Goodbye, USgamer Readers! (And You Can Thank Me for Not Writing "Thanks for All the Fish")
I have to go now. My planet needs me.
This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.
You might have already heard the news from Twitter, our flagship podcast, or my personal biweekly newsletter, and I'm afraid it's true: After today, I'll be leaving USgamer to start a new-but-similar gig at the website, Fandom.
If you're concerned about the future of Retronauts, rest assured that I'll still be working on the show, though obviously not posting my episodes directly to USgamer. And hey, I'll try to squeeze in an appearance here and there on Axe of the Blood God, too. After all, what are we if not for our brands? You can't expect me to go from "podcast guy" to "guy who used to podcast—" that would just be weird.
Now that's out of the way, I'd like to make this goodbye post a little less self-indulgent by underlining how spoiled rotten I've been here at USgamer. One of the reasons I'm leaving can be chalked up to the fact that I've already achieved all of my goals (for now) as a long form features writer, which few people of my profession have the luxury of saying. When I moved out to the Bay Area to work for the now-defunct 1UP.com in 2011, I showed up with a headful of ambitious ideas, and though its sudden destruction cut some of my plans short, three years of writing for USgamer have basically allowed me to do everything I've wanted to do. So, thanks for helping me achieve all my dreams, you bastards.
Looking at the 500-plus articles I've written over the past three years, I have to say I've certainly gotten away with murder here at USgamer. I embedded myself at Summer Games Done Quick, participated in a weekend-long game jam, and interviewed Ron Gilbert for hours about his decades-long career. I found out the story behind Final Fantasy X's infamous laughing scene (you know the one), why Phoenix Wright is called Phoenix Wright, and had an incredibly rare opportunity to interview Nintendo composer Koji Kondo. Most importantly, I had the chance to bang out what I hope is the definitive oral history of Day of the Tentacle, until someone else comes along and asks a bunch of better questions.
Of course, I'm not only going to miss the degree of freedom I had here at USgamer; I'm also going to miss the people. This site has always felt like 1UP 2.0 to me, and not because half of it is comprised of people who used to work for said website. Again, I'm incredibly spoiled to work with a group generally on the same page about everything, and always willing to push themselves to do better. Even if I won't be writing here any longer, you can be sure I'll remain a regular reader, simply because you really can't find USgamer's content or perspective anywhere else on the Internet.
In closing, I'd like to back out of this gracefully by thanking all of you with sticking with me over the years. Hopefully, you'll check my work out at the new gig, and still keep up with USgamer, because it's not going anywhere. I promise to keep doing the only thing I know how to do if you keep staying interested. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me!
