Hi everybody!
As we hurtle towards June and Issue 1 of No Escape Magazine, I’ve been thinking more and more about what I want No Escape as a whole to be. You’d think after three years I’d have figured it out already, but unfortunately that’s not how my brain works. I do have an approximate vision of what I want No Escape to be, as it approaches escape velocity (oops) from its origins in video game criticism in general and as a response to a specific kind of nonsense from a specific no-longer-in-the-industry EIC in 2019, uh, specifically.
After three years of doing nothing but covering video games and the video game industry, I have to admit that I’m starting to feel boxed in. I understand entirely that the box is of my own making; nobody forced me to only talk about video games, but as I’m sitting inside the box it feels small and cramped and like I’m running out of air. Is this burnout? Is it just year two of a pandemic and the attendant self-isolation coming to a close and making me feel like I’m crawling out of my own skin? The why of it doesn’t really matter so much as this: I have to talk about other things or I won’t be able to talk about video games for much longer.
Gaming is a bastard of a hobby. It demands so much more time from us than we really even have the ability to give. Even when the hobby is a job, how is it that we legitimately expect folks to play every single major 40+ hour release to the point where they are above average at the game? I don’t believe in the whole “indiepocalypse” bullshit but I do believe that by simple virtue of how time works, it’s damn near impossible to keep up with the glut of AAA action games that come out all the time. I just finished Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, but because of how deeply entrenched that game is in the “Games as a Service” model, no I didn’t. I’ll never be truly “done” with The Witch Queen, I will simply reach a point at which I am no longer able to keep up playing it. And honestly the other games I’m playing at the moment aren’t faring better: at least with Final Fantasy XIV I’ve got an actual progress bar to completion, but even then, I’m still looking at a good 200+ hours of content to go before I reach the end of Endwalker. That’s a long time!
I like to read. I like music. I want to watch more movies this year. Playing video games can’t be the only way I experience culture again this year, not for the third year in a row. Again, this is a me problem, it’s not something y’all can solve or need to necessarily care about. But it leads into a bigger issue: what is No Escape if I stop focusing so much on video games? Do I just leave the site dormant until I happen to play a video game? Nah, that doesn’t sound like a good idea. I’ve spent so long building this little site up that letting it wither on the vine just seems stupid. I like No Escape, even! So that’s the first bit: rather than even slightly think about abandoning No Escape, we’re going to begin moving some furniture around in the “office” today, so to speak.
From “Video Game Criticism in an Age of Conflict” to “Digital Culture and its Discontents”
The first thing I want to talk about here is the site vision. Since 2019 No Escape‘s tagline has been “Video Game Criticism in an Age of Conflict.” Not much has changed except for my desire to talk about more than just video games. We’re still in an age of conflict; everything from the bullshit culture wars in the US and UK to the actual physical ground war in Ukraine suggests this age of conflict is waxing, not waning. There are new questions to be asked about how we create and consume culture in this time, especially as these acts are mediated by social media, and soon, “metaverse” companies. How are our personal worldviews shaped by the media we consume? How do we navigate frankly frightening and inscrutable channels of information? What do we want out of the media we consume? What are the media makers’ and the platforms’ goals in pushing that media to us? Can political art change you? Starting this year I want No Escape to explore that. These are bigger and messier questions than can be answered through the lens of video games alone, though games are still a part of that conversation. And so, instead of focusing purely on “video game criticism in an age of conflict,” our view is now much wider: we will be examining every aspect of “Digital Culture and its Discontents.”
New (Rough) Content Schedule—Daily, Weekly, Monthly
I’m about to make future Kaile’s life a lot harder and for that I am both so sorry and so upset at myself, but moving forward, expect to see different types of content drop on a daily, weekly and monthly basis for the foreseeable future while I figure out what the best pace to work at is going to be. Daily content will be fairly short blogs, probably about some piece of media I just saw that I think y’all might enjoy checking out. You know: extremely low-stakes, low-effort blogging, a real throwback to how things were before *flails arms at everything*.
Weekly content, on the other hand, is going to fall into three categories: reviews, roundups, and commentaries. Reviews should be fairly self-explanatory, but with the provision that they’re not limited to video games any more. I feel like I don’t have to keep making that point clear, but anyway. Not just video games; also music, movies, television shows (if I get pitched on one) and any other digital ephemera either myself or future contributors find fascinating. Roundups will come out on Sunday, and will round up news pertaining to digital culture. I have no idea how this is gonna work out but it’s starting this Sunday so I guess I better get to stepping on that. Commentaries will be commentaries. Hopefully these will help me tweet less, a thing we can all agree I need to do. Will this weekly content be in newsletter form? Who knows! I don’t!
Finally, monthly content. With the looming launch of No Escape Magazine, one thing I want to do is ensure that the stories that get published in No Escape also have a life online. Whenever I release an issue of the magazine I want to make sure that you can also access each post online in article format. Additionally, as time goes on, I want No Escape to be a place where longer-format journalism and criticism can live, we’re talking big pieces, 10k words and up, babey. Putting that kind of content out on a no-sooner-than-monthly schedule just makes sense, as trying to cram it in any faster would mean the work suffers, and nobody wants that.
Will I be able to keep this pace up for very long? I guess we’re about to find out! Fuck! Now I have to change all the site categories again…
New Content, New Pitching Guidelines (Stay tuned!)
With the addition of new types of media we’re covering and new tiers of writing we’re posting, the way folks pitch to us will have to change. I will be closing pitch submissions until April 1 to figure out the best way to make sure folks who write for No Escape get paid. In the meantime, please consider supporting No Escape on Patreon. I’ll be updating the tiers and goals soon, so keep a lookout there. And just in general, please excuse the dust as I move stuff around and try to make the site as good as it can be. Thanks for reading this stupid long post! Talk to you again soon.