All Good Things...

The domain name for The Grumbly Gamer expires tomorrow.

In theory, the whole banana should revert back to its Blogspot address (www.thegrumblygamer.blogspot.com), but I have opted not to actually renew the direct Grumbly Gamer URL. In fact, despite it probably continuing on in it's Blogspot form, I doubt I will be doing much with this going forward. It's a sad thing (but you'll manage to live on, I promise), but it's also just time.

I never intended this thing to go on as long as it did, really. The idea of a blog had been suggested to me by a friend in the video game industry. I was trying to get a job within the industry, and he said that this would be a good way to get my thoughts and writing style out there in a more effective fashion. Thus, The Grumbly Gamer was born. After that it sort of took on a life of its own, and I've really enjoyed the work that I've done. I've done some cool interviews with people like Hal Halpin (president of the ECA) and Spencer Halpin (director of the film Moral Kombat)-- hit up the search to check those out-- and I've ranted on some really bizarre gaming news stories. Overall I think that this whole experience has really helped me grow as... well, whatever it is I'm trying to grow into.

So now we come to the end of the road, at least at the moment.

See, I finally had a big interview for a big position at a big game studio. I'm currently waiting to see if I get said position, but if I do then I'd assume that I'd have to end the blog anyway. There's that whole "conflict of interest" clause that most companies (gaming or otherwise) have that will most likely prevent me from blogging about games while actually working on games.

Plus, let's be honest, my heart just hasn't been in this lately. I've gone from posts almost every day to one every couple of months. Part of it was due to dedicating myself towards getting a job (in particular the one I interviewed for), but there was another factor at play.

When I started this, I had no direction to speak of outside of "make fun of gaming news stories that are entertaining or ridiculous to me", or ranting on some issue I felt needed to be bitched about. I would peruse all sorts of news sites, find something that jumped out at me, and proceed to poke fun at it. It was fun, but it was scattershot and it was hit or miss. Over the course of my time with this blog, though, something happened: I gained a focus.

So, if I don't get this big industry job, or if they somehow let me keep a blog while working there, I'm going to start a new project, one specifically focused on stories and news about the assaults on gaming and gamers. There are so many people out there trying to take away our rights to play what we want, from people claiming that games are horribly violent "murder simulators" to people that feel that gamers are somehow less socially acceptable than "normal people". I'm sure it'll still be done with some degree of sarcasm (this is, after all, me we're talking about), but instead of just picking any random story I want to specifically talk about the issues that still plague the industry as a whole.

So that's where we stand right now. Either I'm going to be actually working and therefore not blogging, or I'm going to be still blogging but doing so with an actual purpose. Whichever one comes to pass, it means the end, even temporarily, to The Grumbly Gamer.

I want to thank everyone for their support, all of the people who have been reading and commenting and making me feel like this wasn't a complete waste of my time. I want you all to know that at some point this became not about just using a blog to get an industry job but about bringing my work to the masses (if "masses" can be described as three regular readers) and sharing my thoughts with other gamers.

Huh. This whole thing bothers me way more than I ever thought it would.

That being said: This is The Grumbly Gamer, signing off...