RETRO GAMING: MY PART IN ITS DOWNFALL (Patreon)

Get a load of this: I miss the retro gaming community. 

To be more specific, I miss the buzz there was in the community a few years back. It seemed to build from the point at which I launched Digitiser2000, and really peaked around the time of Digitiser The Show. I’m not saying I’m responsible – far from it – but I realise that I might’ve helped foster that excitement into existence. Digitiser The Show felt like a kind of consolidation of retro gaming, but in its wake, all that excitement seemed like it was fading away.

Admittedly, I’m writing this because I don’t know whether that’s just my perception. I’ve been at the centre of it, on the inside looking out, and so I am curious to know whether others have experienced it too. And whether they miss it as much as I do. 

I know I’ve taken a step back from retro gaming (still writing my column in Retro Gamer, mind), and Digitiser2000 is on hiatus (I think I miss the Friday Letters Page most of all), and I don’t do much on Twitter other than plug Digi and check my notifications, but it seems like something has changed. 

It doesn’t help that there has been a pandemic on, of course. This year has seen no in-person, communal retro events, Digi Live has been postponed, and everyone has seemingly retreated into their own little bubbles. Atop that, there are now so many retro streamers on Twitch and YouTube, and god knows what else, that the community has fragmented. It has lost its focus. Everyone and their uncle is a retro streamer now, and we’re all fighting for the same slice of pie. Audiences have diminished.

Plus, of course, there’s the drama, which I know has driven at least some people away. There has been a lot of it over the past couple of years. Troll accounts, people getting cancelled, dubious copyright claims, people being harassed to the point of breaking etc. etc.

And then, for me, I went through the wringer with Digitiser The Show, which caused me no end of grief, including:

• ·  One of the Digitiser The Show sponsors threatening me with legal action, because he believed he deserved more than we’d agreed upon with regarded to the branding.
• ·  One of my Digitiser The Show friends and colleagues deciding to post disparaging remarks about the Digi channel under a false name, as well as accusing me of nepotism, because I dared to feature my wife in videos. Someone who you’d think would know better. Or, at least, know enough to hide their IP address, given that I’d been to their house…
• ·  Assorted other Digitiser The Show drama that I had to sort out, which I can’t really talk about, even though I’d love to, because not talking about it makes me look like the bad guy (been there before; curse you, sense of honour!).
• ·  People who were huge Digi and Found Footage fans seemingly no longer being fans, because I did something, though gawd knows what, to upset them.

And then, atop all that, we’ve even had people in the community sadly pass away. I would never have expected it, but I was really affected the untimely, and utterly unexpected, death of Gaming Mill, perhaps because it came on top of losing some people close to me last year. 

All of the above is a big part of why I’ve struggled to finish the Digi the Show DVDs. I’ve got such a psychological blockage there, because so much to do with it turned nasty for me. I’m really struggling with it.

Taken together, all of it is why I moved away from retro gaming, even though I know there are lots of good, decent, people in the community even now. And still it goes on, even being one step removed.

This week alone I’ve been informed by a couple of people that there’s more drama in the Digi/retro community, some of it involving people I’d hoped knew better. I mean, we’re all adults, for pity’s sake! Most of us are middle-aged! It makes me feel nauseous to think that there are those who bought tickets to Digi Live who may not want to go, because there are other people there with whom they’ve had online troubles. Haven’t we all got more worthwhile things to do than make life miserable for others? Don’t we want to be better than that?! It baffles me. If somebody annoys you, why can’t you just ignore it? Why let it push your buttons? Why attack them? 

And then over the past month or so I’ve been fielding emails from an idiot, who wants to “destroy” the Digi channel. I had to fill out an online police report for malicious communications on Monday, though I’m holding off on filing it in the hope he’s gone away. 

One of my favourite song lyrics of all time is “I want to be someone that someone would want to be”. Why would anyone want to be that person? Be better.

Overall… I just don’t need it, y’know. I have enough going on in my real life already that needs dealing with. I wonder whether it’s just me who has been feeling like this, but I do know that I miss when it felt different. I miss the buzz from a few years ago, the excitement around Found Footage, and leading up to Digitiser The Show.

So, I dunno. I guess this year has been weird all round, and I’m trying to work whether what I’m feeling - this sort of drifting, lack of focus - is because of the pandemic, because I’ve changed, or because something has changed for real.

Is it just me?

Paul