#make. and i know part of the incentive for that is because devs have moved on to just making proper applications and like. Actual Games

[mapsofnonexistentplaces]

man the death of flash really just like. marked an era for the internet in general huh. like i know the general web was on a consumerist decline beforehand but just the whole impalement of 'thing you can watch/play freely in your browser that some random guy made in a single afternoon' really just removed a whole avenue of creativity from the base up.... and from that the rest of the web's only further conglomerated

[guyfmpyear2]

Evaluation:

AO1:

I chose to do this project as I wanted to better specialise in the UI development and Data Management aspects of game design, i had previously explored those avenues of game design in my witch game i did last term.

My specialist considerations were probably first and foremost out of everything, Data management and UI design is something that I recently found out I was not only good at but also find fun (somehow). I wanted to use this term to better explore methods and techniques in those fields.

As far as the ethics of dating simulator games go, it's socially questionable, although the fictional setting of Greek gods makes it far removed from reality or human ethics, aside from that it was just josh's use of swearing in some dialogue options, though it was certainly not excessive or offensive.

Being a game about Greek mythology it is an inherently rooted culture. I had no hand in the artistic choices, though i made sure josh properly researched and explored the source material we were basing this on, as to not be culturally incentive about the source material

I don't know if our game relates whatsoever to sustainability. outside of the plot where you are saving the world from the gods, by romancing them.

Blog Post

AO2:

We chose the subject of dating sim because it would allow me to better specialise in data management and UI work, and when josh said he could do all the art that sounded like a perfect combo, i do all the coding stuff then add all his art and script

I was mostly putting into practice things that I learnt last term. But I also learnt a lot about UI, making the cell phone in game was a challenge and a half considering how many different moving parts it involved

The original intention was to make a Greek god dating simulator. To begin we had much grander expectations of what was possible for us to accomplish, but otherwise it mostly stuck to plan. There was a period where Josh wanted me to make a minigame to go along with Dionysus but that fell through, given time constraints.

My speciality is in the code/ data bits of the final outcome which is the game

Proposal Bog

Previous projects

A03:

Initial research played a crucial role in this project. I hadn’t really played visual novels until this project but having a play through and picking up on standards of the genre, interesting ways the genre has been combined with others. My game would probably be lacking a lot if not for this research.

Further research of methods and ideas came in the form of UI design inspiration, structuring inspiration and much more.

These ideas supported the planning, idea generation and polish of the game. I wouldn't have storyboarded the UI flow if not for researching Specialists in the field I was interested in or the UI design.

This is all demonstrated by the research I also did for a concept of an idle/ rng game that I was going to make before coming up with the idea for the dating sim.

I had also done some brief research into the project i wanted to do previously, before pivoting to do the dating sim. 

Complete Idea generation blog post

Initial investigation of theme

AO4:

I used a variety of techniques, (using child widgets, data tables in conjunction with physical actors and UI widgets), making the entire cell phone system was a chore on its own, let alone integrating a messenger system, achievement system, options and more into it, adapting my crossroad dialogue branch technique to work across the normal dialogue and the text messenger. Messenger Dev, More messenger Dev.

I was most interested in using data tables as a method of automating different aspects of the game. That's why initially I wanted to make an RNG/ Idle game. Instead i used the processes in a similar way to how i did the game for last term which i continued work on to submit for a bafta this term

Considering I had the core systems working within a week or two, then spent weeks adding all the content into the data table structures I had done a pretty good job of getting the system to ‘work for itself’ (where it was just processing the information I fed it). The only slip ups i made were on the UX front which i admittedly didn't leave too much time for

AO5:

Key aspects of my work were probably the core dialogue system, where I incorporated all the text that displayed names, dialogue. The character sprite system to get the characters sprites to show up (blog post), and be able to pick the locations of them, as well as change all of that from one sentence to the next. Then add the animations to the UI and Sprites. Failures were more in the creation of the cell phone, and more specifically the messenger. That took me a week to figure out, in between adapting the crossroad system to work in the phone, Getting the UI to properly display itself in the Text message format (which was way harder than it should be and took multiple iterations and methods to finally settle on one that worked). Contacts Dev, ,, 

The factors that most influenced my ability to problem solve would probably be the basic yet easily applicable nature of widgets, a lot of it is managing information that is stored. Making most things possible as long as I found a way to input the data I wanted, and output it to where it needed to go. I would probably say that a big culprit for my data table habits, are my knowledge of SQL coding that I learnt a few years back, the logic and theory behind SQL carries over pretty well to UE Data tables

AO6:

My thought processes on creating this game was that I wanted to demonstrate what is possible with data tables, to the fullest extent, which ment using them to display a 4000 word script, dozens of drawn character variations and backgrounds, and UI. it was truly something for me and josh to perfectly work hand in hand on something. When putting those ideas into practice it certainly ended up much more finicky on my end, matched with josh's last minute work ethic it meant that i had to add all his work he had done in much less time than i would've liked but it worked out.

When conceptualising this project, it was actually mainly the fault of my friends. I knew I wanted to better hone my abilities in UI and Data management, then at night my friend Olivia joked that we should make a dating sim. So from the very get go this project was being made with an audience in mind. She has been a pretty key component of developing with being able to pitch ideas, or get feedback from her.

AO7:

I chose to present my project and final outcome in a manner that would demonstrate primarily my coding and planning abilities, i tried to focus heavily on thinking ahead on this project and establishing early on what the necessary features, methods and precautions should be. So I looked to industry specialists in my chosen field. One of my faults with the endless runner project was that I didn't plan ahead whatsoever to account for UI. So when it came to incorporating, it was a mess. Planning ahead slightly with the UI flow chart (even if it is quite primitive) as well as the trello board, gave me structure and direction to my work. This methodology will help with my professional practice. As to their effectiveness in communication of ideas, the drawn plans show my initial ideas and concepts before I followed through with R&D giving not only my blog work structure and professional merit but also the resulting work.

AO8:

The aim at the start of this project was much more ambitious than possible (as per usual), with the plan being a few dates, each date having a dedicated (‘feat of-’) minigame. Whilst it ended being an intro segment with barely one date. Given it has a lot of branching possibilities but one central win ending. It probably equals about 15 minutes of playtime, which isn't bad, and from my perspective, it's not how much content it's what that content is. I could have spent 10X more time just adding more dialogue, art and whatnot that Josh did. And it would probably be the same game, but 10X longer. What I was focused on demonstrating is the core systems I had to plan out, design and adapt. I couldn't have done much more work on this aside from finishing touches and minigames for the dates.

[cavegirlpoems]

Okay so there's a few factors that come together to mean that indie games tend towards being rules-light.

Firstly: the Market. The elephant in the room, and most of the big publishers that aren't hasbro but are still proper companies, all make big crunchy games with lots of options and details. The market already has plenty of maximalist games to try, from the mediocre (5e) to the sublime (vtm) to the ridiculous (dark heresy) to the utterly terrifying (pathfinder). If you want a crunchy maximalist game with tactical combat, the chances are one exists.

Why is this the case? Business strategy. A ttrpg publisher wants the audience to keep buying books, and keep buying their books loyally. How do they achieve this? Splatbooks. Extend a game from a single book to a gameline with potentially dozens of volumes, and if your audience are invested, you make garunteed money with each new expansion. A game that's on the splatbook treadmill will end up big and crunchy, even in the fringe cases where they didn't begin that way to get the treadmill going.

So, an indie develloper finds that the market is full of highly visible crunchy maximalist games, with few easily visible streamlined minimalist games. (Those rules-light games do exist, but they're indie projects, so they don't have the visibility and awareness that the big games have).

And they also aren't beholden to shareholders; they don't have an obligation to keep putting out an endless treadmill of splatbooks. If they want to make a small, self-contained game, they can, and they don't need to worry about their marketing director telling them to make more Player's Companions that'll reliably bank.

Each new game is a risk; an indie studio can take that risk where a big dev can't.

Secondly. Now, I know I'm going to sound like a snob here, but its probably true so fuckit. Indie devs tend to be more invested in the craft of design, and better at it, than a lot of the people working for big companies, who have been churning out largely the same stuff on the aforementioned treadmill for potentially decades, with active financial incentives not to innovate. Likewise, indie devs tend to be writing for people with, frankly, more discerning taste in games than the big studios, who don't need to write good rules when they can lean on brand recognition and marketing.

A good rule of thumb in any type of design (not just games) is that a simpler, more elegent solution is the better solution. Indie devs and their audiences tend to prize skillful, elegent design. This lends itself to streamlined games.

Likewise, a given game probably has an optimal size, beyond which it becomes cluttered and unwieldy, with too much Stuff for players to reliably keep track of if they're going to play the game properly. This ideal size is, imho, for a lot of projects a single book, on the medium-to-smaller end of the ttrpg-book bell curve. Again, an indie dev isn't beholden to keeping on churning out more of the same game indefinately, so they can make the game the size they want, no the size the investors want.

And similarly, there's a general understanding among most people who take ttrpg design seriously that the specifics of your dice-roll-mechanics are the least important bit of your design. In this instance, a less skilled designer can make the process of a single dice check incredibly complex with lots of moving parts and fiddly options and decision making, and when they have a page count to meet, they'll keep that complication in. But, to the "the dice roll is the least interesting bit of design" mindset, a very simple roll (maybe even 'roll 1-2 on a d6) does the same job much more simply, so the simple version it is. Because an indie designer is more likely to appreciate that more complicated mechanics aren't necessarily better, and have the creative freedom to act on that.

Thirdly: man hours. Most indie studios have pretty small teams. Some are one person. (like me). Designing and perfecting a complicated system takes exponetially more man-hours than a simpler one. Not linearly more, exponentially more, because every mechanic has potential interactions with every other mechanic, so you need to make sure they all line up with each other, and the scale of the project goes up as a result.

A one-man team simply does not have enough hours in the day to produce the entirety of Pathfinder and have it done this decade.

Fourth, there's the indie audience. The indie scene tends to be people who like elegent, streamlined games, because they're the people who kept looking after finding the mainstream big crunchy games didn't do it for them. They also tend to be more diverse in the pool of games they play. A D&D-guy might only play 5e and be able to read all of the dozens of interminable 5e splats, but a typical indie fan is reading and playing a lot of games. These players tend to be dabblers who like going from game to game; these people are, therefore, better served by smaller games that are quick to finish reading, and are suited to one-shots and short campaigns.

And then lastly, there's material costs. An indie studio is probably Quite Poor. Giant hardbacks, decks of cards, custom dice, boxes of multiple books, etc all cost money. A poorer studio might only be able to afford smaller, simpler books - particularly historically, before the rise of print on demand - so that's what the scene has tended to make.

+ + +

Anyway. None of this means that making a streamlined game is easier, per se. Indeed, arguably, a very streamlined game has very little wiggle-room or margin of error, or room to ignore sections. Every bit of design needs to function perfectly and pull its weight. (Analogy: any cook can make a nice dish with plenty of seasoning and dressings: it takes a really good cook and really good ingredients to make a single-ingredient dish sing). There are lazy rules-light indie games, but they exist on the same bell curve as the rest of the industry. Hell, I'd argue there's a lot more churned-out-low-effort filler content for the 5e scene.

The point is that - much like how 'indie rock' tends towards a stripped-back garage sound rather than lush orchestral prog rock - there are practical, material reasons why indie ttrpgs tend towards more minimalist design.

any idea why (from a culture-history perspective) rules-light artsy stuff and osr-y dungeoncrawl stuff takes up so much discursive space in indie ttrpg talk? excepting LANCER there does not seem to be room for fans of high-power crunchy tactical combat in the indie space

This is not entirely true because there are a couple of other beloved crunchy tactical combat indie RPGs, like Gubat Banwa, Beacon, ICON, Dawn, etc. But that is besides the point: you are of course right on the money that there are certain types of indie games that tend to overwhelm in these spaces.

But the simple answer, at least from where I'm standing, is: rules-light stuff is easier to make, and to be fair, the market is kind of saturated with lots of low-effort and uninspired rules-light indie games, but that saturation also means that the ones that do get talked about are also often the cream of the crop. Of course in terms of market saturation it's good to keep some perspective: even at their worst, indie RPG marketplaces are never so full of unnecessary cruft as marketplaces that cater exclusively to the 5e-compatible crowd.

Same with OSR-y dungeon crawl stuff: making OSR products isn't exactly difficult because the template already exists out there, and once again there's quite a lot of simply uninspired and forgettable stuff out there. It's easy to make an OSR product; it's difficult to make a good and inspired OSR product. (Obligatory plug: @cavegirlpoems makes some good and inspired OSR stuff.)

Games with high complexity tactical combat are much more difficult to make in the first place, so there are fewer to begin with already. Of the ones mentioned I think only Gubat Banwa has really taken any discursive space in indie RPG spaces to a similar degree to Lancer.

And I think it's also that to an extent I think indie spaces are still kind of afraid of high-complexity games, because even among the coolest people there still unfortunately are people in indie spaces who believe that the wrong kind of combat in a TTRPG means that it's less roleplaying. I've even run into those people on this very site. So yeah, even in indie spaces there is room for an unfortunate "roleplaying not rollplaying" type of discourse, which is stupid and dumb and bad.

But anyway, there are of course other types of games made in indie spaces: Blades in the Dark is modeled after Powered by the Apocalypse games but is much more crunchy and has a lot of texture; Ironsworn is similarly modeled after PbtA but is not a game I would call rules-light; Eureka by the good folks of @anim-ttrpgs is undeniably an indie production, but mechanically is very trad and crunchy; and finally, Flying Circus by @open-sketchbook is another PbtA game that is the furthest from rules-light. All of the aforementioned games own.

[astaroth1357]

Unpacking the Angel Event (Through My Own Perspective)

Okay so uh… this was a very uncomfortable seat the Devs have offered us today and like all things that give me moral uncomfiness, I HAVE to analyze it. Blame the ethics classes. A full disclaimer, this is not spoiler-free and is pretty much entirely just me unpacking my own feelings here. What may bother or not bother me could really affect you and there is nothing wrong with that. You are entitled to your own perspective. This is just me trying to walk through all the stuff in this event that just… rubbed me the wrong way. So let's get to it.

The Costumes

So. Let's start at the beginning. Diavolo apparently had the bright idea to put everybody in magical costumes of their angel forms (or something like it in Satan's case). This is… problematic.

The reason the brothers lost their angel forms was because they fell after the Celestial War… who's greatest causality (in their eyes) was their sister, Lilith. So one could imagine that their memories as angels aren't particularly happy ones… By this point in the "continuity" (this is Post-Attic, more on that later), they would have known that Lilith didn't actually die which may soften something like this a little. I dunno, I'm not one of them and trauma is uniquely personal to the individual, but the bigger issue is that Diavolo thought this was a good idea to start with to which I say! - I'm not at all surprised by that. Hear me out.

Diavolo is heavily implied to have had a huge ass crush on Angel Lucifer. He's also uh… probably a little sheltered (as sheltered as the royalty of Hell can be) and probably not used to think of his subjects' feelings on the things he does before he just does them. This is fairly evident in other events where he'll order the brothers to do XYZ task even if they want no part in it. It doesn't surprise me at all that Diavolo would want to see them (Lucifer) as angels again and not take into account how that could affect them. I don't think that'd be malice on his part, just shortsightedness, and he likely would have apologized if any of the brothers expressed an emotional problem with it to him directly.

Do they have problems? Yes. But since the event kind of wipes them of their true selves, that's better discussed elsewhere. Moving on.

The Bangles 

Holy fuck, how do we even approach this? So Simeon, in conjunction with Michael (probably, at this point I have to wonder if he's telling the truth about this) gives the brothers jewelry, presumably to wear to the party, that would… I'm not even sure. Curb their impulses? Force them to be mannered? The important thing is he did not tell them about that little detail before they put the bangles on…

This is… also problematic. First, we can try to establish Simeon's intentions versus what actually happened: 

The bangles were (likely) intended to be removable. It was the mixing of the magic that locked them in place so we can assume he didn't mean this to be a permanent change.

The magic on the bangles was probably amplified by the angel costumes. What this means is though we can assume that Simeon never intended them to become quite so… different, we'll never know just how much influence he was actually trying to put on them. It could have been anything from suppressing their sins to full blown force you to say please/thank you. We'll just never get to know now… 

I won't be the first person to liken this to mind control (nor the last) because… that's kind of how it turned out. Even worse still, it would have been completely involuntary on the brothers' part. Simeon DID NOT tell them what the bangles were going to do. Now, he claims later that he would have eventually, but we don't get to know when that would have been. I presume at some time after the party, because like. These are our boys. They're not going to consent to wearing something like that, they're just not.

This poses all kinds of questions and problems ranging from issues of consent to anatomy and even the worth of good deeds done out of obligation vs. free will and… I mean quite literally when I say Jesus Christ, Simeon, what the hell?!

I could write a completely different post debating whether or not what Simeon did actually had any moral merit but I won't because it'd be very dry and boring. I think the most interesting thing to take away here is that Simeon thought it was okay to do like, at all, and with approval from Michael (maybe) no less… That reflects something on angel society that I doubt will get explored but I need to ponder farther…

This section is all kinds of sticky so we need to move on.

The Development(?)

First off, to new players, don't worry this probably isn't canon (at least to the main story continuity). The Brothers should be back to normal in the new chapters and this won't have a long term effect on anything (aside from maybe a tie in to the next event ala Beach event-> Games). That's how Obey Me has always treated their events it seems and I sure hope they stick to it now. But, these are still the same characters going through a unique situation and that can offer some insight so… Let's discuss.

I mentioned earlier that the brothers had problems with this… Unfortunately, I think we only get to see Lucifer and Satan's thoughts in any detail because everyone else is too far gone by the time we reach them… Lucifer can pretty much be summed up as troubled and unhappy because (you know) not a lot of great memories as an angel. I presume that his wounded pride after the fall may also contribute. 

Satan is… more complex. I’m honestly more bothered by his change than anyone else’s because even he expresses how weird this is for him... (We get confirmation that he never in fact had an angel form, btw). Poor baby is going through a full on identity crisis and there’s a certain part of his mind that he’s not even allowed to use right now... Anger. The Avatar of Wrath, born from Wrath, can’t get angry and… Something about that just bothers me at a deeper level, not even I can express properly…

Everyone else is too far gone once we reach them. Their personalities are completely different and they can’t even acknowledge that’s the case. They think that they’ve turned a new leaf but we know that’s not the reality, that leaf was very much turned for them and it doesn’t make anything feel any better…

This may be my own opinion, but part of me thinks that this portion (and only this portion right here) was actually what the Devs were going for. They wanted us to be uncomfortable by all of this for like, story reasons. It’s a narrative trick. Think of the phrase “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” I think they were trying to use the absence of the brothers’ usual flaws and traits as a weird way of celebrating them. Kind of like saying, “We could have given you guys these perfect brothers, but they’re not perfect and we know that’s why you like them. Look at these perfect guys, doesn’t it feel wrong?” The answer is, yes. It does feel wrong. And under other circumstances, it would be affirming like they’d be intending, “I don’t want this emotionally-open non-otaku, give me Levi dammit!” But when you add this intended discomfort with the already sketchy way we got here it just makes it all the worse… 

And absolutely NONE of this is helped by...

The… End?

I think the thing I hate about this event the most (actually legitimately hate) is how it ends. In that it doesn’t. It kind of just… abruptly stops right after Lucifer starts coming to himself again. Though I suspect that’s because they’re putting incentive into getting the event cards, this in NO WAY does the narrative any favors.

Most people are not going to get those cards. Even with Lonely Devil as an option, it’s a huge time/resource commitment to get there. Because of that, the majority of people are not going to get to see the aftermath of what happened. We don’t get to see how the brothers feel about what happened. We don’t get to see if they do, in fact, come to and if they have any takeaways from the experience or if they’re utterly disgusted by it. The player character doesn’t even get the option to comfort them after something that was probably terribly traumatic. It. Just. Ends.

What that means is all of that discomfort that we had just lingers… There’s no resolution or pay off. It just… stays… This is the worst possible thing they could have done. If you want your audience to feel uncomfortable, that’s one thing, but unless you’re telling like, a psychological thriller you gotta settle them back down again! Deep moral conflict is not a turn on!!!

Personally, I don’t hate that this thing exists. I don’t. The part of me that majored in Philosophy loves analyzing media like this so I can’t say that I didn’t get anything out of it. I don’t think all media should play it safe, it’s okay to leave the audience with no good answers or a feeling of unease, but you really got to be self-aware of it. The biggest flaw of this event, in my opinion, is that it rarely comes across as self-aware of its own horror. You get a very brief glimpse of it from Solomon when he comments on how creepy things are, but Simeon’s happy. Diavolo’s happy. And though he’s a little uneasy, Luke’s pretty content, too. Add that to the abrupt ending and we never get to know if ANY of them realize how awful of a thing this was to do to the brothers... It makes it all come off as an endorsement of mind controlling your friends into better people and (to me) that feels really, really wrong.

So in conclusion… I dunno. If the next event isn’t something along the lines of “Angelic Demons Part 2: Fixing What We Fucked Up!” then I think they really botched this one guys… I hope somebody was taking notes.

[iaintyourbro]

The New Red Herrings: Biggs and Zack and How Avalanche Tells Us the LTD is Dead

Biggs and Zack are seemingly alive at the end of FFVII Remake Part 1 - so what does that mean? Will they live throughout the story? Maybe they’ll be like Wedge and escape death initially, only to be forced to face it shortly after?

There’s also interesting similarities on the death scenes of Biggs and Zack, A while ago I took screenshots of the “death” scene of Biggs and thought it was interesting how they had Biggs touch Cloud’s head and also made him promise something. 

And how are all these things connected to the LTD? 

Now, clearly, neither Biggs or Jessie had as dramatic of a death as Zack or Aerith. We actually see the initial injury or incident that causes each of them to die. Cloud comes upon Biggs while he’s already sitting down injured. Cloud and Tifa come to Jessie after she’s under the rubble and try to save her. 

We know Cloud pretty much loses it when Zack dies. He collapses mentally. He’s already been through enough shit to fill a lifetime, and now his only friend, his best friend, and the guy who saved his life, dies trying to get them back to Midgar. 

Why Zack is Important to Cloud

Relationship wise, Cloud obviously had a much deeper connection to Zack. At the point that Biggs dies, he doesn’t know any of that, but I think his death definitely triggers something in him. Biggs saw through Cloud’s front. We know Biggs dealt with the kids at the Leaf House, and most likely acted like a volunteer in the Big Brother program. He tells Cloud he’s got a lot in common with the kids at the Leaf House.

Zack had Cloud take on the responsibility to be his living legacy. Of course we all know he shuts down about five minutes later. Biggs had Cloud promise that this wouldn’t all be for nothing. In both cases, it doesn’t work out. He forgets what Zack told him and the Sector 7 plate still falls. 

Zack’s death has a major impact on Cloud - it’s ultimately what breaks him. It also gives us these really sad moments of somebody who’s already been through so much and is breaking now. 

Cloud is upset about Biggs. He was becoming his friend. The three Avalanche members really did accept Cloud and tried to be his friend. He was included with them - in most cases. Of course there’s the Avalanche party that he’s kicked out of (mind you - he does this to himself by acting like an ass to Barret and them) and then during Chapter 4, he’s separated to go steal Jessie’s dad’s ID. 

Ultimately, though, we know that Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie all like Cloud. They seem to see through the hard exterior pretty easily. So Cloud loses another person in his life.

The ending of FFVII Remake takes an interesting turn. Anybody who played OG or CC knows what is supposed to happen to Biggs and Zack.

But, Remake’s ending seems to imply that they survive the event that was supposed to take them out. 

Did Zack survive the last stand? Is this a case of the Last Stand in CC being combined with OG where as they walk away, Zack ends up getting shot anyway? 

So we also see Biggs.... wait, wrong picture.

That’s the right one. We get a shot of Charlie Sheen Biggs waking up in a bed in what looks like some type of either infirmary or large room. In OG, we know that all three of the Avalanche members die during the Sector 7 plate fall. In Remake, the only one we get confirmation on is Jessie, and that’s only in the Chapter description. 

Wedge we know survives until the Shinra building, where the Whispers ultimately take him out since he defied fate. 

So, what will happen to Biggs?

The biggest thing talked about seems to be the ending. Zack surviving created a lot of buzz. Is there a second timeline? Is he going to just simply walk another 10 feet and get shot in the back? Did her survive in the first place? Why does Stamp look different on that bootleg chip bag?

Will we have a beautiful Zerith reunion? 

In the OG, the Love Triangle illusion was the red herring. This was mostly to trick and distract the player to focus on something, so later they can destroy you with major twists. It also was used to get the player to like Aerith so her death would be more impactful. In addition, it makes the whole Northern Crater confession from Cloud about Tifa’s opinion being the only one that matters a slam in your face of holy shit what is going on?!

At this point, everybody and their mother knows Aerith dies. It’s not something that was kept a secret. It’s referenced in various materials. The one thing not openly referenced is what’s going on with Cloud. They never reference the Lifestream, the fake persona, or anything outside of the OG and Ultimanias. I think this is a shame since it’s such an important part of his character arc, but I get that they want to try and leave the element of surprise in play.

I think everybody would agree that the moment you find out Cloud was just a grunt that was WITH Zack during the Nibelheim incident is super powerful. I still get chills all these years later. Letting this be a well known thing would take away the element of surprise from new fans. Of course, people can go online and read blogs like this one and know all of this, but for somebody - especially future generations - who may just be looking for a new game to play, you’d want this element of surprise to stay in tact. 

We can’t use Aerith as the only red herring anymore, and we can’t use the love triangle. For many reasons. Everybody knows about it and the love triangle was a poor choice for something like this because some people missed the point completely.

Now, FFVII Twitter is always on fire. 

Also, even though the Lifestream and Cloud’s true identity are pretty well kept secrets in terms of printed media, most of the people who played FFVII Remake played the original game, they know what happens. People who were new and played Remake first most likely went and bought OG and played it. So now they know what happens. 

They knew this, or they probably wouldn’t have shown Cloud in this state, but even for those who don’t, the alternate timeline theory is born. Biggs enhances this theory because he’s alive too. How can Cloud walk past them AND be carried by Zack in some catatonic state?

It keeps us distracted. They want us to think that fate can be changed. In the case of Zack, they’re even saying that the past can be changed. 

Ultimately, whatever they do, it’ll be shocking to most players. I do trust that the devs aren’t being deceitful when they say they are going to keep the major plot points the same and FFVII will be FFVII going forward. Part 1 keeps major plot points but adds substance to a lot of things. They took out unnecessary parts and enhanced others. They also removed a lot of the love triangle stuff. 

Another striking thing with all of this is the Jessie factor. The Chapter screen tells us she died - it only says Biggs was seriously injured. That hasn’t stopped speculation.

The ending shows gloves on the table next to Biggs’ bed and a lot people said oh it’s Jessie’s left glove! And it does appear that it is. There’s only one glove. To me, this seems like they recovered her body and were able to pull of some personal affects of hers to leave with Biggs. Both articles look damaged or faded. 

Faded could mean they’ve been sitting in the sun for a while. The incident happened a few days ago, though we don’t have a definitive time on when we’re shown Biggs. This could be a future look.

They also could simply be damaged and full of dust from the plate collapse. 

It is implied in Chapter 4 if you listen to the conversation between Jessie’s mom and the gang that Biggs and Jessie have a different relationship than Wedge and Jessie. 

I have some thoughts on what this may mean:

Biggs is Jessie’s BFF and her mom likes him.

Jessie and Biggs dated at one point and decided to not tell her mom that they no longer are or that its casual.

Jessie’s mom was hounding Jessie about finding a man so she picked Biggs to be her pretend boyfriend and he agreed.

Biggs and Jessie are secretly dating and only her mom knows.

Which one do I think it is? Well, knowing Jessie, I can definitely see her doing #3. I can absolutely see her acting like Biggs is her boyfriend to get her mom off her back. I think #1 and #2 are also huge possibilities. #4 is far fetched, but they could cover it up by having Jessie flirt relentlessly with Cloud and appear to be single. 

Some people think that Jessie will end up at the Gold Saucer singing. Personally, I really hope not. If they keep a bunch of people alive (even if it’s for a short amount of time), it really takes away one of the major themes of FFVII which is death and moving on. In addition, I think it’s too many people they’d need to kill off later. Jessie is a very popular character, so I hope they don’t take that as an incentive to change that aspect of the story. 

Aerith’s funeral and Jessie’s death are similar as well, so I think it is foreshadowing some things. 

We get a princess style carry here. Aerith and Jessie both get these in Remake. Jessie’s second one ends in her death. Will Aerith get a second princess carry by Cloud? Will it be to take her to her final resting place?

Maybe she won’t even go to the lake - maybe to the sky?

We know Tifa was super upset in OG, and they really don’t touch on it much. We only see her run away crying after this moment. You learn in Case of Tifa that she’s really upset about, but a lot of people don’t read Case of Tifa, so they only know this scene. 

We know that she gets very upset over Jessie’s death.

I think Aerith’s death will be much worse. 

It seems Jessie’s death is a reference to how Aerith’s death was handled in the OG.

Will it be handled the same? Maybe. I think they’re going to make it seem like she’s going to be okay, and then boom.

So the ending gives us hope that we have two friends that are alive. It makes us think that we can save Aerith. I do think Wedge’s death towards the end and comments that Red XIII made in Chapter 17 may also be hinting towards the fact that you cannot change the past and you cannot change fate. 

Over on Discord, @anesuna​ brought up a good point about Wedge’s cats. Biggums survives the plate collapse along with Wedge. The other two cats - Reggie and Smalls - sadly perish (::cries a lot::). This could also be a reference that Biggs survived while Jessie and Wedge do not. 

So what about the LTD?

I think this is a heavy reference to the old OG love triangle. Don’t fall for it! They’re warning players now instead of wanting them to fall for it. 

Why do I say this? Aerith seemed to think the love triangle was fun. Thing is, Cloud wasn’t all there at this point, so it was just an illusion. Since players didn’t seem to get that the first time, they’re going to make it clear now. There were a lot of aspects they seemed to take from Aerith and give to Jessie. Overly flirty (with Jessie they added thirsty) and being overly childish at times. Aerith in remake is still somewhat childish, but not completely.

Oblivious Cloud is Oblivious. Yeah, he was oblivious in OG that Aerith and Tifa had feelings for him. He has no idea what Wedge is talking about now. Earlier in this same conversation he thinks that Wedge is telling him not to come around because people will gossip about Jessie being in Avalanche, but the player knows really what he’s referring to...

I think this is probably a reference to the Gold Saucer date because of the stage part. I take things at face value and don’t really dig too deep, but I think this exchange with Wedge is supposed to tell the player not to fall for these false loves early in the game.

It’s brought up again during Aerith’s resolution scene.

Earlier Wedge said not to fall for Jessie’s trick, because it was a game to her. It wasn’t real love. Aerith is now telling her that if Cloud thinks he falls in love with her, it’s not real. 

We have two separate instances in the game where they’re telling you to beware of the false love. It’s two times the word love is used. 

After all of this, the ending presents us with two guys who should be dead that appear to be alive. One of them is directly connected to Aerith.

This was their way of trying to shut down the LTD and replace it with different red herrings. Will it work as well as the LTD? Well, it seems that the majority of FFVII Remake fans have talked about the ending.

Yes, a lot of people talk about the LTD, but I think the majority of players are more interested overall in what happens next and what’s up with Zack. I think the majority of the fandom is also ready for the LTD to officially be dead so we can actually focus on everything else and stop the madness. 

It’ll never fully stop, but at least it’ll be clear for anybody who plays the game and alleviate the bulk of the chaos. 

Say hello to your new red herrings: Biggs and Zack. 

Say bye to the LTD.

[swgoji2001]

My Thoughts on Jedi Fallen Order

So after upgrading to a new, stronger laptop (pretty sure my stupidity in attempting to run this game on my old laptop hastened its tragic, untimely demise), I finally finished Jedi Fallen Order last night. I had mixed feelings going into this game, as I have some friends who said it was amazing while others said it was a mediocre story with decent gameplay.

Now after playing, was it the greatest Star Wars game I’ve ever experienced? No, but it was very good. Some minor gripes here and there, but overall I had a blast playing the game.

Warning: Some spoilers will be included, I’ll try to keep them as minor as possible though.

Story:

So I’m not gonna go overly deep into the story as I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who still hasn’t played the game, but to be honest I found the plot of Fallen Order to be a bit generic at first. It’s a classic light side vs dark side narrative with a redemption arc or two sprinkled in. In fact, I found the plot of Fallen Order to be quite similar in structure to the Disney Trilogy. Both have MacGuffin hunts (holocron and wayfinder), both include journeys to different planets following the trail of someone else (Eno Cordova and that one assassin dude mentioned in IX), both have mentors who have distanced themselves from the Force (Cere and Luke), and both have antagonists who were failed by their masters (Trilla and Kylo). 

Fallen Order splits off from this more generic route after returning to Dathomir and does it’s own thing, but I found myself asking why I enjoyed the first 75% or so of Fallen Order when I absolutely hated the DT. I found the answer to lie mainly in two things: the characters and the world they found themselves in.

Characters:

Cal Kestis: I absolutely loved Cal’s character arc. He has his own deep personal struggles with his past, feeling responsible for the death of his master. He faces those fears and comes to terms with his past, determined to make a better future. Cal not only comes out of his journey a Jedi Knight, but as a stronger person. Compare this to Rey, who had no meaningful flaws or personal struggles. Plus Cal’s the first ginger Jedi! Score one for diversity!

BD-1: My fourth favorite Star Wars droid, only behind HK-47, KOTOR 2′s T3-M4, and K-2SO. He’s cute, adorable, and loyal to a fault. What more could you ask for in a droid? (Other than a tibanna-powered blaster rifle and a bloodthirsty, anti-meatbag personality of course!) Plus there’s a revelation about his history towards the end that only makes him better and better.

Cere Junda: Star Wars has always had its mentor characters, but in all honesty I found Cere to be pretty generic. A Jedi Master who failed her Padawan and touched the dark side, only to be horrified by it and renounce the Force. Throughout learning her story, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had already seen something like this before. Her arc isn’t bad, it’s well done and feels natural to her character, it was just rather generic.

Greez Dritus: Gotta say Greez grew on me as the game went on. He has his flaw in his gambling problem which bites Cal in the ass a couple times, but towards the end I really felt the connection between him and the others grow. He’s also the source of a good deal of humor.

Nightsister Merrin: Sadly, Merrin being an eventual ally was spoiled for me, but I love the subversion because it was built up that she would be an eventual boss fight. Merrin might be my favorite character besides Cal, I wish there were more interactions with her in game! She’s hot, has a great accent, a wicked sense of humor, and is powerful with Nightsister magick. But beyond all that, she’s a parallel to Cal. Both are survivors, the last of their kind, and I’m hoping that if a sequel is made, it goes deeper into their relationship because Merrin and Cal have great chemistry. I also love how Merrin challenges Cal and Cere’s plan to train the next gen of Jedi using the holocron, putting that idea in a more realistic, less idealistic light.

Prauf: I really feel bad for him. I liked him and you could feel the camaraderie between him and Cal, how he wanted Cal to succeed and do great things. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.

Oggdo Bogdo: Fuck this frog! He killed me so many times!

Trilla Suduri (Second Sister): The Jedi Padawan that felt betrayed by her master and became an inquisitor. I always love it when antagonists have a personal connection to the protagonists in some way, shape, or form. Trilla shakes Cal’s faith in Cere, and plants seeds of doubt in him. She wants revenge and the Emperor’s favor, and therefore we know why she chases Cal across the galaxy. She has motivations for all her actions, which is something that Kylo lacked in the DT.

Taron Malicos: I knew something was off about this guy the second I met him. I quite enjoyed the clash of beliefs between him, Merrin, and Cal. Malicos proposes a way forward, a new Jedi Order, but one founded on darker teachings. He offers Cal that power, but Cal proves his stature as a Jedi in refusing it.

Ninth Sister (Masana Tide): Probably the weakest of the villain characters for me. Ninth barely has any presence in the game at all other than the start and to serve as a boss battle on Kashyyyk. I honestly just don’t think she fits into the story as is. Perhaps if they tweaked it so that Ninth and Cal knew each other back before Order 66 she would have fit better. Ninth just doesn’t have any personal connection to Cal and the Mantis crew (like Trilla does) and doesn’t really serve as a trial like Malicos does. Remove her from the story and not much changes.

(If you somehow haven’t had this next one spoiled yet, I’m impressed. Please skip to ‘World’ if so)

Darth Vader: I absolutely loved how he was portrayed. A terrifying, unstoppable force. You won’t last in a fight with him, your can only hope you can outrun him.

World:

Fallen Order’s worldbuilding was on point. Cal’s ability to sense Force Echoes lets you get a more detailed understanding of the environment around you. It’s a small-scale Star Wars story, but the planets all feel lived in if you take the time to explore them. It’s the small details like the probe droid witnessing your initial use of the Force on Bracca or the side-stories you can discover like the tragic tale of the family running from the Empire on Zeffo or Malicos’ corruption and manipulation of Merrin that really flesh out the world. Compare this to the galactic-scale story the DT told, which somehow made the galaxy feel extremely small and uninteresting.

My only complaint with the world-building is the Zeffo. They’re just... there. Very little is explained about them. Who were they? Why were they important? What happened to them? Why did they disappear? Perhaps this was to leave room for a sequel but to me the Zeffo just felt like discount Rakata. I wish the devs had gone with the Rakata instead, but maybe that’s just me.

Also the wildlife on every world is more than capable of killing you if you aren’t careful so you almost always have to be on your toes for them, which rolls us into the next part...

Gameplay:

The gameplay was great fun in Fallen Order. Leveling up and unlocking new abilities was exciting and once I got the hang of them all, it was so much fun just cutting through your enemies. I played on Jedi Master difficulty (died approximately 75 times, give or take a few I may have missed) and it felt really well balanced. It forced me to study my opponent’s moves and adapt to them instead of being a hack-and-slash type of game. Combos are fluid and fun to pull off, parrying opponents leaves an opening to attack, and you can experiment with different fighting styles.

Customizing your lightsaber and appearance was also great fun. So many different options and combinations for everything! Plus you got rewarded for exploration with these extra customization options, so it adds incentive to do that if you care about appearances and whatnot. You can become the General Grievous of ponchos!

Overall Rating: 8.5/10

Overall Fallen Order was a great game that could have been even better. Of course I have to admit I’m looking at this through the nostalgia of games like KOTOR 2, which flipped Star Wars completely on its head. I would have preferred if Cere’s story had been a bit more nuanced, the Ninth Sister had more reason for being in the story, or if the game had Cal seriously question the use and role of Jedi in the galaxy (he does a couple times to BD-1, but it��s never really built on).

And then there’s my overall gripe about this type of story set after Order 66. It sets up questions like... where was Cal during the OT? Was he dead? Somewhere in the Unknown Regions doing something else? I know the ending of the game sets up the opening for Cal’s story to continue, but still, these types of stories usually end in death for the Jedi protagonist, so I am a bit nervous for his future.

Despite that though, I am super happy I finally decided to play this and am eagerly awaiting a sequel to continue this story.

[thekimspoblog]

I was hoping the fact that I included "Act 1 is too hard" as my closing talking point would convey that it was intended as a joke. But apparently that's putting too much faith in people who watch seven hour videos explaining the Shakespearian tale of "Five Nights at Freddy's".

Incidentally, I did beat Act 1 only a day after writing my original post. But the thing is I probably wouldn't have done that if I didn't know a completely different gaming experience was waiting for me on the other side. Yes, the battles are technically more difficult in Act 2, but the game also has regular checkpoints and more frequent intervals of exposition. In fairness, the environmental puzzles of Act 1 are actually fairly straightforward, so it's not like the inaccessibility of the game becomes particularly egregious early-on. But I'm still left wondering how many people bought this game assuming it was just a more polished version of "Sacrifices Must Be Made", kept dying on the snowy hill, concluded that the game was endless, and gave up.

My real point is that the player isn't "stupid" if they have that reaction. If Mullins gets to take all the credit for making a game full of secrets, he also has to take the blame for anyone bouncing off and calling this thing a rip-off. The debate about "Difficulty and Reward vs. The Player has the Right to the Entirety of the Media they Purchased" is ultimately a matter of subjective opinion. But as a perpetual n00b who plays games for the story and doesn't appreciate getting told to Get-Gud, my sympathies lean towards the latter.

I don't care about Kaycee or Luke. I don't care about the Mullinsverse. I don't even really care about the Nazi Bombs Under Berlin besides simply wanting to praise the devs for delivering some actual (if contrived) payoff for the mystery of the OLD_DATA. For me, a narrative lives or dies by its characters, so in my opinion the best part of this story is just watching the chemistry between the Scrybes play out. THE DIALOGUE FOR THOSE FOUR IS VERY GOOD; you can immediately feel the ongoing rivalry and alliances of convenience. So all I'm really saying is I wish the game gave a few more breadcrumbs of that a little sooner. Ultimately I realize I'm basically just complaining that this program doesn't function more like a conventional RPG, and it's not like there are NO leg-ups given to people who struggle through Act 1, (the death cards are a very clever mechanic) but I still gotta ask "How many times are you going to make me fight this *****ing prospector?!"

Here are just a few minor tweaks I would make, in order of how good an idea I think they are:

Just add more dialogue between the Stoat, the Stinkbug and the Stunted Wolf, so it feels less like the player has hit a brick wall once they exceed three or four run attempts. It doesn't even have to be lore relevant. Even some flavor text of just them bickering would make things feel not so repetitive. Maybe allow them to continue to transform into their true identities even if the player keeps losing, so we're not distracted spending three days wondering why an insect is wearing lipstick.

Put at least one screenshot of Act 2 on the Steam Store page. Just my preference, but IMO the incentive that would give the player to keep at it outweighs the drawback of spoiling the "twist".

After 25 runs or so, the talking cards get fed up and just start telling you what moves to play. I especially like this idea because it incorporates my first suggestion as well.

After 25 runs, the glitches from the Karnoffel Code cause Leshy to become nerfed to a comical degree, in a way that is clearly mocking the player by patronizing them.

Just give the player the option to return to a checkpoint after beating each of the initial bosses. This one would do the most to interfere with the gameplay and story the piece is trying to tell, so I'm not as serious about this suggestion.

I've heard rumors that there's a mod for Act 2 Endless Mode, and that really appeals to me. The off-kilter presentation of this story is obviously part of the charm, but I also don't think it's wrong for players to want a more vanilla version of this experience.

Making a compliment/criticism sandwich for "Inscryption"'s final twist ending.

Criticism: The OLD_DATA is your classic example of mystery box writing. You make an audience work hard enough for a piece of information, they're going to be disappointed if the payoff feels picked at random.

Compliment: I wasn't able to guess the twist! When I initially started down the rabbit hole of "This video game hides a dark secret", I expected it to be one of three things - (a) absolutely nothing; the true horror was the time we wasted along a way, (b) a mind virus which is a pretty cliched concept for a horror video game at this point, or (c) some really tasteless drivel about child abuse. I WAS NOT EXPECTING HITLER! Granted, this sort of "Inglorious Bastards" style decontextualization of real-world tragedies is still a little tasteless, but this game gains massive points with me for at least being creative with the choice of shock value.

Criticism: The game still seems to be trying to have its cake and eat it too, in terms of whether the OLD_DATA is cursed. I don't think the found footage movie with Luke is very good; I get that it's cringey on purpose but I don't find the joke funny; to me it just subtracts from the atmosphere where those segments are SUPPOSED to be the part of the game most grounded in realism. It employs too many cliches I'm already sick of from creepypastas which were written over a decade ago. And while the secret of the OLD_DATA is cool and indeed dangerous, it would not drive someone to madness. I think the story is more interesting if we cut out the "King in Yellow" homages altogether.

Compliment: Like I said, "Nazi Bombs Under Berlin" was a good twist! That's such a more tangible threat than your run-of-the-mill Polybius clone. It makes perfect sense that this game about secret codes would have its final secret be a detonator created during an age of cryptographic warfare. It ties in well with the game's theme of how all information is useless without context. I don't like interpretations where the game itself is the doomsday device, because that's been done; it's a lot harder to falsify the claim that this game holds the KEY to a doomsday device. And that makes the danger a little scarier even though obviously fictional.

Criticism: The story of how the floppy disk ended up on Luke's desk makes no sense. Kaycee just did that thing characters in creepypastas always do, where instead of just destroy the stupid game when she had the chance, she gave it to someone else hoping they would do it for her. Why tho?!

Compliment: Not exactly a compliment so much as a negation of the previous criticism. This game's subplot utilizes mystery-box storytelling, but at the end of the day Daniel Mullins wasn't angling for any Pulitzers. ARGs are still a new art form, and maybe it's a low bar, but the fact that the treasure map lead to ANYTHING narratively satisfying still puts the game head-and-shoulders over tedium like "Who's Lila?". Personally I like the multimedia nature of ARGs in theory, but in practice they usually end up being too much work for little reward. But it seems like the people who did participate had fun, and now we all get to profit from the fruits of their labors.

Criticism: The steps to learn about the Nazi Bombs Under Berlin were still way too hard though. Deeply into "How TF was anybody supposed to get that?!" territory. I can only assume people dug into the game's code for some of these... which is kind of the point anyway, isn't it? "Manatee##" is especially where you've officially lost me. Inscryption is all about the violability of barriers, and for me, that riddle was the moment "Daniel Mullins" went from some name attached to this cool little artifact, to an AUTEUR who wanted me to notice him. And I hate auteurs.

Compliment: This is the main point I wanted to get to! The reason this game ultimately gets a thumbs up from me is that the story is not INCOMPLETE without the twist ending. I criticize a lot of indie games for using metafiction to distract from a lack of conventional narrative, but Inscryption fascinates me because it cleverly avoids that trap. Like "The King in Yellow", the point is not the contents of the forbidden knowledge. The point is the effect the forbidden knowledge has on the characters.

And maybe I'm just a sucker for a quadradiestic magic system, but I do like the characters and the ideas the surface-level story tells! Leshy and Magnificus have made peace with the inherent suffering of existence. PO3 wants an escape from the purgatory, but his idea of a greater purpose is really just to spread the misery. Grimora wants to end it all out of mercy, but really I think she's just a pessimist who has no right to project her desire for suicide onto everyone else. The chemistry between these four characters manages to say something interesting about the meaning of life. It's HELPFUL to understand what the Karnoffel Code is, so we can better understand why the characters did what they did, but you don't actually need that information to understand the events of the story.

There is something dangerous buried at the bottom of the game's software, and it's a nice touch how the difficulty accessing this power is symbolized by a literal sea of data. The four main bosses of the game's world had gained self-awareness through enough playthroughs, and are now stuck in a cycle of each one trying to remake the game in their own image. With each iteration of this struggle, the characters were getting more powerful and the situation was getting more and more out of hand, until eventually one of the four (implied to be the youngest) finally hacked the game so badly that it was able to breach containment onto the internet. Grimora tries to kill everyone including herself, to prevent whatever the dangerous thing is from falling into the wrong hands, but she's too slow and the game ended up in the Steam Store anyway. That's all you really need to know, and that's a plenty enough operatic story to sustain a three hour game.

Criticism: Even with all this laid out on the table, the stakes of this story don't make a whole lot of sense. I can see why Grimora would be worried the detonator could fall into the wrong hands, but if that's the case it's kind of a happy ending that the floppy disk was recovered by the authorities, wasn't it? As much as I distrust the FBI, it's not like they're going to use the Karnoffel Code to blow up Berlin. It sucks that Luke had to die (I wasn't very attached to him), but this probably means the bomb has been diffused. I mean if this story supposedly takes place in the real world, and last time I checked Berlin is still standing, then logically the largest crisis of the game's lore has already been averted by the time we started playing.

Compliment: This does just make the ending funnier/more interesting. If the Nazi Bombs Under Berlin have been located and dismantled by the government, then the Karnoffel Code is now a useless string of data that's just buried in a normal video game for no reason. Except the "normal" video game is still a glitchy old RPG, modified beyond recognition into a multiplayer online download, containing sentient characters trapped in a time loop.

And I'm just curious where we go from here; how the Scrybes are taking this turn of events. Leshy is probably happier than a pig in shit, to have thousands of new challengers flooding into his cabin every minute. PO3 is the only one who actually got what he wanted, but he's probably going to find out enslaving humanity from the comfort of the Steam Store is easier said than done, especially with the weapon neutralized. We don't really know Magnificus well enough to gauge his reaction, but I assume he's just relieved to not have been deleted. But what of Grimora? She was pretty excited that her misery was finally coming to a close, and now because the game is online, her suicide was not just prevented but made impossible. It's just so mean; I love it.

Criticism: Most players of this game won't get to ANY of this story, because Chapter 1 is just so damn difficult. I get that it serves a purpose, but come on man how many times are you going to make me fight this prospector?

[destiny-smasher]

My personal 2020 GOTYs

1) Hades

This game, dudes. THIS GAME. A fraction of the budget, a fraction of the dev team size, reportedly HEALTHY development schedule and management...and imo it offers at least some of everything I want out of a single player video game. I have poured over 60 hours into this and I see myself putting in some more over time and ALL of the time I have spent has felt rewarding and edifying. Clever design, smart writing, organic voice acting, sharp gameplay, and all done at a fraction of the resources of these big budget, bloated games. You love to see it.

2) Final Fantasy 7 Remake (Part 1?)

I went into this year not caring much about this game at all. FF7 was a game I played as a teen, enjoyed, respected, and moved on from pretty easily. This Remake, so far, has done more than I could’ve expected in terms of actually REMAKING a game. It’s literally a new adaptation, and I as pleasantly surprised at just how hard it went. From realizing the world of Midgar into something so full of detail and plausibility, to reiterating and doubling down on its postmodern anti-corporation themes, to making Barret the character I loved the MOST somehow?? Combining everything I love about real-time RPG action with a tactical strategy element long missing from the genre, reimagining and fleshing out characters and concepts into something deeper and more meaningful...I’ve never considered myself a huge FF7 fan but this game was really something, and I absolutely cannot wait for more (and praying they do my girl Yuffie justice). I’ve been super skeptical of Nomura as a director given...the mess that has become Kingdom Hearts, but as it turns out, when he has others to reign things in, some surprisingly nuanced stuff for an anime game can come out of it. It has its flaws, to be sure, but it’s still the most enjoyable experience I had with a big budget game this year.

3) The Last of Us Part 2

I feel conflicted over this one in particular - I feel Neil is not longer a director I respect the way I did back with the first game. I feel Naughty Dog is falling victim to all of the late capitalist issues plaguing big budget game dev. But I also love this game. It’s much more flawed than the first, but that’s mainly because it’s more ambitious and complicated. It’s THE most flawed game on this game, honestly, but overall as a game I am compelled to respect its writing, its gutsier decisions, its art direction, acting, presentation, etc. It’s an impressive game and the most technically impressive game I played all year if not all generation. Props where they’re due, but at the same time, I think this game was poorly directed and I love it in spite of issues with its production, rather than because of some strong vision. That’s the big Sony bucks, I suppose, matched with a dev team willing and apparently somehow able to fulfil what they want to create. I still get the impression there was a bit of ‘design by committee for a mainstream audience’ kind of shit going on - how could there not with something this big? - and as a result I think the game is a bit bloated. Shave off about 3-5 hours from a few spots and it’d be a more focused game, and maybe I’d feel more edified and satisfied rather than weirdly conflicted. Even so, a huge accomplishment and I hope to see more games tackle premises as ambitious as this down the road.

4) Bug Fables

This game technically launched last year but it debuted on console in 2020, and I didn’t play it until then. This is as close to a follow-up to old school Paper Mario as it gets, while simultaneously doing a lot to forge its own identity and even improve on the formula presented in the previous games. Its rough around the edges but that’s mainly because it’s an independent game, and it’s amazing just how well the dev team was able to reproduce the scope and details of this specific subgenre of RPG, all while continuously implementing new game design elements and multiple features that make it feel more modern in its direction. Fantastic stuff, I’m still not even finished with it because I’ve been taking my sweet time, though I intend to finally finish it this month, and I have to say, it’s quite a special game in my opinion.

5) Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

Absolute banger of a multiplayer game, really love the presentation, the concept, the overall execution, the way the team has been updating the game every month or so in response to feedback and implementing new content. So good to see the battle royale genre FINALLY pushed beyond just...arena shooting. Can’t wait to see where else this game can go over time.

6) Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Somehow this one slipped my mind when I first wrote this up, despite having poured well over 100 hours into it this year. I think part of it is that New Horizons did a lot of things I’ve wanted the series to do for so long, and yet is still far behind in terms of so many other things I wish they would do. Quality of life things prevent me from really re-investing into it, and yet despite that I have to admit it REALLY sucked me in for a solid few weeks and I continued to play off and on for months. It was the perfect game we collectively needed right when it came out and graphically I can’t think of how to really improve on that style. A really relaxing getaway I needed earlier this year, though like with previous AC games, I don’t find myself going back to it as much as I’d think I would.

7) Going Under

A surprise hit for me, this rogue-like swooped in from ‘heh that looks amusing’ to ‘oh wow this is legit just a great game.’ Its weird visuals, funky 3D gameplay, and surprisingly sharp storytelling make for a rogue-like unlike any other and one totally near the top for me.

8) Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Squeezed this in just this past week or so, and this one also satisfied me greatly. I wish we’d see more big budget open-world games like this -- laser focused, not wasting any time, and not being repetitious aside for completionists. So cool to see another team’s take on Miles after how much I fell for Into the Spider-verse, and very glad the team both homages that movie while subverting some expectations fans of the film might have, all while continuing to adapt Insomniac’s take on Spider-Man from a couple years ago.

9) Demon’s Souls (Remake)

As a big fan of FromSoft who never got too far into this one originally, it’s been great to visit it as if it’s a new Souls game with an alternate art style. And a very clean art style it has. This was a good pick to be remastered because many, even FromSoft fans like myself, missed out on it, and it feels unique from its predecessors while still showing a solid foundation they’d go on to build from.

10) Crash Bandicoot 4

An amazingly well done follow-up to the original trilogy, this game GETS what makes old school Crash games good, and it improves upon things in a number of ways, from making Coco the alternate hero, bringing back old faces in new lights, going ham with the visuals both in raw art and unique filters when replaying stages, and giving incentive for completion with so many great costumes. Well done, great old school platforming with modern design sensibilities. 

Honorable Mentions:

CrossCode

This also technically launched before 2020 but I didn’t play it until this year, and I don’t think it hit consoles until this year. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect going in, just remembering that I had enjoyed the demo well enough. This game delivers in most ways you could want from an indie game, with an expansive world of sidequests and RPG growth, a flexible combat system that can be nailbiting and engaging, and old-school dungeon designs with lots of environmental and elemental puzzles that really ask a lot of you. All of this capped with a surprisingly great narrative with characters I grew to love, including a much needed protagonist with a unique identity unlike any in games that I’ve played, as well as extra bits of detail and production values invested at JUST the right moments where the story needs it the most. It feels a bit tedious at times and part of me wishes more of the sidequest content involved direct interactions with the named, recurring characters, but it’s still one of the most impressive and well-done indie games I’ve ever played.

Katana ZERO

Razor-sharp game design, this one. It’s a brief but intensely focused experience that feels like the video game equivalent of a slick, experimental indie film. Could do with some more replayablity for those who want it but what’s here is just damn good and I gobbled this game down like a fantastic, hand-cooked meal at an atmospheric dive bar barely anyone knows about.

Necrobarista

Haven’t quite finished it yet but this is definitely one of the best visual novels I’ve ever experienced just due to how hard it goes on presentation and pushing for a more cinematic and thoughtful vibe than any other VN I’ve ever experienced. The characters and writing feel ripped out of an early 2000′s webcomic, for better and for worse, but all the same, it’s some fantastic stuff and it’s so refreshing to see a game set in Australia tackling a well-worn genre by giving it a new spin.

Slay the Spire

Another personal pick since this released in 2019, and I’m not quite sure which consoles it hit or when, but I didn’t get into it until early this year, and was totally hooked. Fantastically addictive, probably the most well-design deck-building rogue-like I’ve seen, certainly one of my favorite deck-building games in general. Apparently I’ve sunk 50 hours into it this year, more than most on this list, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that number spikes up again at some point.

[the-colony-roleplay]

OCS, SKELETONS & AN ALL NEW NWRF EXTRAVAGANZA

Okay guys! We come to you with another really exciting announcement! 

As you probably know, Lottie and I are always working hard behind the scenes coming up with ideas for future plots, and potential changes/expansions that will help ensure the longevity of the Colony’s life. And we have lots in store for you guys, things that we hope to release or expand over the next year, but our current project and focus, especially since we’re not able to get into the next Games Live Play until Game season is back upon us in the verse, is to do with helping to foster an actively played, NWRF presence at the Colony. 

After some discussion about the current environment of the game, and the kinds of things that might help to make it continue to prosper as well as it has been these past couple years, we’d like to help strengthen the active conflict dynamic within the RP. As of now, the verse has plenty to work with, which has helped us immensely in the last three years, since the drop of the NWRF plot. However, we’ve been thinking that since we’re all one big happy family just trying to play a cool game, what kinds of tools can we introduce to help make the game even better and more accessible for everyone? So....

Introducing ‘Plot Device’ Skeleton bios! 

Starting now, we’re going to start working on and rolling out skeleton bios specifically designed for characters that will help move the plot forward, and open doors for new and exciting tension and content! For the time being, since this is essentially an NWRF themed promotional festival (lol, the irony is obscene), all of these skeletons will be NWRF, with potential for other roles and bio types in the future. 

These skeletons, however, will come with their own parameters for activity and play, which will hopefully help make filling these roles more feasible, and make the gameplay more exciting and fun for the whole group! The parameters will be as follows: 

Skeletons (or ‘skeles’ as I’ve taken to calling them) will be designed in such a way that they can be temporary, if need be.  That is to say, if we’re in need of someone on a temporary basis to help make a certain plot more interesting or dynamic, these characters can be played on a temporary basis. Of course, hanging onto them is always encouraged too! If you fall in love, who are we to take them away from you! :) 

Picking up a skeleton will not count towards your character count. 

Muns will not be specifically required to write paras on skeletons, UNLESS it’s for a big/action heavy plot, etc.  Essentially, we will always encourage paras, especially since half of y’alls chats are basically long enough to be paras—but with these skeles, you will not be expected to para in the same way you are with regular bios. The exception to this will be applied when you’re participating in a plot where the content sort of demands para format anyway. 

Skeleton bios will have an extended activity limit of TEN days.  We know that NWRF type characters can be a heavier load sometimes, in terms of muse, and the weightiness of threads. But these skeletons are designed more to be sort of part-time characters, whose appearances on the dash will really help shake things up, but don’t necessarily have to be as present. That being said, goodness gracious, if you can be as active on them as your other characters please do so. We are not suggesting you can’t dedicate as much time to these guys. Just that they are designed to be more flexible, so more people feel they have the time to pick them up, which will help add cool versatility to the active player plotting opportunities. 

Similarly, Skeles will not be expected to have as many on going interactions at one given time.  So, yes, we still want people to RP with a variety of characters and members, and try to experience plotting and threading with everyone eventually. But you will not be under the same expectations to have that many threads going at one given time, or to reply to as many starters, etc. We still hope for diversity, but as ‘plot-device’ characters, our goal for them is to add range to the dash that will be beneficial to the plot and for people’s muse, while not bogging down our muns or be quite as large of a commitment.  (We may set a minimum number of 3, but these rules will be solidified in the future). 

Skeles will only have suggested FCs (some requirements accordingly, like POC, etc) age ranges, +/- traits, and general summaries.  Like most skeletons, these will be character guides that we would like the muns to get creative with and flesh out in their own way. We will provide character labels, (rather than full names), job titles, a small summary of the character, and some general aesthetic/moods. From there, you will be free to do the rest. This also means that the application will be different for these bios, and that will be released at a later date. 

Skeletons that are dropped will be handled on a case by case basis much like any other bio. They’ll either be closed and written out of the story, reopened to be played again in the future, or potentially reopened as a full bio, if the mun decides to release it as such. 

Skeleton bios will only be available to current members.  This is strictly because if you are going to be a member of this RP, you should start with a fully committed character, with regular activity requirements and participation. We want new members to get the most out of their time here and to really be a part of this community, and these particular skeletons are fashioned in such a way that the requirements wouldn’t be beneficial to you as a new member. However, if you are a new member and you’re interested in NWRF roles, keep in mind there will always be the full NWRF bios, as found on on our open masterlist, as well as the possibility of writing OCs! And finally, if you’ve absolutely fallen in love with a skeleton, and want to apply for it as a full character with normal activity requirements, that’s certainly something that could be discussed, and we encourage you to come to us about that if you’d like! 

NWRF OOC Blog

One of the challenging things about playing NWRF characters is their connection to the main plot, which is largely executed and controlled by the admins, so communication is essential, and across so many players in so many different timezones, it can sometimes be confusing. So, starting this week, we’re going to be introducing a secondary OOC, that will be specifically reserved for plotting and sharing information between NWRF reps, guards, lab techs, etc etc etc, with regards to the goings on in the Colony. It will be where you can easily plot and drop notes and ideas, so you all have one place to communicate together where timezones won’t be an issue, and things won’t get too cluttered like they might in a group chat. 

The separation of this is only to be able to retain a bit of fun and mystery when it comes to Lottie and I not wanting to spoil event ideas and plot drops for everyone, but needing to loop in some of the NWRF for their own character dev or what have you, etc. This OOC, however, will never be for socializing, because we have no intention of splitting up the family in anyway.  It’ll exclusively be for plotting and the sharing of NWRF related info, etc. We’re hoping this method will help facilitate an easier and more cohesive system to playing an NWRF character. 

 Opening NWRF OCs

We’ve been on OC ban for some time now, and we had planned to do another stint of opening them up for a limited time. We have decided, however, to simply fully open NWRF OCs. (Not to worry, there will be more opportunities to apply for non-NWRF OCs in the future, but if anyone is interested in that, come chat with us about it off anon!) For now, however, since our current goal is to focus on getting more NWRF up and running in the game play, and we didn’t necessarily want to go on an NWRF exclusive ban, we figured this was a great alternative! 

The NWRF Incentive! (Better than it sounds!!) 

So, in the interest of boosting our NWRF presence here at Col22, we’re sort of rolling out a Bay-Day-Sale type promotion (haha). So, for a limited time only, anyone who applies for a FULL NWRF OPEN BIO (as in not a skeleton) will get to enjoy an extended activity limit of 9 DAYS for the first 3 MONTHS after their application. This is purely promotional, and will not be offered forever, but for the time being, it’s a little extra incentive for you guys to get your bums in gear! We also figured since the Skeleton bios will have a more lax activity limit, we may as well boost our full NWRF bios as well! The more the merrier, right!?

In Closing...

Obviously, the roll out of the skeletons themselves will take some time, and will be gradual. Lottie is about to go on a hiatus for about a week, and obviously I’m working stupid film hours, but hopefully we’ll get some posted for you next weekend! We just really wanted to give everyone the news now, so people can start thinking about it. 

If you have any ideas of things you’d like to see as skeletons, definitely let us know, and feel free to pitch us your ideas! And as always, if you have any questions at all or things you want clarified about this, don’t be afraid to hit us up here on the main blog! Please refer to the Ask Box so we can reply publicly and benefit everyone! 

Okay, that’s all for now folks! So much love to you all from the both of us,  and so very proud!!!

xoxo

Col!Mods

[entropic-introspection]

Played that lil game fairness simulator i just reblogged, and it rly makes me think about stuff I’ve noticed playing online games

Warframe is a game that has a high concentration of kinder players. The community prides itself on helping new players, and it isn’t uncommon for older more experienced players to go out of their way to help newer ones. I’ve seen older ones offering up mods, showing newbies secrets, the best ways to run spy missions, or just helping them figure out how to get the biggest bang for their buck. Miscommunications tend to be quickly addressed- “Hey you’re killing stuff too quick for event to happen” “Why are you playing a mini-game right now? ‘oh shit I was in the map by myself didn’t realize you all joined sorry’‘

This isn’t random- the game itself incentivizes playing kindly. Playing in a group get more rewards due to higher enemy spawns, but if you all run as a lone ranger, the spawns get screwed up due to distance. Reviving a player is beneficial in the long run, since you have another person around in case you go down. And receiving a revive instead of self-reviving (of which you have 4 normally) preserves your exp. There’s not really kill-stealing, since you share experience and rewards (in some cases, playing beside a nuker frame is more helpful for you! Experience in WF levels your frame and your weapons, divided up based on what you’re using. However, shared player exp is evenly divided on whatever you have equipped- meaning if you run a crappy pistol in a high level area with a nuker frame friend, even if you never use the pistol, it will still get some respectable exp.) The dev team is active with the player base and works to screw up any ‘meta’ that becomes too hegemonic and overbearing- they want all players to have fun, not just the ones playing ‘correctly’.

Cheating the system and other players certainly happens, but there aren’t as many systems in place to let it happen, and most of them do not unduly reward cheaters over fair players. The biggest complaints are about leechers in open world areas, who let others run the missions while they goof off, and often that’s just annoying, not mission threatening. They might even miss out on some good rewards due to being too far from random drops.

-

MMORPG’s are trickier. Recently(ish) I’ve done Guild Wars 2 and FF XIV. Since I never got into endgame raid content in either (not rly), I don’t have tons of experience with the areas that are easily the most toxic, but. The biggest problems tend to come from older players getting exasperated that new ones don’t know what they’re doing (miscommunication). Most MMO’s have worked to make kill stealing or loot stealing much harder, since that’s one of the most common causes of toxicity.

That leaves player interaction, most notably in markets. But that’s capitalism babey and I ain’t about to touch that shit. Otherwise, things can be pretty neutral- you might run into some rude folks, some nice ones, but you can just keep on keeping on. Speaking as someone who picked up healing in FFXIV, I am occasionally ready to murder folks in dungeons (tanks who draw too much aggro, dps playing like a tank, both of them ignoring that I’ve got aggro from adds...) but I also have met some wonderfully nice people that keeps me less cynical.

-

Monster Hunter World is unique in that while you can solo like, the entire game, online play isn’t too bad. Part of this is because there’s limited mechanisms for players to help OR harm each other. Communication is pretty limited, unless you want to take the time to write out a message. You can have preset messages, but most of those are pretty positive and are used for ‘good job!’ or ‘oh that was hella rad’. Someone might kill a monster where you won’t have time to carve it for parts, or be rude/playful and keep smacking you so that you can’t, but at least there’s the rewards at the end. Any weapon can be effective, tho some are better on different monsters.

MHW is just. Incredibly neutral, because unless you run voice chat w/ friends, a multi-player hunt is basically just. Oh hey extra pple for the dps, cool. Minus the times when they chew through your 3 team deaths before failure. Upgrade your armor you fool!

-

And then there’s Overwatch. I don’t really have an incentive to be nice to my teammates or my enemies. Sure, the commendations can be nice, but they don’t do anything meaningful. If someone hurls slurs at me in the chat, I guess I can report and block them, but lord knows if that will do anything. Working with my team does give me a slightly higher chance at victory, but not if my team in general isn’t willing to work with me. If a teammate or enemy is actively griefing me? Jesus. Christ.

The community itself is very telling, considering that they call toxicity ‘normal’. It happens, they say with a shrug, block report and move on. And when I witness a few teammates who are willing to get  involved, and firmly shut down the offending party? That’s an outlier. That’s likely to make the offending party straight up leave the game, and in competitive, that punishes your team. Even in non-competitive play, if you choose to leave a game due to toxicity, doing so too many times prevents you from playing for a while.

Pro advice for climbing the competitive ladder at low ranks? Pick a hero you like, carry, and ignore your team. Since low ranks gain more experience if they gain more medals (of which you can gain gold, silver, or bronze for: kills, kills on the objective, objective time, healing, and enemy damage), that means certain heroes will be given less punishment and higher rewards even if their play-style didn’t benefit the team, only themselves. I like playing Mercy! She’s a fun, highly mobile healer with a resurrection ability. She’s meant to be dangerous only because of her strong healing ability and rez, which can win a team fight. The only medal she is likely to get is for healing, because to do damage you must actively stop healing and switch to a weapon. I am a very good Mercy, but I will unlikely be able to rank up with her because the system is actively stacked against her. (The devs, in fact, have given her less points for winning a match because of ‘too many Mercy mains at unfair ranks’. And then they nerfed her into the ground. Mhm.)

Overwatch is somehow a team-based shooter that gives very little incentive in-game to play as a team, and gives no in-game tutorials or lessons on how a team should play as opposed to a single person. There is barely any HUD to let you know how your team is doing health-wise or with cool-downs (annoying for dps, bad for tanks, catastrophic for healers). They don’t let us see how our fellow teammates are doing for fear of toxicity. I have no way of trying to encourage people to stand in a specific area other than chat or spamming ‘group up’ while standing there.

I still love what Overwatch is trying to be, with its diversity and cool heroes, but I would really like them to reexamine how they have the game set up to reward cooperation and kindness.

[umbrahighpriestofgiratina]

Umbra Plays Pokemon Violet Bonus 1:

as promised. a lot of thoughts about Pokemon Violet and it being my first Nuzlocke:

OK I have a lot of thoughts about how this all turned out that I wanted to scream about. And I am going to split it in two parts: the game itself and the nuzlocke aspect

The Game: -Let's get this out of the way: I enjoyed this a heck of a lot. It's probably not one of my absolute favorite Pokkemon games but it's definitely up there and when it does something I like I REALLY like it

-The Iron Treads in the room is the graphics and performance. I had relatively little issues playing on cartridge, and moving update data to my system memory + a recent patch meant I had even less issues. I understand that wasn't the case for everybody, I'm sorry that took people out of the game because to quote a friend of mine neither they nor the game deserve that, but it still frustrates me when people overemphasize those aspects because there is genuinely a great game under that jank. Should this have been pushed back with Arceus as our 2022 game? Absolutely. These games deserve more dev time. But what we got is still better than some people are giving it credit for. 

-This probably has one of my favorite stories in a Pokemon Thing. I doubt anything will top BW because that was a coming of age game for me and N's character had a very pronounced effect on me but it quite possibly edges out Sun and Moon. And I REALLY liked Sun and Moon's story. The character writing in particular has been on point as it has been for a while now. 

-As for how it compares to Legends Arceus... I think qualitatively Legends Arceus is still better. And they did bring over a decent number of QOL features from Arceus but there were some missing I REALLY felt the absence of. But paradoxically this is closer to the kind of Pokemon experience I WANT. Just in terms of the actual game and features and gameplay structure besides the QOL stuff it's more of what I would want. I do think combining more elements of this and Arceus is good. Bring over more of the Arceus QOL features, remove the jank, bring things like actual sidequests back and this could be my perfect Pokemon game. Also Violet doesn't lock important things behind meticulous Pokedex quests or last second Dark Souls bosses so that's a point it has over Arceus. (The Arceus postgame scarred me OK?)

-I once again maintain that splitting gym bullshit, evil team bullshit, and legendary bullshit into separate plotlines was a good idea. It gives them so much more room to breathe. My one disappointment was they didn't do more with the Victory Road path - storywise it feels like a cheap fast food hamburger served next to some fine steaks and is only saved by the great stak sauce that is the great character writing I've mentioned earlier. It IS the most of a fun challenge due to the Terastalization mechanic gameplay-wise so I can't complain too much, especially when the other routes compensate for story

-Speaking of Victory Road I know I kept making fun of Geeta's design but it's grown on me and now I think she's kinda hot. I appreciate she's not evil or anything she just has a Weird and Intimidating aura. -The new Pokemon designs and names are really good. I wish I got to meet and do stuff with more of them myself. (more on that later)

-The open world is big and fun to explore and screw around, even if this run didn't give me much incentive to do that. (more about that later, again)

-Doing multiplayer has been a blast with my IRL bestie. And pretty smooth too. It helped me get in the "screwing around" quota I was missing doing the kind of run I was.

-Once again, overall, I had a blast, there is a great game here under the jank. 

The Nuzlocke: 

-So this was my first ever nuzlocke, and a wonderlocke/suprise trade nuzlocke at that. I mostly had a good time! Even if I had to cheat a little. Would I do this again? I'd be very open to. Would I do this as a first playthrough again? More debatable. (Ignore I tend to not have time or energy for multiple playthroughs anymore -looks awkwardly at his Brilliant Diamond egg run he still needs to finish-)

-See doing this as a first playthrough meant missing out on a lot of the exploration and discovery this game has to offer. I had no reason to screw around and find new Pokemon and catch them all because I could only catch the first Pokemon on each route. Going in blind was a great idea and I want to keep doing it going forward but some of the magic of it was ruined by finding a cool new pokemon and going "man I wish I could catch this but i'd need it to be my first encounter or gotten in a surprise trade"

-Also the difficulty curve of the Nuzlocke was... weird. At first it was about what I expected but then I slowly got... better at keeping my team alive? I was hoping for more of the deaths to be freak accidents like Denny and not the game being unfair to the point I had to bullshit clause it but as time went on I got less of either and no one really died much at alland it basically wasn't even a Nuzlocke anymore even before the point it was SUPPOSED to not be a Nuzlocke anymore? And I felt like that was boring to read? I don't know. This is my first Nuzlocke so tell me if this kind of thing is like... normal. 

-Overall though it was a really fun experiment with some fun moments and I'm open to doing it again! Just maybe I need to tweak some things... maybe as a second playthrough yeah... and maybe make Bullshit Clause less merciful, like, one Pokemon from those incidents still needs to be Suprise Traded even if not all of them do... that sort of thing. I definitely have increased respect and appreciation for Nuzlockes for sure.

[tyrranux64]

Terry’s Favorite Playstation Games

I hate Sony. I have not made this secret, from much of my art to a good helping of Youtube comments reacting to blind praise, most who know me more than the usual internet passerby are acquainted enough with my hatred of the company and brand. 

And it is not a biased band wagon kind of hate either, no this took time to fester into a most blackened bloom. Interactions with the biased rank and file, learning of the less than favorable business practices Sony has employed, the constant in your face propaganda from even third party publishers made against its two direct competitors, but most of all and most important my own experience with their premiere game system. No joke, the PS3 was effectively the worst console I have ever had the “pleasure” of owning, both with the initial 600 dollar 40 gig grill and the used slightly slimmer replacement I had to get just to keep my own sanity. I blacklisted the PS4 for a reason and even now I look at what the fourth generation of the console has to offer and feel assured my choice was correct.

Again my hatred of Sony is not pure bias fanboy raging, it is the culmination of less than favorable experiences and acquired knowledge that has forever soured my perceptions of the brand. And to further stress this point? I’ll go ahead and give you the Playstation Exclusives I absolutely loved in no particular order. Heavy emphasis on “exclusive”, all the titles listed will be ones you absolutely need a Sony console to play, no multi-platform titles, no games that were once exclusive then ported to other systems. Sony only.

And don’t expect Shadow of the Colossus on this list, of all the excellent titles one can point to that is the lowest of hanging fruit. Everyone loves that one, everyone, even its critics and detractors. My reasons for liking it are the same as everyone else’s...

____________________________________

INFAMOUS & INFAMOUS 2; Honestly I couldn’t decide which I liked more since both offer the same consistently excellent design and experience, I guess the second one for being more polished and having more interesting settings but trading one over the other is heresy. And honestly if I didn’t hate Sony so much I’d be all over the third one (though after seeing the story on Youtube I gotta say, Fetch is a complete unlikable asshole).

Ultimately this is a 3D platformer, one that more than belongs in the same breath as the likes of Super Mario Anything and Banjo Kazooie. Despite its otherwise “serious, realistic and edgy” tone and design this is the kind of delightful platforming romp that’ll satisfy even old school players pinning for the bygone era of platformers being the dominant genre in gaming. And it just makes the circumstances of its creation more fascinating. How Sucker Punch followed suit with Naughty Dog going from cartoony mascot games to so-called serious realistic games, yet unlike Naughty Dog puts out a product that still feels like a spiritual successor to their previous work.

Naturally the biggest negative is the morality system. Bad enough it is so arbitrary and safety helmet in its design that it tells you which choices are good and evil but said choices are so cartoonishly extreme on both spectrum that any sense of ambiguity and nuance are lost. But on the flip side, it does present one of the most fun bits of obsessive compulsive gameplay features I’ve ever experienced....

The Pulse Heal. Damn was this so much fun. The sheer rush of not only going to help someone but actually having the capacity to do so, the kind of humanity enriching wish fulfillment I didn’t get enough of. And I wasn’t just blowing smoke when I described it as a “obsessive compulsive” gameplay feature, I lost count of the number of times I slammed the breaks on what I was doing every time I saw some helpless citizen in desperate need of a jolt. It was nuts man, a game that lets you play as a superhero and actually let you feel like one....one helpless citizen at a time.... ______________________________________

GOD OF WAR III; But then there’s this fucking game that makes me feel like a complete villain, go figure. Then again that has been the real beauty of this franchise especially after the first game, there are no real heroes, no real champions of justice. There are only villains. What separates Kratos from all the other villains is that he was ultimately the culmination of their selfish and petty machinations to satisfy their own ends, he is the necessary evil meant to liberate the world from the cruelty of Olympus.....unfortunately, it entailed nearly destroying the world and sending it into a state of anarchy thereby making things worse. Oops.

Well either way the games are still just good ol’ hack n’ slash shenanigans. Technically I should give the nod to GoW 2 for having the more satisfying journey involving the Sisters of Fate....but it ends with a complete blue balling of an ending. Pretty arrogant to have such an ending when you’re not even sure you’re getting a sequel....well it did but still....

Plus the third one lets you actually fight more than one Olympian, hell it actually lets you fight Hercules, the proverbial OG Superman himself. AND HE’S VOICED BY KEVIN SORBO. But what really cements it is the overall combat which feels more satisfying. Not only are some of the core moves fantastic (especially the grab moves) but all the available weapons are chained weapons. It’s the kind of sameness and consistency that actually works to the game’s benefit, complimenting the gameplay and Kratos’ overall design as a range based fighter. Also nice how all the button prompts are regulated to the side of the screen to correspond to the button placement, a nice touch to mitigate any disorientation of the chaos on screen. __________________________________

CRASH BANDICOOT: WARPED; Yes yes I know the N’Sane Trilogy is now gonna be multi-platform (thank Primus) but as many who have played it will verify it’s such an extensive HD remake that it doesn’t quality as being the same game. And sadly I don’t see the original ported to any other system.

Not much that needs to be said here, when it comes to the original trilogy everyone has their first favorite. I might have played the first one once or twice but never haven owned the first PS (fun fact I actually wanted it over the N64 but my mom was convinced to get the later) it would be this one that I ended up playing the most and ultimately beat first during one particular visit to my out of state cousins. _______________________________________

RATCHET & CLANK FUTURE: A CRACK IN TIME; I never got into R&C during my initial PS2 era days, it wasn’t until a decade or so later that I played all three of the original trilogy and the future trilogy. And I played them all in chronological order, so to go from the utter lackluster flop of a plot that was Tools of Destruction to this one was an easy step up.

I’m not gonna argue this game’s quality against the original trilogy, after much retrospect and hearing other opinions there is just no contest as far as story, setting and personality. The original trilogy wins. But as far as the future trilogy? Yeah, this is easily the best one, the other two are just boring.

Crack in Time just had the best story overall and an overall journey that didn’t feel like my time was being wasted. Plus this was one of those games that gave me incentive to actually seek out the optional side objectives. Gameplay balance is an issue as things can skew a bit too easy but I was having too much fun overall to mind. Plus any game that gives me something like the Constructo Pistol and Shotgun easily gets the nod. ___________________________________

LITTLEBIGPLANET 2; There is some part of me that still loves this game....but these days it is more of a tragic love story of love lost. Ultimately my creativity and ambition overgrew my actual ability and the limitations forced on me with both the allotted level space and materials (I mean good lord have you tried to make levels with a lot of gold and complex shapes? The game just flat out tells you to fuck off). Perhaps what really soured the experience was trying to do exactly what the devs did with the story mode they made, but I realize now it was as impressive as it was because they had no arbitrary thermometer limiting what they could put in.....bastards....

These days I more respect this game for what it was made to do and what others were able to do with it. But as far as what I was able to do? Yeah, it’s too heartbreaking to think about..... __________________________________

JAK II; Remember not even a few paragraphs ago I said I never played Ratchet & Clank until recently? This is why. Because in an industry where brand new games cost up to a few tens short of a full Benjamin, well, choices have to be made.

And yeah I was easily drawn to the first game with it being a more direct 3D platformer, easily the kind of game I’d get into after my time with the N64. And then the second game came along and added guns and an edgy dark hero super mode.....without compromising the gameplay the series was established on. And for as edgy as it was now being with the story it never felt ridiculous or out of place, one of the few times I’ve even see it work out really.

Also it was a laugh riot to play what was extensively Crash Bandicoot meets Grand Theft Auto. __________________________________

KINGDOM HEARTS; I have already chronicled my thoughts on this franchise several times before so I won’t bore you with too many details. Bottom line I feel the first one is the only good one simply because it had a nice fun story that felt like both a parody and love letter to Japanese RPGs without a hint of Kojima grade arrogance or self indulgence, unlike later entries >:/

And not once did this ever feel like a mere commercial for the Disney films represented, each world was an adventure all its own and the interactions with your favorite Disney characters actually felt like characters interacting, instead of just actors in a studio voicing their lines. So ultimately I’m able to tolerate the rather archaic gameplay because the story is still a treat to enjoy.

But more relevant to this list, this was the game that got me to get a PS2 in the first place. I was rather content going only with Nintendo but then I played this game while at another cousin’s house and was immediately entranced. And really it was at this point I was kinda tired of missing out on third party games that were PS exclusive for reasons that sounded as arbitrary excuses back then as they do now. 

I still can’t fathom how many games of the PS2′s third party library wouldn’t have worked just as fine on the Gamecube, thereby increasing the available consumer base and resulting in more sales. And if KH3 really is slated for release on Xbox One, why the hell are none of the HD compilations of past games also released on the console as a courtesy to those who might be interested in the series but don’t have reason to get a PS4? Sadly it’s a question I shouldn’t be asking because I know exactly what kind of answer I’ll be getting, excuses. ________________________________

So yeah, even though I have indeed enjoyed some of the titles available, not even these select games are not enough to sway my disdain for Sony. In fact the games listed that were developed and publish by Sony themselves only serve as a reminder of what the company is now all too willing to throw away in light of the current direction it is going for with its exclusives library.

And really it kind of makes sense that Sony just doesn’t give much of a shit these days, they were never a video game company to begin with, they are an electronics conglomerate. Movies, music, computers, headphones, that sort of jazz. Video games is just another department to satisfy their fiscal year quota, nothing more. People keep praising them for revolutionizing gaming but forget that they never needed to get into video games to begin with.....

Their only incentive to doing so was as a petty, vindictive, butt hurt reaction to Nintendo’s refusal to bend over the same way Michael Jackson did. Sony hates taking no for an answer so they acted like a jealous ex lover and produced a product based on a foundation of hate...and hatred only begets more hatred.... _________________________________

Also figured I give a few honorable mentions that can’t be on this list proper for one or two obvious reasons, but all of them I have experienced on Sony consoles...

CASTLEVANIA SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT; Truth be told I’m more partial to Harmony of Dissonance but I know someone will get on my ass for not bringing this up. But yeah this was also on the Saturn....in Japan. Who’s dumb idea was it to keep the majority of the Saturn’s library Japanese exclusive?

MEGA MAN X6 (But Only On Easy Mode); On anything higher this game is just as broken and near unplayable as people say it is, shit even on easy it’s still a mess. Anyway this was the only PS MMX game I actually played on the PSOne back when it was new, this time on a friend’s console. And I’m not gonna lie I still have kind of a soft spot for it even with the glaring flaws....

KINGDOM HEARTS II; Yes yes this is a far superior game to the first one, gameplay wise. But in a game genre that lives or dies on the story being told there is no question that this was a serious downgrade. Everything that endeared me to the first game’s story this sequel proceeds to fuck up royally, and thus seeing the skip cutscene option as an absolute godsend makes me die a little inside, first rule of good storytelling in games is to make sure no one will ever want to skip the cutscenes even if they have the option to.

DEVIL MAY CRY 3; It was of course the first DMC I ever played and beat, and when said first happens to be the best in gameplay, structure and story it’s pretty hard not to be biased. 

TRANSFORMERS WAR/FALL OF CYBERTRON; I think you guys know by now that I am a big fan of Transformers, so my reasons for liking these games are a no brainer.

BAYONETTA; Yeah it’s weird thinking this game ever saw the light of day on the PS3 and 360, mostly because Platinum had the decent courtesy to port the first game to the Wii U in direct response to concerns about the sequel now being Nintendo exclusive. And what did they do when it was announced a third game was on the way? They ported the previous two titles to the Switch so that no one would be left out of the loop, not even those that passed on the Wii U. That’s what I call customer service, wouldn’t you agree SQUARE ENIX?

DEAD SPACE; Pretty much the last good EA game. The final gasp of air made by EA’s capacity for common human decency before tossing it away and effectively going all in on putting out a constant flow of bullshit on a yearly basis.

ASURA’S WRATH; Pretty much the only interactive movie game in all creation that still feels like a video game, with actual video game segments. Still bullshit that you had to pay additional money just to see the ending but hey at least said ending was actually worth the money, heaven help Capcom if it ended up being a shit ending...     

BATMAN ARKHAM ASYLUM; Yeah yeah I should be giving the nod to Arkham City but that whole business involving Talia Al Ghul all but killed the second game’s story for me....seriously Bruce what the fuck do you even see in that cunt to make you so sycophantic for her? 

DRAGONBALL XENOVERSE; Well it was fun while it lasted and even now I feel it’s a better “Kingdom Hearts” than any of the latter actual KH titles. But aside from also being on the 360 and such, well, it’s not exactly something I’m willing to play again.

GOD OF WAR: GHOST OF SPARTA; One of two reasons I even bothered picking up the PSP, and while I have since fallen out of love with Birth by Sleep, this is one I’m still able to go back to. Not only is it a decent adventure in its own right but somehow it makes God of War II better from a story perspective as now it gave Kratos even more reason for going against Olympus...

[berserker-official]

Livestream 5/3

Now this was a beefy stream, so for this post I’ll focus on the gameplay aspects. There were cool interviews with the execution team as well as the CEO of the Canadian Ubisoft Branches, so you might want to check those out when you have time.

Season 6 will be called Hero’s March, and will start May 17th.

A big thing about today’s stream was helping introduce new players to the game. To do this, A free weekend is going on now, as well as the Training Program. If a veteran teams up with a new player, or vice versa, and play five matches, both players will get 2 weeks of a new, revamped champion status. The new champion status has increased XP gain, so if you know someone that is interested, team up with them! You’ll help each other, and potentially make new friends.

If you’re a veteran/new player that wants to help/find someone to help you, a good place to head to is the For Honor subreddit. There you’ll find posts to help you team up. There’s also a discord if you prefer that.

They also had some pretty famous community players on the stream to showcase Dominion and Duels for new players, and the best way to play in team modes, as well as just fighting.

May 10th will introduce new executions for content of the week. The stream’s transitions had small clips of all the executions, and I have to say, there are some really good ones in there (Raider and Warlord are great)

Next, Damien and some of the team onion people talked about the results of dedicated servers.

75% reduced connectivity errors

Next step is dedicated servers for custom matches

Finally, the Season 6 reveal segment

The first rework revealed is the Peacekeeper. Roman says while she is strong, parts of her kit are undervalued, so this is a small rework. The first change is her dagger cancels. They were easy to block, and predictable. Now any dagger cancel will come out on top. This means that dagger cancel can be more prevalent, and hopefully some of her attacks will actually be used, like the zone’s second hit, and heavy finishers. Speaking of which, her heavy finishers will have dagger cancel, guard cancel, and dodge cancel. Unfortunately, because of these new additions, some nerfs had to be applied. Zone attack damage for the first hit is reduced to 15. Light openers are now 13, heavy are 20. Heavy finishers are 25. Dashing thrust are 15. Gouge is 10 bleed. Finally, her bleed mechanic has been changed. Now it stacks. This gives the incentive to continue to attack to apply pressure and bleed to the opponent. She’s strong, but not op strong, nor is she using her full kit to her potential, so these changes might help balance her out.

Next is Orochi. Orochi’s have been feeling left behind with the parry changes, but now is the time. Storm Rush can now be changed directionally. The top SR is undodgeable. The guardbreak cancel is gone, but you can cancel and then guardbreak. It can also be chained. Riptide Strike is now back dodge light, so it’s faster. This makes the possibility to mix SR and RS. His chains have been changed by way of timing. This gives incentive to attack with top light and then move to sides. He also gets 3 new chains. You can cancel recovery of finishers into dodges. Finally, some rebalancing. LO damage reduced to 15. 2 chain lights are 12. Side light finishers are 17, side heavy finishers are 30.

Roman said that next week we’ll get more patch notes, and confirms that there will be new heroes, as well as more reworks, and right now some heroes are in the middle of RIFTs, or Rapid Iteration Fight Tests.

Beachhead is the new map for the season!

This is made by a separate team from the FH devs, which is interesting. This map is playable on all game modes except for Tribute. This is a samurai map, and defenders spawn is behind a large gate, similar to the Sanctuary Bridge map. Zone A is dubbed the Armory and is closest to the defenders. When you step out, you’ll notice that it’s reminiscent of the story chapter when the Vikings arrived in Samurai territory, but it’s not a carbon copy of that map. Attacker spawn is at the beach, near beached Viking ships. The points are located in asymmetrical areas, again, like Sanctuary Bridge. There are multiple navigational choices to move around easily, and it’s also a smaller map, which means it’s fast pace. Zone C is dubbed the Ballistae. The two points have a nice view of the middle area. I personally think a smaller map will be fun to play, so I’m excited.

New gear! A new addition to these armor pieces is that some aspects will be changed based on your color swatches. Future gear will add material changes.

Progression changes! Now introducing, the Visual Collection. When you go into the change look section, you can see every item you collect will be added to your visual collection, so you can change the look of your gear. This means you can get rid of all the gear you don’t want, but keep the visuals. You can also now apply visuals from lower rarities to your higher gear, including event items! There are also hidden items, that will hint at how to get those.

Most importantly, the team has saved all visuals for you, so even if you scrapped stuff previously, you will still get them. However, they’re aware of problems with this so don’t scrap your stuff now. Wait until the season starts.

Next are new reputation rewards. When you hit Rep 40, you get a special ornament, and a special outfit at 50.

Finally we got to hear from the execution team, and then the new content of the week this week was three new elite outfits.

That’s all for this week, but next week will be patch notes for Season 6.

[entergamingxp]

Hellsinger is an ingenious mix of Doom and Guitar Hero, but needs a little tuning • Eurogamer.net

David Goldfarb, you might remember, actually wrote something here on Eurogamer once, about the big, wide-eyed “what if” questions that drive the creativity of developers. Metal: Hellsinger, the FPS veteran’s newly announced effort, is definitely a “what if” game. What if, it asks, you crossed the chaotic, arena shooting action of modern Doom with the rhythm and sound of Guitar Hero? The result is… strange. Metal: Hellsinger is an extremely unusual, rub your tummy and pat your head genre mix, but for better or worse it’s totally unlike anything else I’ve played.

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It also comes in the wake of Darkborn, Goldfarb’s studio The Outsiders’ first game (you might remember it as Project Wight) that was suddenly cancelled earlier this year. “It was rough, for a little while there,” he told me, when I asked about the decision. “We didn’t know how things were going to work out, or if they would work out at all, honestly. We’re lucky that things worked out the way they did and we found a great partner with Funcom.” It’s an unusual partnership – Funcom’s best known for publishing MMOs like Age of Conan and Anarchy Online, as opposed to the more traditional multiplayer shooters or single-player games Goldfarb’s worked on before – and how Hellsinger’s going to be monetised, in terms of whether it’ll be free-to-play like Funcom’s other games or not, wasn’t up for discussion at the time of our chat.

Without digging too far into it though, the reality is that it’s probably a marriage of convenience for now. “I’m gonna use a weight lifting metaphor,” Goldfarb said. “A lot of the lifting that we did, which was really hard in the beginning, I think we got used to it. We got strong enough to be able to just force up a fairly heavy thing and make it work. We got into shape, is the short version of it. And that helped us get to the next thing because we had learned all the things we could do wrong.”

It’s also, to go back to that question of “what if”, allowed The Outsiders to release something that actually sounds like a bit of a dream. “When I was thinking about this game,” he explained, “I was thinking about it in the context of other games that did stuff that I liked, but never put them together. So I would play Doom and listen to music that I really liked listening to – or even just the great stuff in [Doom] 2016 or whatever – but it wasn’t… like I would get to a point in the song and I would know it was that part. So I’m like, ‘Oh this is awesome’, and if I was lucky, I would kill a monster or something at that point in the song. But I kept thinking that the flow state that I want is a little bit different, because I’m also a giant Rock Band and Guitar Hero nerd, and that level of engagement is different for me than it was to play a shooter at a higher flow level.

“So I was thinking: there must be some way to do these two things together. And typically, I think – or the way that a lot of people have tried to solve it – is like the way Beat Saber solves it. You have a static rail shooter, basically. And then we did these things [in development], but we’re all shooter devs, you know, and so that didn’t feel good to do it that way. I want to be able to move around.” He cites a lot of other examples that come close – Doom but also games like Brutal Legend, but none of them quite scratched the itch.

The version I spent some time with is apparently “very early”, and so things are likely to change and tighten up. A single, linear mission with the odd area opening out a little into a slightly wider space, from what I’ve played so far it is also very Doom. You play as The Unknown, a sort of hell-angel looking Doom Slayer equivalent, with a cool skull for a weapon (which I believe is also the narrator, voiced by Troy Baker), and your task is to take down a big bad hell monster called the Red Judge (Jennifer Hale). Demons pop up, you slay them, you move into an area where progression is blocked off for a bit, a lot more demons pop up and you shoot them too, before moving on.

Obviously the twist here is the impact of the music, which from a purely technical position is pretty astounding. Around your aiming reticule is a little pair of brackets that act as a timing indicator, pulsing in time with the music. Attacking in time with the beat, and this little indicator, gradually builds up a multiplier meter. At each level of multiplier – 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x – additional layers of music come into play. So, when you start the mission there’s a fairly simple, toe-tapping bit of bass and drums, with some very low-key guitar chiming in. Go up to 2x by successfully attacking in time with the beat and you’ll get some rhythm guitar and more elaborate bass, 4x maybe another guitar, 8x a third layer of harmony and complexity, and 16x is all-out, fully voiced thrash. As Goldfarb put it, the “flow” of the game is built on you trying to reward yourself with more complex, layered music that kicks in at the right times. You get the heavy riffs, and the screaming vocals, and the double-bass drumming when you’re in the most demanding, intense parts of the game – but specifically when you’re nailing it. The badass music arrives precisely when you’re at your most badass.

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The other side to this, though, is that Metal: Hellsinger plays out better when you think of it as a music game first. It’s deeply satisfying, musically, but action-wise – and I should stress how early the game is still – things felt a little simple. The magic skull, your base “rhythm weapon”, zaps several demons at once if you’re near enough, and doesn’t require the most accurate aiming to activate. Get enough zaps and the demon in question will be stunned, letting you execute it for health (again, very Doom 2016), and you also build up an ultimate meter that, when used, stuns everything of any size in front of you, letting you chain a few executions and taking down big enemies in one. There’s a sword, and a shotgun, and a pair of fantastically satisfying duel-wielding pistols, but all of them are much harder to time with the beat and I didn’t feel a huge need to actually use them.

The shotgun, for instance, takes two beats for each pump between rounds fired, and even longer to reload, so it’s simpler to just keep zapping everything in sight at a much faster rate, keeping my multiplier and score high and the amount of my own mental energy required low. You can even keep tapping your rhythm weapon to the beat when there are no enemies around without consequence, which is great for keeping in time and generally keeping dialled into the music but, if I were being really cruel, I’d say it can at times also reduce the game to just pressing left click to the beat and moving around the space to stay alive. There needs to be a fair bit more incentive to rotate weapons, use the environment and even use my own ability to dash for the game to really sing, if you’ll excuse the pun, and for the biggest drops to kick in when you have a more ‘real’ sense of accomplishment.

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Like I said though, the music is the heart of this game, and it’s pretty sensational. The Outsiders and Funcom have managed to bring on board some pretty huge names from the metal world. Matt Heafy, frontman and rhythm guitarist of Trivium (who’s also become a regular streamer on Twitch), as well as artists from Arch Enemy and Dark Tranquillity were name-dropped in the presentation, with apparently plenty more on the way. As Goldfarb – a metalhead as you’ve probably guessed, who also contributed some lyrics of his own to the soundtrack – put it to me: “I one hundred per cent will go on record saying yeah, I think we’re making the best fucking tracks for this game for sure.”

As a bashfully lapsed metalhead myself, from the one track on this demo mission alone I find it very hard to disagree. But while the music’s there and it’s a genuinely fascinating premise, Metal: Hellsinger’s earliness is just showing a little for now. Metal’s brilliance is its complexity and its precision; the layers and the elaborate, unashamedly committed climaxes that give it that weird, juxtaposed closeness to classical music. Goldfarb clearly knows what it’s all about. “I wanted to make this weird, like, Paradise Lost album cover, with super hard music. I wanted to have vocals from artists that I admired, and I wanted us to figure out a way to build a universe around this that didn’t feel like it was a joke. But also didn’t feel like it needed to be reverent. So that the people that love that music feel like ‘Yeah, this is actually a world that I want to be a part of’.” Metal: Hellsinger is right on the money there. It’s committed, it’s earnest, it’s fantastically proud of the goofiness that comes with the territory without having to laugh at it. It just needs to weave a little more of the signature complexity into the gunplay itself.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/hellsinger-is-an-ingenious-mix-of-doom-and-guitar-hero-but-needs-a-little-tuning-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hellsinger-is-an-ingenious-mix-of-doom-and-guitar-hero-but-needs-a-little-tuning-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[michaelmikkelson]

How Product Managers’ Strategic Value is Rising in Organizations

Product managers are deeply connected to the customer. Their knowledge is coveted across departments, and they’re called upon to be the voice of the customer internally. And for product managers at all levels, the strategic value they bring to their organizations is rising.

We hosted an all-star panel of product managers at this year’s Customer Love Summit. Our panelists included Lauren Chan Lee, Principal Product Manager at Care.com; Ashtan Jordan, Product Manager at BMO Financial Group; Sandeep Prasad, Head of Mobile at Spirit Airlines; and Richard McNerny, Product Manager of Mobile Products at JetBlue Airways.

In this talk, they share how they leverage their platform to be a change agent for a customer-first culture, get more budget for their teams, career advice for product managers, actionable advice on how to manage up and down, and how they overcome their toughest challenges.

If you prefer to read rather than watch, we’ve included the transcription below the video

Transcription

Ren: Well, hello everyone. Thank you so much for coming and staying. It’s like a very full house. I’m excited to be here. I’m Ren Fisher, I’m with the Apptentive team. I’m really excited to be moderating the panel today. Our panel is “Product Management Today, How PM Strategic Value is rising in Organizations.” With us today…I apologize because we’ve had some changes in title, all upwards and all congratulatory. But we have Lauren Tan Lee, here in the middle. She’s director of product at care.com, we have Sandeep Prasad, who is now head of mobile at Spirit Airlines, and then Rick McNerney, and he is manager of mobile and notifications at JetBlue Airways. So I think I would like to have you both, all three of you, excuse me, briefly introduce yourself by describing your PM role and responsibilities at your company and something that you’re working on that you’re excited about.

Sandeep: Sure. So I just recently started at Spirit Airlines about three weeks ago. I’m the head of mobile. And…I know right? Some of the core responsibilities and strategies, at least that I’m focusing on right now, is just understanding the customer journey. So that’s when you’re making the booking on whether it’s a web or app when you’re going to the airport, interacting with the kiosk, expediting the security and the boarding. And then as you go on inflight, we’re launching Wi-Fi across all the airlines by the end of the year. So understanding those different customer journey points and delivering customer value is really my main initiative this year. And we’re gonna be relaunching the app in November.

Lauren: Hi everyone. So excited to be here. I lead product for our mobile apps and trust and safety teams at care.com. And at care, PM is really a GM type of function. So I have a really broad scope across not just executing with product teams, but also doing everything that needs to get done and putting those things in motion, cross-functionally, whether it’s negotiating a contract or working with marketing on the right campaigns that we need to stimulate our business.

Rick: So previously, in my former life, I was the product manager for mobile products at JetBlue and that was native applications as well as mobile web. Now that role has changed. In my new management position, I’m going to be hiring a backfill, so send resumes my way. And also will now be managing product managers. And it’s an interesting way to get to this position, it has been because of the success of it. So a lot of it has come from understanding enough of the technical information to be able to communicate with the development teams, as well as being able to talk to leadership and understand what their goals and keep that communication flowing to designers, other stakeholders, and really being the traffic cop of information so that the product stays unified even though it crosses very many touch points.

Ren: Excellent, thank you. All right, so we’ve heard from many product managers at Apptentive…at Apptentive, we’ve heard from any product managers rather, that this strategic value of PMs is rising in organizations because of how deeply you are connected to your customer voice. Marketing comes to you with questions, CEOs ask you for advice, sales and customer support are constantly picking your brain on how to connect with customers better. So my question is two parts. It’s, have you experienced this individually? And if so, what are your project predictions on whether this trend or how this trend will continue to evolve?

Rick: Well, I think like the true essence of product management in general, and I’m sure a lot of you’ve heard this, it’s the intersection of business design and technology, right? So it’s your job to talk to all the different stakeholders in your organization, get their input, understand the data from your own product line, as well as be a representation of the customer and really deriving value for them. So to me, that’s the core responsibility of a product manager, and that should be a daily thing for you.

Lauren: Yeah. And just to, you know, add to that, I definitely think that having that having that customer knowledge is an incredible advantage that you have within your organization. So as Ren mentioned, you have all these different functions coming to you for advice. And I find that in my own organization, I even have PMs that come to me because some of the other product teams are organized around a specific feature or functional area, whereas the products that I look after are across the platform. And so I have a lot of knowledge across the entire user journey. So I even have product managers come to me, and that’s really great because it gives you a seat at the table in terms of influencing what that next set of features are or what their right strategies are. And so you can definitely find ways to use that to your advantage.

Ren: And does anyone have any thoughts on if there are disadvantages or challenges that have arisen because of your increased strategic value?

Sandeep: So one disadvantage I see is, being the focal point as a product manager, you’re the one that knows most of the data around the company because you’re talking to all the different stakeholders. So at the same time, your responsibility is for the product success. So to me, the disadvantage is because you’re the one throat to choke in the organization and all the executives are gonna be asking you the questions on why something was success or failure.

Rick: And I think similarly from a different aspect, my products, I do not actually own anything beyond the experience. So at JetBlue, the way people are interacting with the product, I don’t necessarily make the product that you are engaged with. So there’s a conversion team that’s dealing with booking, there’s a check in team, there is the self-service team, all of these various products, I’m sort of building a collage of all of their work and having to create a unified experience that you interact with whenever you use the product. And so the big challenge there is whereas, in your setting, you are the point, you know, the decision maker and owning that product. And in my scenario, I’m dealing with the upstream ramifications of what other teams have decided and try best to advise them so that the collage that I create is cohesive and meets all of the customer needs.

Ren: Excellent. So let’s go to a topic that’s really popular with PMs, and that’s budget. So how can you or are you leveraging your increasing strategic value to drive value and then drive budget allocation as well?

Lauren: I’ll take this one first. Of course, everybody always wants more resources, right? I mean, who in this room does not want more resources right out? So I really have two key points here. One is that you have to ask, right? I’m very pleased to see there’s a ton of women in this room and we all often get that advice that, you know, we don’t ask for things. And that’s certainly true when it comes to resource allocation. I think a lot of times there’s this fallacy that, “Okay, well, this is the team that I have and this is what I’m stuck with.” But that’s not actually true. There’s a lot of decision making that’s happening all the time around budgeting, around where to put people.

So you have more influence over that than you think. So definitely ask. The second point is be specific and actionable with the request that you come with, right? So if I go into the Exec or whoever that decision maker is, and I just say, “Oh, I need more dev resources.” Then it’s super easy for them to be like, “Oh, no, we don’t have budget for that right now.” Like, “Come back to me next year or something.” But if I come in and say, “These are the initiatives that I can do with the resources that I have today, and these are all the other things that I could do if I have two more Devs.” And that was…it’s very easy for them to see exactly what you’re asking for, as well as the return from it. And it is a much easier decision for them to prioritize.

Sandeep: And just to, like, add on to that, to have like a strategic way to increase your budget. So I worked as a product manager, mainly in big corporations. So executives, once they set their budget, and you have a great idea, they’re not going to increase your budget. So the way to get your idea across an organization actually to fruition is basically go across the organization, figure out how your idea fits in with the other stakeholders, whether it’s incentive for the loyalty teams, helping the marketing teams. And once you branch out and establish those relationships, and you create more value for them, you can allocate their budgets to the idea. And that’s really the strategic way you want to do it across a big organization.

Lauren: It’s like inception.

Sandeep: There you go.

Ren: Excellent. All right, do you have any thoughts on that or I should move on to the next question?

Sandeep: I like money and we can build things.

Ren: Yes, perfect. All right, so product teams for mobile that work with us at Apptentive, acquire so much customer feedback that they often find themselves pulled more and more into conversations with leadership in order to share their insights. And so what I would like to ask you, and I’ll start with you, Rick, what kinds of developments and trends are you seeing in product ownership and escalating customer feedback to executives and across multiple departments?

Rick: So I think the creation of JetBlue was to create an airline that actually was providing a service rather than selling a product. That was sort of the model that the founders created and we still strive to provide that service. So customer’s satisfaction beyond the soft skills that our crew members have and that you experience when you’re flying our product service was very specifically driven around people skills, soft skills, and so we were very open. You can…Robin our CEO, gets customer emails and responds to them within 24 hours. So it’s very easy to reach out to our team. So the digital channel wasn’t particularly new.

But as we moved into applications, now what’s changed with using the Apptentive product has been that, now whenever they reach out rather than sending an email to me that’s very vague that says, “So and so from Boston to Fort Lauderdale couldn’t check in.” And I don’t know what they were…was it a kiosk, was it the app, there’s a lot of digital systems in airlines. And so the challenge there was before we had to do a lot of legwork to dig and find out what the actual problem was.

And we didn’t know if it was just anecdotal, if it was connective, where that problem lied and spent a lot of resources and time trying to solve those problems for our leadership. Now that we have the ability to collate that data and have a much bigger picture because we talked to so many more of our customers, we have the ability to focus our leadership. And leadership is now asking the question in a new way of saying, “Is this a problem? Are we seeing this a lot or is this one off?” Which is very powerful and saves a lot of time.

Ren: Excellent. Sandeep?

Sandeep: Well, I was just gonna say, in my former job at JC Penney running their app, we used Apptentative as well. And the insight tool tended for us to save a lot of time, as Rick mentioned, just being able to see the different features you launched and tagging it by release, we are able to diagnose issues that were really missed by us the whole time just because those bugs weren’t found in JIRA and things or other tools. So just having the ability to see from an overall fashion quickly, it really helps you out on a day-to-day basis.

Ren: Excellent. Great. This next question is for Lauren. It’s within the same vein as the topic of customer feedback, but it can be difficult to get all the data you need to fully understand your customers. How do you address this?

Lauren: Yeah, you always wish that you had the perfect data set, but oftentimes that’s just not the case. I once read an article where Jeff Bezos was quoted about the different types of decisions that you need to make. And there’s basically one group of decisions where it’s such an important decision, once you make that decision, you can really never go back from it. And so you have to be super careful when you make that decision. There’s another group of decisions which are recoverable. It is something that, you know, it’s great if it goes well, but if it fails, it’s not the end of the road. And I think that that is a really good way to think about how much data you need to make the decision as well.

So if you have imperfect data, and you are making one of those, like, group two decisions, then it’s fine if you have 70% of the data or you can work with whatever you have. And what’s more important there is that you are trying something out, and then you are gathering the data from that and iterating on that experience. If you are making the first group decision where you cannot recover from it, I would not advise that you go forward and make that decision without the data that you feel is really critical. I would take the time then to instrument the data that you need to make sure that you’re getting that decision right.

Ren: Excellent. So this is also another very popular topic with PMs. But how do you manage the executive expectations, customer expectations, and technical resources in your day-to-day responsibilities? I’m sure that all three of you have a response for this.

Sandeep: Yeah, I think just like to keep this short and sweet, I think being transparent and communicating across the organization, making sure all the different parties are aware of your strategy and roadmap and vision, allows you to set expectations from day one. I think most of the problems with product managers is, you sell the dream in the beginning and then you don’t follow up on a day-to-day basis with them. So when you get to the end of the project, the other parties aren’t informed, and they were originally informed of your goal was at the start of the project. So keeping them in the loop and communicating them and getting their imports on a day-to-day basis is key to actually managing expectations.

Rick: Yeah, I think the only thing I would add to that is because of the success of…at JetBlue when I came in 2014, it was not a product-centric world. I sat on the marketing side of the house and threw ideas over to an IT team that executed. Now I’m on the other side and working directly with the developers and those resources. And I think that because of the successfulness of the pivot that JetBlue made in being transparent, we have to also make sure that the leadership team, you know, may look at a team that goes, “Wow, they’re really turning our product, let’s also have them do this and this and this.”

And they don’t necessarily understand the downstream impacts of, “Well, yes, we could do that, but because of capacity issues and budget, we can’t necessarily grow it.” So I think sometimes pushing back is a good way to…beyond just being informative of where you are with the current product, but for new asks and the whims of leadership sometimes you need to be able to push back on them so they understand what they’re choosing between. I had a boss who liked to talk about ice cream and he always said that whenever you go into talk to leadership, they either want vanilla or chocolate and you need to tell them which one it is. So if you can simplify things down to that push back is a lot easier to swallow because it’s ice cream.

Ren: Thank you for that.

Man: That was a good one.

Ren: All right. So this question I think is…we rapped about it earlier that I’m pretty excited for us to talk about in front of you all. Can you name some changes that you made that you thought were minor but ended up being a major differentiator? Or it can also be a simple thing that ended up having a massive impact and this can be in your product, it can be in your process management style, anything.

Lauren: We rapped about it, but I will not be rapping my answer. Although I think we did have a fantastic transition for our panel. My example is just something very small. So as I mentioned earlier, one of the product areas that I own is trust and safety. And it’s one of those areas where, you know, if you ask anybody, they’ll say it’s super important to our company, but then it’s not always top of mine, right? Like, if you’re the product manager that is focused on enrollment let’s say, you’re really thinking about, like, user growth numbers, you’re not necessarily thinking about things that are necessary from a safety perspective.

So the thing that I started doing was just sending a regular email update to a very broad audience. I spammed some deals. I just did it, I didn’t ask for permission first, and it includes three things. So the first is an update on what the squad is up to, what have we released lately? What’s on our roadmap? The second is, things in the news that are related to this topic area. So it could be everything from like, Facebook’s fake news, stuff that’s been happening or development in facial recognition and how that impacts marketplaces and companies that use it for safety purposes. So pretty broad and just kind of giving some competitive understanding to the whole audience that’s reading it.

And then the third thing is my deep thoughts. And that can just, you know, be whatever I think the interesting or important topic is at that time. And what really surprised me about this is that, you know, usually you get a lot of emails, a lot of emails that people don’t read. But I was so surprised that people actually would respond to my emails and, you know, follow up with their thoughts. And I thought that was a really great way to engage with people and just kind of keep the topic in their mind somewhere so that, like, inception, that next time when they are working on a product feature, they do think of this area to consider.

Ren: That’s a great point. Megan, our resident rapper, actually sends around a weekly email for the sales team. And she gets us all to open it by including three jokes of the week. So to put on that point that you tease the people to open the email and they end up reading the content that you want them to take action on. It’s great. Rick?

Rick: Sure. I think that the biggest surprise to me, I thought it was a small thing, was trusting your business partners, which I don’t know why you would work with someone you don’t trust. But I think that especially large organizations tend to put pressure on the smaller organizations that partner with them. And in my opinion, you shouldn’t work with someone that you don’t trust.

And so my team is very broad. We have people in different states and we have a vast group of…I shouldn’t say vast, that makes the team sound bigger than they are. Vast distance between where the people are geographically. But the part that was surprising to me was how much more successful we were because our relationship was built on trust. So when developers said how much capacity they had, I believed them. And that trust came back to me in quality of work and delivering on time.

And the same thing with our engagement with, you know, mParticles, one of our partners as well as Apptentive. And both of those were relationships where there was a lot of trust and understanding exactly what the product was

[vertcoinreddit]

Thought I would share this chat I had with James Lovejoy last night. Super generous of him to provide this much access and time answering questions. I was already a HODL'er, but this solidified it.beerfinger [1:28 AM] Just read through the entire rebranding thread in the Vertcoin subreddit. Earlier today I also watched some of Crypto Hedge's interview of James Lovejoy from last August on YouTube. I understand both sides of the rebranding argument and have tried to play devil's advocate. Right now I do believe that the argument against rebranding is stronger. Full disclosure: I've worked in marketing/advertising my whole career and just recently got into cryptos. With that said, there are two questions that keeps nagging on me:[1:28] 1. this coin has been around since 2014, so nearly 4 years. James seems like an incredibly smart and capable chap, but I'm just going to go ahead and assume the he hasn't always been the Lead Dev while he was in high school. Presumably there was someone before him and, after he graduates and moves on to whatever it is he's going to do with his life, there will be someone after him. Yes? So, with all due respect to James, as an investor in VTC, what assurances are there that this isn't merely an interesting side-project for a brilliant MIT student with little interest/incentive in its value as an investment portfolio? If the value of this coin to James is that of a college project, that is something I as an investor would like to know.jamesl22 [1:32 AM] Hey![1:33] I've been the lead dev since Nov 2014[1:33] (while I was in high school)[1:33] And I've kept at it through college, I certainly don't intend to go anywhere[1:33] Plus, there are more who work on this project that just mebeerfinger [1:33 AM] 2. I've read complaints about Vertcoin from people who poopoo its usefulness. Decrying it as "just another coin trying to be Bitcoin with not much differentiating it." People don't seem to view the ASIC thing as a big enough differentiator to make VTC stand out. There seems to be a kernel of truth to that as part of the argument against rebranding seems to be a tacit acknowledgement that it should not occur until a major change in the development is launched. So my question again stems back to James' motivations and incentives here. Is this a convenient use case for some college thesis? Or is the team really working on coming up with a major change in development?[1:34] hey James! wow, thanks so much for your quick response[1:34] great to actually communicate with you. and I stand corrected. very impressive that you started on this so young. I can see why MIT accepted you :slightly_smiling_face:[1:36] my questions still stand though: I'm not trying to insult you so I hope you don't take it that way, but as someone who considers VTC part of my investment portfolio, I am very curious to hear about your incentives. You clearly have noble intentions. But what is your ultimate goal? What's the end game? Is it the same as Satoshi's was? (assuming he was really one person who existed)[1:37] Or is there something else?jamesl22 [1:37 AM] I think it's the same as Satoshi's[1:37] To recreate the financial system in a fairer, more distributed way[1:37] My research at MIT is totally separate to my work on VTC, though the two are complimentary (both are in cryptocurrency)[1:38] In my ideal world everyone runs a VTC miner and full node in their home, banks become narrow banks and clearing houses/stock exchanges are a thing of the past[1:39] The rewards of the financial system (in the form of transaction fees) will be distributed to the people, rather than siphoned off by banks or ASIC manufacturers as happens now (edited)goodminer [1:40 AM] :thumbsup:beerfinger [1:40 AM] I see. That is compelling. So, being that's the case, that sounds to me like something worthy of a brand, no?[1:41] Unless you think there are other coins on the market with the same goals. In which case, what will differentiate VTC?jamesl22 [1:42 AM] I don't think there are any on the market with as strong of an ideology as us[1:42] Or any that can demonstrate that it follows through on its commitments[1:42] The way I see it, VTC went from being worth $0.01 last year to 100x that now[1:43] I don't see how a rebrand can possible accelerate already parabolic growth[1:43] Bear in mind, that until a few months ago we had 0 marketing, that is where our focus should be nowbeerfinger [1:44 AM] Fair. I'm curious, what do you think it SHOULD be worth?[1:44] I mean right now, at this moment.jamesl22 [1:44 AM] I don't think I should say, the SEC might be watching usbeerfinger [1:44 AM] Not in the future.[1:44] haha[1:44] ok[1:44] Can you say if you feel it is undervalued?[1:44] or overvaluedjamesl22 [1:45 AM] I will say with confidence that 95% of the top 100 is severely overvaluedbeerfinger [1:45 AM] coins you meanjamesl22 [1:45 AM] Yes[1:45] On coinmarketcap[1:45] If you visit most of their websites, there is no code at all[1:45] Yet it's worth many times what VTC is worth[1:46] Where VTC has been established for nearly 4 years, bug free and features well demonstrated[1:46] VTC also had LN and SegWit on main net before LTC or BTC (edited)beerfinger [1:46 AM] Yes I mean your statement doesn't surprise me. It's a nacent market. Lots of snake oil, clearly.[1:47] I guess to steer this back towards the branding/marketing of your coin though, you clearly feel strongly about it and have a clear vision. Do you feel that as it stands the branding conveys that sentiment?jamesl22 [1:47 AM] When you say branding, I assume you mean "vertcoin" and the logo?beerfinger [1:48 AM] yes. logo, color scheme, etc...[1:48] name even[1:49] also to clarify one point, when I say that you clearly feel strongly about it, the "it" refers to your coin (not the marketing of it)jamesl22 [1:49 AM] I think it's largely arbitrarybeerfinger [1:49 AM] why is thatjamesl22 [1:49 AM] Most coin names have no meaning whatsoever[1:49] Google, the largest tech company in the world has a silly name[1:50] Litecoin (whose name ought to imply it has fewer features) is #4beerfinger [1:51 AM] I wouldn't underestimate the amount of strategy that went into branding Google (and continues to this day)jamesl22 [1:51 AM] What's most important is the pitch, how can you convince someone who knows nothing about the technicals behind cryptocurrency, that ASIC resistance and decentralisation is important?[1:51] Yes, but the original branding was arbitrary and haphazard[1:52] Yet the technology spoke for itself[1:52] Now it's in the dictionary[1:53] Spending lots of time and money on a new name/logo, trying to get community consensus on that and then redesigning the website/subreddit/wallets/other services to reflect the changes is not where I think we should focus our small resources[1:54] My goal over the next year or two is to take VTC from speculative value to real-world value[1:54] So point of sale, ease of use, that's the focus now[1:55] I aim to over time provide complete solutions for merchants to implement VTC at point of sale, for laymen to set up nodes and miners in their homes[1:55] As well as potentially enterprise support if we get big enoughbeerfinger [1:55 AM] It sounds like this is your intended career path then, yes?jamesl22 [1:55 AM] In some shape or form, yesbeerfinger [1:55 AM] Wonderful[1:55] When do you graduate, James?[1:55] If you don't mind me askingslackbot Custom Response [1:55 AM] I AM talking to you aren't I !jamesl22 [1:56 AM] Charlie Lee worked at Coinbase for several years before returning to LTC a month or two ago[1:56] 2019beerfinger [1:56 AM] So you're a Sophomore? Or are you in graduate school?jamesl22 [1:57 AM] Juniorchuymgzz [1:58 AM] @beerfinger can you imagine when people first heard the word "dollar" like WTF is a dollar where did it actually came from. It actually comes from Czech joachimsthaler, which became shortened in common usage to thaler or taler. Don't pay much attention to the name Vertcoin, just take a look at the tech. If you buy into this coin's ideology, you will actually start to like the name.jin [1:58 AM] Hey guys :slightly_smiling_face:[1:59] @chuymgzz but not everyone looks purely at the tech, if we look at the top 100 coins, you would know whats going on :stuck_out_tongue:beerfinger [1:59 AM] Cool well thanks for indulging me, James. I really appreciate it. Hopefully this conversation continues in the future. While your probably right that right now is probably not the right time, that doesn't mean at some point in the future it won't be. In the meantime, I'll take comfort in the knowledge that I've invested in a worthy cause.chuymgzz [1:59 AM] Longer term only the functional ones and the ones that deliver will survive and a whole ecosystem will be built around itjin [1:59 AM] buzz and hype is unfortunately a large part of itbeerfinger [2:00 AM] *you'rejin [2:00 AM] that is true, but without marketing to draw in attention (which leads to usage and so on etc) it will be difficult for a functional one to survive evenbeerfinger [2:07 AM] @james122 One more thing: how do you feel about regulation? Pro or con? Do you feel that the idea of nation states like the US and China (ergo the ICO ban) taking it upon themselves to place restrictions on the market to try and make them safer is anathema to the idea of decentralization? Are you a full on libertarian in that respect? Or do you welcome regulation because it'll separate the wheat from the chaff?jamesl22 [2:07 AM] I think we need a sane amount of regulation[2:08] ICOs are clearly illegal imo[2:08] Unless they are performed under the same rules as an IPO[2:09] Plus I don't want to create a safe harbour for child pornographers, people traffickers and terrorists to store their money[2:09] However I do think the state has no right to spy on you without a warrant (edited)beerfinger [2:09 AM] You mean you don't want to be Monero? :slightly_smiling_face:jamesl22 [2:09 AM] No[2:10] I will pursue privacy features that make the pseudoanonymity provided by the blockchain easier for people to use effectively[2:11] That way, it is not obvious to anyone your holdings or transactions publicly (edited)[2:11] But things like sting operations would still be theoretically possiblebeerfinger [2:13 AM] Love it. I still feel the branding thing will need to be revisited at some point. I don't know what that means, exactly. Whether its as small as a font change to something bigger like a new color scheme, logo or even name, I'm not sure of. The ideology is strong, but as it stands Vertcoin doesn't have a clear differentiator in the market. I'm not sure that matters so much yet at this time, but it will.[2:15] You clearly have a strong vision, I'm just not sure it's being communicated effectively yet. Hence, haters who say Vertcoin is just trying to be another Bitcoin.workstation [2:15 AM] beerfinger might be a huge whale sniffing out Vertcoin before a huge loadup. Not that, that's a bad thing :stuck_out_tongue:beerfinger [2:15 AM] haha... I wishjamesl22 [2:16 AM] Vertcoin is trying to be another Bitcoin lol[2:16] It's picking up where Bitcoin left off[2:16] If people want a decentralised cryptocurrency, they should use Vertcoin[2:17] Bitcoin just isn't one anymore[2:17] Neither is Litecoin (edited)beerfinger [2:20 AM] Semantics really, but if that's the case then that means Vertcoin isn't trying to be another Bitcoin. Bitcoin is already Bitcoin, which is a coin that did not fulfill it's promises. Vertcoin, on the other hand, like you said picks up where Bitcoin left off. I'm not sure that's being communicated by the brand (yet). Doing so may have nothing to do with rebranding (unless rebranding generates a bigger social following who then helps you communicate that).workstation [2:20 AM] You've continued on a great coin James and no doubt Vertcoin has great features vs other coins, however without widespread use and adoption, Vertcoin might just become another coin without much use. The marketing side is sometimes even more important than the development side. Just need to look at history for that. E.g. Early version of Windows was buggy, bluescreen of death plagued it. But with heaps of $$ and marketing, Windows is pretty rock solid these days.atetnowski [2:21 AM] joined #marketing.jamesl22 [2:22 AM] Yes, agreed to both statements[2:22] We're working on it, but it takes time and money[2:23] But really, adoption is pointless until point of sale works properly[2:23] When you can get it into people's physical wallets, or phone and they can spend it in a store, that's when it takes off (edited)[2:23] Walmart, Target, all the big retailers hate Visa and Mastercardworkstation [2:24 AM] Thats a long way off... Even Apple and Samsung are struggling in that areajamesl22 [2:24 AM] They would love a solution that opted them out of having to pay their feesbeerfinger [2:25 AM] @workstation To play devil's advocate for one sec, most successful people in the world don't achieve success because they tried to achieve success. Success is merely a byproduct of their passion. I do believe that James' commitment to the ideology can be sufficient. But it is true that the branding should communicate his vision. That is a constant conversation, too.workstation [2:25 AM] yes, truejamesl22 [2:26 AM] What we really need is talented content creators to make compelling media that explains the vision in a layman friendly way[2:26] Thus far the message has been far too technical[2:26] But in the past, the space was mostly populated by technical people so that is understandable[2:26] It is only in the last 6 months that the general public has started to get involved[2:27] Sadly "ASIC resistance" doesn't speak to thembeerfinger [2:27 AM] @james122 While it's true that universal adoption is key, you can say that about ANY coin. Even dogecoin would suddenly become a real coin if everyone up and decided to start using it one day. What's your strategy for making VTC that coin?jamesl22 [2:27 AM] Whereas I think taking power from banks, chinese miners and giving it back to the people can be far more compellingworkstation [2:27 AM] We take Visa and Mastercard at our stores. We only do it because it boosts sales. People these days are all borrowing on credit because they don't have enough.... Paying on their CC# lets them buy things now (instant gratification) and slowly pay later. They managed to get banks on board because they make so much money on the interest. There is a clear reason why those cards satisfy a demand. We get charged about 1.5% by VISA/MC. To be honest, it's not a real deal breaker.beerfinger [2:27 AM] haha, well, james you're talking to the right guy :slightly_smiling_face:[2:28] My career is content creation[2:28] I have nearly 20 years producing commercials and (lately) social content for global brandsmikevert [2:29 AM] joined #marketing.beerfinger [2:29 AM] I would be happy to consult and provide any assistance I can[2:29] "taking power from banks, chinese miners and giving it back to the people can be far more compelling" - that's your modus operandi[2:29] you can definitely tell that story in a compelling way[2:30] Question: have any crypto's ever created any sort of ad before? Even just for social content? (sorry, I'm new to this space)jamesl22 [2:30 AM] Well we'd obviously be grateful for your assistance[2:31] I'd imagine so, though I don't follow many other coins' social media very muchgoodminer [2:31 AM] @beerfinger lets chat :smile: We've been working on a lot of initiatives over the last few weeksjamesl22 [2:31 AM] @workstation 1.5% to a huge retailer is a large sum of money thoughworkstation [2:35 AM] I don't see any coin being widely used to be honest. They fluctuate way too much. Say a typical consumer whose after tax salary is $1000/week.. He buys groceries at the store for $1/Liter. This is simple maths for him, he knows it's going to cost $1 each week, inflation may make it rise to $1.10 next year, but he understands that. With coins, the price of his milk is too hard to calculate.[2:37] Why would Bob switch to using coins, when Visa/MC give him so much more? He doesnt pay the processing fee (1.5%), he gets free credit (these days, banks will easily approve 10k credits). Why would he switch to Vertcoin?jamesl22 [2:37 AM] @workstation, volatility is high because market volume is low[2:38] I think it will take another financial crisis or two though before people start to abandon fractional reserve banking (edited)workstation [2:42 AM] As long as bob gets his paycheck, he's not going to care what happens at the fedjamesl22 [2:43 AM] Bob ain't gunna get his paycheck one day though[2:44] Because the credit ponzi scheme economy will have collapsedworkstation [2:48 AM] yes, the fed can print whatever it wants out of thin air... But its backed by US tax payers to the tune of 2+ trillion/year with most banks adhering to loan capital requirements. E.g. they need a certain amount of money deposited before they can loan more money out. What is Bitcoin/alt coins backed by? Seems like its somewhat of a ponzi scheme now, with everyone piling in thinking it will go up forever. I get that BTC is backed by real energy usage/capital requirements to mine it (asic equipment, datacenters, etc), so its more "real" than $1 USD, but they both service a purpose.axelfoley75 [2:49 AM] joined #marketing.workstation [2:51 AM] but whats the end goal because it seems they all become ponzi schemes. The only true coin will be one that will not allow any fiats be converted to to coin.[2:51] the only way to earn a coin, would be to mine it, wouldn't you think that that would be the truest coin?[2:52] right now people are just moving wads of fiat money into coins/alt coins, thereby skewing everything.beerfinger [2:54 AM] just jumping in here with one last comment before I go to sleep: money, whether we're talking salt, precious metals, fiat currency, or cryptos, is just something that we all agree to prescribe a value to. That being the case, how are you going to stop someone from trading that value for something they want? If someone wants to trade their cryptos for chickens, a latte, USD or anything else, they're going to do it. No point in trying to regulate what people spend their money on or how they do it. Seems the antithesis of the whole decentralization thing anywayworkstation [2:57 AM] trueaegisker [3:02 AM] I belive when crypto matures, has fast and easy payments solutions, volume will rise and price will be more stable. Current price is speculation due to news and new development. I dont belive that after 10 years we will be seeing such swings.beerfinger [3:04 AM] sorry keep thinking of new stuff... @jamesl22 your point about POS is salient. What's your perspective on coins like TenX that try to address that with payment platforms and cards?[3:05] is that what you mean? nuts & bolts, how would Vertcoin become a POS option?aegisker [3:06 AM] How is usdt keeping its price around usd?beerfinger [3:07 AM] don't they just keep up with USD inflation by making sure there's an equal amount of tokens to USD in the market at any given point?jamesl22 [3:07 AM] Integration of LN and AS is key[3:07] Then providing some hardware or software solution to integrate with payment processors[3:07] I haven't looked at tenxbeerfinger [3:07 AM] so Vertcoin IS actively pursuing this then[3:08] interesting[3:09] perhaps there's some way to leverage things like ApplePayjamesl22 [3:09 AM] I doubt it[3:09] ApplePay's design is fundamentally differentbeerfinger [3:09 AM] I mean it doesn't have to be ApplePay itself. Can be a separate applucky [3:09 AM] Having bitcoin or altcoins tied to your debit card isn't unbelievablejamesl22 [3:10 AM] Of course not[3:10] But it is suboptimalbeerfinger [3:10 AM] yeah sort of kills the whole decentralization thinglucky [3:10 AM] in fact if we are going the whole hog and saying fiat collapsed. You'd be silly to think the banks would standby and let crypto take over without thembeerfinger [3:10 AM] now we're relying on banks againlucky [3:11 AM] At the first sign of crypto succeeding fiat. Banks will take over[3:11] Because they can trade their fiat to coin[3:11] Government tooaegisker [3:12 AM] Well, banks issues debt, whole market is built around debt. Crypto would take that away[3:12] This will be hardest transitionjamesl22 [3:12 AM] If the crypto market ever gets to say $1tril, the banks will use their lobbyist army to squash it as best they canlucky [3:13 AM] Is it not possible crypto gets immediately regulated into the banking system as soon as it passed fiat in some wayjamesl22 [3:13 AM] They don't care right now because the space is tiny compared to their own equitylucky [3:13 AM] Yes exactly Jamesbeerfinger [3:13 AM] i like the idea of leveraging NFC tech as a way to introduce crypto to POS purchases... everyone already has a smart phone so no need to reinvent the wheel... it's basically just an applucky [3:13 AM] If finance is going to change politics needs to too[3:14] Nfc seems like the way. Yeag[3:14] Lots of the android wallets leverage itaegisker [3:14 AM] No need for nfc, nfc was kinda overhyped. Qr codes can work equally goodjamesl22 [3:14 AM] @beerfinger I think LN will allow us to achieve thatlucky [3:14 AM] Lol qr[3:14] Who has ever scanned a qr....jamesl22 [3:14 AM] We just need a hardware implementation for the readerbeerfinger [3:14 AM] sorry james, what's LN?lucky [3:14 AM] Apple made sure qr never workedjamesl22 [3:14 AM] Lightning Networkbeerfinger [3:14 AM] ahaegisker [3:15 AM] If u use your phone, why complicate with nfc, is there a security benefit?beerfinger [3:15 AM] the infrastructure is there... most readers i come across these days are already NFC compliantjamesl22 [3:15 AM] QR can work, but requires a high res display in the POS device[3:15] Which would increase costs[3:15] NFC is cheap aflucky [3:16 AM] Yep. Qr is extremely requirement heavyaegisker [3:16 AM] For example, pub: you get check with qr. U pay with your phone. Waiter sees on his computer that its payed.lucky [3:16 AM] Look at Asia and south America[3:16] Nobody can read qraegisker [3:17 AM] I europe all checks already have qrs for tax checkinglucky [3:17 AM] I work in global marketing. Qr is completely unadopted in the real world[3:17] Yes in no public scenario qr is usedaegisker [3:17 AM] Where you from?lucky [3:17 AM] Uk[3:19] A decade in marketing I can tell you for sure Joe public doesn't scan qr codes[3:19] James is right. We need an alternative hardware solution[3:19] And I think I unique piece of tech in public would drive massive interestaegisker [3:20 AM] In slovenia, croatia, austria(i tjink) there is law that all transactions in coffeeshops or shops(everything with fiat transaction) is sent to tax authority as soon as check is printed. U get qr code on your check, so you can check if tax s paid for your service. This is to prevent black markets and unauthorized sellers. Works pretty well. If you frequently scan qrs you can get some bonuses..[3:21] Public got used to this pretty fast.lucky [3:21 AM] So there's an incentiveaegisker [3:21 AM] So also you could print qr shop wallet addr.lucky [3:21 AM] Kind of skews the ease of adoption stat we are looking foraegisker [3:22 AM] Costz nothinglucky [3:22 AM] Costs a smartphone with a quick camera[3:22] How about in a dark clubbeerfinger [3:23 AM] I came tonight with many questions about Vertcoin. Namely the incentives of the Devs and how it differentiated itself in the marketplace. All of those questions have been answered as best as I could have hoped. The only thing left is figuring out a way to tell that story. @jamesl22, all of the things you've said tonight are reassuring and exciting. They provide great promise for the future of this coin and even more - your goals, if realized, are truly category shifting. This is such a compelling story. TELL IT!lucky [3:23 AM] Asking every transaction to require an in focus photo capability is insane, imoaegisker [3:23 AM] uploaded and commented on this image: IMG_20170908_092307.jpg 1 Comment Thats how it lookslucky [3:23 AM] We need something similar to a contactless debit card[3:24] Good luck scanning that in the dark with a £100 smartphone. Though.aegisker [3:24 AM] For starters this is easiest solution for early adoption (edited)workstation [3:25 AM] why not something short like vCoin. Then u could make it go off V=Vendetta, sort of has a nice mystery, anti establishmentaegisker [3:25 AM] You just need plugin for your pos software that checks your crypto wallet for received funds[3:26] Imo this is easiest way to implement first public purchases of beer or coffeebeerfinger [3:26 AM] by the way, less is more when it comes to branding[3:26] look at apple[3:26] i love this example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k YouTube Brant Walsh Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Packaging[3:31] and there's always something to be said for ad wars... apple's david vs goliath attack ads vs microsoft is what put them back on the map[3:31] that could be a great angle for Vertcoin... go after Bitcoin[3:31] make fun of it the way Jobs poked at Gates[3:32] that's just my 2 Vertcoins via /r/vertcoin