Critical Distance Patreon Update

Hello readers!

First, and I don’t say this often enough, I’d like to thank everybody here–readers, supporters, folks who point us in the direction of articles, who hang out on our Discord–everyone, for sticking with us over the last 13 years and counting broadly, and these last few years of pandemic times especially. We know that lots of our readers have been going through a period of great financial hardship, and while we expected to see our own Patreon support dip over the course of the pandemic, things have finally dipped far enough that we need to do a bit of self-promotion to ensure that we can continue to meet our month-to-month operational costs.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve rolled out some new features and formats that we’re really proud of, and which are still going strong. Connor joined us a couple years back to deliver a monthly dedicated video-focused issue, and our partnership with Keywords in Play continues to feature the smartest and most exciting critics, scholars, writers, and thinkers you maybe haven’t heard of just-quite-yet. Then there’s the fun community-driven stuff we’ve been able to do, like our essay and essay-game jams.

All that being said, there have also been some limitations on what we’ve been able to do. We haven’t run a Critical Compilation in a fair while, in part due to the cost, and while we have other ideas for projects, most of those things have remained on the drawing board for the same reason.

We run plugs from time to time for subscription drives, promotions, and causes close to our hearts, but this time we’re simply here to plug ourselves! We’ve been in this space for a good long while and we intend to stay! For a more thorough articulation of our mission statement, it’s available here, but in short: we think there is both an ongoing and timely need to search through and past seasonal discourses in games and elevate the sharpest, most urgent crit, so often articulated as it is by woefully underrepresented writers and thinkers in the space. We want to start conversations, give existing ones momentum, and most importantly, preserve those conversations so that future readers and writers–not just in games, but across our media and cultures–can learn from them.The continuing support of our readers makes all of that attainable, and can even give us a foundation on which to grow.

Our support links are below, and accompany each weekly issue of TWIVGB. If you’ve got the means and are interested in the work that we do, we’d love it if you checked them out! If you aren’t in a position to support us yourself, one of the best things you can do is share this post. If you value what Critical Distance provides to the games community, make a tweet or post on your social platform of choice and share your support. Critical Distance is 100% reader supported, we don’t run ads or sell anyone’s data and never will. By that same token, however, we need that support to be able to continue doing what we do.

Spread the word – support the mission of Critical Distance via our Patreon or with a direct one-off donation via PayPal.