So based on recent leaks, of which I'm sure someone or multiple people are getting a terse talking to, the character of Predator will make a guest appearance in Mortal Kombat X.
As a huge Predator fan, so much that I even dressed up as him in an original costume for Halloween when I was a kid, I am pysched to see this happen. Considering the last game starring Predator exclusively was a piss-poor PS2 title, Predator: Concrete Jungle, and the Aliens vs. Predator game for the PS3 wasn't that great, I'm excited to see how the team at NetherRealm will design the character and create his moves.
Besides the important question of whether the Predator will don his mask during combat, perhaps that will be a combat variation aspect, I thought of one pre-fight dialog exchange that needs to happen. So be prepared to be amazed by my amazing, or perhaps not, dialog writing skills.
Johnny Cage: You're one ugly mother...
Predator: Screams/Growls
Johnny: What, has someone else said that to you?
Yup, best dialog ever. But seriously, I hope there's some potential meta jokes involving the Predator and Johnny Cage since it could be fun as hell.
Friday, March 20, 2015
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
So Then That Happened...
As some of you, the five of you that actually read this, may know I posted a rather honest and long winded blog about my experience and feelings with Shogun Gamer. I did this mostly to get things off my chest in an outlet that's larger than 140 characters since I was just annoyed at how things went down and were developing with the Shogun Gamer brand as it stands now.
I hadn't checked the blog stats for a while, and randomly thought to do so today. To my surprise I saw two comment bubbles from none other than my former colleague Casey White. Now I didn't, and won't, delete the comments since that's not my style really. He can say whatever he wants, and in turnju I'll further say stuff.
Below is my official reply to the comments made by Casey, which I just thought I would do as a post since it's easier for people to track. So whoever decided to "tip" him off about my comments can feel free to do so again if y'all want to stay in the loop.
Don't know if you'll actually see this considering I just did, but I'll reply to your comments, or at least a select few of them.
In no way did I "kill" the site. When I was EiC for that three month period the site was running smoothly in every possible way. A few upgrades to the site were made in the cosmetic department to make it a bit more streamlined, as I could best do given my small tech know-how in web design, and stuff was going well in terms of the staff at that time and lining future content up (interviews, features, reviews, etc.).
But as I claimed in my blog post, which I don't know if you fully read, I DID NOT DELETE THE YouTube channel. To say such a thing is a bit idiotic since it impacted me, and the overall brand of Shogun Gamer. Yes, the "most popular" video, which technically it wasn't anymore since my Power Rangers vid had 4 million views, was deleted as were countless videos I made, dozens of which I had uploaded to actually give the channel some depth given it was extremely barren when I started developing it prior to my EiC tenure, I began cleaning and upgrading the YT channel in April 2013 since we had a ton of copyright strikes from game trailers and sourced music, and virtually nothing else to show for it besides the Pokemon vid and a few random interviews & hardware reviews.
Here's exactly what happened: something, of which I still don't know, took the site down when it comes to the domain name. This immediately killed ALL the Google accounts (Shogun staff accounts, Admin account linked to YouTube). When I noticed the site went down, whilst I was trying to upload a review, I immediately tried the email but got nothing. Tried YouTube. Got nothing. Couldn't sign into a damn thing since it said the accounts were deleted, and considering my staff email didn't have certain privilege access and what have you, I really didn't know how to rectify the situation since Corey had already blocked me.
So again, I didn't delete the YouTube channel, and to this day I'm still a bit baffled as to what exactly happened since one minute it was all good and then the next it wasn't.
To say that I threw a tantrum and deleted everything isn't exactly correct. Sure, after the site went down and i couldn't make any progress in retrieving anything, both with Google and Namecheap, I decided to say fuck it and delete some base articles in March since I was under the assumption that Shogun was completely dead and I was just going to see what I could retrieve of my own. Did I delete these articles, which occured in March for the record, out of anger? Sure I did. I was upset that the site was taken from me in some manner and there was nothing I could do to retrieve it since Corey, who I had to use JJ as the middle-man for contact, had "no info" to help things out.
So again, I didn't delete anything when the site when down in late January, this includes the site itself and the YouTube account. The stuff I did delete on Facebook, photo galleries, posts I made, was done since I was going to see if I could essentially rebrand that channel, rename it etc. for my new project before Michael-Sean contacted me about whatever it was he was trying to rope me into.
To move onto another thing you brought up, yes, I had to bail out of two conventions at the last minute. This sucked, and when it pertained to GDC I paid you for the hotel room, I think it was like $300 something. For PAX no one ever asked me and I honestly couldn't pay anything since I was dead broke at the time due to only having my gig for two more months. That's life. But to say you had to salvage relationships for cancelled meetings is being a bit melodramatic. With GDC I don't recall making many meetings, if any, and for PAX Prime I booked two whole meetings both of which I emailed you about to cover for.
So no, you didn't have to rescue the sinking ship when I thought it was "beneath me" to attend those events. And why the fuck would I think it would be "beneath me" to show up? I loved going to industry events, both to learn about stuff, meet new people, and of course partake in open bars. But I didn't bail on those events because I was being an ego driven prick, but because some personal stuff came up and I just couldn't make the trips, and that definitely bummed me out to say the least, especially since the resulting coverage was lacking for both events.
Moving on to other stuff, yeah you did some stuff on the side when we were working together. The thing is at least from my perspective, and this even goes back to when we were colleagues, is that none of your stuff was really impactful. You sent out review request emails to folks, did some occasional Photoshop stuff, and yeah... that's about it.
What exactly did we have in Marketing, HR, and web dev? We barely had any ads, either coming in or going out, that were significant besides free shout-outs on sites run by your friends like EXP, LOMC, and whatever the hell happened with AirBehr.
HR? Uh... yeah, it was five people tops, so I guess if you had to send emails to folks about random things or lining up hotel booking that counts as something. And considering that the site literally did not change its layout for five fucking years then I would love to know where the web dev came in, that's unless I'm misunderstanding the definition of that term. Yup, the logo was changed and some boxes went from grey to white, with rounded borders instead of square. Slow clap moment indeed...
I don't think I ever knocked you as a writer, and there's really no major point in doing so. That's not me backing out of a further argument, it's just the truth. The stuff you wrote was mostly good, and however I disagreed with how you handled your reviews you at least backed up your thoughts to a degree. The thing about you, and this actually a bit of good-willed helpful advice, is that you just need to expand on concepts, delve deeper, and take a gamble with some stuff by going with your gut and sticking with your vision (like that game journo industry thing you had on the backburner for ages). In the end there's a major difference between mediocre, serviceable, and being great in what you do and ultimately provide to your audience, however small or large it may be.
After all that off my chest round two, I really can't say that I did any major long term damage to the Shogun brand, at least in terms of stuff that you need to tidy up and fix on your own. I didn't delete YouTube, and it would be fucking idiotic of me to do so since it was the only revenue stream at the time and I was making some decent money (around $25 on the vid) from the Power Rangers video I made. If I really wanted to motherfuck the site I would've completely pulled the plug on the hosting and/or delete every piece of content, and close the Twitter and Facebook accounts but I didn't. That would've been a true "Ian doesn't give a fuck" style trantrum. All I did was delete a few user accounts to make it easier for me to find stuff, and delete some pure garbage articles written by former staff members that definitely don't need any attention.
And with the blocking and stuff on social media that's pretty straightforward to be honest. Corey started it all first, coincenditally on the day the site went down prior to contacting me, so that was an easy decision to make in terms of blocking. Then you deleted me from Facebook, no biggie really, a few months later so I thought that was pretty much in the books when it comes to ever talking to you again since I couldn't foresee a scenario in which it would happen either personally or professionally. Michael Sean was the next big block because he was a jackass that threatened to sue me. Everyone else on the block list is just there since I don't see myself talking or working with them again in any way. I have nothing against anyone else like JJ since he was a solid dude, but it's just like I don't see myself working with him due to how you two are connected, and we never really casually chatted in the first place. So that's just a general example of my thinking I guess you could say. It's just one of those things where I'm on my side of the equation, they're on that side, so I'm just going to draw the line in the middle between us and keep it at that.
I think that covers it, but if you actually see and read this, whenever that is, then feel free to reply since I did after all.
Cheers,
Ian
I hadn't checked the blog stats for a while, and randomly thought to do so today. To my surprise I saw two comment bubbles from none other than my former colleague Casey White. Now I didn't, and won't, delete the comments since that's not my style really. He can say whatever he wants, and in turnju I'll further say stuff.
Below is my official reply to the comments made by Casey, which I just thought I would do as a post since it's easier for people to track. So whoever decided to "tip" him off about my comments can feel free to do so again if y'all want to stay in the loop.
Don't know if you'll actually see this considering I just did, but I'll reply to your comments, or at least a select few of them.
In no way did I "kill" the site. When I was EiC for that three month period the site was running smoothly in every possible way. A few upgrades to the site were made in the cosmetic department to make it a bit more streamlined, as I could best do given my small tech know-how in web design, and stuff was going well in terms of the staff at that time and lining future content up (interviews, features, reviews, etc.).
But as I claimed in my blog post, which I don't know if you fully read, I DID NOT DELETE THE YouTube channel. To say such a thing is a bit idiotic since it impacted me, and the overall brand of Shogun Gamer. Yes, the "most popular" video, which technically it wasn't anymore since my Power Rangers vid had 4 million views, was deleted as were countless videos I made, dozens of which I had uploaded to actually give the channel some depth given it was extremely barren when I started developing it prior to my EiC tenure, I began cleaning and upgrading the YT channel in April 2013 since we had a ton of copyright strikes from game trailers and sourced music, and virtually nothing else to show for it besides the Pokemon vid and a few random interviews & hardware reviews.
Here's exactly what happened: something, of which I still don't know, took the site down when it comes to the domain name. This immediately killed ALL the Google accounts (Shogun staff accounts, Admin account linked to YouTube). When I noticed the site went down, whilst I was trying to upload a review, I immediately tried the email but got nothing. Tried YouTube. Got nothing. Couldn't sign into a damn thing since it said the accounts were deleted, and considering my staff email didn't have certain privilege access and what have you, I really didn't know how to rectify the situation since Corey had already blocked me.
So again, I didn't delete the YouTube channel, and to this day I'm still a bit baffled as to what exactly happened since one minute it was all good and then the next it wasn't.
To say that I threw a tantrum and deleted everything isn't exactly correct. Sure, after the site went down and i couldn't make any progress in retrieving anything, both with Google and Namecheap, I decided to say fuck it and delete some base articles in March since I was under the assumption that Shogun was completely dead and I was just going to see what I could retrieve of my own. Did I delete these articles, which occured in March for the record, out of anger? Sure I did. I was upset that the site was taken from me in some manner and there was nothing I could do to retrieve it since Corey, who I had to use JJ as the middle-man for contact, had "no info" to help things out.
So again, I didn't delete anything when the site when down in late January, this includes the site itself and the YouTube account. The stuff I did delete on Facebook, photo galleries, posts I made, was done since I was going to see if I could essentially rebrand that channel, rename it etc. for my new project before Michael-Sean contacted me about whatever it was he was trying to rope me into.
To move onto another thing you brought up, yes, I had to bail out of two conventions at the last minute. This sucked, and when it pertained to GDC I paid you for the hotel room, I think it was like $300 something. For PAX no one ever asked me and I honestly couldn't pay anything since I was dead broke at the time due to only having my gig for two more months. That's life. But to say you had to salvage relationships for cancelled meetings is being a bit melodramatic. With GDC I don't recall making many meetings, if any, and for PAX Prime I booked two whole meetings both of which I emailed you about to cover for.
So no, you didn't have to rescue the sinking ship when I thought it was "beneath me" to attend those events. And why the fuck would I think it would be "beneath me" to show up? I loved going to industry events, both to learn about stuff, meet new people, and of course partake in open bars. But I didn't bail on those events because I was being an ego driven prick, but because some personal stuff came up and I just couldn't make the trips, and that definitely bummed me out to say the least, especially since the resulting coverage was lacking for both events.
Moving on to other stuff, yeah you did some stuff on the side when we were working together. The thing is at least from my perspective, and this even goes back to when we were colleagues, is that none of your stuff was really impactful. You sent out review request emails to folks, did some occasional Photoshop stuff, and yeah... that's about it.
What exactly did we have in Marketing, HR, and web dev? We barely had any ads, either coming in or going out, that were significant besides free shout-outs on sites run by your friends like EXP, LOMC, and whatever the hell happened with AirBehr.
HR? Uh... yeah, it was five people tops, so I guess if you had to send emails to folks about random things or lining up hotel booking that counts as something. And considering that the site literally did not change its layout for five fucking years then I would love to know where the web dev came in, that's unless I'm misunderstanding the definition of that term. Yup, the logo was changed and some boxes went from grey to white, with rounded borders instead of square. Slow clap moment indeed...
I don't think I ever knocked you as a writer, and there's really no major point in doing so. That's not me backing out of a further argument, it's just the truth. The stuff you wrote was mostly good, and however I disagreed with how you handled your reviews you at least backed up your thoughts to a degree. The thing about you, and this actually a bit of good-willed helpful advice, is that you just need to expand on concepts, delve deeper, and take a gamble with some stuff by going with your gut and sticking with your vision (like that game journo industry thing you had on the backburner for ages). In the end there's a major difference between mediocre, serviceable, and being great in what you do and ultimately provide to your audience, however small or large it may be.
After all that off my chest round two, I really can't say that I did any major long term damage to the Shogun brand, at least in terms of stuff that you need to tidy up and fix on your own. I didn't delete YouTube, and it would be fucking idiotic of me to do so since it was the only revenue stream at the time and I was making some decent money (around $25 on the vid) from the Power Rangers video I made. If I really wanted to motherfuck the site I would've completely pulled the plug on the hosting and/or delete every piece of content, and close the Twitter and Facebook accounts but I didn't. That would've been a true "Ian doesn't give a fuck" style trantrum. All I did was delete a few user accounts to make it easier for me to find stuff, and delete some pure garbage articles written by former staff members that definitely don't need any attention.
And with the blocking and stuff on social media that's pretty straightforward to be honest. Corey started it all first, coincenditally on the day the site went down prior to contacting me, so that was an easy decision to make in terms of blocking. Then you deleted me from Facebook, no biggie really, a few months later so I thought that was pretty much in the books when it comes to ever talking to you again since I couldn't foresee a scenario in which it would happen either personally or professionally. Michael Sean was the next big block because he was a jackass that threatened to sue me. Everyone else on the block list is just there since I don't see myself talking or working with them again in any way. I have nothing against anyone else like JJ since he was a solid dude, but it's just like I don't see myself working with him due to how you two are connected, and we never really casually chatted in the first place. So that's just a general example of my thinking I guess you could say. It's just one of those things where I'm on my side of the equation, they're on that side, so I'm just going to draw the line in the middle between us and keep it at that.
I think that covers it, but if you actually see and read this, whenever that is, then feel free to reply since I did after all.
Cheers,
Ian
Thursday, January 1, 2015
Here's some info for y'all (the WHOLE story on Shogun Gamer)
So as some of you out there may know, I used to be part of ShogunGamer.com. To be more specific, I co-founded ShogunGamer.com and was the main figure on the content side of things for five straight years. As you may also know, I'm no longer with ShogunGamer.com, and am prepping the launch of an entirely new video game press site that I hope to have up shortly (if you dig around Twitter you can likely find out the name of it).
If you follow me on Twitter (insert shameless plug link here), you likely have seen that at times I have no problem in calling something out, whether it be a silly business decision, a crappy games press site, or even a developer. I don't have this mindset because I like to be "controversial" as it's instead a matter of me simply liking to get things off my chest, let me opinion be fully known, and in some issues to show that I'm not part of the somewhat "stand united" front that certain members of the games press industry take. You could say that I have the similar attitude/approach that David Jaffe has in that I'm not that much of a bullshitter, and I find that being honest in some cases is the best thing to do.
So with that said, chances are you may have seen me go off on Shogun Gamer within the last few months since my departure. I haven't entirely done this because I'm "bitter" about things since I'm really not. My attitude/feeling on the matter is instead one of disappointment. It's disappointing to see a brand that I helped build and craft over the last five years suddenly go to shit due to continued mismanagement at the hands of people that pretend to know what they're doing, yet ultimately aren't achieving anything more than securing free games for themselves and having the "bragging right" to say that they're in the press industry, of which they consider going to industry events such as GDC or E3 to be a vacation rather than a business trip that's meant to be taken seriously so as to provide content to their audience and build business relationships.
Given how some of you may be fans of wrestling, or Sports Entertainment as it's requested to be called within those in the WWE, you may have heard the now famous CM Punk interview on Colt Cabana's Art of Wrestling podcast. In the two-part interview Punk essentially laid out the full details on his sudden departure from the WWE, and at the same time listed a lot of unknown things about WWE management which showed that they really have no clue at what they're doing.
Punk did this interview merely to get things off his chest and to continue with the next chapter of his life. While I may not be a multi-million dollar entertainer who is now venturing into a career within the UFC, I was really inspired with what Punk said and did so I thought it would be good for me to essentially do the same thing: give the full low-down on Shogun Gamer, what is going on with the people "running" it, and fully move on from that chapter of my career never to look back or openly discuss it again. Thus, you better strap in for a long story since this won't be a short tale.
So after we settled on some basic details, such as choosing a name from some options, Shogun Gamer started up slowly but surely. Since day 1 of when the site launched it was always about posting more detailed and timely content rather than the somewhat slow or sparse offerings made on other gaming sites at that time. The set-up at Shogun was fairly basic since I was tasked with writing stuff on my own volition whereas Corey was mostly in charge of handling tech stuff and setting up sponsorships.
Shogun slowly grew over time as we continued to post content, with me being the lead of course, and a few other people came aboard. The people included Casey White and Rob Gerlach. Now I perhaps should've stated this earlier, but I'm located in Chicago whereas Corey, Rob, and Casey were all friends in Vancouver. So at times it was hard to set up easy forms of chats without it becoming a chore due to work and personal stuff. That aside, the contributions made by Rob were questionable early on since his writing style was a bit out there, and I personally had a meltdown when he posted a "review" of Assassin's Creed 2 which literally spoiled the ending of the game without noting such a thing would occur. Now in hindsight this may seem like a non-issue to many of you since AC2 is so old, but Rob's review was posted around three weeks after the game came out so it was still new and fresh to many people at the time, thus spoiling the ending was something I thought was fucking absurd.
Casey's contributions on the other hand were a bit sparse. Mainly opting to do a podcast he co-hosted, Casey would from time to time make a contribution such as a review, but it really wasn't a regular thing. Eventually Rob would be removed from the site since he wasn't contributing enough, and other people would come and go, including one person that was asking for review materials behind our back, thus he was essentially stealing stuff.
Even amidst the ho-hum contributions by others I still was on my own personal track of expanding the brand since I believed in it, and I simply wanted to do cool stuff such as interview people within the industry I admire, and bring to light attention on lesser-known projects.
Other than Corey's odd choice to have ad rates for potential advertisers be high or merely not following up on certain things that would've been a home run in either securing some money or merely expanding the site, simple things just couldn't happen for some odd reason. For example, the logo that is currently being used by Shogun Gamer was created around three years ago yet it was only until Corey had fully exited the site, which I'll get to later, that it was finally used on the site itself. This really annoyed me since I didn't understand why we weren't using this logo despite it being awesome and being on our damn business cards that we handed out at industry events. Lack of brand cohesion was a huge problem with Shogun Gamer since there was no immediate identity to the site, nor was there an explanation of what our name meant, a thing which I honestly became embarrassed about upon speaking with Guy Cocker, and industry figure I admire, at a GDC party when he inquired about what the name meant.
Furthermore, simple things on the site "couldn't" be added by Corey like suggestions I had on the site layout, and a full gamut of swag that we collected at PAX 2012. Despite making a heavy push at PAX Prime 2012 to get swag to give away in a Facebook contest, the contest never actually happened for some reason. I recall pushing Corey several times as to what was going on since we had around twenty pieces of swag to giveaway ranging from an 18-inch statue, some cool PlayStation t-shirts, and other random crap. But alas, I got half-assed excuses and the contest, and actual swag, never happened nor was it given to our readers as promised. To this day I don't know who ultimately received the swag, so it could still be with Corey or it may have been handed out to his friends.
Other stuff such as that happened, but this time it pertained to actual developers. After being contacted by a PR person who was familiar with Shogun Gamer through my prior work, he used to be at Grasshopper Manufacture and being a GhM fanboy it was my content that he was aware of, to arrange a contest for the game Half Minute Hero the actual contest itself never got off the ground. This wasn't because I or the PR person backed out or failed on a key element since everything was settled between us such as the terms/key gimmicks of the contest, how the prizes would be handed out, etc. The fail in this case is to be placed on Corey yet again since despite making him aware of things, which I was "required" to do since he was the "boss" at the time, the art assets I needed for the contest and Facebook pages were never created, and if I recall Corey even stated that we couldn't do the contest a particular way because of supposed regulations on Facebook.
To be completely clear, the proposed contest for Half Minute Hero was something along the lines of "post a video or text entry saying what heroic deed you would do in 30sec." It was that damn simple, yet I guess we couldn't do that on the Shogun Facebook page due to the "staunch" regulations of Facebook. It was pretty clear that Corey just didn't give a damn and couldn't be bothered to do any sort of work despite this being a cool thing for the site to do, not just because of the potential relationship building with the publisher, but to draw some outside attention since we were one of the few sites chosen to hand out these special promo watches for Half Minute Hero.
One of the key things about Shogun Gamer when Corey was in charge was that it was filled with missed opportunities. Besides the occasional thing like a biz deal that could have benefited the site, there were also missed opportunities pertaining to some of our partners, one of which was Megasteakman. A Vancouver based indie video production firm, Megasteakman first came into contact with Shogun with their Pokemon Apokelypse video. This whole deal was handled by Michael Sean, who I'll discuss later, and it was something that I was entirely up for. The Pokemon vid by MSM was cool, and I was fine with the way Corey wanted to "leak" it, specifically that it would be "sent" to us as a "leak" and then later "revealed" to be an indie fan film.
Shogun got a lot of hits through the Pokemon video and it was picked up by a ton of sites. For being such an easy thing to put together, it really didn't require any production or extra thought on Corey's end to put everything together, so all together it was a very good deal in terms of us, Shogun, getting a ton of hits and recognition from the video.
The downside with Megasteakman was that they, or Kial the main dude, essentially pledged allegiance to Shogun after the Pokemon video came out. In some ways I can understand that since Kial was based in Vancouver and all, but in the end their reliance on Corey, and Shogun, prevented them from becoming a bigger deal, at least in my mind. A key example of this is that Megasteakman turned down a potential deal from IGN because they were being loyal to Shogun. I can understand being loyal to a degree, but given how Megasteakman's partnership with Shogun never went any place in a way that helped expand their brand, it ultimately was a poor decision to stick with Shogun. There was talk of featuring Megasteakman videos on the site in a regular capacity, though I was a tad wary of that as I was afraid the site would suddenly turn into a poormans version of Funny or Die since Corey was one to beat a concept to death if it stuck merely to squeeze as much potential money as he could out of it. Ultimately, there was never any major work done with Megasteakman, both to help their brand and to help further expand Shogun Gamer in a meaningful capacity.
From my perspective, Megasteakman could have been on the same level as Freddie Wu or CorridorDigital as far as being a popular YouTube gaming brand that makes cool videos since they have the same level of talent and production skills. But instead of having similar popularity and the potential monetary perks which go along with such thing, not to mention potential partnerships with game publishers as both aforementioned examples have done, Megasteakman is currently a stagnant brand which hasn't accomplished a lot other than being a one-off thing within the local Vancouver gaming/indie film community.
Another example of an issue within the site pertained to a somewhat substantial relationship with the shop Memory Express. Best likened to a smaller scale version of Best Buy, ME is based out of Canada and has a few shops in the U.S. A deal was struck between Corey and a ME rep to provide Shogun Gamer with a colossal gaming PC, both to do a review of since ME put it together and for us to "keep" for a period of time so as to do reviews of PC games all while continuing to plug that ME provided us with the rig itself.
A rather good video review was posted of the rig ME provided us, but other than that not a lot happened. Initially a push was made by Corey for Shogun Gamer to be geared towards PC gaming due to us having this massive rig from ME. I was rather tepid to this since my worry was that it would make the site a bit one sided, and it would essentially make one person responsible for reviewing a key series of games since it was just Corey & Casey that had access to the rig, and there was never talk of one being supplied to me. And just to be clear, I wasn't annoyed nor did I want a rig from ME. Sure, it would be cool if I got some sort of hook-up that I could use, but I wasn't really keen to get one nor did I ever make a push into acquiring something from them.
Eventually it was decided that occasional PC reviews would occur on the site to use the ME rig, but as I said earlier that never happened. I don't know why we didn't feature more PC reviews on Shogun, but the rig was essentially wasted on us, both as a tool for us to take advantage of and as a promotional item to use on behalf of Memory Express. Yes, a few PC reviews did go up, but it wasn't a regular occurrence, and I still don't know why that was the case since at that time we had access to a decent amount of PR firms, and of course certain PC games are accessible via online distribution outlets. So all together despite Memory Express giving us a chance on two occasions since they provided two rigs, Corey and Casey squandered that whole opportunity.
Upon further reflection, the thing about Corey was that he could deliver some awesome stuff at times since he had skills and knowledge. Despite this, he always had a one track way in which he went about projects, essentially that of he opted to focus his efforts entirely on one task 100% no matter what else was going on rather than trying to multi-task if the situation called for it. An example of this was when Corey spent the entire weekend editing a video interview at PAX Prime 2012 while the event was going on. I can understand and admire that immediate focus, but considering the interview was for an online PC MMO and not for a major title that would bring in lots of traffic, it was just odd to me that Corey opted to put that much effort into the video while we were at the event rather than just waiting until the rest of the week to finish it. All together it was this general vibe of Corey which I think sunk Shogun Gamer in some respects as things had to be "executed" a certain way otherwise they would simply not be done at all and then merely fall off the map into oblivion.
After using his trip to E3 2012 as a way to get a job interview going, Corey "left" Shogun in July 2012 upon landing a Community Manager job at Klei. Given how Corey's work on Shogun was merely one to use as a portfolio of sorts and obtain free headphones from events such as CES, I really didn't care that Corey was gone and to be honest I thought the site would finally be able to change ever so slightly under the guidance of myself and Casey. Unfortunately, Corey stayed part of Shogun Gamer for almost an entire year after landing the job at Klei. I can understand perhaps not wanting to relinquish your position early in a new job in case it goes tits up, but the fact that Corey stayed on the site whilst working at a game developer, and even wrote several game reviews, such as for WWE 2K12 and Assassin's Creed 3, always irked me as a conflict of interest in a way. Like, if you're part of the games industry full-on you really shouldn't also represent yourself as a member of the press industry.
Eventually Corey did decide to finally leave the site around May 2013, and insisted on a letter he wrote being published on the site. I don't know why he wanted this to be published since he was a non-entity on Shogun for almost two years straight at that point, but the letter itself was never published much to my delight. At the time of Corey's departure, Casey and I decided to co-run the site together upon opting a new direction that would focus entirely on editorials, reviews, interviews, and features rather than any sort of daily news coverage.
I was really excited about this new direction Shogun was going to take, and I went full-on into planning new features and a way for us to stay on top of keeping the site active. The latter was done by me through setting up a simple Google calendar in which various articles were listed along with their publishing dates in advance. I thought this would be helpful so the site wouldn't go through any dry spells in which nothing would be posted for more than three days since we had a small core staff that just consisted of Casey and I. So all together this calendar made it clear to both Casey and I, at least in theory, what content needed to be posted based on what we both had going on.
Despite adhering to the calendar myself, Casey fell behind on several key areas. Even though he had review copies of games provided to him, sometimes well in advance, of titles from Nintendo, Casey couldn't put together simple reviews for those games, and to be honest I think reviews never went up. Additionally, a minor blow-up occurred between the two of us when Casey posted a review from an outside writer, who of course happened to be his friend, without notifying me of it in the first place. Casey was under the impression that I was merely the "calendar guy" and that it was his job to seek out content for the site despite him not actually writing anything himself on a regular basis. This spat was brushed under the rug after a day, but it still annoyed me since it was yet another case of Casey talking big concepts and features he wanted to do, but not actually doing anything even though he had the opportunity to do as he desired.
For a period of time I got a bit of flack within Shogun, and this goes back to the early days, of being too much of a lone wolf. I basically got shit for writing content without telling anyone, and this was content that was in my particular wheelhouse. For example, I was always the PlayStation guy on the site while Casey was the Xbox fan, and we both had our individual franchises or developers that we liked to follow, write about, and potentially receive review copies of. But alas I was labeled as being too much of a lone wolf even though I was the sole person writing half the time, and my content was stuff that delivered hits, both on outlets like N4G or through other gaming sites picking up on certain tidbits dropped in interviews.
Yeah, I was bit of a hardass to work with, but this was just because I was really dedicated on pushing content, and we as a whole never did any group projects. I had my specialities, so I was going to go about doing the content I wanted to do since no one else was bothering to do interviews, features, or editorials, etc. To be clear, I was never difficult in that I wouldn't let people write about certain things or topics. As long as it didn't cross over into something in which I was clearly the lead of, such as PlayStation based content or actor interviews, I pretty much let everyone else do whatever they wanted, which in the end proved to be a whole lot of nothing.
Just to give you a better idea of how much content I delivered compared to my former colleagues, here's a stat for you:
So in general, given the material I delivered, which was always consistent and usually delivered a decent number of hits to help expand the brand, my attitude was generally one of that I knew what the fuck I was doing and I knew I was good at it.
With that out of the way, Casey basically failed in his position of being the "lead" on Shogun since he produced little to no content upon Corey's departure, and even failed to work alongside me in a James Bond 50th anniversary feature I wanted to do focused on both the games and general lore of 007. Ultimately, Casey told me in mid September that he was leaving Shogun Gamer upon landing a job within the gaming division of BroadBandTV. This of course happened after he attended PAX Prime 2013 as a member of the press for Shogun and ultimately did not post a single article on the site. I was annoyed it took Casey so long to let me know what was going on since I was busting my ass yet again to publish actual content while he was using the little work and "experience" he had to secure a job someplace else.
So with it being near the end of the year, 2013 to be precise, I decided to take things slowly with Shogun as I planned a soft relaunch of sorts. With me having full access to do whatever I wanted, all while footing the bill for the actual server, I wanted to take my time learning how to create new pages on the site, trying to craft a small sense of brand cohesion given my amateur Photoshop abilities, and trying to prep content with a small staff three person staff.
Ultimately I was able to get some decent, albeit slightly simple, site improvements in place on Shogun Gamer in late 2013, and the site itself was prepped for its soft relaunch through the arrival of some interesting content such as an interview with developer Roll7 about OlliOlli.
Upon trying to immediately contact Corey due to him having knowledge of the site and the various service accounts, I became aware that he had blocked me on everything. Now this caught me off guard slightly since I had talked to Corey a grand total of three times in 2013, the last of which was in December, and each conversation was relatively short and mellow since it was about minor random things. I then in turn contacted Casey to see if he had any details on this sudden situation, and he didn't inform me of anything.
After trying to talk to various reps from Namecheap.com, I eventually had to give up on figuring out what the hell happened. Since I had none of the account info for the Shogun Gamer domain on Namecheap I really couldn't do anything. This in turn left me assume one of two things: either the site was jacked by an outside source, or Corey just decided to turn the site off for no reason.
To further iterate how much of a blow the site being turned "off" was, this immediately closed the Shogun Gamer YouTube account which I had upgraded greatly to boost our subscriptions and total views which ranged in the 4 million+ area. Also, the domain issue also deleted the Google email accounts that we used for our mail, so all my contacts and key messages were immediately lost.
Having no real option to do and not being able to find out with Corey what happened since he decided to close me off, I decided to call it a day with Shogun Gamer, and this was made moreso when Corey took it upon himself to edit the Shogun LinkedIn page to reflect that he was the "sole" owner/founder, and that the site was closed on its own volition. Now the site itself was still up since the server, which I had began paying for in October/November 2013, was still active so all the content was still there and visible if you had the IP address of the site. But even that wasn't really enough for me to stick with the site since I had no way of gaining the name back, and I had begun to grow tired of how damn clunky and broken the site was on the tech and presentation side of things (trust me when I say that the site needs to be rehauled from the core in order to be modern and viable).
So from March 2014 until August 2014 things were pretty mellow in terms of me just conceptualizing my new site, what I would do, and what the name of it would be. I had no contact with Corey or Casey during that time, and I decided to block and remove them from my social media as well since I was rather angry with how they conducted themselves on Shogun Gamer, and I literally had no intentions of ever talking or working with them again in any capacity.
So colored me surprised when in early August 2014 I was contacted by Michael Sean Morgan. Michael was part of Shogun in the early days since he was friend with both Corey & Casey, but he wasn't a founder of the site. Instead, Michael was tasked early on with being a promotion guy, and he did make some minor contributions here and there before leaving the site sometime in 2012.
Michael contacted me to see what Shogun stuff I was still in possession of since he expressed his interest in restarting the site. I was informed by Michael that he wanted to start up Shogun again with a new staff, of which he would potentially "train", and he was going to focus more on video content built around YouTube gaming personalities rather than do written content like I had done in the past and wish to continue to do. I told Michael that I still had the Shogun Twitter, Twitch, and Facebook accounts, and that I had been paying for the server as well for several months.
Michael pitched to me that I could come aboard the new site, and would actually be paid for any contributions I made (I'll expand on the old Shogun pay method in a bit). I told Michael that I was a bit wary of it since he had hoped to launch the site in October 2014, and told him what I considered he needed to do to relaunch Shogun (build the site using a new CMS, write new stock content like reviews of key games so there isn't a big gap between what was posted in Jan 2014 and whenever the site launches). Michael really didn't express any interest in any of that, and we just came to the agreement that I would carry over all my Shogun content onto my new site, which I was going to do to begin with back in March 2014, and that I would be compensated for the eight months that I paid for the Shogun server, which was around $240 total.
I gave Michael all the info for the Shogun accounts, and wished him the best of luck in launching the site again. I had still considered the potential of writing for Shogun again, but I was somewhat focused on doing my own thing since I really didn't want to work under anyone again, and I even told Michael that I had no intention of working with Casey if he were to come aboard - which at that time Michael told me that he wasn't as I was the first, and "only", person he had contacted.
So I was a tad surprised to see that Shogun Gamer came back in September on the day that Destiny launched on the PS4/Xbox One, and that Casey was seemingly the one in charge once again. Upon seeing that the Shogun Twitch channel was doing a Destiny livestream and that the site and Facebook pages listed nothing of a "grand" Shogun return, I went to my Twitter to state how this was dumb and why that was such a bad move. Like, why would you "relaunch" a site by streaming a game on its launch day which is so popular that literally everyone else is either streaming or playing it? What's special and captivating about that?
I guess Michael saw my Twitter comments, or perhaps someone told him, and I received an email from him saying that I shouldn't have done that and I should have taken my issues to him for some odd reason. I then listed all the issues I had when how Shogun was relaunched since no mention was made of what happened for the site to go offline, who was running the site now, or what was the new focus of the site moving forward. Michael then told me that all of that was going to be addressed in a special video they would be releasing shortly, and that this was merely a "soft" launch to test out all the bugs on the site. Personally, I thought that was a half-assed excuse since you shouldn't start promoting a site or doing key content for it if you're doing a soft launch to fix any site tech issues that may occur.
Eventually in another email Michael threatened me with legal action if I were to continue to voice my displeasure with Shogun Gamer on Twitter, and if I were to continue "promoting" myself with the Shogun Gamer brand. Aside from mentioning that I was formerly with Shogun in my Twitter profile, having it up on LinkedIn as prior career experience, and mentioning that's where I used to work in a job post I made on Gameleon.com, I in no way was promoting myself with Shogun Gamer. In fact, some of my Twitter posts back in September were made to hammer down the fact that I was no longer with the site since I didn't want the mediocre status of the site to reflect upon me if people were under the impression that I was still running things. Now by this time I had taken down my key Shogun content, such as interviews, features, and reviews both because I was going to republish them on my new site and because I didn't want Casey and whoever else at the new Shogun to take advantage of the work I did myself for their own personal needs. I don't know if that seems selfish, but considering all the work I did on Shogun was on my own I didn't want anyone using an interview or review I did in order to land something for themselves. To me that just doesn't seem fair so I pulled all the content I gave a damn about off the site.
To further expand upon Michael's threats of legal action, he was going to say that the money I did receive from Shogun was enough evidence that I was a "contractor" and that all the content I wrote was legally part of the site and could not be removed. Would any of you out there like to guess how much money I made from Shogun Gamer directly when Corey & Casey were running things?
I made a grand total of $80. Yup, nearly five years of work and all I got was $80. To be honest, it was never about the money for me, yet the fact that I was paid sporadically and in various amounts, such as $20 or $40, was odd considering the money that I sunk into the site. Now that's not to say we all didn't sink a fair share into the site since we paid for a lot of stuff, such as trips to E3/PAX, but I thought it was funny that Michael was somehow going to use the fact that I got $80, which was mostly given to me not for the content I wrote but to partially offset the $25- $40 a month Gamefly subscription I used primarily for the site for over four years, was something that I found to be funny and a bullshit move on his part. Besides that, an actual contract was never signed between Corey and I or anyone else on Shogun pertaining to our positions on the site, rate of pay, etc. There was no actual contract signed by me on the site, yet here I was having this dummy threaten me by using $80 paid over five years as proof of being a "contract" worker.
Wanting not to deal with someone that I consider a silly delusional goose that had no clue of what he was actually doing, I told Michael that I would "cool" it on Twitter and he could not pay me the money I was owed from the Shogun server simply because I wanted nothing to do with him anymore. So we left it at that, and I then proceeded to block him on everything I could since he was now on my ignore for life list.
Looking at Shogun Gamer since it came back in September 2014, the site itself is pretty shallow. Some reviews have been published as have some odd and lackluster editorial content which really isn't unique or that memorable beyond being a cheap hit on N4G. Additionally, there's just a continued lack of thought being put into Shogun as of now. The fact that articles have images thrown in without any real thought such as using an image create by a fan as the "ideal" representation for a game is simply haphazard and shows a direct lack of thought. Is it so hard to find an official screenshot or perhaps just plop a trailer into an article, you know since this is a video game site and it would be nice to see actual footage of a game in question?
Also, there are little things about Shogun which show that moving forward the site is nothing but a low-tier enthusiast effort. The fact that it wasn't until December 2014 that a new version of the About Shogun Gamer page was made is indicative of the malaise that plagues the site since these are simple things we're talking about here. Beyond that, there are numerous other things which are painting an image which lacks professionalism such as countless broken links, not informing the audience of who the new writers are, articles which are laid out poorly, massive typos in Photoshop images for what should be a major article, and having Twitch and YouTube channels which are barren and lack any sort of regular activity.
These may seem like petty things to bring up, but again it's just a case of it being disappointing to see the brand go down this route. It's also a fact of me wanting to shed some light on the site for any potential developers or PR firms that may be approached by Shogun for something, whether it be an interview or review request. When it comes to reviews, Shogun as it is now is falling back into the old pattern of asking for stuff, or receiving it without a request being mae, and simply not putting an actual review up. For example, a review copy of Super Smash Bros. for the WiiU was received by Shogun around two weeks prior to the retail release, yet not a single review or article has been posted on the site itself. Is that a good way to run things? No It isn't, and this has happened in the past, particularly by Casey, with at least a dozen games like Halo 4, a Forza game, a ton of 1st party Nintendo 3DS titles, and Alien: Isolation as well just to name a few.
What's so hard about reviewing a game you receive for free? Nothing, that's the answer. You play the damn game, capture some media if you can, write your review, and hopefully publish it within a reasonable timeframe. These are the things that Casey absolutely fails at as a writer and "Managing Editor" of a site. An example of this was a few yeas ago, I think it may have been early 2013, in which I received an email from him asking my thoughts on doing some backlog reviews, one of which was Elder Scrolls Oblivion. I told him that I thought it would be odd to post a review of a game that came out in November 2012 in March 2013, and that it would be best to do something else with it such as a retrospect sort of thing. The only reason Casey wanted to do these reviews is because this was stuff he got for free, yet for some reason couldn't be bothered to actually review on a timely basis. Stuff such as this is both a failure to the Shogun Gamer audience, some of whom may rely on the reviews to make a decision, and the various PR partners that supplied material to the site and trusted it to do good, to an extent mind you, of featuring their game on the site.
Basically, Shogun Gamer as it stands now is not a proper gaming site even as an indie one. It may not label itself as a "professional" one similar to sites such as Gamespot or Game Informer, but compared to other enthusiast sites like OnlySP.com, or TwoDashStash.com the site is a failure as it stands now when it comes to delivering content that is cohesive or interesting. Even though I was paid next to nothing, I always looked at Shogun Gamer as a full-on job and I treated it with such respect in what I did and sought out to achieve. Looking back at things and how the site is now, it's clear that Corey and Casey didn't think as such based on their half-hearted work, and how fast they were to exit the site.
It's understandable for others not to be able to fully sink 100% of their life and time into Shogun, but I never got the impression that anyone else took it seriously aside from being an outlet to get free stuff or use as a resume builder for another gig. Was I using Shogun as a resume builder? To an extent I was, but I was always focused on expanding Shogun as a given brand and making it a fully viable and recognizable outlet within the games press industry similar to how Destructoid or even DualShockers (which I despise) grew over the years from being small outlets to large entities within the industry that have access to key events and people.
The only thing that Shogun Gamer is currently is a Vancouver Gaming Club posing as a gaming site so it can receive free material which it then does nothing with. Best of luck to them in whatever the hell they seek out to achieve, but again, in the end what sort of impact will Shogun Gamer make moving forward beyond being a mere pet project of those involved and so they can have bragging rights for their friends at drunken parties? What is the overall goal at Shogun Gamer currently? I honestly think they don't have one and are merely flying blind as they hope for something to stick and make the site popular.
So yeah, there's the full story. I really didn't do this to blow up any major spots, but it's just something I felt like I needed to get out of my system, and to perhaps shed some light on a site that I feel like is currently swindling both its audience and the PR firms that it works with.
If anyone out there has questions about anything I stated within this blog or random stuff, then please feel free to reach me either by posting a comment or hitting me up on Twitter.
If you follow me on Twitter (insert shameless plug link here), you likely have seen that at times I have no problem in calling something out, whether it be a silly business decision, a crappy games press site, or even a developer. I don't have this mindset because I like to be "controversial" as it's instead a matter of me simply liking to get things off my chest, let me opinion be fully known, and in some issues to show that I'm not part of the somewhat "stand united" front that certain members of the games press industry take. You could say that I have the similar attitude/approach that David Jaffe has in that I'm not that much of a bullshitter, and I find that being honest in some cases is the best thing to do.
So with that said, chances are you may have seen me go off on Shogun Gamer within the last few months since my departure. I haven't entirely done this because I'm "bitter" about things since I'm really not. My attitude/feeling on the matter is instead one of disappointment. It's disappointing to see a brand that I helped build and craft over the last five years suddenly go to shit due to continued mismanagement at the hands of people that pretend to know what they're doing, yet ultimately aren't achieving anything more than securing free games for themselves and having the "bragging right" to say that they're in the press industry, of which they consider going to industry events such as GDC or E3 to be a vacation rather than a business trip that's meant to be taken seriously so as to provide content to their audience and build business relationships.
Given how some of you may be fans of wrestling, or Sports Entertainment as it's requested to be called within those in the WWE, you may have heard the now famous CM Punk interview on Colt Cabana's Art of Wrestling podcast. In the two-part interview Punk essentially laid out the full details on his sudden departure from the WWE, and at the same time listed a lot of unknown things about WWE management which showed that they really have no clue at what they're doing.
Punk did this interview merely to get things off his chest and to continue with the next chapter of his life. While I may not be a multi-million dollar entertainer who is now venturing into a career within the UFC, I was really inspired with what Punk said and did so I thought it would be good for me to essentially do the same thing: give the full low-down on Shogun Gamer, what is going on with the people "running" it, and fully move on from that chapter of my career never to look back or openly discuss it again. Thus, you better strap in for a long story since this won't be a short tale.
THE BEGINNING
Shogun Gamer was co-founded between myself and Corey Rollins in early 2009. The exact way the site was formed was out of a PlayStation 3 fan club I ran on Gamespot.com. The PS3 club on GS was one of the largest on the site, but given the stuff that went on with Jeff Gertsmann at the time, and simply due to the restrictive nature of how content could be posted, Corey contacted me about doing an indie site and we both thought it would be interesting to branch out to a new site since we both loved gaming.So after we settled on some basic details, such as choosing a name from some options, Shogun Gamer started up slowly but surely. Since day 1 of when the site launched it was always about posting more detailed and timely content rather than the somewhat slow or sparse offerings made on other gaming sites at that time. The set-up at Shogun was fairly basic since I was tasked with writing stuff on my own volition whereas Corey was mostly in charge of handling tech stuff and setting up sponsorships.
Shogun slowly grew over time as we continued to post content, with me being the lead of course, and a few other people came aboard. The people included Casey White and Rob Gerlach. Now I perhaps should've stated this earlier, but I'm located in Chicago whereas Corey, Rob, and Casey were all friends in Vancouver. So at times it was hard to set up easy forms of chats without it becoming a chore due to work and personal stuff. That aside, the contributions made by Rob were questionable early on since his writing style was a bit out there, and I personally had a meltdown when he posted a "review" of Assassin's Creed 2 which literally spoiled the ending of the game without noting such a thing would occur. Now in hindsight this may seem like a non-issue to many of you since AC2 is so old, but Rob's review was posted around three weeks after the game came out so it was still new and fresh to many people at the time, thus spoiling the ending was something I thought was fucking absurd.
Casey's contributions on the other hand were a bit sparse. Mainly opting to do a podcast he co-hosted, Casey would from time to time make a contribution such as a review, but it really wasn't a regular thing. Eventually Rob would be removed from the site since he wasn't contributing enough, and other people would come and go, including one person that was asking for review materials behind our back, thus he was essentially stealing stuff.
Even amidst the ho-hum contributions by others I still was on my own personal track of expanding the brand since I believed in it, and I simply wanted to do cool stuff such as interview people within the industry I admire, and bring to light attention on lesser-known projects.
THE ISSUES
Even though I was absolutely killing it on the content side of things by landing interviews with actors, posting a ton of reviews, and trying to do out of the box content, Shogun Gamer wasn't really progressing. Perhaps I should place some blame at my own feet for not trying to do more, but with Corey being in charge and Casey somehow skipping me to become Managing Editor/Editor-in-Chief at one point in 2010/2011, which was big WTF moment to me since I had been there longer and was running the writing side of the site, I had to deal with Corey's lack of securing partnerships, his slow method of doing simple things, and dealing with a committee (Corey & Casey) of sorts to get simple things done.Other than Corey's odd choice to have ad rates for potential advertisers be high or merely not following up on certain things that would've been a home run in either securing some money or merely expanding the site, simple things just couldn't happen for some odd reason. For example, the logo that is currently being used by Shogun Gamer was created around three years ago yet it was only until Corey had fully exited the site, which I'll get to later, that it was finally used on the site itself. This really annoyed me since I didn't understand why we weren't using this logo despite it being awesome and being on our damn business cards that we handed out at industry events. Lack of brand cohesion was a huge problem with Shogun Gamer since there was no immediate identity to the site, nor was there an explanation of what our name meant, a thing which I honestly became embarrassed about upon speaking with Guy Cocker, and industry figure I admire, at a GDC party when he inquired about what the name meant.
Furthermore, simple things on the site "couldn't" be added by Corey like suggestions I had on the site layout, and a full gamut of swag that we collected at PAX 2012. Despite making a heavy push at PAX Prime 2012 to get swag to give away in a Facebook contest, the contest never actually happened for some reason. I recall pushing Corey several times as to what was going on since we had around twenty pieces of swag to giveaway ranging from an 18-inch statue, some cool PlayStation t-shirts, and other random crap. But alas, I got half-assed excuses and the contest, and actual swag, never happened nor was it given to our readers as promised. To this day I don't know who ultimately received the swag, so it could still be with Corey or it may have been handed out to his friends.
Other stuff such as that happened, but this time it pertained to actual developers. After being contacted by a PR person who was familiar with Shogun Gamer through my prior work, he used to be at Grasshopper Manufacture and being a GhM fanboy it was my content that he was aware of, to arrange a contest for the game Half Minute Hero the actual contest itself never got off the ground. This wasn't because I or the PR person backed out or failed on a key element since everything was settled between us such as the terms/key gimmicks of the contest, how the prizes would be handed out, etc. The fail in this case is to be placed on Corey yet again since despite making him aware of things, which I was "required" to do since he was the "boss" at the time, the art assets I needed for the contest and Facebook pages were never created, and if I recall Corey even stated that we couldn't do the contest a particular way because of supposed regulations on Facebook.
To be completely clear, the proposed contest for Half Minute Hero was something along the lines of "post a video or text entry saying what heroic deed you would do in 30sec." It was that damn simple, yet I guess we couldn't do that on the Shogun Facebook page due to the "staunch" regulations of Facebook. It was pretty clear that Corey just didn't give a damn and couldn't be bothered to do any sort of work despite this being a cool thing for the site to do, not just because of the potential relationship building with the publisher, but to draw some outside attention since we were one of the few sites chosen to hand out these special promo watches for Half Minute Hero.
One of the key things about Shogun Gamer when Corey was in charge was that it was filled with missed opportunities. Besides the occasional thing like a biz deal that could have benefited the site, there were also missed opportunities pertaining to some of our partners, one of which was Megasteakman. A Vancouver based indie video production firm, Megasteakman first came into contact with Shogun with their Pokemon Apokelypse video. This whole deal was handled by Michael Sean, who I'll discuss later, and it was something that I was entirely up for. The Pokemon vid by MSM was cool, and I was fine with the way Corey wanted to "leak" it, specifically that it would be "sent" to us as a "leak" and then later "revealed" to be an indie fan film.
Shogun got a lot of hits through the Pokemon video and it was picked up by a ton of sites. For being such an easy thing to put together, it really didn't require any production or extra thought on Corey's end to put everything together, so all together it was a very good deal in terms of us, Shogun, getting a ton of hits and recognition from the video.
The downside with Megasteakman was that they, or Kial the main dude, essentially pledged allegiance to Shogun after the Pokemon video came out. In some ways I can understand that since Kial was based in Vancouver and all, but in the end their reliance on Corey, and Shogun, prevented them from becoming a bigger deal, at least in my mind. A key example of this is that Megasteakman turned down a potential deal from IGN because they were being loyal to Shogun. I can understand being loyal to a degree, but given how Megasteakman's partnership with Shogun never went any place in a way that helped expand their brand, it ultimately was a poor decision to stick with Shogun. There was talk of featuring Megasteakman videos on the site in a regular capacity, though I was a tad wary of that as I was afraid the site would suddenly turn into a poormans version of Funny or Die since Corey was one to beat a concept to death if it stuck merely to squeeze as much potential money as he could out of it. Ultimately, there was never any major work done with Megasteakman, both to help their brand and to help further expand Shogun Gamer in a meaningful capacity.
From my perspective, Megasteakman could have been on the same level as Freddie Wu or CorridorDigital as far as being a popular YouTube gaming brand that makes cool videos since they have the same level of talent and production skills. But instead of having similar popularity and the potential monetary perks which go along with such thing, not to mention potential partnerships with game publishers as both aforementioned examples have done, Megasteakman is currently a stagnant brand which hasn't accomplished a lot other than being a one-off thing within the local Vancouver gaming/indie film community.
Another example of an issue within the site pertained to a somewhat substantial relationship with the shop Memory Express. Best likened to a smaller scale version of Best Buy, ME is based out of Canada and has a few shops in the U.S. A deal was struck between Corey and a ME rep to provide Shogun Gamer with a colossal gaming PC, both to do a review of since ME put it together and for us to "keep" for a period of time so as to do reviews of PC games all while continuing to plug that ME provided us with the rig itself.
A rather good video review was posted of the rig ME provided us, but other than that not a lot happened. Initially a push was made by Corey for Shogun Gamer to be geared towards PC gaming due to us having this massive rig from ME. I was rather tepid to this since my worry was that it would make the site a bit one sided, and it would essentially make one person responsible for reviewing a key series of games since it was just Corey & Casey that had access to the rig, and there was never talk of one being supplied to me. And just to be clear, I wasn't annoyed nor did I want a rig from ME. Sure, it would be cool if I got some sort of hook-up that I could use, but I wasn't really keen to get one nor did I ever make a push into acquiring something from them.
Eventually it was decided that occasional PC reviews would occur on the site to use the ME rig, but as I said earlier that never happened. I don't know why we didn't feature more PC reviews on Shogun, but the rig was essentially wasted on us, both as a tool for us to take advantage of and as a promotional item to use on behalf of Memory Express. Yes, a few PC reviews did go up, but it wasn't a regular occurrence, and I still don't know why that was the case since at that time we had access to a decent amount of PR firms, and of course certain PC games are accessible via online distribution outlets. So all together despite Memory Express giving us a chance on two occasions since they provided two rigs, Corey and Casey squandered that whole opportunity.
Upon further reflection, the thing about Corey was that he could deliver some awesome stuff at times since he had skills and knowledge. Despite this, he always had a one track way in which he went about projects, essentially that of he opted to focus his efforts entirely on one task 100% no matter what else was going on rather than trying to multi-task if the situation called for it. An example of this was when Corey spent the entire weekend editing a video interview at PAX Prime 2012 while the event was going on. I can understand and admire that immediate focus, but considering the interview was for an online PC MMO and not for a major title that would bring in lots of traffic, it was just odd to me that Corey opted to put that much effort into the video while we were at the event rather than just waiting until the rest of the week to finish it. All together it was this general vibe of Corey which I think sunk Shogun Gamer in some respects as things had to be "executed" a certain way otherwise they would simply not be done at all and then merely fall off the map into oblivion.
After using his trip to E3 2012 as a way to get a job interview going, Corey "left" Shogun in July 2012 upon landing a Community Manager job at Klei. Given how Corey's work on Shogun was merely one to use as a portfolio of sorts and obtain free headphones from events such as CES, I really didn't care that Corey was gone and to be honest I thought the site would finally be able to change ever so slightly under the guidance of myself and Casey. Unfortunately, Corey stayed part of Shogun Gamer for almost an entire year after landing the job at Klei. I can understand perhaps not wanting to relinquish your position early in a new job in case it goes tits up, but the fact that Corey stayed on the site whilst working at a game developer, and even wrote several game reviews, such as for WWE 2K12 and Assassin's Creed 3, always irked me as a conflict of interest in a way. Like, if you're part of the games industry full-on you really shouldn't also represent yourself as a member of the press industry.
Eventually Corey did decide to finally leave the site around May 2013, and insisted on a letter he wrote being published on the site. I don't know why he wanted this to be published since he was a non-entity on Shogun for almost two years straight at that point, but the letter itself was never published much to my delight. At the time of Corey's departure, Casey and I decided to co-run the site together upon opting a new direction that would focus entirely on editorials, reviews, interviews, and features rather than any sort of daily news coverage.
I was really excited about this new direction Shogun was going to take, and I went full-on into planning new features and a way for us to stay on top of keeping the site active. The latter was done by me through setting up a simple Google calendar in which various articles were listed along with their publishing dates in advance. I thought this would be helpful so the site wouldn't go through any dry spells in which nothing would be posted for more than three days since we had a small core staff that just consisted of Casey and I. So all together this calendar made it clear to both Casey and I, at least in theory, what content needed to be posted based on what we both had going on.
Despite adhering to the calendar myself, Casey fell behind on several key areas. Even though he had review copies of games provided to him, sometimes well in advance, of titles from Nintendo, Casey couldn't put together simple reviews for those games, and to be honest I think reviews never went up. Additionally, a minor blow-up occurred between the two of us when Casey posted a review from an outside writer, who of course happened to be his friend, without notifying me of it in the first place. Casey was under the impression that I was merely the "calendar guy" and that it was his job to seek out content for the site despite him not actually writing anything himself on a regular basis. This spat was brushed under the rug after a day, but it still annoyed me since it was yet another case of Casey talking big concepts and features he wanted to do, but not actually doing anything even though he had the opportunity to do as he desired.
For a period of time I got a bit of flack within Shogun, and this goes back to the early days, of being too much of a lone wolf. I basically got shit for writing content without telling anyone, and this was content that was in my particular wheelhouse. For example, I was always the PlayStation guy on the site while Casey was the Xbox fan, and we both had our individual franchises or developers that we liked to follow, write about, and potentially receive review copies of. But alas I was labeled as being too much of a lone wolf even though I was the sole person writing half the time, and my content was stuff that delivered hits, both on outlets like N4G or through other gaming sites picking up on certain tidbits dropped in interviews.
Yeah, I was bit of a hardass to work with, but this was just because I was really dedicated on pushing content, and we as a whole never did any group projects. I had my specialities, so I was going to go about doing the content I wanted to do since no one else was bothering to do interviews, features, or editorials, etc. To be clear, I was never difficult in that I wouldn't let people write about certain things or topics. As long as it didn't cross over into something in which I was clearly the lead of, such as PlayStation based content or actor interviews, I pretty much let everyone else do whatever they wanted, which in the end proved to be a whole lot of nothing.
Just to give you a better idea of how much content I delivered compared to my former colleagues, here's a stat for you:
- Over the course of five years, eleven staff members of the site (not including myself) posted around 400 pieces of content ranging from news stories, reviews, interviews, editorials, and features.
- Over the course of five years I posted over 4,500 pieces of content ranging from news stories, reviews, editorials, features, and interviews.
So in general, given the material I delivered, which was always consistent and usually delivered a decent number of hits to help expand the brand, my attitude was generally one of that I knew what the fuck I was doing and I knew I was good at it.
With that out of the way, Casey basically failed in his position of being the "lead" on Shogun since he produced little to no content upon Corey's departure, and even failed to work alongside me in a James Bond 50th anniversary feature I wanted to do focused on both the games and general lore of 007. Ultimately, Casey told me in mid September that he was leaving Shogun Gamer upon landing a job within the gaming division of BroadBandTV. This of course happened after he attended PAX Prime 2013 as a member of the press for Shogun and ultimately did not post a single article on the site. I was annoyed it took Casey so long to let me know what was going on since I was busting my ass yet again to publish actual content while he was using the little work and "experience" he had to secure a job someplace else.
So with it being near the end of the year, 2013 to be precise, I decided to take things slowly with Shogun as I planned a soft relaunch of sorts. With me having full access to do whatever I wanted, all while footing the bill for the actual server, I wanted to take my time learning how to create new pages on the site, trying to craft a small sense of brand cohesion given my amateur Photoshop abilities, and trying to prep content with a small staff three person staff.
Ultimately I was able to get some decent, albeit slightly simple, site improvements in place on Shogun Gamer in late 2013, and the site itself was prepped for its soft relaunch through the arrival of some interesting content such as an interview with developer Roll7 about OlliOlli.
SO WHAT HAPPENED?
So at first I never left Shogun Gamer since I was the one in charge from top to bottom from October 2013-Jan 2014. What happened was that in late January 2014, the Shogun Gamer domain name was disassociated from the site. This in turn left the site in a deadzone since upon entering the ShogunGamer.com URL you would receive a stock page provided by Bluehost. Now at first I was under the impression that the domain name itself had expired somehow, though I was never informed of any such thing from when Casey transitioned everything over to me.Upon trying to immediately contact Corey due to him having knowledge of the site and the various service accounts, I became aware that he had blocked me on everything. Now this caught me off guard slightly since I had talked to Corey a grand total of three times in 2013, the last of which was in December, and each conversation was relatively short and mellow since it was about minor random things. I then in turn contacted Casey to see if he had any details on this sudden situation, and he didn't inform me of anything.
After trying to talk to various reps from Namecheap.com, I eventually had to give up on figuring out what the hell happened. Since I had none of the account info for the Shogun Gamer domain on Namecheap I really couldn't do anything. This in turn left me assume one of two things: either the site was jacked by an outside source, or Corey just decided to turn the site off for no reason.
To further iterate how much of a blow the site being turned "off" was, this immediately closed the Shogun Gamer YouTube account which I had upgraded greatly to boost our subscriptions and total views which ranged in the 4 million+ area. Also, the domain issue also deleted the Google email accounts that we used for our mail, so all my contacts and key messages were immediately lost.
Having no real option to do and not being able to find out with Corey what happened since he decided to close me off, I decided to call it a day with Shogun Gamer, and this was made moreso when Corey took it upon himself to edit the Shogun LinkedIn page to reflect that he was the "sole" owner/founder, and that the site was closed on its own volition. Now the site itself was still up since the server, which I had began paying for in October/November 2013, was still active so all the content was still there and visible if you had the IP address of the site. But even that wasn't really enough for me to stick with the site since I had no way of gaining the name back, and I had begun to grow tired of how damn clunky and broken the site was on the tech and presentation side of things (trust me when I say that the site needs to be rehauled from the core in order to be modern and viable).
So from March 2014 until August 2014 things were pretty mellow in terms of me just conceptualizing my new site, what I would do, and what the name of it would be. I had no contact with Corey or Casey during that time, and I decided to block and remove them from my social media as well since I was rather angry with how they conducted themselves on Shogun Gamer, and I literally had no intentions of ever talking or working with them again in any capacity.
So colored me surprised when in early August 2014 I was contacted by Michael Sean Morgan. Michael was part of Shogun in the early days since he was friend with both Corey & Casey, but he wasn't a founder of the site. Instead, Michael was tasked early on with being a promotion guy, and he did make some minor contributions here and there before leaving the site sometime in 2012.
Michael contacted me to see what Shogun stuff I was still in possession of since he expressed his interest in restarting the site. I was informed by Michael that he wanted to start up Shogun again with a new staff, of which he would potentially "train", and he was going to focus more on video content built around YouTube gaming personalities rather than do written content like I had done in the past and wish to continue to do. I told Michael that I still had the Shogun Twitter, Twitch, and Facebook accounts, and that I had been paying for the server as well for several months.
Michael pitched to me that I could come aboard the new site, and would actually be paid for any contributions I made (I'll expand on the old Shogun pay method in a bit). I told Michael that I was a bit wary of it since he had hoped to launch the site in October 2014, and told him what I considered he needed to do to relaunch Shogun (build the site using a new CMS, write new stock content like reviews of key games so there isn't a big gap between what was posted in Jan 2014 and whenever the site launches). Michael really didn't express any interest in any of that, and we just came to the agreement that I would carry over all my Shogun content onto my new site, which I was going to do to begin with back in March 2014, and that I would be compensated for the eight months that I paid for the Shogun server, which was around $240 total.
I gave Michael all the info for the Shogun accounts, and wished him the best of luck in launching the site again. I had still considered the potential of writing for Shogun again, but I was somewhat focused on doing my own thing since I really didn't want to work under anyone again, and I even told Michael that I had no intention of working with Casey if he were to come aboard - which at that time Michael told me that he wasn't as I was the first, and "only", person he had contacted.
So I was a tad surprised to see that Shogun Gamer came back in September on the day that Destiny launched on the PS4/Xbox One, and that Casey was seemingly the one in charge once again. Upon seeing that the Shogun Twitch channel was doing a Destiny livestream and that the site and Facebook pages listed nothing of a "grand" Shogun return, I went to my Twitter to state how this was dumb and why that was such a bad move. Like, why would you "relaunch" a site by streaming a game on its launch day which is so popular that literally everyone else is either streaming or playing it? What's special and captivating about that?
I guess Michael saw my Twitter comments, or perhaps someone told him, and I received an email from him saying that I shouldn't have done that and I should have taken my issues to him for some odd reason. I then listed all the issues I had when how Shogun was relaunched since no mention was made of what happened for the site to go offline, who was running the site now, or what was the new focus of the site moving forward. Michael then told me that all of that was going to be addressed in a special video they would be releasing shortly, and that this was merely a "soft" launch to test out all the bugs on the site. Personally, I thought that was a half-assed excuse since you shouldn't start promoting a site or doing key content for it if you're doing a soft launch to fix any site tech issues that may occur.
Eventually in another email Michael threatened me with legal action if I were to continue to voice my displeasure with Shogun Gamer on Twitter, and if I were to continue "promoting" myself with the Shogun Gamer brand. Aside from mentioning that I was formerly with Shogun in my Twitter profile, having it up on LinkedIn as prior career experience, and mentioning that's where I used to work in a job post I made on Gameleon.com, I in no way was promoting myself with Shogun Gamer. In fact, some of my Twitter posts back in September were made to hammer down the fact that I was no longer with the site since I didn't want the mediocre status of the site to reflect upon me if people were under the impression that I was still running things. Now by this time I had taken down my key Shogun content, such as interviews, features, and reviews both because I was going to republish them on my new site and because I didn't want Casey and whoever else at the new Shogun to take advantage of the work I did myself for their own personal needs. I don't know if that seems selfish, but considering all the work I did on Shogun was on my own I didn't want anyone using an interview or review I did in order to land something for themselves. To me that just doesn't seem fair so I pulled all the content I gave a damn about off the site.
To further expand upon Michael's threats of legal action, he was going to say that the money I did receive from Shogun was enough evidence that I was a "contractor" and that all the content I wrote was legally part of the site and could not be removed. Would any of you out there like to guess how much money I made from Shogun Gamer directly when Corey & Casey were running things?
I made a grand total of $80. Yup, nearly five years of work and all I got was $80. To be honest, it was never about the money for me, yet the fact that I was paid sporadically and in various amounts, such as $20 or $40, was odd considering the money that I sunk into the site. Now that's not to say we all didn't sink a fair share into the site since we paid for a lot of stuff, such as trips to E3/PAX, but I thought it was funny that Michael was somehow going to use the fact that I got $80, which was mostly given to me not for the content I wrote but to partially offset the $25- $40 a month Gamefly subscription I used primarily for the site for over four years, was something that I found to be funny and a bullshit move on his part. Besides that, an actual contract was never signed between Corey and I or anyone else on Shogun pertaining to our positions on the site, rate of pay, etc. There was no actual contract signed by me on the site, yet here I was having this dummy threaten me by using $80 paid over five years as proof of being a "contract" worker.
Wanting not to deal with someone that I consider a silly delusional goose that had no clue of what he was actually doing, I told Michael that I would "cool" it on Twitter and he could not pay me the money I was owed from the Shogun server simply because I wanted nothing to do with him anymore. So we left it at that, and I then proceeded to block him on everything I could since he was now on my ignore for life list.
THE CURRENT ISSUES
Thankfully I haven't been in contact with either Corey, Casey, or Michael about anything for the last few months. So on the surface there aren't any issues that need to be resolved, but I personally find it disappointing to see how Shogun is being run right now since clueless people are at the helm. To me its somewhat apparent that the whole angle Michael did with me was either bullshit and was a favor he was doing for Casey, or he simply decided to bail out on whatever vision he had upon realizing the actual work that actually needed to be done in order to fix everything.Looking at Shogun Gamer since it came back in September 2014, the site itself is pretty shallow. Some reviews have been published as have some odd and lackluster editorial content which really isn't unique or that memorable beyond being a cheap hit on N4G. Additionally, there's just a continued lack of thought being put into Shogun as of now. The fact that articles have images thrown in without any real thought such as using an image create by a fan as the "ideal" representation for a game is simply haphazard and shows a direct lack of thought. Is it so hard to find an official screenshot or perhaps just plop a trailer into an article, you know since this is a video game site and it would be nice to see actual footage of a game in question?
Also, there are little things about Shogun which show that moving forward the site is nothing but a low-tier enthusiast effort. The fact that it wasn't until December 2014 that a new version of the About Shogun Gamer page was made is indicative of the malaise that plagues the site since these are simple things we're talking about here. Beyond that, there are numerous other things which are painting an image which lacks professionalism such as countless broken links, not informing the audience of who the new writers are, articles which are laid out poorly, massive typos in Photoshop images for what should be a major article, and having Twitch and YouTube channels which are barren and lack any sort of regular activity.
These may seem like petty things to bring up, but again it's just a case of it being disappointing to see the brand go down this route. It's also a fact of me wanting to shed some light on the site for any potential developers or PR firms that may be approached by Shogun for something, whether it be an interview or review request. When it comes to reviews, Shogun as it is now is falling back into the old pattern of asking for stuff, or receiving it without a request being mae, and simply not putting an actual review up. For example, a review copy of Super Smash Bros. for the WiiU was received by Shogun around two weeks prior to the retail release, yet not a single review or article has been posted on the site itself. Is that a good way to run things? No It isn't, and this has happened in the past, particularly by Casey, with at least a dozen games like Halo 4, a Forza game, a ton of 1st party Nintendo 3DS titles, and Alien: Isolation as well just to name a few.
What's so hard about reviewing a game you receive for free? Nothing, that's the answer. You play the damn game, capture some media if you can, write your review, and hopefully publish it within a reasonable timeframe. These are the things that Casey absolutely fails at as a writer and "Managing Editor" of a site. An example of this was a few yeas ago, I think it may have been early 2013, in which I received an email from him asking my thoughts on doing some backlog reviews, one of which was Elder Scrolls Oblivion. I told him that I thought it would be odd to post a review of a game that came out in November 2012 in March 2013, and that it would be best to do something else with it such as a retrospect sort of thing. The only reason Casey wanted to do these reviews is because this was stuff he got for free, yet for some reason couldn't be bothered to actually review on a timely basis. Stuff such as this is both a failure to the Shogun Gamer audience, some of whom may rely on the reviews to make a decision, and the various PR partners that supplied material to the site and trusted it to do good, to an extent mind you, of featuring their game on the site.
Basically, Shogun Gamer as it stands now is not a proper gaming site even as an indie one. It may not label itself as a "professional" one similar to sites such as Gamespot or Game Informer, but compared to other enthusiast sites like OnlySP.com, or TwoDashStash.com the site is a failure as it stands now when it comes to delivering content that is cohesive or interesting. Even though I was paid next to nothing, I always looked at Shogun Gamer as a full-on job and I treated it with such respect in what I did and sought out to achieve. Looking back at things and how the site is now, it's clear that Corey and Casey didn't think as such based on their half-hearted work, and how fast they were to exit the site.
It's understandable for others not to be able to fully sink 100% of their life and time into Shogun, but I never got the impression that anyone else took it seriously aside from being an outlet to get free stuff or use as a resume builder for another gig. Was I using Shogun as a resume builder? To an extent I was, but I was always focused on expanding Shogun as a given brand and making it a fully viable and recognizable outlet within the games press industry similar to how Destructoid or even DualShockers (which I despise) grew over the years from being small outlets to large entities within the industry that have access to key events and people.
The only thing that Shogun Gamer is currently is a Vancouver Gaming Club posing as a gaming site so it can receive free material which it then does nothing with. Best of luck to them in whatever the hell they seek out to achieve, but again, in the end what sort of impact will Shogun Gamer make moving forward beyond being a mere pet project of those involved and so they can have bragging rights for their friends at drunken parties? What is the overall goal at Shogun Gamer currently? I honestly think they don't have one and are merely flying blind as they hope for something to stick and make the site popular.
So yeah, there's the full story. I really didn't do this to blow up any major spots, but it's just something I felt like I needed to get out of my system, and to perhaps shed some light on a site that I feel like is currently swindling both its audience and the PR firms that it works with.
If anyone out there has questions about anything I stated within this blog or random stuff, then please feel free to reach me either by posting a comment or hitting me up on Twitter.
Monday, June 2, 2014
Quick Question
Okay, so perhaps this would be better suited as a Twitter sort of thing, but considering how long-winded I can be I thought it would be wiser to go into detail about my question rather than doing a series of Tweets.
One thing that has slightly irked me as of late within the games journalism industry is how certain sites, whether it be large ones such as GameSpot or smaller scale indie run sites, have been putting their writing staff to the forefront. By no means do I think any video game site should be run in a somewhat Borg/1984 like fashion in which everyone is part of one hive mind and there's no real indepedent thought. What I'm talking about more is how some sites will design features that immediately push a particular writer, or perhaps simply a personality in the case of YouTube style off-shoots, to the forefront in such a way that it makes them the central attraction (such if it's an attractive gal used to "attract" young guys) rather than the core content.
I'm not neccessarily getting in a hissyfit over stuff like what Jim Sterling does since that's his primary schtick lately. But when I see sites such as GameSpot do a plethora of features in which they have the faces of their writing staff Photoshopped onto images or simply have feature X hosted by person Y, I wonder if that's what people, specifically the readers/viewing audience wants. Again, I don't have a problem with certain writers getting a bit of a spotlight from time to time or being the primary reasion a person may visit a site. It makes perfect sense for some folks to have their favorites and people that they rely on when it comes to their views and general thoughts about reviews and the general happenings within the industry.
So here's my primary question for anyone that is actually reading this: Do you like features on gaming sites that heavily feature/focus on a specific writer or do you just want to read good content that actually makes the game/developer the focus?
If you want to give me your thoughts then just leave a comment here or hit me up via Twitter.
One thing that has slightly irked me as of late within the games journalism industry is how certain sites, whether it be large ones such as GameSpot or smaller scale indie run sites, have been putting their writing staff to the forefront. By no means do I think any video game site should be run in a somewhat Borg/1984 like fashion in which everyone is part of one hive mind and there's no real indepedent thought. What I'm talking about more is how some sites will design features that immediately push a particular writer, or perhaps simply a personality in the case of YouTube style off-shoots, to the forefront in such a way that it makes them the central attraction (such if it's an attractive gal used to "attract" young guys) rather than the core content.
I'm not neccessarily getting in a hissyfit over stuff like what Jim Sterling does since that's his primary schtick lately. But when I see sites such as GameSpot do a plethora of features in which they have the faces of their writing staff Photoshopped onto images or simply have feature X hosted by person Y, I wonder if that's what people, specifically the readers/viewing audience wants. Again, I don't have a problem with certain writers getting a bit of a spotlight from time to time or being the primary reasion a person may visit a site. It makes perfect sense for some folks to have their favorites and people that they rely on when it comes to their views and general thoughts about reviews and the general happenings within the industry.
So here's my primary question for anyone that is actually reading this: Do you like features on gaming sites that heavily feature/focus on a specific writer or do you just want to read good content that actually makes the game/developer the focus?
If you want to give me your thoughts then just leave a comment here or hit me up via Twitter.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
The Name Game
Whereas my last blog post was a bit of a pipebomb style ramble about the state of games journalism and how crap it can be at times, this newest post will be a bit more focused on what I sought out to achieve on this place to begin with: chronicle the creation of my new video game site.
I'll admit that progress has been going slowly on the development front, but considering I'm the only person working on things right now (which isn't exactly new territory since I was a one man machine on Shogun Gamer), I'm not freaking out about things just yet. However, one very important element that I've been wrestling over within the depths of my crazy mind is the actual name of the site.
A few potential names for the site have popped up, one of which has already been taken by a rather piss-poor micro-blog, so I'm certainly in the brainstorming mindset of as now. The one conundrum that I have is what sort of tone I want to establish with the name since it'll essentially be the key pillar for the site, branding across other platforms such as YouTube, and revenue avenues such as advertising with 3rd party partners and merchandise. The element that I'm thinking about closely in connection with the name is whether or not I want to follow the somewhat long established pattern of having a name be "___Gamer".
Obviously I was already part of a site that followed the ___Gamer pattern since I co-created and worked on Shogun Gamer for five years. Even then, that name somewhat surfaced out of our collective asses without much thought given into it, which I honestly think is the case with most indie/micro gaming sites that are around today. Shogun Gamer obviously had a catchy name to it, though it really had no brand logic behind it; it was just a cool name that elicited a vision of some sort of ninja like gaming figure. It wasn't even until the fifth year the site was active that we finally had a proper logo, which was created two years prior, and even then Shogun Gamer didn't have much of an identity to make the name actually make sense.
So branching out entirely on my own I'm looking not to make some of the same mistakes that Shogun originally did and other sites continue to make these days. I think it's understandable for some folks to follow the ___Gamer routine since its been so ingrained within gaming culture more or less - despite the actual use of the word "Gamer" having a rather negative connotation amongst some people given the usage within maligned marketing campaigns of the Mountain Dew and Doritos variety. So what's the best way to go about things, use the word Gamer within the name of a site or do something else?
Such a question is what I'm asking myself on a daily basis as I try to think of names and then subsequently check to see if they're available in all the key fields. The alternative of not using the ___Gamer pattern is choosing a name that's a bit more out there yet still drums up the thought of gaming within the masses. Stuff like Polygon or IndieStatik is clever stuff that works, but the danger, at least in my mind, of going down that path is selecting a name that may be a bit pretentious or simply too damn out there for people to accept.
In some ways I'm am leaning towards selecting a name that doesn't use the word Gamer within it since I do think that our industry, both the general games industry and games journalism, needs to mature in a lot of ways. Sure, back in the day it was awesome to have stuff like GamePro or GameSpy, but the constant use of the word which is the key descriptor of our industry is somewhat silly in my mind. Imagine if every music magazine/site used the word music in its title rather than something imaginative such as RollingStone or Spin. Wouldn't that be silly as hell if we had dozens of major sites that used the word music or movie in its title since that what it covers? Again, it may make sense for people to use certain words in naming their publication since it allows users to easily find or remember it, but in the world of gaming I'm getting a bit burned out by seeing the words Gamer or Gaming used in every damn title.
So that's that I guess. The name game is continuing within my mind and I'm hoping to figure out something soon so I can go about securing all the proper stuff and get going 100% in branding design and site development (review stuff, image design, etc.)
I'll admit that progress has been going slowly on the development front, but considering I'm the only person working on things right now (which isn't exactly new territory since I was a one man machine on Shogun Gamer), I'm not freaking out about things just yet. However, one very important element that I've been wrestling over within the depths of my crazy mind is the actual name of the site.
A few potential names for the site have popped up, one of which has already been taken by a rather piss-poor micro-blog, so I'm certainly in the brainstorming mindset of as now. The one conundrum that I have is what sort of tone I want to establish with the name since it'll essentially be the key pillar for the site, branding across other platforms such as YouTube, and revenue avenues such as advertising with 3rd party partners and merchandise. The element that I'm thinking about closely in connection with the name is whether or not I want to follow the somewhat long established pattern of having a name be "___Gamer".
Obviously I was already part of a site that followed the ___Gamer pattern since I co-created and worked on Shogun Gamer for five years. Even then, that name somewhat surfaced out of our collective asses without much thought given into it, which I honestly think is the case with most indie/micro gaming sites that are around today. Shogun Gamer obviously had a catchy name to it, though it really had no brand logic behind it; it was just a cool name that elicited a vision of some sort of ninja like gaming figure. It wasn't even until the fifth year the site was active that we finally had a proper logo, which was created two years prior, and even then Shogun Gamer didn't have much of an identity to make the name actually make sense.
So branching out entirely on my own I'm looking not to make some of the same mistakes that Shogun originally did and other sites continue to make these days. I think it's understandable for some folks to follow the ___Gamer routine since its been so ingrained within gaming culture more or less - despite the actual use of the word "Gamer" having a rather negative connotation amongst some people given the usage within maligned marketing campaigns of the Mountain Dew and Doritos variety. So what's the best way to go about things, use the word Gamer within the name of a site or do something else?
Such a question is what I'm asking myself on a daily basis as I try to think of names and then subsequently check to see if they're available in all the key fields. The alternative of not using the ___Gamer pattern is choosing a name that's a bit more out there yet still drums up the thought of gaming within the masses. Stuff like Polygon or IndieStatik is clever stuff that works, but the danger, at least in my mind, of going down that path is selecting a name that may be a bit pretentious or simply too damn out there for people to accept.
In some ways I'm am leaning towards selecting a name that doesn't use the word Gamer within it since I do think that our industry, both the general games industry and games journalism, needs to mature in a lot of ways. Sure, back in the day it was awesome to have stuff like GamePro or GameSpy, but the constant use of the word which is the key descriptor of our industry is somewhat silly in my mind. Imagine if every music magazine/site used the word music in its title rather than something imaginative such as RollingStone or Spin. Wouldn't that be silly as hell if we had dozens of major sites that used the word music or movie in its title since that what it covers? Again, it may make sense for people to use certain words in naming their publication since it allows users to easily find or remember it, but in the world of gaming I'm getting a bit burned out by seeing the words Gamer or Gaming used in every damn title.
So that's that I guess. The name game is continuing within my mind and I'm hoping to figure out something soon so I can go about securing all the proper stuff and get going 100% in branding design and site development (review stuff, image design, etc.)
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Tales From Your Ass: E3 Edition (And Other Random Tidbits)
First off I need to address that it has been a few days since my last initial blog post. Given how I'm somewhat new to personal blogging, I don't know if there's an exact protocol that needs to be followed when it comes to posting content since I assume that folks should be given a reason to actually visit and read my rubbish.
My delay in posting anything isn't a sign of negligence on my part, nor is it a warning sign that all is not well with my new gaming site. Unfortunately, my girlfriend for the last six years, who is also the mother of my 1 year-old daughter, was hospitalized for nearly two weeks due to a blood infection. So while I myself have been recovering from my own sudden flu incident, I've been tending to my girlfriend and of course been raising my sixteen month old daughter.
Now let's chat about some actual business in my typical way as I'll be calling people out and blowing up spots. As many of you no doubt know, the ever wonderful media event that is E3 2014 is nearly upon us. Being someone that has deeply been into video games for as long as I can remember, I must say that it was amazing when I first attended E3 myself since it lived up to the hype and hoopla I witnessed on the GameSpot streams or on G4 (RIP).
The problem it seems with E3 now is that it's such an easy target to generate hype prior to the event actually happening. Obviously the point of various publishers or PR companies is to generate hype for their games through early announcements or teases, yet actual game "journalists" will jump on any sort of E3 rumor for the obvious reason: to generate hits. It’s understandable for a site to drum up some hype in order to generate revenue via ad clicks or what have you, though seeing sites like DualShockers, GamingBolt, or OnlySP essentially post every possible rumor that is floating around is simply disheartening and it essentially takes games journalism ten steps backwards from whatever progress it may have made.
Sure, a site like DualShockers may preface their story by saying the details they’ve heard are “rumors”, but why bother posting something like that in the first place? Stuff like the recent Sony E3 conference details that “leaked” sound cool in theory, yet it’s obvious that it’s nothing more than a bunch of crap that will never happen since it’s playing up to every possible thing a Sony fan would want to see. Would it be awesome to see The Last Guardian make an appearance at E3 this year? Damn right it would, but there’s no way in hell that it’s going to be a 2014 title on any platform. The same goes for a new Wipeout game on the PS4. Why would Sony close Studio Liverpool and cancel a Wipeout PS4 game that was in early development only to reactivate the project again under a different studio? Wouldn’t it be easier to just let Studio Liverpool do business as usual, and perhaps make a few cutbacks, rather than stopping and starting up a project over the course of two years? But alas, sites like DualShockers will throw away whatever credibility they have in order to get some hits and have a dozen or so sites link back to them.
I’ll admit that I used to post rumor articles back in the day so I’m not going to act like I’m some sort of high and mighty chap that has never done any wrong. After all, posting rumors is a natural part of the games journalism business more or less since there have been some credible leaks from folks such as CBOAT and Ntkrnl on NeoGAF. The main problem I have with how most sites go about posting rumor articles is that it seems like they have no common sense as far as taking a second to think, “Could this really be legit or is it just pure wankery at its finest?” It’s also somewhat sad to me to see sites like GameSpot, which I actually still enjoyed post the infamous Jeff Gerstmann incident, to jump on the rumor bandwagon and go hog-wild by posting articles about everything. Does a site like GameSpot really need to go that avenue to gain hits given their other content (reviews, features, video content)?
It’s true that not every gaming site out there will post a crap rumor article, but it does seem like it’s an easy enough thing to do, thus a lot of sites will actually do that. I think getting excited about potential gaming reveals is a natural thing since we all like to get hyped about what sort of megaton or surprise may be made, however I would greatly appreciate if more writers exhibited some common sense and restraint as opposed to selling their integrity for the sake of getting a high CPM.
In other news: progress on the new has been a bit slow as of late for the obvious reasons. I still would like to get the site up and running more or less around August or early September, but I’m staying realistic in knowing that I’ll have a crapton of work to do in the coming weeks and months to build the type of site that I actually want to do.
That said, if anyone out there is interested in potentially working on the site either in a writer, tech aid, or other capacity then just let me know. I definitely would like to have a proper staff of writers so if you want to talk about games and let your voice be heard then shoot me a message either here or on Twitter. I’m not looking for people that have prior experience in writing, though it is a bonus, so if anyone is looking to break into the biz more or less then I’m certainly willing to help a chap out.
My delay in posting anything isn't a sign of negligence on my part, nor is it a warning sign that all is not well with my new gaming site. Unfortunately, my girlfriend for the last six years, who is also the mother of my 1 year-old daughter, was hospitalized for nearly two weeks due to a blood infection. So while I myself have been recovering from my own sudden flu incident, I've been tending to my girlfriend and of course been raising my sixteen month old daughter.
Now let's chat about some actual business in my typical way as I'll be calling people out and blowing up spots. As many of you no doubt know, the ever wonderful media event that is E3 2014 is nearly upon us. Being someone that has deeply been into video games for as long as I can remember, I must say that it was amazing when I first attended E3 myself since it lived up to the hype and hoopla I witnessed on the GameSpot streams or on G4 (RIP).
The problem it seems with E3 now is that it's such an easy target to generate hype prior to the event actually happening. Obviously the point of various publishers or PR companies is to generate hype for their games through early announcements or teases, yet actual game "journalists" will jump on any sort of E3 rumor for the obvious reason: to generate hits. It’s understandable for a site to drum up some hype in order to generate revenue via ad clicks or what have you, though seeing sites like DualShockers, GamingBolt, or OnlySP essentially post every possible rumor that is floating around is simply disheartening and it essentially takes games journalism ten steps backwards from whatever progress it may have made.
Sure, a site like DualShockers may preface their story by saying the details they’ve heard are “rumors”, but why bother posting something like that in the first place? Stuff like the recent Sony E3 conference details that “leaked” sound cool in theory, yet it’s obvious that it’s nothing more than a bunch of crap that will never happen since it’s playing up to every possible thing a Sony fan would want to see. Would it be awesome to see The Last Guardian make an appearance at E3 this year? Damn right it would, but there’s no way in hell that it’s going to be a 2014 title on any platform. The same goes for a new Wipeout game on the PS4. Why would Sony close Studio Liverpool and cancel a Wipeout PS4 game that was in early development only to reactivate the project again under a different studio? Wouldn’t it be easier to just let Studio Liverpool do business as usual, and perhaps make a few cutbacks, rather than stopping and starting up a project over the course of two years? But alas, sites like DualShockers will throw away whatever credibility they have in order to get some hits and have a dozen or so sites link back to them.
I’ll admit that I used to post rumor articles back in the day so I’m not going to act like I’m some sort of high and mighty chap that has never done any wrong. After all, posting rumors is a natural part of the games journalism business more or less since there have been some credible leaks from folks such as CBOAT and Ntkrnl on NeoGAF. The main problem I have with how most sites go about posting rumor articles is that it seems like they have no common sense as far as taking a second to think, “Could this really be legit or is it just pure wankery at its finest?” It’s also somewhat sad to me to see sites like GameSpot, which I actually still enjoyed post the infamous Jeff Gerstmann incident, to jump on the rumor bandwagon and go hog-wild by posting articles about everything. Does a site like GameSpot really need to go that avenue to gain hits given their other content (reviews, features, video content)?
It’s true that not every gaming site out there will post a crap rumor article, but it does seem like it’s an easy enough thing to do, thus a lot of sites will actually do that. I think getting excited about potential gaming reveals is a natural thing since we all like to get hyped about what sort of megaton or surprise may be made, however I would greatly appreciate if more writers exhibited some common sense and restraint as opposed to selling their integrity for the sake of getting a high CPM.
In other news: progress on the new has been a bit slow as of late for the obvious reasons. I still would like to get the site up and running more or less around August or early September, but I’m staying realistic in knowing that I’ll have a crapton of work to do in the coming weeks and months to build the type of site that I actually want to do.
That said, if anyone out there is interested in potentially working on the site either in a writer, tech aid, or other capacity then just let me know. I definitely would like to have a proper staff of writers so if you want to talk about games and let your voice be heard then shoot me a message either here or on Twitter. I’m not looking for people that have prior experience in writing, though it is a bonus, so if anyone is looking to break into the biz more or less then I’m certainly willing to help a chap out.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
So Begins The Journey
Despite being a member of the ever esteemed video games press industry for the past five years, I've never been a fan of personal blogs. Sure, I will go on Twitter and Tweet like a madman when I want to discuss random stuff or blow up some spots, but when it comes to discussing things in a format like this I've always been hesistant.
Yet here I am, chronicling my journey of starting from scratch and building a new video game site in the year 2014. Being a person that was essentially reared on magazines such as GamePro (RIP), The Official PlayStation Magazine U.S. (RIP), and PlayStation Magazine (RIP), I've always been into video game journalism - something that I think most people these days aren't. There are certainly those who have gigs at some of the big sites, such as Polygon and Gamespot, who have a passion for games and discussing them, but for the most part it seems like those who create original video game sites do it merely to acquire free games or to have a resume for whenever they seek a job within the games industry (which deserves a Goodluck Bro given how volatile the landscape has been in recent years).
So yes, I love video games, but I also care about how they're covered; thus I'm starting a new website. Some of you that may be reading this may know that for the last five years I was at Shogun Gamer. Having co-founded that site, I can safely say that I was the driving force behind it since I did a crapload of reviews, sought out interviews on my own, and create every piece of content I wrote under my own supervision. Sadly, Shogun Gamer was ripped away from me so I'm starting anew.
This blog will basically serve as a chronicle of my progress made on the site in the coming months. Okay, that may sound a tad pretentious, but I promise I won't pull a Polygon documentary out of my ass and talk about the woes of going from one solid job to another. Obviously in my case I don't have a company backing me with cash so it's much more of a grassroots effort, but this blog will mostly serve to provide my thoughts on things, how I'm approaching the site, and perhaps asking for feedback from folks.
And just to let folks know, the site could be online in late August or sometime around September. Building sites and creating content isn't easy after all.
Yet here I am, chronicling my journey of starting from scratch and building a new video game site in the year 2014. Being a person that was essentially reared on magazines such as GamePro (RIP), The Official PlayStation Magazine U.S. (RIP), and PlayStation Magazine (RIP), I've always been into video game journalism - something that I think most people these days aren't. There are certainly those who have gigs at some of the big sites, such as Polygon and Gamespot, who have a passion for games and discussing them, but for the most part it seems like those who create original video game sites do it merely to acquire free games or to have a resume for whenever they seek a job within the games industry (which deserves a Goodluck Bro given how volatile the landscape has been in recent years).
So yes, I love video games, but I also care about how they're covered; thus I'm starting a new website. Some of you that may be reading this may know that for the last five years I was at Shogun Gamer. Having co-founded that site, I can safely say that I was the driving force behind it since I did a crapload of reviews, sought out interviews on my own, and create every piece of content I wrote under my own supervision. Sadly, Shogun Gamer was ripped away from me so I'm starting anew.
This blog will basically serve as a chronicle of my progress made on the site in the coming months. Okay, that may sound a tad pretentious, but I promise I won't pull a Polygon documentary out of my ass and talk about the woes of going from one solid job to another. Obviously in my case I don't have a company backing me with cash so it's much more of a grassroots effort, but this blog will mostly serve to provide my thoughts on things, how I'm approaching the site, and perhaps asking for feedback from folks.
And just to let folks know, the site could be online in late August or sometime around September. Building sites and creating content isn't easy after all.
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