Well, even just a casual glance around the site lately would tell you that things have gone a little too long without being updated. I’d like to claim that a lot of it is due to being busy with work, which is partially true, but a lot of it is also to do with simply not knowing what to do with Little Mathletics.
When the site started, around the start of the year, it was simply a place to put up writing done by myself and others. Somewhere along the line, this fell a bit flat - I’m not the greatest fan of publishing “rants” on my site, or turning it into a LiveJournal, so I began doing interviews with people I found interesting. As most readers would know, this actually started working pretty well - a lot of this is attributable to the support of sites like Blue’s News, Shoot the Core! and, of course, GameSetWatch. When SimonC at GSW asked me to put interviews up over there, it kinda threw things out of balance over here.
Not that that’s a bad thing. It’s nice to have to think on your feet, and I’m glad to have moved to a website that doesn’t involve me coding every single inch of it. And things were going pretty well a while - I’ve just been thinking that, in all honesty, the last thing the world needs now is another bloody videogames blog.
The way I see it, there’s nothing wrong with throwing your hat in there - if you’ve got something special to offer. Take a look at the sidebar on the left here, for example:
- Joystiq and Kotaku, as much as a lot of people have problems with them and the occasionally underwhelming journalism that appears on their sites, are still great sources of news. That takes a lot of effort, and it doesn’t hurt to have good connections before trying something like that too. I’m not interested in competing with that - as far as I see, there’s no real pay-off for me in trying to, anyway. And I’m not just talking financially, here; I don’t really feel any reason to want that. I’d rather be writing something interesting, rather than pithy summaries of news.
- Press the Buttons, in all honesty, is the best site one person could ever hope to do on their own. Matt G does such a consistantly great job almost every day of the year it’s nothing short of amazing. Not only that, but he’s broken news on more than one occassion, and is constantly relevent and insightful. As much as I’d love to do what Matt does, it’s good enough for me just knowing that he’s out there doing what he’s doing.
- Addicted Geek head into tech news a lot, which is okay with me seeing as I don’t read much of it. The site’s at its best when Sideath is talking opinion, rather than trying to print news, but it’s got its place. Mostly, I think I go there so often simply because I’ve got a lot of time for anyone blogging about games that drunk that often. It makes me laugh. A lot.
- I’ve edited a bit of stuff for Nintendo Life now and then, which is the main reason it’s up there, but I’m also a big admirer of what Ant is doing with the community there. Plus, he’s a nice guy. There’s a reason not every site I’ve helped out with is up there - Gameworld Network, as obscenely high as their Alexa ranking is in comparison to most other sites I’ve worked with, could learn a lot from Ant. A whole lot. But, maybe that’s a story for another time.
- DB Magazine falls into the same camp. Yeah, most of the stuff I review (both in terms of games and CDs) comes from them, so I probably owe them for that, as well as the free tickets to gigs, but I’d do anything for them. Sincerely. They don’t pay me a cent either, yet I’ve spent literally tens of hours over the past few weeks trying to get their distributor situation under control. It’s because they’re wonderful, you see. Not neccessarily fitting in with the point I’m trying to make about offering something to the ‘net as a whole, but still wonderful.
- UK Resistance and Geek on Stun are amongst the funniest sites I know. Geek on Stun has been growing eerily similar to UK:R for a while now, but I can’t really complain - I’m still laughing, after all. It’s the hundreds of lesser Blogspot imitators that really get to me. No names, but, Jesus, give it a break.
- The Game Rag is probably the most originally hilarious game blog out there - when you start trying to explain to people who don’t even like games the humour behind headlines like the recent “Game Rag Writer Sues Makers Of Cooking Mama, Says Overbearing Perfectionist Mother Seems ‘A Bit Too Familiar’”, it’s probably hit a nerve. A good one.
- Shoot the Core is the best shmup related site on the net. Hands down. It’s going through update mode at this moment, but there’s simply nothing else like it. Indispensible.
- Insert Credit “gets” things that other sites don’t, but with a glorious knowing wink. It’s smart and it’s funny. I could care less whether or not they’re New Games Journalism or whatever - all I really care about is that they’re doing things over there that no one else can come close to, and I love every word of it.
- Gamasutra and GameSetWatch are obvious pretty important to me - one being the first place to pay me for writing, and the other being the place I currently make a living from - but what’s even more important is that I’d been reading both sites for some time prior to any of that. Being asked to contribute to something that I consider to be the highpoint of gaming journalism on the internet in terms of Gamasutra is pretty amazing - just as it was when I was asked to write for what I consider the most individual and interesting gaming blog out there before it. And that’s probably why I’m writing for GSW without being paid for it right now.
So, forgive me if that little section veered off my point a bit at times - what I’m trying to say is that I’m not interested in just being “that guy who posts a bit of stuff on gaming when he gets around to it”, because there’s already way too much of it happening. And I’m not interested in trying to make this site something else, because those sites I just listed - along with many others of note, like the Escapist, and TIGSource - are already doing something far more important and interesting that what I feel like putting in the time to do. I’m a freelancer, not a blogger, I suppose.
It’s kind of fitting that the forums died the other day - for one, I don’t think they fit the site at all, but it’s also symbolic in the sense that I think that was what I had wanted the site to be. Little Mathletics isn’t the kind of site that deserves a forum though, and that’s why it won’t be coming back.
Well, that and I know so little about php that I couldn’t do it even if I wanted.
There’s a conclusion here somewhere, I believe…
Little Mathletics has steadily been turning into a workblog for some time, and it seems about time to actually finalise that move. Whether or not I still add comments on the Australian industry is another thing I have to work out - I’m still not convinced there’s anyone doing that properly, or in an interesting fashion. I’m not sure that I’m the person who can do that, but it’s certainly something I’m thinking about.
Expect a big old upate in the next day or two explaining exactly what I’ve been doing for the past three weeks!