A midnight launch was not attended, let's get that out of the way. I have every faith that I would turn into a pumpkin, just like in the old story, where a man is too old and tries to hang with feral-ass youths. How real do you motherfuckers wanna get? I'm typing this post on my phone in the parking lot of Best Buy. Mr. Gribs got up at fuck o'clock and has hardware in his possession; everywhere I've been has only power supplies and grey Joy-Cons, storm-toss'd flotsam in the ravenous wake of the Switch.

This is all a real thing that happened. I've been there every day since it launched, in case we were able to play For Honor: For The Watch, and… well, here. Let my friend Kris Straub tell you all about the event, as though it were a Monster Truck Rally:

I have a whole new appreciation for the art of game design after watching Rodney Thompson and Mike Selinker inspect and construct Thornwatch. I knew I had a cool idea and some genuinely new mechanics but I had hit a wall. Rodney came in and looked at what I had done and saw all the little problems, but more importantly he saw what I wanted the game to do. He cut out old rules that only hurt that game and built new rules to support the Thornwatch I wanted. When Rodney isn't working at Bungie or helping me design Thornwatch, it turns out he is making his own game! Tycho and I actually played the game, and we both loved it. It's true! You can watch the video of it for yourself:

You'll be playing Horizon: Zero Dawn soon enough here, but since you need to manufacture practically every shot you fire from your weapons, it might be worth keeping an eye on what you're putting out. Sony's had fairly strenuous limitations on streaming the product, much more strenuous than you might think for a game whose reviews came out a week ago and are all incredible. I asked them, actually, because I wanted to stream it last Wednesday with Mr. Gribbz. Alas; there are authentic mysteries here, most people still don't know much about the game, and they want to safeguard that for as many people as possible

Hey! I backed Banner Saga hard, like, so hard that I got to write a Godstone for the sequel and create an item and stuff. I was asked to help with a promotion for The Banner Saga 3, and I know the second one was a rough ride for the studio so I said yes several times in rapid succession.

Horizon: Zero Dawn comes out on the 28th here in the States, and March 1st in Europe. My feeling is that you should buy it.

A torrent of generosity from the Internet washed the whole situation away, essentially - but there was an opportunity to make a lasting improvement to their Play Therapy department by supporting the playrooms and stock a new teen room they'd planned. Travis over at Child's Play did a write up that includes the overwhelemed response from the hospital; you can find it all here.

I like Star Wars, not as much as some but I do like it; there's always new words in there for me to learn. "The Last Jedi," as a piece of nomenclature in English, has a lot of potential weight and finality to it because of how "the" works. "The" abuts singular or plural nouns, and Jedi can refer to one or more completely mad star wizards. It is ambiguity adorned with uncertain, enigmatic fixin's; you're getting it coming and going.

I know that it totally looks like something we already have a mental construct for, one hundred percent, but it's not actually that.

He's up to his ass in Thornwatch shit, watchin' them thornz, but I was able to get him over to watch me lose a few times, which is really all I wanted. All I needed! Then he can go. I think my timing on this one was just wrong; I need to remember that he is like the MCP. In many ways, obviously, but chiefly in that he is surrounded by a whirling shield, and cultural projectiles must be carefully timed to pass through.

I have the official release that the Warehouse team put together down below, but: we have a warehouse, a big one, and if handling fulfillment isn't fulfilling for you or your company, I'd love to introduce you to my crew. Hit us up at biz@penny-arcade.com to talk more. But! We need a couple people down there, so I'll leave this up through the weekend. If the below sounds good to you, kick a resume over to pawhfulfillment@gmail.com. Here goes:

I'm always telling him to check out my shit, and he's always telling me to check out his; the joke is that we don't really do that. But I think I'm gonna look at his "whatever it is" this time and actually try to understand it.

Hey! The shirts I was telling you about just hit. The Omin and Jim ones!

Beat-the-shit-out-of-players survival games are a thing, an entrenched thing, and making players naked and terrified is just an outward manifestation of the mechanical goal, I suppose.

The ritual one undertakes unlocking heroes in Fire Emblem Heroes creates a kind of dangerous, addictive momentum. Each time you go to expend your Orbs and summon stalwart allies, you draw an initial hand of five "stones" that you can choose from to become a character. But. Each new stone you turn over is cheaper than the last one, so not turning over all five is as difficult as not eating an entire cylinder of Pringles. For me. Maybe you can do that: maybe it's possible for you to pop, and then, having popped, stop. I've never been able to.