I have a feeling that this comment will get buried and/or you won't read it because I anticipate it ending up being pretty long, but I'm putting it out here anyway because fuck it.
I started listening to Podtoid ~5 weeks before you peaced out from Destructoid, and I want to tell you that from your hosting of the show, your RevRants and your articles, you've taught me an entirely different way to think about games (blah blah games as art blah blah).
Before Podtoid and your Revrants, I always just considered the medium as this faceless construction with enormous teams of programmers, lacklustre writers, and a couple of bourgeois-types sitting behind a desk evaluating how much money they're projected to earn. Which is, in many cases, not too far from the truth.
You and Aaron Linde showed me a completely different side to the medium. From your discussions on Metal Gear Solid's ridiculous plot-lines, themes of censorship, privately-owned military powers, etc., Earthbound's final boss Giygas and his significance to Shigesato Itoi's life, Passase, Gravity Bone, no kill run-throughs of various games, and so on, I have another appreciation for the medium in which I feel that game developers (some, at least) really want to do something with their games and that they aren't solely commodities. Sure, I had played Shadow of the Colossus before knowing who you were and understood the themes of moral ambiguity, love, devotion, etc., but until reading stuff you've written about Shadow of the Colossus and other games, I didn't know people could be scholarly about this shit.
From here, I became interested in blogging about games. Not contributing anything at first, but just reading various blogs with good editorials, observing different reviewing styles, and basically loving how Destructoid produces both of these without taking itself too seriously, thus, for example, alongside a quality review of Bit.Trip Beat by Jonathan Holmes would appear right next to an absurd un-boxing video by Jim Sterling; a good mix of seriousness, humorousness and humility. I then wanted to write about games, and I wanted to do it for Destructoid. This was about 2 years ago from now but, long story made short, I immediately became disenchanted from the idea by with the realization of the sheer amount of individuals trying to do the same as me and that the "games journalism" infrastructure is enormous, with a large amount of blogs being completely unknown (many of which actually quite good), and a small few occupying a position in which they receive any sort of acknowledgement. I can talk a lot more about this but I'm sure you've some DLC to write so I'm trying to finish this shit up.
I want to thank you for showing me that people can be smart about games and they actually mean something. I know that you're just a regular, smart dude who had a lot of luck and are probably thinking about how strange (you may use a different word) it is that you had an impact on the intellectual development from some 20 year old Canadian kid, but you did, and I thank you for it and I want you to keep making shit. Just keep doing shit, dude.
So to actually ask you a question: do you think Destructoid has changed significantly in the years you've left? I know a lot of other writers have left so it wouldn't be right to suggest a direct change as a result of your leaving, but I think there's been more of a focus on news and reviews rather than editorial and criticism, and I'd love to see more of the latter.
tl;dr: thanks for being smart and doing stuff. has destructoid changed since you've left?
(I totally could've gotten away with just posting my tl;dr as my entire post but fuck it)
p0pfarts11 karma
Hey Anthony,
I have a feeling that this comment will get buried and/or you won't read it because I anticipate it ending up being pretty long, but I'm putting it out here anyway because fuck it.
I started listening to Podtoid ~5 weeks before you peaced out from Destructoid, and I want to tell you that from your hosting of the show, your RevRants and your articles, you've taught me an entirely different way to think about games (blah blah games as art blah blah).
Before Podtoid and your Revrants, I always just considered the medium as this faceless construction with enormous teams of programmers, lacklustre writers, and a couple of bourgeois-types sitting behind a desk evaluating how much money they're projected to earn. Which is, in many cases, not too far from the truth.
You and Aaron Linde showed me a completely different side to the medium. From your discussions on Metal Gear Solid's ridiculous plot-lines, themes of censorship, privately-owned military powers, etc., Earthbound's final boss Giygas and his significance to Shigesato Itoi's life, Passase, Gravity Bone, no kill run-throughs of various games, and so on, I have another appreciation for the medium in which I feel that game developers (some, at least) really want to do something with their games and that they aren't solely commodities. Sure, I had played Shadow of the Colossus before knowing who you were and understood the themes of moral ambiguity, love, devotion, etc., but until reading stuff you've written about Shadow of the Colossus and other games, I didn't know people could be scholarly about this shit.
From here, I became interested in blogging about games. Not contributing anything at first, but just reading various blogs with good editorials, observing different reviewing styles, and basically loving how Destructoid produces both of these without taking itself too seriously, thus, for example, alongside a quality review of Bit.Trip Beat by Jonathan Holmes would appear right next to an absurd un-boxing video by Jim Sterling; a good mix of seriousness, humorousness and humility. I then wanted to write about games, and I wanted to do it for Destructoid. This was about 2 years ago from now but, long story made short, I immediately became disenchanted from the idea by with the realization of the sheer amount of individuals trying to do the same as me and that the "games journalism" infrastructure is enormous, with a large amount of blogs being completely unknown (many of which actually quite good), and a small few occupying a position in which they receive any sort of acknowledgement. I can talk a lot more about this but I'm sure you've some DLC to write so I'm trying to finish this shit up.
I want to thank you for showing me that people can be smart about games and they actually mean something. I know that you're just a regular, smart dude who had a lot of luck and are probably thinking about how strange (you may use a different word) it is that you had an impact on the intellectual development from some 20 year old Canadian kid, but you did, and I thank you for it and I want you to keep making shit. Just keep doing shit, dude.
So to actually ask you a question: do you think Destructoid has changed significantly in the years you've left? I know a lot of other writers have left so it wouldn't be right to suggest a direct change as a result of your leaving, but I think there's been more of a focus on news and reviews rather than editorial and criticism, and I'd love to see more of the latter.
tl;dr: thanks for being smart and doing stuff. has destructoid changed since you've left? (I totally could've gotten away with just posting my tl;dr as my entire post but fuck it)
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