No Broom Required Is My Famicase Game Of The Year 2022
Yeah, it’s been a while since my last real deal blog post. Though I’ll have to keep this one fairly short & sweet & thus stick with the subject at hand.
Though looking back at my previous picks for the best Famicases from their respective years, I also provided a quick life update, so here’s the latest: remember how this time last year, I had just graduated grad school and got a Masters in Library and Information Sciences?
Well, the plan was to get an archivist gig, but those are kinda hard to come by in NYC, so instead I got a librarian gig. Turns out, having a background like I do (i.e. video games) along with other semi-adjacent interests (including manga, anime, and internet lol) made me somewhat the perfect candidate for youth services.
So I am now a young adult librarian for Brooklyn Public Library. A role that has kept me super busy! Hence why there things have been quiet on the Attract Mode front, but there’s other reasons as well… but back to the past few Famicase round-ups; remember how I also stated how the whole thing was starting to feel a bit, I dunno, formulaic?
Whereas in the past two years, only 25 carts caught my eye, for the 2022 edition of My Famicase Exhibition, there’s 30. And that’s an improvement I guess? Granted, this year’s offerings is still rife with formulas and tropes. But as previously stated, it’s been now 27 years, those are just unavoidable. Which is why I haven’t bothered trying to keep similar offers separated and instead have kinda/sorta paired them up…
… BTW/FYI, coming in at a very close runner-up to the cart at the very top is the one below, mostly cuz the “FamiIdea automatically generates endless lists of incredible game concepts for your Famicase submission, Immediately removing your creative block!”
So I was going to save this for later, but may as well answer the question: what exactly is going on with Attract Mode these days? Well, in a few weeks will be the 10th anniversary of Attract Mode version 2.0 (yeah, can’t believe how the time has flown by as well). And a LOT has happened since then, and as I’ve already been doing in a rather haphazard fashion (trust me, it has NOT been by choice), I will mark the occasion by highlighting past accomplishments, but the bad stuff needs to be mentioned as well.
August 2012 saw the relaunch of Attract Mode; the database for version 1.0 of the site had crashed and burned, so the blog was rebuilt from the ground-up in WordPress, plus the store was handed off to our new fulfillment partner Fangamer. Also it was no longer just Attract Mode but the Attract Mode Collective, and it was no longer just the Adam and Matt show; several other individuals were part of the gang, each with posting privileges. Hence the decision to ditch WordPress for Tumblr in February 2015.
It was the hot blogging platform at the time, seemingly everyone had an account, plus it was easier to use compared to WordPress, so we figured would help convince everyone else to join in. Which alas didn’t really happen; many chose to simply pass on blogging, which was fine, and eventually it was just the two of us again, like originally (when it came to the website; the true highlight of that period was all the amazing collaborators we made, for all the new merch and art shows). Yet then came a bunch of nonsense, largely stemming from a change in ownership & resulting changes, that many longtime Tumblr user is still very much upset over, thus the realization that Attract Mode’s days on the platform was numbered.
Hence the decision in July 2017 to move over to Medium, aka Attract Mode version 3.0, but for a host of reasons, that too has not worked out so well. There were talks of returning to WordPress, but more pressing matters took a priority, which to varying degrees are related to the changes in the marketplace that led to the end of the art shows, along with the closure of the shop (we tried to do a 2.0 of that as well, but to little success). Eventually Adam had to step away, and it’s been all me for the past few years. And with my hands so full, I only really have the time for the Twitter account, which for better or worse, is where all the action is anyway.
Back to Tumblr; some might have noticed that attractmo.de, and to that extent blog.attractmo.de, no loner works. Which means all the 2.0 blog posts… the ones that I haven’t gotten a chance to archive on Medium (I also began another, this time chronological archive over at my own personal website, fort90.com) no longe works… but that’s not really the case. Just take every URL and replace blog.attractmo.de with attract-mode-collective.tumblr.com. Example: https://blog.attractmo.de/post/622145693316972544/so-about-that-pac-man-championship-edition no longer works, but just change the first part, so it’s https://attract-mode-collective.tumblr.com/post/622145693316972544/so-about-that-pac-man-championship-edition
Again, am not the biggest fan of Medium, but at least its infrastructure allows for a relatively easy means of republishing Twitter content. But alongside being busy af and the total lack of customization with this platform (which is my primary gripe, and I know stuff like the look & feel of a blog are basically things of the past, thanks to other kinds of changes in the marketplace, but complaining about it is how I prefer to show my age) is the belief that it won’t last forever and go the way of Tumblr as well. Which is why I am also archiving content in a second spot; my blog no longer has discoverability (thanks Google) but at least its mine, I have total ownership, relatively speaking.
As for new posts… that’ll happen, soon. I hope. Till then, again, there’s Attract Mode version 2.9.
