Make Our Site Complete

We turned two recently, and are ready for a new person in our lives.

I don’t normally like to put these From The Editor pieces back-to-back, lest I overuse the platform, but the overall horribleness of the last couple of weeks in games has overshadowed an important date for Haywire, our second anniversary, and now that things are finally getting a little quieter, I want to get out the announcement that I had initially planned for the occasion. I know there’s only one candle on that cake. Images are hard.

Two years are a long time, and doubly so by internet standards. Two years ago I took up a magazine project that a forum buddy of mine had worked one and, with the help of even more forum buddies, put together Issue 0. Much has changed since then. We’ve gone from PDF magazine to online collaboration. Old contributors have stopped being active, new ones have joined.

I’d like to thank all the writers, editors and readers who’ve walked some of that distance with us. I tend to be cynical about these milestones, using them to compare the reality of what I built to the vision I once had – particularly the one I outlined at Critical Proximity in this case – but regardless of my wild hopes and dreams, I think we have created something very nice indeed and I am proud to say that I have been involved in it.

Well, that’s stretching my role a bit. Over the last two years I’ve also had increasingly less and less time to work on this project between other obligations and plans, to the point where day to day operations took up most of it. To address this, as well as to continue our transformation from small site trying to climb the ladder to shared space providing people with the experience, confidence and connections to pursue their own projects and collaborations, I have an announcement to make.

We are now looking for a managing editor. The deadline for applications is September 21st 2014.

They’ll be in charge of managing, editing and posting columns, but can also get involved with features and other projects if they feel like it, and will have the freedom to implement any changes they want to make, after talking them through with me and the other editors. As all positions on this site, this one is sadly unpaid. To balance, it doesn’t come with the unrealistic expectations other places might have for candidates.

This position is about learning, not about knowing. You don’t need any kind of experience to apply for it. In fact, I’d probably prefer somebody who’s never written about games before, to get some fresh eyes on this (it’ll ultimately be decided by a vote among editors though, should there be more than one candidate). Based on my experience from the last two years, it’s a really good way to learn about writing. Other benefits include meeting a lot of lovely people, and getting to tell them what to do. It still means committing quite a bit of time though, so keep that in mind.

If you’re interested in trying your hand at this, email me at johannes.koeller@gmail.com and let me know. I look forward to hearing from you. Applications will be open for about a month before us editors pick a candidate.

Happy Birthday us!