That Guy. Over There. I Know Him.

This is what Matt looks like all the time.

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I’m not the best at what I do. Other people are funnier, more insightful, crazier, maybe even more interesting (though I’ve gotta say I make a concerted effort to be interesting. I’m more interesting than a one-eyed squirrel who used to be a pirate but now lives on a mysterious space station orbiting the moon while he plots the eventual demise of the human race). This is all a very roundabout way of saying that I believe in giving credit where credit is due. I’d like to feature a fellow writer, gamer, and blogger aficionado, who isn’t necessarily always better than me, but perhaps often or periodically better. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Matt Madeiro, formerly of Joystiq, occasionally of Single Spaced (when he feels like it), and currently of The Last Level at Unwind.

Let’s get one thing clear: Matt doesn’t write more than me. Not by a long shot. I often visit his personal site, Single Spaced, hoping to find some sort of juicy and/or amusing tidbit on his latest gaming antics or writing efforts or what have you. Instead, the same sad three or four entries are sitting there that have been doing so for the last two months or so, looking all lost and forlorn. I should call Social Services about the situation, really.

Quantity, however, is only one metric, and a shallow one at that. Matt spends more time on his work, and in doing so puts a great deal more quality into his pieces. For every five or six posts I crank out that are decent, or perhaps only moderately interesting to people other than myself, Matt offers the internet world a single, slick piece, generally quite informative or helpful, and more often than not, straight-up funny. I’ve got a sense of humor, sure, but I struggle to translate it into written word. There. I said it. Me and my therapist have been trying to get that out for weeks. Acceptance is the first step, right? Now I can start going to those meetings where we all sit around and say things like, “My name is Brian, and I’m not that funny.”

Anyway, humor is something Matt manages with a bit of flair and an extra helping of sarcasm. I’m not sure why there’s flair, or what that even means in this situation. It just sounded right. “I’d like a glass of wit, barkeep. Extra dry.” That’s what I say if, you know, he served up drinks instead of blog posts.

He writes pretty regularly on Unwind, so that’s where you’ve got the best chance of reading some of his stuff. One of my favorites was also one of his most recent, a preview of upcoming game Red Faction: Guerilla. Basically, it was an ode to blowing stuff up, which is a favorite activity of mine. I’m not saying it made me ROFL, but there were definitely some chuckles and giggles here and there.

Come to think of it, Matt is supposed to be writing a fun little two-parter on gaming for T+L. I haven’t seen heads or tails of in since a couple of weeks ago when a draft of it showed up on my dashboard. It has since been deleted; an accident, I’m sure. Matt insisted that it was, “nowhere near ready,” or something to that effect. Two weeks? It’ll probably be absolutely amazing (I hope).