What We’ve Been up To

It’s the update you’ve all been dreading: The admission by me that I’ve still been suffering from writer’s block for well over a full year now, and that I don’t rightly know if I’ll ever get back to it! Thanks for checking in y’all, and I’ll see you next year!

… Nah, you fine folk really do deserve a bit more of an explanation than that after all this time, even if I know it won’t satisfy many of you who initially followed me on the promise of reading novella-length essays about bad video games. As some of you may already know, we’ve since transitioned to doing feature-length streams about bad video games over on Twitch. We put on a show every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday between the hours of 8:00 and 11:00PM (EST); and boy howdy, have I been having so much more fun doing that than I honestly ever did with my writing! For all the times you’ve heard me “joke” about not being a writer, the honest truth is that I am not a writer: I’m a lapsed video editor with media training and the constant urge to be the center of attention. I’m immensely proud of the fact that folk enjoyed my experiments in writing – that I got to feature on podcasts for it, get cited in published books, and write scripts for one of my favorite YouTube channels – but I feel like the project probably already peaked past a certain point, and that there was no real road to making it a tenable thing on its own (in terms of continuing to build an audience / finances).

Add to all that the absolute state of the games writing industry as a whole, and I must confess: The future in long-form writing looks pretty bleak, at the moment. That isn’t to say that I don’t applaud folk who remain committed to the format, and respect audiences who prefer to consume their content in the form of text: I hope for nothing but the best for y’all, will continue to shout out and support writers, and wish you well in the fight against the 3.0-ification of the World Wide Web that seeks to bury long-form written content. This is simply to say that I figure my uncommitted ass isn’t gonna be of much particular help in “saving the scene,” and that it’s best to leave that important work to the professionals and more passionate hobbyists out there.

Also, I’ve gotta admit: After having so much of my work outright stolen from me by YouTubers with audiences roughly six-hundred thousand times larger than mine, and having to call in favors from my handful of industry connections to get so much as a link to my articles added to the bottoms of descriptions of videos with over a million views more than a couple times; I’m kinda tired of being exploited? I know that I’ve always trafficked in the idea that information should be free and free-to-use; but after the fifth or sixth incident dealing with some shmuck who doesn’t even play the games they talk about for themselves (handing those duties off to their teams of underpaid writers and video editors) – seeing my words and personal opinions [and even my goddamn animated GIFs] re-sold wholesale – I can’t help but feel at least somewhat entitled to some of that attention and adulation! Call me selfish for that if you will, and I will fully confess to it if I must.

But hey, you know what’s a whole lot harder to get away with stealing these days? Fully commentated video playthroughs. Good luck to anyone trying to edit around my constant laughing every time something breaks in a game. And as it turns out, I can get just as many of my thoughts out and interject as much research and history as I want to into my streams! I’m proud of the fact that our YouTube archives contain hundreds of hours of what I believe to be well-researched, entertaining, and hopefully insightful gameplay segments. And to be extra clear: If I hadn’t “pivoted to video” (as the kids used to say), I’d have just as soon taken a full-on break from having an Internet presence again. That’s seriously how burnt out I’ve been on this whole writing business, and how guilty I felt about not being able to consistently deliver on these goofy write-ups of mine. And so, while starting up our regular stream started as a means of filling the time and space between our articles; I quickly began to realize how much I had missed the format, and getting to engage directly with other sickos bad game enthusiasts in the audience.

I count myself incredibly lucky to have met my co-host Charkie, who inspired in me a want to get back to my roots in video production / put my voice back out there again. As a matter of fact, we just recently celebrated their one-year “Streamiversary” on the channel (as of the time of this writing), and it’s given me a good opportunity to reflect on the road that brought us to where we are now — to re-evaluate what my long-term goals are, and hash out who exactly I want to be on the Net. And I reckon the answers to those questions are: I want to have an audience, and I want to earn it on my own terms — through my charisma, confidence, and enthusiasm for “bad” games. And as it turns out, it’s a lot easier to project those qualities through the power of voice and video, rather than the constraints of the long-form written essays I have been known to produce on here.

Now, none of this is to say that I’m completely renouncing writing, or that this website will just continue to languish until the digital dust causes it to collapse: There may come a time where I have the irresistible urge to get back on the horse and put out a 50,000+ word essay on Glover or whatever the hell else I feel deserves “the full BGHOF treatment.” And again: I’m still very proud of the works I put out on here in the last eight years, and will always keep them up as a monument to the blood, sweat, and tears I put into producing them. And if that means that folk will continue to liberally lift from them in the process of making YouTube videos – raking in sponsor spots to the tune of five figures (all while I continue to live paycheck-to-paycheck as a social worker) – then so be it: As we continue to grow our platform on the back of our streams, and eventually drive it to a point where we’re commanding our own comparable audience, me and Charkie will be contented knowing that we did it without stooping to hackery and laziness — that all the thoughts we share on stream are our own, and that we’re really damn good at delivering them.

So, that’s the update: Please to consider checking out our streams and/or stream archives; across Twitch, YouTube, and our dedicated “Stream Archives” page here on the site. We’ve been told by folk who “don’t usually watch streams” that ours are a pleasant surprise, which might stem from the fact that I don’t personally watch too many streams either! And even if you don’t decide to take that trip with us, it’s all good: I’m glad I could entertain and inform y’all with my writing, and that you at least know now that I’m still out there doing my thing — standing up for and showcasing bad video games, and encouraging folk to form their own opinions on them. Trust that I’m committed and capable of making this whole thing work – know that we won’t stop ’til we reach the top – because that’s the cowpoke way. And this lifestyle ain’t just a gimmick to me, y’hear?

~ Cassidy