Thursday, 31 December 2009

• Letter from the Editor: A New Year, A New Decade, A New Beginning

  
  
  

  Dear readers, fans, casual observers, haters, extraterrestrial beings observing our planet for signs of intelligence and all other concerned parties,
  
  When I first applied to be an intern with Xanga, a site with which I had been familiar with for years, and saw the list of destination sites that were available for which to write, my choice was clear on to what site I wanted to devote the most time. That site was Lovelyish. Kidding! Of course, that site was HardestLevel, which would later come to be tagged impressively as "The Impossible-to-Beat Gaming Source." That desire came from the fact that video games are a significant part of my life, that video games are quite simply something I love.
  
  That sentiment, that pure love for video game-based entertainment, is the glue that has held our little site together. Along with game reviews, game release announcements, head-scratching news on people marrying their in-game characters and Hawt Girls, there have been plenty of personal gaming stories and love letters to specific games and systems to be had on HL. I know I've been Mr. Retrospective when it came to writing for this site, and so it is only fitting I include an SNES reset button for the pic to this post. That will always be my favorite system, hands down.
  
  Back to the point, though. Something I have always valued about HardestLevel.is that users could be featured for baring their E-souls right along with the staff. Sure, we've had to take the good with the bad, but the voices of individual people have been critical to this site and have made it more valuable to me than other gaming sites that focus only on game industry news. Even through our supposed site shift to capture more gaming culture tidbits and material that would appeal to casual and non-gamers, people would consistently write things that appealed to them, no matter what the classification. From a business standpoint, it's not been ideal, but from my personal standpoint, I have respect for the fact that people come from different gaming backgrounds and interests. Tanner and Tiffany (who have been our most productive staff writers and I thank them for getting us through this month), for instance, are their own people with their own gaming and writing and styles, but both can be equally appreciated.
  
  Why talk about the history of the site now, though? How does this relate to future events? Well, you've probably noticed we've been paring down our output very recently; in fact, we missed a day this past week, which still kind of upsets me. If this wasn't any indication, though, our site is winding down. In fact, this post should serve to be the final update for HardestLevel, not just for the year, but for the foreseeable future. HL has continued to grow in the past half a year, but at a rate that's too slow to sustain in its current form. Thus, HardestLevel will continue to exist in its current form, but no further updates will be made to the site. This will not affect current accounts with our site, and you can still access previously posted content. I should remind you you can access these existing posts by tags related to your top areas of interest or by contributor.
  
  And now what about video game blogging on the Xanga Network? Is it, pardon the pun, Left 4 Dead? Thankfully, no. In an effort to bring the type of content you would expect to see on HL to a larger audience, Mancouch will very soon be featuring a tab for gaming content, much in the way Lovelyish has its Beauty, Advice and Style Court tabs. You may have already noticed some posts that originally aired on HardestLevel have been appearing on Mancouch in preparation for the changeover. For some, the mere mention of Mancouch (or Lovelyish, at that) may make your blood boil, but we encourage you to support this new beginning of sorts. The current HardestLevel staff will still be writing for this new tab, including myself, although as more of a now-and-then contributor, much in the way Yuliya has been of late. For the sake of a video game analogy, it's like pressing the reset button on your console, or perhaps better yet, like playing a game on a newer-gen system that has backwards compatibility. There still will be a haven for video game blogging on Xanga!
  
  Still, I guess to have a new beginning, you have to have an end, that being an end to HardestLevel as we know it. So, I'd like to give my thanks. I'd like to give my thanks to everyone I've worked with, if you're reading: Alex, Andrew, Jim, Justin, Konrad, Matt, Tanner, Tiffany, Tim and Yuliya. I'd also like to thank the dragon and the knights for being faithful mascots to our little webpage. We really should've given you fellas names, now that I think of it. Finally, and most importantly, all of us at HardestLevel would like to thank all of you readers and contributors who supported our site, our writing, and made it into a community. After all, that is the essence of sites like Xanga: the community.
  
  In all, thanks for the memories and I hope you'll continue to keep writing and supporting all the destination sites, including our new home. May you have a Happy New Year, a Happy New Decade, and may you never stop gaming.
  
  
  Sincerely,
  
  Joe A.K.A. awinnerisyou
  

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