i was given the chance to work part-time at polygon in the last few weeks of 2023 to help bolster the site’s output while staff members were away on vacation. as an infrequent contributor, i was excited to work with polygon’s editors on a more regular (if ultimately finite) basis. my month there resulted in a wide variety of blogs, some i really love and some that were simply attempts at making sure polygon appeared on google when folks searched for timely topics (no judgement, of course; the terrible state of ad-based media means that websites need to do this to stay alive).

as such, here’s a quick-and-dirty ranking of everything i wrote for polygon over the holidays, with a few stray thoughts whenever i feel the urge to discuss a story more deeply. please click on the headlines if you’d like to read the actual blogs in addition to this post-mortem.

24. All the weird ways to watch the New Year’s Eve 2023 ball drop

since a lot of people would be looking up where to watch the various new year’s eve programming, this was one of those “we need to get on google” blogs. the only entry i considered weird at the time was ninja’s nye stream on twitch, youtube, and tiktok, but i didn’t choose the headline.

23. Where to find all the Spotify Wrapped-style breakdowns of your 2023 gaming habits

ditto.

22. Nintendo appears to be shutting down Wii U, 3DS online play early

21. GTA 6 trailer reportedly breaks record for YouTube views in 24 hours, blowing away competition

20. The biggest gaming controversies of 2023

i originally started writing this round-up with big, five-graf breakdowns of each controversy until i was told to be much briefer and rely on backlinks to give readers background info. thank you, editor, you saved me a lot of time.

19. Baldur’s Gate 3 patch fixes horrifying ‘Pinocchio issue’

18. Fortnite made Peter Griffin buff – the easy but boring choice

holy crap lois i’m in freakin’ fortnite hehehehehehe.

17. Cyberpunk 2077’s upcoming patch will finally add a metro system

16. Watch every sub-5-minute Super Mario Bros. speedrun at once

15. The internet is full of weird and wonderful Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer remixes

the internet = youtube but w/e that’s on me.

14. Eve Online player corp names ChatGPT its new leader

despite being one of the very first assignments i was given, this wasn’t published until weeks later due to it transforming from a “hey, isn’t this weird?” blog into a slightly more involved story with quotes from the folks involved and even eve online developer ccp games itself.

looking back, i’m a little uncomfortable with giving “artificial intelligence” any coverage outside of its failings, but i think i included enough skepticism about the technology to keep this story from being totally AI-positive. i’m also really grateful to my editors for allowing me to dig a little deeper without making me feel like i was ruining polygon (this happened frequently at another website that shall not be named).

13. ‘Almost nobody left’ of D&D team that helped get Baldur’s Gate 3 off the ground, says Larian CEO

12. Infamous Baldur’s Gate 3 anti-LGBTQ+ mod removed from Nexus Mods

i like any assignment that lets me talk shit about gaming’s biggest loser bigots.

11. When Grand Theft Auto 6 takes place: a maybe-I’m-overthinking-this investigation

this is a good example of something conceived to take advantage of hype around a topic (in this case, the newly released grand theft auto 6 trailer) that turned into a pretty fun research topic.

10. Dear Cyberpunk 2077, please let me role-play as someone with manners

09. Tekken 8 gives Kuma an attack with shocking implications

fighting game lore? sign me up.

08. Why is Cyberpunk 2077’s metro so slow? An investigation

i love anything that lets me research a topic with which i’m not intimately familiar. this story required digging into old source books for the cyberpunk tabletop roleplaying game, work i think resulted in a strong story with a slightly silly premise (my strong point, imo).

07. Super Mario World is a liar (for good reason)

this only exists so i could use one of my favorite bits from it’s always sunny in philadelphia as a headline. we cut the “sometimes,” so it doesn’t land as well, but it’s still a good blog imo.

06. PlayStation classic Alien Resurrection hides one heck of a piracy secret

i’ll take any opportunity to write about video game piracy after i was accused of trying get everyone at my old job fired my simply mentioning emulation in a draft.

05. How an old-school RPG used my assumptions about the genre against me

when they didn’t have something ready for me to write when i logged into slack, my polygon editors would ask me what i was playing for potential stories. this made me immediately anxious the first time it happened because i don’t play a ton of new games these days due to the whole not having a job thing. as tengai makyō: ziria had just gotten an english translation, i pitched a quick game diary-style blog about how it had tricked me.

they liked it, and i appreciated the opportunity to write about a pc-engine cd game.

04. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 studio to make Hunter x Hunter fighting game

i logged into slack the morning after this news broke praying that no one else had covered it. this is such an ian story, you have no idea.

03. Samurai Shodown RPG is like Final Fantasy with fighting game inputs

see: entry 05.

02. I wish it didn’t take federal crimes to see video games mid-development

this op-ed resulted in a bunch of game devs talking shit about me on twitter, with one nasty idiot in particular drawing comparisons between my writing and rape. i don’t have a twitter account anymore.

01. Pokémon come to life in National Geographic-style animations

the story itself isn’t a masterpiece, but it brought to my attention a wonderful pokémon fan creating equally wonderful videos. they even thanked me for covering their animations, which always feels good in a line of work where it’s a coin toss whether or not the subjects of your reporting will incite harassment against you for the crime of acknowledging their existence.