Somebody comes along and writes something clever and you wish you've written it. That's what Lore Sjöberg has just done with his summary of the 7 Basic Blogpost types over at Wired.

I wanted to summarize them all, but that would be stealing too much of the meat from the thing. Someone should maintain a blog with exactly these categories.

If I had to nitpick: "Animals are cute!" should instead be part of a general "Meme" category instead of shoving those under the holy cult of ego number 7.

What's scary is that I can't read videogame blogs today without thinking it's all just "Something I like, only different!". They're reminding me of the opening scenes of Robert Altman's The Player where movies are pitched as "it's like such-and-such, only a comedy starring Bruce Willis". I was thinking exactly that when I figuratively ran over unfortunate Keen (not so unfortunate, he's doing alright *grin*) with the phrase "armchair designer".

I'm as much a culprit of these formulas creeping in to my own blog.

File the whole thing under "People are dumb!".

I'm re-re-revamping this blog back to NecroRogIcon.

My plan to fully investigate every major MMORPG never got jumpstarted. My best experiences with these games are with my close-knit group of friends. I enjoy playing a few great games rather than sampling them all.

Oh I'm bound to still throw my opinions around. ;)

I'm no longer a tight industry insider, but I still get the urge to swim in those streams now and then. Overall for this blog however, too tight of a focus just left me less inclined to write, it felt too forced and thus my updates became few and far between.

For a few weeks there, I wasn't even sure if I wanted to keep this webspace at all, it felt like it was just an old shoe that I hadn't thrown out because I'd had it forever. Plus, I've become more of a private person in recent years and I'm not always comfortable with such a public space.

But I need somewhere to vent and stream my thoughts, whether they be about Age of Conan, Tabula Rasa, or some brand of mustard that I happen to like. This is that space, so I'll relabel it appropriately as such.

MMOROG as a name also felt a bit too cult-of-me. Heh, certainly NecroRogIcon is too, but it just suits me, it's more apt.

This is an old subject, but one that I'm finding myself revisiting time and time again. Call it a desire to pigeon-hole if you like, but what category of "news" does blogging fall under?

First, let's filter out all of the personal blogs, plus take out fiction and the pure aggregators. Oh and don't forget the spam and corporate promotion blogs, skip those too. Everything we're left with is trying to be newsworthy.

There's no simple umbrella for blogged news, but I think I've got it down to three basic categories: Journalists, Pundits, or Joe Schmo with an opinion.

• Journalism needs standards. That's my opinion, one I hope is shared by the general populace. Even basic op-ed reviews need standards, you wouldn't review a movie you haven't seen, or a game you haven't played, right?
• Pundits can be listened to once and then ignored. They tend to push a rigid and repetitive stance, that's why they're pundits.
• Joe Schmo, that's the tricky one. There are both educated and uneducated opinions. Once an opinion is decently educated on the topic at hand, the lines between Joe Schmo and Journalism begin to blur.

Despite some nasty setbacks in videogame journalism, a goal of integrity should be maintained. In fact, those setbacks will probably strengthen the field. They've also opened up a hole where the bloggers can compete with the establishment.

If you've got what you think is leaked information about a game, verify it. Everyone loves a good fresh leak, don't they? But if it's not true, it's causing damage. And respect the NDAs, even if you aren't the one that signed it. In fact, this is why NDAs have become so prevalent in our industry, so many hotshot wannabe reporters can't hold their tongues when they should.

What do you care, if your pagerank goes up you're happy right? If game blogs get mired in false information, a high pagerank won't be worth much with a disenfranchised audience. Make trust the default, don't post suspect information.

Honesty and integrity before pagerank, please.

I'm currently working on converting this blog + a whole bunch of other sites to Drupal. I'm also restructuring my entire server and database setup. So far, it's a bigger task than I had imagined. You can read about my efforts if you wish on my work-in-progress blog: News @ Gameslate.

In the meantime I've been posting less here, not so much because I'm so busy, but when I've got something new on the horizon the incentive is low to add to the pile. It's mostly just an in-my-head thing, because logically I know that a couple more articles in a database of ~1000 isn't going to make much difference in the conversion process, but still it doesn't feel as productive.

I'm looking forward to this blog thriving in my new working environment. I have a few world domination plans here and there. ;)

It's been...

• 3 years since I started playing World of Warcraft.
• 9 years since I owned my first dedicated webserver.
• 10 years since I became spoiled with broadband.
• 11 years since I first played an "MMORPG".
• 13 years since I started this website / blog.
• 16 years since I began working in the videogame industry.
• 18 years since I first played a "MUD".
• 20 years since I received my first "Internet" email.
• 24 years since I owned my first computer.
• 25 years since I learned my first computer language.
• 34 years since I first played a videogame.

It seems almost unfair for me to switch from Wordpress, the plucky blogging CMS has served me so well. It's not as though it has let me down, it's just that I need something different now to fit my needs.

No, this blog isn't going anywhere and I'm not even dumping Wordpress quite yet, but I do plan on organizing all of my various content sites under a single CMS umbrella and that's just something Wordpress isn't designed for. I'd still recommend Wordpress to anyone that wants to setup a blog with very little fuss but all of the standard blogging features, it really is great software.

I'm moving to Drupal, you can read more about that on my other blog, the not-quite-as-entertaining one over at News @ Gameslate.

This will be kinda like ending a love affair. *sniff*