It was kind of a sobering sight, and I’ve been weighing various responses to it. I’ve come up with three:

1. Despair: this is where my work, if it ever gets published, will wind up in 30 years – on a table amidst other dusty relics, too old and obscure to sell or even interest grad students. This one’s an obvious trap. I shall avoid it.
2. Ambition: this won’t be my fate! I’ll become a Big Name! My work will endure! There are two problems with this one: it’s arrogant (and who needs more arrogant academics), and it’s impossible (there’s no way to predict how your work will be received).
3. Self-reliance: if this is the likely fate of my work as a critic, then I might as well produce stuff I really like and am proud of. Something I would want to read, at least. And the third bowl of porridge was just right!

This isn’t so much a revelation as a reminder, but I’ve found that writing my dissertation – which is largely a struggle to establish my voice – is making me  appreciate aphorisms.

My presentation’s title was “Working in the Metaverse and the Academy: Composing a Game Studies Dissertation Online.” It’s an inaccurate title (so it goes when you have to write a proposal almost a year in advance); the presentation was really about trying to write a “born-digital” dissertation and running into institutional roadblocks. Alex Reid has reviewed it on his blog, which you can see here.