The Scoop
RoKtheReaper.com started out as nothing more than a small, ugly blog site because I needed some place to write freely about anime, manga, and gaming. Honestly, it really only started out as a gaming site and did not include “anime and manga” until a brief while later. I am honestly pleased at how far I have come since its creation some years ago, but I am not pleased by how lazy I have been in growing it and keeping up with regular postings on it. Something I have learned is that you will lose your audience and people who regularly enjoy your posts if you happen to stop and go on hiatus for significant period of time. Well, on to other things that are more important.
As far as content on this site, I typically do anime, manga, and gaming write-ups in the form of reviews, news, interviews, and editorials. However, I have found that news is something that I do to basically make sure I post something at least every single day, I honestly feel like it is somewhat of a cop out because it is mostly nothing but putting out press releases with very little original content. At the very same time I realize that everything cannot be extremely detailed reviews, interviews, and editorials and I need a way to give myself a break. Also, I have several faithful facebook followers and also someone who said, “I get most of my anime news from your page”, so it would be wrong if I did not allow myself a break while simultaneously spreading around information that others might not know about.
Content is something I have always struggled with, I have constantly debated on many ways to go about it and antagonizing on whether-or-not it is worth it in the end. Because I have a job where I work 12 hour days on the weekends (7PM – 7AM), and I often work two – three days during the week for overtime (5:30PM – 5AM or 5:30PM – 4AM), I am tired and do not have enough time to write, game, watch anime, and read manga. However, I feel like I need to keep my batteries refreshed and will sometimes not do any overtime simply to relax and chill, but during this time I often just sit and do nothing, I do not make progress within any respectable avenue and it frustrates me. In order to counter this and provide more content for RoKtheReaper.com, I am going to start making a lot more coffee and grabbing more energy drinks in order to make sure that I have sufficient energy to do the tasks at hand. Though, there is often another problem that comes along with writing articles and putting out meaningful content.
Something that made me quit this site a number of times was judging myself based on whether-or-not I got the ability to review for a developer or publisher, bypassing me for review material was a swift blow to my ego and I often took it as, “You are not good enough, well known enough, or worthy enough for me to waste my resources by having you review it”. I wondered why my friends who reviewed seemed to have so much better luck when it came to these things…I eventually thought maybe I just was not as talented as I thought and gave up. Each and every time I improved my writing, improved my site, and tried to be more professional but immediately felt like quitting when a developer did not write me back or give me a review of some sort. I recently broke this habit lately from talking to my best friend, he told me I should do it for fun and because I love it, do not worry about whether-or-not I get it because that is bonus on on the cake and is not reflective of my true abilities. I agreed. Turning your hobby into a job will make you not want to do it, and I want to love doing this.
As far as actual content, I will do my best to post regular news, reviews, editorials, and interviews as it happens upon me. I am really surprised that this site is going the exact opposite from where I first intended. I started this site in order to do mostly gaming reviews since that is more my area of expertise, however, I threw in anime/manga when things were going slow in the gaming world (Such as the drought of information we usually have after the yearly E3, Electronic Entertainment Expo). It seems I am garnering more support for my otaku media more than that of my gaming, but probably because gaming journalism right now is getting pretty corrupt and also because it is very saturated by professionals and rookies alike. But I began to get scared that my main audience would be for anime/manga and not gaming, but then I quickly realized that I love them both so it does not matter and the audience for me will be the audience for me. Anyone who supports me is a friend indeed.
Something else I plan for the site is a store, as well as a donation button for Paypal that people can use. I need many things in order to fully step up as a spokesperson for anime, manga, and gaming. The things I need include stuff like an El Gato for recording games and putting them on YouTube for “Let’s plays” and tutorial videos, an HD camera for doing video reviews and general opinion vids, and a Wacom tablet for digital pictures. I figure if I have anyone that willingly wants to help me, I should allow them to be able to do so. If people are ready and willingly available to help me because they want to see me succeed, why should I take the harder way and get it all done alone and possibly never have what I need because of my financial situation? Makes sense to me.
Another section I wanted to add was “Featured Fridays”, where I take one fan and have them fill out basic information of themselves, including a picture, and I could submit it and that way they get some light on the stage. People who support you deserve to be noticed and stand out from the crowd themselves. I will probably start this by the end of the month. Also for fan appreciation I wanted to have monthly contest where I give away something that is related to gaming, anime, or manga. Maybe for anime it would be something like a Nendoroid, for Manga it would be something like a 4 book manga set, and maybe for gaming it would be like a $40 PSN or Xbox Live card, whatever they wanted. I need to get my finances in order before I can do such a thing, but it will be worth looking forward to.
I am getting really tired, only got a few hours until work so I will hang it up here and go to sleep. Thank you for reading my first site update and I hope to see you read the next one in October! Sayonara!
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