RoKtheReaper.com — Late June 2017 Website Update

Trust that I know you guys are really getting tired of monthly updates with no real follow-ups, however, that is going to be changing drastically.  RoKtheReaper.com was founded upon some very strict principles, and I have allowed writer’s anxiety and overwhelmingly pressure destroy my vision for the very last time.  I am going to be making a real effort to get right back to where I started while also providing more frequent updates for those of you who follow and support the content that I make.

This late update for June 2017 is going to cover a few things that I think are very important, with the most important one being the content that is going to be created in the upcoming months and what the long-term plan is for RoKtheReaper.com.

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Something I have been attempting to do since I began RoKtheReaper.com was make a name for myself as a respectable source of gaming, anime, and manga.  While things did start off very promising and my popularity began to rise, I began to feel the pressure of becoming a rising star on the media front and suffered from something I like to call “writer’s anxiety”.  I began to carefully scrutinize everything that I wrote to the point that I would be afraid to even get started on anything, especially anything that involved me acting like a critic (which is pretty much everything).  Not only that, but I stopped reviewing games due to the sheer volume I was receiving, the amount of anime coming out that I would have to watch, and the severe lack of help since I was just a one man crew.  Though, I think I have found an answer to all of this.

My definition of “success” began to change when I first started.  Originally my goal was to simply have an outlet to allow my geekdom to reign free, allowing me to talk about video games and Japanese culture to my heart’s content without worrying too much.  Eventually I wanted to become better than places like IGN and Kotaku by allowing people to see unbiased reviews and analyzations from someone who was a gamer just like them (without an ulterior motive financed by money).  As I began to rise, I began to worry about whether-or-not someone was going to give me that review copy, I began to judge myself by the amount of shares and likes on my posts (even comments at times).  I became someone who was obsessed with the response and not so much the message, I was essentially the Great Value brand of everything I had grown to hate.  That stops now.

I am back into things for the love of doing them without worrying.  I have found my best results are the things I have wrote out of love and passion anyway, and often times the love for these articles are later on down the line when I have forgotten about them; someone will end up finding the article and really resonates with it, it tends to only gain momentum after that.  Obviously I do really want results, but sometimes people will simply read and follow without responding nor commenting, I do it ALL the time. 

So this marks a brand new chapter for RoKtheReaper.com where this blog and website is becoming much more of a lifestyle than a simple hobby.  It is going to be my main outlet for everything that I want to become, I will make it my motivation and my legacy.