Say hello to my new gaming blog, Nerfed Gamer

I demand you immediately visit Nerfed Gamer. NOW!

Having done that (you did, didn't you? Of course you did, you liar), let's talk about what it is and why I created it.

Why "Nerfed Gamer"?

After I shuttered Ghost Gamer News, I kept having impulses to write about gaming here and there. I wasn't about to start GGN back up again; it was too much work, and I had a rather strict structure to content and strategy that I just wasn't interested in following anymore.

I especially wanted a place to cover literally anything I wanted in the gaming industry, rather than focusing on specific niches.

Years ago I bought the domain "Nerfed Gamer", thinking about starting a gaming news site focusing on accessibilty in gaming. The modern concept for the domain, however, is only going to drop the specific focus on accessibility in gaming, and instead produce content on gaming from the perspective of a disabled (nerfed) gamer. I'll certainly cover accessibility concerns in things like reviews, and even bitch about the state of accessible gaming in editorials, but ultimately the content is going to be accessible (hah) to gamers of all kinds.

I also wanted to change up my writing style; Pain Propaganda has a bit of what I want in a looser writing standard, but I wanted to not only embrace vulgarity.. But snark. I wanted the writing to be fun at some level.

So, my goal with future content on Nerfed Gamer is to always inject a bit of snark and vulgarity.. The best part is I plan to prove to the anti-woke mob that you can still have filthy humor and be woke at the same time.

Let's take this for an example, from my editorial on "Go Woke, Go Broke":

Failure for going woke is rarely a thing; No, failure happens when you create some horrid child’s fever-dream design of a truck and end up doing too much Ketamine while you piss away your money on a declining social media platform you bought so you could be a dick with a giant megaphone.

I fucking love that line.

The "What" (tech stack) of Nerfed Gamer

I didn't want to build yet another WordPress site, dealing with maintaining and securing a bloated platform that's degree of performance is more sus than an imposter in Among Us.

I did some research, asked around, and ended up settling on Grav CMS.

It skips the DB and goes flat-file, and the templating system is delightful.

Best of all, it is insanely performant.

I seriously couldn't be happier using it.

There are some headaches; writing content in the admin panel is a little frustrating if you're used to WordPress' block editor, but it is Markdown-based and does have some good options for extending functionality, so I'll take it.. Especially given how fast the site loads on my cheap shared hosting.