Man, I fucking hate this game. Like straight-up detest it. I reviewed it for NWR back in the day and it remains one of the only games to ever make me throw my controller. So many cheap deaths, so much progress lost. When I realized how much grinding I was in for to get through the tougher dungeons, I put it down and never came back.
I hear you there. If the desire is to do it for a living, you should definitely be putting in the time and effort to figure out how to get paid for your efforts - while doing it for free can be ok for a while to produce a solid portfolio, it can't be where you settle. There have been a few people who have written here or others at Nintendo World Report that went on to find themselves in writing careers that were assisted by their prior experience writing as a hobby. So it all comes down to your own personal end goal.
I can promise you, if I was actually making money on PixlBit, I'd be figuring out how to compensate the lovely folks who contribute to this site. As it stands, everyone who contributes here is doing it for the passion they have for the hobby, including myself. Without that passion, there'd be no PixlBit and if we were in it for the money, this place would've closed shop a long time ago. So I think that's kind of the other side of the coin.
Sometimes though, just doing something is reward enough. Like I've said - at this point especially - PixlBit just straight up costs me money. Shutting it down would be a more fiscally responsible thing to do, but the time/effort/money I put into this serves some weird purpose in the universe and I love that it's here doing that thing. I'll admit that I don't get the same thrill from writing about games that I once did, but for a while it was a really fun special thing that I deeply enjoyed.
So that being said, whenever you're doing something for free, you need to take a look at what you're doing and determine why you're doing it. In specific regards to gaming journalism - it's a pretty saturated market. It's unlikely there's much of a career in starting and subsequently running and maintaining your own site. Seeking paid freelance work is a much safer bet (imo) that will likely earn you a paycheck long before starting your own site. Permanent gigs in this field are extremely hard to come by, so you can always hold out hope, but statistically, you're not likely to land something.
If you ever want to join on we'd love to have you! :)
As someone who went the path of writing for a somewhat well-known site (Nintendo World Report) to starting his own site, I'd say it's not really worth the effort. While it's fulfilling in many ways to do your own thing, it's an incredible amount of work and the cost is fairly substantial. Ad revenue here doesn't even cover running and maintaining the site, much less all of the technical man hours put into the back end of the site. Furthermore, once you detach yourself from an established site, you immediately lose access to press resources and review copies and it takes a long time to rebuild those relationships and establish yourself as a new entity (and with some companies it just never happens).
It sounds very appealing to do your own thing, but sometimes it's just better to stick out where you're at and enjoy it for what it is. While I definitely don't regret starting PixlBit, it's been anything but an easy road. I'm glad so many 1up folks migrated here because I'm not sure how long the site would've persisted onward without an established audience. Once you stop treating something as a passion project and approach it as a career or business opportunity, it transforms from a fun distraction to a stressful burden. For better or worse, that's the reality of it.
All that aside and on a much brighter note, congratulations on 20 years Cary, that's quite the achievement. I wish you the best of luck and hope you can go at it for 20 more years!
I too appreciate these blogs about music. Always great to hear about new stuff, since there's just SO much out there today. I mean, it's impossible to find everything that's good.
I've recently gotten into The Dear Hunter, which isn't metal in the slightest, but the compositions done by Casey Crescenzo are really impressive. Also, their stuff is all over the board (see below for some samples). I don't even know that they conform to some sort of genre, but goddamn, do I dig them.
Since you mentioned this, I decided to jump back in as well. I too abandoned the game at about the 25% mark. Just over the course of the weekend in my spare cycles I've managed to surpass where I was at. I'm enjoying it much more than I did back then. It definitely has a Souls feel to it, which is great.
I think the fact that it wasn't as Metroid-esque as the other handheld entries really turned me off to the game, but now I can appreciate it for what it is. Plus the lack of 2D Castlevania definitely makes it all the more palatable.
Also, forget Silent Hill Origins, that game was hot garbage. Atmosphere was great and all, but it had annoying difficulty spikes, it controlled horribly, and backtracking was a total chore.
Saints Row IV is great! I actually got all of the gold trophies in the challenges, but I didn't have the patience to go through and do all the other random nonsense that was required to get a platinum.
If you get around to it, Gat Outta Hell is also fantastic, so be sure to check that out too.
Saw some video of this during E3 and was kind of wishy-washy on what I saw. Figured if it was ever in the range of $5-$10 I might check it out, but definitely not at $30. I'll probably just skip it altogether now, so thanks for the heads up!
Demon's Souls is still a really solid game. Getting through the first couple levels is really the worst part of it. At the very least, once you can manage to clear out 1-1 it's a lot easier going because you can at least level up and make the game a bit easier. But yeah, that level design in Dark Souls is pretty much unparalleled.
Both DS3 and BB are great games, you'd be well-served be either. If you like Lovecraftian stuff and classic horror, I think you'd really dig BB.
A remaster of Demon's Souls would be awesome. I was desperately hoping they announced that at E3. If they do it, I hope they do a deeper remaster of the game and really get the menus and models and everything looking like they do in the newer games.
