Goodbye, From All of Me to All of You
By now, you’ve probably all heard the news that 61FPS is no more. If not, I’m sorry you had to hear it from me–I’m no good with these kinds of things. But for now, we have to move on and face facts: this blog is yet another Internet casualty.
When I first started writing for 61FPS back in August of 2008, I had no idea how I was going to post twice a day and manage to keep up with the rest of my writing/schooling/living duties. Then I discovered the solution to this problem: rip off news relentlessly from Kotaku. Of course, I kid–I did most of my ripping off from Joystiq. But, given the small audience and limited powers of 61FPS, we were never about up-to-the-minute news, hard-hitting exclusives, or the black, soul-destroying magic that somehow makes websites profitable. 61FPS was just a bunch of crazy kids who really loved video games, and I’m sincerely going to miss being a part of it.
What I enjoyed most about 61FPS was its place as a writing sandbox for video game fanatics. From the beginning, bossman John Constantine didn’t ever set any limits or try to rein us in; he trusted us to write good material, and as a freelancer who has to go through arduous pitching processes for nearly everything I do, I really appreciated his faith. Every morning, when I woke up and opened the Nerve CMS, it was an actual challenge to mine my gaming life for blogging material; but, more often than not, the results were well worth the effort. 61FPS gave me the chance to flex my writing muscles in ways that wouldn’t necessarily fly elsewhere, and I’m really grateful for that.
It’s heartbreaking that 61FPS is shutting down now, of all times. I think we’ve recently hit a high note for blog content; the work of my 61FPS peers has always impressed me, but in the last few months it felt like something “clicked” and we suddenly became a well-oiled blogging machine. You can probably chalk this up to our WordPress upgrade, which made all of our jobs 100 times easier–with the last CMS, we had to manually input the HTML code for paragraph breaks. The new look, new backend, and general new feel of the revamped 61FPS made us all a lot happier, which is why it’s such a bummer to see it die so quickly.
While it’s traditional to go out with dignity, I’m honestly in need of more writing work and this place is as good as any to send out a distress call to anyone with a paying gig out there. So send me an e-mail if you can help; but if you can’t, feel free to e-stalk me through my Twitter and/or personal blog, though be warned that my skin would make a lousy suit. And if you enjoy my writing, I still have regular gigs at GameSpite, Something Awful, and 1UP’s Retro Gaming Blog.
Thanks for reading my writing over the past ten months; I’m really going to miss being part of such a unique group of people.
- Bob Mackey
Tags: 61fps, bob mackey, games journalism, goodbye
John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself. 
Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.
Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.
Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines.
Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.
Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.
Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.
You just described the exact reason why I liked this site so much. It seemed like you guys were able to more-or-less post whatever you wanted to, and you were all capable of doing so without posting anything stupid. I guess I’ll be following you on your own LiveJournal and GameSpite from now on. You’re one of my favourites from this site, and I think you’ll go far. =P
What he said doubles for me. You’re an extremely talented writer, Mr Mackey, and I really enjoy seeing your byline in some of my very favorite places. I’ll keep an eye out. All best to you.
I can’t wait to see what website you’ll be making a thousand Mother 3 posts next, Mr. Mackey.
Guess I’ll be getting my Mack Attacks elsewhere, but I’ll still miss the servings I got here.
Thanks for the kind words, everyone; hopefully we’ll all find something new to do soon.
Freelance work is a fickle mistress. I’m trying to make it work within animation and it’s always a drought-then-deluge type of situation. Best of luck to you, I have no doubt you’ll find something great to work on. I actually found 61 FPS through your personal blog, which I found through Gamespite, which I found through your work on Something Awful. So I think it’ll be easy to follow all of you guys in the future, and to that I give a thumbs up.