025: We Came. We Saw. We Command & Conquered.
Hullo.
Oddly big week, for a bunch of reasons. That you're not getting a joke first line probably says that. Details of it some herein.
Contents!
We Came. We Saw. We Command & Conquered
C2E2? Is that an astromech?
Spangliness?
Links
Byeeeeeeeeeee!
****
So, Jim, John, Alec and myself sold Rock Paper Shotgun to The Gamer Network.
I suspect everyone reading this is going to have one of three responses.
What do any of these words mean?
Wait – Kieron was a co-owner of Rock Paper Shotgun?
Oh, end of an era. And that Deus Ex review, eh? That was great.
(The second and third one would have a subsection of “Wait – RPS wasn't already owned by the Gamer Network?” No, they handled our ads and owned a minority share as part of that deal.)
My writer prehistory is that I used to be a journalist and a critic. I started writing professionally back in 1995, and between 1998 and 2010 I suspect the only time longer than 3 days that I didn't write criticism in some form was the two weeks I spent in hospital being menaced by my mutant exploding organ power.
Which is another story.
The majority of what I did was games journalism. I have written for everyone, from Wired and the Guardian to PC Gamer and Eurogamer. By 2007, I was aware I was on the way out. I was doing math on how little money I had to earn so I could spend all my effort in comics (which would have paid nothing). I felt that I'd basically done everything in the form. Hell, I got the line “Edge is feeling a little peckish” into Edge, which is basically as good as anything it gets.
At which point, my then flatmate Jim Rossignol said he wanted to do a PC Games website. There was no decent purist PC Games site in existence then. The early Internet ones had all gone multiformat, which meant huge chunks of games were being uncovered (plus, they had an ads budget too). There was space to make a business we owned.
I growled. I felt I was out the door. But Jim had successfully Just One Job-ed me.
So instead of just doing comics for no money, I did games journalism for no money, alongside my day job, which was mainly games journalism for money. I was writing more games journalism than I suspect any human should do. Jim and I were joined by John Walker and Alec Meer, long time friends and PC games journalists.
I took it seriously from the start, but it took me a surprisingly long time to actually realise why I had done it. It wasn't just altruism or some messiah complex bullshit. There was one thing I hadn't done in my career.
I'd never launched a magazine.
Rock Paper Shotgun was an embodiment of our view of games criticism, and what it could be. We were very lucky with our timing. Two years later and PC Gamer had their online act together and made their website sing, for starters. Plus, we were positioned at the start of the Indie Wave that was coming in, and more often than not we were their first cheerleaders (You would not believe how much we wrote about World of Goo). Our philosophy, as much as we had one in the early days, was the mainstream sites were hopelessly anodyne and the underground sites were hopelessly cynical. If there was a magnetic north, it was about a love for the art form and trying to share that. I hope that came across.
We called in many favours, from contacts we'd gained over the year, to server space... but basically we launched the site with a budget of zero. We made a business out of air, ideas and good-will.
By 2010, we'd gone from doing it for free, to making enough money to support the staff full time. I left at this point, having felt that stabilizing it so that it could exist indefinitely was a good sign off point. In a real way, those three years were my years on Amiga Power – which, for those who aren't as old and British as I am, is my way of saying “Those were my three years in the Beatles.” I thought that part of my career was over in 2007, when in fact everything else was prologue.
I've been involved mainly in a silent partner way since then, and my input is primarily saying “whatever makes you and the staff happiest and successful.” The sale comes, as explained in the link, from realising that RPS doesn't have the resources it needs to go where it needs to go next. So it was sold.
I was having an interview last week, with a woman who had freelanced on the site, and had no idea that I was involved. It made me happy. RPS is far from perfect, but the idea that I was part of the foundations of a machine that paid full time staff and freelancers better-than-almost-everyone rates for doing imaginative, funny, critical and personal work is an amazing thing to have as a legacy. Having created exactly the sort of organ we wanted to see in the world, a stage for other people to play on. It had an existence entirely separate to mine.
This is a site, in its early days, was dismissively (but very amusingly) described by a rival publisher as “Kieron Gillen's Blog.” Now my involvement is just an historical anecdote for those who care about such things. That's wonderful.
I still move in games circles in London and always play up the old man of games journalism routine. As such, I take great joy in being even more obsolete than I was in the beginning of the week. I will continue to accept drinks form people who really liked my Deus Ex review back in 2000. I'm sensible.
As the “we lived off good will” suggests, there's so many people I should say thanks to, but let's keep it tight. Thanks, Jim, Alec and John. It was hell and I love you.
****
C2E2 was lovely. I don't think we've ever had as seamless an experience at a US con. It was almost like we were professional. I stress, almost – our banner broke, and we were next to Jen Bartell (In terms of table lay out, we are basically like neolithic Britons and she is Rome in all its splendour).
But it went well, in a stripped down way. All we did was panels, lunch and signing, consistently for any time we were at our table. Often the line was capped off before we'd even started, which is what seems to happen when you have a successful book and rarely do US cons.
In short, people were lovely. Here's one shot of cosplay I put on my instagram...
...but there was a bunch more too, which I'll try to sort out.
We also threw a party, where I totally failed to play Man, I Feel Like A Woman, and that was my sole aim.
(I lie. My sole aim, as always, is to make people dance. I am very dance floor slutty.)
****
Finally got around to dropping a mail to the publisher who I'm hoping will put out SPANGLY NEW THING where I describe SPANGLY NEW THING and they went “This sounds great” which is normally publisher for “Yeah, let's publish it” so I presume it has a home now. I need to move on the heavy lifting on that shortly, shall we say, but there's one last big thing I have to write before hitting it.
(Which will be done in a single draft all tomorrow. Expect pure Id.)
Relevantly to SPANGLY NEW THING, at C2E2 I did my first more free-wheeling interviews in a long time. Or at least, my first free-wheeling interviews in English for a long time. One of the downloads has been transcribes, and includes quite a few hints about SPANGLY NEW THING. Here's a quote...
“I’ve said in a few interviews that I’m working on my next big, spangly thing. It’s a very literary high fantasy. It’s very grown up. I say grown up as a very loaded term because high fantasy is trashy in many ways. But I want to dig into some bigger themes and see what I can do with the genre. That hate fuck, that passion I have for fantasy means something.”
****
I contributed to this article about the 9 panel grid, as I CANNOT CONTAIN MY LOVE OF NINE PANEL GRID CHAT.
The Screaming Citadel is looming, which means press. Marvel interviews me about why Luke should (and shouldn't) trust Doctor Aphra. Somehow we made this longer than one line which said “He clearly shouldn't. She's Doctor Aphra.”
Dan Berry interviewed me in Stafford for the opening of charity the House Of Bread's comics Library. Here's his recording. I haven't listened but I suspect I was way to open. I am very much in the TMI stage of my career, a stage I have been in for approximately the last 39 years.
I've been following this IndieGoGo closely, as it's a documentary of Poly Styrene. It's not quite fully funded, and they've extended it for a while so more people can donate, though it's worth noting that it's a flexible goal so it's not 100% required to hit the goal. It would just clearly help. And when it's a documentary about one of the few figures in punk who I think would still be radical if she stepped on stage as a teenager today, I think it's essential. Most documentaries like this are about nostalgia. I think Poly Styrene is as relevant and inspirational today as ever. Honestly, go listen to some X-Ray Spex. Oh Bondage Up Yours is the ever-inspiring petrifying and invigorating calling card, but Identity has been on every X-men related playlist I've made.
****
Right. I have to do some hipsterhammer stuff or else I blow my deadline. Byeeeeeeeeeee!
Kieron Gillen
London
3.5.2017