Hello everyone, I am Dom Auffret.
This is my story about VGDensetsu and this is my life, forever...
Back in 2010. After a 6 year long pause, my interest in video game came back all of a sudden. I started doing research, decided to learn a few words of English, registered on dozens of boards and received book and article proposals from some French people (publishers, magazines, websites). I wrote some articles but none of them has ever been published. Since I was tired of being asked to scrap an article on the History of the Master System and make a top 20 instead, I decided to stop working with them. I was still interested in video games and posted stuff on my personal Twitter account (which was a bit less personal at one point). Then, on February 22, 2016, I started VGDensetsu. I had the intent of making documentaries at the time but still hadn’t decided which subject(s) I would like to cover, so at first I just posted video game related stuff without any restriction other than what is prohibited by law.
I quicky decided to concentrate my efforts on infrequently or poorly covered subjects and news that don’t make the news. I even wrote about eroge -some of the less-shared articles I ever posted (I never played any erotic game but I still think it’s an interesting market, economically and culturally speaking). I also started doing research on artists who work or worked in the video game industry. Some were famous, other weren’t, and many of them had already passed away when I decided to make a post about them.
I accumulated a lot of frustration during the past two years. I have been harassed by 2 different people and I still wonder why. One told me he was fan of my work and, as someone who has never been fan of anything apart from cinema (Hi! I’m the guy who talk about century old movies on a video game account), it was a bit weird to say the least... So if you’re asking, I can spend months without playing any game. I’m just an unusual casual gamer who likes doing research. The content I posted on Twitter or Tumblr has been stolen countless of times, sometimes by people who just repost it without thinking of adding any source (I can understand that), other times by some pretty big accounts who have been told many times to credit the people who do the research. Then, there are accounts that only post artworks, and when you see that, after looking for hours for the name of the artist behind this or that artwork, the picture you attached to your tweet has been reposted a few hours later by one of those dedicated accounts without any mention of the artist and that it gets way more RTs than your own tweet, that’s really frustrating. And dumb. I also realized how huge was the gap in popularity between series such as Mario, Zelda, Sonic, Mega Man, Street Fighter or Nintendo in general and other video games. I didn’t want to become famous or get tons of RT though and I think it’s up to historians to make their work more accessible to the public. That’s an extra effort I was too lazy to make sometimes so I don’t blame people for not being interested in little known games.
Earlier this year, I started writing articles on a few subjects with the intent of taking a break after posting them, to take the time to think about what I would do next and, in case I would have chosen to quit, at least it would have ended on a good note, something I could be proud of. Then a few days ago, something made me realize I didn’t want to go on. I've spent at least 3 hours per day every day looking for informations here and there since I started this account. Some of the articles I wrote took me more than 100 hours of work each, and more than 200 on 3 of my last ones. As is said, I like doing research and I have no regrets, but there are a few other things I’d prefer to be doing. I still have one last article to finish translating before turning off the lights. I published a few posts on Tumblr in the past few days so that you can easily find some of my older posts, especially those dedicated to artists I've covered over the years. I don’t think I'll post anything else after that, but who knows…
--Dom Auffret
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