The following was written by HaemishM on his new site Game Angst:
This is the end of something and the beginning of something quite like it.
I started writing for the “rant site” Waterthread.org back in September of 2002, after a first abortive attempt to write something for Player2Player.net that is probably better lost to the ravages of time. When Joe decided he didn’t want to be the “face of a community” with Waterthread, he offered me the site. I turned him down, for a number of reasons, the main one being I didn’t want that headache. I just wanted to write what I wanted to write and have somewhere to put it on the web without the hassles inherent in running my own site. When schild took over that community and transplanted it to f13.net, I came along. If none of that means anything to you, you probably started reading me there without any knowledge of my writing history. Ego would have me believe I’ve built up something of an audience, perhaps even a following. Game Angst is the experiment to provide the proof to that theorem.
At first, it was just an idea without even a name to give it form or function. I wanted a place to put things I write that may or may not ever fit with f13.net, things that may only have anything to do with games because the writer is an unabashed gamer. As an aspiring novelist, I came to the conclusion that self-promotion is going to be key to getting published, and getting published is a step to being paid to write instead of being paid to be a webmonkey. Self-promotion often leads to conflicts of interest, especially when the writer has to be just as concerned about promting the publishing entity. In short, my self-promotion wasn’t going to happen to my satisfaction at f13, and in the process might actually have begun to cause conflicts with f13’s agendas. There are other reasons beyond that, personal reasons that made me uncomfortable to continue writing for f13, but the main one is ego. I want to do something for me that grows to be something beyond me.
Game Angst is meant to be a site to promote my writings, about games, about movies, about anything I get enough of an idea about to commit to bits. It’s a playground for my mind, my little sandbox to tinker with. With every frat boy getting a MySpace and blogs springing up like cockroaches skittering from the kitchen light at midnight, it’s time to stake my own claim in the mindsphere. My goal is to spread long-winded commentary articles out amongst mostly daily ruminations within a few key areas of interest. The front page will be about gaming, with links to other sections like movies, television, politics, books, and any other media I get a hankering for. As I get the site built up, I’m going to have an archive of my old writings from f13.net and waterthread.org. I’m particularly interested in looking back over my “Mature MMOG” series from the early days of Waterthread with an eye towards the changes that have taken place in the MMOG Medium since then.
Along the way will come some machinima created using The Movies, and maybe even some peeks at my fictional works, such as the novel I’m currently trying to get published, and some supporting fiction.
Eventually, there may be some openings for other writers to hitch their wagons to this site. If you’re interested, email me and we’ll see what happens.
There will be forums, of course. I’ve become rather attached to the idea of virtual communities banding together around the most inane shit possible, and wouldn’t want to deprive anyone of the joy of bashing my writing. There will be only one written rule in my forums . If I don’t like it or don’t want it, it shall not be done. Like I said, it’s my sandbox, not your litter box.
Anger is a gift. Angst is a calling.
I write this shit because this is what I feel compelled to write. Ego would have me believe my writing is useful or enjoyable to the people who read it, otherwise I’d just burn what I write. The source of my angst isn’t hatred. My angst is a palpable dissatisfaction with the details of individual games, but born out of a genuine passion for games. I love playing games, and I want them to not just be new, but new and improved. I love games, and I want new games to play, new games that build upon the foundation of the good games of the past, discarding the things that did not work in favor of better systems. It is an angst that is wholly symbolic of my belief in humanity itself. I truly believe that through the process of evolution, evolution of the mind, the emotion, the body and the produce of the human spirit, that we can better our individual and collective lives. In that context, the game angst is an existential angst, doomed to setbacks and disappointments, but also to genuine surprises.
And if that bit of academic-sounding mental masturbation didn’t completely drive you away, I also like dick and fart jokes too. I want to write seriously about games, but we should never lose sight of the fact that we are playing games with pixellated elf boobies.
Angst comes with a side of satire and a smile.
So, check out his new site: Game Angst [Link Removed; No Longer Exists]. And if you somehow missed it, Sachant has a little blurb up on her site about her E3 Coverage [Link Removed; No Longer Exists].