Planning for the future (Games 'n' Wrasslin')

Hey hey, folks! Hope you're well.

It's been a fair while since I've done a bit of an update post, but I wanted to quickly get one in now, especially as I'm starting to work on some pretty big things. This should cover both gaming and wrestling, and I'll get to wrestling seeing as there hasn't been much there recently -- sorry for that. But that side of things isn't over by a long chalk.

It's fair to say that over the past couple of months I've been suffering from something that wrestling fans might be a bit familiar with, that good old wrestling burnout. That's kind of the long and short of why there hasn't been anything since the Dream Slam video, really -- general frustrations with the world of wrestling in general means that I haven't actually been watching anything, and the ideas for content just haven't really been coming. Things, happily, are starting to get a bit better here, and I'm dipping my toes in again -- funnily, this seems to dovetail a bit with that old bastard finally being resigned out of his job. Odd that, isn't it? So I'm a lot more open to getting some ideas back together for wrestling videos, perhaps with a bit more of an open idea as to what I'm actually going to cover (of course, I'm always open to suggestion here). 

One other frustration when it comes to wrestling, mind, is the platform that I use for the videos. It seems as though Vimeo causes quite a few problems with some people, and some folks have reported to me that they're not able to watch the videos I post at all. This is an especially frustrating point seeing as it's a small group of folks to begin with, and then a fraction of them can't watch? Fucking pisstake, really. So far, I'm not able to find a solution here aside from the obvious one, which is to take things elsewhere...I guess that would be back to YouTube, although not on my main channel. I've got the barebones of a wrestling channel set up and should perhaps develop that further -- at least there, everyone with the link would actually be able to watch the video. I'm just sorry to the folks who have these problems with the website, and that I've not found much that's able to help with that. We shall see. But I certainly do want to keep going here...I mean, not least because it would be good to get over Jim Cornette on that list that gets posted around on Twitter, wouldn't it?

On to the world of video games and YouTube and so on, I've started work on a pretty big project -- in fact, it might be the biggest I've done yet. The subject in question is the almighty Telecomsoft, and the whole universe of companies and games that entails...why so big? Well, looking at this one in whole doesn't just necessitate looking at the obvious labels like Firebird, Silverbird and Rainbird. It's also a great deal of companies that ended up under their wing, for one reason or another -- you've got Beyond Software, Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9, Odin Computer Graphics, Argonaut, Realtime...all sizeable companies and naturally, lots of big individuals too! Mike Singleton, Julian Gollop, Anita Sinclair, Geoff Crammond...there's so much ground to cover, and it's appeared quite intimidating previously. But I think it's about time to get on with this. At present, I think that to cover the whole of the Telecomsoft Universe will take about five videos, dedicating each to these almighty companies -- I could go even further because there's entire games even aside from Elite (which I've already done) that could deserve videos entirely on their own, but that's how things stand currently. All being well, I'll have this lot done by the end of the year I reckon -- there will be other, simpler videos in the meantime, I'm sure.

Of course, there's some other wee little things going along as well -- things on Twitch have been going very nicely over the past couple of months as I've got back to a quite regular schedule, and honestly it's one of the things that I love doing the most -- I love streaming and hanging out with the folks in the community, and that's why I seem to be on there most nights now! Perhaps it'd be a bit more pressured if Twitch was the only thing I did, but as it stands I'm happy with things the way it is there.  

On the more personal level...well, things do get rocky from time to time but I think that, slowly but surely, I've got more bandwidth kicking around to do things -- not just from a working perspective, but those other things that actually better myself and what have you. It's not always easy, of course -- YouTube, and my general business, is something I take a lot of pride in. It's something I feel quite deeply in my bones, and the UK retro community as a whole is something that I want to be generally proud of representing. There are, of course, times when that becomes trickier when a whole bunch of shit hits the fan, and incidents happen that are a bit of a blot on the landscape...and yeah, you might have noticed that sort of thing's happened recently and honestly? Such events do tend to make you feel less good about this thing of ours. But in the end, I've just got to concentrate on making sure my end's doing good -- with YouTube and Twitch, with wrestling, with the work in Wireframe...and even with the prospect of a book on the horizon? Yep, that's also a thing that may well happen in the future. I guess I just have to be myself really, because who the fuck else can I be?

Anyway, hopefully you've enjoyed this free wheeling bit of updating. I'm going to try and have an off-the-cuff video out this coming week that takes a little dive around Arcade Club in Bury and the laffs I had there last week, including some of their cooler machines and thoughts on the Nerdcon event that I was part of there. As more plans come into view, I'll be sure to keep all of you informed. Things are good. :)

All the best,

-Kim