Hello. It’s been a while.
To be honest, I thought my time in games media was over. 13 years is a pretty good run by any standard. Doubly so when you look at the state of commercial media in Australia, a space that couldn’t be made to care about games coverage if its life depended on it.
I took a break from producing any content about games, written or video, after my contract at the ABC wound down. Between Kotaku AU and the national broadcaster, it felt like I’d climbed as high as the Australian games media ladder went and now there was nowhere left to go.
I got a job elsewhere that very deliberately had nothing to do with games media at all.
Years of grinding SEO content and trying to read the algorithmic tea leaves had left me worn out. Spiritually speaking, I was a charred stump.
Time away would do me good, I thought. I can reconnect with a beloved hobby that became a job and an obligation. It was the right decision. For months, I played only what I wanted or thought looked interesting. I read little coverage. I found out about games the way everyone else does, through friends or on social.
What surprised me was that I did come to miss being in games media. The daily hustle, of waking up to see the next buffet of insane shit the industry had tried to serve while Australia slept, of talking to the people navigating it, left a hole in my heart that wasn’t easily filled.
When I left in December, the industry had felt like it was in a bleak place. In building Beyond Play and preparing to cover games again, I started to re-immerse myself in day-to-day coverage. If anything, things had only got worse in the short time I’d been away.
Jobs are still being lost. AI is creeping in everywhere. Industry leaders still possess the decision making faculties of gas leak casualties, and stay insulated from consequence. Prices for games and hardware climb and climb, and cash-strapped everyday enthusiasts are expected to pick up the bill.
All the while, the big end of town trots out slop, remakes and sloppy remakes as it rattles its cup with rising desperation, and games that fail to generate coin are disappeared.
Why on earth would I ever want to come back to this? The industry’s in worse shape than it’s ever been and I was out the door. Why turn back?
I’m back in the fucking building again because I love video games and I love helping tell the stories of the people who make them. I know, it’s so simple as to be sickeningly twee. Throughout my entire career in games media, all I’ve tried to do is help people understand why games are so important and why we’re so lucky to have them at all. Six months of reflection just kept bringing me back to that central feeling.
I don’t know how to solve the industry’s wider problems. I don’t know how you get kids off social media designed to addict them, or keep them from playing Roblox instead of a thousand better, safer games. I don’t know what the industry will look like when AAA inevitably collapses under its own grotesque, misshapen weight.
But I love talking to people who are thinking about these things, and we must intensify the spotlight on those problems. As important as it is to never turn away from the hazards that face the games industry, it’s also important to surface the parts of the hobby that remind us why we fell in love with games in the first place. No suffering without joy, right? Or is it the other way around? Whatever.
In times like these, what else can we do? Miseria cantare. We sing the sorrow. Then, we look to future and start to build something new and better.
Welcome to Beyond Play.
-DS.
