Joe Martin – Product Marketing for Startups

“The thing about being wrong is, before you know you’re wrong, it feels like being right”

April has not been an easy month for me, mainly for personal reasons I don’t want to go into on here, but also because I’ve spent most of the month distracted by a side-project that I’m working on in my spare time. It’s not ready to be unveiled just yet, mainly because of the aforementioned personal problems distracting me from my distractions – but soon!

And rest assured, by the way, when the project is unveiled then it will be typical to what you’d expect of me – which is to say that it’ll be indulgent, melodramatic and attempting to be a lot smarter than it really is.

In the mean time, here’s what I did in April…

The month started with me doing my regular work for Custom PC Magazine and Bit-tech.net – both of which have been happily flourishing lately. Issue 105, which I was working on last month, is now on sale and it would be great if you could all contribute to my ego by picking up a copy. Also the Games Intro section this month is a bit of an experiment for me, so if you could let me know your thoughts on Twitter then that would be great!

As for the next issue, 106, it’s got an amazing image exclusive from a team I very much respect, as well as a boat-load of games content all written by me too, including a Risen 2: Dark Waters review.

Elsewhere, I completed my second feature for Rock, Paper, Shotgun. It was originally supposed to be a modding guide for Farming Simulator 2011 in the same vein as Craig‘s Skyrim one, but it changed while I wrote it to become a bit more exploitative. It’s called Hoe-No: Farming Simulator’s Bottle Mod Adventure and it’s a bit silly, but all true.

On Bit-tech I did my usual bunch of reviews and previews, most recently including my Crysis 3 Preview. It’s also worth pointing out my Gettysburg: Armoured Warfare Review just to see how the final review contrasts with my earlier, very optimistic previews. Most people don’t like to admit it when they are wrong, but as a critic I feel horribly obligated.

This month also saw me get out of the house a fair bit, for once. I got along to quite a few events, catching up with some old contacts and meeting Tom Francis for the first time, ultimately leading to another guest spot on BBC Radio 5 talking about The Witcher 2’s new console release.

Most of my other work this month turned out to be non-game related though, including a review of Doubletwist’s music syncing service for Computer Active Magazine, and a long feature on the future of Cloud computing for ITProPortal. My work consulting on a mobile phone game earlier this year seems to have earned me a niche in the mobile arena, apparently.

Speaking of which, I did some more of that this month too, this time writing content for it myself rather than helping to lead the design of the project. Again though, since the game isn’t announced yet, I can’t say anything about it. Or about the second game I’m becoming involved with.

I promise, I’ll have more details on all these mysterious projects next month. In the meantime, everyone should listen to the above podcast – I’ve loved 99 Percent Invisible for a long, long time, but this is one of my favourite episodes in ages.

Joe, Out.