The end or not the end, that is the question

When people ask about my job and I mention Stately Play, I can always guess their follow-up question. “Do you make any money doing that?” No one asks if writing here makes me feel good or gives me a sense of purpose or even what I’m writing about, it’s always about the money. When I tell them that, no, it doesn’t really make any money, I usually get a “good luck!” and then they walk away to talk to the more “successful” people.. The sickening takeaway: to be successful, someone/something has to make money and lots of it. Well, from that vantage point, Stately Play is a towering failure. Of course, I heartily disagree.

What the hell am I rambling on about? I got a job that pays real money and it ain’t writing about games on the internet.

So, first, the good news. I got a job! A good job doing what I used to do before I put all my eggs in the unusually fragile Slitherine basket. That is, I’ll be working as an electrical engineer doing Programmable Logic Design and making things that keep people soaring above the earth at 35,000 feet. Take a look into the cockpit when you board your next aircraft. See all those screens the pilots use to tell them which way is up? There’s a good chance some of my code is in there, making sure you don’t crash into a mountain. Scary, right? Well, I’m back doing that and I’m certain aircraft passenger numbers will tumble when word gets out.

So, all the bitching and moaning I’ve been doing here and on Twitter about being broke shouldn’t really be an issue going forward. We’re not rich, but we should have enough to keep the kids in pants and shoes free of holes. Hooray!

The second point revolves around the future of Stately Play now that I’m not spending all day thinking of ways to procrastinate writing stories for it. Don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere. This ties back into that whole “failure” thing I opened with. While Stately Play isn’t the next Kotaku, I’m damn proud of what we’ve built here. I love our community, our forums, our tournaments, and friendly games. I love the discussion and all the online friends I’ve made over the last couple years here. When writing at PT I often felt as not much more than a poor substitute for Owen and failed to enjoy the community. Not that I didn’t love PT, but I rarely contributed to the forums over there and kept mainly to myself. Stately Play is my home, and I’m not going anywhere.

That said, will the content continue to flow? Well, that’s the plan. I did write for both BGG and PT back while working full time before and I hope to continue that trend going forward. Of course, who knows what the future brings and I might find that juggling everything is a bit too much. Even if that’s the case, we’ll still be posting albeit not as much. Let’s hope that’s not the case, but we’ll have to wait and see.

So, bottom line, we’re not going away, but the number of posts might not be of the amount you (or we) are hoping for. Not much I can do about that, but I think the Stately Play crowd (and the PT crowd before it) value quality over quantity any day.

So, this week is going to be on the slow side. I’m still getting my bearings and doing too much outside of work and kids might be too big a hurdle to clear. You never know, but I wanted to warn you. In the future, however, we’ll be going strong. Also, we’re hoping that you guys keep things alive, as you always have, by keeping our forums one of the best and most civil places for game (and book, and movie, and music…) discussion on the internet.

Thank you everyone, and we’ll keep on posting!

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