Friday, April 24, 2009

Friday afternoon tidbits

A small milestone to mark: Sometime today, if it hasn't happened already, this blog will serve up its 200,000th page view. That's not a large number by most blogs' standards, but it seems like a big one to me. Thanks for reading.

-It's the best thing I've seen this week -- Matthew Gallant's mash-up of "I'm on a Boat" with Wind Waker:



-News of Stephen Totilo's move to Kotaku seems strange to me, for reasons I haven't quite been able to put my finger on. Kotaku is good, but MTV Multiplayer is often great. While Totilo will unquestionably be reaching a larger audience, which he deserves, I am hoping that he brings Multiplayer's sensibility to Kotaku, and not the other way around. Kyle Orland interviewed Totilo for Crispy Gamer, and he says all the right things. I just hope that Totilo's reporting doesn't get lost in the hourly press-release snarking.

-Critical Distance is a new group blog dedicated to highfalutin' discussion of games. So far it's a mix of original thinkpieces, well considered links, and a brand-new podcast. They've gathered a good collection of writers. Can't wait to see how the site develops over the coming months.

-Finally, I've deleted a couple of comments this week, so I wanted to take a second to discuss this blog's commenting policy. Simply put: I will only delete comments that are pure spam, or that link to something that seems illegal. That's it.

I won't delete comments for disagreeing with me, even if it's vulgar or just plain stupid. I trust that the tone set by me and by the regular commenters here is enough to dissuade people whose only interest is starting a flame war. Comments provide much of a blog's value, especially when the commenters are as passionate and as intelligent as you guys are. I'd rather err on the side of more reader participation, not less.

7 comments:

Denis Farr said...

That's pretty much been my commenting policy. However, I wonder how much of a commenting privilege we male bloggers have over our female blogging counterparts, who seem to have much more directed attacks on them.

The word verification of this is STSFU, and I wonder what the middle S stands for...

Anonymous said...

I think I would downgrade your assessment of Totilo and Kotaku to "usually good" and "generally awful". I'm pretty disappointed that he's moving over to that site where his good work will more than likely be diluted by the awful "reporting" that happens there.

c.p.ervin said...

Kotaku is a weird, unfiltered mess of a thing at the moment. I enjoy the new "Kotaku Monthly" thing they started this year, because the best stuff they do gets buried in seconds under the torrent of never-ending, never-important press releases and rumors pulled off NeoGAF. I do wish there was a more granular way to subscribe to Kotaku's RSS feed, at least -- I absolutely do not care about new Red Faction screenshots, but there they are in Google Reader nonetheless.

Still, this isn't as baffling to me as Leigh Alexander's brief tenure there.

Matthew Gallant said...

Thanks for the link Mitch, my silly videos got picked up by Offworld because of you. Hurrah!

Anonymous said...
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Mitch Krpata said...

cpe, I agree. It would be nice to be able to subscribe to parts of Kotaku. It's not just them, though -- it really bugs me how eight different sites will be hyping screenshots within minutes of one another.

Matthew, I saw that. Well deserved! Glad I could help.

Anonymous said...

What I really love about this game, besides the cartoon draws it's the ocean music when you sailing, it's very nice I love it.