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Pendleton Ward, the creator of the wildly popular Adventure Time cartoon, wants to start writing about video games. He recently created a new website to do so. At this point, he’s mainly filled it with a few hypnotic animated images of a simple Super Mario having fun with a plunger. In his first post, Ward expressed his desire to “interview people who work on games.”
My first impression was that this seemed a bit like a publicity stunt. After all, the guy does have a stake in the upcoming Nintendo 3DS/DS platformer Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why’d You Steal Our Garbage?! For him to try and build up some buzz by maintaining a video game blog in the run up to the title’s launch makes a lot of sense.
But I think this foray speaks to something more organic.
In various past Twitter posts and interviews, Ward has expressed his genuine affinity for interactive media. Hell, he named this new website “I Love Games You Guys." Chances are, he’ll be taking on the fan’s perspective in his potential interviews.
So why should we care?
Well, anyone who has seen his Adventure Time cartoon has an idea of just how zany its creator is. I have, and I think the dude’s awesome. Hence, I’m totally interested in hearing or reading his conversations with game designers, voice actors, etc.
Nintendo Power magazine and other cherished industry publications might be dropping (up up down down) left and right, but in their place, wonderful projects like this are popping up. In the process, we end up expanding what video game journalism can be. Now we have an animation-world personality who is presumably trying to use his position to gain access to folks who have “worked on Mario.”
It doesn’t sound like Ward plans to write up news articles, previews, or reviews of games. Instead, he appears to simply want to talk to creative types who are in the industry. Thankfully, the Internet provides an amazing, limitless platform to host all of these stories.
While I’m saddened by the looming year-end demise of Nintendo Power, I’m also uplifted and intrigued by this project. So kudos, Pendleton Ward! Go do your interviews in your own wonderful, unique way and add them to the global conversation about video games.
And using a sketch of yourself with a controller-shaped beard for your website’s avatar picture is a fantastic start.
