From The Editor: And So Dawns Year Two
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Today is June 1st, in case you didn't already know. However, something you might not know is that a year ago today, we launched a wonderful website called Start 2 Continue and we've come along way since then. Starting as three friends who wanted to turn their passions for writing, web development, and gaming into a career, we've grown to include a contributing team of roughly 18 volunteer video producers, editors, broadcasters, and community administrators. More impressively, we've built a community of gamers that boasts over 200 members on Steam and our Teamspeak server remains within the top 10% of active servers. And this is just the beginning, friends.
We've had the opportunity to learn a lot within our first year (a topic I plan to elaborate on in my own personal blog), namely how hard it is to start a business at all, let alone try to build a website within the video game industry. With so much competition and a saturated marketplace, we strive to distinguish ourselves from the masses as a website and community that's worth knowing about: a news source you can trust and a group of people to play games. However, that's a pretty broad goal. What makes us different from Kotaku or PC Gamer or Polygon?
The aforementioned websites started as publications that belong to larger media networks (Gawker, Future Publishing, and Vox Media, respectively) that have been established for a number of years now. They have money, manpower, connections--three resources a grassroots website such as ours just simply cannot compete with. When we publish news articles, there's a good chance you've probably already read about it through one of the big guys. And that's alright. After all, who's a developer going to talk to: a website that boasts hundreds of thousands of views a day or ours that gets now a little over 13,000 views in a given month? In fact, in one instance when we attempted to reach out to a developer (that started like us: a group of friends with a shared passion for gaming and mods), we were told that we simply weren't worth the time as we didn't have the necessary traffic to be worthwhile.
That isn't to say we think you should stop following us or that we're bitter or envious of the big boys. In fact, it's the hardship of trying to start up with almost literally nothing--no previous contacts, money, or people who can afford to spend time on a project that can't promise paying them back any time soon--that has shaped us into a website that, in its tier, is rapidly growing.
With almost no budget for marketing, we've still managed to cultivate a monthly following of 10,000 unique viewers. And where we lack connections to break major news quickly, we've reached out to independent developers and started advocating their progress and try to spread the word on awesome new games you might not have even heard of, games that the larger companies might look down upon because the studio is "too small" or "not known well enough."
We've made it our personal mission to put passion over competition, that our combined appreciation for video games and camaraderie as a community (within and without Start 2 Continue) is what we will champion. Traffic is important, sure, but so is quality material for you to read and enjoy. After all, who wants to sit and read a regurgitated press release about Call of Duty 15 instead of a new game being funded on Kickstarter that puts some mainstream FPS games to shame? Not that there is one--at least, not that I know about--but hey, you get my point.
As an individual, I believe in mutual respect; I believe that the connections we share with other people, whether it be online or offline, through business or play, family or friends, are all important to making life good. Independent developers do not exist solely to sell games (at least, I'd hope not). These are artists who are seeking to express themselves and the stories they wish to share with the world, carving their own way in an industry that, until recently, has been extremely difficult to break out into. Perhaps your passion does not lie in the creation of video games or anything related to gaming at all, but everyone has something that consumes them, that calls to them at an almost primal level. Though personally, I don't believe in destiny (on most days), everyone has something to bring to the table, to make the world a better place in their own way.
For many of us gamers, our diversion is a sense of escape. A lot of us look to gaming to connect with others online when connecting with others locally just doesn't seem to bode well. In my case, gaming was my way to deal with depression I've experienced most of my life; it was a way convince myself that I wasn't a waste or as useless as I was made to believe growing up. How nice would it be, after all, to find people like you who just want to live their lives and find other people to enjoy it with? A lot of us say how we have gamer buddies that, if you hung out "in real life," you'd make great friends. However, I'm here to say that just because electronics and headsets might be the only means to communicate for the vast majority of us, that isn't to say the relationships and friendships you forge mean any less.
With all of that said, we hope that you continue to support Start 2 Continue in our endeavors to bring the gaming community a little closer on all levels: to help indie developers get their names on the board or provide jobs for aspiring video game journalists, streamers, and video editors. And if gaming is simply a hobby or a pass-time, we'd be more than happy to join you on the battlefield and give you a new place to hang out with new friends.
Here's to another great year and hopefully many more!
Anthony Magestro Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief
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