[VIDEO GAMES] Stellaris: MegaCorps Gets Sold Out (Notionally) on Strategy Gamer

Oh, look, my article on Stellaris: MegaCorp is up. And I'm looking forward to writing more about it.

https://www.strategygamer.com/reviews/stellaris-megacorps/

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As usual, this article went through a lot of editing and revision. Not because it was written particularly poorly, but because I had a real problem:

The contents of the free patch which goes along with the DLC are enormous and change almost everything about the functioning of the game. When I say "get ready for everything you know about the game to be wrong for the second time in three years," that's not actually hyperbole – it's understatement.

I have received the go-ahead for writing a longer, less compressed piece on all of the updates which have come in this massive patch release and I'm starting to assemble the parts of that in the back of my head as a take a couple of days of not thinking about it for such things to come together.

That's generally how things work for me. As a writer, I have an idea, it percolates around in the back of my brain, tentacles connect up to other things, and then the whole thing flops out – first as an outline then as a fully fleshed piece. But the idea cycle has to happen first. If you don't have an idea, you can't write.

Let me rephrase: if you don't have an idea, you shouldn't write.

For some strange reason, that doesn't seem to impede an annoyingly large number of people who think they can write.

Regardless, the next one is going to be quite large indeed, or it's going to be written as a single block and then chopped up and parted into the website as smaller components. This is one of the advantages of having a professional editor to whom you submit your fragments of journalism to. He has a responsibility to actually deal with whatever insanity you've put together and figure out how to make it work. Sometimes that's coming back to you and telling you "not good enough." Sometimes that's coming back to you and saying "if you can change your focus from this bit to that bit, this will be a lot stronger." Taking that direction quickly and well is one of the signs that you are, maybe, a decent freelancer that someone will continue to want to work with.

I can only pretend.

No matter what, it's going to be nose to the grindstone again very soon to work on another article. If you are interested in Stellaris or have something that you would like to make sure that I work into my much longer bit, let me know. I am more than happy to attend the heckling from the audience.

You only get heckled if they're listening to what you're doing.