Medium Difficulty is one of my must-read game sites (and I’m not just saying that because they once published something I wrote). While many game publications stress timeliness and providing up-to-the-minute coverage of controversies, Medium Difficulty’s approach is more idiosyncratic. The stories posted at Medium Difficulty tend to be well edited, meditative, and at times highly personal. In many ways, the site is a personal project for the writers and for the site’s founders and editors, who have been running it on — pretty literally — no money.

The Medium Difficulty logo.

Labors of love are great, but love doesn’t buy server space. So, at the moment, they’re running a ChipIn campaign to try to scrape together $5,000. The campaign is running until October 12, and they’re currently just a little over 20% to their goal. The money raised will go towards upgrading the site’s bare bones infrastructure and design, purchasing hardware to enable more multimedia content, and producing fundraising materials for other outlets. Kickstarter is great, but as the editors mention, they currently don’t even have the resources to put together a compelling video.

If you care about sharp games writing, consider supporting Medium Difficulty. Further information on the fundraising campaign is available here.

Given the excellent work the site’s contributors have already been doing, I look forward to seeing what they can do with more tools and resources. The work at Medium Difficulty is important and interesting, providing a home for the kind of games writing that is often at the margins of more established game sites. At the very least, if you have an interest in game culture, I highly recommend reading.