Oh no: I’m alive. Sorry for letting this thing languish for two years and change! I’ve been pretty busy, despite appearances. On the off chance any Analogue subscribers don’t follow me elsewhere and want, in bold defiance of their best interests, to keep up with my writing, I figured I’d provide a brief recap of my recent exploits here.
When I started Analogue in 2020, I’d never been published, and the blog functioned partially as a collection of longform samples for me to send alongside games writing pitches. (I still do this occasionally—to any editors reading this, thanks for stopping by. Toss future Cole a bone, they’re pretty good at this and could probably use the dough.) After I had a few posts under my belt, I shifted my focus first to freelancing and then to finishing grad school, an endeavor that was every bit as difficult as it was pointless. I’ve had a steady stream of work since then, though not without hiccups. Earlier this year, for instance, I got laid off three days after Elden Ring came out. I intended to carve out time in my newly freed-up schedule to write an Analogue post about Elden Ring, and then I played so much Elden Ring that by the time I finished Elden Ring everyone else had already written about Elden Ring. (Elden Ring is, by the way, the Analogue Game of the Year, unless that pick is too obvious, in which case the Analogue Game of the Year is Live a Live, unless we’re not counting remakes, in which case the Analogue Game of the Year is Norco.)
More pertinent, though, is the fact that I’ve managed to rack up a few bylines! The first was in early 2021, when I wrote a piece for Uppercut Crit about the 1997 PSX title Moon: Remix RPG Adventure. Twenty-two months out, I mostly still like it, though of course there’s plenty I’d change—if anything, I wasn’t effusive enough about Moon, which I’m convinced is one of the most important games ever made. You can buy it on most major platforms for twenty dollars. Do so!
Later that year, I pivoted to freelance film writing, which remains my primary focus. Since we’re not here to extoll the virtues of the seventh art, I won’t link everything, but you can find a list of sites I’ve contributed to on my Linktree. May that list grow longer in 2023, amen.
Re: games writing, after a long break I managed to land a couple gigs at Kotaku, the “Gamer’s Eden”. First, in October of this year, I wrote a feature charting the thematic continuum of Tetsuya Takahashi’s oeuvre, with a focus on Xenogears and his most recent project, Xenoblade Chronicles 3. It’s by far the longest thing I’ve ever written professionally, and even though I don’t think any one piece of writing will ever be enough to sufficiently decrypt Xenogears, I’m pleased with what I have. Much of the article’s ideas are spun out of the Xenoblade piece I posted here, so if you enjoyed that, you may enjoy this.
My second contribution went up just yesterday: a look back at the GBA game Sonic Advance 2, on occasion of its recent 20th anniversary. This actually began life as an Analogue post, since the game is just niche enough that I didn’t expect any outlets to show interest in a lengthy retrospective. To my surprise, the good folks at Kotaku gave me the green light, and were even gracious enough to let me keep the Hunter S. Thompson quote at the beginning. Cheers, guys.
I don’t intend to fully abandon Analogue, though it probably goes without saying that I need to budget my days more carefully now. I work full-time, and if I’m going to spend my evenings writing something, chances are I’ll shop it around first to see if I can at least get paid for it. Going forward, let’s just call this Schrödinger’s Substack. Dead, until I decide I want to post something that didn’t get picked up anywhere else. If and when I get more games writing published, I may post intermittent roundups like this one so people can get an idea of what I’ve been working on. It’s impossible not to feel presumptuous writing this, and I likely wouldn’t do so if Analogue didn’t still get multiple email subscribers per month; whoever you people are, I sincerely appreciate your interest in what I’m doing despite the brevity of the blog’s lifespan. I’ll see you when I see you, and until then, take care in the new year!