Sometimes, I’ll rush an article out the door, and either skimp on the editing due to lack of time, or push something out that is bare bones content, with the rationalization that “they can’t all be winners”, and then it will will either get way more views, than I expect, or people I know will personally read it and bring it up to me after the fact, leaving me thinking to myself: “well, had I known people were going to read it, I would have written something much better”.


Which is why to avoid disappointment, I always propose to under promise and over deliver: it’s the best of all worlds.

All of this is reminiscent of school, when the projects I would work hard on would be returned with a so-so grade, and the rush jobs would net me high marks. C’est la vie, I eventually had to start telling myself, though those sentiments linger in other ways now a days, and remind me that Impostor syndrome is real folks, and at least in my world, something I will randomly grapple with from time to time. Ever since I put up the Ver. 2.0 of ATE (i.e. what you are reading with your very own eyeballs at the current moment), I’ve been satisfied with the increase of traffic I had vs. the 1.0 version I wrote on for many years, more so just on account of reaching a wider audience. Gaining a readership, spreading ideas, and inspiring others with a sense of whimsy and wonder, which is unabashedly the greatest height of success I may reach on any given day, so the more faces I’m able to rock, the better in that regard.

My reference to the impostor syndrome is due to the notion that I use to do this as a paid gig for many years, both in small freelance roles, but also in a much bigger way when I ran Gamersyndrome as editor-in-chief, which reached a staggeringly larger pool of people. Between the numbers involved, both traffic wise and financially, you’d think having run my race successfully as it were, I would be a little more secure with myself whenever I put thoughts to a screen, but alas, it still occurs. In order to safely secure myself within a realm of comfortable reassurance, I just borrow the same perspective I use to utilize when I hosted Karaoke for multiple years, right before I’d open the show, sing in front of a crowd, sometimes dozens, and in other moments still, perform for over 100 plus people at a time, I would remind myself the reason I was ever nervous, even after having done it so many times before, was because I still cared about doing a good job, and I think that sentiment is worth a a great deal.

Going into September, I think my goal moving forward with ATE sounds a bit…well, daft perhaps, or ridiculously straight forward in a way, due to the nature of the website, but it’s easy for one to get caught up in both the headlines of the everyday, and the abstraction that surrounds both game design, and the industry that predicates both. To wit; I’m going to refocus my efforts on playing more games, and doing straight writeups. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to do traditional previews, as I have covered in the past, as it does not really suit me to do so, but as much as I loved my articles I wrote in August, they largely focused on the metaphysical aspects of gaming more than the meat and potatoes gameplay itself, with what seems like, looking back, The Rogue Prince of Persia being one of the only titles I dealt with by name throughout the whole month in vivid detail. Such a sadness, in terms of opportunities squandered on more articles addressing full spreads on the video games that were available in August to enjoy.

So, I’m going to refocus my efforts, and push forward with some more nitty gritty articles, and attempt to push myself outside of my comfort zone involving just philosophical takes on the games at large, and see how it goes. I’m even going to avoid overthinking this article with minimal reformatting, just to see how it sits with me. I will leave you with a bit of a teaser though, with some soon to be follow ups in the realm of gaming, that will involve the gripping realities that walls have to offer, the foibles and follies of when hands go mad, and the ridiculous standards of remixing cross-overs with nothing but D.I.Y, spit spine, and reckless abandon.

I look forward to sharing some more gaming writeups with you in the future, and hold a great deal of confidence that if nothing else, September will be jam packed with games galore.

~Pashford