I’m happy to announce the launch of my blog Jots on Dots: Thoughts on Digital Games. In order to explain what the blog is about and what I hope to accomplish with it, I’ll just quote the mission statement from the site’s About page:

Purpose

Jots on Dots: Thoughts on Digital Games is a blog that seeks to offer two solutions to problems I have: one, I’d like to write about games more; and two, I’d like to see small games written about more.

There are a handful of great sites that regularly recommend (mostly) new free and indie game releases (including some personal favorites like Warp Door, hmtwvcicbid, and FreeIndieGa.me), which tend to follow the freeindiegam.es model of zero or minimal commentary. I love this work and it’s supremely valuable. These sites also post a much higher volume of games than I will be able to here.

But we are in an age where there are thousands of games released every month–tens of thousands every year!–and hardly anything gets written about any of them, save for pre-relese hype and at-release reviews for the work of larger studios and a handful of celebrity indies. As a person who values criticism and scholarship, this dearth of discussion pains me a bit. You see responses on feedback store pages and creators’ websites, but these tend to be either written primarily for the benefit of the game creator or at as a sort of advertisement to the potential customer. Feedback isn’t really commentary. There are a lot of great, small games out there in the world and I want to do my small purpose to give them the consideration I believe they are worthy of.¹

Here, I’m looking to write short reflections and essays (we’ll use the sloppy term “review”) that seek to work out in words what I think these games offer. Yes, I want to recommend games I enjoy, but I also want to do a kind of work on these games to expand their seen-ness, including indie games from previous years, many of which risk getting lost to time completely as they sink further and further into the back catalog of indie game portals.

Scope

I’m not limiting myself to new releases. Nor am I necessarily limiting myself to indie games. Expect to see some write-ups of old DOS games, vintage indies, and the occasional big-name game I’ve been playing lately. I’m sensitive to the fact that small, free games especially tend to be labors of love by individuals, so I don’t expect you’ll see much negativity here.

I’m a game-maker myself (see Whatnot Games). I’m also a scholar of Japanese literature and popular culture. The games you’ll see written about here will reflect my intensely personal tastes (and may reflect whatever games I’m playing to research current projects). I’m also looking to introduce small, interesting Japanese games that will be accessible to people who don’t know Japanese.