Goodbye Destructoid! Also sloths

It has been a crazy almost-2-years.

After joining the Dtoid community in 2007, more or less a million years ago, I suddenly found myself at gamescom 2010, writing previews for the front page. By the time gamescom was over, I was notified that my cushy university teaching one-year contract wouldn't be renewed (yay economy!), and it was time to re-evaluate what I wanted to do.

Something with games? Yes! Something more interesting than spending four years on a Ph.D in educational gaming that nobody (including myself) would care about by the time it was done? Yessss! But who needs a media psychologist foreigner who does studies on mediated behavior in the games industry? Not that many studios and publishers, apparently.

Staying busy and helping out the friends I had made at the site over the years seemed as good an occupation as any, and after Nick Chester gave me the OK to write a news post about some arcane PC space strategy sim, I just never stopped doing it.

So here we are, almost 2 years later. Things have changed. The community is always changing, new trolls come and old trolls go, new staff has been brought on board, others have left, but the spirit of the site remains intact.

It's also time for me to move on.

Starting Monday June 4, I'll be Kotaku's new European Editor of lol no. Maybe PR Manager for the Ghost Recon franchise at Ubisoft!? Nope it's not that either...

Sadly, I can't disclose exactly where I'll be going, yet, but two days is not that long of a wait. Keep an eye on Twitter if you are interested ;)



I want to thank Niero and Nick for giving me a shot, as well as the other staff that has made the site what it is today. Without you, I would never have bothered to become part of the community, and certainly never would've wanted to become an editor. Thank you for all the effort you have put into the site to date, and for keeping the balance between ridiculous stories and tl;dr journalisms.

To Jim, Conrad, Jordan, Joseph, Jross, and Dale: Days devoid of news and reviews were always better with you around in our "virtual office." Never stop.

To Tony and Holmes: Thanks for being Nintendo fanboys, or at least for being guys who are insanely passionate for things I could never care less about. I don't think we ever agreed on anything related to games or the benefits of HD, but it was always refreshing to see another perspective <3

To our volunteer reviewers: Over the past year or so, we've worked on expanding reviews for whatever we could do. Now we have reviews for things like Paradox games, weird indie stuff, space sims, PSP Minis, eShop games, and things we normally would never have been able to humanly cover. It has been a blast working with you, and I'm proud of the progress we've made as a group, as well as the individual progress you have made as writers. Now that I won't be managing you guys anymore, please make Jim's life a living hell for his Alpha Protocol review.

To the proofing team: Thanks for your patience :)

To everyone else, from contributors to Twitch.tv hosts: You know you're awesome. Keep rocking it.



But most of all, to our community: Thanks for existing. Whatever people may say about "online friends," I can't think of any other gaming community where you can talk shit about games on the Internet, and then meet each other for the first time at PAX to continue talking shit about game as if it's the most natural thing in the world. There's something special about the way Dtoiders come from all corners of the world and all walks of life, yet share this one passion that makes us equal whenever we meet at an event or a NARP.

My only regret of the past years is that the more time I invested into writing for the frontpage, the less time I had left to interact with the community. IRC was always open, but the window would all too easily get buried beneath other windows of the perpetual 10+ things left to do. Likewise, it became harder and harder to keep up with the Cblogs. Between writing on the Cblogs and writing as an editor, I've never felt a big difference between the two, other than having higher standards to adhere to and having actual deadlines. Living in a European timezone never made L4D sessions with Dtoiders easy to start with, but the busier I became, the less I found myself doing anything with the community anymore, and that's the biggest drawback I have encountered as time progressed.

Looking back, everything I ever did for the site was simply a matter of A) helping out where help was needed or B) doing what makes sense to do. The reasoning was always "Go back to bed if you're sick, we'll take care of it" instead of "Oh boy what a great chance to show off my skills at journalizm!" It doesn't take a special person to do that, at all, but it takes a special place to make a person invest himself into a site and its people, and I'm proud to have been part of such a place.

The level of shared passion for the best hobby in the world is beyond amazing, and that's something that's evident not just in our community, but in our staff as well. Destructoid has always felt like a second family, sometimes even coming close to becoming a first one, and things like gender, job titles, race, or sexual orientation have never mattered one bit here. Also, you are all damn sexy people.


Bonus sloth!

So thanks for having me, taking the time to read my stuff, posting comments whether you agreed with something or not, and until we meet again!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to cover as much as I can <3