I'm Gonna Do A 900º (11/20/20) | main/menu with nicholas grayson

// Hello, welcome to main/menu, a weekly newsletter about video games. Every Friday, Fanbyte Social Editor+ Nicholas Grayson will hand deliver a bunch of words about the intersection between games and culture to your inbox. If you have questions or comments, you can hit me at niki@fanbyte.com.

Okay, time to do the newsletter! //

oops oops oops sorry this one’s late i’m actually taking the day off so it threw off my whole schedule this week. In case you were wondering (I know you were), I did not get a PlayStation 5 this week. No one would sell me one. I am still looking for one, and if you want to give me/sell me one, you can reach out at niki@fanbyte.com. I will not pay one dollar over $499 + shipping. :)

It’s somehow almost GOTY time? We had our first Game of the Year planning meeting this week, and I’m really excited for y'all to see what we’ve got cooking. Written stuff, podcasts, video… it’s all coming. I’m still trying to collate my list and slide some games in that I need to clean up over the next couple of weeks. All of the kids (i.e. former Fanbyte editorial intern Ren) are talking about Umarangi Generation, a photography video game that looks incredible. I still need to roll credits on Bugsnax, and apparently Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is really good? So I’ll play that.

Last year at this time, I still didn’t really know what the hell I was doing at this job. By the time Game of the Year rolled around, I’d only been on the Fanbyte team full time for two or three months. I’d been on Fanwidth since April, sure, but I didn’t really think that I deserved the platform. Who really gives a shit what I think? I rewrote my top 10 list four times because I was convinced that I didn’t deserve to write it.

impostor syndrome, baybee

A year later though, I feel… kind of the same? But that’s okay, I think. I’m way more confident in my work, and I know that there is an audience that cares about what I have to say.

Hell, you subscribed to this newsletter, and I’m the only person writing it.

V I D E O G A M E S

I’ve been playing a lot of NBA 2K21 for a review pod and y'all this game is just as wild as it was last year. There’s a scene where your team plays against a team made up of the main characters of the last 5 NBA 2K MyPlayer campaigns, including a man named Frequency Vibrations (this is the guy who had a conversation with his ghost best friend after he died in a car chase. That year’s campaign was a Spike Lee joint.)

Anyway what was I talking about

oh yeah in this one you talk to your dad who is also a ghost. he fades away at the end of the story like in a movie. I’ll write about it for Fanbyte dot com so stay tuned for that.

I also went for three hours in last night’s edition of f̶r̶i̶d̶a̶y̶ Thursday Night Fuser, you can catch the vod here.

John revamped the news show, and now it’s called Fanbyte News. It’s like an NPR show but for video games. This week, I was on and talked about TVs, and tried to convince John to buy an OLED. I don’t think he’s going to do it. You can listen to the show below!

You want some good stuff? Let me tell you about episode 2 of The Vineyard with Funké. It’s a banger. It premieres tomorrow on YouTube at 1:00pm PST. Funke’s going to get to the bottom of the famous “Zach Stop You’re Gonna Get in Trouble” Vine, it’s a treat. I won’t be in chat tomorrow but most of the staff and Funke themselves will be there, so go hang out!

How hard do you think it is to do a 900º on a snowboard? Probably pretty easy? I’ll report back next Friday to tell y'all how many 900ºs I did this weekend.

Please tell your friends about the newsletter! Hell, sign them up for it, whatever! They’ll thank you for it.

Have a good weekend and be safe, folks.

Peace.