Blogging Diversity and Growth

Inane ramblings ahoy that probably won’t interest anyone in he slightest who isn’t involved in blogging or the meta commentary surrounding it.

I wasn’t going to weigh in on the current meta blogging topic. What would a newbie(ish) blogger really have to add to the conversation; I haven’t been around that long, I haven’t been writing that long, and to be honest I haven’t even been reading them that long. But, the conversation is still going and I just wanted to make one thing clear.. Mmo Blogging is not and will not die in the near future as there will always be a place for written commentary. As long as people are writing there will be people reading.

There are a few issues I think that are maybe giving this impression. Firstly is that some of the old cranky dinosaurs of the blogging world have been retiring in recent years, some that were part of those early communities. Many of these bloggers I’m guessing still have relatively the same collection of blogs they have read since the begging with a few additions now and then. And as some drop off the list gets steadily smaller.

When I started writing a blog and seriously reading others last year I found an absolute wealth of others out there journaling some incredibly interesting experiences and critical opinions and I’m still finding more that are both old and incredibly new. It comes in many different formats now too from vlogging and let’s plays, to picture spams on tumblr, Sooo many podcasts, and even twitter (which I really need to delve into). All it takes is some branching out from old formats, an open mind but also a decent amount of searching.

And that’s the thing, it has become a lot harder to find new blogs now than it used to be. The culture of the internet has changed from one of strong communities to a huge conglomerate of noise. There are a growing number of blogging platforms, public and private forums, official and unofficial sites so much so that it is frustration to navigate which potentially obscures those new or forgotten blogs. Then there are sites like reddit that do what we’re doing on a much larger scale, how do you make your own voice feel valuable in all that.

Not only that but I think the internet has become a bit more of a scary place for the newbie writer. It has become a culture that is a lot more critical, cynical, and antagonistic than it used to be. I’m aware that there have always been trolls and always will be trolls but with the rise in connectedness and lack of accountability it has really spurned these on to trolling heights and added a greater feeling of uncertainty to those starting out. Self promoting in this age is really quite nerve-wracking (for me anyway), it is either constant judgement or complete dismissal and both can be heart breaking.

And excuse me, I don’t know whether Rohan is trying to be satirical or not but the loss of blogs isn’t related to any sort of generation bound illiteracy, no matter how far you stretch the term. In Australia the percentage of people who have completed high school or greater is higher than it was a decade ago. If anything I think people have learnt to structure their writing better for actually human consumption rather than an academic style. I have seen a lot of garbage out there now, myself included, but I read a terrible lot of garbage on the internet in the 90s. I believe it’s more to do with the increased visibility of people’s garbage rather than any sort of decline in abilities.

The other point was how there are less and less blogs that solely focus on mmo’s, and while I do think it is due to certain changes in the genre I don’t believe it has caused mmo blogging to die. Has Syp died as a mmo blogger due to his interest in older rpg’s because that’s the opinion I’m receiving. Of course he hasn’t. MMO blogs, like his own are just becoming more diverse which I think is an incredibly good thing.

Jeromai believes the mmo genre and bloggers interests are just maturing and I would have to agree. Games that don’t just include mmo’s and the genre itself is changing to become more focused on particular playstyles and interests. So many wonderful experiences out there that it would be a shame not to have the broadest possible outlook you can.

I don’t know about you but I think it would have been incredibly boring to just have one primary game most were talking about. Now we have multiple opinions about a variety of subjects spawned on by new experiences and it is an exciting time to be a part of. The popularity of general gaming blogs has nearly always been greater than that only focused on mmo’s or a particular genre due to the wealth of experiences they have to write about so it seems limiting to restrict yourself like that. Your missing out, and your audience probably is as well.

The golden age of mmo blogging is hardly over, in fact I believe there never really was a golden age. But there is definitely a new age coming spurned on by connectivity and the growth of online media.