Welcome to our weekly feature, “Question Of The Week.” As you can tell from that entirely original title each week we pose a question to our panel and they chime in with their opinions. No one sees one another’s responses until the story is posted, so each contributors thoughts are their own. Responses are posted in no particular order.
And remember, as with all editorials, the views expressed in this editorial are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Cliqist.com.
The question of the week for the week of 8/31/14 is :
What’s your favorite Cliqist article from the past year?
[divider]Marcus Estrada
One thing I love about writing about Cliqist is that everyone on the team is a skilled writer who produces content that is both fun to read and entirely unique! Over the past year a great many articles have caught my eye, but here are two of the more recent ones that I’d particularly love to highlight. First is the Tex Murphy Retrospective by Mitchell “Moe” Long. Such a comprehensive article obviously took a lot of work (aka playing every single game in the series!) to properly prepare for the Kickstarted sequel. Delving that deep likely helped show prospective players of Tesla Effect that it might be worth exploring the past games too.
The other article which will likely stick on my favorites list for a long time is Representation Matters: Trans*women by Charlotte “Charlie” Humphries. As gaming fans, we regularly hear (and may even speak up ourselves) about the need for more women in the role of video game protagonists. However, to many, that concept of woman is specified to a specific type – one that improperly excludes transgender individuals. As we work toward equality in our gaming protagonists, we should be sure that when we suggest more women we do mean ALL women!
To read more of Marcus’ work click here. To learn more about them check out our About Us page.
[divider]Nathaniel Liles
My two favorite articles to write were “5 Kickstarter Games That Failed While You Were Backing Potato Salad” and “Are Free-to-Play Games “Crowdfunded”?“, but they’re definitely not the best articles of the last year. It’s impossible to choose those. I mean, there’s Julie’s awesome comic, our great coverage of GaymerX2, articles about horse sex, articles about scamming Bronies, articles about the OUYA (pure comedy)… Our whole website is the best article of last year. Boom. Question answered.
To read more of Nathaniels’ work click here. To learn more about them check out our About Us page.
[divider]Brad Jones
My pick would be the relatively recent interview with ‘Kickstarter Video Game Cop‘ Ahmad Khan — unique, incisive and very engaging. Who would have thought that crowdfunded video games would grow to the point that a vigilante, Chris Hansen-type such as Ahmad would rear his head? A really great statement of Cliqists’ ability to cover the culture surrounding crowdfunding, as well as what it produces.
To read more of Brads’ work click here. To learn more about them check out our About Us page.
[divider]Mitchell “Moe” Long
Picking my favorite Cliqist article from the past year (has it really been a year? Is this…is this a weekend?) was a rather difficult task. What with the quality and quantity of reviews, news, and updates that have amassed themselves on the site, my options were plentiful. Variables assaulted me from each angle until, from the fog of 2 AM it hit me: “Wasteland 2 Goes To Prison.” Having initially read the article way back on August 29th of 2013, I remember thinking “this sounds like a pretty awesome game. I may have to pick up a copy.” Several months later, having completely forgotten my initial reaction to the post, I actually received the game: to review on Cliqist. Moreover, as the inaugural Cliqist article, it was the natural choice for favorite article. Greg forayed into the world of online game coverage with that fateful write-up. Without “Wasteland 2 Goes To Prison,” we wouldn’t be celebrating our anniversary.
To read more of Moes’ work click here. To learn more about them check out our About Us page.
[divider]Ahmad Khan
I am a new comer to the Cliqist squad to I will focus on the story that change my impression of Cliqst from being a generic indie-game pre/review site to an actual video game journalism portal. Yes, I am talking about the article investigating the Dark Skyes Kickstarter. Even though Dark Skyes was a small project (around 7K funding goal), the methodical approach taken by the folks at Cliqist to get to the bottom of that bizarre and malicious mess was beyond impressive. Personally as a backer I appreciate the time and effort Cliqist puts in educating backers regarding both the good and bad that comes with crowdfunding indie games.
Ahmad is currently a guest contributor at Cliqist. You can read the rest of his work here.
[divider]Greg Micek
I’m going to cheat a bit and name a few, mostly because I had trouble narrowing the choices down to a single selection. In no particular order they are:
5 Kickstarter Games That Failed While You Were Backing Potato Salad. Title lengths be damned, this was a great read for me because it balanced anger and a legitimate desire to show people the right path all in one. We really try and steer away from the “angry gamer” schtick here, and Nathaniel did a great job of balancing it. It was also great because it accomplished the core mission of Cliqist: shining a light on crowdfunding campaigns that may have fallen through the cracks.
Night Trap ReVamped is in Need of Help. A like this for reasons similar to the previous choice. Marcus could have approached the article very sarcastically and with anger, especially since he’s a fan seeing a project he really wanted to see succeed fail right before his eyes must have been frustrating. It also showed a level of crowdfunding expertise that you can’t fake, something that our entire staff continues to improve on with every piece.
Virtual Russian Roulette Absolutely Terrified Me in Gods Will Be Watching. I always gets nervous when we post an article that isn’t directly crowdfunding related. Sure, Gods Will Be Watching is a crowdfunded game; but this article could have appeared on any other site. It didn’t though, it appeared here on Cliqist. Writing several hundred words on a single scene in a game while capturing the overall feeling of the game isn’t something you see very often in games writing; but Marcus did it perfectly. It didn’t come across as forced, overly artsy, or dull; it was just a friend telling me a story about a game he played.
If I may cheat a bit more, I’ll toss in one my own that was fun to write. Growing Up With Brian Colin isn’t about crowdfunded games, it isn’t particularly well written, and its overly long. However, I remember starting it at about midnight one evening and finishing at 4am. It was all free writing with almost no editing, and was just a stream of past memories. A lot of dust in the room that night.
To read more of Gregs’ work click here. To learn more about them check out our About Us page.
[divider]Have a question you’d like our panel to answer? Post it below, or email greg@cliqist.com with your toughest crowdfunding questions! If you’d like to check out some of our previous Questions Of The Week., then go right ahead!
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