Sophomore Slump
We’ve hit the Terrible Twos, people, the second anniversary of this website. This last year saw my productivity drop to a trickle as outside events pulled me away from my work (Player 2 and I now have rings, for instance). For half of the year, I wrote only two or three articles a month, significantly lower than my previous six or so. I apologize to my random visitors (who aren’t family and friends) who have been hoping for new content.
This is the cool part though. I have random visitors now. Every week, I see a steady stream of viewers come to my website, and for some reason, my Gorogoa review still gets a lot of hype. Mind you, we don’t have a Solomon Rambling fan club, but we could if I play my cards right.
This year saw me pushing back into the fiction world. Subreddits like r/shortscarystories and r/nosleep have thriving communities, and each story I have posted has resulted in a surge of viewers. I won a contest, and my stories have been narrated twice. Someone even said I was their favorite writer on the subreddit. Blush.
It hasn’t been without its problems. I have become a popularity whore because I don’t want to write a story that won’t get views. Science fiction and long third-person horror just don’t have the viewer base on Reddit. Unless my story is horror and 500 words or less or is “written realistically from a first-person view,” I can’t post it. Hell, my favorite story, “None of You Can Write a Good Twist,” was taken down because it treated other stories on the subreddit as if they were fake. I get they have a theme, but holy hell, there are a number of stories on r/nosleep which break or bend the rules but stay up somehow. God, it’s amazing how “Heaven Comes for All” even managed to stay on there.
I’m salty; I know it. Although I always wanted this site to be a place for my fiction, there is a part of me who wishes people came in equal masses for my reviews. I appreciate those who read my stories, but I would love to see comments on my reviews (barring those found on my Katamari Damacy review). I would love to be criticized by a disgruntled gamer.
Fetishes aside, it’s been a weird year. We’ll see how my junior year compares.
As for the whole “Review Update” of this article, I don’t have much to say. The Nintendo Life community has recently been shredding apart the site’s reviews, so I’ve pondered how I can improve my reviews. Lately, some of them have felt weaker than I would prefer, but I have loved others. Regardless, I have no scores to change.
As for the games, Flat Heroes continues to be absolutely amazing. Every person who comes to play loves it, and it is so easy to get into. I could play that game for hours. Crawl, comparatively, has proven not to be a hit. The controls and rules of the game are far more complex than I had previously thought for newcomers, even if they get it by the end. Four-player games are also too chaotic, making three-player games the best. Although I have not played it with anyone recently, I wish Treadnauts was more popular in my home because it’s the multiplayer game I miss the most.
Other than that, it’s all been new games for me. Hopefully, we get more people commenting on my reviews this year. With more discussion and discord, I might actually change a review score.