Monday, February 14, 2011

No High Scores

Well, we're finally up and running, somewhat.

Still a few kinks to work out but the new blog, with the four JTS members plus Barnes is now live and ready for your perusal.

Hopefully we can bring our different gaming background together to provide you guys with something a little different. Making a new blog worth reading isn't easy but with Todd on board it'll be gravy!

So check out the site, register and comment and we hope you stick around.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Just What in the Hell is Going On Here?

Blame Brandon.

Ok I realize that we have stopped updating the blog.

Seriously -- blame Brandon.

Ok...don't blame him. We should have been a bit more up front about our plans but truth be told we weren't entirely certain what we wanted to do.

Let me explain.

All three of us write for GameShark and partake in the now surprisingly popular Jumping the Shark podcast. We have a devoted following after 50+ episodes.

Nutweasel was always a way for Todd and I to vent a little, talk sports games, boardgames, and generally goof off. I have known Todd for nearly 15 years and consider him a great, great friend so writing with him has always been a joy for me, even though I constantly give him shit for pretty much everything he does. It's just what I do.

Gameshark is my job, and as a contractor for Mad Catz I am somewhat limited in what I can do there from a site design standpoint (don't get me started) and from an editorial standpoint. The blog was a way for me to just be me.

Todd and I maintained the blog for a long time (see the archive) and discovered a pretty solid following...for two doofuses who blathered about nothing in particular. Although the traffic soared every year when NCAA and Madden shipped.

Then came Brandon. Brandon has somehow ended up being one my closest friends, which either says a lot about what a great person he is -- or my choice of friends. I'm undecided as to which.

Brandon is also a great writer, but adding the third man didn't mesh well with Nutweasel. I mean what do we start calling the site? The Nut, the Feisty Weasel and the Transformers Geek?

Doesn't roll off the tongue does it?

So we hatched a plan that involved lassoing in another Jumping the Shark alum, the brilliant Danielle Riendeau, and another writing machine in boardgame/videogame savant Michael Barnes to form a daily gaming blog where we could all do our thing and provide various takes on gaming subjects from all angles.

All five of us come from different backgrounds (Todd and I being the most similar) and what makes the podcast so special (to us at least) will hopefully translate to this new site.

The new blog, which I will publicly announce on next week's podcast, will go live on Feb. 14th (Monday) and I will provide the links at that time. The blog will be a bit more professionally organized with many, many more updates than what Todd and I were able to do here -- even when we were updating as often as we could.

It should be a hell of a lot of fun and another way for all of us to just write about games -- be they PC, console, hand held, or cardboard. From news posts, trailers, game diaries, Brandon's Pokemon obsession dairy, Danielle will talk about the game design class she teaches, Barnes will write a thesis on Ameritrash and Eurogames, and Todd will...well we aren't sure yet but I'm sure it'll be awesome! (see what I mean, I can't help myself)

Basically if it interests us, we'll talk, about it.

So that's what's going on.

I'm sorry to have abandoned the site here for so long, but like I said--

It's always better -- and easier -- to just blame Brandon.