We Still Have Something to Say Before Pressing the ESC Key

First published in GRIND V, page 3.

"GRIND is a magazine that marks the rediscovery of the joy of playing..."

If someone had told me four years ago that I'd end up writing the foreword for the fifth GRIND magazine as well… well, I'd have been thoroughly amused.

The summer of 2021 was a turning point both for me and for Mihnea Niță and Mihai Dimache (the other two founders of the project). I was approaching 30 and thinking I ought to give up playing, Mihnea was planning his engagement, and Mihai was finishing his architecture studies. All of us were asking ourselves serious questions about the future, and all of us felt let down by the lack of progress on NXT LVL 2 magazine — a project that never came to be, but which left us feeling we owed the community a comeback.

But GRIND is a magazine that marks the rediscovery of the joy of playing, in the wake of some major challenges in our lives. It is, if you will, a valve through which we let off the everyday pressure. A brief moment of artistic expression, arriving after a good few hours of button-pressing once the office routine is done. A creative way to externalise the thoughts that come out of an activity specific to introverts. And a timid contribution to the altar of Romanian literature, which somehow ends up being better appreciated abroad than on our own Mioritic lands.

I should point out, though, that while I'm still the one writing the foreword that opens each new edition, my merits and contributions have shrunk. From GRIND III onwards, Leo took on the role of the conductor, the one who plans and lays out the score so that each musician gets their chance to show what they're made of. And he does an absolutely incredible job, taking the project to new heights every time. For the current edition, Leo laid the groundwork for new partnerships, made sure the project would have relevance beyond Romania's borders, and knew exactly what to ask of each writer. The initial plan was a somewhat lighter magazine that wouldn't go over 150 pages. But even when we set out with the simple plan of knocking out a three-minute track for Radio ZU and Rock FM, we end up with a symphony in four movements!

GRIND has smashed every record, both for quantity and for quality. It keeps attracting the most talented writers in the field, pulls off the feat of bringing together contributors from the biggest magazines about games, and unites Romania's gaming community around one simple idea: we like writing about the hours we spend in front of our monitors for fun, and we're proud of it.

The current edition includes, alongside the game reviews you'd expect from the publication, an exclusive interview with John Romero, a transcript of the discussion we had on the GRIND podcast with Piotr, Marcin and Adam from Good Old Games (GOG), special presentations for Games Funattic and JocuriNoi.ro, as well as an art gallery showing Alexandru Negoiță's (Dominus) illustrations. We even have articles on fiction, comics and board games. And for the extreme-performance enthusiasts, Tudor "Monstru" Bădică from Lab501 treats us to assessments of graphics cards and ultra-fast storage media.

One copy of this magazine will go to CD Projekt Red's headquarters to be put on display, another will join John Romero's personal collection, and the fanciest of them all will turn up in the display cases of The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. I had to read that sentence three times over and pinch my own wrist to make sure I wasn't dreaming — because I don't think any other magazine in Romania can boast that kind of achievement.

In the lines I have left, I want to thank every collaborator who made this dream a reality. And especially Leo, who put in titanic work to conduct the orchestra. The project has fully achieved its goal of involving a wider community, to gather up everything that is good and beautiful in the Romanian language used to describe computer games. If Leo and I were to stop writing and doing graphics, I'm convinced there would be initiatives to carry the GRIND story on through the volunteers who already contribute to the magazine. And somehow that decentralisation is the finest quality a pulse coming from the heart of an enthusiast community can have: GRIND transcends its status as a publication started by people who hand themselves roles and job titles, to become a pure ideal. GRIND is for players, about games, and in Romanian. And for as long as there are people who meet those three criteria, I'm optimistic that we'll keep having magazines like this.

Don't be alarmed, though: before we'd even finished work on GRIND V, Leo and I had already started making plans for issue VI. I think we still have a thing or two to say before we hit the ESC key. Per aspera ad GRIND!

@Aidan @Leo @Tudor @Klamath @cioLAN @Gabi @Adrian @JohnRomero