HonestGamers Blogs

2009 was the first year since 2005 that I submitted a review to HonestGamers. In the interim I submitted some screenshots, some cover art, and even a guide or two.

I submitted only three reviews in 2009, and for 2010 I plan to uh, at least triple that. In absolute terms this is a pretty modest goal, but considering my habits I think it's a reasonable bar to set without being too ambitious. It will start with my Alpha review in about a week, but I think most of my writing will probably occur after I graduate in May. It's too difficult to write during the school year, but hopefully post-graduation life will give me a little more time to write.

My contribution plan is primarily writing oriented, and within that context it will primarily be review oriented. I have submitted screenshots and cover art in the past, and they're comparatively easy to do, but I want to focus on writing now. Back at GameFAQs, before I discovered the community, I mostly mass produced reviews in a very mechanical manner, basically writing sectioned reviews without section headers. I had a relatively high output during this period.

After I began learning about writing from reading RotD's I slowed down dramatically and became very interested in actually learning about the craft and process of writing, instead of just doing it mechanically. I learned and developed too much in this time for it all to disappear from four years of disuse, but I do feel a little hazy and unsure about how to structure and organize things, and what information to include and exclude. Technically, I did write papers during my five years at college, and that may have helped somewhat, but I went about them in a mechanical manner similiar to the one I originally approached reviews with.

Unfortunately, I can't yet afford a current gen console, and even when I do I don't know that I'll be spending $60 on new games. I've always been about buying games later so that I can pay $10 for them, and few games have compelled me to pay the original price at or around the time of release. This means I likely won't cover the newest games, and will mostly do semi-retro coverage (mostly one or two generations behind).

Jason showed me a site statistics page though, which says that only 12% of the games in the database have reviews written for them. I hope to review a few uncovered games even if they aren't especially recent ones. I do expect to write a guide or two, but I mostly intend to write reviews, both to help this site and for my personal development.

Game of the Day: Alphabetolympics - B