We are now onto the backside of Blaugust, the halfway point is just behind us in the rear view mirror and a mere two weeks left before things are wrapped up.
Blaugust 2026
I have not gone in on some of the group writing projects or weekly themes so far, and I am not going to get involved in the RSS debate as it seems to be more of an esoteric measuring of good versus ideal. My RSS feed delivers full text and I don’t plan to change it. Case closed for me.
But that tends to be my way. My plan for Blaugust tends to be to just keep doing what I was already going to do anyway, which is to write about video games.
And not even popular video games, for the most part. Occasionally my life intersects with some popular title like Balatro or Blue Prince, but I usually end up getting off that train pretty quickly. Nor do I tend to write anything very useful, except as a side effect of what I planned to write. I don’t do help guides or write reviews.
So I don’t write anything of general interest about an arguably unimportant and often niche entertainment topic.
This site is really just a web log, from which the word “blog” was derived, of my video game activity. When I started out on this journey of blogging about 20 years I no doubt thought I was going to have some profound observations to share. There is an early era of the blog where I felt every post had to have a lesson or a point or should sum up into some tidy little message.
But I couldn’t sustain that even if I wanted to. I meandered for a few years somewhat uncertain what to really write about. Eventually that settled down into recording my journey. I found a pace I could sustain, and kept going. I occasionally joke that there are weeks when I spend more time writing about video games than playing them, but only because it is true.
Does what I write have value? Maybe.
As I note in the About section of the site, the blog is about me, and for me. There is a primary audience of one. And I find value in what I have written. But I also do not write and move on. I also revisit. My month in review posts include an ever growing section about what happened one, five, ten, and so on years ago, anchored in what I wrote.
At some level the blog is an experiment in building context. How can you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been, or whatever it was the Talking Heads were on about.
There is also a bit of an experiment in measuring what I think I like and how that plays out and what opinions stand the test of time and which changed. For example, I wrote early on in the life of the blog that I was not a big fan of The Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft. I took issue with some of the design choices the team made which seemed quite transparently chosen to try and make the expansion last two years so they could get the next one out.
Suffused by nostalgia in 2019 when WoW Classic launched, our group was able to test whether we were too harsh on the expansion at the time. And… no… we were not. It remained a slow, grindy mess and we skipped most of it, opting to go all in on Wrath of the Lich King when its turn came. And then we stopped playing when Cataclysm ran way too long. It was literally history repeating itself.
Anyway, the blog will be hitting its 20th anniversary next month and I will no doubt have many words of that sort to share.
Overall though, as a source of memories and impressions recorded in the context of their time over the last 20 years, the blog has served me well… and others. My writing a week by week status of World War Bee for 59 weeks straight back in 2020 and 2021 has turned into a good first hand context and timeline for the events of the war. And I link out to other sources each week, so you could fine worse ways to start out looking into one of the largest virtual wars in video game history.
Which brings me back around to what I write about and the fact that it is Creator Appreciation week.
Blaugust 2026 Schedule
This week started out as developer appreciation week back when the event was more a collection of video game blogs, but got generalized to “creator appreciation” as the event moved through the years.
Here is the thing. My blog, from my perspective at least, is almost all creator appreciation.
Again drawing from my About page, I try not to waste time writing about things I do not like.
You may rightfully retort, “Aha! But I just saw you didn’t like the World of Warcraft expansion The Burning Crusade! Clearly you are a liar or filled with self-deception!
Maybe you’re right. Self deception is a common flaw. But I will say that I do like World of Warcraft overall as a title. I have enjoyed many hours playing it. That I do not like one aspect of it, that there was an expansion that I did not love, that I take issue with the design choices the team made in crafting any particular era of the game, does not change the fact that I like the game.
I would argue that I spend no small amount of time trying to figure out WHY I don’t like aspects of games that I otherwise like and enjoy and that sort of introspection is not hating on a game. I long ago learned that not every game is for ME alone and that it is unreasonable to believe everything should be tailored to my particular likes and desires.
Hell, I have opened up posts about games pretty hostile up front. See my first post after playing Tarisland. The title literally announced “I Hate It Already!” But I spent most of the post… and two further posts… exploring why. It was mostly the control scheme. That and the fact it was a somewhat generic fantasy MMORPG.
The point here is that I take the work being done seriously, even if I don’t like the implementation. I appreciate the effort, even if it isn’t for me and I try to be somewhat thoughtful in my approach, to at least justify my reaction… though that can be a bit trying when CCP/Fenris is off on one of their attempts to solve a complex problem with a single dimension fix.
So it is creator appreciation every week. I probably could have just written that and saved you a journey. But where is the fun in that? Also, I often think through an idea while writing about it, which means I do not always end up where I though I might when I started.
Also, it is NOT TOO LATE to join in on Blaugust. We had somebody sign up for the event this weekend. If you want to join in here are they key links to get started.
- Blaugust initial Announcement – All this info in a longer format
- Blaugust Sign-Up Page – Get yourself officially on the Blaugust list
- Blaugust Discord Server – Come hang out with fellow Blaugust participants
- The Blaugust Prompt List – The 2024 version, but they’re still fresh
- Past Blaugust Media Kit page – Where to find past Blaugust logos
- 2026 Blaugust Media Kit – Plus all of these links and a few more
So far we have 165 participants signed up, along with a few out there I have noticed who are using the has tag and going along without signing up. But I am only going to list out the one who filled out the form because there has been too many post on social media for me to sort out who is who. So, alphabetically we have the following sites:
- 20ilyApril
- 26g
- 392ms
- 82MHz
- A 3D Blog for a 3D World
- A parenthetical departure
- Academic Aesthetic
- Aeish World Neocities
- Agnes the Alien’s blog
- Alessandro Cuzzocrea
- Alex’s Review Corner
- An Archaeopteryx
- aneeshsathe.com
- Aster’s Asterisms
- Axxuy’s Internet Notebook
- Aywren’s Nook
- bavatuesdays
- bearblog
- Ben Ramsey
- Beyond Tannhauser Gate
- Beyond the Horizon
- Biggus Bloggus
- blog.x2600.cc
- BongoTwisty
- Brennan.day
- BurgeonLab
- Byte Vortex
- Casual Aggro
- Chasing Dings!
- ChristiRichards.com
- Christopherhimes.com
- clandestini
- coffee spills
- ComradeNerdy Blog
- Contains Moderate Peril
- Cubic Creativity
- Dave Henry Blog
- Dear Angel
- devz.cl
- diary.lollyrots.com
- Divergent Rays
- Dozenial Dragons
- Emma Juettner’s Blog
- Endgame Viable
- fluidline.neocities.org
- Fragmentary
- From the keyboard of Dr Jan
- fyr.io
- GamerLady P Blog
- Gamers Esoteric
- Games and Geekery
- Gaudete Theology
- Geek on a Harley
- gRegorLove.com
- Gridranger’s blog
- hamatti.org
- Heart Soul Machine
- I Can’t Think of a Name for this Website
- In An Age
- inanotherplace
- inconsistent.software
- Indiecator
- Inventory Full
- It’s Just This Little Chromium Switch Here
- JAG’s Workshop
- Jak2k’s Website
- Joelchrono’s Blog
- K-Squared Ramblings
- Kai Gulliksen
- Kay Talks Games
- Kayriene
- Kedara
- keeroks space
- Kevin Cunningham
- Knifesedge Blogs
- KVibber.com
- Lameazoid.com
- Lost Letters
- Lucky Instar
- Lyons in Beta
- lysurps
- Mailvaltar
- Many Welps
- Mar Qaroll’s The Marrowing!
- Matt’s Blog
- Medium
- Michael Harley
- michcia’s notes
- MMO Casual
- MMO One Night
- MogBlog
- msfjarvis.dev
- Musings Over Pints and Coffee
- muttthecowcat
- Nerd Girl Thoughts
- Nerdy Bookahs
- Noisy Deadlines
- NomadWarMachine
- nosrednayduj
- not all those who wander are lost
- note (large blog platform)
- Notes by JCProbably
- Nullish
- object dot computer
- Off the Top,
- OrbitalMartian
- owlblog
- Parallel Spirals
- Personal InfoCloud
- Pinkway
- Point, Click, Repeat
- Portrait of a….
- Pour The Coffee
- Pretend Typewriter
- prin.lu
- prry
- puxped’s station
- Quail Creations
- Quinn Daedal – Blog
- rachonaut
- re: nyman
- Riel’s Nest
- Rishi Dass
- ROSKA’S REVERIE
- Ryan Patrick Randall
- Sal’s
- Select * From Life
- Shadowz Abstract Gaming Blog
- Sheri42.net
- Small Good Things
- Srijan’s Home
- SweaterPockets
- Syl’s Blog
- Sylvia’s Studio
- Tabitha
- TAGN
- Tantek Çelik
- Taxodium
- Taylor film crit
- The Friendly Necromancer
- The Ghastly Mirror
- The Maker Dad
- theTangentSpace
- thethinkingboard
- ThinkRoot
- Through Wolfy’s Eyes
- Troy Press
- Ubergeek Kelly’s World
- Varun Barad
- WCRobinson
- What the Fran
- Why I Game
- with words, wonder
- Words of the AgingGamer
- Words Under My Name
- words, essays, and more
- Wry Writer
- Zelibeli
- コーポ雪原
- スナックエルベ
- もうすぐ33歳
- わくパンの思考のかけら
- 世界のねじを巻くブログ
- 伏枥之间
- 素生
Feel free to copy this list and maybe give some of the sites a visit if you have the chance.