

Hi writers! I’m looking to assign a couple of features for Slate before the end of the year. If you have anything in mind that you think would be a fit please send me a pitch! Jenée.Desmond- [email protected] or dm me. RTs are appreciated so this can reach more people. Thanks!

Isn't he also the one always telling people that they don't have the cards in negotiations? So, he knows they have negotiating leverage, and would be willing to meet and negotiate only if they give up all of their cards. "It's so easy."

I wish being a critic didn't include so many adjacent skills. A majority of the things I need to learn have the best shot at professionally doing criticism have little to do with media literacy and writing craft, and much more to do with production and monetization.

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Even if I agreed with this sentiment—which I don't—I would probably find any of this more compelling if this exact cohort wasn't going out of their way to cut mental health medications, resources, research, practitioners. Identifying another cause and then cutting that too is still ghoul behavior.

Are you a freelancer near GDC? We got an opportunity!!!

After missing several dozen days, I think I've decided to hang up the towel on 365Games. I'm sure I've played more than enough games, but I don't know if I have that many I feel really strongly about discussing. I want to revisit the concept, but with fewer games and more said about each later.

In the wake of the government being picked apart, giant piece by giant piece, I can't help but wonder. When this is all over, what sort of massive undertaking will it be to rebuild something functional in the aftermath, assuming enough of it is left to salvage by survivors?

I know it's very little comfort now, but I hope every person even loosely adjacent to this administration becomes radioactive. I hope when the awful stops happening at full speed, everyone with a foot on the pedal gets hammered with consequences: No more service in public. Never getting hired again.

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It's the tiniest little thing, but now feels more relevant than ever to make my pronouns even more visible.

I try not to lean too hard into doom spiraling, but it's hard to see headline after headline of the least empathetic or loudest cruelties day, after day, after day. I know this won't be forever, but it's hard for me to really grapple with the idea that these are the people sharing life with me.

I'm going to do a little hoping right now, instead of leaning into the sadness everywhere. I hope that ignorant, conservative voters can start to feel less scared soon. Less scared of people who aren't a threat to anyone, be they across a border or in a bathroom.

I'll admit I'm personally let down the the Switch 2 just looks like a physically larger, likely more powerful version of the Switch. However, every complaint I've seen about the Switch is that it doesn't look better or run more modern software. Switch 2 looks like it will do exactly those things.

I miss a more amateur internet. I think we're losing something that every website has professional templates, web forums are a lost part of internet discussions, and it was possible to see YouTube videos that don't have professional lighting, make-up, camera, and editing for hobbyist videos.

Doing anything daily will be a challenge for me, but I think I'll hop in on this idea as well. I fully expect I may miss some days, but I will backfill when I have energy. So, full thread: 0/365

I don't want to make any grand plans for 2025—that just feels like a good way to make myself so anxious I do nothing—but I do think I want to do some professional criticism this year.

Being kind is heckin' hard. It requires time, care, consideration, and effort all the way around to be truly kind a lot of the time. To be attentive to what people need in their lives, an understanding of how to contribute to it helpfully, and the time to get the resources together to provide it.

I don't know if I've even played enough recently to be able to lean into blogging, but as much as I've seen it as the topic of discussion today, it feels like it would be worth doing anyway.

I cannot imagine a version of my work that could be faultless. Even if I manage to nail exactly what I'm trying to do, there will always be ways other "ears" can pick out tone, the flows, and rhythms. Even if I miraculously produce a "perfect" work, I still would benefit from another editor's lens.

I cannot think of any words sufficient to express my frustration. www.cnn.com/us/live-news...

It's kind of miraculous to me that .txt files are still readable on modern hardware.

I'm sure there's an actual article to be made out of this, but it's very uncommon to have games that allow you to be mechanically kind, isn't it? Narratively, sure. Morality systems do sometimes systematize it. But not very often through the primary play mechanic.

Seeing this is probably the closest I've ever come to understanding Lovecraft. The thing I am watching cannot possibly be, but if true, the world as I understand it hasn't survive. How could I describe this to someone else in a way that would not make me sound mad?

I've been in this space primarily as part-time freelancer for the entire time I've been around, but seeing all of the foundations of game criticism as a primary job erode from all directions is deeply disheartening.

Hey uh, I'm hiring! I'm looking for a Sr. Writer and Reviewer here at PCMag to work on the security team, specifically reviewing and covering VPNs, proxies, Tor, the Dark Web, and other privacy/infosec tools! Deets below, DMs open for questions, apply here: www.ziffdavis.com/careers/jobs...

Cropped so I don't give this post too more oxygen, but I remain baffled that opinions like this persist. Game criticism sites close regularly, writers are looking for work constantly, the people who write big articles are the same ones who write news churn. Where is all the supposed pay off money?

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Even putting aside the obvious theft issues with harvesting these scripts (You wouldn't download a car, etc.), the point of LLMs is to build an average of the data. The average of LotR, Gladiator, Breaking Bad, and Sopranos is probably inexplicable. How is the unthinking computer going to know?

It still takes me a minute, sometimes, to unseat my brain from convention: love to see they/them pronouns written in pieces, I'll still struggle not to forcibly mentally capitalize anything that could be a proper noun even against the person's preferred casing, and I'm still bad with neopronouns.

come work with me and help answer important questions like "what is the plural of yoshi" job-boards.greenhouse.io/voxmedia/job...

Name a game with a 10/10 soundtrack.

A fun experiment for people who like to rage against reviewers to try is to take games you've already decided you're going to play and go on media blackout. Play the whole thing and write down your thoughts without seeing what anybody else has to say. Then check to see if your opinion is popular.

I haven't yet played Balatro, nor have I really seen it played in any meaningful way (aside from seeing it as B-roll in various hardware reviews or summary lists), and side from the back-of-the-envelope pitch of "Poker Roguelike," I have a very confused idea of what the game actually is.

I don't think it's necessarily my best work, but this subject continues to be something I don't feel like I have good answers for. Games are insular, and the language of how a game is, and feels, remains impenetrable. thethesaurusrex.com/2020/01/05/a...

For those who know, would it be better to try to get into an existing indie project to start writing in narrative-centered games, or to make your own really small project as a sort of portfolio?

One thing I feel like I encounter with more and more young writers is that they (sometimes) have no sense of flow, rhythm, a well-constructed sentence, as if they never really learned to love reading itself. If you're a writer, you must have a sense of this. You must have a real love of reading IMO.