To: Luke
From Owen
Re: Chi Town
This weekend was my 52nd on shift, which means I've done my first year with Kotaku. Coincidentally, Adam Barenblat has too. His friends in Boulder threw him a Happy Kaketaku Anniversary party yesterday. Now watch us find out there's some sort of elaborate hazing ritual for your first anniversary. Crecente is closer to Adam, geographically, and I think Adam can take him. But Fahey is around the corner from me in Atlanta, and that means bad shit, implicitly.
A year is long enough to forget what a "normal" weekend was like before Kotaku. "Normal" then may have been watching college sports, grocery shopping, sleeping off hangovers, going to movies or whatever. "Normal" now is something akin to being a radio talk-show host and substitute grade-school teacher for six to eight hours in front of a computer screen.
That's not to say I haven't learned anything. Anyone looking through my history of the first four months will find some truly amateurish, what-is-this-jackass-thinking posts that I swear sounded good at the time. A thoroughly dumbass thing I wrote equating a PS3 bug in GTA IV to the Red Ring of Death stands as particularly embarrassing and especially disownable. Another ridiculous brainstorm of a game idea exposed me as hopelessly out of my depth.
And I was. Video games are an extremely sophisticated subject, read by people who themselves have a kind of intelligence and sophistication that's difficult to engage. Sometimes I feel like the coolest guy in the room. Other times, like a frustrated clown at a birthday party gone off the rails. But I can honestly say I have a more direct relationship with the readers here than I ever did at any newspaper. And to all of them, I'd like to say thank you, and thank you for reading Kotaku.
This weekend's highlights:
Answer Survey, Help Game Preservationists
An Idea of How Large the Big Huge Layoffs Were
Sony Gets Chippy on Eve of DSi Release
Team Fortress, (Semi-) Unplugged
K3
Reggie Fils-Aime Comments on "Bob's Game"
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