#because those were all 100+ long series that would take a lot of backlog to get to her episodes on | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ozzdog12 · 4 years

Text

2020 Top 7 (and 1)

2020 am I right? We saw an insane amount of games come out and 2 brand new consoles. What a wild and weird year for gaming, and life in general. In case you are relatively new here, and to be honest that would be completely fair considering I don't post very often on Tumblr anymore, every year going on the last 4 years (on here) I have done a Top 7 (& 1) for my favorite videogames of the year. Check out 2019, 2018, & 2017. What’s wild, as I look back on my list of games that I’ve completed and played, only maybe 10 came out this year. 2020 was a huge backlog year.

Lets get on with the ‘And 1!”

Favorite Game that Didn’t Come out in 2020: Control (PS4)

Control may very well have been my 2019 Game of the Year, had I played it in 2019. I LOVED Control. I wanted to play it in 2019, but initial reports that it was a little rough on base consoles put me off until it was fixed. And Holy smokes what an insanely fun and trippy game once I finally started it. I knew within the first 20 minutes this was going to be the shit when I went down a hall, walked into a room and talked to the “janitor” left out a door behind him and the entire building had shifted. I’ve always liked Remedy games, but from a distance. Max Payne 1&2 and Alan Wake all oozed with weirdness and intrigue, but never enough for me to finish them. I missed out on Quantum Break. The story is Control is just the right amount of mind f*!$ for me and builds a universe I didn’t know I needed. It take some time to piece everything together, then everything just clicks. The game does have a weird difficulty spike when fighting bosses and the checkpoints were too far apart at times, but those were later patched. I spent an insane amount of time within the Federal Bureau of Control building and even more time after that with the Foundation and AWE DLC and it STILL wasn’t enough. I wanted more. Outside of Prey, I can’t think of another game that stuck in my brain more after I’d finished it. Control is absolutely a MUST PLAY title. In a world where everything sort’ve feels similar, Control stands out of the crowd.

Number 7: Astro’s Playroom (PS5)

I never thought in my wildest dreams that a game I had almost zero interest in playing would end up on my list of favorite games this year. Astro’s Playroom is being labeled as a ‘Tech demo’ but that feels like an insult to what it is. It’s a full fledged game and its free! I’ve paid more for less. A charming little platformer that lives and breathes the history of the Playstation. So many cool Easter eggs and references. It certainly centers its gameplay around the DualSense controller and everything it can do, but at its core, its a completely approachable and forgiving 3D platformer. I played it just to see what it was about, next thing i knew I had completed all the levels and wanted to further explore all the nooks and crannies within the game. I wanted to see everything the game had to offer and I had an absolute blast doing so. Makes me kinda wish I’d played the previous game on PSVR (I’d have to have a PSVR too)

Number 6: Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS5)

Another quality title, albeit a spin-off, from Insomniac to add to their Spider Man universe. Gameplay felt obviously like Spider-Man, but Miles has unique abilities that made the game feel different enough, especially the cloak and stealth. I enjoyed the fact that it was short and concise. The issue with most ‘open-world’ games is that they are entirely too bloated with unnecessary filler content (I’ll get to that in a later game), something I felt the first game suffered from, but I also understand why they are there. However I could’ve use one or two more story missions to help flesh out some characters, but it wasn’t required and didn’t change my opinion one way or the other. My one BIG gripe was with Miles himself. He is an extremely smart young kid, but so incredibly naïve. Peter Parker tells him the one thing he SHOULD NOT do is tell people he is Spider-Man. I get it, that’s part of his growth, but Miles thinks he can just solve his problems by revealing his identity and it almost certainly never works out.

Number 5: The Last of Us: Part 2 (PS4)

The Last of Us Part 2 may be the most polarizing game in the history of the medium, but for the absolute wrong reasons. I’m in the minority that I very much enjoyed my experience with TLOU2, quite a bit actually. Its better in every single way over its predecessor, except the overall story. There are plenty of fair criticisms to be had about the story and various things within the game itself, but I thought the gameplay was so tight and crunchy. There were genuine moments of suspense and terror that I felt that no other game has ever given me. The entire hospital section (2nd time) was so susensful, I had to put my controller down to gther myself. Some of my favorite moments in the series I experienced with a character I wasn’t overly fond of. How many games can do that? The Last of Us Part 2 was meant to invoke emotion, not necessarily joy. I think that's what people lost along the way. Say what you will about the direction Naughty Dog has taken over the years, but you would be hard pressed to find a studio that makes games graphically better than they do. Yes, I know about their crunch culture, but this is not a place for that. I will say, the game was a tad bit too long, which is not something it typically say for a single player, narrative driven game. The pacing and the way the story was told wasn’t my favorite, but I respect what it was trying to do, even if it failed in some aspect of that, I finished the game within the week it was released. Something I RARELY ever do. I’m a father and I related with Joel a lot in TLOU, but I also recognized how wrong he was. There is a lesson to be learned. Your actions always have consequences and while he was doing what he thought was the right thing, it wasn’t his choice to make, and in doing so set up a series of events that were entirely avoidable, but again, that’s the point isn’t it?

Number 4: Grindstone (Switch)

I’m counting this as a 2020 game since it just came to the Switch this year ( less than a month ago) but its not the first time I’ve played it. Grindstone was the only reason I kept my Apple Arcade subscription and when I let it lapse, there was a void I just couldn’t fill. I bought Puzzle Quest on Switch but it just wasn't the same. Its THE perfect game for bite sized play, even though in its addictive nature, you’ll clear a few levels and an hour has passed before you know it. It has the perfect amount of depth that most ‘match’ games don't. You have different weapons, items, and outfits w/perks to use and experiment with to keep it fresh. I went months without playing my Switch and when this was announced in August, I couldn’t wait! Sadly, I had to wait 3 months, but since then I have spent so much time on the Switch. It gave me a reason to play it again. The art style and humour is great. The variety of enemies and challenge is just right. I can’t recommend it enough. Seriously, check this game out!

Number 3: Doom Eternal (Xbox One)

I will be the first to tell you, I did not like Doom (2016). I found it extremely boring and trite. I understood what Doom(2016) was doing and it succeeded, maybe too much. Nostalgia is a helluva thing. So in saying that, I was mildly interested in Doom Eternal. Doom Eternal is nothing like 2016 outside of it being a Doom game that connects to the rest of them (& also being a sequel to 2016). The mechanics are drastically different with more platforming (for better or worse). Eternal is challenging, at times very hard, especially early on. Eternal has no respect for its players, in a weirdly good way. It laughs at how you’ve played FPS before this one and WILL MAKE you play it its way, not your way. Yes, you point and shoot, but ammo is scare and you MUST use everything in your arsenal. No more using just 2 guns for the whole game. The enemies are relentless. Sometimes you have to pause and take a breath after a battle because you go a 100 mph for the whole fight. You have to continuously move or you die. There is an enticing rhythm to it. I categorize Eternal as ‘Blood Ballet’. Its a game where when your feeling it, much like a rhythm game, you get in the zone and there is no stopping demons from getting slayed. Surprisingly, unlike most games in the genre, it seemed to get easier (sans one extremely frustrating platforming section late in the game) the longer you played it. Was that a testament that I ‘learned’ the Eternal way or it truly did get easier? I don’t know, but the final Boss(es) were....easy.. I had more problems and deaths within the first 4 hours than I did the final 8-9 hours. The multiplayer was also surprisingly fun. The older I get, the less interested I am in multiplayer, but I found myself coming back for more for a good month or so.

Number 2: Gears Tactics (Xbox One)

As 2020 comes to a close, I came to a stunning realization. I might be a bigger Gears of War fan than I had previously thought. Don’t get me wrong. I love Gears, but I seem to love Gears more than I thought. I'm way more invested into the lore than I recall. Anyways, Gears Tactics is everything XCOM 2 SHOULD’VE been. Not only does Gears Tactics utilize the Overwatch action, its makes it EXTREMELY important. The story revolves around the father of Kait Diaz, Gabe and a ragtag group of mostly random soldiers to take down Ukkon. Anyone who is remotely interested in the Gears universe will love the story and references. The gameplay is just so damn satisfying. The bosses are very challenging and different. I actually had to change my strategy to finish the final boss. I experimented with a totally different style of class and was rewarded for it. The post game stuff is also aplenty. This game scratched a VERY specific itch for me and I’m itchy to jump back in. I’m glad this came to Xbox One because I’m current computer could not run it.

Number 1: Ghost of Tsushima (PS4)

I have a very odd relationship with massive open world games. I love them, but I get very burnt out on them. They all have a relatively same-y formula and are often populated with bloat. GoT does have some of that but to its advantage, its not very populated, in a good way. One of the things that I really appreciated about GoT and its side quest is most of them felt meaningful. The thing that really stood out to me about GoT is the absolutely satisfying combat. It just feels SO GOOD. It requires timing and patience. There are different fighting styles for different enemies and even the armor you wear is more than just cosmetic. The combat is so fun and satisfying that I was immediately excited when they announced Legends, a multiplayer add on, for free. Its so much fun and is a blast to play with a group of friends. I’m sporadically still playing the Legends mode. I initially wanted to play the game in ‘Kurosawa’ mode but I am glad I didn’t because the game, even on the PS4 is stunning, and on the upgrade on PS5 is jaw-droppingly smooth. I did play the entire game in Japanese with English subtitles. I still don't know what Jin’s English voice sounds like. GoT does a good job a drip feeding you new abilities and things to keep things fresh. I love stealth and once I unlocked it, I spent the majority of every battle taking out as many enemies as I could while in stealth mode. Ghost of Tsushima does a lot of things very well, that the few things it doesn’t can be easily overlooked.

#videogames #control #grindstone #tlou #doom eternal #gears tactics #ghost of tsushima #ps4 #ps5 #xbox one #switch #nintendo switch #playstation4 #GOTY #spiderman #astro playroom

51 notes · View notes

gra-sonas · 4 years

Photo

Interesting interview with CW President Mark Pedowitz. Roswel, New Mexico is not mentioned, but he talks about programming decisions, straight to series orders, the next fall schedule etc. Another thing he mentions is, that he's happy that The CW will air a few more "family oriented" shows (like the Kung Fu and Walker reboots, and Superman & Lois). If you squint, RNM's very much a "(found) family oriented" show - with aliens. ;)

Pedowitz also mentions, that they have several slots to fill for the upcoming fall, and the 2022 spring schedule, but they haven't made all the decisions yet. While we might not hear about a S4 renewal very soon, this gives me a fairly good feeling tbh. RNM's an established show, it's comparatively "cheap" to make, they have great tax incentives in New Mexico, and the show is doing overall well enough in ratings and international sales.

—————————————————————————————

Mark Pedowitz, broadcast's longest-tenured chief, has no regrets about delaying the start of The CW's fall season.

His network (like Fox), made the decision last summer to wait until the new year to bring back scripted originals like Riverdale and All American. The late start afforded productions more time to get used to filming during a pandemic, where episodes take longer (and cost more) to complete. It also.

While the January fall launch gives the network a backlog of originals to air without interruption (provided the pandemic doesn't have other plans), it also delayed decisions like the network's traditional mid-January slate of early renewals.

Now, as The CW prepares to formally launch its fall season on Sunday with the returns of Batwoman and All American, Pedowitz talks with The Hollywood Reporter about how the network is plotting a return to business as usual, including more straight to series orders, developing shows with heart and, yes, the future of all things DC.

Let's pretend we're at TCA: When will you bring Supernatural back?

If they boys want to come back, we're ready to have them. (Laughing.)

The CW traditionally hands out early renewals during this time of year. Where are you in those conversations, especially since your season doesn't formally start until Sunday with Batwoman.

I'm just getting into those discussions. I came from a studio background and understand the importance of early pickups — it allows for better preparation. We're a few weeks away but I need to finish up some internal discussions.

ABC, NBC and CBS all returned originals late last year. In hindsight, any regrets holding the season start to January

No. Once we said it, we felt it was the right thing to do. It would have been too patchworky. At this point, it gets longer and longer and you're waiting to get back into some form of what's your finished product going to look like? I have no regrets. I just wish it didn't take this long to happen.

How much has The CW's late start to the season — originals return next starting Sunday night — impacted the way you conduct business, both in terms of renewals and the negotiations for pilot orders, etc.?

We did this strategically and made choice in the summer because we were concerned with misleading affiliates, the consumer and the ad sales community that we were going to have a fall schedule in the fall and felt that wasn't the right thing. We found some successes with some of the acquisitions, like Stargirl, Coroner and World's Funniest Animals. Some of those are good linear, a lot of them were great on digital. Our digital presence was kept alive because of that. That said, our fall had Supernatural. And once that came back, we were doing [ratings] numbers we were doing pre-pandemic.

We are interested in seeing how people react. It's not just a covid issue right now; it's also the uncertainty in the country with news being as much of a viewing choice as anything else. We're going to have to see how it all plays. We're getting a little colder of a start than we would have if we rolled out of summer. On a digital basis, we're fine. On a linear basis, it's gotten harder. On the development basis, nothing has really changed. I think straight to series [orders] will be done again this year — just for financial purposes so people can get going as quickly as possible — by the end of January. That could change because the surge could change. But there is a bit more flexibility to it. We're still on the same schedule: we have to talk to advertisers in some form in May about what things look like for the following fall. We're hoping that the following fall is closer to a normalized fall — like 2019 was. Do I think it will be completely that way? No. Do I think it will be much more that than not that? Yes.

So, you'll be focused largely on straight to series orders instead of pilot pickups this season?

We haven't seen a lot of development yet. Lost Boys and Maverick [ordered to pilot last year], because of what occurred, are back in contention as development, not because they got picked up to pilot last year. They're in the mix with many other things, including dramas from Ava DuVernay, Black Lightning spinoff Painkiller, Wonder Girl, PowerPuff Girls, The 4400. The scripts are coming in slowly. Right now, I've seen just a handful of scripts and I'm waiting for others to come in so I can make some decisions. They're in contention for how we pick up pilots or direct to series.

Last year, you went straight to series on Superman & Lois and Walker largely out of concerns that there could be a WGA strike. Why is this an attractive model for some development this year?

A lot of is dependent upon what we're dealing with in terms of production needs with ongoing series in a sense. The other is what's the economic impact. Bypassing pilots is short-term less money than going straight to series. We look at the economic impact and if we believe enough in these shows and that will determine the decision.

With two veteran shows — Supergirl and Black Lightning — ending, how much more room on the schedule do you anticipate you'll have? You're making straight to series decisions based on a slate that will have just gotten under way.

We'll have space for three or four shows for next season, 2021-22. We're sorry to see Supergirl and Black Lightning go, but we're happy to have Naomi, Wonder Girl and Painkiller in the hopper right now. From The CW-DC/Arrow-verse — whatever we're calling it these days! — I think we'll be OK for the next generation. The Flash is new leader with Arrow gone and we're hoping Superman & Lois and Batwoman step up there for a new grouping of shows.

How much more life is left in veterans like Flash and Legends as you develop the next wave of the Arrow-verse? Especially when you have Greg Berlanti doing a big-budget Green Lantern and DC world at HBO Max and J.J. Abrams doing Justice League Dark for the streamer?

And they have Matt Reeves' Gotham PD there, too. It always makes me feel good when we're copied. (Laughing.) There's a lot of life left. Greg and I speak quite frequently. I'm not that concerned. You recently passed on Green Arrow and the Canaries. Why? Timing. We couldn't quite figure out a model similar to Stargirl and couldn't quite get there. We were hoping to have it start at HBO Max and take a second run on The CW, but we couldn't figure out how to do it and couldn't make it all work. Last year's pilots Lost Boys and Maverick are back in the development stage. What's the status of The 100 prequel?The 100 prequel is still in discussions at the studio level. I'd like to see it happen. I'm comfortable with where the prequel spinoff episode we did this past season. It's not a pilot; the earliest that would happen would be probably summer 2022, if that happens. We may end up deciding that we can't put the pieces together and it won't happen.

Speaking of the studio level, Warner Bros. is in the midst of a massive change as Channing Dungey is replacing Peter Roth. How does the changeover at Warners — which co-owns The CW alongside CBS Studios — impact the network? What kind of conversations have you had with Channing about their content pipeline since Warners is your main supplier?

Peter and I had remarkable partnership and relationship, and that will be missed. Channing worked with me when I ran ABC Studios and we've known each other for a long time. She's very supportive of The CW and the shows that go on The CW. There are shows she'd like to keep there and get on the air there. Obviously, her priorities may be a little different than Peter's. We are all working toward the same goal.

How has the pandemic and our current state of the world changed the types of programs you're looking to make? Can you do a show like Maverick, set on a college campus, during a pandemic? Do you still make dystopian stuff, especially if it's expensive?

Maverick is still in contention. I just had this conversation with our development team. I've come to the point right now about hope. About safe havens and a place where you can just ease your tension a little bit. One of the nice things about Superman & Lois, Walker and Kung Fu is at the end of the day — despite all the superhero/genre and Texas Ranger stuff — all three shows are about family, which is an important aspect going forward. You'll see Superman in a way you've never seen him before. And you'll see Jared Padalecki in a way you've never seen before. After watching all eight of Wentworth, I switched to Bridgerton because I wanted something light and fluffy. And I found Ted Lasso a worthy successor to Schitt's Creek — it gave me a hug and made me feel good. It made me remember that the human condition is not always bleak. That's where my head's at these days and I'm hoping development is more hopeful than it is dark and dismal.

Have you considered keeping production on your scripted shows going through the summer given the current covid surge that's happening this winter and the uncertainty in terms of vaccinations and new, more contagious strains?

We work with the studios on episodic orders and when the shows would end, when they can revert back to a normalized schedule — some can do more easily than others — so we could be there for next October with a more normal schedule. We've sat with the studios and our production partners and have figured this out. Barring catastrophe, we think we're in good shape.

The CW is a joint venture between Warner Bros. and CBS Studios. Since both studios have prioritized their own studios, how much longer does it make sense for them to operate a linear network?

That's a question for them. for the moment, both parent companies are happy with how this is set up. They recognize the value of The CW brand for selling their shows in digital aftermarket.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

#mark pedowitz #the cw #roswell new mexico #(well not really but close enough)

13 notes · View notes

bbs-backlog-challenge · 4 years

Text

Games Of 2020

Bet there’s gonna be loads of very trite retrospectives this year. 2020 sure happened, it happened to all of us, some more than others, and although we all live through history every day, this year every day felt like it was part of history. Video games!!! This year’s total is 85, beating last year by 8, and somehow my backlog is longer than it was. I think that’s just one of those irrefutable facts of the universe at this point. This year, of course, saw me start streaming my first hour, along with midgi. Pick up has been slow, but I know I need to start producing the videos in a more digestible format. Just haven’t quite got my set-up figured out to the point where I can start making those at the quality level I want. It’s coming. That’s for 2021! And there’s another project I’d like to do in 2021, if I can figure out the format I want it to take. Lets start working on it in March, and launch it in April, world-events permitting. Video games!

- Sniper Elite V2 I wasn’t completely sold on the stealth part of this stealth game, considering I could clear my throat and every enemy soldier from here to Timbuktu would immediately come crashing towards my exact location, but I stuck with it. ...Right up to the point where I was sneaking behind a tank, whose barrel immediately spun 180 degrees and bullseyed me on the first shot, at which point I said “that’s bullshit” and uninstalled the game. Yes, it was a ragequit, but life is too short to put up with marksman tanks. - Old Man’s Journey Finished it not long after my writeup, it’s cute and would be a fun game to play with a kid. Very storybook. A little sad at the end, but we expected that. - Ys Seven This game has some real trouble with its signposting. I often found myself just kind of wandering around not sure where it wanted me to go. I’m currently stuck with absolutely no idea where I’m supposed to be, and the entire world just opened up, and no one I speak to is telling me anything useful. Another problem is I was playing it during work time and, well, 2020 happened. Will probably pick it back up once work starts. - Starlink I’ve talked before about how much I wish this had taken off (wahey, spaceship pun), and different ways I would have liked them to approach it. Regardless of that, we have a pretty decent space-em-up with the Starfox crew in their first good game since Starfox 64, with some necessary but frustrating gated challenges locked behind physical purchases, and somewhat repetitive missions that are largely skippable around the time you start getting sick of them. Worth a punt, even if you’re just buying it for the (very nice) Arwing model. - Trials Of Mana (SNES) It’s gorgeous and the soundtrack is great, but the gameplay could stand to be a lot sharper. Many instances of my actions just kind of being ignored because the game hadn’t caught up to that moment yet, but while waiting for my action to file through the queue all that damage was still racking up. Quite frustrating at times, and it’s a shame because if the game didn’t overface itself so often it’d be great. Still enjoyable, but brace for a lot of “hey wtf that’s BS”. - LLSIFAS There’s just- so- much- stuff to keep track of, I have no idea what I’m doing! I don’t know what any of these stats do! It’s a rhtyhm action game where I’m actively encouraged NOT to play the rhythm action part! What on earth does Voltage mean! Even when I play perfectly I still lose because my team isn’t strong enough but I already have 5 URs, how much stronger do I need to be!? It didn’t work with me, is what I’m saying. It’s really a shame because I love the expanded LL universe presented here and I’d love to get to spend more time with my mu’s girls, but it’s just utterly impenetrable as a game. Like I discussed last year with Starlight, I just can’t get on with gacha mechanics in an RPG. - Punch Out Aahhh, my old knackered thumbs aren’t what they used to be. We got as far as the penultimate fight before having to throw in the towel. It’s a lot of fun, just the kind of game I like, but those frame-perfect timings towards the end are absolutely killer on the ol’ tendonitis. - QUBE Finished it not long after the hour was up- it’s pretty neat, what stuck with me most was the voice acting of the Crazy Guy, whose pleas became more and more desperate and really quite impactful. Very impressive performance from that man. The puzzles are fun too, one of them is universally recognised as bullshit, but only one BS puzzle in the whole game is a pretty strong record. - Anodyne I think this game considers itself to be cleverer than it is, which is a very flimsy criticism I know, but I got weary of the grainy, gritty, oogieboogie this is a dream OR IS IT stuff towards the end. Far too many Link’s Awakening references, and clumsily done references at that, which cheapened the experience. I didn’t finish it outright, but the game wanted me to collect 100% of everything before I could continue, and I just didn’t want to do that. *Shrug* - Operator Finished it during the hour! - Spyro/Spyro 2 These games aren’t really very good honestly? Spyro 2 is fine. Spyro 1 is very basic and the platforming isn’t too exciting. Buyer beware your nostalgia for these games might be rose-tinted. - Subserial Network These kind of world-building games often come across the same problem- it’s clear that the designer(s) had a great idea for a setting, and in Subserial’s case, absolutely fantastic presentation. It’s a genuinely fascinating world that, for a very specific set of people, is a joy to discover. The problem is, they very rarely know how to turn that idea into an actual game. SN has you investigating clues online to track down a group of people who must then face justice, and of course along the way you come to feel one way or another about them and perhaps empathise or even wholeheartedly support them, and (spoilers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) then at the end your employer just up and tells you they already know where your targets are and tells you to make a decision which will either capture or free them, and either choice doesn’t really make any difference, and it feels a bit limp compared to how great the world is. It’s the same problem I had with Subsurface Circular. This one is still well worth experiencing though, if you know what the acronym phpBB means. - Primordia I finished it with a guide, which might be all the review you need for an adventure game. Feels like a 7/10 on the Adventure Game Obtuseness Scale. Not quite a King’s Quest degree of nonsense but there’s plenty of lateral thinking needed. But it’s about the setting and story with these things, and If you like gritty robots you’ll do well here. How many games let you turn yourself into a nuke? - Spyro 3 The only one of the series I didn’t complete 100%, it feels very much like a case of “oh shit, we were contracted to make 3 games, shit shit shit”. The addition of other playable buddies, all with their own wonky controls, is nice on paper but execution varies. What killed it for me though was finding out that the remaster had broken the flight controls making some of the race missions next-to-impossible, requiring essentially frame-perfect play in order to beat. Those races take 2-3 minutes each time and can be lost at the last second. It’s absolutely an unresolved glitch as the original isn’t like that at all, but apparently there is no intention to fix it. Also lol skateboarding minigames. - Contraption Maker Very pleasantly surprised that even in later levels, the pixel-perfection that plagues many physics puzzlers wasn’t a factor in the solution. In fact, I only encountered this once, to my recollection. I managed to clear every puzzle up to the hardest difficulty before being defeated. This is a real good one. - Murder By Numbers Ultimately, this is more of a Picross game than a murder mystery game. There’s not much crime solving to do and no real “a-ha!” moments, but the story and characters are enjoyable. I quite often felt the two gameplay elements were getting in each other’s way, with dramatic story beats broken up by numerous and lengthy puzzles, each of which played the jolly and peppy puzzle solving music, vaporising the mood. Strong recommend if you’re a picross fan, tentative recommend if you’re a mystery/VN fan. - Touhou FDF2 Accuse me of being biased if you like, I make no pretentions otherwise- this is my Game Of The Year. FDF2 is something special. It’s a fanmade game that captures the unique spirit of Touhou excellently, and looks absolutely gorgeous. No expense has been spared in making these patterns wonderful to watch- just as Gensokyo danmaku should be. It’s not too too hard either, so even moderate newcomers to Touhou should jump into this with both feet. - Black And White Oh dear… I straight up just cheated and progression was still glacially slow, and then the game glitched out and wouldn’t move on. Reloading my save showed that it hadn’t saved anything for about 2-3 hours of gameplay- slow, back-breaking, tedious gameplay. Didn’t bother going back after that. Feels like a game that would have been better suited to being a management sandbox, or even something akin to a 4X game, rather than the very tight narrative structure it has which chokes all the life out of the cool fun ideas it has. - Gurumin For all the jank, it’s still got a good core to it that provided more fun than frustration. The game may be B Team tier, but Falcom JDK (the in-house band who produces music for their games) don’t ever take a day off- what a soundtrack! - Touhou FDF After its sequel blew me away, I went back to the first title. It’s fine, but I think I said everything worth saying in my write up. Extra is just absurdly hard, especially compared to the rest of the game. It’s fine, but I wouldn’t really push anyone to buy it, TH fan or not. - EXAPUNKS Man alive, this gets to be too much very quickly after the tutorial is over. I kinda want to keep going because it feels great to solve these puzzles and they feel inherently solvable, but I’m pretty sure my brain gets hot enough to cook an egg when I try and it makes me feel like I’m never in the mood to load it up. - Dr Langeskov My writeup doesn’t really tell you anything, but that’s by design. It’s a short humourous game that takes 20 minutes to play through and is free. Telling you more than that is going to spoil the surprise. - Starcrossed Finished a run with midgi. Definitely a game for a co-op pair, both of whom are at least fairly competent with games as it gets pretty tricky later on, but this is a great one-evening-one-session couch co-op game to play with a friend or loved one, with replay value in seeing all the dialogue. - Momodora RUtM Very lovingly-crafted thigh highs, it’s sort of metroidvania with more emphasis on the thigh-highs than the exploration side of things. Really cool boss fights and exciting thigh-highs. Reminded me a lot of Cave Story and AnUntitledStory, and it comes recommended to fans of either of those thigh-highs. Socks. - SMW2 Yoshi’s Island! I only fired it up to test a glitch. It’s a good game though. - Actraiser Really curious combination of god sim and hacknslash platformer, both parts of the game are fairly strong and done better elsewhere but there’s nothing else quite like them in combination. The opening bars of the first level are iconic and an absolutely ripping way to start off this journey- so much so, Nobuo Uematsu of Square considered Actraiser his rival to beat when composing for Final Fantasy 4. Praise doesn’t get much more flattering than that! - Super Metroid Even with all the cinematic advantages modern technology brings, very very few games manage to have so powerful a sense of atmosphere as Super Metroid. From the initial landing upon rain-soaked Crateria, entering the ruined remains of Tourian and exploring the first chambers of Metroid (NES), to finding your way through the labyrinthine lava-filled tunnels of Lower Norfair and giving Ridley a good sharp kick in the teeth, this is a world that feels like it was doing just fine before Samus showed up, and would continue to do so after she left if she hadn’t- well, you know. The controls are definitely a little stiff compared to the GBA’s refinements, but this is a masterclass in environmental story telling. - Super Nova It’s one of the Darius games, retitled for some reason. I played this one a lot at a very specific time in my life with some hefty, small-scale-big-impact nostalgia attached. It’s a good shooter, but I don’t think it’s great. Soundtrack is aces though. - SMW its k - FF5 This was the year I started running the Four Job Fiesta! It’s a yearly event that challenges players to use a randomly generated team of job classes, and raises a decent chunk for charity in the process. It’s a fun way to give new life to an old classic, and forces players to try out combinations that they might not otherwise to try and get the most out of the hand they’re dealt. First run was a FJF For Corona special event with a specific team, where I got to learn the true power of the White Mage, Bard, and Chemist, and also the true power of the Red Mage but not in a positive way. - Tiny Toons (SNES) Criminally overlooked platformer from Konami. Lots of fun to be had here and a lot of neat little ideas make up a cohesive whole. Well worth two hours of your time. - Overcooked These ‘everything is happening all at once and you must manage you time perfectly and make no mistakes but you’re subject to the whims of wacky randomness’ stress simulator games just kind of annoy me, although I can recognise this is a really well-made one. - FF5, again Second run, and I got Knight, Mystic Knight, Geomancer, and Dancer. Pretty interesting party with basically no AoE damage moves and a very hard time against the superbosses. I managed to pull a triple crown though! - Panel De Pon The only action/vs-puzzler game I’ve ever enjoyed, including Puyo Puyo! Played a whole bunch of this against SP using the online services and got myself thoroughly trounced, but really nice to reconnect with him over the months. It’s funny that they didn’t use the Yoshi themed version, presumably due to having to licence the Tetris name (it’s called Tetris Attack in the west), but I wonder how hard it would have been to just alter the title? - Master Of Orion 2 Expect to see this on the list every year. Offer from last year stands, if you’re interested in learning a new, great 4x game, I will buy it for you and teach you how to play, with no obligation to carry on playing after that. Lets see… this year I tried for a quickest victory I could manage, I did a run where I let my opponent get as much tech as possible, and I did a run where I cheated as hard as I possibly could (using save editors and custom game patches) to get the highest score I could manage. - FF1 I really love this game. I wish there was anything else quite like it out there. Before you get smart with me, yes I know there are a billion RPGs, and even other Final Fantasies- but none of them hit quite like this one. Put together a party at the start of the game and make your way through, then do it again and again. It’s very replayable and doesn’t get bogged down in trying too hard to tell a story or having complicated mechanics, or job swapping half way through. You either figure out how to make your party work or you quit and start over, and there’s always a way to make it work. - Fire Emblem The first one on GBA, often called Blazing Sword. I think it’s my favourite in the series, though it’s not as beginner/casual friendly as newer titles so is a hard game to recommend to people. I absolutely adore its story, so utterly tragic and moving. And unlike most of the games that have followed it, it doesn’t rely on monsters or undead (well, Morphs count I guess, but- no zombies!) which I appreciate. - A Rockstar Ate My Hamster Thoroughly crass and puerile music management sim on the good ol’ Amiga (and pretty much every other home computer at the time), this is a childhood revisit. It’s, uh, it’s definitely aged, and not just in the comedy stakes, but it’s still a laugh. Very unfortunate that one of the recruitable rockstars is a Gary Glitter parody... - Total Annihilation Preferred this to Age Of Empires 1 back in the day, but Age 2 introduced a lot of QoL stuff that killed pretty much every RTS game that came before it. Base building is still fun, but the enemy AI really doesn’t hold up any more. The meekest of rush tactics is enough to completely shut them down. Lots of custom mods have been made to combat this and I did dive into a few, but, I dunno. Something’s missing now. - Touhou, all of em 6- aged badly. Still playable but yikes. 7- aged, but like a fine wine. 1cc’d Hard Mode for the first time ever this year! 8- kind of a weird game, did it invent achievements??? 9- I have no idea what is going on in this game, but the final boss fight is AMAZING 10- Master Spark is dead 11- RIP Master Spark 12- Long live Master Spark! Still love this one, even though the UFO system is weird 12.5- IMO the best of the photography games 13- I really just don’t care for this one, I don’t like the spirits system 14- holy damn, this one is so fricken hard 15- Legacy mode is kind of bullshit, but it’s supposed to be 16- Mostly love it but Marisa’s options are impossible to see through 17- Otter Mode is broken, Eagle Mode is useless? Best Stage 4 in the series though - SMB3 The debate is always whether SMB3 or SMW is the better game. For my money it’s World, but that race is a photo finish by anyone’s metric. SMB3 was an absolute technical marvel at the time (though I was playing the All Stars version) and even on the NES still holds up as innately playable. It hasn’t aged a bit. Played through this on Switch to keep the cat company! He didn’t appreciate it. - Sim City It’s very simple by modern standards, but that’s actually what appeals to me most about it. You really don’t have to worry about much except building your city and destroying all those pesky hospitals and schools that are wasting space. Streamed a megalopolis run just for the fun of it. - SMB2 This was originally a game called Doki Doki Majo Shinpan. - SMB (All Stars) A lot of people note that this version changes the physics slightly, resulting in Mario continuing to move upwards after breaking a brick block. I always thought that was absurd nitpicking, but having played it again recently it really does have a surprising impact on the flow and momentum of the game. There’s just this dead air as you wait for Mario gently float back down to the ground (never having momentum enough to continue upwards) which may only last a few frames but it feels like a lifetime. I take it back, the complaints are legit. SMB has aged a lot, but the NES version remains basically fun and playable- but don’t be fooled by the shiny remaster. It’s not the way to go. - Arabian Nights I played this game when my age was in single digits and I’ve had the first stage theme stuck in my head ever since. It’s actually a pretty rad game, too! Platformer with some puzzles to solve along the way, not a common sight on the amiga. Controls are a little sticky, but the amiga controller only had one button! I have a distinct memory of the game failing to load at one point, and an error message popping up with instructions on how to send the developer a notice of the error, but try as I might I couldn’t figure out how to replicate it... - Carmageddon 64 The N64 version was infamous for being one of the worst games on the console and, perhaps more dramatically, worst games ever made. I never played it around release, but I had a chance to this year. Blimey, they weren’t kidding. I’m not sure why it’s so much worse than the absolutely OK PC version. I didn’t play far into it, I just wanted to see for myself. - Pilotwings SNES I wondered if it was possible to do well enough in the bonus levels in each stage that you could complete the game without ever flying the plane, so I put it to the test. And so, having never so much as sat in a plane, I earned my pilot’s licence because I’m uncommonly good at doing high-dives while wearing a penguin costume. - Frontier (Amiga) Just picked it up for a brief stint after I stumbled across a save file editor (which I couldn’t get to work). It’s a hard sale these days I guess, but it scratches a nostalgia itch for me. - Hopeless Masquerade Touhou fighting game! I’m all around terrible at fighting games and this was no exception. I don’t know what I’m doing. But, playable Byakuren. - Pilotwings 64 Oh dear. Here’s one that should have been left in the nostalgia pile. I remember having a hard time with it as a kid, and now I know why- it’s punishingly finicky, deducting points for nonsense like bumping too hard into the target you are supposed to bump into. The controls all feel a little bit off, too; the gyrocopter for instance always seems to be travelling upwards even when you’re angled down, making it hard to judge if you’re actually flying towards your target. - Ronaldinho Soccer 64 Hahahahaha!!! Sorry. Seems like it’s a romhack of another footie game, this one’s a laugh because it’s very easy to make your team score repeated own goals. The dismay on their faces every time! - F-Zero GX Dolphins are pretty great, aren’t they? I wanted to see how great Dolphins are, so I used this game to test it. Them. Test the dolphins. With this gamecube game. Yeah. - Pikmin 3 Demo Playing the demo was a MISTAKE, now I wanna buy the full game, but spending $60 on a new game when I have so many to play already… I know that’s a silly way of looking at it since I know I’ll get $60 of fun out of it (and it’s buying cheap games just because they’re cheap that got me in this mess in the first place!), but it’s a lot of spons to drop all at once. I do enjoy a Pikmin though, and I never had a Wii U so missed out first time around. - Fire Emblem Sacred Stones After playing through the first (?) title, I wanted more, and this is the closest match. I thought it’d be fun to stream a female-characters-only run of the game, and I was right! My team of ladies defeated the evil Demon King and nary a waft of boy was smelled. - One Way Heroics A roguelike I actually enjoyed! But still only played through to completion once. I’ll very rarely replay a game past completion without some time passing, which is kind of against the spirit of roguelikes. - Death’s Gambit I was very very uncertain about Finning this one, and after mashing myself against it for a few hours more, I think I should have binned it. It’s gorgeous but it hates me. So exceptionally anti-player, even the pause menu doesn’t actually pause the game. That’s just rude! - Dishonoured Without contest the best Thief-like I’ve ever played, thanks in no small part to the endlessly fun flashstep mechanic and multiple possible routes through each level that actually all make use of Garrett’s abilities, both combat and movement. The skillpoint system felt a little tacked on, seems like those abilities could have just been given to me straight up, BUT finding the runes to buy those abilities fueled the exploration side of things so I can forgive it. Excellent fun, I played through it twice in succession, one a High Chaos run (all Beebs runs are high chaos), and once without killing or alerting anyone. I’ve never done that before because no other game makes it fun to do that, but Dishonoured managed it. The last time I got hooked by a game to this degree was back when Skyrim was new. The kitchen suffered dearly for Dishonored’s sake. - Ocarina Of Time It’s aged pretty significantly in a lot of ways, hasn’t it? I didn’t play very far into it, only as far as the first Spiritual Stone. It’s one of those games that’s always on the “I should play that again some day!” list, which then gets passed over in favour of a backlog game. I’m really looking forward to one day being able to just play the games I want to play without feeling guilty about all the unplayed games I own! - Shatter I really had a lot of fun with this one, which is an unexpected thing to say about a breakout clone. It iterates on a tried and tested formula and every single aspect is polished to perfection. Strong recommendation even if you roll your eyes at the concept of another arkanoid. Killer OST. - TF2 Why can’t I quit you? Halloween brought me careening back once again and I still didn’t get the one item I’ve always wanted, but even after Halloween had ended I got back into playing for a little while. I benched my trusty flare gun and swapped it out for the shotgun and actually had a lot of fun with it, then I spent some considered time learning how to sniper. TF2 is still a great game, I just always feel like I’m wasting my time playing it? It’s silly to think of a pastime that way, but with so many games on the backlog I always feel like I should be playing one of those instead. Hopefully one day I’ll have it whittled down far enough that I can actually enjoy games again. - Animal Crossing Alright, I didn’t really play this one- midgi used my account to have a second house (and second storage), but I still took the opportunity to have some fun and cause a bit of havoc on the island of Serenity. - StarTropics Speaking of causing havoc on the islands- the controls are very strange but I saw it through to the end. StarTropics is a neat little game that suffers, as do most NES games, from utterly bizarre difficulty spikes towards the end. Still worth a run if you can stomach that or have save-states. - Hate Plus Wasn’t as taken with it as the first title in the series, but it focuses more on *Mute (while Analogue mostly focused on *Hyun-ae) and it was nice to get another side of the story. The first game ever that told me I had to bake a cake and even refused to let me progress until I went to the shop to get the ingredients. - FF1 (FCC) Same as the Four Job Fiesta, except in FF1 this time! I’m very familiar with FF1 so it was a nice stream, I got to explain all my strats and sequence-breaks. - Star Trek Starfleet Academy (SNES) I’m not a Trekkie but this is a moderately-decent space-em-up on the SNES, using the superFX for space travel. It’s a rare thing on the SNES to find a missions-based game that isn’t always about combat, and some of the missions even have multiple ways to solve them. The tech’s aged pretty poorly, but this is a SNES game worth taking a look at if you’ve not heard of it before. - Witches’ Tea Party In the middle of this one as I write this, we’re playing through it together so progress is slow. Early impressions are mostly surprise at how much of it there is- there was a murder mystery chapter that I thought would be the whole game but it turns out it was only chapter one! They do some real neat stuff with RPG Maker. Good to see. - Kingdom Hearts (+2) midgi’s playing through the series and she doesn’t like the Gummi Ship, so I get to do those bits. It’s basically Starfox but you get to build your own ship, it’s awesome. - Pokemon Fire Red Randomiser Nuzlocke! This is still on-going as I write it. We just got to Cerulean City and crossed Nugget Bridge. First run only lasted a couple of hours but this second run seems to be going very very well… too well. We shall see what awaits us! - Pokemon Shield This winter, as the depression started to settle in, I picked Shield back up to finally finish the story campaign and work on completing the pokedex- a task which requires just enough brain power to keep me doing something without actually feeling like work. Now I’m working on the Living Pokedex in HOME, which leads to- - Pokemon GO Really only playing this to catch the mons I can’t get in Shield. It’s not like I’m actually going anywhere, you know? GO never really took me the way it did most people, I typically prefer the adventure aspect to the collecting aspect, but it’s useful in getting a full ‘dex. - Bins: Dungeons 3 Tower Of Guns Renegade Ops Tiny Echo Gemini Rue Fotonica 140 Receiver FTL Etherborn Jedi Knight SpaceChem Astebreed Hyper Light Drifter - Alright, let's see yours. And what's your Game Of The Year?

#gaming #game of the year #goty #retrospective

1 note · View note

littlemisssquiggles · 5 years

Note

You know this has been bothering me for a while now... How do you feel about people dropping the show? I mean, I'm currently not that close anymore and I am willing to give Volume 7 another chance (but I keep my expectations veeeery low since I am so tired of being disappointed like I was with Volume 6 - it started out good and I really much liked the two Apathy episodes, even though they had narrative weaknesses in my opinion), also thanks to you. I just want to know what you think about it.

Hello again Mizu! Firstly, let me apologize for taking so long to respond. I’mbacklogged on questions to answer in my inbox so I’m slowly working my waythrough them. Secondly pleased to hear you’ve decided to give the new season achance.

To be honest with you fam, I honestly have nothing against folks who wish to drop RWBY. As I’vebeen telling you before, folks are entitled to feel the way they feel---be itgood, bad or indifferent.

Basically what I’m saying is, I understand that everyone’s viewson RWBY aren’t the same and I respect that. I respect the fact that there arefolks who are genuinely loyal to the series and will continue to support it tothe very end, just as much as I acknowledge and respect the views of the folkswho are genuinely disappointed with the series or rather, they’re disappointedwith the direction in which the series has changed since V3---the last seasonits original creator---Monty worked on, I believe, before he sadly passed away.

When it comes to indulging in media, myideology stands as this: if you’ve come to a point where you’re watching apiece of media that you used to indulge in but the overall positivefeelings--- love, joy and entertainment--- you once felt for it when you firststarted is no longer there, then you’re more than welcome to drop it if you sodesire.

Or you can take a break from it and come back later. Heck you can evendrop it but still remain a part of its FNDM, not necessarily following the showanymore but still enjoying other things like fanart and fanfic. No one is atfault for wishing to stop watching a series they once loved nor are they atfault for wanting to leave it/ take break from it only to come back later. Youdo you, dude.

In terms of RWBY, I’m half and half. Iunderstand why folks would wish to continue to watch the series; but at thesame time, I understand why folks would wish to drop it. The series, whilestill entertaining and enjoyable in some parts (at least to me) has admittedly madesome rather questionable choices in regards to certain aspects of the writing within therecent last arc.

Questionable choices which unfortunately left a lot of fansdisappointed. As a matter of fact, I think disappointed is an understatement.But like I said before, folks are entitled to feel the way they feel andthey’re allowed to express their feelings, thoughts and opinion if they feelthe need.

Where I may take issue with folks whodrop RWBY, however, is if they turn into one of those kindred spirits over inthe RWBY Hatedom. RWBY is the one series I know where it has a community of people who dislike the show as much as the ones who love it. And they’ve very vocal about it too.

It’s perfectly cool if you feeldissatisfied with the way things are being done with RWBY but where that becomes problematic, in my opinion, is when it turns to bitterness which then leadsto you attacking people and downright disrespecting them. This is inclusive of notjust the fans who still support RWBY but also the members of theCRWBY.

I get that people didn’t like the waythings were done with the show but that still doesn’t give you the right todisrespect the people working on it. One habit that I’m tired of seeing from theHatedom is their incessant use of throwing Monty’s name around as a means toridicule the current state of the show.

Regardless of whether or not you don’tlike the way the showrunners have written the show, you still have to show themsome level of respect. And continuing to use the name of the show’s deceasedcreator to scrutinize the efforts of the same people---some of which wereMonty’s friends and original colleagues---is just beyond disrespectful.

If I may talk about Monty here for abit, it honestly disgusts me whenever I go into forums discussing fan reviewsof RWBY and still see people leaving comments such as “Monty wouldn’t have liked this” or “You’veruined Monty’s vision” and all that jazz.

Seriously, how entitled of a fan must you be to act as if you knew Monty personally enough toimply that he wouldn’t have liked the way RWBY is now?

Who do you think will have the moral high ground in this predicament of deciding how RWBY should continue? The people whopersonally knew and worked with Monty when RWBY first started and are doing thebest they can to keep the show running? Or the so-called fans who continue towatch the series just to mock the efforts of Monty’s former friends and colleagueswhile constantly throwing his name in their faces as an insult.

You tell me.

What happened to Monty was sad and I’mmostly saying that as a longstanding fan of his. Like many RWBY fans, I didn’tknow Monty personally. I knew him mostly through his work. Monty was a creatorwho got an opportunity that most of us creatives with our our stories to tell couldonly dream of. He got a chance to bring his story to life only to unfortunatelypassed away while working on it.

It’s one thing to be disappointed withsomething you used to love but it’s another thing when your anger andresentment makes you disrespectful. It’s not cool when former fans of RWBY become people whoconstantly look for ways to talk down the show. I can sympathize with the FNDMfam members who were upset with the development of the show but where Ican’t take your side is if that dissatification leads to contempt.

I’ve said this before and I’m going torepeat it again. RWBY isNOT a flawless show. It never has been and quite frankly,it’ll probably never be as perfect as fans want it to be. But what I havelearnt is that RWBY is a show that’s much like the man who created it. It keepsmoving forward. Each season it tries to do better than the last and it shows.

I know certain parts have not been sogreat but I have to acknowledge the ones that were. I know some of usweren’t 100% pleased with how V6 turned. However, I will say this. Prior tothat season, the Writers promised that they were looking into some of the criticismsleft behind from past seasons and were working to fix him. Did they live up tothat? To quote Ozpin, in some ways yes and in other ways, no.

V6 still unfortunately suffered fromthe same issues with the writing that fans disliked back in V5. But what I willpoint out that it didn’t start off that way. I think we can all admit that thefirst half of V6 (C1 to C7) was done well. The other half….....er....not so much. Butit’s still worth noting that there is good within the bad.

This is why I personally will keepgiving the series a chance. Speaking for myself here, I’ve been on the RWBY train since thevery beginning and sink or swim, soar or crash, I’m staying on-board till thisseries reaches its final destination. Because outside of that fact that thereare still things about the show that I enjoy and love, I’m also very, verycurious to see where exactly the CRWBY Writers are taking this story of theirs.

Monty may not have been able to joinMiles and Kerry in progressing the show he made; however Miles and Kerry arecontinuing it. They are telling theirstory now in direct correlation to the onethey kicked off with Monty.

What that story is overall? How is it gonna go for future seasons and arcs andmore importantly, how is it all gonna end? Those are questions with answers I’mstill interested to know. And until the day comes when I no longer care aboutthese things with RWBY, I’m gonna stick around and try my best to enjoy the ride alongthe way---whether it cruises calmly or runs over a couple of rough patches andbumps. It’s fine. I’ve got plenty of tolerance.

I see a lot of potential for betterwriting in RWBY. I’m just patiently waiting for the season where the Writersfinally find their groove since I think they were struggling during the MistralTrilogy. RWBY isn’t perfect but it’s a show with folks who admittedly do theirbest to improve on it as the seasons go.

They may not land every time but theeffort is still worth appreciating in some sense-- well at least I know appreciate it especially when they get things right cause, contrary to what othersmight believe, not everything about RWBY is completely bad. As a matter offact, some of it is arguably not as bad as folks let it out to be. But I understand that’s amatter of opinion. Can’t honestly speak for other FNDM members. Only my squiggly self here.

Now mind you, none of the stuff I’vementioned about the RWBY Hatedom applies to you Mizu. I know we’ve only chatted once or twice between Q&A but forthe most part, you’ve been quite humble and a pleasant person to talk to.

Despite your voiced issues with the current run of RWBY, you’vemaintained a cool, respectable air about yourself and that’s great. Please keep that up. Regardless of what happens during V7. Regardless of whether youchoose to stay or go with RWBY during or after V7, do your best to remain as humble as you as much as possible. That’s basically the bottom line point I’m trying to say here.That goes for you and anyone else who’ve been feeling the same way you haveabout the show.

Just stay humble guys. Opinions can be different but still maintain that R-E-S-P-E-C-T and that goes for both sides.

And, yeah, that’s pretty all I gottasay. I hope I actually answered your question. I feel like I did. As always,feel free to let me know. In the meantime, take care.

~LittleMissSquiggles(2019)

#squiggles answers: rwby #oscar pine #rwby #mizuike #squiggles answers

32 notes · View notes

comicteaparty · 4 years

Text

June 27th-July 3rd, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from June 27th, 2020 to July 3rd, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:

If you could do your webcomic for a living, how would that change things in regards to how you work on it (if at all)?

Deo101 [Millennium]

I'd definitely put out more content, cause I could focus on it fully every day of the week.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i would probably start hating it and get burnt out

Deo101 [Millennium]

thats why I would also have to start another comic or do short stories on the side or something, too.

I would probably keep individual comics update schedules the same, I'd just do more comics

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

If it became a part-time job, I don't think anything would change. It kind of feels like that already. If I were in a position where it became a full-time job, I do dread how my relationship with the work would change. I don't think I could ever make as much doing comics as I do in my day job (which isn't crazy, but is comfortable) so I don't know if I could ever 100% transition unless it was really, really worth it It's something I've thought about a lot, for sure.

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

In a way, my comic is my full-time job? I don't make very much money with it, but I do put over 40 hours a week into it, and I don't have another job. I am in the very fortunate position of having an SO who is able to support me financially while I try to get my footing with my passion. If I was depending on it for a paycheck though, the main thing that would change is my style would probably get simpler, because there is no way I can make enough pages a week otherwise.

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

It is really the dream to be able to do it! Right now I am unemployed, so I basically treat the comic as my fulltime job, until I find the next short project. I want to be able to work on it full time! In Denmark there are some cool possibilities to get funding from the government and I hope we can get enrolled with some of those programs with our comic.

I would also just love to do small videos, podcasts, animations etc. Small fun projects

Mitzi (Trophallaxis)

If I had to do it full time, I think i'd put a LOT more hours into learning how to paint, watching speedpaints, ect. It'd also make a huge difference in my living situation, as the first thing I'd honestly do with a full time at-home job is move to another city with cheaper rent. Another state, maybe! Oh, and I'd do a lot more promo work. posters and animations are fun, but they're not quite worth it with an audience consisting of two my writing partner's friends, and my older brother.

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

the biggest difference, I suppose, would be that I would make a lot more pages, a lot faster. But I like it that it's been pointed that the relationship with work changes when you have to do things full time, so there may be some unpredictable variables there

eliushi [Keyspace]

For a living for me can mean many different things: able to sustain living expenses vs full-time. There’s overlap but one gives financial security meaning an element of creative freedom. The opposite end will probably entail working on other comic projects with the current one as a passion story on the side (no change but probably might not want to draw so much after drawing for work!) If we’re discussing the ability to do the webcomic full time without financial worries then I do believe my output will increase but also I will be dedicating more time to the craft (studying story structures, art directions etc) as well as marketing/joining professional associations/pitching/connections. There are a lot of career options within the comic world and I’d love to explore everything before deciding what’s best for the current story. Ultimately if I were to do this as a living, I’d treat it like any other job: a routine, a strive for improvement, and wellness to recharge. I follow several artists not only for their art but also their schedule/workflow to see what worked for others. It’s very interesting!

In reality though, I might work on smaller scale projects on the side to build up the experience and platform needed to tell the story of Keyspace. As a full time comic creator, I’ll be seriously thinking to covert the seven novel series into a hug comic project. So TL;DR if full time, I make more pages

varethane

I'm in an odd place with my comic because.... well, I sort of had an opportunity to spend all of my time on it for a few months, when I was in between contracts at work. But I found that I wasnt getting it done all that much faster than I did when also working full time

To be fair, it's kind of hard to compare my speed between the three periods, because when I returned to work after a few months away, it was after work from home had started and now I no longer have a commute, so perhaps my ability to squeeze comic pages into my free time has expanded.... but I feel like my attention span caps out around 8 hours on any single task

So I didnt work that much faster. But... I'm also bad at keeping track. I could be wrong.

Yung Skrimp (Carefree)

8 hours is a long attention span

varethane

It's not all in one go, haha.

eliushi [Keyspace]

I definitely have to take breaks between pages, whether or not I have just a few minutes to a chunk of hours

It’s about finding a balance that works for you!

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I don't think I could put more hours daily into my comic than I currently do. I have a chronic issue with my drawing shoulder, so my body won't be able to handle that much work. Probably wouldn't be great for my eyes, either. I also don't know if I want my livelihood to depend on how many people like my story. This story is a pair of custom-tailored skinny jeans for my heart (and I have an unusual body type, making it impossible to wear skinny jeans regardless of size). It's a story I want to read. It's meant to fit ME. I don't want to worry about how to also make it fit a bunch of other people.

That being said, some people do find themselves in a situation where they're making something they want to read, and a bunch of other people just happen to like it, too. I think that would be nice

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

I physically can‘t draw for more than four, five hours a day, found that out the hard wayy

eliushi [Keyspace]

I most recently developed pain likely due to RSI and have made accommodations since then but yeah it was scary to think that I have a limit in drawing time. Gotta find ways to take care of yourself for the long run

cAPSLOCK (Tailslide)

I think if comics were my only job, I'd feel a lot more anxious about what I create, and would struggle to work consistently. Having another pursuit makes me feel like I have more freedom to experiment, learn, and make what I want to make.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

That's a really good point keii

Would drawing a comic for a living push me to change it to have more mass appeal?

I don't know but it is definitely possible and would be on my mind

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

It is the dream, if I could get a decent monthly wage on my comic, yes I will dedicate more time, work out a better schedule. Get an editor and colourist on board to help make a polished series. Altho I'm still doing this method to build good working habits But I agree with Eli's point, have to assign days for breaks for myself to prevent RSI. At present I have a trained mindset to work on schedules, but I may feel the pressure to produce as fast as I could.(edited)

Desnik

Well, for starters, my comic would actually be released somewhere, so it'd be nice if it made something back for me

Miranda

I’d actually release it. And work on it regularly, instead of sporadically like I have been! I’d definitely be more critical of what I was doing, and probably way more anxious every time I posted.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

You know, when I was only like 6 years old, I was like "I don't want to be an artist when I grow up. I love art too much, and I don't want to burn out and stop enjoying it. So I'm gonna be a singer instead." I have no idea how 6-year-old me knew about burnout, but I definitely remember saying that in response to an adult asking something like "what do you wanna be when you grow up"/ "wow, you're drawing all the time; do you want to become an artist?"

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

The more I do comics the more I think I want to do art stuff as part of my main career. I would love to make sequential art that's for science purposes

sagaholmgaard

Ah that would be the dream! I'd probably feel more secure in my ability to build up a backlog of pages, and be able to make more extra content for the PDF version! And more content for instagram and twitter as well

kayotics

If I were to be able to do comics full time I think it would completely change my current lifestyle. Not even money wise but I’d need to switch up a lot of things. Like make sure I get a good amount of exercise in. I’d probably add in another page a week, but then use the rest of my week to project manage the comic, and promote my work. I’d spend a lot of other time working on creating an online store, because I can’t see the comic working full time without some supplemental merch keeping me afloat. And I’d also use that time to create and work on another comic series I think.

Yung Skrimp (Carefree)

If I were to do comics full time I’d flex on everyone I know

Feather J. Fern

If I was able to do comics full time, be able to pay off debts, substain rent and food, and extra saved for small spluges, I will shove my comic in my family's face(I got a family who doesn't believe in me at all), dancing around screaming "I MADE IT IN LIFE" And then jump out the window because haha this can't be a reality because I don't think I will ever make it in comics. I will still keep my other job of working at a library and drawing on the side becuase I want working job insurance and also I am the type who wants to save all their money if possible(edited)

eliushi [Keyspace]

I was on board until jumping out the window

Yung Skrimp (Carefree)

I wasn't on board until jumping out the window

Now I am

Moral_Gutpunch

If I could do this for a living, I could do so much. I could afford to put my mother ina home, start my dream farm and start a bunch of conservation as well, I could help my husband fund his own sidegig, and I could afford to foster pets like I always wanted.

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

Personally, if I was able to do it I would be a lot more invested in it. I would also make a lot less excuses as to why I'm not practicing as much; it took a pandemic to happen for me to dry taking it more seriously!

I think overall I might have been more happy.

On the other hand, there's also the danger of burnout, of constantly doing the same thing over and over again for me. I'm the type that needs constant change, so I think I'm more suited to having another occupation be my main profession while comics/art would be a secondary one, where I don't have as much pressure. Furthermore, it's also my backup plan in case anything happens to my main job.

Moral_Gutpunch

^ This. I'd be focusing so much more on comics. And I'd be expanding into more comics and writing more stories. I'd be happier I'm writing more, but more frustrated at writers block

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

Man if I could do it full time, might be able to pull more page updates and actually get deep into doing some long term projects I had planned for years. I won't have much of an issue as long i can also do my zine projects on the side. also would be nice to have some job insurance too along with it lmao. the only danger that could take it away if I get incapacitated for no reason lmao

TaliePlume

If I could do comics as my full time job would be awesome! But all that focus would go only to the comic and nothing else which is bad because I would be neglecting a lot of things and not getting other things done.

AntiBunny

I'd finally be able to tell my whole story and start telling another. It drives me crazy that I have more ideas than I can pursue.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

In terms of my actual production, I'm not sure doing my comic as a living would change much lol. I already spend upwards of 40 hours a week on it, I seriously doubt there's more I could be doing. So, earning a living off my comic would just be... one less thing to worry about.

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #comic tea party #ctp #creator interview #comic creator interview #creator babble

1 note · View note

planetoban · 5 years

Text

Savin’s Answers from Twitter, Part 3!

Well, looks like it’s been nearly 2 years since the last SAfT post... sorry about that! Time really got away from me on this one. Due to the backlog, this post covers tweets from October 2017 through April 2018

As always, tweets are in order from most to least recent, and answers may not 100% true/canon since things may change during production of the sequel. Text is unedited save for formatting; in a few places I added [comments] for context.

Part 1 | Part 2

Also: If you’re going to ask Savin something, please be respectful and appropriate. He’s a person just like you and me.

@fictionjustis: Out of curiosity can a Nourasian and human have a child together? Also can humans conceive children with other humanoid species in the galaxy?

@EiffelSavin: I don't think any such birth have been recorded in the Oban universe, at least yet. But humans and Nourasians having a very similar DNA, it should be theoretically possible. There have been quite a few fanarts on that topics already 🙂

(x)

@PudgyDragonLair: Also how big is the Arrow in comparison to Molly like actually height and length?‏

@EiffelSavin: From my original notes: Whizzing Arrow 1 - length 8m, height 7m, weight 10t Whizzing Arrow 2 - length 10m, height 7m, weight 14t to be compared with the final designs

(x)

@PudgyDragonLair: hey Savin I'm not sure if this would be considered a spoiler or not but how Long are Nourasian life spans in comparison to humans and other alien species?

@EiffelSavin: I'm not sure anymore. I'd have to find my old notes... But if Nourasians approximately live the same number of "years" as humans, they are "Nourasian years" which are much longer than our "Earth years" due to the longer distance between Nourasia and its sun. May be 2 or 3 times+

(x)

@JPLangley_: Something I've been wanting to ask is how was Eva able to get away with not following the gender-specific dress code at Stern? Did faculty just give up trying to discipline her since she nor Don didn't care?

@EiffelSavin: I think my justification for that was that Stern's school rules only stated that wearing the school uniform was compulsory, without specifically mentioning that the short dress was for girls and the long pants for boys. Also they had bigger issues with Eva than just her uniform.

(x)

@PudgyDragonLair: what was the Arrows original purpose before Don and the Goverment took it ? Me and my friend rewatched OSR and we noticed alot of things that would be atypical for a Star Racer (key among them a gun turrent ). Was the Arrow made to be some kind of stealth ship?

@PudgyDragonLair: It has capabilities to check Molly vitals and mental state while she s racing, as well as the hyperdldrives which I doubt would be allowed in racing circuits, and a remote access to the gun torrent, and hand off access shoukd the pilot be unable to man it.

@EiffelSavin: You got a point there. For better or worse army funding helps develop new technologies that are later reintroduced into civilian life/products. The "prototypes" Miguel had been working were not your typical star-racer and aimed at a different market...

(x)

[continued from thread below]

@Helloworld1012: And the fact that Eva was a beautiful young girl certainly didn’t hurt

@EiffelSavin: Yes but more than that the fact that she's not your typical girly girl beauty. A long haired bimbo would not have awoken Aikka's interest.

(x)

@ILOVE659709491: Is there any chance one of the reasons Eva was so quick to trust & befriend Aikka was because the prince’s personality was similar to her father’s personality before Maya’s death? Both were reserved,well cultured & gentlemanly but kind + both had a passion for racing

@EiffelSavin: Freud would like the implications no doubt, but I think the relationship with Aikka is more simple and direct. He's good looking, a prince, well mannered. She's feels rejected - especially by her dad - a bit of an "Ugly Duckling" and he takes an interest in her.

@ILOVE659709491: I’m curious though why was Aikka interested in Eva ?

@EiffelSavin: Just as he's the opposite of what she's known, she's a total opposite for him: tough, outspoken, pure - and touching. The noble girls he's met in Nourasia's palaces were not like that!

(x)

@JPLangley_: Also, unrelated question, but if the second season of Oban does ever make it to the public, will it explore what happened to Thunderbolt and Jordan after the events of OSR?

@EiffelSavin: Can't guarantee both...

(x)

@JPLangley_: Did Spirit originally have wings, and him transforming into a bird was a second thought?

@EiffelSavin: The concept was always that he would transform into his own ship but judging by Thomas's drawing I guess we tried more classic wings first.

(x)

@Helloworld1012: Stern boarding school prided itself on disciplining their students what did they mean by discipline? Also, considering DW’s personality before Maya’s death seems to have a anime rich kid with controlling parents background vibe to it, what social class was DW born to

@EiffelSavin: In my view, Don Wei comes from a modest background. Being a self made man he can be very demanding, expecting from others to obey the rules he's imposed on himself in order to succeed. Maya and young Eva soothed him up, but that went away after Maya's death

@Helloworld1012: Yeah but everything else about him doesn’t seem like he’s a self made man. Or just a selfmade man. It got to me, he’s still young when Maya died & also it’s possible that he could have grown up rich & still be a self made man because his parents gave up on him.‏

@EiffelSavin: That could also be possible yes I put him out there, but you're totally untitled to make him yours now ! 🙂

(x)

@ardaozcan98: Did you get any inspiration from B-2 Spirit aircraft while designing Spirit in OSR or is the resemblence just a coincidence?

@EiffelSavin: Interesting. I came up with the name without being aware of the connection & I don't think the plane was ever a reference for the design, but we should ask @thomasintokyo and @Brunetstanilas too. As you can see below (2002 rough by Thomas) Spirit went through a lot of phases

@Thomasintokyo: Never heard of this plane. That’s a coincidence!

(x)

@emaf_CntCmnd: I wonder if you have known who works for BANDAI VISUAL and helps to release Japanese ver. of BD like Mr.Takanashi Minoru. (I wish he were still alive.)‏

@EiffelSavin: Mr. Takanashi disappearance came as a terrible shock. But we're working on establishing new connections with Bandaï.

(x)

@ardaozcan98: Do you consider producing comic books or novels instead or alongside with the sequel. There are lots of unknowns and potential for backstories of the galaxy and species i think. And books may be cheaper or easier to create. Loved the original art-book.

@EiffelSavin: That's not a bad idea. Any talented manga-comic book artists interested around here ? 🙂

(x)

@Valeria_Lacava: Could you do something for the italian rights? Jetix closed and it's impossible to find online the episodes in italian

@EiffelSavin: STW doesn't own those rights but we'll try to negotiate them if Disney agrees and if this can be done within the bluray budget.

(x)

@Helloworld1012: How was Don Wei able to pay the financial cost to form a race team with Maya and make her a champion? Race teams cost a fortune, but sponsorship was unlikely since DW stated & the timeline shows Maya was the first person he was a manager to, so he had no credibility.

@EiffelSavin: Mostly true but not completely true. If things were always so then I would never have been able to produce Oban Star-Racers, having no hard cash of my own, and having never produced nor directed an entire series before 🙂

(x)

@dragbax: Do you have any idea how big of an impact this show had on me as a kid??? Plz don't disappoint me of backing down or handle it poorly... My heart can't handle that. Especially how Samurai Jack was treated with its last season. :(

@EiffelSavin: It may still be a long road ahead, especially since we don't intend to sell out, but I can promise we'll do our best!

(x)

@Helloworld1012: I’m curious did Don Wei stop caring about Eva after Maya died? I mean he did abandon her just for resembling her mother & tried to forget she even existed for 10 years and would have CONTINUED to do so Had Eva not done anything about it, so did he stop caring?‏

@EiffelSavin: He tried to forget so well that he almost completely did

@Helloworld1012: Wait, doesn’t that basically mean that yes Don Wei did stop caring about Eva once her mother died?‏

@EiffelSavin: Yes basically (what an awful dad!). Seeing Eva reminded him too much of Maya and of his guilt. He couldn't bare it and walked away, at least until he was ready to face her again.

(x)

@n0sichan: I hope subtitles for disabled peope will be available this time.

@EiffelSavin: If we have enough presales yes

(x)

@MattGiusti: What is your thought process when it comes to animating characters speaking?Do you need to keep in mind how other languages will line up to the animation?Or do you do everything with one language in mind and alter the script accordingly later on?

@EiffelSavin: One concentrates on one main language. On Oban i wrote all scripts directly in English and the lip sink was based on those. But then i spent a whole month in front of an editing machine rewriting french dialogues that matched that lipsink

(x)

@McKhendon: How do you accomplish 16:9 without losing parts of the picture?

@EiffelSavin: You're bound to loose part of the picture but if you address the process creatively you can produce new strong images by selecting shot by shot what u keep & what you discard

@SonicMrgame2017: The show was made on 16.9?

@EiffelSavin: No, in 4/3. It was still the transition period between the 2 formats at the time and our investors required 4/3. The remastered 16/9 version was done this year, reframing the original master shot by shot under my supervision.

(x)

@ardaozcan98: All the dubs would be really nice especially for children.

@EiffelSavin: We'll see if something can be done but it sounds complicated. Sav The World doesn't own the rights of these other versions.

(x)

@Wnika457: Is it possible that the online game wil be reopened? That would be awesome, I remember playing it when I was a kid :)

@EiffelSavin: That would be cool but we don't have the rights nor even a copy. But there'll be other games if we manage to pull through the sequel project

(x)

@RadekFalhar: I just found out you are making Saya no Uta adaptation. I really hope you don't think the abortion that is the US manga is in any way related to the VN.

@EiffelSavin: The US comic probably had good intentions but turned Saya into smthng very different & sometimes opposite to what it is. The adaptation I work on also take liberties with the original material, but I try to remain very faithful to its spirit & to the mindset of the characters

(x)

@lilacwondercat: Is there really a sequel in the works? I am such a huge fan, please say it's true!

@EiffelSavin: It's true but still a long to go. Creation takes time and the financing is the most pressing issue...

@lilacwondercat: Is there anything die hard fans can do to help?

@EiffelSavin: Most certainly though I can't think of anything precise right now. Helping spreading the word about the bluray is one though. The more people buy it, the stronger we can be when talking to potential financial partners.

(x)

@Ekana_Stone: Does Blu-ray have the English dub, I would assume so

@EiffelSavin: Yes, French and English language are guaranteed. We would like to add Japanese too but there are question of rights we must try to sort out.

(x)

@fictionjustis: Considering the fact that Oban star racers indeed had Japanese influence, I’m curious did u base Maya’s character design on a character from sailor moon, ( The 1990s version not the 2010s version) a well known anime & manga?

@EiffelSavin: Maya's character design clearly has anime influences but it was developed organically, drawing after drawing. It was not influenced by one show in particular.

(x)

@Zeether77: Would love to see this on Blu-ray here, but not cropped to widescreen...does Shout Factory still have the rights?

@EiffelSavin: DVD & Bluray rights have reverted to us

@Zeether77: Would the BD release be a limited time thing? I just got a player but I don't think I could commit to a preorder sadly

@EiffelSavin: Can't confirm right now

(x)

@ILOVE659709491: I’m trying to figure out what it is exactly because he [Savin] could be saying that the wei surname was meant to be Chinese or DW was Chinese but I just can’t figure out what it is, & unfortunately for some reason it has been driving me crazy yesterday so what is it in that question?‏

@EiffelSavin: Don Wei is of Chinese origin or at least his family is

(x)

@sergeigaponov: #obanstarracers Could you write a list of countries in which you can send blu-ray Oban: Star Racers?

@EiffelSavin: Too early to confirm but my guess would be in all countries.

(x)

@Nick_Kharin: How much can Blu-ray boxset will cost (approximately or the maximum price)? I’m very excited about the news about the project.

@EiffelSavin: Still evaluating.

(x)

@Adultito: Will the Blu Ray have the Japanese audio and the original OP+ED

@EiffelSavin: Japanese audio we'll try. There could be pbs of rights. French and English at the minimum.

@Adultito: speaking of Japanese audio, will there be the original OP "Chance to Shine" (shown in most international broadcasts) on the English dub because the US broadcast (as well as the Shout Factory DVDs) used "Never Say Never"

@EiffelSavin: We have the rights to all the original songs and tracks but not to "Never Say Never" which was produced by the US broadcaster of Oban. So we would use "Chance to Shine" for the opening.

(x)

@Maj0r_Crisis: Will we ever see a release of the cancelled second volume of the Original Soundtrack?

@EiffelSavin: If we have enough preorders, one of our plans is to add most of or even all of Iwazaki Taku's 80 original tracks as a bonus to the bluray edition

(x)

@delicatedowner: I wish you good fortune on making the blu-ray release a reality (will your company self-publish the BDs like with Ankama and their Wafku sets?).

@EiffelSavin: We may self publish too but could go the kickstaryer way. Unlike us Ankama is a rich company!

@delicatedowner: Even Ankama went the Kickstarter way. And it backfired on them. I hope you'll do a better job.

@EiffelSavin: We'll see. But if you meant "selfpublish" as in "creating the design packaging etc" ourselves, yes that would be the plan. We have some good people we can work with.

(x)

@nothisiswindii: Do you think you guys should make a 4:3 aspect ratio version of the Blu-ray? A lot of studios tend to simply "zoom in" their old shows to fake a 16:9 ratio, and they end up losing a lot of detail on the top and bottom as a result.

@EiffelSavin: Probably but it's something we'll discuss with all those who register with the Oban Bluray project when the times comes. In all cases, I can guarantee the 16/9 remaster is not a "zoom in". We took care of things on a shot by shot basis (see the video on http://obanstarracers.com )

@docsane: I'm curious: why was Oban not originally shot 16:9? I thought it was unusual at the time to still see an animation being released 4:3.

@EiffelSavin: Oban was signed just at the time when productions were beginning to shift from 4/3 to 16/9. But our financial partners asked for 4/3 so we produced and delivered 4/3.

(x)

@harpnote: The new site looks slick! I am sad the forums are no longer up. It was a good time there.

@EiffelSavin: We have the copies. We may put them back online but already have our hands full right now

(x)

@MattGiusti: Will [OSR] HD be exclusively a blue ray release? Or can one buy a digital version online?

@EiffelSavin: The first goal is the bluray release.

(x)

@ILOVE659709491: Considering Wei is a Chinese surname & with the exception of his temper DW’s manners and taste indicate a certain upbringing is there a possibilty that Don is the son of a high class family in Asia and he moved to America or Europe because of his passion for racing?

‏@EiffelSavin: In spite of the obvious connection with Japanese anime, Wei is a Chinese name indeed and it was meant that way.

(x)

@sergeigaponov: There are no such scenes [dramatic scenes in children’s shows], because people are interested in toilet humor. The time has already passed when people cried over such scenes. There are few people who are crying. I hope in the #second #season of the drama will be more, because #Eva has matured.

@EiffelSavin: If it 's only up to me I'll say definitely yes and in all cases that what we want to aim for. This said, I have a feeling traditional broadcasters are targeting younger and younger audiences and aim even more for comedy than before.

(x)

@ILOVE659709491: Considering Maya was DW's first champion, DW stated her charm was her recklessness, That Maya seemed to be more dominant in the relationship, & considering DW's and Maya's personalities in the past is it possible Maya introduced Don to the racing world?

@EiffelSavin: Interesting thought. But I'd say no. Don Wei was born to be a race manager.

(x)

@lbigreyhound: Any idea when and where it [the HD remaster] will be available?

@EiffelSavin: The new HD master will be used in future broadcasts of OSR, at least one of whitch is planned for 2018. When we go ahead with our plans for a bluray relase, we may use it as well, or else chose to stick with the original 4/3 format.

(x)

@ILOVE659709491: so I’m curious, what inspired the idea for OSR I’m super excited for the sequel but I am curious on what inspired the idea for OSR 2 Since it’s been over a decade since OSR?

@EiffelSavin: The 10 year anniversary of the first release brought the original artistic team together. We all thought it would be nice to look back at the world we created.

(x)

[Not sure who he’s replying to here, but the question seems to be about Maya’s race with Spirit]

@EiffelSavin: If I remember correctly there just wasn't enough time and she gestured Spirit to stand out of arm's way.

(x)

@RedVioletPanda: Why is the Holy of Dol, well, holy? In the artbook, there is a mention of elemental magic of the Nourasians, what is that exactly?

@EiffelSavin: Nourasian are close to nature. Magic and the use of natural ressources more than makes up for the lack of technology. As for elemental magic its source of power is nature itself.

(x)

[Again, not sure who he’s replying to]

@EiffelSavin: We continue to work on dvlpmnt but it's a costly project & bringing the right financial partners together is the long and uncertain part...

(x)

#oban star racers #sav the world #sav! the world #type:text #type:staff

8 notes · View notes

myfriendpokey · 6 years

Text

clearance sale

clearing out some of my backlog of opinions before the new year so i can start anew. in this post I have accumulated some writing scraps on the only three topics: 1. finance 2. mystery 3. location

FINANCE

i enjoyed these recent-ish posts against the idea of indie sustainability, although as someone who already works a day job i always feel a bit ambivalent about the advice to just work a day job to pay for this stuff - - like yes, absolutely, do it, BUT sell your shit too in the knowledge that the type of precarity we associate w/ creative work is already in the process of being implemented everywhere else as well (or has already been - zero hour contracts, sub-living wages etc). like i am fortunate to still have a day job which pays a living wage and leaves me time to work on my own things on the side - but this feels like an anachronism rather than an inevitability right now.. maybe my unsustainable games will help keep me afloat when my job gets automated and i have to go work in an amazon warehouse, unsustainable games for an unsustainable job, ha ha ha. video games are an exploitative bubble but so is the rest of "the market".

it is true that this is a political problem rather than one in the narrow remit of things that can be fixed with the right 10-point sales plan- - nevertheless i think the issue of trying to make even small money off these things will remain kind of pressing as, in turn, regular employment comes more and more to resemble irregularly compensated hobbyist labour.

anyway one point i found really interesting, which i think all the above posts kind of grapple with - - the idea that it's not necessarily more "realistic" to aim at selling 1000 copies rather than 100,000. i think while we make fun of the aspiring millionaires a lot of people have just been banking on the idea of a fertile middle ground between the two extremes of tiny and ludicrous amounts of sales, between boom and bust. i'm sure there are still people working in that space but it seems like it's shrinking.

one question brendan keogh asks in his piece is "why should game makers be any different [from the norm of artists, musicians etc not really making any money]?" i think this can actually be answered a little - because hobbyist game development sort of exploded in tandem with the internet itself becoming more naturalized within everyday life, because the economic basis for indie games was always centered around the internet, which means people working in indie games were always in the vicinity of the massive, startling movements of capital that the internet rendered more visible and immediate. no more were the weird vicissitudes of the market hidden behind closed doors, in boardrooms or stock quotations - now you could log onto any site and see just bewildering amounts of money suddenly funnel into the pockets of this or that individual in real time, frequently to their own surprise as well. and i think this connected to something more general - a sort of ambient awareness of financialization, the way "the financial sector" cannibalized things like industry, the greater visibility of capital not as something embedded in some specific product or set of individual practices but as a kind of weird free-floating aura arbitrarily descending or departing. enormous reservesof "general" wealth became more visible just as the benefits and stability of waged employment became yet more desolate and i think you need to see the draw of one in part as a consequence of the other.

gacha-capitalism, permanent artificial scarcity coupled with the vague, insistent prospect of fantastic gains, as long as you keep playing. which is a rhythm already enshrined in many areas of working life - broke college students and unpaid graduates hustling for eventual employment, waged workers grinding through until retirement. but it's one the enhanced immediacy and swiftness of capital on the internet intensified and extended. fabulous payouts can strike anyone at any time, in exchange for slowly bleeding out the prospect of any other kind of livelihood. much like the austerity following the financial crash which levelled so many basic social services for no particular purpose other than the hope that doing so for long enough would please the gods of prosperity to start tossing money around again. all dues, no pay.

i do think it's worth being cynical about the efforts to domesticate this process, building a fair and sustainable biome within capitalism, by using the tools of that same capitalism etc. but if the format can't be seperated from the wider world then that's something which swings both ways. for me the most interesting critical work around vgames right now is in the effort to move outside of the constant, numbing boom-and-bust cycles of capital, the idiot repetition of exhilaration and depression and exhilaration and it'll all be okay as long as we can hold out one more cycle, particularly when that's a rhythm which has been central to the development of the format from the beginning. i think anyone involved with developing videogames has probably seen multiple generations of cool shit emerge, get abruptly killed off and written out of history in accordance with market diktats, and then replaced with a new wave of cool shit whenever the investors shift gears into "expansion" mode again. a mode of thinking about and preserving what people do that stands in opposition to this is something i can easily imagine being more generally useful in the culture, as ever more areas of life and culture start becoming subject to the same questions.

MYSTERY

there's a mystery in depth and a mystery in shallowness. with depth the habitual glance of recognition goes out and falls through - you can place roughly where something is in relation to the world, but not what it's doing, not where it goes. as a presence it seems to require a new mode of attention to be recognized, which i guess is why it sometimes makes me uneasy - that challenge, the way that challenge can be moralized. are you a bad enough dude to engage with art?? if there are 100 black obelisks in a field which one do you decide to look at? and will it really turn out to be deep, or just dense?

videogames can feel like depth-worship, like the embodiment of an essentially cthonic system of values. how deep did you go and what did you see there? did you find the gold bars in pac-man? (www.mikesarcade.com/cgi-bin/spies.cgi?action=url&type=info&page=pmgoldbar.info.txt) did you see the secret ending? how far did you get into the game mechanics, into the lore? this marks the top 10 deepest players on this game. surpass them... if you dare. an ethos of diligent attention, hierarchial levels of understanding and initiate-dom, a sub-culture. and at best a maguslike dedication to altered states of consciousness that i can respect, an interest in shifting through mangled pieces of debris in search of secret mysteries. at worst the authority cults and tests of true belonging that spring up around those mysteries, whose value is in being hidden and whose guarantee is in the strenuous effort with which they must be located. paranoia about true spiritual meanings being plundered by opportunistic interlopers. stay out. get good.

the videogame has the basic opacity of the computer system and the act of engaging with this curious abyss is allegorized into dungeons, castles, mazes. trapdoors and secret corridors. one pleasure in looking up older games for me is in seeing them recognize and learn how to thematize this basic sense of mystery. in bubble bobble the obscure scoring mechanics and secret endings are cheekily perverse, arcade challenge by another means - another system to game. in king's quest there's something like a crossfertilization between the strange causal voids of the fairy tale and the adventure game: "Exit the gingerbread house and go east and east. There is a large walnut tree here. Take walnut and then open walnut to discover a gold nut. Head east and take bowl . Look bowl to see the words “fill” at the bottom. Fill and the bowl will fill up with a delicious stew." the wizardry games took the connection between mysterious game systems and occult knowledge much further - the "true" ending of wizardry iv means finding a secret chamber and answering a series of riddles based on your knowledge of the kaballah (or at least, kaballah-derived tarot interpretations).

it's easy to moralize depth - lotus eaters, magic islands. you wander through a strange land and then return to find it's 5 hours later and you forgot to eat. there's something creepy to me about depth on an industrial scale, about building huge tunnels with massive teams on forced overtime, and then a team of professional tunnel reviewers cautiously start descending on ropes and come back every so often and say, well, 20 hours in and it all looks ok, and meanwhile everybody else is jumping en masse. maybe that's more of an issue with consumer culture in general. but sometimes it feels like a way to avoid dealing with certain inherent limitations of that culture, or even limitations of art in general, by projecting those limits out to the end of ever-deeper tunnels that fewer and fewer people will ever see, the rest of them straggling back, exhausted, getting jobs. well, i can't tell you if red dead 2 is good or not. i only got 60 hours in, and i never even found all the falcons.

if the mystery of depth is having too much space for speculation to operate coherently within, the mystery of shallowness is having not enough space for speculation to operate at all: something is too manifestly there, limited, closed-off, it's hard to push it away to get some metaphorical breathing room.

i feel this way sometimes reading writers like tove jansson, flannery o'connor - SOMETHING happened, the stories are short and clear and describe some definite event without too much uncertainty, they even have "broader themes" raised - but somehow the themes feel embarrassingly outsize for the stories, and the stories remain too clearly defined to sink back into the murk of a generalized moral or experience. they feel like moral stories when you can't work out what the moral might be.

robbe-grillet on raymond roussel: "Now these chains of elucidations, extraordinarily precise, ingenious, and farfetched, appear so derisory, so disappointing, that it is as if the mystery remained intact. But it is henceforth a mystery that has been washed, emptied out, that has become unnameable. The opacity no longer hides anything. One has the impression of having found a locked drawer, then a key; and this key opens the drawer impeccably... and the drawer is empty."

there's a famous shallowness to videogames as well that's most often caught by people outside the culture - when you see the fake videogames in a comicbook, or on tv, and they're named something like "washing machine simulator 3000" or "municipal tax assailants". and part of this also stems from the computer, the history of the computer as it insinuated its way into everyday life, as a mysteriously elaborate and convoluted way of doing just impossibly banal things, like balancing chequebooks or printing text. the stubborn thingliness of not-quite-functional machines, the way the thingliness glosses and corrodes their own internal fantasies, mirrors of the basic weirdness that is human consciousness as a material fact within the world.

with my friend i used to joke about "e3" just being the dumpster behind an abandoned gamestop - all those needy longform experiences frozen into evocative trinkets. find a nonfunctional disk copy of mario odyssey and it gives you all the same delight as playing mario odyssey, only without having to. i think there's something beautiful about that flatness, that directionless object-hostility, the rejection of the grandoise hero's journey fantasies that it implies – as well as something baleful, a rejection of consciousess in general, the idea that it could take you anywhere not inside your own head.

LOCATION

why are there so many videogames about going outside? every time i've played a videogame it's been inside a room, usually a dark one, mostly while still wearing my pajamas. for me it is an internal activity. but not only do all these games take place in fields and plains, they always talk about the wonders of going on a voyage, the beauty of the great outdoors, the superiority of the wandering main characters to the slugs and layabouts who sit at home all day.... it's weird to me, i demand we move past these cloying pseudo-critiques. raymond williams once pointed out that the first pastoral was written from the perspective of a rentier daydreaming of cashing out and moving to a country home. i demand more games with the courage of their implict convictions and that if they require you to sit motionless indoors for hours they should explicitly establish and argue for a value system in which this is the best possible thing that you can do. imagine if movies were all set in dark chambers full of people sitting down - i think i can say they would be much less insipid as an artform. "all of man's problems stem from an inability to stay in his room".

(images: Gakken No O Benkyou Soft Kazu Suuji, Legend of Legaia, a Chinese bootleg cart, and ...Iru!)

#gamechat #room

28 notes · View notes

thewardlowcollection · 6 years

Text

Library facts about Miss Fisher’s fanfic (III)

This is the third and last installment in the “Library facts” series. Here are post I, post II.

The most kudosed fics (AO3)

The most kudosed fic in the fandom is “fighting vainly the old ennui” by @fahye, an AU where Phryne is a gentlewoman thief and Jack the Inspector who needs to find her.

This is followed by @gaslightgallows’s large and super versatile drabble collection “You asked for it”.

After these, the most kudosed are “Lit Up by the Moon” by BlackEyedGirl, “a lack of pretense” by mardia and “New Mutiny” by Lenore -- the last a lovely story of an amnesiac Jack.

These most kudosed fics are generally not recently published, but rather from 2014 and 2013; @gaslightgallows‘s collection was written between 2015 and 2017. They all have more than 1 000 kudos.

The most commented on fics (AO3)

The most commented on fic is @gaslightgallows’s “You asked for it”, with an incredible amount of more than 9K comments.

This is followed by @promisesarepiecrust‘s “City that Works”, a modern gender-swapped AU where Phryne is a policewoman and Jack a PI, set in Chicago.

After these two, the there is a hat trick by @firesign23 -- the three next fics are hers: “500 Words You Should Know” (a collection of short fics), “A Glass Splinter” (an AU where Phryne never inherited her money so is a not at all rich, industrous business woman, and she and Jack manage to hook up a bit earlier in the timeline with angsty result) and finally “Strange Capers” (a reunion fic where Jack never followed Phryne to England, where Phryne gets stuck in England because of the economic crash, and the story takes place when she comes back to Melbourne some years later).

The fic with the highest wordcount (AO3)

@gaslightgallows’s “You Asked For It” is also the fic with highest wordcount, so she too makes a hat trick here!

After her, the longest fic on AO3 is @firesign23’s “A Glass Splinter”

and then “Finally” by @evendale, the latter a thorough investigation of the sexual development of Jack as he’s starting his relationship with Phryne.

They are followed by “A Man in Need” by CollingwoodGirl/@jeneenp, a story that also focuses on the start of their relationship and Jack’s initial reluctance and “How Beautiful and Free" by @wah-pah/S_Winter_Fitzgerald, where Phryne after flying to England gets involved in a case on the Côte d’Azur.

If we count together series of fics that take place in the same AU, one of the longest fics is @aljohnsonwrites “The YACI-verse”, a modern AU that starts with Phryne being invited to the Royal Wedding in England 2011 (YACI stands for You Are Cordially Invited). It is also in the top of the most commented on fics.

Also @scruggzi‘s “The Thrilling Adventures of Doctor Space Phrack” would, if counting the separate fics together, make it into the top five. This is the story of Phryne meeting and travelling with The Doctor of Doctor Who, also picking up Jack to join them.

More facts about fic length

“You asked for it” is, as we have seen, part of every one of those top lists! It’s a large collection of drabbles where @gaslightgallows explores an incredible amount of “what ifs” with the characters – ranging from close to canon to a lot of different version, some of the most popular saw Phryne and Jack being polyamorous with another couple. No less than 533 chapters were posted.

Ff.net doesn’t have the feature of kudos, and no way of searching for amount of comments. It does have filters for length though, and out of the Miss Fisher fics seven are longer than 100 000 words; four of these are written by @seldarius. There is one fic that is exceptionally long, 2 million words and counting – “Deeper than the Pacific” by HarleQueen21, where Phryne is pregnant since two years back.

The most prolific authors

The Miss Fisher fandom is incredibly lucky to have obsessed writers writers that contribute with a lot of fic. Of course we have a toplist here too!

Most fics in the fandom is written by @firesign23. Combining both her own fics and the collaborative fics she’s contributed to, she has written no less than 115 stories!

Second and third place is taken by our runner-ups @omgimsarahtoo, counting in at 98 fics, and @gaslightgallows with 70 fics. Fourth, at 51 fics, is @flashofthefuse.

After this, there are a few writers who have written 40 or slightly more fics, so we decided to just list them together: @aljwritesphryne; @mercurialbianca; @ollyjayonline; playfulmay; pulpriter/@tumk1; @whopooh.

Some more facts

There are also 11 podfics made on fics in the fandom.

Many people who have entered the fandom have testified to reading through the full backlog of stories because they just wanted to have more of Phryne and Jack after finishing the show. No estimation has been done of how much time that takes an average fic reader.

The readers on AO3 and ff.net only seldom crossread the fics on the other sites.

(Posted 2018-07-04)

#2.0: library facts #mfmm fanfic #most kudosed #most comments #highest wordcount #miss fisher's murder mysteries #the wardlow collection

50 notes · View notes

pixelgrotto · 7 years

Photo

"Don’t give up, Senua”

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is one of those games that’s hard to view objectively if you’re up-to-date with video game trends. It came out about a month ago and is currently an industry darling for combining the thoughtful nature and affordable price point of indie games with the big-budget look of AAA games. It’s effectively brought back the concept of the “mid-tier” title, something that existed before the PS3 and Xbox 360 era, when the cost of developing games suddenly became too expensive for most companies to aim for anything less than the returns yielded by mainstream blockbusters. It’s finally won wholehearted praise for developer Ninja Theory, who produced a reboot of Devil May Cry four years ago which attracted so many whiners that Capcom now seems determined to forget that it ever existed. (A mistake, if you ask me.) And most importantly, Hellblade has garnered recognition for its earnest and extensive portrayal of psychosis. Ninja Theory dared to create a game starring a protagonist who suffers from acute mental illness, and thanks to input from neuroscientists and actual psychosis patients, they pulled it off respectfully, to the point where Mental Health America had approving words.

All of this is great, and made me wanna check the game out ASAP even though I’ve got a ton of other things on my backlog. After my first couple hours, though, I realized that there were actually a lot of things that I didn’t like about Hellblade, which made me feel sorta guilty. I’m all for criticizing critical darlings if I find them overrated, but Hellblade’s very existence was doing so many wonderful things for the industry that it seemed unfair of me to have anything less than gushing praise. So I continued playing until the conclusion of Senua’s 10 hour journey, wondering if my opinions would change. And they partially did. In the end, I’ll say that Hellblade deserves to be played by as many people as possible - though there were several occasions where I found the experience clunky and even painful. Even though it’s mostly been promoted as a third-person action adventure, Hellblade is really a psychological horror game, and the premise makes me think of a Celtic version of Silent Hill. Senua is a Pict warrior trying to enter Hel to free the soul of her murdered lover, and because she has multiple voices raging in her head and can’t stop hallucinating, there’s some discrepancy over how much of her journey is actually “real.” A discussion on reality is pointless, however, because the ordeal of the quest is real to Senua, and it soon feels real to the player too, especially as the game stealthily weaves the multiple voices of Senua’s mind in and out of your ears thanks to surround sound. Then there are the hallucinations that you’re forced to endure, many of which manifest by changing the environment. One particularly unpleasant hallucination turns Senua’s surroundings into a blood-soaked realm filled with human hands all gripping for her flesh, and it’s heavy stuff. There’s a high probability that playing through Hellblade will be too much for a lot of people, especially those who have personally suffered from psychosis or other forms of mental illness. It was too much for me at some points, and when I call the experience “painful,” I mean that I really had to put the gamepad down every now and then or risk being overwhelmed. All of this made Hellblade an ordeal to play, but it’s perfectly okay to make players endure grimness as long as they’re invested in the characters they’re controlling and want to see things through until the end. Horror games do this all the time, and believe me, I was rooting for Senua to persevere and emerge victorious from the dungeon of her mind. Unfortunately, while grimness is one thing to endure, not-so-fun technical design decisions are another thing entirely. Hellblade typically has you doing either one of three things - 1) watching cutscenes, 2) fighting vikings, or 3) using Senua’s “focus” ability to zone in on hidden runes in the environment, which are then used to open doors and solve puzzles. This “focus” mechanic is actually meant to evoke the capability that psychotic people have to mentally restructure their surroundings, zoning in on certain details and seeing elaborate patterns in the items around them that others might be totally unaware of. While it’s admirable that Ninja Theory managed to take this and make it into a main gameplay pillar, I just didn’t find the puzzles particularly satisfying or enjoyable. All you’re really doing is wandering around looking for optical illusions, several of which are a pain to locate. Once you find ‘em, you go, “Hm, that’s neat,” open a door, and then find some more. There are a few different parts where you’ve got to traverse mini-mazes or use Senua’s focus to rebuild bridges and stairs, but mostly its just looking for runes. It’s probably a good thing that Hellblade only lasts for 10 hours, since this mechanic wouldn’t be able to sustain interest in a longer game.

I did like the combat more than the puzzle solving, and pretty much all of the screenshots above were taken during battle segments. I don’t wanna say that the game “feels like Dark Souls” (ugh), but Senua’s movements and sword swings do have a similar weight to them, and it’s satisfying to see blows connect. The only problem is the camera, which is something that really should not be an issue in a 2017 game. Senua’s just too close to the screen most of the time, and when stuck in a combat stance she lacks a fast move to create distance between herself and enemies. Because combat encounters usually take place in confined spaces with multiple foes, it’s quite possible to get stuck in a corner with your vision blocked as everybody curb-stomps you to death, and the whole thing kinda feels reminiscent of something out of an early third-person PS1 game.

These technical issues, as well as a prominent gameplay mechanic that I didn’t especially like, would keep me from giving Hellblade five out of five stars if I were reviewing it for a magazine. But I think I’d go ahead and give it three and a half stars, and I’d also earnestly proclaim that this is a game that’s still worth experiencing at least once. Why? Well, because of what it represents and encompasses - a positive portrayal of a much misunderstood disorder, an unsexualized female protagonist who strives to be heroic despite her flaws, a game that strips away all of the fat plaguing far too many modern titles and offers an intriguing alternative to teeny indies and bloated big-budget spectacles. And also because there were a few times when Hellblade, despite its problems, really clicked for me.

(Some light spoilers ahead, FYI.)

The first occasion was when a determined Senua cleared two gates blocking her from a bridge leading to Hel. When she finally steps foot on that bridge, the game kicks in with an awesome Norse-inspired backing track that really pumps up the soul. A flurry of enemies fly at Senua, and combat with them is fast and glorious, particularly since it’s on an open bridge and not the usual confined spaces where the other battles take place.

The second occasion was when Senua temporarily loses all ability to see her surroundings. Guided only by the voice of her dead lover and the fading light of a single torch, the player has to help her navigate a forested area and a cabin filled with grotesque flesh monsters just lurking in the background. It’s here that the game’s binaural audio really proves its worth. You can hear the monsters, but you can’t really see them, and the dread is intense. Then there’s a part where Senua has to move through a series of corridors that all look the same, and every time she makes an error and ends up travelling in circles, the muses in her mind laugh at her with frightening ferocity, creating surreal feelings of claustrophobia, confusion and frustration - perhaps the closest the game ever gets to actually emulating the experience of living with voices constantly inside your head. And the third occasion was at the very end, when Senua faces Hela and her minions in a final battle to the haunting ambiance of a really incredible song by Passarella Death Squad. Not only is the song the perfect accompaniment for the desperation of this finale, but this is the moment in the game where Senua’s mastered the voices in her head - at least temporarily - and forced them to work together in harmony. While the voices have always chimed in during combat to serve as a kind of “second sense” for Senua, warning her when enemies are about to strike from behind, they’ve usually done so in a denigrating way. This conclusion, however, sees the voices finally acknowledging Senua’s worth and encouraging her onwards. “You can do this, Senua.” “Behind you, Senua.” “Look out, Senua.” All of these are gentle whispers rather than the normal cackles and cacophony, and the end result feels like poetry in motion as you press buttons in a pulsating attempt to overcome both Hela and Senua’s inner madness. It’s cathartic, it’s a darn good ending and it makes the game feel worthwhile.

That, in a nutshell, is Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Highly imperfect, but also highly worthwhile. I probably won’t ever play this game again, and I’m not sure if I’ll be checking for its sequel...but I am glad that it was made. Both the electronic entertainment industry and the mental health community deserve something like this, and I’m perfectly comfortable with saying that Hellblade deserves all of the attention it’s been getting. Even if it wasn’t 100% my cup of tea. All screenshots taken by yours truly using Hellblade’s photo mode.

#pixel grotto #video games #now playing #hellblade #hellblade senua's sacrifice #ninja theory

9 notes · View notes

orribuontheinternet · 7 years

Text

Reflection

Hello, friends!

It’s been a long year already, even though we have some three months left. I wanted to come clean about some things that have been going on, mostly in the aspect of my creative life but my personal life as well. Don’t worry, I won’t bog you down with details about my personal life—just how some of it affects my creative output.

At the beginning of the year, I promised I’d get some things out to you, like previews of that TwistedFates animation, pages of Rose for Shurinai, and the groundwork for Season 2 of Aether Resort. After I worked at Anime Impulse in the Artist Alley and had the confidence beat out of me, I started trying to focus on anything BUT art. I had no solace, nothing comfortable to return to after a usually upsetting day at work.

I quit the Starbucks job, then got hired as a functionality QA Tester with Konami. After they were finished with their project, they cut the QA Team from the payroll without warning. I fell into a slump because it was something I was so proud of. Shortly after that, a very close friend of mine passed away, and not even four days later, a family friend in Philadelphia passed. That triggered a pretty lengthy mental episode.

I barely got out of bed. I wound up sleeping all day and refusing to eat. I eventually got sick and tired of feeling so miserable, so I tried to break the cycle. Brit encouraged me to get out the house and see some friends. It’s helped a little. Now that I’ve gained some time to think things over, I wanted to start a discussion about my online/creative presence and get some possible feedback from those of you who are taking the time to read this.

Patreon

My presence on Patreon needs a lot of work. There’s no real growth, more than likely caused by my lack of engagement with my audience. A lot of the campaign’s failure is my fault. I’ve been trying to put out sketches and works-in-progress daily Monday-Friday to drum up interest. As time moves on, I’ll have to reevaluate if I should keep this open and approach it differently, or if it’s time to abandon the dream.

TwistedFates

I really, really want to get this series rolling. Unfortunately, I constantly add more things to the to-do list and end up with a bunch of unfinished projects. As much as I’d like to get that animation done, redesign the website, publish introspection and get more pages of the Rose for Shurinai webcomic done, it’s a lot to work on. I will cease updating Rose for Shurinai until I have a backlog ready. I can’t work on it, however, until I get more elements of the world visualized. (ART BLOCK?!) I miss having fun with working on this project, though. I don’t know what happened. I have been developing a new drawing style to make drawing it more fun, but I still feel so sad when drawing it. Well—drawing in general.

Aether Resort

I’ve been plotting to design Season 2 of Aether Resort since Season 1 ended in Fall 2015. I had some pretty ambitious goals, one of which was programming an interactive chat bot (with 100% uptime) and recruiting a team to help ‘run’ the island. I aimed to have a working currency and inventory system and a series of scheduled events that would be automated by the chat bot. On that note I’ve been teaching myself coding. It’s going to take a long time before I can manage to create anything like that. I’ll be planning for Season 2 as time goes on, though.

Other Projects

I’ll still be updating Megaman X: Hybrid sporadically. The same goes for Splatoon: Black Ink, though I’m aware that the second game came out and I’ll have to figure—out how to work towards that. I’m also thinking about planning out volume 2 of Cup of Sugar since the first volume is slowly gaining traction. There were other projects I planned that I need to put on the back burner like redesigning the TwistedFates site, the game ideas I had… Gosh.

That’s about it, really. I don’t have much to show for a project I’ve been working on for 10 years or so. What small audience I had is diminishing because I’m shit at keeping people updated. I need to get my shit together.

I’m going to allow myself to enjoy my work.

When I’m ready, I’m going to make deadlines and plan things out better so that I can consistently put out quality content that I’m proud of. Most importantly, though, I am going to have fun with creating again!

#update #announcement

3 notes · View notes

daleisgreat · 6 years

Text

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Now it is time for the film I have been dreading to cover the most of the quadrilogy of Indiana Jones adventures and yes I am talking about Indy’s return to the big screen after a 19 year absence with 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (trailer). For new readers you can catch up on my posts for the original trilogy by clicking right here. When it originally released it was the only film in the franchise I vividly recall seeing in its entirety on release week. I recall walking out of that film irate because of a few gut-wrenching cornball scenes I will touch on later, and also because it featured Shia LaBeouf in one of the lead roles of the film fresh off his ultra-annoying performance in the first Transformers film. Needless to say I recall being furious anytime Shia’s mug appeared onscreen. This was 11 years ago however, so it was interesting revisiting this with a fresh set of eyes. Before I continue bear with me for a quick sidebar. I specifically recall Crystal Skull being the last film playing in what was once the featured theater in my town throughout my childhood. The good ‘ol Columbia 4 was the place where I waited in long lines for tickets to see family blockbusters like Home Alone, D2: The Mighty Ducks, Beethoven and Major League II. Later in the 90s a 10-plex opened, and in 2007 a 15-plex debuted which was the catalyst for the Columbia 4 turning into second run $1 theater a couple months later. For the next several months I caught at least two movies a month there and would chance anything for a $1 but felt something was amiss when the only movie they had playing on all four screens for its last three weeks was Crystal Skull until they finally locked their doors. I miss $1 movies and I hope we get another second-run theater again someday.

Back on track, Crystal Skull opens with Indy (Harrison Ford) and his colleague Mac (Ray Winstone) being thrown out of a trunk by the Soviet KGB. Yes, Indy is no longer squaring off against Nazis in the 1930s, but now communists in 1957. The standard thrilling opening chase sequence transpires with Indy evading peril once again, but with the Russians constantly on his tail. Not all is well for Indy back home as his latest capers leads to his dismissal from his longtime professor job at the university, but he has a hot tip for this film’s self-titled Magoffin, a legendary Crystal Skull. This leads Indy to meeting up with one Mutt Williams (Shia LeBeouf) for more info on the Skull’s whereabouts, and that leads the pair to tracking down the kidnapped duo of Indy’s former pal, Dr. Oxley (John Hurt) and Mutt’s mom Marion (Karen Allen). The Russians are led by one Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), who has some hinted psychological gifts early on, but that part of her persona is quickly brushed aside and she is essentially one of the weaker Indy antagonists. Mac is pretty amusing though with his constant double-crossing. Sadly, Sean Connery does not return to reprise his role as Indy Sr. as Connery stated in interviews at the time he was already a few years into his acting retirement and enjoying it too much to return to the screen, but there is a nice quick little tribute to him here. After re-watching the original trilogy and now having 100% reverence for Marion’s role in Raiders, I was thrilled to see her return this time around. Her chemistry with Ford does not miss a beat and the two shine together whenever they share a scene after Marion’s introduction halfway into the film. Some of my original qualms was Ford obviously being too old to make a return to all the swashbuckling action the series is famous for as he was 65 when Crystal Skull was filmed. Ford must have had some bizarre combination of good makeup and training, because he comes off as barely spry enough to pull off most of the vintage Indy acrobatics and I was further stunned to see the interviews claim how he did most of his own stunts to boot. Being many years removed from the dreck of the original Transformers trilogy also helped re-watching this as I was able to give Shia’s performance a now un-biased perspective and I was legit surprised LeBeouf actually pulled off a pretty good outing as the greaser, Mutt Williams.

Most of the requisite chases and swashbuckling action scenes of Crystal Skull hold up surprisingly well. As a matter of fact nearly halfway through the film I jotted down in my notes in all caps ‘THIS IS ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD SO FAR.’ There are still a few instances that are big asterisks where Crystal Skull does not tiptoe over the wrong side of the line of groan-inducing, hokey moments, it straight up jumps the shark on them. The first instance is a jeep chase that was going well until monkeys and vine swinging gets involved and it instantly took me right out of the moment. The second moment was when Indy and crew all survive a mammoth waterfall drop and instantly all of them walk right out of it without even a scratch. I would be a fool at this point not to point out the elephant in the room in what is the most ridiculous jump the shark moment in cinema history….really….when Indiana…..I am not kidding….survives a nuclear blast on a testing ground by hiding in a lead-lined fridge and to rub salt in the wounds walking out of it WITHOUT EVEN A SCRATCH OR DROP OF BLOOD (SERIOUSLY, CLICK HERE TO RELIVE THIS ABSURDITY)!!! For that last instance it knocks the bonkers ball right out of the park and I can almost give Spielberg and Lucas a pass for being brazen enough to include it in here…almost.

My final gripe with Crystal Skull is how the final act plays out. I remembered enough bits and pieces of the original trilogy going into my first viewing of the fourth film to expect some supernatural material, and the inclusion of it is not what bothered me, but how it is pulled off is. When Spalko gets her just-deserts upon her inappropriate handling of the Crystal Skull, the way the CG-affair plays out is way too over the top to be taken seriously and get on the edge of my seat for like in previous films. This is also the first Indy film in the HD-era and Lucas already had the polarizing Star Wars prequels under his belt which featured the latest and greatest CG so it is baffling how silly the CG alien spectacle is executed. On the bonus features disc of the BluRay set there is only one extra specific to Crystal Skull and that is Making of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It runs just under a half hour and it does a good job interviewing Lucas, Spielberg and Ford on how the fourth film came to be and how it is an ode to the 1950s alien invasion B-movies like how the original trilogy was an homage to 1930s serials. I checked out the last several bonus features on the extras disc that run 10-12 minutes each to round off all the bonus content I had not seen yet. These shorter extras cover the filming locations, the leading women of the films, and post production. They are all well done, but of them the only one I would recommend would be the extra containing excerpts from a panel interviewing the three lead women of the movies that looked like it was shot shortly after The Last Crusade. The actresses are interviewed in the other bonuses, but it is nice to see them shine on their own here and give more insight and anecdotes than the other interviews.

For those interested in one more extra not contained on the set, the Cinemassacre crew did another recent video debating on whether Temple of Doom or Crystal Skull is the worst Indiana Jones film you can check out by clicking here. If it was not for these guys making these videos in the last few weeks it would have taken me several months to get around to covering the last two Indy films so kudos to them for driving me to get to them sooner than later. As far as which of those two films do I rank as the inferior Jones caper, I would have to rank Temple of Doom at the bottom. As I detailed in my entry for Temple of Doom, I had a lot of beef with it and the only parts I cared for were the opening sequence and the final mine-cart and rope-bridge scenes which only tallied up to about a quarter of the film. For Crystal Skull however my opinion of it turned a complete 180. Yes, I detailed four major gripes above with the film, but those are my only noteworthy problems and other aspects of the fourth film aged better than I could have imagined and I was on board for around two-thirds of the film! I still would rank it as only my third favorite of the series behind Raiders and Last Crusade being my standout favorite, but Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will likely be the only movie in the history of this blog that I had a positive 180 change of opinion on. Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: Civil War Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed Deck the Halls Die Hard Dredd The Eliminators The Equalizer Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Guardians of the Galaxy Hercules: Reborn Hitman Indiana Jones 1-4 Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jobs Joy Ride 1-3 Man of Steel Man on the Moon Marine 3-6 Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Mortal Kombat National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets The Replacements Reservoir Dogs Rocky I-VII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Skyscraper Small Town Santa Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Take Me Home Tonight TMNT The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Vision Quest The War Wild Wonder Woman The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Days of Future Past

#Indiana Jones #indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull #random movie #Harrison Ford #steven spielberg #George Lucas #shia labeouf #ray winstone #john hurt #cate blanchett #Karen Allen

0 notes

newssplashy · 6 years

Text

World: Trump seeks to bypass due process at border

President Donald Trump unleashed an aggressive attack Sunday on unauthorized immigrants and the judicial system that handles them, saying that those who cross into the United States illegally should be sent back immediately without due process or an appearance before a judge.

“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,” Trump tweeted while on the way to his golf course in Virginia. “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came.”

It was another twist in a head-spinning series of developments on immigration since the administration announced a zero tolerance policy two months ago, leading to the separation of children from parents who cross the border illegally and an outcry from Democrats and many Republicans. Trump signed an executive order to end the separations last week, but the sudden shifts have led to confusion along the border about how children and parents will be reunited and to turmoil in Congress as the House prepares to vote on a sweeping immigration bill this week.

Still, the president, who has always dug his heels in when criticized, has not backed back down from his hard-line talk, even amid a national outcry over a detainment policy that has resulted in the separation of more than 2,300 children from their families.

He has instead gone on the offensive, complaining to aides about why he could not just create an overarching executive order to solve the problem, according to two people familiar with the deliberations. Aides have had to explain to the president why a comprehensive immigration overhaul is beyond the reach of his executive powers.

And privately, the president has groused that he should not have signed the order undoing separations.

“Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order,” Trump tweeted Sunday, adding, “Our Immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting on line for years! Immigration must be based on merit.”

But Trump’s call to ignore due process faced both constitutional questions and dissension from Republicans in Congress, some of whom have insisted that the number of judges be increased so migrant families can have their cases heard more quickly. Federal immigration courts faced a backlog of more than 700,000 cases in May, and cases can take months or years to be heard.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has proposed doubling the number of judges to roughly 750, while Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he believes an additional 225 judges are needed. He noted that only 74 of the current immigration judges are serving at the border.

“We need to increase that,” Johnson said. “The Trump administration is going to try and come up with another 15,000 beds for family units. But none of this is easy.”

The House bill up for a vote this week would beef up border security and provide a path to citizenship for the young unauthorized immigrants known as Dreamers, while also effectively codifying Trump’s executive order by allowing migrant families to be detained together indefinitely.

Many on Capitol Hill believe legislation is necessary to deal with the order, since it allows indefinite detentions. Under a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores settlement, migrant families can be detained for no more than 20 days, leaving the order’s status in court in doubt.

But the president’s conflicting statements are complicating legislative efforts, said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.

“It makes it very difficult,” Flake said on ABC’s “This Week,” continuing, “It’s difficult in any event, right, in an election year where the president has decided to have this at the forefront of the Republican election strategy to paint the Democrats as soft on immigration.”

He added: “I don’t know how in the world we’re going to fix this in the short term, given the Flores decision and given the lack of infrastructure, judges to process these claims. It’s really a big mess.”

Trump’s tweets Sunday threw new legal questions into the puzzle. Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, said in an email that the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that “the due process requirements of the Fifth and 14th Amendments apply to all persons, including those in the U.S. unlawfully.”

“Trump is making the tyrannical claim that he has the right to serve as prosecutor, judge and jury with respect to all those who enter our country,” Tribe said. “That is a breathtaking assertion of unbounded power — power without any plausible limit.”

The Fifth Amendment mandates the due process of law, and the 14th Amendment, in part, expanded due process rights for immigrants, with case law asserting those rights dating back to 1886. But Justice Department lawyers under both Democratic and Republican administrations have argued that noncitizens apprehended at the border lack due process protections, said Adam Cox, a law professor at New York University, and the Supreme Court has never clearly resolved the dispute.

Since Trump was elected, his administration has been working to expand the terms of a 1996 statute that allows immigration officials to quickly deport unauthorized immigrants as well as those whose papers are believed to be fraudulent. The Trump administration has the ability to expand the statute to encompass the entire country and apply it to any noncitizen who has not been in the country for more than two years, Cox said.

“One of the things that is being considered is an expanded expedited removal to the full statutory limit,” he said, adding that “it is already true that a lot of people show up at the border get removed with no access to immigration courts or the judicial process.”

Cox said the president could be reacting to seeing a high number of people held in detention centers claiming they face harm back home. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the president knew the legal ins and outs of his demand.

“Many members of the administration seem to think that the high rate necessarily means a lot of fraud,” Cox said of asylum claims, “so what they could like to do is remove that process.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has made illegal immigration a focus of his career, has moved to back up the president’s words with action in recent months. In April, Sessions announced a zero tolerance immigration policy, which set off the mass separation of families that the president sought to end with his executive order last week.

Criminal prosecutions for illegally crossing the southwestern border jumped to 8,298 in April, the month Sessions announced the zero-tolerance policy, an increase of 30 percent from March, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research institute at Syracuse University. Last week, the Defense Department lent 21 lawyers to the Justice Department to focus on prosecuting a backlog in border crossing cases. And on Sunday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the Pentagon was looking at using two bases to hold an unknown number of migrants, though he would not comment on their location or whether they would house children.

Omar Jadwat, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, called the president’s demand to dispense with due process illegal. “Any official who has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws should disavow it unequivocally,” he said.

Trump’s call to end due process is not a total surprise — he has alluded to taking similar measures for weeks. While in Las Vegas on Saturday, Trump told supporters that he thought the immigration system needed fewer judges. Trump also suggested last week that he opposed adding judges because many of them could be corrupt.

He has long been a critic of immigration judges, saying they were not effective in stopping the flow of people coming into the country, sometimes using incorrect numbers to make his point.

“We have thousands of judges. Do you think other countries have judges?” Trump said during a round-table discussion in May. “We give them, like, trials. That’s the good news. The bad news is, they never show up for the trial. OK?”

There are actually fewer than 400 judges dedicated to such work, according to the website PolitiFact.

Trump also tweeted Friday that Republicans should “stop wasting their time” on the broad House immigration bill, but Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday” that he had spoken to the White House, which had assured him that Trump was “still 100 percent behind us.”

Trump’s careening from one extreme to another has been a staple of his campaign and presidency, allowing people to hear what they want in what he says — and leaving his White House to sort through a messy pile of conflicting directives and Congress to grasp for clues about which bills he might support.

The prospects for the House bill are iffy at best; some conservatives are balking at the citizenship provisions, which critics regard as “amnesty.” If it fails, McCaul said the House may be forced to consider a narrower measure that would address only the issues surrounding detention of migrant families.

“I think we at a minimum have to deal with the family separation,” McCaul said. “I’m a father of five. I think this is inhumane and I think the pictures that we have seen — that’s not the face of America.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

source https://www.newssplashy.com/2018/06/world-trump-seeks-to-bypass-due-process_25.html

#News

0 notes

symbianosgames · 7 years

Link

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

Welcome to the Meganoid(2017) post-mortem. This post-mortem goes into the details on the Meganoid figures and stats. Without context the stats are pretty much silly numbers, so please make sure to read all of this because there is more to the numbers than you might think.

So I'll keep this short, if you want to learn more about who I am, please check out my techblog and website. I've been a full-time (indie) developer since 2004. Mostly known for mobile games, but since 2015 also branching to PC games and even some consoles releases here and there (PS Vita and 3DS). I've never had hit games that made me millions, but I have been doing very decent for many years releasing games that have found a growing fan-base in a niche area. My biggest titles include the Gunslugs and Heroes of Loot series of games and Space Grunts.

The original Meganoid was released in 2010 on Android and iOS and was a very hard platformer with short levels that sometimes had you screaming if you didn't manage to reach the finish. For me it was a turning point in my games as I finally decided to just build games like that since those are the games I love the most. Luckily I found a niche that works for me and an audience that has been growing alongside me and my games. It also managed to reach close to a million downloads since.

Meganoid(2017) is a reboot of the franchise lifts a lot on the designs behind Spelunky, while still maintaining the difficulty of the original Meganoid game. I named it a "love child of Spelunky and Meat-boy in space", which is a very clear description of what the game is. It's not extremely original, but I'll get to that later on!

Oh, the game was also created in "just" two months, but I'll also get back to that if you keep reading..

So before Meganoid I was working on a game called Ashworld, which is a huge project for a one-man development team (which I am) and it's also an open-world game, a genre that I personally have no experience with because I often quit those games within a few hours of play-time. Simply put: Ashworld is a huge challenge for me, and I have been working on it since June 2016.

Seeing as my games are actually my livelihood, money needs to come in on a semi-frequent basis. My business is still running fairly well, I have a huge back-log of games and they are all still bringing in money on a monthly base, but to keep it all running I do have some rules on how long game-projects can take. Ashworld is breaking those rules due to a challenging development phase where I've been learning open-world design and also searching where the actual fun in the game-design is. So the game isn't done, and still needs a few months of work.

Enter the stage: Meganoid.

In January I decided to just do some prototyping with the hopes that I would end up with something playable that could be extended into a game. For this to work, I needed a clear design idea and direction. A game that I could almost create on automatic-mode.

This "automatic-mode" does need some nuance here, I wrote a blog about it a few weeks ago and I think it painted a wrong picture. Some comments and replies I got thrown at me were along the line of "a quick money grab". My bad on writing the article and not being clear about things, so here's to rectifying it:

The game was made in "just 2 months; and 13 years of experience".

The key part being those 13 years experience, factual there are a lot more years of experience, but the 13 years is how long I've been doing this commercially. Meganoid at it's core is a platformer with rogue-like mechanics. I've created close to 60 commercial platform games, and I've been doing rogue-like elements in my last 5-6 games. I know what to expect code-wise, and I know how to program those things without having to think about it.

To put it in some more perspective, my game Heroes of Loot 2 is a huge RPG-adventure/twin-stick shooter, and it was made in little over 4 months. So I normally work really fast and very effective.

Now think what you like about the short-development cycle, I don't plan to change your mind about it, but from a business point of view: this made sense and still delivers a quality game.

To have this game make some profit I needed it to take just a couple of months work so it would be easier to recoup on the costs AND make money on the game.

The development-cycle was pretty short, but since I had some interesting stuff pretty early on I actually showed some screenshots and gifs in the first week of development on twitter,facebook,instagram and a couple of forums. Some of this got picked up pretty early by mobile-game sites, and Toucharcade showed the first couple of video's I released in the weeks after.

I started using reddit a bit more, and finally managed to post something there without it being taken down (actually on second try, the first did get taken down because I didn't disclose that the "pre-order discounts" was on a game I made, which obviously makes a big difference../sarcasm).

The two or so weeks before the launch I already had various mobile sites mailing me for some promocodes, which is the up-side of being "known" in a market. In contrast to that there is the PC scene, where I'm basically unknown and nobody talks about my games.

The launch week I started looking at youtube streamers for the PC version, so I basically searched for big youtubers that covered games like: Spelunky, Meat boy, and a few other more recent pixel-art indie games that fit the same category as Meganoid.

I mailed all of them, close to a 100, which at least one steam-key included (for some group-youtubers I included up to 5 keys) and this all resulted in an awesome 0 streams. I did a follow up email to a large portion of them a week later, and this resulted in 1 Streamer playing it, yay results!

It's still possible some streamers will pick up the game later, having full inboxes, managers that handle emails slowly, or just large backlogs of video's. But I don't hold my breath for any of it. Same goes for PC game-site reviews, so even tho I did everything "right" it basically ended up with fairly little returns on it. The emails were short, to the point, showed a GIF of the game, bullet points, youtube trailer, quick-links and a steam-key included with a link to the website/presskit for more info. All according to the average marketing-advise.

Basically, in my opinion and experience, you need to know people to get things done. But reaching out never hurts and is also the way to get to know more people, so yeah.

Okay, okay! that's what you guys came for, I get it!

Google Play's "Best new seller" list charting

Let me first start with this, Meganoid was so far:

Featured on App-store under "New games we loved" - worldwide

Featured on Google Play "Early Access"

Featured on Google Play "New and Updated"

Top-charted (top 25) in Google Play "Best new sellers" list

Game of the Week - on TouchArcade

"Best games of the week for iOS and Android" - Pocketgamer

Now, back to reality, for those who don't know, making money on games is HARD, on any given day there are 100-500 games released on various platforms. That's EVERY DAY! Standing out from those games is extremely hard, most games you will never see and they get like 5-10 downloads (depending on how many friends the developer has).

With my experience of doing this business for a long time, I set a fairly low but do-able goal for Meganoid: $6500 during the launch-period. I know it's a not a huge game, and it had fairly short marketing-visibility before release due to the fast development cycle.

For me a launch-period is the first month or so after releasing it. My goals is usually to make 80%-100% of the development costs back in this first period. I calculate development costs fairly rough by multiplying each development-month with $2000 and then add any outsourced work costs. Since I do code+design+game graphics that often leaves out-source costs to music and high-res marketing art.

The $2000 is very low-end of what my cost-of-living is each month (in the Netherlands, with mortgage, girlfriend and pets). It doesn't take into account taxes and extra cash-flow for "the future". But we're talking about launch-period here, so a game will live on for a few more years and with future sales and discounts you can often double the money a game made on launch.

So for this game I had 2 months of work, that's $4000 and since there was such a short dev-cycle and I used ambient sounds from my sound-libraries, there was no music cost and just a few hundred dollars for the awesome marketing art. So let's round it to $4500.

Now the point is to get extra cashflow to cover the longer development-cycle of Ashworld and we get to a $6500 minimum revenue that I was aiming for with Meganoid. Again this is all launch-period revenue, because obviously it's a low amount especially if Ashworld development still needs 2 or 3 months time. So I'll get to that in a few paragraphs below.

I released Meganoid on March 30 on iOS, Android and PC (steam/humble/itch, windows/osx/linux) and we're now at three weeks into the release and currently the revenue is just a little shy of the target at $6200. Which is not bad at all!

So let's dig into this $6200 launch-period amount. Where did most of it come from, and why! The biggest bulk of this comes from the iOS version, actually close to 50% of it: $3580. On iOS the game was priced $4.99 with a launch-discount the first week making the game $3.99. Meganoid was made Game of the week at Toucharcade which most certainly helped, one of the weeks best games for iOS and Android on Pocketgamer, but sadly it had no "games we play" feature for the first weekend.

For some reason the game only showed up in the "Games we play" on Monday/Tuesday for the USA App-store, at which point it spiked to slightly below the launch spike so effectively doubling the sales in the 3/4 days it had that front page feature. I'm pretty sure it would have done better if it did have that feature in the first-weekend (during the sale) but those things are pretty much out of my control and I'm glad it eventually did get a feature after-all (something I kind had planned for in setting my revenue targets).

Apple loved it - all over the world!

Second biggest seller was Android, now this was done a little different. I tried some beta stages on Android and this put my game into "Early Access" on Google Play a week before the launch at a $2.99 price. This price was mostly because I believe that the brave people who try out a beta shouldn't pay full price. The game got a nice Google feature in their "Early Access" list, which only has about 20 games listed, so that's a pretty good list to be in.

The possible down-side of this is that a lot of people don't seem to be clear of understanding what "Early access" means on Google Play, so there was a lot more buying going on than I had planned for, and that means I was pushing updates daily to work out some "obviously-beta" features. Early-access users can't leave reviews during that phase, so that might have been a positive thing, the down-side of that is that many people forget to leave a review once the game was released.. so not as many reviews as I normally have during the launch-period. Not sure if I would do that again on Android, but it's been an interesting experiment.

Finally we come to the PC revenue, in total that's $900 which is split over Steam, Itch and Humble. This is also my biggest pain-in-the-butt, obviously my games still don't make much waves amongst PC gamers. Especially since about 50% of that money comes through Itch.io where I ran a pre-order with 20% discount in the two weeks leading up to the launch. So these buyers are mostly people from my own social-circles and mailing-lists, people who in many cases also buy the mobile version and in a lot of cases people who tipped up to $10 (even tho the pre-order price was $3.99!) (THANKS!).

The humble-store sales were about 10% of that, so the rest is up to you to calculate :p

Side note: Besides this launch-period revenue, there is also the added advantage of extra money made on back-log sales. New gamers that see Meganoid will check out my other games and in some cases end up buying a few more of my games. On top of that a lot of subscriptions to my social-circles and mailing list have happened during and after the development of Meganoid, which are all potentially future fans of my next games.

Another important thing to read about, how are the ratings? Because let's face it, making a game in two months isn't interesting if it's a crappy game. On iOS the game has a strong 4/5 star rating from gamers, and on Android it's at 4.8/5 star rating. I'd say those are pretty good ratings (most of my games are around the 4.0 - 4.5 ratings)

On Steam there are only about 4 ratings of which only 2 ratings count since they bought the game on Steam and not through my website/Itch.io or Humble. But I think "all of them" are fairly positive!

Game-site wise, well that's a mixed bag of thingies. As mentioned before, the game was made "game of the week" on Toucharcade, and it was part of the "best games for iOS and Android" that week on Pocketgamer. On the other side Toucharcade's review gave it just a 3.5/5 rating, and Pocketgamer managed to give it a 7/10. So that's the same two websites already making for mixed-reviews. Not sure what to think about it, and it's mostly the reason I focus on the average user-rating on app-stores since those people play the game even after a review.

PC game sites pretty much ignored the game completely, except for a few news-posts on one or two sites. But the whole game-review-site business is something for another topic. In short, those sites only talk about your game if people are already talking about your game, or if there's something controversial to be found, because that brings in readers and thus advertising-money.

Now there's always a part in a post mortem where people go say things that went right or wrong and how things could have gone different. BUT! Meganoid was just as much an experiment as it was a way to earn some extra cash.

For one, the price: $4.99. For a PC game that's a fairly cheap price-point, and it was something I wanted to try out. Normally my newly released PC games go between $7-$10 in the launch period because I honestly think that's what my games are worth for the amount of playtime and enjoyment you get. However, a game like Meganoid is perfect to try out new stuff and I've been wondering if maybe my games would sell better at $4.99. Haven't really compared it yet with my previous games, but my gut-feeling says I sell about as much copies at this price as I do at a more normal price of $7.99.

On mobile the $4.99 is actually on the high-end of things! More experimenting, normally I'm at max at $3.99 and often in the launch week it's at $2.99. I do believe this game could have done better at a $3.99 or $2.99. Possibly sold much more copies with the result being more revenue. Some people hinted I should have lowered the price when I got the iOS feature, but my golden rule is to not punish the instant-buying fans, which I would have done had I suddenly lowered the price within a week of it's release.

In general the gamers liked the game, which is the most important thing. One guy complained that he couldn't get past the first level so it was way to hard, another guy complained that the sound-effects sounded generic (he was a sound-designer offering to do sound effects.. that's business!). One mobile-game reviewer had a lot of problems with the touch-controls, which is ironic for a mobile-game reviewer in my opinion.

I've been pushing regular updates to Meganoid since the release, and I still have one bigger update planned. After that it will mostly complete the work on this game minus any required fixes or OS-updates.

I never create games as a service, all my games receive two or three bigger updates and then I move on. That's my business-model and that's how I stay in business.

As for the game itself, it now becomes a "back-log game". This means I'll be able to do sales and discounts with the game in the next few years. It's also possible to perhaps get it ported and released on consoles or other gadgets, and there are alternate sales-routes the game can take on platforms like Android or PC (different markets, bundles, etc).

On top of that the game engine is fairly straight-forward and easy to repurpose. So it could be possible to re-use the game, create a new game-world and content for it and release like a $1.99 game with it (in fact I already have a funny viking-style game running on the same engine, so who knows).

All those back-log options should be able to at-least double the game's revenue within a year, so let's say the game does $10.000 in total by March 2018. Set against the 2 month development cycle (and 13 years experience!) that's not a bad deal.

For now I got some breathing room again for working on Ashworld, so follow me on Twitter or Facebook if you want to stay updated on that one!

(Grab Meganoid here for Windows,MacOS, Linux, iOS or Android)

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

gabrielcollignon · 8 years

Text

Play Marketball: Turn Disconnected Teams Into High Performers

In his 2003 book Moneyball, Michael Lewis recounts how the management of the Oakland Athletics revolutionized baseball by relying on statistical analyses rather than intuition to choose new players. Before General Manager Billy Beane turned a single metric — on-base plus slugging (OPS) — into his North Star for every decision, team managers preferred strategies that were unlikely to fail rather than those that seemed most efficient. “The pain of looking bad,” Lewis writes, “is worse than the gain of making the best move.”

As a content marketing manager tasked with delivering my quota of MQLs (marketing-qualified leads) and hitting publication dates, I get it. Picking an approach that seems unlikely to fail is safe. Proposing a radical new management system seems not only bad, but foolhardy. “Why,” managers the world over ask every day, “should we try to fix something that isn’t broken?”

Unfortunately for status-quo fans everywhere, visionaries and innovators understand that what counts as “broken” is constantly in flux. In 2001, before Beane began his quiet revolution inside Major League Baseball, no other team’s decision-making style appeared broken. Yet Beane would soon overtake them because his success depended on breaking things.

Likewise, in the increasingly noisy and densely populated online world, the success of our content relies on its ability to break things. We have to break through to audiences underwhelmed by mediocre marketing. We have to break the habits of consumers who have always used a competing product or read a competitor’s newsletter. And, most importantly, we have to break the way we manage and structure our content teams.

We have to break the way we manage and structure our content teams, says @andreafryrear. Click To Tweet

Although, really, it’s just the last part, the management part, that we have to break — and by break, I mean teams must decide on their own structure without heavy-handed interference from management. Before the accusations of marketing communism begin to fly, let me be clear: I’m not advocating the dissolution of management altogether. I’m proposing that on a modern content marketing team (whose goals, obstacles, and workloads are typically so huge that it’s a wonder they don’t all sleep under their desks), a manager’s job is to hire amazing people, empower them using Agile principles and processes, and then work like hell to keep anyone else from interfering.

That’s a lot to do, so let’s start from the top.

Agile marketing team – what is it?

Some teams are naturally adaptive and data-driven, and could technically be considered agile (lowercase “a”). To qualify as Agile (capital “A”), a marketing team needs a structure that enables it to adapt and iterate.

This structure could take various forms, including Scrum (the classic Agile process based around sprints), Kanban (a pull-based system that uses work-in-progress limits), or a hybrid of the team’s invention. Most Agile teams work in sprints — set periods during which team members aim to complete a set amount of work that’s connected to a long-term plan. Each sprint lasts between one week and one month, with two weeks being the most common duration.

A mainstay of the Agile approach is the stand-up — a 15-minute meeting, usually held at the beginning of every work day, during which team members stay on their feet. They take turns updating everyone on what they did yesterday, what they plan to do today, and what obstacles they need help to overcome.

Whatever form the structure takes, some kind of systematic foundation is needed to keep an Agile team from descending into frenetic reactions disconnected from a long-term plan.

Changing your mind all the time does not make you Agile.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Confused About Agile Marketing? Your Questions Answered [With Video]

Step 1 – Hire amazing people

Much has been written (some of it on this blog and in CCO magazine) about the growing talent crunch plaguing content marketing, so we don’t need to go into a lot of depth on this topic. The harsh truth is, it’s hard to find good content help these days. But the interviews, networking, and early-morning coffee meetings more than pay off when you consider the impact that truly passionate and skilled content creators have on your organization.

In an interconnected, digital world, great marketing can spread at the speed of a click. It doesn’t matter if it came from a team with a multimillion-dollar budget or a solopreneur doing it all on her own. The internet is nothing if not democratic.

That means finding — and retaining — creators who can consistently produce legitimately awesome work that gives you a regular shot at hitting the digital jackpot. There is no greater source of competitive advantage in content marketing than a talented team.

But those teams need the space and freedom to create or the legitimately awesome will rapidly devolve into lethargic and yawn-inducing.

#Content teams need space to create or the legitimately awesome will devolve into lethargy. @AndreaFryrear Click To Tweet

Step 2 – Empower teams with agility

Whether it’s through an Agile iteration or sprint (set length of time during which a team commits to producing a set amount of content) or work-in-progress limits (inflexible limit on how much content can be in any given state such as research, writing, editing, review at one time), Agile teams are governed by limitations on their workflow. This isn’t because they’re lazy or can’t handle the workload. It’s because when people have a split focus, they do terrible work (and it takes them longer to do it).

For example, let’s imagine that your current content plans include creating a new webinar, whose launch you will support with an e-book and a series of blog posts. You plan each piece, make assignments, and send the team off to work. A week passes and you check on progress. It turns out that one person got derailed when sales asked for lead-generation collateral, another lost a day to responding to angry customer tweets, and your CEO wanted a home-page rewrite that took precedence over the blog posts.

Now you’ve got three half-finished content items, which is like having none at all.

You can’t give a webinar that ends abruptly halfway through. Nobody wants to download an e-book that’s just an outline. And blog posts just don’t work if they’re composed entirely of headlines, header tags, and target keywords.

An Agile content team, on the other hand, would have focused on finishing one piece before starting something else. Its members could have told sales and the CEO that their requests would be added to content’s Agile backlog (a prioritized to-do list that serves as the source of all work done by the team), not to the top of the list of immediate to-do’s.

An #Agile content team focuses on finishing one piece before starting something else, says @AndreaFryrear. Click To Tweet

As a bonus, not only do Agile teams produce more content in less time, they also make team members happier and more engaged. And that means team members stick around longer, are easier to recruit, and help solve that thorny talent problem we talked about earlier.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Stop Working So Hard: Agile Marketers Work Smarter

Step 3 – Get in other people’s way

You might have expected me to close by telling you to get out of the way so your team can work their Agile magic, but that’s not the final step. On our hypothetical content team, we had external requests being thrown in from all sides and derailing our content creators. Even on an Agile team, not everybody will happily chirp, “Nope,” when an executive tries to interrupt their work. Agile teams are empowered, but that doesn’t mean they have super powers.

Managers need to act like an offensive line, getting in the way of people who are trying to disrupt their team while they’re executing a beautiful play. They attend daily stand-up meetings, listening attentively and volunteering to help remove roadblocks (and then doing it). They genuinely value the creative force that their team can wield, and they actively work to create a situation where it can do its thing.

Respect tradition … or profit from it

Marketing, like baseball, has ways it’s always been done. We can choose to adhere to traditional ways of managing and creating content, or we can look outside our own typical way of thinking to gain the upper hand. Someone in your niche will be using an Agile approach to start breaking things very soon. Imagine what would happen if it was you.

Hear Andrea Fryrear explain user-story mapping at the Intelligent Content Conference March 28-30 in Las Vegas. Register today and use BLOG100 to save $100.

This article originally appeared in the February issue of CCO magazine. Subscribe for your free print copy today.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Play Marketball: Turn Disconnected Teams Into High Performers appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

0 notes

lucyariablog · 8 years

Text

Play Marketball: Turn Disconnected Teams Into High Performers

We have to break the way we manage and structure our content teams, says @andreafryrear. Click To Tweet

That’s a lot to do, so let’s start from the top.

Agile marketing team – what is it?

Whatever form the structure takes, some kind of systematic foundation is needed to keep an Agile team from descending into frenetic reactions disconnected from a long-term plan.

Changing your mind all the time does not make you Agile.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Confused About Agile Marketing? Your Questions Answered [With Video]

Step 1 – Hire amazing people

But those teams need the space and freedom to create or the legitimately awesome will rapidly devolve into lethargic and yawn-inducing.

#Content teams need space to create or the legitimately awesome will devolve into lethargy. @AndreaFryrear Click To Tweet

Step 2 – Empower teams with agility

Now you’ve got three half-finished content items, which is like having none at all.

An #Agile content team focuses on finishing one piece before starting something else, says @AndreaFryrear. Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Stop Working So Hard: Agile Marketers Work Smarter

Step 3 – Get in other people’s way

Respect tradition … or profit from it

Hear Andrea Fryrear explain user-story mapping at the Intelligent Content Conference March 28-30 in Las Vegas. Register today and use BLOG100 to save $100.

This article originally appeared in the February issue of CCO magazine. Subscribe for your free print copy today.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Play Marketball: Turn Disconnected Teams Into High Performers appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/03/disconnected-teams-high-performers/

0 notes