December 9, 2014 | Filed under: External Sources, Recent Posts and tagged with: Critical Distance, TYIVGB
We have posted our methodology on how I do the This Year In Video Game Blogging feature over at Critical Distance. The last few years I have always done a ‘how I did it’ post here and after the fact. Transparency has always been a bit of a problem for us. Not because we aren’t transparent, but because no one ever seems to pay attention when we’re announcing how we do things. The nadir of which was last year and that damn Kotaku commenter.
In general, it has gotten better. Our regular readers understand our weekly process at least. And usually, it takes only a single attempt for a person to realize ‘holy hell this is a lot of work.’ TYIVGB is different. Not only are the pieces selected for it of a higher caliber than what is expected for a weekly piece, but also the feature itself is held to greater scrutiny. I decided very early in the year that doing a postmortem was no longer good enough. There is weight placed on it by virtue of it being annual and less regular.
I’m getting the process out of the way ahead of time. I want people to understand how this is done before they read the feature. I said last year that one learns so much about a subject by just doing it. I have learned more about curation through my time at Critical Distance than I would have any other way. You can’t go into a project like this without some idea of what you are doing it for. The first year I did it because I thought it would be fun. The second year I did it because I did it once, why not again. The third year was because it had become a tradition and way to celebrate the year. 2012 was a year worth celebrating. I don’t know what was going through my head last year. A sense of ownership and responsibility. This is my thing. This year, it’s an eye to history. Not our past history, but our future history in need of a reference. That is my head space for TYIVGB 2014.
I’ll probably still do a postmortem come January. A real one, not a late comer methodology post that comes across more as justification that edification.