Midyear Post Mortem

I set goals this year. Some easy, others seemingly impossible. Most of them were anchored to my writing, so I’d like to review my progress in more characters than Twitter would allow.

Schedule Changes

My old writing schedule was to post at least one thing a month. This has changed as I am now posting every week. There are several reasons for that schedule change.

The first is that I’ve started to get better at putting out content more regularly. There are two preview posts I did for viewport that I never bothered linking on my blog, which were published within the same period as my Overcooked 2, Slay the Spire, and Wargroove reviews. I really enjoyed making writing a part of my weekly routine and it felt weird to go back to “hibernating” until my Baba is You review.

Secondly is experimentation. It’s really hard to explore your voice in writing when you don’t write regularly. I wanted to make changes in my reviews, but struggled to and would fall back on my established formula. After returning to my blog I wrote my The Gamer Tag post, which was one of many exercises to help find my voice in writing. I’ve been informed by friends that more of my personality comes through in my reviews now, which I’m quite pleased with.

Finally is commitment. Having a schedule helps keep me regularly writing. Spending the last two weeks drowning myself in Total War: Warhammer 2 was great, but could have been the killer of content for all of July without self imposed rules. I need a schedule to keep myself on track.

In summary: I’ve grown to enjoy writing more, I wanted to find my voice and have more opportunities to experiment, and I needed a firmer schedule. I’m seven for seven so far with monthly posts and make no plans of missing either my old schedule, or my new one.

Features

I’m going to cheat and say that I accomplished this goal. I no longer write for viewport, but I did create a piece I’m proud of which met my criteria for being a feature. My post on Return of the Obra Dinn was a challenge to write, but I’m glad I was finally able to publish my first feature post. Mechanics are always where my focus rests in games, so it was really fun to dissect and write about how they worked in Obra Dinn.

I have come up with other ideas for written pieces in a similar vein, but they haven’t panned out. I’m currently working on one about Furi, but there is a distinct possibility that it will never see the light of day. I want to write more feature pieces, but trust me when I say that it’s incredibly challenging. Or at least I think it is.

Staying Relevant

In a bid to stay topical, I’ve bought more new games this year than ever before. I’ve also never noticed how few games release in the summer months until now. Despite that I’ve had a fairly good year so far. Here is the list of the games I’ve completed that released this year (on PC):

1. Slay the Spire
2. Ravva and the Cyclops Curse
3. Wargroove
4. Tou Hou Luna Nights
5. Baba is You
6. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
7. The World Next Door
8. Grimshade
9. Katana ZERO
10. Bomb Chicken
11. SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech
12. Gato Roboto
13. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Not bad. Halfway through the year and I’m a little over halfway to my goal of playing 20 relevant games. I do also have ISLANDERS and Devil May Cry 5 in my backlog following the Steam Summer Sale.

So far 2019 has been a really good year to me. There are already six games I have on my shortlist for top five games of the year (some aren’t listed above), and I only have one game that is going on the bottom five list. With any luck a few more games I’m interested in covering will come out in the coming months to round out a stellar year of gaming.

Swearing Less

This is the goal I’ve been the least successful with. I still swear at a gratuitous level and have only myself to blame for it. I can do better. I know I can. Thankfully I’ve been a lot more successful with my other goals, so my inability to use my full vocabulary is the only noteworthy failure in this post mortem.

Closing Thoughts

I’m really proud of all that I’ve accomplished so far this year, but still have a desire to continue improving. I’ve been really pleased with the positive changes I’ve seen in my writing over the past six months thanks to the increased commitment to my blog. This has become a hobby that I’ve grown to appreciate almost as much as gaming. I can’t thank those of you who have helped me thus far on my journey enough and I hope to absorb more knowledge from you, as well as learn from others in future.