Editorial: The importance of positivity

The importance of positivity

          I’ve been doing this blog for just under two years now, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over that period of time, it’s this: the game industry is a very silly thing to write about. Every week there’s something new going on, and usually none of it’s good news.

          I had a few options of things to talk about this week, ranging from Sea of Thieves being praised for having just plain, ordinary microtransactions instead of loot boxes to recent tragedies reigniting people who still cling to the baseless “video games make people violent” debate. But instead I’ve decided a change was necessary to how these weekly editorials will go.

          If you follow this blog, you’ll know that aside from my reviews and Monday editorials, my biggest piece of content is a bi-weekly series called “Star Wars Wednesday”, where I take a look at something funny, interesting or cool from Star Wars and just talk about what I think about it. It’s easily my favourite thing to do on this blog, partially because it’s not a series where I have to lob criticisms at Lucasfilm for every single decision they make that I don’t agree with. I know it’s popular these days to see videos with names like “This is why Canto Bight is the WORST thing in Star Wars EVER! Part 65”, but I’d much rather focus on the good in something than the parts of it that kinda miss the mark.

          And that’s where these Editorials come in. Bottom line, I’m tired of just being negative and focusing on the bad parts of the game industry week after week after week. It’s just exhausting to focus only on news that other people have already talked about extensively, and you can likely find more varied and in-depth arguments and opinions on the industry’s hottest topics elsewhere than my little corner of the internet.

          It turns out you can only talk about EA and Ubisoft so much before you get burned out, actually.

          So starting next week I’m changing how I do these weekly Monday editorials. From now on, we’ll be doing a more positive take on the game industry. I might still do news and opinion pieces from time to time, but only if it’s a subject I’m really passionate about or a topic where I really feel I can add something new and different to the discussion, but for the most part I want to do more positive stuff. I want this to be a series people can read on their Monday mornings not for “juicy drama”, but because it’ll be a small, fun part of their day that’ll make it that much better.

          I’ll be doing more Top 10 lists for sure, but the main thing I want to try out is “What makes games great”, a new subseries where I’ll take a single game or game franchise each week and examine what makes them so awesome. Next week I’ll be doing Breath of the Wild to celebrate the first anniversary of its release, so you can look forward to that.

          At the end of the day, I’m doing this because there’s enough negativity in the world, and I’d much rather spend my time writing about something that’ll make people happy. If you want news, you can go on IGN or Kotaku or The Jimquisition, because trust me, there’s plenty to go around. I’m happy taking this path instead.

          See you next week.