2017 not in review

If you were looking for the next installment of my award winning series, well, you're going to be disappointed. There are two reasons for this, one bad and one worse which I'm about to rant about. Suffice to say that my 2017 wasn't as awesome as I'd have liked.

I started the year intentionally unemployed. This has its ups and downs. Fast forward to a mercifully short interview cycle and I left my state-subsidized health insurance and retook my place amongst the gainfully employed. This also has had its ups and downs, though mostly up, save for working a millionty-billion overtime hours. For those wondering, this also contributes to this last year's miserable post count.

I make it a point to not talk about where I work, partly because of NDAs/confidentiality and because it's not usually pertinent to what I'm writing. I've been making games professionally for a long time and have a lot to say about their construction. I've also been playing games for a much longer time and have a lot to say about their consumption.

Many bemoan the state of the gaming press on a regular basis as if that'll fix it. For my part, I'd much rather give examples of what I'd like to see than just wax ineloquent about how bad it might be. So when you look at one of my big write ups, that's what it is: me organizing my thoughts about a thing I spent a lot of time as an expert witness with experience on both sides. I hope it is abundantly obvious that all things said here are my opinion, nothing more and nothing less. In fact, I often note this just in case it isn't clear. On my personal blog. Like a lot of people do.

My new employer has a very specific policy regarding social media of which these un-hallowed grounds are an example. "Thou shalt not, under any circumstances, speak/write/blether about anything within the scope of our business about which our competitors might soever doeth such that we, the employer, might be liable to some greater government function such as the FTC or whatever department draweth the short stick of concern, so sayeth Ye Olde Employment Agreement™, amen." Or something like that.

If you asked, I'd probably agree that thiny-veiled advertisements and corporately sponsored smear campaigns against competitors are pretty awful (curated streaming being a sketchy area). That said, I don't think that anyone with enough brain cells to rub together would have any difficulty determining that the crap written here isn't that. And if that's not the case, then I'm pretty sure humanity is Double-Dog Doomed™.

This is a stupid policy (that's an opinion), one argued from a position of fear and insecurity. In layman-ese, it means I can't talk about games here, which is dumb (also opinion). Games are probably the only thing I'm qualified to talk about with any authority and I have a lot to say about the stuff I played this year (Skyrim, my first Bethesda game, Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas) but about which I've put only these words to page. That's why this post is a rant instead of what I'd rather be writing.

I will probably still write up my thoughts though they'll molder with the other dozen-ish pieces I'm still putting together--editing is a bitch, yo. Some day the policy will change because it's stupid (more opinion) or because I've moved on, in no small part because of this ridiculousness (that one's fact).

So for the poor chumps from legal or HR or whomever it is who draws the short stick to police this crap (and yes, I know you do), tell your superiors that it's dumb to give people more reasons to leave your employ--I have enough of them already.

Oh, and in case it wasn't obvious:  all the writings herein are the opinions of the author only.

2019 edit:  I don't work there anymore, so a year and change out, here ya go.