I don’t think gaming would be as prevalent and important in my life without my friends. Some of my best memories around video games have been with friends. Long nights trying to beat Demon souls, hours spent grinding our way through monster hunter, hanging out after school and playing a few rounds of the terrorist hunt in the original Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6, and all the excitement around Call of Duty Modern Warfare.

When I was in high school, voice communication in games was becoming more prevalent. We used Teamspeak and Ventrillo when we had friends who had a server. I remember for the longest time our friend group would conference call each other and tie up our parent’s landlines when we didn’t have access to a server.

I went to college in a different state and as a result, I lost touch with a lot of my friends as tends to happen But there were a few I kept in close contact with. In college, I didn’t game nearly as heavily as I did in high school and as a result, I lost a lot of contact with my friends who shared that common interests. In fact, after college, I’ve really only kept in contact with one of my childhood friends, Jay. I talk about Jay a lot here, he’s my go-to gaming buddy and my best friend.

This isn’t by accident. When I graduated college in 2014, I bought myself a headset for my PS3 that had been gathering dust at my parent’s house. I knew that if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be in touch with my friend for long as our lives grew busier. We live 4 hours away so we don’t see each other in person all that often. But through video games, we’ve kept in touch for the last 5 years.

About 3 years ago, Jay introduced me to his circle of gaming friends. We were all in a group skype chat that was fairly busy. It was a little weird at first, feeling like I was intruding in the conversation of all these people who had known each other for years. But after a few months, I felt part of the group. I’ve kept in contact with these folks for 3 years through various games. We’ve, thankfully, moved our group chat over to Discord. It turns out Skype is not good for these sorts of things.

Flash forward to earlier this year and I actually got to meet these guys I’d been talking with for years at one of their weddings. It’s a surreal experience meeting someone in person that you’ve come to know by their voices alone. But we all lived so far from one another it was awesome having us all in one place.

All of these connections have come from games. And they wouldn’t have been possible without them. Today it’s easier than ever to keep in touch with friends new and old with discord, skype, and social media. I for one am so thankful for the ability to talk to my friends and play games so easily.

This blog is in its 4 years. I use the term year lightly as some “years” I’ve been active here for a month or 2 before disappearing. However, it is Getting to know you week for Blaugust so let’s get to know this blog.

I’m Not Squishy came in to being as the result of the Newbie Blogger Initiative in 2016. This would ultimately be the last NBI event and it would be a year or two before it was rolled into Blaugust. At the time I had been thinking of starting a blog for a long time and was inspired by what I saw in the MMO blogging community and The CRPG Addict. My original thought was to blog about MMOs and have a side project where I played through the games I owned. My backlog seemed quite big back then at 100 or so unplayed games.

If you’ve been wondering what the meaning behind the name is, I’m not sure anymore. I wanted a gaming related title for the blog and this one just came to me while at work. I’ve always played the glass cannon type characters and my friends have always yelled at me for sacrificing survivability for more damage. I thought it was a cool name at the time, these days I’m not as sold on it.

Over the years this hasn’t changed too much. I do find myself playing fewer MMOs than I thought I would. I’ve also gone through fewer games than I thought I would almost 4 years in. I was pretty active in my first year and then other projects and real-life seemed to get in the way of keeping up with the posts.

The state of this blog, as I see it now is more of a gaming blog than an MMO blog. I’ve been waiting for an MMO to grab me for some time now and nothings latched on too much. Well except Trove, but it’s hard to write about Trove on the daily, sometimes even weekly do to the repetitive nature of the game. I’m planning on focusing a little more on my self imposed backlog challenge. I’ll be focusing on my steam library instead of all systems and I’m still trying to figure out the best way to write about it. For now, I still want a place to share my gaming adventures and other interests and this is the perfect place to do it.

Last week we looked at why we read game blogs. This week, let’s talk about why we write game blogs. This blog is now 3 and a half years old. That’s crazy, where has the time gone? While I haven’t always written here, it’s been in the back of my mind every day since it started way back in 2016. But I was thinking just the other day, why do I keep coming back to the blog? I’ve gone months without writing, but I always come back whether it be for an event like Blaugust or just when inspiration strikes.

Let’s me chronicle my own gaming history

Blogging lets me chronicle my own history of gaming. I can look back on my posts and see what I was playing, what I liked, what I didn’t like, where my head was at in that particular momment. I often look back on old posts and remember exactly what triggered me to write that particular post. Plus with my self imposed baclog challenge, I have a place to keep track of all the games I’ve beaten over the years this blogs been here. If you look at the Games Beaten page, you’ll see its pretty small for something I’ve been trying to do for almost 4 years.

Changes the way I think about games

When I’m active on my blog, like I am this month, it changes the way I think about games. It adds a little more to the expereince. Instead of playing for pure fun, I’m constantly looking at opportunities for a post. When I’m not playing, I’m immeresed in news and other’s blogs that inspire my writing and my enthusiasm for the hobby,

Gives me more enjoyment from the hobby

When I’m not blogging and I’m not streaming with Jay, games feel almost like a waste of time. Yes, this is probably not a good thing, but writing makes my gaming time feel important. I’m not just playing, I’m playing to create something at the end. If anything, writing a game blog brings me more enjoyment than simply playing a game.

It’s a creative project

I like having a project. It’s why I like a lot of the grindy games I play, it’s why I love writing a blog, it’s why I like streaming and managing a twitch channel with my friends. It’s a nice creative outlet, I can’t draw, I can’t play an instrument, but I can write

There’s a great community

The game blogging community has some of the nicest people in it. Everyone is very welcoming to new people. Everyone is helpful if you have a question. And everyone loves games just as much as I do. I find this corner of the internet to be the least toxic gaming community ever. And with such great bloggers around with years and years under their belt, its hard  not to be inspired by them.

It improves my writing and style

Last, but certainly not least, writing a game blog helps me improve my own writing. Especially at a time like Blaugust where I’m writing everyday. I can always tell when I post multiple days in a row that my writing gets better. When I take a few months off, it’s like going to the gym after a long break, it’s hard, I feel like I can’t do what I used to, and it takes a while to get back to where you were before you stopped.

Quick side note: This post marks 2 straight weeks of posts in a row. This may be the most posts in a row ever on this site. I’m feeling good about finishing Blaugust this year!

The Strange Brigade is one of my new favorite multiplayer games. My group has played it a few times over the last month and it has quickly become a group favorite as well. It’s like multiplayer Tomb Raider set in 1930’s Egypt. We haven’t gotten very far, the missions are quite long and usually, we only have time for one or two before one of us has to log off for the night.

Actually, we bought it because we thought it was going to be a lot like Killing Floor 2. I didn’t really like Killing Floor 2 all that much but others in my group have played the game nonstop for years. I liked the look of the setting more in this game. Truth be told we haven’t played the horde mode yet.

As it turns out though it has a fun story. I wouldn’t say it’s a great story so far, big bad gets released and is going to take over the world sort of thing, but it has been super fun to play through. The narrator is absolutely the most stand out aspect of the game full of 1930s-Esque quips. Also puns about the strange brigade, lots of puns.

The core gameplay revolves around solving puzzles and shooting zombie mummies. Ya, I might be tired of zombies by now but these are MUMMY zombies, a whole new breed. Also giant scorpions, but mostly mummies. The puzzles are great because they can be done solo but it’s much better to figure them out as a group. There are secrets to collect, a treasure to unlock, more guns to slay your enemies, and there are also ceramic cats to shoot. The narrator is quick to congratulate you on each cat statue destroyed, he evidently does not enjoy felines.

I’m looking forward to putting more time into this game. It’s been a while since the group had a game all members actually liked. Now if we could all coordinate our schedules better we’d have more time to play!

It’s brainstorming week for and I figured I should write something on the topic. Though take this advice with a grain of salt, I am far from a consistent, everflowing source of content.

One of the major benefits of participating in Blaugust, it forces you to flex those brainstorming muscles Brainstorming is a skill that gets better with practice. You can look for content everywhere and you get better at spotting things that will make a good blog post. It’s also an active endeavor. You can’t sit around waiting for the next great idea to come to you. Otherwise, you end up with months between your posts or no posts at all.

Now, on to my one brainstorming tip:

Write what you enjoy reading.

Whenever I’m looking for something to write about I look to my feed and see what I enjoyed reading that day/week/month and use that as a jumping point. It could be a topic that interested me, a news item I have an opinion on or trying out a new post or writing style. I find that certain topics circulate around the blogosphere with different bloggers expounding on it in a given week. You’ll even see a lot of bloggers get into the same game all around the same time as they read posts from others.

I like to read game diary-style posts hence those make up a lot of the posts here. Sometimes there’s a topic that really interests me and I just have to add my two cents. Rarer are the times I have a new idea I’d like to discuss but it does happen. I make sure to keep track of all of it one way or another. I use the usual tools like Evernote and WordPress drafts when I’m out and about. But, my favorite tool for brainstorming is my waterproof note pad. I’m a cliche, my best ideas come to me in the shower.