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OK, I lied. It’s actually the wee small hours of the 10th right now. I’m up late waiting for Windows 7 to install for a second time. The first time it didn’t clear away the hard drive, and I really didn’t feel like rooting out all the old files from the previous installation.

Tomorrow is likely to be grim, but hopefully I’ll be going into it with a vastly superior gaming rig. Some great friends spotted me a new power supply and a GTX 560 video card, and I just bought myself an ASUS 27-inch monitor, along with 8 gigs of RAM, and the 64-bit version of Windows 7. This should get me through to next year, at least. Longer, if consoles keep acting as an anchor on hardware requirements.

This is probably the only weekend where I could fit this in. For the rest of the month, I’m on reviews duty, with no end in sight. This upgrade needed to happen now or never, and it’s a load off my mind knowing I’ll be hitting the major releases with the great hardware. But before I get to reviews, I think I’ll have to install Crysis. Crysis, Sengoku, and Age of Empires Onlines should occupy my weekend quite nicely.

But what about my weeks? I haven’t done a great job of explaining what I’ve been up to lately, but the truth is I’ve kind of been everywhere of late. For instance, you can find me on the last couple Gamers With Jobs Conference Calls, talking about Deus Ex: Human Revolution and other things.

We’ve also been going great guns over on Three Moves Ahead, what with Soren Johnson killing some lazy summer days by spending time talking strategy games with us. It’s been impressive to see the spike in listeners. We do a good show over at 3MA, but a guy like Soren packs the house when he’s headlining. It’s great to count him among 3MA’s fans and recurring panelists.

I also made an appearance over at the mighty Rock, Paper, Shotgun, writing a review of the surprisingly good (yet still somewhat unfulfilling) Tropico 4. It’s thrilling to find myself writing at a place that was such a huge influence on me when I was starting out as a freelancer. To my relief, the RPS readership seems to think I fit in pretty well over there. Some of them didn’t even guess I was a Yank.

I’ll be popping up in some other unusual places over the coming weeks, and I’ve got some projects I’m really excited about. Hopefully tomorrow (today) I’ll be working on one of them with my pal JP Grant. Preferably with some brews in hand.

A couple springs ago, I logged into Quarter to Three and saw that I had a private message from Troy Goodfellow. I’d run across his name when I was researching another piece I’d written for The Escapist, but I didn’t know much more about him. He liked an article I’d done for them, and wanted to tell me so.

I don’t know many writers who go out of their way to drop messages of appreciation to their juniors, but Troy does. He was willing to chat a bit with me over the next few months, and provide advice and counsel when I needed it. And then at some point he brought me in to help out with a feature series he was running, and shortly thereafter he brought me onto Three Moves Ahead to fill in for Julian and Bruce.

Freelancing often comes down to who you know, and whether or not they like you. Troy reached out to me and opened far more doors than I could have hoped for, starting with his invitation to become a regular 3MA panelist. He vouched for me to editors, and he helped me build an identity and reputation. He is generous with his assistance to those he believes in, and I am very lucky to have won his confidence. There are not many so generous with help in so competitive a field, and games writing is losing more than you might think as Troy transitions to a career in PR.

On his way out the door, he has given me some more amazing opportunities and responsibilities. The one I want to talk about right now is Three Moves Ahead.

Continuity and Change

When 3MA began, it had four incredibly qualified panelists on hand to discuss strategy games. Julian has a very deep well of experience from which he can draw when it comes board games. Troy and Tom Chick know the strategy genre better than any other writers in the US, and more importantly, they can communicate their understanding to readers and listeners. Bruce knows wargames inside and out, and has a logician’s approach to discussion.

Had that group continued to have the type of conversations it did in the first half of 3MA’s life, I would likely never have been a part of it, and the show would be none the worse. They were a great panel and I still consider many of their episodes to be the gold standard against which I judge those I’ve been a part of.

But other commitments made it hard for four or even three of the panelists to record together, and their busy work schedules made it very hard for them to coalesce around a topic on short-notice. Remember that I came aboard as a semi-regular fill-in, and one of the great advantages Troy had in working with me is that I was chronically under-employed and was willing to crash-research a game or a topic. Until joining 3MA, I had never considered myself a strategy gamer. It just happened to be a genre where I spent a third of my gaming time. But I liked 3MA, I was honored to be helping out, and I was learning a lot. I dug into the genre so that I could make more valuable contributions. But I don’t flatter myself in to thinking that I bring what Tom or Bruce does to an episode.

So as I take over the show, one of my goals is to get the mixture of panelists closer to how it was in earlier episodes. It’s a better show when we have a larger group of intelligent people examining the topic at hand. Hopefully Tom and Bruce can help out from time-to-time, but I’m also hoping to add enough depth to the bench that the show is less dependent on me and Julian. In this vein, I’m also hoping to have longer fuses on each 3MA, so that we can better prepare for a topic. If we can get these two things right, I am certain 3MA will be as good as it’s ever been.

All that said, I have different tastes and views than Troy. My definition of what constitutes a strategy game is probably closer to Tom Chick’s heretical “everything is a strategy game.” While I’d never do an episode on Bioshock 2 like he wanted, I might do an episode on the Brothers in Arms series. Not all my favorite games are strategy games, but almost all my favorite games have significant strategic or tactical elements. From time to time, I will beg your forgiveness as I try to catch glimpses of strategy existing outside its natural habitat.

Likewise, it is inevitable that my increasing interest in board games, and Julian’s knowledge of the format, will result in board games playing a larger role on the show. However, I will try and ensure that board games come up in the context of theme shows where  they might be relevant, or when we uncover a particularly interesting game.

Beyond that, you should also expect more classic game analysis. Frankly, we haven’t really scratched the surface of games that are worth revisiting. If we can get the planning right, there’s a wealth of rich topics waiting to receive attention. Episodes like this will also allow Troy to rejoin us on a regular basis.

These are small changes, but I think they could have a major impact on the show. I have other plans in the works: a site for the show, better production equipment and practices, and perhaps even taking the show twice  monthly if it means we can make better preparations and and deliver a better product. But some of these are minor changes, and others are just ideas, not plans. In the last analysis, 3MA answers to two groups: the panel, and the audience. I want those of us who record 3MA to be proud of our effort, and I want those of us who listen to it to come away feeling like it’s as interesting and thought-provoking as ever.

I don’t entirely know what that will entail, which is why I want your input and suggestions. In the meantime I am, as ever, honored by Troy’s trust, and the goodwill of the listeners who have been offering their congratulations and best-wishes since we made the announcement. I will do my best to live up to the standard he set.

Right after we recorded the latest Three Moves Ahead, I realized Troy and I had over-discussed each question and under-answered many of them. I would have preferred to answer more questions and maybe do a little less pontificating, but I guess that ship sailed. But there were a couple good questions that I wanted to revisit a bit, and expand on my answers.

Why port Supreme Commander to 360 and not Demigod?

On the show I kind of slammed publishers for not knowing what they’re doing when they force developers to make games for the wrong platforms. My answer was a little glib for my liking, but its was born of my increasing frustration over the number of projects that are stillborn because they can’t meet arbitrary platform requirements. Other projects that are compromised to death for the sake of cross-platform release. I despise the idea of developers being forced to design for a platform that they didn’t intend.

As RTS gamers, though, we benefit from this. Being forced to develop with an eye toward console limitations means not relying on the mouse and keyboard to overcome design excesses.

With Demigod, I’d guess that Gas Powered Games ran into a couple issues. First, it was an odd concept that a lot of larger publishers probably didn’t want to touch. All Stardock cared about was the PC, so there was no incentive to ever explore a 360 version. And since the game ran into so much trouble, and Stardock still doesn’t care about consoles (with the Impulse service, console support is not in their interest), it’s just a good idea who time will likely never come.

Games Journalism 2020

Troy says the video is the future of games journalism. I just don’t see it. Until the line between the computer and the TV is erased, video content is just going to be too slow-paced. Short video reviews and game trailers are one thing, but even with those it’s hard to find the motivation to actually watch. The way I browse, 3 minutes is a lifetime to spend on one thing. 10 is an eternity. This is why podcasts are so great: they are a background activity. Video is foreground.

But I do suspect games journalism will be in a healthier place. The collapse of the print outlets was a disaster and wiped out some tremendous collections of talent. They allowed good people to higher-quality work rather than fixate on volume. The online space has not really caught up with that.

In 2020, I hope there will be more sites like Rock, Paper, Shotgun: writing collectives that take the pressure of individual bloggers and allow for higher editorial standards without sacrificing the personal, homey atmosphere of a blog. A site like Hellmode seems to be off to a great start, and that’s just two writers. I sometimes wonder whether the TMA panel could rule the strategy, wargaming, and boardgame space if the panelists collaborated, and if that could ever be made to pay.

I think we’ll see more outlets like Eurogamer and dear, departed Crispy Gamer. Toward the end, I’ll grant that the Crispy experiment was pretty much over: the site was leaning heavily on a half-dozen staffers, which made it a much less interesting site than it had been when it was a freelancer’s heaven. But the idea is sound: cherry pick the best ideas of a few dozen people, and foster an editorial environment where they are free to experiment and spend time polishing their copy. That’s also why print will still be alive.

An Aside on Getting Paid

There are writers who say you should never work for free. Many of those writers, however, came up in a different market. The bottom line is that I’ve worked for free, and it’s not always a bad thing to do. But it needs to be done with a goal in mind.

Gamers With Jobs does not pay, but there are other benefits to writing there. First, some of my best friends write there and I want to be a part of it. Second, the Gamers With Jobs writer’s room is worth money to me. If I can post my work there to receive feedback, I will emerge from the experience a better writer. A freelancer lives by skills, after all, and there aren’t many places that can help improve them.

There are other outlets that are worth doing a little work for free just so you get the clip in your file. But eventually you need to ask people to start paying, and quit if they don’t. By all means see if you can wedge the door open with free work. But don’t spend too long in the doorway waiting.

Seriously, though, working for free can be a disaster. Exchange of services for compensation is the foundation of professionalism. If that exchange is not taking place, it’s very hard to have a professional interaction. An editor needs to be able to make expectations and preferences clear, and that’s much easier when you’re paying someone money. That’s what nobody tells you about freebies: it actually makes the work more difficult, because the relationship is undefined.

I have major ethical concerns, however, about sites that rely on a community to generate most of their content, and compensate their writers with a bit of notoriety and hints that one day, the Editors will pluck a community member from that ranks and make him Staff. I don’t think that’s an effective avenue into the industry, and if writers are generating traffic for a website, they should be given more than a pat on the head for being a “featured writer.”

I hope that in 2020, those sites are gone, and community goes back to being something to nurture and enjoy, not strip-mine.