I’ve spent the last few years having to hold station with what I’d like to do with Higher Plain Games. After a year of covid chaos (I work in central Government), I’d started getting back on top of things before my dad, and then my mum fell ill. I needed to take care of my dad before he passed away in 2024, and thankfully my mum is making a steady recovery towards self-sufficiency again. That means I can start to refocus my energy and time on myself again and what makes me happy.
Higher Plain Games is part of the Higher Plain Network, a collection of creative projects that I run which covers heartfelt games, music, and a few other side projects too. I don’t want to take sponsorships for reviews as that puts me in a compromised position, and I don’t want to sell out to crazy companies either. I want to stay independent. This means I focus on community funding alongside YouTube ad revenue to make the network a success.
In 2025, I want to explore turning what I currently do a passionate hobby, into a part-time business. With generative AI degrading art, creativity and journalism, I think now more than ever we need to support the creatives that do. With Higher Plain Games I intend to solve three problems:
- As a gamer, I need to find a trusted source of balanced game journalism that covers games I may have missed or never heard about before.
- As a game developer, I need a way to showcase my niche game and find a new audience for my product.
- As gamers and developers in the indie scene, we want a trusted space to build a community to share good practices, receive feedback in a respectful manner, and keep gaming enjoyable for both sides of the industry.
This is what I’ll be working on across 2025, so you’ll start to see the website and my content expand to accommodate these goals. I also have a few other things I want to explore too with Sim Racing, real-life events, and my own attempts at game development too. I wanted to share this early so that everyone is aware that I’ll be expanding beyond reviews this year.
If this sounds interesting, and you’ve got $1 a month to support an independent creative – please consider becoming a Patron. If can sustainably reduce my day job to 4 days a week by the end of the year, that will be a major win. In the meantime, I’ll be bringing more videos, reviews and other articles to you so you can see the value I can offer.
Thanks for reading and being part of this exciting journey whether you support, read, watch or listen to anything I put out there. I also made an off-the-cuff video (without my glasses and with a terrible haircut) explaining most of this too.
Simon
Higher Plain Games is part of the Higher Plain Network. If you like what I do, please consider supporting me via Patreon for as little as $1/£1 a month. There are additional perks for supporting me, such as behind-the-scenes content and downloads. You can also share the website or use the affiliate buy now links on reviews. Buying credit from CD Keys using my affiliate link means I get a couple of pence per sale. All your support will enable me to produce better content, more often. Thank you.
