DAW2016 Coming Soon

DAW2016 Coming Soon

One of the truths of the gamer blogger community that you will realize if you hang around for very long, is that we really like having events.  There is the Newbie Blogger Initiative that runs during may, and for some reason a few years back I started Blaugust or at least popularized it.  Another one of these events that has happened on a yearly basis is the “Developer Appreciation Week”.  As far as I can tell the practice was envisioned by the blogger formerly known as Scarybooster.  Back in 2010 he envisioned a week where bloggers posted one or many posts talking about the developers, companies and folks in the games industry that we really appreciate.  Unfortunately the Scarybooster blog has been deleted for some time, so the early posts announcing this event are also gone with it.  Thankfully through the magic of the internet archive you can still see some of those first posts.  With the absence of a Scarybooster blogging presence, the week itself also was a little forgotten this year.  Traditionally this happens during the last year of March, and since that seemed to be a crazy time for a lot of us… I suggested we simply reschedule the week for the tail end of April.  The theory there is that all of this blogging excitement just might also drum up some excitement for the Newbie Blogger Initiative that will be happening in some form during the month of May.

The concept is simple.  During the week of April 24th through April 30th, make one or more posts talking about your love and or appreciation of someone or some group from the games industry responsible for making those games that we love.  The concept however is important.  The good folks in the games industry enter it because they love video games, and often times have a life long goal of ending up there.  The industry itself is a really rough one, and we can all see how caustic the communities can be when they turn against a game or an individual.  This has been all the more evident in the last few years with the various “crusades” against this or that that have cycled through the gaming world.  I think it is important that we set aside this week to lower our pitchforks, and set down our causes…  and marvel in the reality that these folks do for a living what many of us wish that we could.  The folks that make are games are not huge monolithic corporations that poop out games… they are folks that had a dream and are fighting really hard to see that dream realized.  I maybe have a slightly different spin on things since over the years I have had a lot of friends join the industry… and many of them leave after a few years because it is honestly a largely unappreciated one.  It is time for us bloggers to step in and show them some of the love we feel deep down in our hearts beneath the rants and the criticism.

So I ask you all to join me in Developer Appreciation Week.  Lets continue this tradition that Scarybooster started long ago.  Lets tell all those folks in the industry that we still care, even though we often times have some very serious complaints.  At this point I am not sure yet if I will be posting something related to DAW 2016 every day of the week, but even if you only make a single post… it will be appreciated.  For those wondering what others have written in the past, I happened to be doing the Blog Bonanza at MMOGames this time last year and wrote up a summary post of the various things folks said during the week.  Unfortunately #DAW2016 and every other combination of hashtag I could think of is being used by Dyslexia and Dementia and several other causes…  so what really matters I guess is the blog posts.

 

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