Listen, dear backer, you who are hesitating to whip out your credit card to support my digital sanctuary, let me paint you a picture. The world out there is a cosmic con. Do you want to splash out €60 on a meal for two where you’re served frozen METRO food reheated by a chef who’s forgotten what dignity is? Go on, savour your defrosted hake fillet whilst the lady makes it clear she’s there for the money, not for the romance. I’ve got something better for you: for the price of a Starbucks coffee, you’re funding a space where I dissect Final Fantasy X with the fervour of a copyist monk and the bad faith of a pub pundit.

And let’s talk about OnlyFans, shall we? You pay €15 a month for an influencer to give you a virtual wink whilst her Chad is banging her off-camera? The result? You’re broke, you’ve learnt nothing, and you’ve just fed the ego of a girl who looks down on you. With L’Onaniste Vidéoludique, your money goes towards something tangible: columns crafted like haikus, analyses of obscure games that’ll make you rediscover your PS2, and a big middle finger to Yann Moix, that snob who thinks pixels are the enemy of literature. I’m telling you, a good JRPG is Proust with chocobos.

And Netflix? Pff, a wokism factory that churns out series where the villain is always a straight white bloke and where the script seems to have been written by a short-haired, blue-haired feminist. I, on the other hand, offer you authentic stories, written with guts and a worn-out keyboard, where I tell you why Shadow of the Colossus had me crying into a futon at 3am. No cancel culture here, just a bloke who loves video games the way you love a demanding mistress: in secret, with passion, and without sharing.

Let’s not kid ourselves, life isn’t a JRPG where you can grind XP to escape your problems. France Travail is my personal nemesis, with an advisor who, let’s be honest, must be compensating for a love life that’s a paid DLC with a bureaucratic zeal that would make a Dark Souls boss tremble. My life is that of a bloke trying to survive in a world where France Travail has decided that native-born French people are fair game for administrative harassment. Meanwhile, the ‘opportunities for France’ – you know, that expression attributed to Bernard Stasi or Alain Juppé, lovingly recycled by the poets of the JVC forum to describe the scum who do doughnuts in BMWs in your Leclerc car park – well, they’re living their best life. No surly advisor to give them a hard time, no threat of being struck off because they forgot to clock in at 8.03 am. No, they’re taking it easy, whilst I have to juggle my passion for Xenogears with summonses from my supervisor, a Cerberus in a Zara suit who takes out her frustrations on me by making my life a living hell.

So why your money? Because this blog, L’Onaniste Vidéoludique, is my barricade. My secret dungeon. My way of saying ‘fuck you’ to the system that wants to shove me back into an open-plan office sorting through useless Excel spreadsheets (yet another pleonasm) whilst others have it easy. For a few euros, you’re not just funding a blog: you’re funding an aesthetic revolt.

If I go back to working full-time to escape his harassment, goodbye blog, goodbye reviews of Vagrant Story or that Finnish point-and-click game where you play a depressed lighthouse. Your funding is my mana potion: it gives me time to write, to explore digital worlds, and to deliver texts that feel lived-in, not like a press release.

And let’s be honest, mate tea isn’t cheap. I’ve opted for this South American herb (for its genuinely effective effects, unlike coffee) which costs more than a Genshin Impact skin. If I want to keep sipping my mate whilst dissecting the art direction of Persona 3, I need you. Not to buy myself a yacht, but to keep my freedom as a lone gamer, far from open-plan offices and TEAMS meetings where they sell you hot air.

And above all, above all to keep trolling employers with my CV, which features the following quote: “The pleasure of a true salesman is to sell to people who have absolutely no need for what’s on offer, or who can’t afford it. When both these conditions are met, that’s when the fun really begins!” – Jean-Pierre Marielle

• Content that packs a punch: At least one review a week of fully played games, not skimmed over like some intern at Video Game Magazine. JRPGs, point-and-click games, forgotten gems, or even ramblings about a manga or film that’s blown my mind.
• Style, for fuck’s sake: No bland prose from an underpaid editor. My writing is velvet and vitriol, sentences that dance like a Kingdom Hearts boss and sting like a review of your last Sekiro playthrough.
• A community of hermits: This blog is for gamers who, like you, would rather get lost in a dungeon than in a Tinder chat. We’re aesthetes, melancholics, poets of the game over.
• A snub to mainstream culture: By supporting this blog, you’re giving the finger to Yann Moix, to the gaming press that recycles Ubisoft previews, and to all those who think gaming is for teenagers or losers. We’re going to show them that you can love Chrono Trigger and Stendhal, and that we do so with panache.
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No need to sell a kidney. A few euros a month is enough for me to keep writing, drinking mate, and dodging the clutches of France Travail. Head to 4fund.com, search for L’Onaniste Vidéoludique, and make a donation to the cause of solitary gamers. Because honestly, what’s worth more: a restaurant where you pay for fish and chips, or a blog that reminds you why you cried at the end of Final Fantasy IX?

Come on, join me in the shadows. We’ll play alone, but together.