On New Years Day I put together a brief twitter thread about my hopes for 2023, and I decided that I should expand on, or at least replicate something similar here.
IronAge Media was not part of my plan for 2022. As I discussed in a prior article this site was created as a response to Razorfist, who in turn was inspired by the breakout success of Eric July. In that same spirit I hope you all are motivated by one another's successes. I encourage anyone reading this to seek out ways to contribute towards the cultural changes you want to see. Create if you feel compelled, but also consider writing reviews, recording discussions, and drawing fan art of other indie IPs you are excited about.
IronAge Media will continue to be a place for people to find indie IPs and network with one another. However, after some reflection over the holidays I will be altering plans, though not stated on the site, that I had previously commented on elsewhere. Currently the site will remain a static site. I will not be creating a commenting or login system at this time. I also plan on reducing my workload until I get things more streamlined for myself. This means I will limiting articles to Tuesdays and Thursdays unless there are later additions which need a slot. It also means I will be cutting back my plans for weekly YouTube uploads to a monthly site review and one or two interviews per month for now. My Friday evenings with Iron Age Knights will continue to be part of the routine. These changes should reduce my chaos throughout the week, and allow me to pre-load content out weeks in advance.
Weekly prompts will definitely continue, but with changes. Most notable is that I will be creating a new prompt format for audio media. Readings or music drawn from previous featured stories will be the basis for it. Along with that, voting and submission guidelines will be different starting with January prompts. To hear about those details, check the prompts this Wednesday for the details of those changes, as attempting to elaborate on them here would take up too much space.
Continuing down this process of streamlining, my social media presences will be limited to Twitter, Instagram, Guilded, and YouTube. Videos will still be replicated onto Rumble, but I'm culling my neglected Locals. Speaking of finances, part of the reason for not rushing into a more complex site is to keep costs down and make it easy to continue doing this for free. I have no intention of running the site off donations, begging you like wikipedia. If I attempt to expand the site beyond my own means, it will be accompanied by a product, service, or something of value.
The intent behind these decisions is to make sure IAM is sustainable for me personally, and sets the foundation for continuous, steady growth throughout the year. I have more things in the works, but for now they are still incubating. I am excited about what 2023 has in store for the Iron Age, and I promise I will be here doing what I can for this new counter culture for as long as it will have me.