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About

Hi, my name is John. This site, Ripe Machine, is my online repository for my opinions on the games I play. The many years that I’ve been playing video games have made me interested in deepening my understanding of the medium—its history and its memetic capabilities. At the same time, though, I don’t want to lose sight of what attracted me to gaming in the first place: having fun.

My goals for this site

Besides just telegraphing my point of view on games, I have multiple personal goals for this site. Online video game discussions usually are centred around the corporate hype cycle about the latest big-budget titles. This hype machine (get it?) is so omnipresent, uncritical, and unreflected, it is a huge detriment to anyone who actually wants to engage with the medium intentionally. For the last few years, I have largely removed myself from this way of consuming video games and things have been great. I intend to keep things the same with this site. That does not mean that I won’t cover big-budget titles at all, but I will try to make room for smaller fish in the pond. And if I do cover a big game, it definitely won’t be close to release. Removing myself from hype-driven consumption allows me to play games at my own pace and engage with them critically.
This is also why I won’t shy away from spoilers in my writing. What’s the point of critiquing media if you can’t talk about it in its entirety? Of course, I won’t go out of my way to be a dick to people who care about this stuff, but if a game has a plot point or mechanic late into it that I think would be interesting to discuss, I will.

My other motivation for this site has actually nothing to do with gaming. The truth is, I’m a terrible writer. My only proper experience with writing is in an academic setting. So I want to use this project to improve at conveying ideas—hopefully in a way that doesn’t come off as too distant or stilted. And secondly, my memory is terrible, too. I often find myself slowly wandering in circles in my mind as I try to engage with prior ideas of mine from just a few weeks ago. I hope that through writing, my ideas become less ephemeral.

Other facts about this site