Who Writes Electron Dance?

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Click here for the best articles in five years of Electron Dance.

Joel Goodwin, Writer & Founder

Joel Goodwin was born in the early 70s and raised on the Atari 2600. In truth, Joel expected to be a famous writer after reading himself drunk on Asimov in his childhood years but ended up getting a PhD in mathematics instead. He now programs away his creativity on a trading desk in exchange for cash. Everyday he dreams the same dream.

He started the PC gaming site Electron Dance in April 2010 to exercise his writing skills but, since then, the site has grown. Sure, it’s no Kotaku… but it does boast hundreds of readers and Joel has also written for Rock Paper Shotgun. He used to be known round these parts as Harbour Master or HM for short.

Joel can be reached through e-mail on hm at electrondance.com. He’s also on Twitter as @ElectronDance. He is currently posting much less to focus on his videogame book The Weapons of Progress.

Contributors

Gregg Burnell is on loan from Tap-Repeatedly to co-present Side by Side, a video series on local multiplayer games. Corey Hardt writes the Puzzleworks Quarterly; he can be found on Twitter and has an itch.io page.

Previous Contributors

Eric Brasure contributed a highbrow videogame podcast series called Dialogue Tree and also hosted a podcast with Joel called Counterweight. Previously, he was a contributor to videogame criticism site Second Quest and its associated podcast Cartridge Blowers.

Electron Dance has also featured words by Matt W, Shaun Green, Erlend Grefsrud, Badger Commander, Dan Cox, Emilie Reed, David T. Marchand, Doug Wilson of Die Gute Fabrik, Durandal and Robin Arnott.

Accolades

Electron Dance is most famous for a film about The Witness. But you may remember the site for discovering Marvel Brothel, posting the best Neptune’s Pride game diary in the world, working to get exposure for Richard Hofmeier’s Cart Life, writing one of the few analyses of Starseed Pilgrim and coining the term “secret box” as a counter to “walking simulator”. The comment discussions here, when they get going, are some of the best to be found on the videogaming internet.

If you’re interested in a trip through the archives, try one of the links below.

Annual Roundups: 2010 — 2011 — 2012 — 2013 — 2014

Articles linked by Rock Paper Shotgun

What We Post

• Electron Dance is averse to previews including Kickstarters unless the game can actually be played (exception: Angry Young Men). Joel doesn’t like to be part of the pre-game hype which makes him an accomplice in the post-game disappointment.
• Joel is also averse to retro articles unless he can say something exciting (examples: The Devourer, Where We Came From).
• As Electron Dance is Joel’s voice, he doesn’t like to dilute it with guest posts (oh yes, there are exceptions- see the Special Guest Star articles).
• Whenever Joel tries to write for other sites, he finds it way too distracting. He’s come to the conclusion he prefers to write exclusively for Electron Dance with only a few dalliances away from the site. He is not a journalist and has no interest in becoming one. If he writes elsewhere, he’ll let you know.
• Although Electron Dance will accept press copies of games from developers there is no guarantee that Joel will actually play or write about them. Joel’s gaming and writing time is limited as he has a full-time job and two children, plus he already has a queue of games he wants to play. More importantly, Joel does not usually play for the purpose of review or critique, but to look for topics to write about.