Hello, I'm James Wynne. You might have seen some of my gaming related articles around the web, or maybe not: Aside from GamesBeat, The Game Fanatics, and GameZone, everywhere else I've written for has gone under or disappeared from the web altogether. It sucks, because some of my best writing is gone forever, but sh*t happens. Save more backups.
Today, I'd like to begin chronicling my attempts to become (more) internet gaming community famous, because internet famous is where all the internet money is. Originally, I had hoped to start with my first attempt: Let's Plays with Strangers. It's a fairly self explanatory concept. I invited complete strangers into my house to play Resident Evil: Revelations 2 and Bloodborne. It was…interesting. Sadly, the videos are mostly lost thanks to FedEx.
Instead, I'd like to focus on twitter DMs. You see, establishing a good rapport with your audience is crucial, yet many people trying to break into games media will have a bot send you a DM when you follow them. That's just poor etiquette, and I believe my followers deserve better, so I took to creating personalized DMs for all of my new followers. Here, take a look at some of them:
Yeah, I may have gotten a little carried away with Subject Zero….
That was the longest by far. They couldn't all be stupidly long, they just had to be unique, but somewhat connected, to meet my own personal standards for what my fans should expect. Eventually that ideal solidified into the following:
It was a brain stroke of genius, if I do say so myself, kinda like reusing assets. I've long believed in the saying "Do it right, do it light. Do it wrong, do it long" and this most definitely felt like I was doing it right. After all, it did lighten my work load and removed the need to find new ways to reward my fans.
No idea why I fixated on people wanting to chop my hands off, but I'm pretty sure it made sense logically speaking. A gamer without hands isn't much of a gamer, and unless I wanted to be some kind of sideshow curiosity, I was going to need them to become a big shot in the gaming media.
About a dozen DMs later, I realized my refinements had almost turned my personalized responses into the canned responses I had been waging war against in the first place. I guess its true that prolonged battles cause us to become the very thing we hate. After a long day of writing personalized DMs, I decided I would revisit the task fresh, and with a zeal for the original. Unfortunately, I received more unfollows than replies, and decided to scrap the initiative.
I believe I've found the error of my methods though: Looking to the past was the right idea, but grassroots campaigns are old, not oldschool. There's no nostalgia for busted old methods of trying to become popular, but there is nostalgia for busted old things that were already popular. That's why my next attempt to set myself apart from the pack is to cash in on the 90's, baby!
My new goal is to stylize future articles into faux 90's gaming magazine pages, like PSM or Nintendo Power. This time I'll become legendary for sure, so check in for some updates down the road.
