Unwinnable Weeky Issue Forty-Nine

This is a reprint of the letter from the editor in Unwinnable Weekly Issue Forty-Eight – check out the excerpts at the end of the post. You can buy Issue Forty-Eight individually now, or purchase a one-month subscription to make sure you never miss an issue!

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Hi there,

I finished The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt around 4 a.m. Monday morning. Try as I might to delay, to put it down, the last act of the game was compulsive. I had to know what happened next, damn the eight hours I’ve already been sitting here.

I miss that game.

I have a lot to say about it, mostly regarding the main character, Geralt. That will surface in a couple weeks.

Right now, I just want to talk about missing it.

It is strange. I’ve read plenty of books that I didn’t want to end. You know the kind, you turn the final page, close the cover, put it down and truly believe, for a little while, that you’ll never read another book again. You look across your shelves and every volume looks boring, pales in comparison to the magic you just experienced.

It wears off in time. In fact, I find that the ennui is proportional to the length of the media. It happens with movies, but since movies are short, the feeling fades in a couple of hours. A book will last a couple days.

I played the Witcher III for a little over a month. The save game doesn’t log how many hours I’ve sunk, but I put it far north of 100. By way of comparison, I played Dragon Age: Inqusition for 123 hours and that game feels far smaller in scope.

A month, I played.

Almost a week since I finished. Still fumbling around in the later hours of the evening, not sure how to fill the hours that used to be brimming with monster hunting.

The feeling will pass, of course, it always does. I’ll find something else to occupy my attention.

But until then, I feel a little lost.

And it might sound strange, but I like that feeling.

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Some cool things coming next week. Can’t really tell you much about them other than one involves a bundle. Of words. Cool words.

The other one involves words too.

But since we’re a magazine, I reckon that isn’t much of a surprise.

Sorry to keep you in suspense. (Not sorry)

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Kickstarter backers, your subscriptions are running out. You have three more issues before the end. Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss an issue. We’re working up some treats for you, too, but more on that next week.

The bottom line is that we can’t go on without you. You support, your reading, your telling of friends is what has kept us going for the first year. I hope very much that you continue that kindness. We cherish every bit of it.

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This week, Matt Marrone investigates where iOS games come from (hint: no storks involved, just hard working developers). I fear for the state of the videogame industry in light of the Shenmue III Kickstarter and the Metroid Prime: Federation Force petition. Joe Köller argues that we need to get rid of E3, as quickly and as permanently as possible. Gus Mastrapa rounds us out with Dungeon Crawler, Part Twenty-One.

Have a great weekend!

Stu Horvath,
Jersey City, New Jersey
June 19, 2015