Switch launch coverage on Tired Old Hack – the plan

Right folks, here’s my plan for launch coverage for the Switch. I was going to tweet this as a series of tweets but no fucker likes a long thread dominating their timeline.

There will be a few non-Switch articles up on the site over the next 10 days. This will include a Retro Vault video in which I show an old Super Mario All-Stars promo VHS (both with and without commentary), a review of an indie game, podcast episode 7 and my Complete History of Bomberman feature (which is looking like it might be one of my biggest articles yet).

After my Switch turns up on launch day (I’m buying it, ain’t no hardware freebies for this tired old hack) I’ll get to work playing through the launch games.

One of the things I loved most about working on ONM and Nintendo Gamer was getting to play through all the launch titles and giving a huge rundown of what’s worth playing.

Launch time is the most important time for game reviews in my opinion, so I was worried my new situation – working on a smaller, slowly growing site rather than a massive publication – would make it difficult for me to cover everything.

Thankfully, through a combination of securing some review code (yer man Scullion’s still got it) and my lovely Patreon folk deciding I should spend this month’s pledge money to get the rest of the titles, it’s looking like I’ll be able to eventually review every single Switch launch game. That means reviews of:

• The Switch hardware
• 1-2-Switch
• Human Resource Machine
• I Am Setsuna
• Just Dance 2017
• The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild
• Little Inferno
• Skylanders: Imaginators
• Super Bomberman R
• World Of Goo
• Any other launch surprises we don’t know about yet (Snipperclips?)

The key word here is ‘eventually’. In case your counting skills aren’t up to scratch, I’m only one person and we’re talking around 10 games here. Add in the fact I have a normal 9-to-5 job and it’s going to take a wee while for me to get every game reviewed and up on the site.

If there’s a game you desperately want to buy on day one, you’re going to have to look elsewhere. I’m not going to rush this stuff and drop the quality of my writing just to compete with the other sites: my Patreon peeps and their meeting of my stretch goal to remove ads from the site have ensured I have no real need to build traffic quickly.

I still want to grow the site’s traffic, but I want to do that organically through word-of-mouth, not through sneaky clickbait shit like multi-page articles or ‘reviewing’ stuff before all its online features are even available just to get on Google first, then promising to update the review later and never doing it at any point throughout the entire fucking thing’s lifespan.

My site’s traffic will grow as more people share links, and that’s only going to happen if I write good shit. So I’m asking you to be patient with me, and trust that I’ll have everything covered eventually. The games aren’t going anywhere after launch day, and you’ll all be playing Zelda for the first few weeks anyway.

Speaking of Zelda, one thing I’ve decided for certain is that my Breath Of The Wild review will not be a full review of the completed game, but rather my take on the first 10 or 20 hours (and will be clearly marked as such, so you aren’t misled).

By all accounts this game is going to be enormous, and you aren’t exactly going to be lacking in Zelda reviews elsewhere. Every prick’s going to have it front and centre on their site so by adding my own review I’m not really going to be contributing much new.

I do still want to give my opinion on it for the sake of completion, but given I’m one person and I’ll have nine other games to get through I want to give priority to those (odd as that sounds).

You’re going to be able to get a Zelda review everywhere but you aren’t going to be able to get a Little Inferno one, or a Super Bomberman R one, or an I Am Setsuna one on every site.

Since one of my goals for Tired Old Hack has always been to focus less on triple-A games, my priorities are going to be these other non-Zelda titles.

Some of you still value my opinion a lot (for some odd reason), so I want to make sure you get that opinion for every launch game, not just the one everyone’s going to buy anyway. Everyone wants Zelda, but some people care about World Of Goo as well and I want to make sure they’re catered for.

I appreciate that writing 10 reviews can take a while, so to ensure you get at least some coverage while you wait I’m going to be doing regular evening streams of the Switch launch games, then putting the replays up on the site. This way you can get my partial reaction as I’m playing the games for review.

My intention is to have every launch game reviewed by the end of March. This may have to get pushed into April depending on circumstances, but we’ll see how it goes.

Finally, I appreciate that not everyone cares about the Switch. I’ve already had one or two folks say they started following me because of my multi-format work on CVG (or just recently because of Tired Old Hack), not because of my Nintendo work with ONM and Nintendo Gamer.

I promise Tired Old Hack isn’t going to become a Switch site. Console launches don’t come around too often: they’re big events and many sites alter their priorities to ensure they’re covered properly. The whole of March may be fairly Switch-heavy on the site, but after I’ve worked my way through the launch games normal service will resume.

I still plan on doing weekly podcasts during this launch review period, and I’ll be putting up various new Gemhunter videos and other bits and pieces so that those not interested in the Switch will still have stuff to enjoy.

If you want to support me on Patreon, you can do so here. I’ll be regularly updating my Patrons with posts explaining where I’m currently at in the process, what I’m playing at that point and my initial thoughts on it, before the final reviews are posted.

If you can’t afford to support me on Patreon, please use this Amazon UK link any time you do your Amazon shopping (be that buying Switch stuff or literally anything else on the site). Going to Amazon through that link won’t cost you any extra, but it means that any time you buy something I’ll get a cut of it from Amazon for sending you there.

For example, if you were planning on buying a £29.99 magic wand vibrator massager, use that link and while it’ll still only cost you £29.99, Amazon will chuck me 90p. You’ll be supporting me without spending any more than you normally would, plus you’ll get something to jam in your orifice of choosing (mind and rubber up, though).

Otherwise, if you don’t even want to do any of that, just read my stuff. If you like it, share it on your social media network, subreddit or forum of choice. Help me build my readership and over time I’ll have the leverage to request more stuff to review, which in turn will lead to more timely coverage on the site so you’ll know what to buy before it’s out instead of three weeks later.

Long story short, it’s going to be an extremely busy month for me, so go easy on me and eventually, all going well, I’ll be able to slowly but surely deliver ONM-era launch coverage for those who miss the glory days.

Cheers, everyone.

Chris