#steam is just huge and getting established there is super super critical

[girlfailurefelix]

what gave you the idea for borrowed time? did you have any other plans for it? (aka yap about it all you want)

so actually! i had been thinking about it conceptually for like two weeks before i wrote any of it (i was complaining to my sib about it cuz i was embarrassed to write since i hadn’t since i was a preteen/young teen lol) and it just drove me absolutely nuts cuz i couldn’t stop thinking about it at work.

just gonna establish now since it gets confusing: greg ≠ gregory. i treat them as two different characters in the same body. so i will not use them interchangeably on this ask, just like i don’t in my fic

cut because i am going to YAP

i wrote chapter one as an attempt to stop myself from thinking about it further (i was originally going to kill tony off and have it be a oneshot, either post-pizzaplex escape much like security breach’s bad ending c̶u̶z̶ ̶s̶o̶u̶l̶m̶a̶t̶i̶s̶m̶ or have him end up getting chased to the fire escape and yk, you can fill in the blank on that one. blah blah blah insert something here about tony’s very interesting, incredibly weird intro in the book. i’m still trying to figure that one out cuz other themes in the book [the celtic stuff specifically. this is a huge thing for me and i can go off about how it’s used in the book, but that’s for another post if yall want that] make that interesting if we didn’t know how ggy kills from the therapist tapes. actually, even though you can’t see it, this is how he dies in my cotard’s solution animatic. the knife in it wasn’t for killing him lol, his ass went off the roof [hence “i wanna make my murder look like a suicide”], but now i’m getting sidetracked). but one thing led to another and i wrote chapter 6 and the epilogue.

Chapter 4 was my last written chapter (hence why i don’t bother uploading individual chapters and just drop whole stories at once) if you don’t count editing several parts of chapter 1 (small tweaks for clarity purposes, not huge minus what i mentioned above. debated making this one two chapters but ended up keeping them together as a big one cuz it didn’t make as much sense when split up) and chapter 5 (i originally wrote the car ride to the pizzaplex cuz i thought it would be funny to make tony flip a tit and go hellaciously slow with the fear that he’d get pulled over cuz yk. twelve. but i figured it was too boring and discarded it).

the original title was actually a different song name. (super embarrassing but it was a hollywood undead song -another way out. i might use this later for a different, more fitting fic- cuz it helped me come up with a lot of the smaller details within chapter 1)

i did name it after the song from the death note musical cuz it can be interpreted about being about both tony and gregory. i meant it about gregory personally cuz at the end he quite literally is living on borrowed time (since tony’s death is the reason he’s able to get away from vanny. very remisa.), but tony is too throughout the entire fic, since obviously it’s an extension of his original implied lifespan (you’re welcome, you little shit.) and also cuz he’s putting up with (and being worn down by) greg’s shit the entire time in order to save gregory, even at the risk of his own safety, and i think that lines up really well too.

the chapters also all had individual names but too many were deathnote so i got embarrassed (og title of chapter 4 was the game begins lol, which is why the last sentence of chapter 3 was what it was)

color was SOOOO important. like the names i used were incredibly specific. i really wanted to emphasize how dead greg’s eyes are vs gregory, also how tony was losing steam cuz yk. traumatizing.

i based tony’s mom on mine lol. and she and my sib picked up on that immediately after they both read it (i didn’t have a beta cuz i didn’t take criticism or editing, but i did let them read it immediately) i know she doesn’t check on tony in the book when he sneaks out, but i figured that’s her giving him space, and i loveeeee projecting so that was reflected in the mom parts. mother’s instinct and all that. she totally knew greg was weird after the first night, he wasn’t just bullshitting on that part, but again, space (and yet another projection from a specific experience of my own).

greg. let’s fucking talk about greg. FIRST, he was gonna kill tony’s ass the whole time, despite chapter 4’s events. that was him being manipulative because i just don’t think greg *wouldn’t* notice tony’s behavior. as i wrote, he’s NOT subtle, even in actual canon. he meant what he said when he called him useful, and he certainly didn’t like feeling rejected, but don’t let him fool you, he doesn’t actually like tony. tony actually mentions this in chapter 2 as a possibility and much like his instincts in the actual book, he was right. it was just about dragging it out to make it worse on tony and getting something out of him as a bonus. i like to think of him as building on gregory’s original personality cuz virus, so he’s not that different, but he’s like,, worse if that makes sense. like the worst parts of gregory, amplified. with some killing, yk.

speaking of tony guessing, he was absolutely BULLSHITTING with the greg vs gregory shit. denial is not just a river, he just happened to be right. cuz seriously, he was two seconds from cracking anyway, i mean little dude is SO traumatized, especially at this point.

so gregory. he was able to communicate when half asleep cuz i think that greg/the actual virus would want him to experience the nightmares and such (agony continuing to feed the virus. yk. fnaf shit) to keep him in line. so this is the small window of opportunity he would have to even be a person, much less attempt to save himself. he’s miserable in this state though cuz tired and unable to be fully awake lol. also he can see everything greg does, hence knowing tony and trusting him, but he can’t really do anything about it. he’s always present though.

ellis wasn’t in this besides mentions because of multiple reasons. 1, i wanted to make it clear how much greg was isolating him. like that’s on purpose. 2, it would’ve gotten too convoluted to have tony protecting both of them in this specific case. and 3, i knew i wanted it to loop to security breach, so ellis would’ve interfered with that unless i killed him off. regardless of the fact that i personally see him dying in addition to tony as the canon post-ggy events [cuz let’s be real, regardless of if he believed it, he read tony’s paper. that’s a loose end and a disaster for greg waiting to happen. i don’t think he would risk it, especially since tony’s immediate disappearance would be sus as fuck.], i didn’t feel like killing him off needlessly.

so i actually sobbed after re-reading the end. giggled and kicked my feet about how awful it would be while writing it, but rest assured, it kicked my ass after. like to the point that i considered scrapping it and letting them get out safe (which is where the AU with Sunlight on Your Skin came in), but i knew this was the proper ending for both of them. greg ended up getting his way in the most fucked up way (tony was useful.) but also failing in the same breath, tony got to save gregory (giving him a far more satisfying character arc than his original, meaningless death. also fulfilling the void left by the guilt from not being able to help his dad’s fate), and gregory got saved, even if it was a hollow, tragic “victory” for him.

also i originally was going to have greg fatally wound tony as he won the game, but i wanted to bring in vanny (cuz of the “friends” comment from the beginning and it being brought up again by greg in one of the middle chapters) cuz A) i love my wife and B) it felt /too/ sad and angsty to the point of overkill (no pun intended)

oh. and gregory does actually like tony back, he wasn’t just saying it cuz wanting to escape and then him dying. just so we’re all aware. maybe not at that point as much as tony does (and not as much as he does in sunlight on your skin’s au continuation, cuz actually actively getting to be himself would help.), but it would’ve worked out if tony didn’t yk, kick the bucket. sorry if that makes his death worse.

[syrupspinner]

I defeated Endica VII: The Dream King

I wonder how many people can say that?

I have a weird history with this game. when I was a kid, I loved reading fan wikis, and one of my favorites was the magaman database despite never playing any of the games. since I was terrified of emulation ever since I got a virus from angelfire, my only hope was fangames. and the game that looked the coolest was... Mega Man Perfect Harmony!

id attach an image of the gameplay, but all kid me cared about was having a million (24) playable characters, thats really all you need. I'd check the website for it from time to time, and eventually I saw that it had inexplicably morphed into something called Endica, an original story. from what i can tell, its a pretty thorough reskin, but a reskin nonetheless, you can see stuff attacks and level layouts that were taken over wholecloth.

i think it was just a kcikstarter at the time, but i didnt donate. sorry dev guy. I bought it when it came to steam later though! before it was unlisted. but then it was put on the devs website for free, so you can still play it if you want.

that's it for the history. I just wanted to give a little background about it, because I'm not sure if anyone else would.

so, how'd the game turn out? I... have my criticisms. I promise I won't be some caustic asshole about it, but it's hard to recommend.

so it's pretty clearly inspired by classic megaman in the controls, only you have a melee attack zero-style. as for the graphics, I'm not sure what they were going for. it's like, kinda retro? but everything is super shaded and like... the only thing I can compare it to is the cdi. like, the gameplay sprites and backgrounds and stuff. it's kinda cool, like an oil painting on a crt, but I'm taken out of it by how the enemies squash and stretch, and how the coins look so unshaded and layered on top, and how healing is just an Adobe aftereffect... I can see what they were going for but it doesn't stick the landing

there was a huge multiplayer angle for the game too. it was designed to let you have four players simultaneously, nsmb style, so the levels are all really wide open to accommodate. I can't comment on this, BUT I can comment on all the characters they added to facilitate this. they all play just differently enough, and they all have upgradable moves, so it's pretty impressive and surprisingly fun to- holy shit is that the kid from shovel knight

so quick aside. I played this game before shovel knight, but I knew that there's no way shovel knight was referencing Endica, so I looked it up and it turns out that he's a backer character... in a loooooot of games. his creator, seizui, just funds his roleplay OC into a bunch of Kickstarter projects. it's awesome and I love him

anyway yeah, gameplay. it's kind of a metroidvania? you can get character upgrades but im pretty sure it's all combat stuff. my advice is to skip it whenever you can, I got a ring that let me crash the game at any time by hitting c

there's a plot, I've been told. it's a pretty basic "go here and kill evil" thing. surprisingly, reize gets the most character development, he has this whole subplot with his dad and stuff. yeah other than that it just kinda feels like characters say things, y'know? it's all written like a cartoon that just came back from a commercial. "oh, no! we have to stop the giant goblin before it destroys the town!" kinda thing, where it's more establishing basic stuff instead of setting up the characters

so yeah, it's hard to sugarcoat how unenjoyable this was. I respect the work that was put into it though! this game wasn't a waste of time, but it's hard to articulate why without it sounding backhanded. it's... charmingly flawed? there are games I've hovered between completely uninvensted and dispassionately frustrated the whole time, and this wasn't that. there's genuine heart here, an artistic vision with sincere effort behind it. if you have a tolerance for roughness, it's sincerely worth checking out, especially if you're a developer. since it's a game that's bad without being abysmal dogshit, I think it'll be really worthwhile to analyze what doesnt work and why if you're designing your own game.

also, check out the devs other projects! I haven't had the chance to try it myself, but Azazel looks like it'd be fun to try!

[bethestaryouareradio]

Water Matters

“When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.” Benjamin Franklin

We turned on the spigot. A trickle. Seconds later, nothing. 

For over a hundred years the deep well had served three houses, several barns, and all the gardens on our Napa County ranch without a problem. This summer, the well is empty. The bucolic lake built by my Dad and brothers in the former horse pasture served as a family playground, fishing area, and farm irrigation reservoir for decades. In 2021, it is a big basin of cracked clay. There is no water.

In the San Joaquin Valley, an area known to be the breadbasket of fruit and nuts for America, the aquifers and canals are depleted. It is projected that by 2040, 535,000 acres of agricultural production will be lost. If the drought persists and water is not available, double that amount of land will not be planted resulting in food shortages around the country.

Seventy-one percent of the earth is covered in water. Over 96 percent of that water is saline, represented by our oceans and seas. The human body consists of sixty percent water. H2O is a vital nutrient to the life of every cell. People can survive without food for several days, but without water, organ failure commences around the third day of dehydration.

Water matters and water is scarce. Climate change is resulting in rising temperatures and when the soil gets warmer, heat waves worsen. Fifty-five percent of the West is experiencing extreme drought conditions. Some scientists have declared the summer of 2021 the worst drought in over 1200 years. 

What is a gardener to do? 

 Because of the efforts to reduce water usage as well as the higher costs of water, many people have asked me if it would be best to “let their landscape go”.  My rapid reaction is a decisive “NO!” Besides the financial burden of relandscaping, maintaining a garden during a drought is essential not only for the aesthetics and beauty a garden provides but for keeping your home cooler and contributing to a fire safety zone. If you let your plants and trees die, your parched landscape could become a fire hazard. 

Here are ways to minimize watering while keeping your plants alive.

1. Weed your garden thoroughly as weeds are huge drinkers.

2. Mulch to conserve water. Add three inches of good quality mulch to your entire landscape to suffocate weed growth, conserve water, prevent evaporation, and reduce the heat to the soil.

3. Check for leaks in your sprinkler system. If you find a spike in your water bill, you probably have a broken pipe somewhere.

4. Water deeply and infrequently. Once or twice a week will suffice. Most plants need about one inch of water weekly. Check your soil to make sure that the water is penetrating the soil. Dry soil sheds water as run-off. If this happens, water twice, five minutes apart until the soil is saturated. Deep watering encourages a healthy root system while frequent short showers are wasteful and not beneficial to plant growth.

5. Water early in the morning or early evening when moisture will be retained.

6. Refrain from fertilizing in the summer months as feeding promotes thirsty hyper-growth.

7. Mow your lawns without using the bag. Grass clippings supply nutrients to the lawn with less water usage. 

8. Don’t worry about keeping your lawn super-green. Just keep it alive and it will re-green when the weather is wetter.

9. Use soaker hoses around plants to eliminate evaporation. Trees can be especially vulnerable during a drought.  Use a deep soaker wand to supply water to the roots.

10. Don’t put your irrigation on a schedule. Instead, check your soil moisture and monitor your plants. Turn your system on when it is necessary but do make sure to run it to keep the system free of invading insects, roots, and stagnant water.

For both firewise and waterwise gardening, permeable surfaces in your hardscape such as decomposed granite, gravel, stones, and mulch are advisable. They provide a fire-safe zone and allow rainwater to percolate into the soil without runoff. For a list of plants that are both fire and drought resistant, re-read my article located at https://www.lamorindaweekly.com/archive/issue1508/Digging-Deep-with-Goddess-Gardener-Cynthia-Brian-Fire-retardant-and-fire-resistant-plantings.html.

11. Summer is not the time to plant but to plan. Any specimen planted in August will require regular and concentrated watering to establish strong roots. Late fall before frosts will be optimal for sowing.

12. Recycle your household water. Keep a bucket in your shower and bowls in your sinks to catch the water from your faucet. Use it on your houseplants or pour it into your garden. When you steam or boil vegetables, allow the water to cool, then use it on your plants. 

13. Minimize your personal water usage. Turn off the water when brushing teeth or when soaping up in the shower. For toilets, we may be approaching the former drought mantra “if it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.”  This is obviously a personal choice.

14. Adjust your expectations for your garden. Accept the fact that your garden may not be as green, lush, and colorful as it would normally be if water scarcity was not an issue. Plants wilt to conserve energy. Many plants are resilient and can deal with hot weather. They will bounce back with winter rains.

During the past two months, I have been busy personally repairing broken PVC pipes, valves, sprinklers, and hoses as hiring anyone to assist has been impossible. Between the marauding deer, shifting soils, and invading roots, the work is endless, arduous, intensive, and necessary. I have also implemented the tips that I am suggesting. 

Taking a long, relaxing shower used to be my reward after a day of digging, weeding, pruning, repairing, building, and planting, but for the past few years I’ve resorted to three-minute scrubs to save water.

Living in Lamorinda, we are fortunate to be able to turn on our faucets and have water. Farmers throughout the state are not so lucky. Continue to grow edibles as growing your own groceries will become more critical as the drought continues. 

As for now, on our family ranch and vineyards we are buying water.  Last year’s grape harvest was 100% destroyed by smoke taint. Because of the three-digit temperatures experienced thus far, we have already lost 20% of our Cabernet. I pray for a winter of maximum snowfall.

Water is life. It’s precious. Don’t waste, conserve. 

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

Saturday, September 25th, Be the Star You Are!® will participate in the first live event at the Pear and Wine Festival with a booth sponsored by the Lamorinda Weekly. Details at https://www.bethestaryouare.org/copy-of-events

Happy Gardening. Happy Growing. 

Photos and more: https://www.lamorindaweekly.com/archive/issue1512/Digging-Deep-with-Goddess-Gardener-Cynthia-Brian-Water-matters.html

Cynthia Brian, The Goddess Gardener, is available for hire to help you prepare for your spring garden. Raised in the vineyards of Napa County, Cynthia is a New York Times best-selling author, actor, radio personality, speaker, media and writing coach as well as the Founder and Executive Director of Be the Star You Are!® 501 c3. Tune into Cynthia’s StarStyle® Radio Broadcast at www.StarStyleRadio.com.

Buy copies of her books, including, Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul, Growing with the Goddess Gardener, and Be the Star You Are! www.cynthiabrian.com/online-store. Receive a FREE inspirational music DVD and special savings.

Hire Cynthia for writing projects, garden consults, and inspirational lectures.

Cynthia@GoddessGardener.com

www.GoddessGardener.com

[zerochanges]

428 - Chunsoft’s Sound Novel Perfected

428: Shibuya Scramble is an unequivocal, truly Japanese game, and one that nobody ever thought would come out in English--and the doubters were sort of right. The title was a Japan exclusive for many years since its original Wii release in 2008 but after a decade of being out of reach for the English market this cryptically Japanese exclusive was somehow able to be cracked and come September of 2018 made the journey to North American and European markets on PC through Steam and both physically and digitally on the Sony PS4. Honestly I still can’t believe it and I own the darn game! The journey to getting this game out is surely an interesting one, as localization director David Kracker recounted on the Playstation blog that he had to fight hard to get the game pushed forward for a worldwide release outside of Japan, but ultimately was able to do so by showing that appeal for niche games such as these have been increasing steadily since its original Wii release. 

For many people 428: Shibuya Scramble will be their first experience with a Chunsoft sound novel--especially since the localized Kamaitachi no Yoru (Banshee’s Last Cry) is downright almost impossible to play now. Last blog post I discussed in detail what the heck a sound novel even is, and went through a brief history of the visual novel market in general covering where Chunsoft falls in and how much they contributed to the genre. So because of that I won’t go into too much heavy details on sound novels today, but the short and simple answer I gave in my previous entry is that a sound novel is two things. The first of which was a dated term that Chunsoft used regularly (mostly on the Super Famicom and Sega Saturn) and has since fallen out of use in favor of adopting visual novel. The second of which is the more complicated answer that sound novels are both the aforementioned term that was used by Chunsoft for their brand of visual novels and also a certain style of visual novels that would follow years later by other companies that were heavily inspired by the early works of Chunsoft often aping their presentation and narrative style, with 07Expansion’s Higurashi - When They Cry being one of the most popular examples. 

If all that sounds like a bit much, or is just all greek to you, don’t worry--all you have to really take away from my rambling is that the Chunsoft seal of quality with 428 really means something, especially to fans of visual novels. You see, 428: Shibuya Scramble is actually a spiritual successor of sorts to Chunsoft’s earlier Machi sound novel released in 1998 on the Sega Saturn and later Sony Playstation. Machi was a highly well regarded game for its time that was a big hit both critically and with gamers, but despite its constant praise still sold poorly. Over the years people started to discover the game through its solid word of mouth and old fans and new fans alike were always clamoring for a sequel. After many years of begging Chunsoft finally delivered just that, and this is where 428: Shibuya Scramble comes in. By no means a direct sequel (so don’t worry you definitely DO NOT need to play Machi to understand the story) 428 is set in the same city of Machi (aka both take place in the same fictional version of Shibuya), and super fans will be able to spot some references and cameos from Machi sneaking in. 

428: Shibuya Scramble is essentially a dream game to many hardcore fans in Japan that waited anxiously for a return to form from Chunsoft. When it came out the game even famously got a perfect score of 40 in the well known Famitsu gaming magazine--and this was back when you could still count perfect scores they gave out on your fingers, only 8 games prior made that list; nowadays the magazine is known for being far more forgiving with its reviews. So basically, what I am getting at is this is yet another game that was pretty huge back in Japan but sorely skipped over worldwide. 

You may be thinking to yourself then, that’s all well and good, but what about the game itself? Well let me get into that. 428: Shibuya Scramble is as its name implies, a game about Shibuya, while you do take control of characters in the game, at large the characters themselves all feel like a part of the city. Shibuya is a living, breathing entity in 428, and you really get to explore the entire city from multiple perspectives in this one long, crazy day. Shibuya’s story is your story. There are multiple characters you get to play as and each one has their own unique, individual story to tell, but each story is interwoven into the others and they begin to overlap in creative and fun ways. This is where a large part of the game play comes from; finding out how decisions you made with one character affects the fate of another character. 

Say for example if you are being chased in one character’s story and decide to run into a busy city street to escape your pursuers thus causing a traffic accident, in another story the character you are playing now is stuck in said traffic accident and cannot progress their story leading to a bad end. Everything you decide to do with one character not only affects that character’s fate but may even affect the entire city’s at large and change the outcome for every other character you play as too. Finding out how to best affect the story by jumping around the multiple characters and getting everything to play out just right is a lot of fun and no surprise was also a major feature in Machi prior. 

There are a bevy of characters to interact with in Shibuya but the multiple residents in this major Japanese metropolis you take direct control of are Shinya Kano, a rookie detective trying to make his way in the force and crack a kidnapping case, Achi Endo, an ex-gang leader with a heart of gold trying to make Shibuya a better place, Minoru Minorikawa, an investigative journalist on a mission to save a life, Kenji Osawa, a brooding genius that just wants to be left alone but is trapped inside a corporate scandal that goes beyond anyone’s imagination, and Tama, a poor soul trapped in a big furry cat mascot costume that just wants to be free from the hell that is a terrible part time job. Each character has their own unique flavor they bring to the table and their own individual plots range from comedic to serious, romantic to frightening, and everything else in-between. Kano’s scenario is a pretty straightforward crime drama, while Osawa’s plays like a physiological thriller where you don’t know who to trust, meanwhile Tama and Minorikawa’s scenarios will have you on the floor laughing at the insane hijinks they manage to get into somehow, and Achi is kicking ass beating up thugs and saving a lost girl. 

428 manages to combine all these different kinds of smaller stories into one large story seamlessly and it’s an incredible experience jumping between all these fun characters and seeing how they eventually interact with each other as the plot progresses. It’s hard for me to even pick a favorite character in the game as all of them are so well written, and so different from one each other. If I had to pick though, I would say Osawa is probably the protagonist I relate to the most and a lot of his big story moments left me teary eyed and really moved on a truly genuine personal level (I don’t think I’m a genius like him though). 

I can praise 428 to the high heavens, and really a large part of me writing about it today is to do just that, but there is an elephant in the room I probably should address at some point. Something truly horrendous, something that prevents the game from ever being a true masterpiece, something that scares everyone away, the horror of … real life actors! Yeah, as I am sure it’s obvious by this point 428 uses real life actors and was actually filmed on location in the city of Shibuya. A lot of people are put off by this and honestly that kind of bums me out that so many are so unwilling to even try different things. 

To go off on a bit of a tangent, my own personal opinion is that I freaking love the way 428 looks. I’m someone that quite enjoys campy FMV video games; stuff like Night Trap or any Tex Murphy adventure game is solidly right up my alley. I also enjoy unique mixtures of real life and animation, so I love rotoscoping a whole lot--I’m always ecstatic when I find a cool movie or animated series that is rotoscoped, and that’s a large draw to me for games that use it such as Hotel Dusk. So no, I really think 428 is a beautiful game visually that was made by real pros who had to use guerrilla film making in order to bring their vision to life because of laws that prevent filming on location in Shibuya. What the team was able to do here, while also hiding it from “the man” is incredible work! 

Contextly Chunsoft’s sound novels opted to not use the now established format that predominantly is how visual novel look. Originally with Otogirisō this was because visual novels were still in their infancy and the now ubiquitous presentation where sprites are shown in front of background art had not yet taken off. Nobody really knew what visual novels at the time should look like. Otogirisō is actually commonly attributed as one of the earliest examples where a visual novel had background art to begin with and wasn't just mostly text or sprites presented over a black void. Chunsoft kept their games pretty consistent visually from that point, and characters were often not seen on screen, usually just presented through the use of silhouette if needed. This really helped the “novel” aspect of their visual novels, since you had to imagine the characters’ appearances mostly through the narrative descriptions about them just like in literature. 

Over time this changed with the advent of CD hardware which meant the use of still image photography and Full-Motion-Video could really take off, and Machi ran with this new hardware looking much like how 428 does. You can say these games really have a more broad appeal to them too as they are not just “anime” games but games anyone can enjoy just like a good book. This while true in Japan does get a bit tricky for a localized title as a majority of the actors are Japanese which is off putting to a general public not used to watching Japanese cinema or TV dramas. For better or worse 428 is an unequivocal Japanese game, but I really implore anyone who is even the tiniest bit interested to try it out for themselves (especially since there is a free demo) and stay open minded about the game, because if you do, you will find one of the best written, and best localized games in a generation.

428: Shibuya Scramble's predecessor; Machi on the Sega Saturn

428 didn't get a very fair shot when it came out in the English market. The month of September was jam packed with both Triple-A titles such as Marvel’s Spider-man and niche titles that could not be missed such as Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age. The release date really was setting the game up to go against some huge competitors and with its enigmatic overly Japanese sensibilities 428 lacked much of the charisma to fight them. I followed the localization process very closely and this was a game I dreamt I could play for many years, but even I had to pass up grabbing the game on its release date and waited about a month or so until I managed to pick up my own copy as I had poured all my attention into Dragon Quest XI at that time which as bad as I feel for 428 I still don’t regret. By the time I wrote my annual favorite games of the year list I had to exempt 428 from it even, only writing a brief honorable mention as I knew I would love it but hadn't actually gotten to play it yet. The end of the year was far too packed with excellent titles vying for my and everyone else’s attention and what a shame, as 428 is now easily neck-and-neck with my then favorite game of the year Dragon Quest XI.

The truth is it will be very unlikely we will ever see a game like 428: Shibuya Scramble come out in English again. This was a very unlikely localization to happen in the first place, and a very risky one, but it sadly was not a runaway success. Anyone interested in the history of visual novels, sound novels, or seeing one of Chunsoft’s greatest titles definitely shouldn't pass this game up though. And anyone willing, I really recommend 428: Shibuya Scramble hard. If you love good storytelling in gaming, there isn't any better than what’s here. The story in 428 is so heart felt, and uplifting that I found myself crying a lot during my playthrough. I laughed, I cried, I found tons of inspiration for my own writing, 428 truly is a game that changes you. I think those are far too rare nowadays. This is a game that should be in any niche gamer’s PS4 or Steam collection. 

[liamshelby]

When you want to establish yourself as a new artist ( which Liam is), it’s really important to conquer the US market to establish credibility and get invited to the big award show like the Grammys. It sucks but that how it is, the big wigs in industry only pay attention to you when your succeeding in the US. That why artists like Little mix and even Cheryl who did big in Europe are not acknowledged much cause they weren’t successful in the US.

So idk exactly how things went down with Liam but basically this is what I think happened based on what I observed. The most likely reason the album was initially postponed was bc bedroom floor flopped here so his label moved his release date cause they wanted him to have another hit b4 releasing. “For you “ was supposed to be that hit which is why he got to do big promo spots like the today show and Fallon quickly but his radio deal didn’t go through bc that was around the time Charlie Walker was ousted from republic for sexual assault and that the person who signed him and was helping to make sure he got what he needed from his US label. So with Charlie gone, he no longer had that big insider connection and he stopped being a label priority which is why For you didn’t do that well here . He had the sales, cause the song was doing well on iTunes for a while but he needed radio to introduce the song to the Gp cause there not going to buy or listen to a song that they don’t know exist and radio is still the best way to get consistent sales cause your reaching a new audience everyday. If you don’t have a label helping with radio then you at least need a rabid fanbase who keeps requesting but even that can only get you so far ( ex: bts and their fans). For you did well in Europe cause he was still a priority for his Uk label and they helped him with radio. Unfortunately with Charlie gone and For you not doing as well here he became less of a priority for republic and they started focusing on Ari, Drake, Post Malone, and Nicki cause they been signed to republic for a while and even with Charlie gone they have been there long another to become a priority for the other big wigs at republic. Also you can tell things change with republic cause it was around this time that they stopped hyping him as much on their twitter account.

So Liam and his team had to regroup and hold off on releasing his album cause if his debut album flop in the US, it going to be really hard for him to recover as an artist. His first album doesn’t have to be super successful here but it needs to do moderately well like Niall if he wants people to pay attention to his future projects. There next hope was to go all out with familiar and hopes it does well enough that republic will make him a priority again and help with radio if the song picks up steam, and it might not seem like this team did much but they really did. They got him good Spotify placement , did the vertical video, went all out for the music video , did Gma and Colbert show, and even helped out with radio a little cause the song hung around longer then “For you “ did on US radio but the moment the song didn’t become an immediate hit most Liam fans stoped requesting aggressively and without our help the song didn’t pick up steam long enough on radio to show republic that he had another potential hit on his hands so they could start helping out.

Also I recalled seeing some fans who where at Liam chase soundtrack tweeting that they spoke to some of the Republic people who attended and ask them why there not helping him out like Ari and they said fans need to request his song more or there’s not much they can do. When strip first came out we went all out with requesting and streaming which is why it did well enough to get the Gp attention but if were not doing that with the rest of his songs they won’t become big enough to generate attention from the Gp. Most of my friends who dont pay attention to 1d and liked std didn’t even know he had other songs out till I told them . The only reason they knew about std is cause they heard it on the radio or on a Spotify or Apple playlists and loved it enough to start requesting it on radio.

And yes fans shouldn’t have to do this much work but when an artist is not a priority for their label, then fans have to help them out to get their label attention. With familiar not doing as well in the US, his team is scared to release the album cause although it will most likely sell well in Europe, he might not sell as well here and they don’t want him to be seen as a failure. By releasing an Ep they can test the waters, give the fans something to hold them off , while also generating interest with new music. And if the Ep is not super successful here, it won’t count against him cause it an Ep not an album. I’m a huge Solange fan and she used a similar strategy she used before “A seat at the table”. It also similar to what republic doing with Julia Michaels. Liam is very aware that he’s doesn’t have the full support of the 1d fandom to coast on like the other boys do and he’s always says that he considers himself a new artist so I can understand why he would use a strategy that new artist use.

Like I get it frustrating for fans that they keep changing the date but I would rather he takes his time to ensure a successful debut than release an album that doesn’t sell well in the US and we have to spend the next few years fighting everyone who calls him a flop and compare his US sales to the other boys . A little bit of it is Liam fault cause he shouldn’t have told us what dates they had planned but he couldn’t have foreseen that the songs won’t do as well as they expected and his album will be moved again. If he wants to be to release his album next month, he needs another US hit and they don’t know if his next song will be one .

What they should have done was released his album when std was doing good but I honestly don’t think any of them expected it to do as well as it did and they weren’t prepared so they stuck to the album rollout they already had in place but things haven’t worked out as well as planned. I also feel like even if they were ready, he still wouldn’t have released it then bc of the negative reception from critics and 1d fans. He’s a perfectionist and I get the vibe that he wanted to prove himself and show that he had a diverse album before releasing. You can also tell that he’s stating to get really frustrated with the album pushbacks and he ready to just get it over with but he has to listen to his team and label.

Hopefully he will be able to get another hit with his new song so we can get the album but fans also have to help and not give up on it too fast .

—

thank you for this submit! while we do not know what the real qualifications or moves for record labels are because it’s not our job to know these things (they get paid for it & went to school for this stuff, remember), i do find this pretty logical. it does seem like this is what is going on, or at the very least it lines up with that being the case. the only real way we can help liam become big is by requesting it every single day and streaming when we can. the only real downfall is that we’re a small group and we can only contribute so much - until liam has a broader fanbase that is willing to do this, i don’t know that he’s going to be massive.

i do think the loss of charlie had a big impact on liam’s priority at republic, tho. he was really gunning for liam to be the next big thing, but with him gone there’s no real big-man-on-campus pulling for him and keeping the label’s attention. :/ sucks.

[kayleealexa]

Digital Marketing Strategies That Really Work

There are in excess of 25 million free endeavors in the Digital Marketing Company in Liverpool. As a business person or sponsor, what is the significance for you? It's fundamental. You're confronting a gigantic measure of competition.

 How on the planet would you have the option to stand out? Computerized promoting is one uncommon spot you should start.

 Take a gander at these computerized promoting systems that work.

 Computerized Marketing Services

 Chapter by chapter list

 1. Compose Blogging

 2. Structure Webinars and Live Events

 3. One of 2020's Biggest Digital Marketing Strategies: Artificial Intelligence

 4. Considering Millennials

 5. Use Chatbots

 6. Take in Social Media Influencers

 7. Video Marketing on YouTube

 1. Arrange Blogging

 Blogging has been getting steam all through the latest section of years, and in 2020 it will be higher than at some other time. Content showcasing is a huge bit of SEO, which infers that by blogging, you'll have the choice to inconceivably grow the proportion of traffic to your page.

 B2B advertisers that use online journals get 67% a more noteworthy number of leads than those that don't. In this way, notwithstanding the way that it is an exceptional technique to make more traffic, you can in like manner produce more leads and arrangements through blogging moreover.

 As you continue blogging, you'll spread your webpage's compass. Try to pick various subjects, so you're not consistently elucidating something fundamentally the same as.

 By then in your blog entries, despite giving important substance, you can join information about your things and administrations too.

 2. Structure Webinars and Live Events

 Another enormous example for computerized promoting in 2020 is encouraging online courses and live events. These are fantastic for different reasons.

 In any case, people love viewing the video. Various examinations have found that accounts are excessively spellbinding and snatch people's eye more than substance or pictures alone.

 Second, live video is creating in universality. Through encouraging an online class or live stream, you're giving your group a prompt strategy to attract with your picture.

 They can present requests logically and discover an answer right away. Online classes are in like manner mind blowing ways to deal with explain your things or administrations in more unmistakable significance.

 They're an extraordinary arrangement gadget! Consider adding this to your Digital Marketing Services in 2020.

 3. One of 2020's Biggest Digital Marketing Strategies: Artificial Intelligence

 Another monster design in advanced showcasing is the development of man-made consciousness (likewise called AI). Essentially, man-made brainpower is development that can think in a human-like way to deal with empower you to distinguish customer needs.

 As AI continues creating capacities and expansion, it will be a more heavenly and more huge bit of advanced promoting.

 We will, after a short time, have the advancement that manages loads of advertising's ordinary tasks. Man-made intelligence will empower advertisers to put more vitality in illuminating procedures.

Read Also: A brief guide for successful persuasive web writing

 4. Considering Millennials

 As Millennials continue getting more prepared and have extended spending power, it will be basic to consider their effect as you promote your business. Associations that do this in 2020 will find uncommon accomplishments.

 Here are a couple of various approaches to pull in Millennials to your picture:

 Attract with your gathering of onlookers via web-based media. Respond to comments. Post stimulating and intriguing substance on the stages they use most (Instagram, we're looking at you).

 Think about creation an application. In the event that it looks good for your strategy, a solicitation is an uncommon technique to have a fast path for correspondence with Millennials.

 Arrange convenience. Twenty to thirty-year-olds are known for requiring fast information. They've grown up with the web and are acclimated with having the choice to find what they need super quickly. Give content on your site that fulfills this need, and Digital Marketing Agency Manchester  be productive with this measurement.

 In all that you do, endeavor to consider your advertising far as Millennials. They're the possible destiny of the economy.

 For help zeroing in on your computerized promoting, set up a free.

 5. Use Chatbots

 The robots are here. Okay, less, yet chatbots are here, and in 2020 will be a higher need than at some other time!

 What are chatbots? They are a PC program planned to re-establish conversation with human visitors. They can be completed on your site or be set up through advising applications like Facebook courier.

 Chatbots are an exceptional technique to mechanize customer affiliation yet do it in an unmistakable, interfacing way. They can moreover save your gathering a lot of time and assist you with declining the size of your customer care gathering.

 With stages Like SendPulse, you can make your very own Messenger chatbot and with no coding experience.

 Various associations use them as a screening instrument. Here is an ordinary circumstance.

 Another visitor goes to your site to get comfortable with your things. A discussion window jumps up and asks with respect to whether they're another visitor.

 They answer truly, and a short time later, the chatbot asks them what things they're excited about. They can peruse a drop-down, and from that point forward, the chatbot can ask regarding whether they'd prefer to design a free demo with an operator.

 With no human cooperation, you at present have a certified lead that you understand requirements to talk about a particular thing with a sales rep. Conversation about an inconceivable edge!

 This is just one way to deal with use chatbots. There are such a critical number of expected results!

 6. Take in Social Media Influencers

 Lately, online media influencers have created in pervasiveness and impact, and they'll continue doing as such in 2020.

Follow On:  Facebook & Twitter

Connect With:  Linkedin

Subscribe On:  Youtube

[shirlleycoyle]

Disc-Free Gaming Is an Archival Nightmare

Carly Kocurek is the author of Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade (Minnesota, 2015) and Brenda Laurel: Pioneering Games for Girls (Bloomsbury, 2017).

Microsoft’s new Xbox One S launching May 7 boasts “disc-free gaming,” a feature that has already raised issues about ownership and access for players. However, the upcoming xCloud game streaming service indicates Microsoft may be moving towards streaming as a dominant distribution model. If the goal is to migrate away from downloads entirely, the new Xbox disc-less console is the harbinger of what could be a pretty grim trajectory for video game history.

According to Andrew Borman, Digital Games Curator at the Strong Museum of Play, there is currently no model for preserving playable versions of streamed games.

“Other than video, which is a key part of preservation and what we do, there is no record of the game,” Borman told me. “We can’t see the files and the elements of the game including art and story. We have no means to revive the game so that it can be played not just now, but decades from now. The idea of ownership disappears in this model. You have a license to use that for as long as the company wants to let you play the game.”

The diversity of films readily circulating has declined sharply because of the dominance of streaming. For example, Netflix started as a mail-order movie-rental service offering hard-to-find foreign films and cult favorites alongside new releases. However, as the service has shifted to focus on streaming, the number of titles has compressed. As of 2015, Netflix’s disc library included just 7,500 titles, much of it television—and if that sounds like a lot, consider that Chicago video store Odd Obsession has at least 20,000 titles.

Many movies are not digitized and ownership of current copyrights can be ambiguous, making digitization efforts difficult. Movies drift on and off streaming services due to complex issues including licensing of the movies themselves or even of the soundtracks. This drift creates holes in history and presents sometimes weird challenges; a film professor I know reported recently having to run a class screening of the 2006 movie Shortbus from Pornhub, the only site that had it available. Disc-free consoles and streaming services similarly present an acute challenge for historians and archivists. While digital distributors like Steam have driven the move to the cloud, most of these still allowed downloads. Newer streaming platforms remove that possibility, which means access is entirely dependent on the corporation.

I serve on the board of directors for the Learning Games Initiative Research Archive, one of the largest collections of video games and related artifacts. Co-director Judd Ruggill says streaming raises fresh challenges for an area of collection and preservation that is nascent.

“There’s a reason this model works well for game companies—there’s security and the ability to update constantly or create additional content, but the number of dependencies and scale of operations is huge,” Ruggill said. “We’re trying to imagine how to save games in the past, and we have ideas, and we’re starting to implement them, but going forward, when there’s no material object, it’s really tough. The industry isn’t super helpful.”

Media producers often don’t act as benevolent cultural stewards. Disney has carefully managed its own racist past, recutting Fantasia to remove racist caricature and, for decades, keeping Song of the South out of circulation as best they could. Game companies can exert control over versions of available games more easily with newer media forms. “Even if they were to re-release the game, you’re not necessarily getting the same experience that was available on day one of the original release, due to changes that have been made to the game. You only can play what the current developer wants you to play,” Borman said. This is perfectly reasonable from a corporate standpoint, but the effort to protect brand reputation can also shut down criticism and undermine future demands for accountability. Corporate histories—and corporate secrets—kept in corporate archives exist at a remove from the public’s cultural memory.

If streaming becomes the new norm, corporate control of today’s games may persist for decades and games may fall out of access or even disappear entirely. I don’t think Microsoft is going to fold, taking its game library with it, any time soon, but nobody in 1979 would have guessed Atari’s decline, either. There is a huge difference in the problems presented by streaming in the present tense and the 40 years from now – I’m most concerned with the latter.

Preservation standards and practices in video games are less well defined than those for film, television, or other established media forms. Today’s archivists, a mix of professionals and committed collectors, are already unsure of how to handle emerging forms due to the complex interdependencies between software, hardware, servers, and networks. The Library of Congress holds physical copies of games submitted by producers and distributors, but there is not an established way to submit games that can’t be sent in as a complete hard copy.

“Some game companies pack up everything and send it to Iron Mountain, and theoretically you could construct virtual machines and everything from that, but the likelihood of doing that is very low,” Ruggill says. “Everyone interested in these things whether it’s at a high scholarly level or just in general is going to be in trouble.”

Disc-Free Gaming Is an Archival Nightmare syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[techscorn]

You know what's a nightmare? Buying a game disc, only to be forced to download and install a 6-8GB "patch" before playing. Shipping around content on pieces of plastic isn't all rainbows and kittens. via Motherboard

Carly Kocurek is the author of Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade (Minnesota, 2015) and Brenda Laurel: Pioneering Games for Girls (Bloomsbury, 2017).

Microsoft's new Xbox One S launching May 7 boasts "disc-free gaming," a feature that has already raised issues about ownership and access for players. However, the upcoming xCloud game streaming service indicates Microsoft may be moving towards streaming as a dominant distribution model. If the goal is to migrate away from downloads entirely, the new Xbox disc-less console is the harbinger of what could be a pretty grim trajectory for video game history.

According to Andrew Borman, Digital Games Curator at the Strong Museum of Play, there is currently no model for preserving playable versions of streamed games.

“Other than video, which is a key part of preservation and what we do, there is no record of the game," Borman told me. "We can’t see the files and the elements of the game including art and story. We have no means to revive the game so that it can be played not just now, but decades from now. The idea of ownership disappears in this model. You have a license to use that for as long as the company wants to let you play the game.”

The diversity of films readily circulating has declined sharply because of the dominance of streaming. For example, Netflix started as a mail-order movie-rental service offering hard-to-find foreign films and cult favorites alongside new releases. However, as the service has shifted to focus on streaming, the number of titles has compressed. As of 2015, Netflix’s disc library included just 7,500 titles, much of it television—and if that sounds like a lot, consider that Chicago video store Odd Obsession has at least 20,000 titles.

Many movies are not digitized and ownership of current copyrights can be ambiguous, making digitization efforts difficult. Movies drift on and off streaming services due to complex issues including licensing of the movies themselves or even of the soundtracks. This drift creates holes in history and presents sometimes weird challenges; a film professor I know reported recently having to run a class screening of the 2006 movie Shortbus from Pornhub, the only site that had it available. Disc-free consoles and streaming services similarly present an acute challenge for historians and archivists. While digital distributors like Steam have driven the move to the cloud, most of these still allowed downloads. Newer streaming platforms remove that possibility, which means access is entirely dependent on the corporation.

I serve on the board of directors for the Learning Games Initiative Research Archive, one of the largest collections of video games and related artifacts. Co-director Judd Ruggill says streaming raises fresh challenges for an area of collection and preservation that is nascent.

“There’s a reason this model works well for game companies—there’s security and the ability to update constantly or create additional content, but the number of dependencies and scale of operations is huge," Ruggill said. "We’re trying to imagine how to save games in the past, and we have ideas, and we’re starting to implement them, but going forward, when there’s no material object, it’s really tough. The industry isn’t super helpful.”

Media producers often don’t act as benevolent cultural stewards. Disney has carefully managed its own racist past, recutting Fantasia to remove racist caricature and, for decades, keeping Song of the South out of circulation as best they could. Game companies can exert control over versions of available games more easily with newer media forms. “Even if they were to re-release the game, you’re not necessarily getting the same experience that was available on day one of the original release, due to changes that have been made to the game. You only can play what the current developer wants you to play,” Borman said. This is perfectly reasonable from a corporate standpoint, but the effort to protect brand reputation can also shut down criticism and undermine future demands for accountability. Corporate histories—and corporate secrets—kept in corporate archives exist at a remove from the public’s cultural memory.

If streaming becomes the new norm, corporate control of today’s games may persist for decades and games may fall out of access or even disappear entirely. I don’t think Microsoft is going to fold, taking its game library with it, any time soon, but nobody in 1979 would have guessed Atari’s decline, either. There is a huge difference in the problems presented by streaming in the present tense and the 40 years from now – I’m most concerned with the latter.

Preservation standards and practices in video games are less well defined than those for film, television, or other established media forms. Today’s archivists, a mix of professionals and committed collectors, are already unsure of how to handle emerging forms due to the complex interdependencies between software, hardware, servers, and networks. The Library of Congress holds physical copies of games submitted by producers and distributors, but there is not an established way to submit games that can’t be sent in as a complete hard copy.

“Some game companies pack up everything and send it to Iron Mountain, and theoretically you could construct virtual machines and everything from that, but the likelihood of doing that is very low,” Ruggill says. “Everyone interested in these things whether it’s at a high scholarly level or just in general is going to be in trouble.”

[blog-scrumptiouslyelec-blog]

thinking behind professional spiders live steam machined kit

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[tricitymonsters]

i saw the kickstarter update and you’re delaying the release bc of steam. couldn’t you still release on itch.io on the planned day? why delay them both?

MOSTLY it's because Steam is just a massive platform with an astronomically larger audience TCM could potentially reach. If I split traffic between two sites that could negatively impact TCM has across both- since an earlier release on Itch could convince people not to check it out on Steam later + because launch day on Steam has extra visibility across their whole marketplace. If TCM is going to have longterm viability, I've gotta do pretty much anything I can to capitalize on Steam's internal marketing tools.

[shirlleycoyle]

Disc-Free Gaming Is an Archival Nightmare

Carly Kocurek is the author of Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade (Minnesota, 2015) and Brenda Laurel: Pioneering Games for Girls (Bloomsbury, 2017).

Microsoft’s new Xbox One S launching May 7 boasts “disc-free gaming,” a feature that has already raised issues about ownership and access for players. However, the upcoming xCloud game streaming service indicates Microsoft may be moving towards streaming as a dominant distribution model. If the goal is to migrate away from downloads entirely, the new Xbox disc-less console is the harbinger of what could be a pretty grim trajectory for video game history.

According to Andrew Borman, Digital Games Curator at the Strong Museum of Play, there is currently no model for preserving playable versions of streamed games.

“Other than video, which is a key part of preservation and what we do, there is no record of the game,” Borman told me. “We can’t see the files and the elements of the game including art and story. We have no means to revive the game so that it can be played not just now, but decades from now. The idea of ownership disappears in this model. You have a license to use that for as long as the company wants to let you play the game.”

The diversity of films readily circulating has declined sharply because of the dominance of streaming. For example, Netflix started as a mail-order movie-rental service offering hard-to-find foreign films and cult favorites alongside new releases. However, as the service has shifted to focus on streaming, the number of titles has compressed. As of 2015, Netflix’s disc library included just 7,500 titles, much of it television—and if that sounds like a lot, consider that Chicago video store Odd Obsession has at least 20,000 titles.

Many movies are not digitized and ownership of current copyrights can be ambiguous, making digitization efforts difficult. Movies drift on and off streaming services due to complex issues including licensing of the movies themselves or even of the soundtracks. This drift creates holes in history and presents sometimes weird challenges; a film professor I know reported recently having to run a class screening of the 2006 movie Shortbus from Pornhub, the only site that had it available. Disc-free consoles and streaming services similarly present an acute challenge for historians and archivists. While digital distributors like Steam have driven the move to the cloud, most of these still allowed downloads. Newer streaming platforms remove that possibility, which means access is entirely dependent on the corporation.

I serve on the board of directors for the Learning Games Initiative Research Archive, one of the largest collections of video games and related artifacts. Co-director Judd Ruggill says streaming raises fresh challenges for an area of collection and preservation that is nascent.

“There’s a reason this model works well for game companies—there’s security and the ability to update constantly or create additional content, but the number of dependencies and scale of operations is huge,” Ruggill said. “We’re trying to imagine how to save games in the past, and we have ideas, and we’re starting to implement them, but going forward, when there’s no material object, it’s really tough. The industry isn’t super helpful.”

Media producers often don’t act as benevolent cultural stewards. Disney has carefully managed its own racist past, recutting Fantasia to remove racist caricature and, for decades, keeping Song of the South out of circulation as best they could. Game companies can exert control over versions of available games more easily with newer media forms. “Even if they were to re-release the game, you’re not necessarily getting the same experience that was available on day one of the original release, due to changes that have been made to the game. You only can play what the current developer wants you to play,” Borman said. This is perfectly reasonable from a corporate standpoint, but the effort to protect brand reputation can also shut down criticism and undermine future demands for accountability. Corporate histories—and corporate secrets—kept in corporate archives exist at a remove from the public’s cultural memory.

If streaming becomes the new norm, corporate control of today’s games may persist for decades and games may fall out of access or even disappear entirely. I don’t think Microsoft is going to fold, taking its game library with it, any time soon, but nobody in 1979 would have guessed Atari’s decline, either. There is a huge difference in the problems presented by streaming in the present tense and the 40 years from now – I’m most concerned with the latter.

Preservation standards and practices in video games are less well defined than those for film, television, or other established media forms. Today’s archivists, a mix of professionals and committed collectors, are already unsure of how to handle emerging forms due to the complex interdependencies between software, hardware, servers, and networks. The Library of Congress holds physical copies of games submitted by producers and distributors, but there is not an established way to submit games that can’t be sent in as a complete hard copy.

“Some game companies pack up everything and send it to Iron Mountain, and theoretically you could construct virtual machines and everything from that, but the likelihood of doing that is very low,” Ruggill says. “Everyone interested in these things whether it’s at a high scholarly level or just in general is going to be in trouble.”

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