A Welcome and Call for Entries

[Nick Boisson]

Hey, everybody --

First and foremost, I would like to officially welcome and introduce you all to Sarah Conde, our newest game writer. We stole her from her own video game blog -- Girl Informer -- and you will be seeing her pop up on the "Infinite Ammo" column (tomorrow!), reviews, and maybe even her own column soon enough. I greatly look forward to her contributions to the site and if my few conversations with her are any indication, the section will benefit a great deal from her experience and unique perspective.

Now, onto the extremely long and not-so praising part of this message...

Things have been pretty silent lately. I will take the bulk of the responsibility for that, since I have spent a large portion of my time in the past month focusing on moving to Austin and because -- of course -- this section, its content, and its writers are my responsibility. But with exception to Jon and Dylan (and Sarah, obviously), I have also not heard from any of you this past month either. No review requests, no idea pitches, nothing. And really, the only reason I have heard from Jon and Dylan is because Jon and I have had trouble getting a hold of a developer for an interview and Dylan because he is also in the middle of an out-of-state move. At the beginning, I was always asking everyone if they would like to review such-and-such game, but I have yet to have one of you request a review of a game without me asking first. Or just simply a "I just played this game and wanted to know if I could write a review for it" either. 

In case you guys were not aware, getting free games is difficult. And, more importantly, CB receiving review codes/copies is a fairly recent institution that came in with me taking over the section. Now I'm the worst when it comes to writing reviews on games (especially ones that I enjoy, for some odd reason) and I am not asking you guys to write a review for every single game you go out there and buy with your own money. But, the best way for us to get more review copies is for us to have more reviews running. The last review I posted from anyone here that wasn't one of my own was Dylan's Sang-Froid review on May 2nd. And I have no reviews "on the books" for any of you guys in the near future with exception to one that I'm (hopefully) posting on Friday for a game that I bought for myself.

If you guys checked the recent "Most Read" posts that Morgan put on the forums today, March and April were good months for CB Games. May will most certainly not be one of those months.

So, I would really like to hear some ideas or requests here. When I took over the section, I had told myself and all the other editors that I was going to make communication a big factor is fixing the Games section. With the exception of Dylan, you all were fortunate enough to have not been around when my predecessor was and the Games section was lucky to post one article in a month's time because he just didn't care all that much about generating content.

So, I am going to share with you all some ideas that were discussed between myself and the other CB editors regarding the schedule for the site's content. When everything is in order, the CB Games schedule will be as follows:

Monday: Reviews/"First Shot"

Tuesday: "Top Ten" (once/month)/"Pixel Count" (weekly game news round-up)

Wednesday: "Infinite Ammo"/"Extra Life"

Thursday: Reviews/"First Shot"/Interview

Friday: Reviews/"First Shot"

"Top Tens" bring in pretty big numbers! If you have an idea for one, feel free to pitch it. 

"Infinite Ammo" is the CB Games soapbox column where the writer can share games criticism outside of a review. Since I reformatted the column, there have been three posted: one by Dorian and two by myself. Feel free to check those out if you need reference. And, if you have something to pitch, shoot me an e-mail.

"Extra Life" is a column I created where one can talk about any aspect of the industry outside of criticism or news. So far, there are only three posts by me for my PAX East diaries. If you want to discuss a gaming event, share an interesting story about video games or discuss the work of a creator/developer, that is what "Extra Life" is for. Anything and everything related to games, except news or criticism.

"Pixel Count" is a video game news round-up that I created a little while after I had joined CB. It did very well and was getting the Games section seen by a new audience. I had stopped it for reasons regarding my predecessor that I won't get into right now. But I would like to bring it back in the same vein as the Comics sections "That's That Shit", where I discuss the previous week's gaming news with another writer every week. If you check March's "Most Read" post again, two of the biggest articles for the entire month were gaming news posts that I quickly wrote up for funsies. The other editors and myself are trying to get the news section in order because it can help us be seen by a whole lot of eyes. And really, isn't that what we all want?

"First Shot" is video game previews. Nothing really else to say about that.

So, the point of this e-mail is this: I love posting your writing! For realsies, I do. And with exception to Sean and Dylan, this is the only section of CB that you write for. Help me promote your writing. You all are damn good writers and I would very much like to be a better editor for you all. You all should have my number and you can all reach me on GTalk/Google Hangouts/whatever they're calling it now. I share those all with you because I want to make sure that you can reach me wherever I am, no matter the time or circumstance. We are now six writers strong. I don't see why we can't manage to get five articles up every week. Don't get me wrong, I am not looking for quantity over quality. But, personally, I have yet to see quality as an issue for this team.

What do you guys want to review? Who would you like to interview? What would you like to contribute to? Let me know and I'd be happy to work on getting it for you!

--

- Nick Boisson

Games Section Editor at Comics Bulletin

Twitter: @nitroslick | @ComicsBulletin

Phone: (786)-223-5512

[Sean Gonzalez]

Hey all,

Nick's got a great point, and he should get mad props for calling us out.

I've only really been contributing to collab pieces for a bit while I've been job hunting because I'm not one to hold others up, but I'd honestly like to do better than that. I'm sure we all feel the same way.

Nick, I'd really like to check out Legend of Dungeon. A bit ago you suggested that I was thinking about it too far ahead, but the developers hint that it should be ready sometime this summer. Since its Beta has gotten a good amount of buzz around it, maybe it'd be suitable for a preview/review? If it still seems too early, I can wait.

Also, I'm totally up for talking about this big week in gaming. If you wanna do Pixel Count just let me know.

To all my fellow game writers, if you guys want to work together on anything or just connect with likeminded folks, send me an email or hit me up on various social medias and/or game platforms. I'm Cyclopsean everywhere it counts.

That's about it!

--

Sean E. Gonzalez
www.seangonzalez.com
twitter.com/cyclopsean

[Sarah Conde]

Hey guys!

I'm excited to be working with all of you. As for Sean's mention of collaborative work, I'd be cool to hear what everyone has to say about the console wars. Not to be a total copycat, but I like how Destructoid had each of their editors share which reveal they thought was better and why. Any ideas on a direction we could go with that, Nick?

--

Sarah Conde

Public Relations '12
University of Florida

http://girlinformer.blogspot.com/

[Dylan Tano]

Welcome to the sausage club Sarah! I'll spare everyone of my opinions at the moment seeing that I'm irradiated with a higher amount of snark than usual. 

I'm sure you'll fit in fine. As for collaborative work, a lot of that in the past boiled down to top tens so breaking out of that would be great. I've toyed with the idea of a freer formed round table discussion of hot topics but that's probably a better fit for the podcast. 

[Dorian Scarlett]

Hey all

I did the stupid thing and let any ideas I've had simmer instead of discussing them. Rookie mistake, wasn't thinking about the whole team. Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery came out a little while ago. It looks interesting and I wouldn't mind reviewing it, if it's still relevant. Tearaway and CounterSpy are later titles I've been keeping an eye on. Also I wanted to do a top ten about weird console ads, but I could only find around 6 so I was thinking of spinning it into an IA post. 

I'm 100% on board with any collaborative pieces in whatever form they take.  

[Nick Boisson]

Sean: I will be happy to request a beta key and interview for Legend of Dungeon for you. I'll let you know what they say.

Sarah: We actually had two IA articles go up about the PS4 announcement: one from me and my disappointment and the other from Dorian, who felt it was a strong showcase. I was on a plane most of the day and haven't had a chance to really watch this announcement. But next week, I was considering sharing whatever thoughts I had on IA again. If everyone wants, we can make it a collaborative piece. I'd be up for that!

Dylan: Really?! I mean...really?

Dorian: I'll work on getting you CounterSpy as well as an interview with the developers. But sharing weird ads is not an IA post. Read my description of what "Infinite Ammo" is for in the original message.

Everyone: Maybe I didn't make it clear in my original message, but -- as of now -- this is the only section in CB where the only media reviewed by staffers are free copies. With the indie games, I can probably get those for you guys. Maybe even a couple of the big ones. But, if you plan on buying a game, consider reviewing it if nothing is planned for it. I know you guys are playing games that I don't get for you.

[Nick Boisson]

One more thing that I neglected to add to the original message: SHARE YOUR ARTICLES!

I cannot express how imperative it is for you to share your articles on any and all social networks that you are connected to: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Reddit, LinkedIn, everything!

I had discussed this a bit recently on the CB forums, but I don't know how many of you read the forums. Also, share one another's articles. I always try to share all of your articles on my feeds right after I post them to the CB Twitter, Facebook and G+ pages. This would especially be helpful since our Facebook and Google+ pages rarely help in terms of numbers.

[Dylan Tano]

Fun tip: Enjoy writing your work. Don't take yourselves seriously. 

[Jonathan Dantzler]

Hi everyone! Sorry I'm a bit late to the conversation, I'm transitioning to a new job and have had many personal things to deal with over the past week. Welcome to the team, Sarah! I think you'll find we're all a pretty personable bunch.

I definitely think some collaborative articles would be awesome, like maybe reviewing the multiplayer portion of a game. I also really like the roundtable discussion idea.

--
Jon Dantzler

Appalachian State University '12

Website