Welcome to the Old Internet… since 2008!
The Slowdown is the shared scratching post of two enthusiasts blending their sonorous, once-tomboyish voices with the cacophonous timbre of the now-extinct video gaming blogosphere. Any and all topics pertaining to video games, technology, media and methodology are dissected and re-assembled to the best of their ability in an attempt to make some sense of this rapidly decaying industry.
Not having kept up with latest news, all we can do is keenly and openly embrace our shared 30 plus years of gaming heritage, all the while swearing by the indie community with a big PC slant. In practice, we tend to discuss adventure, indie, retro and FPS – including all the potential combinations of the aforementioned.
The post-modern gaming industry is a big deal; and recent developments give reviewers, analysts and reporters plenty of reason to remain cynical and snarky. But being cynical is also cyclical: Though we may appear a little cranky, a little over-the-top, and just a little bitter, instead of reveling in it like some other websites, we wish to remain hopeful and pursue positivity instead of negativity.
Oft-cited in the academia, The Slowdown is your number one stop for not-slop Old Internet New Games Journalism. We believe in the power of play!
Currently our staff consists of two members:
Nabeel Burney is Irrational – all the way. System Shock, Deus Ex, BioShock, you name it, he lives for the Immersive Sim. A keen FPS player with a general curiosity about everything else, he craves both the cutting-edge technical marvels of today as well as the classics and obscurities of yesteryear. He’s more than well-versed in the community aspect of the gaming business, spending his time moderating the official 2K Games forums as well as being a long-time member and a moderator of the Through the Looking Glass community and a contributor to both Bioshock Online and Deus Ex Machina.
Martyn Zachary is a lifelong adventure game enthusiast (10+ play-throughs with LeChuck’s Revenge was the greatest single formative factor of his childhood…) with additional interest in both indie and retro gaming. He grew up on the Macintosh and the Amiga – two fringe platforms – and got permanently scarred, creating an urgent need to take the stance of the perpetual outsider.
His special areas of interest also include Source-based modifications and games, the Adventure Game Studio indie adventure scene and finally narratives and writing in games; coherence, readability, verisimilitude, internal logic and dialogue are among his top interests.
Richard Scary used to aid us with writing. He has Nintendo in his heart, with plenty of homebrew experience on the Nintendo DS platform. He is also knowledgeable about several less-renown consoles such as NEC’s PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16 and the Amiga CD32, both which he owns together with his brother. At the moment he is eyeing a WonderMega.
His other main area of interest are FPSes – specifically, pre-2000 releases and Eastern European renditions of the genre.
The Slowdown is a WordPress blog complemented by a smashing variety of plugins. The template is based on Sandbox. The dead-accurate portraiture above was generated with… wait for it… Turn Your Name Into a Face.
