What Is GameGrooves?

Art by Don Corgi

With GameGrooves celebrating its one-year anniversary this Wednesday, I thought now would be a perfect time to reflect and ask myself one very important question—what is GameGrooves? In the simplest terms, GameGrooves is a platform for video game music fans, but it’s also a website, a label, and a community. For the next week, I’ll be diving into each of these subcomponents to discuss how GameGrooves has changed and where I see it going in the future. But first, a quick history lesson.

Some of you know me (Allen) from GameLark, another VGM community that I helped to form. For many different reasons (some personal, others financial), I decided to step away from GameLark, entrusting it to my good friend Ro Panuganti. Just before I left GameLark, I had this idea—what if I created a website for all things VGM? Granted, there was already VGMO, which mainly focused on original soundtracks, but there really wasn’t a place like that for covers and remixes. I discussed it with Ro, and he agreed that the idea was solid. Thus, GameLark Gazette was born.

Unfortunately, my involvement with the website was cut short when I decided to leave GameLark for good in late 2018, and Ro began managing the website as well as the GameLark label. In the following months, I wrestled with some personal demons (mainly anxiety and depression), but I was eventually able to reach a peace of mind that was previously unattainable. I began to wonder if a return to the world of VGM would be possible, so I contacted Ro about resuming my role as head of GameLark Gazette. Fortunately for me, he loved the idea, so I began posting again in late June of 2019.

From the very first article, I felt that I was at home again, and I had new ideas that I wanted to try (Deep Cuts and Top Picks among them). I conducted interviews again (this time, mainly written interviews), highlighted my favorite VGM tracks, and posed questions to the VGM community at large, but something was bothering me. Despite the healthy relationship that I had with GameLark, there came a point where their branding and message didn’t align with mine. In other words, was GameLark a VGM hub or a record label? I discussed this with Ro, and we decided it would be mutually beneficial if GameLark remained the record label, and GameGrooves became the VGM hub.

What most of you don’t know is that GameGrooves almost came to be much sooner than that. While I was in the midst of wrestling with the aforementioned demons, I came up with the idea for GameGrooves. I wanted to create separate VGM communities for different styles of music based on the four elements—fire for metal, water for EDM, earth for orchestral, and air for lo-fi/chill. I even went so far as to create a main GameGrooves Twitter account and four subsidiary accounts, but I didn’t run very far with the idea. I accrued a few followers and sent a few tweets before realizing that I wasn’t ready to return to VGM just yet.

Here we are a year and a half later, and GameGrooves is a thriving community that produces articles, albums, and contests. I’ve made more friends and met more people than I could have ever imagined, and despite the absolute disaster that is 2020, I think the future is bright for both GameGrooves and the VGM community. I owe an enormous debt to so many people that I can’t even begin to list here, and if you’re reading this, thank you. You are why GameGrooves continues to exist.

-Allen from GameGrooves