Xav de Matos

It has been quite some time since I sat down and wrote here on my diary Tumblr account. Things have been pretty busy.

How busy? Remember that ‘30 Day Tumblr Challenge’ I was doing? FAILED after ten days! (And even some of those were late.)

I’ll get to it soon (I promise) but I wanted to tackle a few other things while I have some free time.

First, I don’t think I ever mentioned on this blog (or maybe I did) that I left the wild world of freelancing to join Shacknews as the full-time East Coast Editor.

Long story short: At the end of E3 2010 I told my friends at Joystiq that the following week would be my last with them. Previously, I had told the bosses what was going down but was told to keep it under wraps until after E3 was over.

Kinda sucked having to lie to my friends — or maybe not lie, but not disclose what was really going on. I had known for a little while that I was leaving but I didn’t want it to change the amount of work I did on a day-to-day basis. I’ve left other (non-writing gigs) in the past and always seemed to shut down three weeks before I was out the door. I know it was over, so I didn’t care.

Joystiq was a different story. I love that site and everyone there and didn’t want to disrespect them by hanging up my press hat (it’s brown) just because I knew I wasn’t leaving. I’ll tell you, pulling all-nighters to finish Joystiq’s annual BINGO cards was bitter sweet. I loved the way they came out, but couldn’t wait to never do them again. It’s a lot of fuckin’ work!

Then the redesign happened. Obviously, I can’t detail what we did on the backend, but everyone was given a laundry list of assignments to complete and little time to get it done. Fuck, if I didn’t want to say “SCREW THIS” and walk away but I couldn’t. Again. Love, respect. All that fun stuff.

GamePro was different. I wanted to tell my bosses and co-workers at E3, but the moment never came. John Davison (now formerly of GamePro) was busy playing host when I saw him at the GamePro party and attempts to catch up with him at E3 were impossible. (You’ll have better luck being struck by lightning than scheduling time with a fellow journalist during show hours. “Luck” is probably the wrong word.) Eventually I told the GamePro bosses via email, who relayed the message to the staff, who then received a note from me.

Coming to Shack has been totally different experience. I can’t really talk about operations, unfortunately, but I can say it has been a learning experience filled with some interesting lessons and great moments.

Our team is meshing well, at the moment. We’ve been killing it the last few weeks and I’m seeing some real discussion happening in NEWS POSTS alongside our standard chatty posts. (Most discussion usually happens in designated chat - aka “chatty” - posts over at Shack.)

I’ve written so much since coming to Shacknews that I wonder what the fuck I was doing at Joystiq and GamePro. It’s crazy.

As for The Freelancers, here’s what I can say: Kyle and I are still working on the show. It was supposed to start already but some things kept that from happening. The plan now is to launch in October. Guests are already lined up and we’re going all out in future seasons. This show is kind off my “baby” and I can’t let it die. You’ll see (or hear) it soon and we hope to make it better, more entertaining and more focused on industry topics as well as writing stories. That said, you may need to resubscribe to it, as our old host is a little fickle about moving content.

When I learn more, you’ll learn more.