Happy New Year from PLAY READ WRITE

I started this blog a little over a year ago now and I've met every goal I set for myself as I wrote, and I've also achieved some secondary, but perhaps even more important milestones. I tried to write every day, or at times, more than once a day, but I thought that I was always honest with myself about the amount of work I was able to put in, and that honesty came with the recognition of what I was going to get out of it all.

What I did get out of writing this blog was my first trip to E3, my first paid writing gig, and an internship at an established games website, but I think I also got a better sense of what being a real games journalist was like. Sure, free games and an entrance to Mecca are great bonuses, but I don't think they're representative of the greater benefit my writing work has given me.

While my writing slowed down a lot over the past few weeks, mostly due to my finals schedule, my iternship, and my traveling holiday plans, I know I've done a lot of good work here and in my writing at large. Once, in a podcast, or some other piece of gaming media, someone said that in order to make it as a games journalist, one has to be a writer first and a gamer second. I think I can say that I understand what that means now. Gaming is a great hobby, one that more and more people are finding themselves accustom to, one that offers a great deal of value as an entertainment form, especially during times like these. Gaming serves as an amazing escape, but there is definitely something different between playing a game, maybe with friends, for pure enjoyment and playing a game for a review, or even a preview. Motivations aside, something just feels different. Maybe it's the knowledge that you're on a deadline, or the fact that you might not even want to play the game that makes reviewing different. Maybe the possibility of getting paid to write critically about a game you've never even heard of, trashing the terrible bits and praising parts that offer something, new, or fresh to gaming is what makes the whole experience different.

I look forward to what my further ventures in gaming journalism offer me. Of course, even as my workload is added to from as many different sources I can find, I'll keep PLAY READ WRITE in tow. I think it's time to set some more goals:

• Write four reviews of recent and holiday releases (including, but not limited to, Episodes from Liberty City [TLAD and TBOGT as a pair], Assassin's Creed II, Modern Warfare 2, etc).
• Write more original posts on topics of my own invention.
• Another 300 posts by the end of 2010 written and published.

As usual I'm leaving this list open to addition, and I'd love to hear any feedback the odd reader/passerby. If you're reading PLAY READ WRITE today or any day, please drop me a line at danielrbischoff@gmail.com, and let me know what you think!