#i love this stupid fps game

[willyonilly]

guys i still use the internet i promise!! i just haven't been drawing a lot lately, but here's a quick doodle of my medicsona as onea them classic tf2 wiki medic render stock images

[madegeeky]

I desperately want the people who made Bioshock Infinite (one of the few fps I've enjoyed) to make another game like Infinite but this looks more Bioshock (which I've never played and am not really interested in playing).

Anyone here who played Bioshock and can let me know from the trailer whether or not it seems to be steering hard to Bioshock vibes?

[reclinepilled]

needy, e.w.

cw: fluff!!! little angst, pet names (baby, beautiful, sweetheart, princess, gorgeous) like one curse word, reader yells at ellie, reader cries a teeny tiny bit, no masc/fem roles are established

desc: gamer!ellie is glued to her game while your patience runs short. also soft!ellie🙏.

a/n: happy march 1st guys! i wanted to share something i wrote while procrastinating some work. thanks for all the support on my last two posts. also the anon that sent in the request, im working on it <3 thank you for reading and reblogs are welcomed and greatly appreciateddd !

wc: 801 (i think)

PLEASE READ HERE ON INFORMATION ABOUT AND HOW TO HELP PALESTINE!!!

you try not to be so needy, you really do. however, your heart can't help but get a little heavy watching ellie completely ignore your presence on one of your days off. and she's not even ignoring you to study or work, it's to play her stupid games.

sure, you played your fair share of video games, as you had an undying love for that one genre. however, you didn't come over under the impression that you'd be getting lonely in her bed, angry, while occasionally letting out a frustrated sigh. she didn't pay attention to those, too busy yelling at her friends on whatever fps shooter she was glued to.

you got angrier and angrier thinking about it and listening to her mash the buttons on her keyboard and throw insults out into her mic. you swear you can feel the annoyance in your bloodstream. you just wanted to do skincare and facemasks, watch some movies, and maybe even bake with your girlfriend. you decide to put your anger aside and give her the benefit of the doubt. you get up from her bed to remind her of what you two had planned. maybe she forgot?

"ellie, baby?" you say as you grab her shoulder softly to get her attention. she glances up at you then moves her headset off one of her ears, "yea- jesse, what the hell! he was literally one hp!" she yells. "anyways, sorry, what's up?" ellie finally gives you two scoops of her attention. "el, i thought we were gonna spend time together..," you say, shifting your weight to one leg as you cross your arms. "yea, yea, of course. just give me five more minutes," ellie says as she turns back to her game. "you literally said that 30 minutes ago, el," you sigh. "i mean it this time," ellie turns to you, doing a puppy face jokingly.

any other time you would burst into a fit of laughter, however right now, you were genuinely pissed off. you stare at her for a few seconds in silence, she stares back. her face slowly drops as she realizes you're pretty upset. next thing you know, you've reached over and put her pc into sleep mode. "y/n! why!??" she whines like a teenage boy going through puberty. "because, i came over on my day off to spend time with you, i could be getting a manicure or something.. but i've spent nearly an hour and a half watching you play this shitty game!" you yell then you walk out of her room, fed up. you grab your bag next to the couch and start to put your belongings away.

"sweetheart! i'm sorry, i really am!" she says as she follows you out of the room. you ignore her, now putting your bag on your shoulder. "look," ellie comes in front of you and softly slides the bag off of your shoulder, she notices how you're still looking down. she gently grabs your shoulders while looking down at you with an apologetic look on her face, "i am so sorry, i just got caught up in the game. i enjoy you being here, and i find your presence so comforting, beautiful. i never meant to make you feel unappreciated, i'm sorry once again." she takes her hand and lifts your face up, and notices your tear stained cheeks.

ellie's heart quite honestly shattered into a million pieces, she didn't know she made you feel so bad but she understands now. "baby, we can do whatever you want," she pulls you into a meaningful embrace while rubbing your back. "els, i love you, sorry for yelling and overreacting-" she cuts you off, "no don't apologize, it was pretty justified, i was being dumb," she lets out an airy laugh, "i love you back, princess."

she could feel you smile against her chest and it felt like 10 tons were lifted off of her back. she pulls away to place a soft kiss on your forehead, then your nose, one on your cheek, and long one on your lips.

you straddle her on her bed while softly chuckling at the cute fuzzy animal headband you placed on ellie's head. you roll the jade roller all over her face, working in the serum you applied before. you can't help but admire how pretty she is. her constellations of freckles, each one so unique, her breathtaking deep eyes, and her long lashes you were so jealous of. little did you know, she was doing the same. you looked like a goddess from this angle, the light cascading down on your perfect figure emphasizing it. "hey baby?" ellie grabs your wrist. "yea, gorgeous?" you slightly lean back from her face, raising a brow.

"it's really hot when you yell at me."

reclinepilled

please do not plagiarize any of my works or post them on other websites without given permission !

[opiopal]

Small McxMammon things that I think about often because I love him

Something a little important is happening but in the background Mc is sitting criss cross on an office chair spinning, whenever the chair slow’s down and stops they pat mammons arm to get his attention and he spins the chair in the opposite direction. Mc is visibly having the time of their life.

Mammon waking up before Mc, staring at them for a while, then tucking hair behind their ear carefully which causes them to wake up, but then smile warmly at him and wrap their arms around his chest immediately,

Mc sitting with mammon, hugging onto him tightly after he had woken up from a nightmare of them dying[lesson 16ref :(]

Mc attempting to take the fall for Mammon after he does something but Mammon refuses to let them, so they get into a small argument while Lucifer progressively stands there getting more and more annoyed.

Mc trips when walking with mammon, he catches them by their arm and starts to tell them off for not being careful, but Mc looks him dead in the eyes and says “sorry, i can’t help but fall for you,” and then he shuts up for like thirty minutes just trying to process it,

Mc and Mammon are always clung onto each other, holding hands, linked arms, thighs pressed against each other when sitting, lowkey cuddling in and out of the bedroom, constantly turning to hug each other whenever they have to go their separate ways no matter if they won’t see each other for the next 5 seconds or 5 hours.

Mc is always going to pay for things whenever they’re out since they know Mammon probably doesn’t have any money on him, one day he refuses to let them pay and does it himself, from that day forward it’s a silent competition of who can pay before the other, they both just want to do something nice for the other.

Them showering together and mammon washes Mc’s hair while talking about stuff, Mc just stands there and allows him, lowkey enjoying how it feels.

Also them lowkey gossiping a little while showering, just it being very intimate without sex,

They rotate who’s room they sleep in, one day they’ll sleep in Mc’s room maybe because they’re both tired and don’t feel like walking upstairs to mammons room, but the next they’ll go and sleep in Mammons room because they don’t want anyone to barge in to try and drag Mc off to do something.

One word, clingy.

They are both so incredibly clingy, when Mc left for the human world for the first time, they both sat on calls at the end of the day for hours just talking, effectively ruining each others sleeping schedule. when Mammon is gone for a gig or a modeling thingy, Mc sleeps in his bed like a pathetic worm wishing he was home already,. Whenever the other comes back from being gone for a while, no matter if it was for a few minutes or a few hours, they rush to each other and hug as if they’ve been apart for years.

If one is seen without the other there’s genuinely just a “where’s the rest of you🤨” reaction from most people,

Mammon shows off Mc whenever he can, if he’s talking to someone and Mc is just silently standing next to him, and that person makes a comment about them being there, he’ll wrap an arm around their shoulder and be like, “yeah, this is my partner, I know, they’re amazing😎”

Mammon waking up in the middle of the night to Mc giggling and cackling while they play a game on their laptop, why are they laughing? Because they joined Levi’s FPS game and keep on sniping him and are laughing at him loosing his mind in the chat, which normally leads to mammon slowly closing their laptop and forcing them to lay back down, they giggle in his arms for about 10 minutes before finally falling asleep.

Mc definitely helps him to pay off some debts and figure out how to save more money, so over time his spending habits aren’t as impulsive and he isn’t getting punished as often for doing stupid stuff,(if Solmare won’t let him have canonic and permanent growth then dammit I’ll give him growth in my head😤)

Mammon has sold a necklace that was really important to Mc around the first few months of them staying there, Mc thought it went missing and was genuinely really bummed about it, to the point where he even saw them crying a little bit, so he fought tooth and nail to get it back form who he sold it from and put it back where he took it, he was very relieved to see them smiling the next day.

Mc has named a lot of his crows after learning that only a few of them are named because it’s hard to keep track, and to add onto it further, Mc has tied ribbons and bows around their little ankles to make sure their names aren’t forgotten.

They bite each other, not all the time but often, if he has their arm around Mc’s shoulder they’ll struggle and have a mental battle before leaning over and gently biting his forearm, if they’re cuddling sometimes Mammon will bite their shoulder, or if Mc is messing with Mammons hand they’ll bite one of his fingers, it’s not sexual biting, it’s practically just small “I love you’s”

One time Mc said “I’m kind of thirsty” and mammon immediately tripped over himself rushing to grab them a water or a soda,

I like to imagine Mc is a pure weirdo, like, pick up bugs and snakes weirdo, why? Because they were yanked from their home and whole life to go to forever school in hell and were like “ok I guess this is happening now” so because of that they often grab moths or anything that’s found it’s way into the HOL and tosses it outside. And I absolutely believe Mc has bent down to the ground while in public and grabbed a snake from a bush, turned to mammon, holds it up and is like “look at this cutie!!” While mammon is trying to not piss himself because holy shit they just picked up a snake and is talking about it like it’s a dog.

After the pact was formed with mammon, obviously it didn’t take long before he was head over heels for them, but I like to imagine that the pacts give the demon a sort of sixth sense when it comes to their human, so I can imagine Mc just trying to go back to class after using the rest room, being stopped by some demons straight up just harassing them, and all of a sudden mammon comes barreling down the hallway pissed and just punches one of them in the face, sure he gets an earful from Lucifer later, but he was just protecting his human like Lucifer asked! So what if he did so a little aggressively, it was a fight or flight situation!!

Whenever Mc and Mammon go out together, they always end up browsing small shops, whenever Mc see’s something they like, you can see their thought process of just. “Oh! This things cute! I mean, really cute, I could treat myself just this once, right? Ok, I’ll buy it just for me, how much- oh, never mind, I guess that’s fine,” and they set it back down, but then within that week mammon is giving them the same item they were going to get.

The first time mammon called Mc something cute like “treasure” Mc went into a blushy giggle fit and put their face against his chest to hide it, which was probably the first time he ever saw them properly flustered, which sparked a flame of “I need to see that more often”

Alright I’m gonna stop there, but I have so much more because he’s always on my mind💕 but I’m gonna stop cause I’m kind of tired of writing right now lol

[felixdragonheartofficial]

TFA TEAM PRIME HUMAN REDESIGNS FINALLY

FUCK

+headcannons

Optimus: gotta stay focused

looks too old compared to his bot form.

I find it impossible for Optimus to be more than a million years old in this canon. In the least, he's older than 1000 years and since we have mfs that are canonically over 70 million years old(fagatron iykyk) compared to that, he feels like a dude in his early-to-mid-30's being the group parent.

---

-I made him more youthful, gave him curly hair, and tailored his clothing to actually look like his bot form.

-workaholic

-on the cusp of barley being able to hold his liquor

-doesn't own a pair of pajamas until Sari gets some for him

-usually forgets to put them on, but appreciates the gesture

-stays active for like, 3 days until he can't fight off sleep with work brain anymore, and unceremoniously passes out on the couch to sleep for a full 24 hours

-ratchet sighs and puts a blanket over him as per routine

-frequently checks security feed

-elf on the shelf despiser

-early morning talks with jazz and ratchet over coffee (they all wake up at 6 am)

-half thrives on caffeine and a vigorous training protocol

-is a dog person, loves German shepherds to death

David sama, pls forgive me ily very much

Ratchet: to old for this nonsense

doesn't match his body type in the slightest.

Ratchet is really old, he's got a sallow face and a gramp gut, how dare they square him. He's wayyy too angular and peachy looking.

-I gave him his luscious curves back, adding all the equipment id expect a field medic to have because he is a field medic, not a regular doctor. I changed his facial proportions, and also made his face gaunt, for that dead inside PTSD look.

---

-drinks his coffee black with brown sugar, literally drinks it piping hot

-is one of those old people who complains about noise

-confiscates bumblebee and Sari's toy cars, and puts them in a high up cabinet

-neither of them know how to bypass the child safety lock lmao

-casual clothes includes a lot- a l o t of plaid shirts, and 10 pairs of the same blue jeans

-tunes out bulkhead and prowls convos about birdwatching

-big fan of political satire dramas

-Sentinel doesn't approve

-Ratchet doesn't give a rats ass about what he thinks of course

Bumblebee: professional smart-ass

doesn't match his body type/age.

Bumblebees holoform is presented as a 10-12 year old child specifically for the fact that he's short, and the comedic relief. Total ass

I set his human age as 19-20 years old, making him more of a big brother to sari because that og model is disappointingly lackluster

---

-Bumblebee is a scrappy wisecracking punk, like an adhd kid who just got roller skates for Christmas.

-since he doesn't have wheels, I feel like he'd wear skates instead to emulate the feeling

-terrible at watching where he's going cuz he's too busy trying to show off, so ratchet makes him wear all that padding + training wheels

-legit despises the padding and training wheels

-Jealous of Blurr for mastering roller blades lmao.

-his favorite games are choose your fighter and fps

-saw ONE ancient ass assassins creed playthrough and begged ratchet to install hidden tasers in his arm bands (was denied)

-Sari used her key to do it instead

-self appointed "rizzler"

-Optimus has zero idea of what that means and thinks it's code for something dubious

-Ratchet knows what it means and thinks it's silly

-"I' was something of a rizzler myself back in my day, kid"

-bumblebee cringes

-loves summer and swimming

-wants to be the fastest thing in the sea because y'know, it's bumblebee

-is spooked from the beach for awhile cuz he saw sharks in Prowls nature documentary

-there are infact, no sharks in lake Erie

Bulkhead: big guy, bigger heart

doesn't match his body type/aspirations.

Jesus fuck he's so wide?? And his belly migrated to his shoulders?? I'm gonna be honest, I really hate this design. I feel like it contributed to the "brute strength = stupid" take that most in the fandom associates with him.

---

-Bulkhead is a SWEET. CARING. NERD YOU FOOLS. He's like the male version of a tall goth gf-

-a tall-nerdy-farm hand-physics bf, You got me fucked up.

-Its already shown that bulkhead really likes art in Addition to creating it. He hates being only seen as the "muscle" so it wouldn't make sense for him to lean into that.

-bunny slippers that him and sari made together(she provided the buttons)

-the slippers go missing sometimes (basically considered community property unless he's wearing them)

(ratchet and prowl are the main offenders)

-frequent art museum goer

-really likes watching cooking shows, but is too shy to make food himself

-Owns a ton of star maps

-Really wants a treehouse that he, bumblebee and sari can hang out in

-pillowfort enjoyer

-casually reads quantum physics at the beach

Prowl: draft dodger

Doesn't look like him at all.

Prowls holoform being a mustachioed,white, police officer was an actual jumpscare for 7 y/o me, I kid you not

---

- I know this bitch would not wear a helmet (you can't force him to) que windswept hair

-Not as much as starscreams, for obvious reasons but yk

-prowl is like one of those "shoes are a prison for your feet"

-emo hipster

-has a pet cactus named "planty"

-bumblebee heckles him for it

-can and has brought his cactus with him on early evening motorcycle rides

-the helmet is reserved for his cactus, bring your own >:(

-salad consumer

-him and jazz share custody of the cactus

-repeat victim of the cat distribution system

-ratchet has probably spent hours telling him they can't keep any animals at base

-frequent midnight picnics with jazz

-and beachcombing

-and roaming around antique stores cuz jazz wants to know what vinyl records are

-got a mug with an attempted pink chibi cat with big round shiny eyes painted onto it, courtesy of bulkhead trying to find an artsyle

-cherishes this mug to death

-has a shrine dedicated to it

[shuttershocky]

A weird problem I have when a video game tries to sell me on a gunslinger character is that there's two schools of design they could be possibly drawing from and I really like one but I dislike the other, and sometimes these two mix because of one side's dominance.

You know how if a video game gives you a character with a katana you can already kind of tell what you're going to get, just modified to fit with the current game you're playing? Dudes with katanas will have a very specific, measured playstyle with high damage. Always some kind of high damage Iai slash type of thing, maybe parries/timing-based counters if it's an action game or in an RPG they're the one with the smooth moves, etc etc you know what I'm talking about. Maybe they'll even let you reflect projectiles.

If you're into that thing, you see the sword, you know what you're getting into. How well it's pulled off varies from game to game, but a katana dude is very likely going to play like how you would expect.

When it comes to "gunslinger with handgun or handguns" however, you could have something influenced by the "Pistol As the Default FPS Weapon" style of thinking where it's a basic but accurate weapon without much pizzazz or style. Such games basically dominated every game with a gun in it from the 2000s until the middle of the 2010s when the Hero Shooter arose, so of course its influence is everywhere. This is perfectly fine, (necessary even), for PVP first person shooters where you're out to grab different guns and just need a stable backup weapon, but if I'm playing another kind of game where a revolver is just "pistol but higher damage", I get a little sad.

That's because the second school of thinking, "If this guy brought a handgun to a serious fight it means they know gunkata", is something I really fucking like to play. Very mobile gunslinger playstyles where their damage output is average (because handguns) but their agility is over the top (they're doing somersaults and shit), rewarding great accuracy while speeding around is one of my favorite things to play ever. Ricocheting shots off of coins with the Marksman Revolver in Ultrakill, Dante using Rain Storm with his handguns, stuff that's impractical and stupid in real life but lights up your inner 8 year old. Shiv in Supervive is a recent favorite, getting an enhanced shot for bigger damage, but only if she cartwheels first (landing the shot resets the cartwheel's cooldown). I love that stuff. I want to play more of it.

[assumptionprime]

I adore your take on DS2 and wanted to know what ur thoughts were on Elden Ring and/or DS 3!

(also I have been loving ur comics!!!)

First off: Thank you! Glad you like my comics! <3

I mentioned it briefly in the DS2 post, and it's been said by others, but Dark Souls 3 is about ending Dark Souls. And it does that very well. The "time and space is falling apart and that's why the geography is like that" that people sometimes say about DS2 is literally, textually true in 3. The Dreg Heap is a pile of other, older Dark Souls areas collapsing in on each other. This world has been going on and on, repeating and prolonging the Age of Fire that should have ended long ago, and it's just breaking down. You can't keep the same thing going forever, that's true in the universe of the story, and of a franchise of dark fantasy action RPGs.

It's kind of funny and also impressive that Miyazaki and the team hit that point, saying if they keep doing this it's going to fall apart, on game three of the franchise. There's so many series out there that will pump out game after game of the same stuff, to the point they stop numbering them and give them subtitles to hide the fact that they're on game 23 of this thing, and FromSoft said "three's our limit for this one" and gave us the greatest hits final bow before moving on to new different takes on their subgenre of games.

Enter Elden Ring! The game that got me into FromSoft games. Every time people talked about Dark Souls it was always about how hard they were, and the whole "git gud" mentality, which made them seem like they would 100% be not my kind of thing. But I am an absolute sucker for a fantasy open world, so I dipped my toes into Elden Ring, and really enjoyed it! Being able to just go exploring and do something else whenever I got stuck was a huge plus, as are spirit ash summons. The game is hard, for sure, but there's also a lot of ways to ease that difficulty (not eliminate it, but ease it (also there's no excuse to not have a pause button, that's stupid, don't @ me))

As far as lore and storytelling, Elden Ring has a lot of cool stuff (that's my wife Ranni, my cool witch wife Ranni) but I don't know that I have so definite a "take" on its story. It goes back to the Dark Souls 1 and 3 well of "some important shit happened, go kill this list of bosses about it" but I appreciate that you have a lot more choice in regards to your ending. It's not "link the fire or don't" it's "you're creating a new age, what do you want that age to be like?" with a few compelling choices and some evil bastard ones for fun.

Assorted side thoughts:

FP is better than spell uses. More convenient, more flexible, lets you focus on Mind to allow yourself to cast more spells.

All of my first playthroughs were sword and board, both because of caution going in and because I like the "knight with a sword and shield" aesthetic.

Related to the last point, Guard Counters are a great addition in ER, and the "Sekiro style block" crystal tear for the Physick in the DLC should have been a talisman or something permanent, to just make that a play style people can use.

The Alva Armor rules, 10/10 best fit in Dark Souls

I really like Shadow of the Erdtree, but it is the absolute limit on the current version of Souls-game mechanics. Not everyone is Let Me Solo Her, and between both the extremely punishing difficulty and the becoming more repetitive nature of a lot of the boss design, they need to change up the combat to keep things going. Sekiro seems to be a step in that direction from what I hear?

No boss fight in any video game has ever made me feel as cool as Slave Knight Gael in the DS3 DLC. It just worked for me on pretty much every level. The story, the music, the visuals, the difficulty. I can beat him, and it's hard but not a kind of hard that makes me angry at the game. Dodging in and out of his attacks, getting my own hits in, it felt like a kick ass dance of fantasy combat. It's peak.

[kinokoshoujoart]

is it really toxic yuri if she doesn’t demand you cut off your fingers for her happiness???

”You have given me gifts over 10,000 times. Congratulations!” haha happy wife happy life…. (my fingers are stumps)

as some of you may or may not have realized i am powerless to the siren call of the ultimate devilish blond Harvest Moon Scum Man, and given that the Japanese version of DS Cute gives you TWO saveslots and TWO hands and the ability to to be in a literal toxic lesbian best friendrriage with ultimate devilish mischievous blonde Harvest Moon Scum Woman i have no choice but to meet all of the Witch Princess’s super reasonable honey do list!!

so one of those fun little non negotiable requests from majo-sama is that you need to give her presents 10,000 times before she’ll even consider marrying you, even if you meet all the marriage requirements!

i don’t mean 10,000 items total— even if you give her a stack of 99 items, it only counts as +1 towards the “items given to witch” counter. you have to give her 10,000 items individually…

in normal gameplay (giving her 1 gift a day, accounting for the holidays when her house is closed) you’ll eventually reach 10,000 gifts!…in your 95th year!

you COULD give her 100 gifts a day every day and knock it out in less than a year, and this was my strategy at first! i quickly realized adding another tedious daily chore to a pile of tedious daily chores slowed the game loop to a crawl and splitting items out was really fucking annoying actually

on the other hand, in 5 IRL hours, you can just get it all done in one visit to her house and never worry about it ever again.

“wow, that sounds like a really great use of my limited time on god’s green earth! how can i too win my future wife’s heart through button mashing my fingers into a pulp?” you ask?

˚✧₊⁎optimized pro gamer technique for breaking your fingers yuri style!!٩(๑❛ᴗ❛๑)۶⁎⁺˳✧༚

you will need

dog (each time you show your pet, this adds +1 to the gift counter the same way a gift would)

the bottom screen should be the map screen (reduces loading time between conversations compared to having your rucksack open)

cast endurance on fingers (wait this is redundant, you saw yuri in the title…)

ideal but not required

sometimes when you enter her house, she’s facing the side and her walk cycle never starts. it’s great if you get this glitch because then you can just stand in place for the entire duration without having to look at the screen, and even like watch a movie or whatever while you do all this, instead of accidentally dropping your dog every time she walks to the other bookshelf

if you’re wondering “wait, doesn’t Witch Princess hate dogs and love cats? why are you showing her your dog?” you are absolutely correct! she yells at you to get that stupid beast away from her every time you show your dog to her! her FP goes down by 3 each time! however, since her response to the dog is shorter than her response to the cat, you end up saving like .6 seconds per conversation, saving over 1.5 hours total, so the dog is what she gets

anyway, in true Karen HM64 tradition, after being repeatedly harassed by having a dog she isn’t fond of shoved in her face ten thousand times in a row for like five hours straight, naturally this makes her want to marry you! who said good old fashioned courtly love is dead?!

* as a small note, if you care enough to keep track and give her an actual gift at the 10th, 100th, 1000th, and 10000th mark, you’ll get 4 of the limited Witch Photos early on, which each give you +1 sweet sweet farm degree points every day… honestly that’s not much, but the pain of being told “your hands are full soooo no reward for you lmaoooo sucks to be you” was too much to bear, so i kept track and used a normal present for the 10th, 100th, 1000th, and 10000th…

[dirt-piper]

The TF2 problem

Don't take anything I say here as gospel - much of it is my own speculation and musings.

TF2 is my favorite game of all time. I started playing it wayyy back in 2012, and while I don't have that many hours racked up total (a meager ~1K), I can at least consider myself to be a few rungs above 'total n00b' in terms of familiarity with the game. I've experienced the best and worst eras of the game - from the Love & War update to the current botting crisis, and I have loved TF2 every step of the way.

But just because I love it, doesn't mean I think it's flawless!

Around 2015-2016 I noticed (alongside damn near everyone else playing TF2) that TF2 was changing, and not in a particularly good way. Love & War was in many ways a perfect update for TF2 - it gave attention and goodies to both the highly casual and the highly competitive ends of the playerbase, with a fancy new taunt system bundled with some pretty fun new weapons. At about this time, Blizzard announced the imminent release of their new game Overwatch, which was directly inspired by TF2 - and now presented itself as being a direct competitor to TF2 in its own niche. This, of course, turned out to be bogus - Overwatch is its own game with its own niche that has a playerbase nearly wholly separate from TF2's.

A common trend amongst the TF2 playerbase at the time was this sense of dread regarding Overwatch - either that it would suck up the entire TF2 playerbase, leaving the game to die, or that Blizzard would try their damnedest to manifest such a reality. Either way, a ton of die-hard TF2 fans began to absolutely loathe Blizzard's new game (before it even came out, I might add) for so much as daring to 'unthrone' TF2.

This entire premise is stupid. It's stupid now, and it was stupid then. But the fear became so pervasive throughout the community that, eventually, it seemed like VALVe was getting scared too. The tone and focus of TF2's updates began to shift far more heavily towards the competitive end of TF2's playerbase - which has never been the majority - as VALVe appeared to try to pivot TF2 into a stance where it could better "compete" with the upcoming Overwatch. Bits and pieces of this started showing with Gun Mettle and Tough Break, before Meet your Match completely revamped the game into a more competitive-focused format.

Why they would do this didn't really make sense - if VALVe wanted to compete against Blizzard's new AAA FPS with a competitive scene, then why would they try to remodel TF2 to position it as a "more valid competitor" to Overwatch when CS:GO was already a proven champion in that space? TF2 doesn't need to compete with Overwatch. It never did. So why would they expend so much effort to change TF2's course when, frankly, it was doing fine as-is?

Looking back now, with nearly a decade of hindsight and a bit more insight into VALVe actually works, I think the picture is a bit clearer, or at least the one I've formed in my head is. I don't think TF2's sudden drastic shift in focus was the result of VALVe scrambling to shore TF2 up against the onslaught of Overwatch - I think it was, rather, the TF2 team scrambling to shore TF2 up against VALVe.

VALVe is not a normal game studio. VALVe is not only lucky enough to be their own publisher (therefore making them a completely independent studio - yes, VALVe games are 'indie'), but also extremely lucky enough to be the de-facto publisher for nearly the entire PC game industry, thanks to Steam. VALVe makes money off of every single game sold through Steam whether they made it or not, essentially guaranteeing them a constant stream of exorbitant income regardless of their own output. They have a complete vertical monopoly of their own industry - they own themselves (VALVe has no shareholders whatsoever), they own their products, they own their publisher, they own their distributor - and now, with the Steam Deck, they own their hardware platforms too. VALVe answers to nobody but themselves, because they own everything that could possibly impact their business.

VALVe is, in a lot of ways, in a somewhat similar situation to AT&T (aka 'Ma Bell') back before the breakup of the phone company back in 1982. AT&T owned the entire phone network - from the switching equipment to the phone lines to the handsets plugged into them - and they charged every person in the country who leased phone service from them (you couldn't own a phone back then!) a subscription fee. AT&T, then, had basically infinite money to do whatever the hell they wanted with (though the government strictly regulated their commercial activities so they could not compete in any industry but telephony). As a result of this, Bell labs, the core Research & Development branch of AT&T, was in a very unique scenario - projects undertaken by Bell labs researchers weren't given budgets - they were given quotas.

AT&T didn't care how much money or time was spent on a project by a Bell labs researcher, so long as it ultimately resulted in something that benefited the company. And this model worked very, very well - Bell labs' researchers gave the world the transistor, the laser, the CCD, the Unix operating system, the C programming language, and received 10 Nobel peace prizes.

VALVe, through Steam, has a free, infinite revenue stream. VALVe's staff, then, effectively have infinite money and time at their disposal to make whatever they desire - so long as it ultimately results in something that benefits VALVe. Or, at least, so long as the people who hold the most seniority at VALVe think it would benefit VALVe.

It's no particular secret that the old guard at VALVe are, largely, unenthusiastic about TF2. Remember - Team Fortress is VALVe's oldest franchise. The original Team Fortress mod was released in August of 1996 - a mere one month after the Nintendo 64's initial release - a full 2 years before Half-life. Sure, VALVe didn't initially create Team Fortress, but they bought Team Fortress Software for a reason - Team Fortress was insanely popular. And it's not just TF2 that has absurd longevity, it's the entire Team Fortress franchise; here's a match from a Quake Team Fortress competitive tournament that is currently ongoing as I write this post:

VALVe acquired Team Fortress software with the premise that the sequel to Team Fortress would become an expansion to Half-life, thereby increasing Half-life's desirability by attaching it to the sequel of one of the most popular FPS games available at the time. TF2, of course, took a bit longer than expected - so Team Fortress Classic, a more-or-less direct port of Team Fortress to goldsrc, was released in 1999 to satiate people until the real TF2 came out.

That took another 8 years.

When TF2 finally released, it pioneered the concept of games as a service - that you could buy a game once and it would receive new content, features, fixes, etc. indefinitely - for free. These were not paid expansions or DLC, these were actual updates made directly to the game that anyone could get access to so long as they happened to own the game. And, once TF2 went free to play, the deal became even better. This model was utterly groundbreaking in 2007 - it's the standard for how most games operate today, sure, but only because TF2 proved how well it could work.

The issue, of course, is that VALVe was eternally working on TF2. By 2015, Team Fortress 2 had been in development in some form or another for 17 years. With this perspective, it seems understandable why some of the more senior members of VALVe would have grown sick of Team Fortress - they'd been doing or dealing with the same game for nearly 2 decades.

But, of course, newer hires at VALVe would have nowhere near the same level of fatigue - many of them were likely still very passionate about the game, and eager to continue its lifespan - but when the people who sign their paychecks and review their employee performances are sick and tired of hearing about Team Fortress, it becomes less and less attractive to pour effort into the game, no matter how much they may personally wish to.

Under these circumstances, the tonal shift TF2 experienced around the release of Overwatch appears more as an internal struggle - the remaining TF2 team trying desperately to prove to their seniors that TF2 was not yet ready to be phased out, that the game could modernize and remain relevant in the modern competitive gaming scene, that just because they were sick of TF2 didn't mean that everyone was.

So, they gambled. They bet TF2's future on a new revamp to adapt it to the then-modern world of competitive e-sports... and fumbled it pretty hard with Meet your Match.

The problem with the TF2 team's attempt to make TF2 more suited to the modern world of competitive gaming was that they seemed to overlook that, to the average non-competitive TF2 player, the game as it was was perfectly fine. Through Quickplay, any player could be automatically placed into a server matching their desired criteria and just... play. A server would stay on a given map for roughly 45 minutes (though players could vote to extend the map timer) regardless of how many rounds there were, meaning that everyone got the same amount of time to play the map regardless of how good or bad either team, as a whole, performed. This game players plenty of time to just... have fun playing TF2. There was no rush or hurry or incentive to play the game in any way other than how you wanted to.

This made TF2 very unique in the FPS world - the truest example of a "casual shooter". There were no ranks or rewards or incentives to play every day beyond random item drops and the enjoyment derived from simply playing the game itself.

The TF2 team's attempt to 'modernize' TF2 in Meet your Match effectively ruined this.

In addition to the introduction of a new, dedicated 6v6 competitive mode, Quickplay was replaced with 'Casual' - a matchmaking lite that tried to find a middle ground between the chaotic ad-hoc freedom of Quickplay and the more rigid, competitive structure of Competitive. It didn't work. Most TF2 players just wanted to play TF2 - casual forced them to stop and wait for the matchmaking system to find a server for them matching its desired criteria, stop and wait every other round for the server to change maps, stop and wait for matchmaking cooldowns to run out if they left a game in progress - so much time was spent stopping and waiting to play the game that hardly any was left to play the game itself. Yes, some of these problems have since been smoothed over, but Casual still forces the play to spend less time playing the game than Quickplay did. In my opinion, Casual, as it was released, could have been perfectly fine if Quickplay was kept alongside it. Instead, in one fell swoop, the way the vast majority of people played TF2 was effectively removed from the game.

In fairness to the TF2 team regarding this gamble, they were under enormous pressure - not just from a TF2 community growing increasingly paranoid about TF2's future due to the imagined threat of Overwatch - but also from the higher-ups at VALVe they were trying to convince.

However, the TF2 team snuck a back-up plan into Meet your Match - the Heavy vs. Pyro war. By outright promising a future major update (or perhaps two, even!), the TF2 team could at least insure that, no matter what their 'bosses' thought, they could justify their continued work on the game as fulfillment of a promise made to the community. And, if the new update was enough of a hit, it could perhaps inspire their 'bosses' to let TF2 continue to live on, at least for a little while.

So, the TF2 team pulled out all the stops for the next update. Jungle Inferno had an animated short, new maps, new weapons, entirely new features (ie. the contracker), it had a massive hype-spiraling 4-day-long update announcement, major weapon rebalances and overhauls - they clearly tried their damnedest to make the best TF2 update possible.

Whether or not the team managed to convince their superiors is unknowable. Jungle Inferno was followed by the fanfare-less Blue Moon update in early 2018, followed by radio silence. The TF2 team may very well have still been hard at work on the elusive Heavy update, but the double-whammy of the all-hands-on-deck push to get Half-life: Alyx finished and released immediately followed by the COVID pandemic likely reset whatever momentum or motivation the TF2 team had left.

This scenario, as described, is painful enough. From the outside, it appears as though VALVe had rebounded from Meet your Match, and was doing its best to improve the game in the wake of their own missteps, only to suddenly drop TF2 with zero explanation given. TF2 was left in a state of indefinite limbo with no clear outlook whatsoever on the future.

What made this infinitely worse is that VALVe had left the game in a state that wasn't just unfinished, it was broken.

TF2 has literally always had a botting problem. For the first span of the game's life, this generally manifested as idling/trading bots, but later on more and more bots began to appear that sought only to disrupt gameplay. Micspam, false votekicks, aimbotting, speedhacks, etc. - purely for the sake of irritating real players. Until Meet your Match, these cheating bots were relatively uncommon - real players could very easily either kick them from the game or simply join another server via Quickplay. Their impact on gameplay was no more than a minor, brief annoyance, and thus they were considered a non-issue.

Meet your Match's new Casual system, however, dramatically restricted the player's ability to hop to other servers when bots arose. Not only this, but the ability to switch teams at will was disabled on Casual servers, meaning it was now impossible to deal with bots on any team but your own (previously, if the other team was too slow to kick their own bots, it was possible to just wait for an opening on the other team, hop over, and call a votekick against the offending bot that would usually end up succeeding). Now, the disruption caused by a single bot was far more impactful than it had been before - because it was a far greater chore to either kick the bot or find a different server. Moreover, Casual outright incentivizes players to stick to the same server until the end - awarding them extra points the more they play, and nullifying any progress they've made towards a given contract that match if they leave before it ends. Players are thus, in effect, forced to play even when bots have made the game unenjoyable.

This resulted in a feedback loop - bots were now more irritating, so people complained about them more, so bot hosters hosted more bots, making them even more irritating - and that feedback loop has continued nearly unabated until modern day.

The TF2 community has been begging for an end to the botting problem for ages - and there have been genuine efforts from the TF2 team to try and fix the problem, but they have been too small and too infrequent to make much impact. And, to be frank, there is no way to effectively, permanently remove the bots. Attempting to keep any and all bots from the game would require enormous, constant effort from the TF2 team - something which is a very tall ask given VALVe's attitude towards the game for the past decade.

What can be done, however, is to simply make the bots less impactful. To let players more easily avoid them, to let players enjoy the game for longer so the bots are no longer such a nuisance, to let players have enough freedom in how they play that they are no longer forced to suffer through games with bots. It won't outright remove bots forever, but it will make them so much less of a nuisance that bot hosters will likely lose the incentive to bother with them. As soon as that happens, the feedback loop will be broken, and the botting issue will decline in severity as their potential impact on players' enjoyment of the game is neutered.

The simplest way to do this is to make Casual just as free as Quickplay was.

45 minute map timers, extensible by vote.

An Indefinite number of rounds per map.

Ad-hoc joining, leaving, and team switching.

Progress on contracts not erased by leaving mid-round.

These are not overwhelming changes. If anything, it's something of a return to form - not outright bringing back Quickplay, but making Casual into a suitable replacement for it - at long last.

And - most importantly - it's a one-time fix. It does not require an eternal arms race against bot hosters, nor a full return to frequent, massive content updates (though those would be nice).

One update to make TF2 more fun, to make the bots less impactful, and to give the game a better standing for the future.

One update to fix TF2.

-DirtPiper

[noirvette]

main 3! gaming headcanons!!

i missed kennys birthday because of my college classes wtf happy belated bday to kenny

a little off topic for the post but ive been playing around with the idea of making a band smau (after hours by 777bambi is so good every update got me at the edge of my seat) and ive primarily been focusing on that as of late so my next few posts might just be headcanons

Stan, Kyle, and Kenny and gaming with their s/o!! cw: implied nsfw on kenny's part

♡ STAN MARSH

Thinks it's great to game together, an easy way for you guys to bond and have fun!!

He kind of likes the more nostalgic games, like super mario bros for the wii (this made me look up the game to confirm it's age and it was made in 2009 wtf??)

Let's you be player 1 but the catch is that he gets to be luigi

Stan prefers playing games on the wii (and switch) and or the ps4/ps5. He's a console kind of guy.

Prefers playing video games at your house and he'll even bring the necessary consoles over if needed just because if his dad sees you two playing he's going to whine to Stan about joining in.

Aside from nostalgic games he's also an action game multiplayer fan, lot of games he has is stylized to be fit for multiple people, so think of games like "It Takes Two" or even the multiplayer parts of Pokemon SWSH / Pokemon SV.

If you're a more single player kind of person, he definitely doesn't mind watching you play while cuddling. Would probably fall asleep watching you play.

I could see him playing Stardew Valley co-op with you if you convince him, but doesn't enjoy the whole farming thing too much

He marries Abigail in retaliation for making him play it with you. (Marry Shane and he will IMMEDIATELY divorce Abigail and beg you to marry him)

He still definitely plays multiplayer pc games with his friends, but sees no real joy in playing it by himself (think like valorant or league)

HOWEVER, if you want to play those games with him? Total tryhard but the really bad kind of tryhard.

Considering he only plays these games with Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman and doesn't play it on his own time he kinda sucks lol.

Screams "YOU'RE BAD" into his mic when he actually downs someone. Screams "WHAT THE FUCK" if he gets downed that Sharon comes in running like "Stan are you okay?!"

He gets so frustrated when he dies that he starts literally pouting. Let him get the final kill if it's just you two against one.

Insta-locks on Sage just to heal you only in game

"Sage heal? Sage heal?" -your poor other teammates

You carry him in these games tbh.

♡ KYLE BROFLOVSKI

Unlike Stan, Kyle loves games like valorant, league, etc. He gets to let out his rage easily by winning

When he loses everyone in South Park knows, he's so mad. However he rarely loses so South Park is safe.

Out of his friends he's for sure got the most amount of kills and wins.

Screams "LETS GOOOOO" when he wins LMFAO. Then gives you a victory kiss.

FPS games is Kyle's specialty. He's def an omen main or something.

If FPS isn't your thing or if you're not good at it Kyle gets it. If you're willing he'll show you how to play (and how to get good fast) however just don't play with him, if you're lagging behind (even if you're new) he's so annoyed, but never mad.

Is willing to play other games with you 100%. Also thinks it's great to game together, even if your guys' gaming genres don't match he's willing to play what you like.

Mario Kart is your guys' go to. You always win against him which leaves Kyle in shock so he often demands rematches.

Ike joins with you guys sometimes and you both initially let Ike win. Ike gets mad though because he wants you both to play equally with him, so when you play fairly he still wins because Ike is just that guy.

Kyle is more of a pc gamer than anything, but if console is up to bat he's an xbox guy. Still is a fps guy on console but it's all single player.

HATES fortnite lol. Doesn't get the hype over it at all, he thinks the mechanics are stupid and won't play it. Might if you beg him to but.. you so owe him.

Is more of the guy that prefers you to watch as he plays, however has no issue if you want to take over playing and he watches, he makes you guys snacks to have while you play.

Avid minecrafter tbh, played it mainly for Ike but then got addicted. So now he makes you play it with him too. He's definitely the "miner". Goes all out on making sure you both have the best armor and weapons. Has a shit ton of diamonds so he made you a diamond shovel for the hell of it even though it's a dumb thing to waste diamonds on. Made you a pink wool heart behind your house when you were gone.

Also an avid tile matcher (think candy crush), begs you constantly for lives. Please give him lives he gives the MEANEST puppy dog eyes.

♡ KENNY MCCORMICK

AVID HORROR GAME ENJOYER LOL

Literally any type of horror game is his go to game. Also likes those RPG horror games (think like ib, the witch's house, misao)

Sets you up by saving right before a jumpscare and then has you come over to play it with him and then you get to experience the jumpscare.

Late night horror game playing with Kenny <3 where you two just play roblox horror games all night, sometimes he puts in the comedic horror ones just so you guys can laugh at how bad it is.

He borrowed Outlast from Cartman to play on your console and you still have nightmares.

"Don't worry baby, nothing can get you when I'm here!" "What if you're NOT here though :(" and then cue him as Mysterion for the next 3 weeks to protect you.

Demands to be princess peach or rosalina in any mario game you guys play. If only one of them is an option and you take that character he will refuse to talk to you until you give up the character

Is also another minecraft enjoyer but likes scaring you with Herobrine LOL and that one scary jukebox disc.

"(Y/N)...." "What Ken?" "Herobrine is outside our door rn" (Y/N) left the game

He also likes watching you play games. Lays down with his head in your lap watching you play.

Kenny prefers multiplayer games that aren't limited to just two players only multiplayer. Only because Karen can play the game with you two then.

If you do happen to playing a two player only multiplayer game and Karen wants to join he lets her take over for him.

Kenny also loves puzzle like games (think like escape room games or keep talking and no one explodes).

Really he just loves seeing your face get all frustrated when playing these kinds of games. He rarely gets frustrated with things like these because he manages to somehow always figure it out, but doesn't say anything just to watch you get annoyed.

If you start getting really frustrated at the game and he notices, he does one of three things; he takes the controller or your phone away and turns on a new game, he actually solves it to spare your sanity, or he saves the game and helps take your mind off of the game and onto something else.

[tailsbeth-writes]

hello taylor happy friday luv 💚

here's my ficlet prompt his week

🎲 Game night for southern philanthropy and firstprince maybe? or if ya wanna simply go with a spicy game night pez/liam/spencer

i'll leave that up to you lolz

A game night for FP & SP that ends in revelations, enjoy! Read on Ao3 🎲

‘Okay, what we playing boys?’ Liam sits down and passes Alex a beer, Henry and Percy clink glasses of wine.  ‘Cards Against Humanity?’ Henry suggests. Percy starts grinning like a Cheshire cat while Alex holds his face in his hand with a grunt.  ‘You love that game, Alex, why the dramatics?’ Liam asks, eyebrow raised.  ‘Cause we've only got the stupid British version. Nora and June stole mine-’ ‘Took custody of, dear.’ Henry reminds him with a cheeky smile. He goes to their bookcase and bends down to reach their game drawer on the bottom.

Alex’s eyes catch Henry’s grey sweatpants (he won't call them joggers however many times Henry insists upon it) where they've tightened across his thighs, the same thighs that will squeeze him into oblivion later.  ‘Earth to Alex, stop oogling your boyfriend's behind and tell me why this version is so bad.’  Henry is back at their coffee table with a very smug look on his face.  ‘I’ll stop oogling my fiance’s ass when you stop eye-fucking Percy whenever you're in the same room.’ Liam splutters his drink over his jeans. When two shocked faces gawk back at Alex, he covers his mouth with a hand. Henry rolls his eyes when Alex looks to him in panic and just puts his arms around his shoulders.  ‘Fiance? I did hear that correctly?’ Percy asks in a tone far higher than usual. Alex and Henry nod in unison and Percy practically tackles them into a hug. Liam is quickly sucked in, there's lots of tears and noises that vaguely reassemble words. When they back out of the hug, Liam’s hand is intertwined in Percy’s. It's now Alex’s turn to be shocked, brow shooting up.  ‘Your engagement kind of shits on our making it official news but it took you long enough to notice,’ Liam scratches the back of his head with his free hand. Henry bursts out laughing and Alex is looking back and forth.  ‘Wait, you knew?!’ ‘You truly are oblivious sometimes, my love.’

[ghost-qwq]

Fallout HCs about video games cuz I'm absolutely batshit insane about these characters

(Fo3, NV and 4 but it's only characters I am crazy normal about)

Fo3 (Butch, Charon and RJ)

Butch

I'm being so honest with you, I think he'd LOVE rhythm games

He's a big music guy to me!!!

Rhythm games player,, he also would play the fuck out of multiplayer fps games

but Lone would have to make him stop because he gets really mad when he loses

He's fucking horrible at puzzle games also, he makes Lone solve puzzles for him but totally not because he needs help

He just uh... Thinks Lone is too dumb to figure it out... Yeah...

Charon

Okay I know I picked the characters but I'm so clueless for him

Maybe fps but idk

Actually this guy likes puzzle games

He watches Butch fail horribly and silently judges him

Puzzle games and like... Games with specific tasks you need to repeat

I'm thinking like Potion Craft and Sticky Business

bro would love cleaning games I think

PowerWash Sim and Viscera Cleanup Detail are his beloveds

RJ

This kid would play multiplayer fps games and absolutely kick ass too

He's the mean kid on mic telling you how shit you were...

He gets mad when he loses and quits

But not before saying that he's never playing that game again

... And then he's playing the same game the next day

He's such a little hater I think he'd say all kids games are for babies

He would LOVE to play them though :(

Would sooner kiss a Deathclaw than play a horror game though...

He'd act like he's not scared until he physically couldn't hide it anymore

FNV (Veronica, Arcade, Benny, Boone, Raul and Vulpes)

Veronica

Fps 100%

She's the one beating Butch all the time and she's having a blast doing it

Maybe also sorting games?

Ooh exploration games even

I barely traveled with Veronica but I feel like she would get really deep into the lore of whatever game she's playing

Unpacking fan I feel

I think she'd like ARGs too

She'd play slime rancher and throw tars into the sea as soon as she sees them

Arcade

He feels like a strategy game player

CIV player

Probably also likes cleaning/sorting games

I don't think he'd play video games very often... Sort of just a thing he does when there is NOTHING else to do

Probably would play Niche

Maybe Spore

I honestly have no clue with him beyond that

Benny

I'd like to start this by saying that he's comically bad at every game he plays

Other than gambling ones

He plays strategy games and loses every single time

He could not win a game to save his own life

Only games he's okay at are like... Ones it's hard to lose,,

And house flipper... He feels like a house flipper guy if he had to play

He also plays the Sims,, he loves that game so much

Boone

Really challenging myself here

I think he'd be good at fps but not really like them very much

Idk why but he feels like an rdr2 player to me a little

He also plays Plants Vs. Zombies because he's great

Idk he absolutely doesn't play games ever and when he does it's like,, card games

Boone is not the gamer of the group

Raul

Fuck oh God why did I put him on this list

Also a house flipper kind of guy but unlike Benny he's actually good at it

When he plays games it's to relax !!

He's playing fucking Stardew Valley and having a nice time

He plays Golf With Your Friends with the Courier...

Kinda feels like a Terraria player but he has actually no clue what he's doing,,

Plays Minecraft but only to build a house then turn the game off

If anyone tries to teach him a game he pulls the old man card

He will not play a game if he doesn't want too...

He's just "too old to figure it out"

Vulpes

Like Arcade he also plays CIV

But he's annoying about it somehow

Strategy and puzzle game player

No matter the game he acts like he's better than you for playing it somehow

Plays Terraria like Raul but he knows what he's doing and won't stop being a bitch about it

He acts like whoever he's playing with is stupid for not understanding whatever game they're playing

Fo4 (Nick, Deacon, Danse, Curie, Preston and MacCready again)

Nick

He's just like Raul tbh

When he plays a game it's to relax or with friends

He also plays Golf With Your Friends... Probably with Ellie and Sole

I think he'd like playing Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes...

Jackbox games too

He likes having fun with friends okay? :( let peepaw play a damn game

Probably would also like PowerWash Sim

Maybe even Slime Rancher

Deacon

I'm struggling more with what games he WOULDN'T play

He'd play multiplayer horror games with everyone and NOT do what he's supposed to

Not because he's uh... Scared or anything...

He's in the Railroad, obviously he likes Detroit: Become Human

Idk why but he feels like he would love OneShot

BattleBlock Theater kind of guy 100%

Like I said, I have no idea what he wouldn't play...

I think he'd play anything with his friends though

Kind of guy to find the absolute worst quality game to play and get it for everyone so they can all suffer together

Danse

Strategy games.

Or games with a very direct path

I think he'd be overwhelmed by open world games

Too much to do and not enough direction on where to go first

Survival games I think he'd like too

Hates horror games,, he would never admit it but he always gets jumpy

I honestly don't think he'd play anything other than strategy games without being pushed but shh.... If he were a gamer

Curie

Cleaning games or games that focus on science

HUGE Niche fan

She has no clue how to play a video game but she knows science!!

CIV player but she doesn't attack anyone unless they attack first... She just wants to make her cities and make everyone in them happy. That's literally it

Preston

I think he's in the same boat as Nick but he can't pull the old man card

He's just not a big fan of video games

But as long as he's playing with friends I think he'd have a good time

Probably would hate horror games too...

They're fun until it gets actually scary and then he doesn't want to play anymore

Honestly, I think he might like Don't Starve

Idk why... He'd play Wilson I think

Or Wendy

MacCready again

look he's older now

He still plays multiplayer fps games but he doesn't get as mad at them

He doesn't say as mean things anymore... And when he says it he says it to himself

I think Butch got him into rhythm games as a kid but he isn't good at them

100% would play video games with his kid.

He'd play like,, bugsnax when Duncan is older and lose his mind

I'm being so honest with you I think he's not good at any games that aren't fps...

EXCEPT. Stardew Valley. He would never in a million years admit it but he'd loved that fucking game.

[anxiefics]

modern au hcs.

: ̗̀➛ ft. scaramouche x reader

_________ ׂׂૢ་༘࿐

he has a ton of piercings. he wears a bunch of earrings and occasionally a lip ring. (he may or may not have gotten a tongue piercing recently, and you only found out cause he decided to make out with you.)

he can cook, but he's lazy, so he usually gets takeout or smth. when he does make food, it's the best shit you've ever tasted. (he cooks more often for you <3)

kinda streamer au: he's addicted to fps games. like you can't tell me he doesn't play valo. he gets annoyed when ppl call it apex, though he loves both games.

pushing my scara and xiao bestie agenda; they often play valo and absolutely OBLITERATE the other team. scara likes to piss them off and say some toxic shit, while xiao says dry stuff like "haha."

he rage quit playing getting over it (ahem xiao beat it in under 10 mins.)

a bit of idol au: scara used to be a solo artist, then recently joined 5wirl, so they renamed to 6reeze. he still releases solo songs sometimes tho.

his songs are usually edgy (i mean just look at him), with some rap and metal vibes. he made a new song where the vibe was the same, but when ppl actually listened to the lyrics it was sounding kinda love-songy (is it coincidence that it was released a lil bit after he realized his feelings for you??)

him and xiao are the ones that the fans want to see together more

they just match and their voices complement each other (also they're both hot asf)

they're also the ones who keep the band members in check; scara just insults them and xiao scolds them (they stick together when the rest are out doing weird shit)

omg one time they posted a mirror pic together when scara wasn't part of the band yet and it was trending

not just cause of the speculations n theories but also cause it was SO HOT

scara has cold hands. it could be so hot and he would still have cold hands.

when it's winter and you want to hold hands for warmth, you should not ask scara. he's gonna make it worse; they feel like actual ice cubes.

once when you dragged him to a haunted house for halloween, he brushed his hands over your neck, and had the AUDACITY to act like he didn't do it, claiming it was "a ghost." he called it payback for making him go to this "stupid place."

he has a love-hate relationship with the rain. he likes seeing it from indoors, and looves the thunder and lightning, but he absolutely hates it when he gets wet. he forgot his umbrella when it was raining really hard and he looked like an angry cat LMAO

_________ ׂׂૢ་༘࿐

̗̀➛ a/n: this was supposed to be out by halloween, but i started writing other shit 😭

[prophecyoflunarflame]

🌻

ALRIGHT TIME TO RANT ABOUT WHATS ON MY MIND.

Eternatus, so much Eternatus. I love this little thang so much, it's like if someone mixed a lizard and a slugcat, then decided to make it go through The Horrors. I love it's design, it looks so cool, a bone dragon but with crystals? And it's own energy holding everything together? And I love the idea of just having the core float there- and the WINGS, I love how it's just these tendrils that are its wings, like it looks like energy could have made up its wings at some point but it doesn't, we don't know why, but it doesn't. The only thing I don't like about its design is it's claws, because how doth thoust move that.

Anyways, moving onto its actual lore stuff instead of its design it is such a little trauma thing. It just got dumped into this world, utterly confused, and then got slapped in the face, basically. How was it supposed to know what it was doing was hurting anyone, when it was so overloaded with energy that it couldn't even control itself? It was probably even worse when Rose gave it the wishing stars, since that was forced, and if I had to guess probably like trying to recharge a one time use battery. I don't know, we never used one time use batteries here. This thing is so pathetic and I want to give it all the loves and hugs it deserves.

Also like, there's a surprising amount of connections to Hollow Knight you can make? Especially since Rose is apparently the descendant of Galar's kings or something, if I remember correctly? Though I think we can all agree what Rose did was much stupider that The Pale King, at least PK was rushed for time and had an actual issue, meanwhile Rose could a just like... put up some windmills. Anyway we all hate Rose in this house.

There's also some connections you can make with Necrozma- Necrozma's shiny is even Eternatus' colors, which I love. They're like the same but different at the same time, they both are in a weakened form in game, have their own special energy which does similar things, crystals and such, and both have encounters in the past and have this super overpowered form. But with Necrozma, where this form is actually it's main form, and spreads light as it's energy spreads, Eternatus' Eternamax form is an overload of energy, when it can't even control what it's doing anymore. And this darkens the sky as it's energy spreads. Honestly the reason why Necrozma appears in the Crown Tundra DLC is cuz the dynamax energy there can probably substitute ultra aura.

Also something random that means nothing: Eternatus kinda looks like a Nosk and I love that. That's amazing. Spider space dragon. Very nice.

Oh and for the main thing on my mind, Eternatus and The Hollow Knight need to be friends. They have somewhat similar traumas and both have that pathetic sort of spearmaster-after-fp energy.

Oh, and I have far too many ideas for Eternatus having a modded Rain World campaign

that is all 👍

[7-andahalf-rats]

specimen 12 mayhaps

I put off drawing him for so long because idk how to draw people but I actually like this doodle a lot tbh. my first time drawing him evar teehee

some HCs I have on him below because I love him so much and. I know you also suffer from The Disease

played HD reno with my mom and she named him Freddy. so I just call him that now. Idk if he has an actual name but in my mind he will always be Freddy

probably a resident evil nerd. he also just likes fps and horror games in general, like half-life and doom. his favorites were always RE though (he is very salty about the bad remakes). prefers console to PC but he doesn't mind too much

can't cook. can't bake. do NOT let him cook

got into vlogging through his love of games. probably went into a bunch of haunted/rundown buildings during his career, and I like to think he'd make stupid references in his vlog posts (like "wow! what a mansion!"). I picture his vlogging medium to be a mix of Ted the Caver (but the spooky parts are instead cheesy references for laughs) and those urban exploration channels on YouTube

probably freaks S14 out when he makes a gaming reference like they genuinely cannot picture that senior citizen picking up a controller and not spontaneously combusting

speaking of S14, he kind of bullies them in the older brother way. like he doesn't really mean it. at first when S14 became a specimen though, he DEFINITELY did. I think their dynamic is either "older brother & sibling 15 years younger" or "long lost father you met at a Walmart buying soggy cabbage that treats you more like a friend than a child" to be honest

I think he has serious anger issues and possessive tendencies from S12, but at his core he's just kind of a rugged nerd. not a very social person but can hold himself in a conversation

probably gives good hugs and falls asleep drooling in his leather recliner like SNNNORRRRRKKKKkk. exhale SNNNOOORRRKKK. exhale

[bunni-v1]

Hiii! Bunni Checking in to let you all know I have not died, and very much enjoyed my break :)

I should be back to posting by Wednesday, which will be when the last part of the not clickbait series drops!

Other than that, I am happily enjoying my break. I wrote (most) of my essays, and got to spend time with my boyfriend and his family. I also got to play a lot of project sekai, genshin impact, and overwatch — only one of those was a positive experience lol. Since I sorta want to just babble on about my thoughts, I’ll talk about those games. Please feel free to talk with me about them, it really makes my day!

Project Sekai is always fun to play, though I’m not insane at the game or anything (guilty thumb player here). I was able to get all of the new event cards except for Miku and Akito. (Though I got Akito on my side account so 🫡). I’m really upset, I’m the biggest Miku fan out there and I have like no Miku cards. Still, I won’t complain about my Shizuku or the shiny new Saki I got.

Genshin Impact was… something. I have like 121 pulls saved for Furina, and I’ve still got about a month worth of saving to do. I finished act three of the story quest a while ago, and while I enjoyed it, it felt a little too monotonous at times — i think that’s the vibe they wanted though, so I won’t say it’s awful. I’ve been putting off Lyney and act four for ages though, and last night I was forced to do Lyney’s quest for that stupid coffee commission. I wasn’t feeling good at all either, I just wanted to get on and off so I was cursing out Lyney and the developers the whole time, but I liked it generally. It wasn’t anything too special, but Lyney is a cutie! As for act four, I really loved it! I won’t say too much because of spoilers, but seeing my two favorite girls on screen at the end made me so damn happy. I can’t wait to have them both.

Overwatch is probably the oddest stain on my gaming repertoire. I literally HATE fps games, but my boyfriend started playing it this summer and I wanted to have something to do with him over break so I picked it up. I’m a mercy main, if I hadn’t made that obvious before, but I play other characters. God, though, this game is miserable to play. Tanks have it the worst, but being a support main sucks too 😭 Especially Mercy, because no matter your skill level if your team is underperforming you’re almost forced to switch because she relies heavily on a competent team (this goes for everyone I guess, but as a Mercy main I feel it most on her lol). Not that big of a deal for me, but if you’re a one-trick it’s gotta suck :/ Still, I’m excited for the halloween update, I’m just tired of having to solo queue when my boyfriend is busy.

Anyway, that’s really all I’ve been doing. If you’d like to talk more about any of the games I was talking about, or anything about my interests (or YOUR interests) I would love to ❤️ I’m excited to be back soon, thank you for your patience.