Two years of ReaderGrev

Hi everyone, I’m writing this from vacation, so I’m going to keep it short. Wow! Two years of ReaderGrev. It’s been very fun, and I intend to keep doing it. Boy, I really thought I’d have more to say about all this!¹

In the course of publishing ReaderGrev, I’ve been frustrated at times over stories falling through, or disappointed in my atrophying ability to string words together in a way that makes sense and reads well. But I’ve never felt at a loss for ideas, and so long as I have those I will keep writing.

I’d like to write about the metaverse (but synthesizing Walter J. Ong’s increasingly fashionable Orality and Literacy so it’s “smart” and “of the moment” and not “cringe”). An idea I’ve nursed since the Launcher days is a half-tongue-in-cheek, half-reported feature about why so many seats/chairs are awful to sit in. (In short: why isn’t every seat everywhere ergonomic?) I still want to — very belatedly — review Jason Schreier’s Play Nice. I have an essay brewing in me about how Valorant ruined my life. (I’m mostly kidding.) Most of all, I’d like to write more about games.

I’m not going to write the self-promoting paragraph-of-links (you can find my full archive here) but in the past two years I’ve only written plenty about the culture surrounding games, but only very rarely about games. Not for lack of trying!

To gesture at the scope of the problem, here is a non-exhaustive list of games I’ve started in the past year or so that I’ve played for anywhere from 5 to 60 hours but not finished:²

• Elden Ring

• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

• Eternal Strands

• Before the Green Moon (which scratched my farm sim itch for exactly one day)

• The Banished Vault

• Diablo IV

• 1000x Resist

• Baldur’s Gate 3³

• Case of the Golden Idol

• Dragon’s Dogma 2

So I ask: How long should you play a game before you can write about it?

Listen. This newsletter is a “no rules, just right” zone — and there are obviously no rules around something like this. I’ve written reviews-in-progress before. But there is a valley between the point at which I feel I’ve gotten my money’s worth from a game and the point at which I feel as though there is something worth saying about it, and I have not crossed that valley in a very long time.

Some games, I feel, don’t reveal themselves until you’ve played them all the way through: Elden Ring, 1000x Resist, etc. I just do not feel comfortable writing about these without completing them first. But also, an increasing number of games I play give up fairly early on that the gameplay is the thing — and I’m not always sure how much more there is to say about these titles after the first round of professional reviews.

Or maybe, in a meaner formulation: I wonder if some of the games that I’ve played and enjoyed recently are interesting distractions but not particularly compelling art objects. This sort of wishy-washiness would be useless in a newsroom. Embargoes and professional obligations render this kind of handwringing moot. But I write for myself these days. What do I do if I’ve played 30 hours of a game two months after its release and realized it was a just-OK role-playing game? Not everything needs to be grist for the content mill, but the question hints at a broader concern.

Frank Lantz, who is smarter and a better writer, published something that feels adjacent to what I’m trying to say, which you can read here and I will quote at length below. I wonder if you might feel the same way.

I’m spinning out a bit here, so I’ll cut things short, but I’d love to hear your thoughts — because I clearly do not have the answers. Newsletters should be an opportunity to engage dedicated readers one-on-one, and I’ve been meaning to find an opportunity to do just that. Just respond to this email with whatever you might want to say, or if you’re reading in your browser, the comments are open below.

Also, more broadly: Don’t be a stranger! Say hello! I’d love to hear who you are and what you’re interested in. Do you have strong opinions about video game journalism? Did you subscribe because I plugged ReaderGrev in a Valorant lobby? Are you a game developer working on something cool? Please consider responding to this email and letting me know who you are and what your vibe is.

Anyway, happy two years! Thanks to everyone who has been along for the ride. Later this week, I’ll have a fun news story to share with you all. Low stakes, but an eye-popping scoop. It’ll be catnip for aggregators.

Cheers!

Thanks for reading ReaderGrev!

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If you have a tip, or just want to get in touch, I can be reached on Bluesky or via email at mikhail (at) readergrev (dot) com.

* The image in the background of the header image is New York Daily News (1888) by William Michael Harnett. According to The Met, Harnett told an interviewer that he “could not afford to hire models as the other students did,” which forced him to paint objects — a fitting image to reappropriate for a niche indie newsletter! I’ve been trawling Wikimedia Commons and digitized public domain collections belonging to American museums for illustrations; I would highly recommend taking a few minutes to just poke around, for example, The Met’s archive, just to see what’s there. Type a random word in the search bar and just see what pops up. Some of my favorites have come from searching the word “games” (a well I will 100% dip into for future illustrations). Much love to the curators and archivists who make stuff like this happen.

1. I already bared my soul about the state of this newsletter and the newslettering business in this post, if you’re interested.

2. Why haven’t I finished these games? Keen-eyed readers will notice the subtle reference to Valorant earlier in this newsletter, and in previous editions of ReaderGrev.

3. This one only sort of counts because I’ve watched my girlfriend beat this game three or four times now.