Every writer has their own creation process. These processes are rarely to never set in stone. People change, and their habits and routines can change as well. Now for a few weeks now, I have been thinking… What is my process? How do I decide on which game to write, and how do my actual thoughts get into an article? So, I think it would be fun to explore some of those things in this article. While I have written a similar article back in 2018, I also think it would be fun to just start this article as if I have never written that article. So, here we go, from choosing the game to clicking on the button “publish”… How do I do it?

Choosing the subject

When I look at the taglines I have chosen for my blog in the past, most of them have one thing in common. They represent in a way what this blog actually is. This blog is a public diary of a Belgian game collector who shares his opinions on the games he plays. Sometimes I play with the idea to create series, where I look at each game from a series or look at several games I have played in the past.

While that could be fun, I don’t like forcing myself to play a certain game because I have to write an article about it. That’s because I might not enjoy the game since I need to rush my play through, so I can have an article out. On top of that, it might reflect in my article as well. I like to take my time when writing about a certain game. Writing about a game right away without giving it time to let things settle is such a risky idea. Since, you never know if you are overreacting on something or not.

Now, when I’m playing games, I have a rule. I never go into playing a game thinking how to turn it into an article. The only exception I make to that rule is when a developer requests me to write an article about their game. While playing the game, I let myself enjoy the game. Now, there comes a moment while playing the game, where I think… “Should I write an article about this game or not?”.

In the past, I used to have a long list of games where I answered yes to that question. When my writing day arrived, I opened the list and picked a game from that list and started the process of writing an article. But, I felt that, that system didn’t work for me anymore. I can’t tell you exactly when I stopped using that system, but I wanted to write more in-depth articles, so I wanted to more research on the game I was writing about and that was taking a lot more time compared to just having a list of games I want to write about.

So, the decision of choosing the game for the next article is a bit more complicated. Sometimes I have a game in mind that I want to write about, and sometimes I don’t. When I have a game in mind, it’s easy to move on to the next process. When I don’t, I look at the games I have played in the past months/weeks and decide from there.

Now, what do I take in consideration when deciding if a game can become a good article? The first question I ask myself is this, what can I say about this game? There are several games I play that don’t have enough things going on for me to write about. Even when they are fascinating like Yeti Quest, it’s your typical match three game like Bejeweled. But in this game, you can choose between three different play styles on the fly in this genre, and that makes it more interesting. But, besides that, there is not too much else going on. Maybe I might turn them in a short game quicky. But I find writing and creating shorter articles about a game less rewarding than writing a longer article about them.

The second question I ask myself is the same question as the first but in a different direction. The first question is actually more, how much is there to talk about, and the second question is what is there to talk about. Something I dislike writing is very negative articles. I don’t want to write an article where I just rip into the game and only talk about the weak points of a game. I also don’t enjoy reading those articles myself, and I personally rather write and read a balanced article over an overly positive or negative article any day of the week.

Now, when a developer requests an article from me and I notice that I’m going to write mostly a negative article… I actually scrap the article. From talking to various developers, I learned how much time and effort goes into creating games, and it takes a lot of courage reaching out to the press to show off your game. People sometimes base their decision on this kind of articles, and I don’t want to turn people away if the game doesn’t click with me or if I’m not the correct person to review the game. But, I do give a list of feedback back to the developer. This feedback exists out of bugs/issues I found or suggestions for improvement. That’s the least I can do for declining the article.

While I answer both of these questions, I start coming up with the theme of the actual article. What will be the core of my message? On what do I want to focus the article? The music, the game mechanics, the visuals, the writing style? It’s mostly now that I come up with the subtitle of the article. A great recent example is how I came up with the core of the Another Code – Recollection article. While playing that game and streaming it with Klamath, I remembered that I wrote an article about that game in the past. One of the game’s core story mechanics is how memory works and how people grow with them. At that moment, I decided to make that the main focus of my article. To show how I have grown as a writer, while using the memories of the past game and articles to take a new look at the game.

The actual review process

Now that I decided on which game I want to review or write about, it’s time to talk about the actual process of preparing the article.

The first thing I start to look at is the story of this game. The reason why I start with the story is simple, it’s one of the best ways to start your article, in my honest opinion. With that, you can set the scene for your readers and explain the mechanics, visuals amongst other things more easily as well. I have tried several times to write about the mechanics or something else first, but I felt that these articles didn’t flow well enough, and I rewrote the whole article. By now, it has become a habit of mine that I don’t know how to change and even if I should change it.

Then, depending on the message I have chosen of my article, I chose something else next. In most cases, that is the pacing or the gameplay, but it can also be the world building or the visuals. Besides having a core message, I also want the article to flow well. My main goal in writing these articles is not only to inform and entertain those who are reading my articles, but also as a way to easily share my opinion on the games I’m playing.

When you read my articles, you’ll notice that I don’t focus on the same things that most big reviewing outlets do. For example, I don’t focus on how realistic the visuals are or if the game is using the latest technology or running at the highest frame rate. Personally, I don’t really care about those things too much. I rather focus on the actual game over those things.

Now, when I’m looking at the visuals for example for my article… I look more at how consistent everything is. How well does everything fit together and fit together with the story and themes of the game. Are there models and moments that look rough or unpolished? Are there animations that look out of place and unnatural? Now, since I sometimes review a retro game, I take in consideration the technology of the time and the size of the studio that developed the game.

I mostly put my focus when writing about a game on the whole package. For example, if you introduce a certain mechanic in a game… how often is it used and what does it bring to the gameplay. There is nothing that annoys me more than having a mechanic in a game that is underused when it’s shown off with a lot of potential. I’m looking at you, for example, Death Mark II. There were some mechanics like the shop or the hidden teeth that were just underused. If a mechanic is going to be underused, don’t put so much focus on it.

Something I also find very important is consistency. While it can be interesting to break consistency in a game to surprise the player to keep them on their toes, there is no excuse to have an inconsistent game. I’m talking for example about huge difficulty spikes or the UI having different ways of working in the game. Let me give you a specific example, in Suikoden Tierkreis, the final boss of the game is so much stronger than all previous enemies, and it felt just unfair. Without any warning, you also had to know you had to grind certain characters and build them in a certain way. Maybe it might be less of a problem now that I know that, but it felt like a slap into the face after the balance of the game being very consistent.

So, do I take notes while I play through the game I’m going to write about? In the past I used to do that, but I stopped doing that. I started to have this bad habit of only writing down the negatives moments or just trying to work everything in from my notes and forcing some sections in. I do have an alternative when writing about a game now.

First, I play the game for at least an hour before I write about it. So, things are fresh in my mind. Also, I leave the game running while I’m writing my article. In case I’m hesitating on something, I can quickly jump in the game and replay to test something out.

And second, I’m abusing my visual memory. I have a very strong visual memory when it comes to games and I found out that when I play the soundtrack of the game, I start to remember quite a lot of things. I can’t write an article without playing the soundtrack of the game.

Sadly, a lot of things in a review are extremely subjective. The biggest thing here is finding a right balance for me. For example, if I didn’t enjoy certain tracks in the soundtrack of a game but I don’t see that complaint while doing some research, I mention it that way in my article. That it might be that the tracks didn’t click with me but that the overall impression of the soundtrack is positive.

The final part I usually do before I sit down and write is doing my research. This research consists out of just looking up this game in Google, reading through other articles, reading through press material, looking at the voice actors, looking at other projects of the developers… I have a whole list of things I want to answer and know about the game. Like how big was the studio that developed it? How long was the game in development? Sometimes reading up on the game helps to clear up things on why certain creative decisions where taken.

Writing the article

Now that I have chosen the game, played through (most of) it and did some research it’s time to start writing the article. The first thing I do is put in the title and it’s subtitle. And then, I create the subtitles and screenshots for the article. In case of a game review, I write in brackets the main themes of that section. For example: (gameplay, controls, music).

Then I put on the soundtrack of the game and I start writing the introduction and just continue to write. While writing, I look at the flow of the article and when I notice that a certain section would fit better in an earlier section, I move it. Now, when I remember a certain detail that fits in a later section, I add a small note in that section before returning to the point I was writing.

I don’t like writing out of order, since I find it more difficult to make sure my core message shines through or the flow/theme of my article stays consistent. So, that’s why I’m doing the article editing somewhat at the same time. When I’m finished with a paragraph, I re-read what I have written and think about the flow of the article and when it doesn’t fit, I just remove the whole paragraph and rewrite it. Now, I also read my paragraph again since my mother tounge isn’t English and sometimes I use certain expressions that don’t exist in English or just make silly typo’s.

While I use two spelling correctors to help me to avoid mistakes, I rather review it myself as well. Too many times I see that spellings correctors fail at understanding gaming terms or make the strangest corrections. While I know that my articles contain grammar issues and typo’s in the end, I try to catch as many as I can before they go live. During some breaks, I spend a couple of hours going through old contect and correcting typo’s and grammar issues. Also, when readers point them out to me, I try to fix them right away. Since, you start to read over your own mistakes way too easily.

While writing, I usually try to not take a break. I find it quite important to do everything in one go while writing. Apart from refilling my glass or taking a quick bathroom break, I try to keep writing. Usually, the whole writing process takes me around 4 hours on average.

After I have fully written my article, I copy it from the WordPress editor to Microsoft Word and let it check again for typo’s and grammar mistakes I missed. I also quickly skim through my article to make sure I haven’t left a paragraph on something stupid like an incomplete thought or sentence.

Now, if you would ask me what I enjoy the least in this whole process… I have to answer the whole SEO process. It’s one repetitive task that is just boring to do in my honest opinion. Looking for the right keywords, pasting the links everywhere and making sure you did everything to make the article appear in search engines. I’m always happy when that process is over and done with.

The opposite question is a more difficult to answer. I can’t really say what I enjoy the most in writing gaming articles. At one hand, I love the interaction with people who read my blog. The developers who found my blog by reading my articles and decide to request a review from me. It’s a rewarding feeling that people enjoy your creative hobby and are able to relax or find new games.

I also love talking about underrated or forgotten games. I just love when I get a reaction from people: “I totally forgot about this game! This game was part of my childhood.” It’s a great way to connect with people and make new friends and/or discover new games.

But, I also just love writing itself. I just love being creative and trying to entertain people and I find that writing and just using languages in creative ways is something I love doing the most. I love telling stories and being able to tell them through a game article without it overpowering the actual article is just a lot of fun to do.

Of course, playing the actual games is quite a lot of fun as well. Since I have such a broad taste in games, I play so many different games and it’s just a blast. I love discovering things about games and how they are developed and how the whole creative process works behind it. Especially since people don’t always stand still by the fact that a lot of things have to come together perfectly in order for a game, movie, album or any creative work to get created.

I just enjoy the whole process. If I have to give an average on how much time one article takes, I have to say that it takes at least 20 to 30 hours. And that’s when everything goes perfect. When I don’t have a writers block or when I don’t have other things going on in my personal life. I’m happy that I found this hobby for me and I’m surprised at how much you are all enjoying it. It still surprises me that some students of the school I work for discovered certain games through my blog and talk to me about them. I even have coworkers who come and ask me for game advice for themselves or their childern. Besides that, I get a lot of reaction through Discord and other platforms and it makes me just happy. Being able to make someones day or just help them (re)discover games and/or entertaining them… It’s one of the main goals of this blog and that’s just perfect.

Now, I think I have said everything wanted to say about this for now. Know that what I talked about in this article is my personal process and feel free to copy (parts of) my process but I highly advice you to make sure that your process works for you. Since, if it doesn’t work for you, you’ll hit a brick wall eventually and either burn out or just loose interest. Enjoy the process and stay true to yourself. That’s how I managed to write around ~ 600 articles over almost 15 years.

Thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. What is your creative process or did you learn something from this article? I’m curious to know, so feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below. I’m also curious if I’ll be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

The real fight for free speech means more than just doing “that which matches the law.” It means being willing to stand up to extremist authoritarian bullies, even when the odds are stacked against you. Challenging regimes where a single satirical post, a meme, or a critical blog can put someone behind bars requires bravery. But sometimes people have to fight, because it’s the right thing to do.

And every once in a while you win.

The notoriously thin-skinned authoritarian Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sued thousands of people for the crime of “insulting” him (or comparing him to Gollum).

He has jailed journalists for criticizing his government and claims that social media (not his own authoritarian rule) is a “threat to democracy” for allowing his critics to speak.

It won’t surprise you to find out that his government is frequently looking to silence people online.

Elon Musk complied, but the makers of WordPress, Automattic (which also host Techdirt), fought back. Like ExTwitter, Turkey regularly demands Automattic remove content critical of Erdogan. After a demand to remove a critical blog in 2015, Automattic went to court. And while it lost initially, basically a decade later it has prevailed:

With the support of the blogger, we swiftly appealed the First Instance Court’s decision on the basis that such a restriction was an undue interference in freedom of expression. Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), this argument was rejected.

At Automattic, we firmly believe in the importance of freedom of expression—and we weren’t about to let this clear attempt at political censorship go by without a fight. Given the nature of the allegations involved, we decided to strike back, and petitioned the Turkish Constitutional Court. While the prospects of success seemed low, we were fully prepared to take the case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg if necessary.

Eight years after we submitted our original appeal, we finally received word that the Constitutional Court had accepted our arguments, and unanimously concluded that both the user’s freedom of expression (as provided for under Article 26 of the Turkish Constitution) and their right to an effective remedy (as provided for under Article 40) had been violated. 

According to Automattic, this is a rare and surprising outcome. Turkish courts have rejected similar attempts by the company, but the company hasn’t stopped fighting these fights and, at least in this case, succeeding.

Do not underestimate the significance of this outcome. Victories of this kind in Turkey are rare, and prior to this case, we had spent almost $100,000 USD appealing 14 different takedown orders, without any success.

At Tech Policy Press, Burak Haylamaz explores how Turkey’s “Internet Law” has been widely abused:

…the Turkish government has employed various tactics over the last decade, including content or website access blocking and removal, bandwidth restrictions, and internet throttling to censor critical media and quell government criticism. By the end of 2022, a total of 712,558 websites and domain names, access to 150,000 URL addresses, 9,800 Twitter accounts, 55,000 tweets, 16,585 YouTube videos, 12,000 Facebook posts, and 11,150 Instagram posts were blocked in Türkiye. These decisions are imposed by various authorities, most effectively through recourse mechanisms before the criminal judgeships of peace, which are carefully framed within the legal system.

It’s especially notable that the main law Turkey relies on for this broad censorship was directly modeled on similar “internet regulations” in Europe (especially Germany’s NetzDG law, which partially inspired the DSA across the EU).

This ruling in favor of Automattic is significant because it puts at least some guardrails on the government’s abuse of the law. However, there are limits. As Haylamaz explains, the Constitutional Court had called out the censorial problems with the law years ago, but left it up to the Turkish Parliament to address, which it did not do.

Finally, with no progress, the Constitutional Court again stepped up to call out how these laws conflict with free expression and to declare them unconstitutional, though for some reason the law stays in place until October.

As Haylamaz further explains, this ruling on the law hasn’t stopped Turkish officials from issuing more blocking orders:

One might assume that the criminal judgeships of peace would cease issuing access-blocking and/or content removal decisions based on Article 9 of the Internet Law, or at least consider the interests of online platforms and content authors, especially after the article was deemed unconstitutional. However, this is simply not the case in Turkish politics and courtrooms. The criminal judgeships of peace continue to issue access-blocking and/or content removal decisions based on Article 9 of the Internet Law, despite its unconstitutional status. This comes as no surprise to many, especially after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan expressed his discomfort with the Constitutional Court’s internet-related decisions and announced his intention to closely monitor them.

It’s good to see Automattic taking on the impossible task of fighting censorial, authoritarian governments and winning. It would be nice to see more companies follow suit.

 

If you are looking for the best wordpress plugins, then you are at the right place. Here is the list of best wordpress plugins that you should use in your blog to boost SEO, strong your security and know every aspects of your blog . Although creating a good content is one factor but there are many wordpress plugins that perform different actions and add on to your success. So let's  start

1.Yoast SEO

Those users who are serious about SEO, Yoast SEO will do the work for them to reach their goals. All they need to do is select a keyword, and the plugin will then optimize your page according to the specified keyword

Yoast offers many popular SEO WordPress plugin functions. It gives you real-time page analysis to optimize your content, images, meta descriptions, titles, and kewords. Yoast also checks the length of your sentences and paragraphs, whether you’re using enough transition words or subheadings, how often you use passive voice, and so on. Yoast tells Google whether or not to index a page or a set of pages too.

Let me summarize these points in bullets:

• Enhance the readability of your article to reduce bounce rate
• Optimize your articles with targetted keywords
• Let Google know who you are and what your site is about
• Improve your on-page SEO with advanced, real-time guidance and advice on keyword usage, linking, and external linking.
• Keep your focus keywords consistent to help rank better on  Google.
• Preview how your page would appear in the search engine results page (SERP)
• Crawl your site daily to ensure Google indexes it as quickly as possible.
• Rate your article informing you of any mistakes you might have made so that you can fix them before publishing.
• Stay up-to-date with Google’s latest algorithm changes and adapt your on-page SEO as needed with smartsuggestionss from the Yoast SEO plugin. This plugin is always up-to-date.
• Free Version is available 

Pricing

• Premium version=$89/year that comes with extra functions, allowing you to optimize your content up to five keywords, among other benefits.

2. WP Rocket

A website running WordPress can put a lot of strain on a server, which increases the chances that the website will crash and harm your business. To avoid such an unfortunate situation and ensure that all your pages load quickly, you need a caching plugin like WP Rocket.

WP Rocket plugin designed to increases your website speed. Instead of waiting for pages to be saved to cache, WP Rocket turns on desired caching settings, like page cache and gzip compression. The plugin also activates other features, such as CDN support and llazy image loadding, to enhance your site speed.

Features in bullets:

• Browser Catching
• Preloading the cache of pages
• Reducing the number of HTTP requests allows websites to load more quickly.
• Decreasing bandwidth usage with GZIP compression
• Apply optimal browser caching headers (expires)
• Minifying and combining JavaScript and CSS files
• Remove Unused CSS
• Deferred loading of images (LazyLoad)
• WebP compatibility
• Deferred loading of JavaScript files
• Delay JavaScript Execution
• Critical Path CSS generation and deferred loading of CSS files
• Database optimization
• WordPress Heartbeat API control
• DNS prefetch
• CDN integration
• Cloudflare integration
• Sucuri integration
• Easy import/export of settings
• Easy roll back to a previous version

Pricing

• Single License =$49/year for one website
• Plus License =$99/year for 3 websites
• Infinite License =$249/year for unlimited websites

3.Wordfence Security

Wordfence Security is a WordPress firewall and security scanner that keeps your site safe from malicious hackers, spam, and other online threats. This Plugin comes with a web application firewall (WAF) called tthread Defence  Feed  that helps to prevents brute force attacks by ensuring you set stronger passwords and limiting login attempts. It searches for malware and compares code, theme, and plugin files with the records in the WordPress.org repository to verify their integrity and reports changes to you.

Wordfence security scanner provides you with actionable insights into your website's security status and will alert you to any potential threats, keeping it safe and secure. It also includes login security features that let you activate reCAPTCHA and two-factor authentication for your website.

Features in Bullets.

• Scans your site for vulnerabilities.
• Alerts you by email when new threats are detected.
• Supports advanced login security measures.
• IP addresses may be blocked automatically if suspicious activity is detected.

Pricing

• Premium Plan= $99/Year that comes with extra security features like the real time IP backlist and country blocking option and also support from highly qualified experts.

4. Akismet

Akismet can help prevent spam from appearing on your site. Every day, it automatically checks every comment against a global database of spam to block malicious content. With Akismet, you also won’t have to worry about innocent comments being caught by the filter or false positives. You can simply tell Akismet about those and it will get better over time. It also checks your contact form submissions against its global spam database and weed out unnecessary fake information.

Features in Bullets:

• The program automatically checks comments and filters out spam.
• Hidden or misleading links are often revealed in the comment body. 
• Akismet tracks the status of each comment, allowing you to see which ones were caught by Akismet and which ones were cleared by a moderator.
• A spam-blocking feature that saves disk space and makes your site run faster.
• Moderators can view a list of comments approved by each user.

Pricing

• Free to use for personal blog 

5. Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is a plug-in that allows you to create contact forms that make it easy for your users to send messages to your site. The plug-in was developed by Takayuki Miyoshi and lets you create multiple contact forms on the same site; it also integrates Akismet spam filtering and lets you customize the styling and fields that you want to use in the form. The plug-in provides CAPTCHA and Ajax submitting.

Features in bullets:

• Create and manage multiple contact forms
• Easily customize form fields
• Use simple markup to alter mail content
• Add Lots of third-party extensions for additional functionality
• Shortcode offers a way to insert content into pages or posts.
• Akismet spam filtering, Ajax-powered submitting, and CAPTCHA are all features of this plugin.

Pricing

• Free to use

6. Monster Insights

When you’re looking for an easy way to manage your Google Analytics-related web tracking services, Monster Insights can help. You can add, customize, and integrate Google Analytics data with ease so you’ll be able to see how every webpage performs, which online campaigns bring in the most traffic, and which content readers engage with the most. It’s same as Google Analytics

It is a powerful tool to keep track of your traffic stats. With it, you can view stats for your active sessions, conversions, and bounce rates. You’ll also be able to see your total revenue, the products you sell, and how your site is performing when it comes to referrals.

MonsterInsights offers a free plan that includes basic Google Analytics integration, data insights, and user activity metrics.

Features in bullets:

• Demographics and interest reports:
• Anonymize the  IPs of visitor
• See the results of how far visitors Scroll down
• Show the insights of multiple links to the same page and show you which links get more clicks
• See sessions of two related sites as a single session
• Google AdSense tracking
• Send you weekly analytics report of your blog you can download it as pdf

Pricing

• Premium plan= $99.50/year that comes with extra features like page and post tracking, Adsense tracking,  custom tracking and reports.

7. Pretty Links

Pretty Links is a powerful WordPress plugin that enables you to easily cloak affiliate links on your websiteIt even allows you to easily redirect visitors based on a specific request, including permanent 301 and temporary 302/307 redirects.

Pretty links also helps you to automatically shorten your url for your post and pages.

You can also enable auto-linking feature to automatically add affiliate links for certain keywords

Features

•  Create clean, easy-to-remember URLs on your website (301, 302, and 307 redirects only)
• Random-generator or custom URL slugs
• Track the number of clicks
• Easy to understand reports
• View click details including ip address, remote host, browser, operating system, and referring site
• You can pass custom parameters to your scripts when using pretty permalinks, and still have full tracking capability.
• Exclude IP Addresses from Stats
• Cookie-based system to track your activity across clicks
• Create nofollow/noindex links
• Toggle tracking on / off on each link.
• Pretty Link Bookmarklet
•  Update redirected links easily to new URLs!

Pricing

• Beginner Plan=$79/year that can be used on 1 site
• Marketer Plan: $99/year – that can be used on upto 2 sites
• Super Affiliate Plan: $149/year – that can be use on upto 5 sites

We hope you’ve found this article useful. We appreciate you reading and welcome your feedback if you have it.