It's been a long time since I actually stuck with an MMO, but whatever Wildstar is doing seems to be working on me. Succeeding in these requires, to my mind, some kind of obsession. Played in an ordinary way, the genre's tropes veritably ensure that it won't satisfy. Wildstar has more immediacy than most, in my opinion, but you gotta commit to this genre. I have discovered a level of obsession that is compatible with the rest of my life.
I mentioned Fates Forever last week and since then I’ve only gotten more into it. I’m playing it every single day and still loving it. I’m gonna drop the official gameplay trailer in here so you can get an idea of how pretty this game is:
I don’t remember where I saw the book Fluency recommended. I took a look at it though and it met all my book purchasing criteria. That is to say it had a spaceship on the cover (extra points if that spaceship is the Millenium Falcon). So I bought it and I was actually really digging it. A massive alien spaceship floating in space. A team of astronauts sent to investigate it. A strange alien presence. I was even okay with two of the astronauts falling in love. Then all of a sudden “She pulled ineffectually at the filmy tunic that was keeping his skin from her.”
We are working hard to get Thornwatch ready for our second major playtest, this time at PAX Prime. There will be a brand new adventure that will show off some new mechanics as well as feature a few tweaks we made based on feedback after PAX East. We’re also getting ready to send out our very first newsletter to folks who have subscribed. It should go out later today and I’ve included some cool behind the scenes stuff. I’ve taken some photos straight out of my Thornwatch sketchbook and will be including them with the news letter. You’ll be able to see how I sketch out an adventure as well as some early designs for the characters. Here’s a peek at one of the pages.
I was reading an interview with one of the producers on the new Transformers movie, and the thing that really got to me is that both the person asking the question and the person answering it thought they were communicating information.
My erstwhile companion Grabark has gone to The Wilds with his clan, and at last word he is still alive and apparently he is severely mistreating crabs.
So much of the current dialogue on Multiplayer is focused on social engineering slash incentivization structures, epitomized in the Riot Games milieu, where you sprinkle little bits of foil all throughout your UI and then empower Courts Of The People to adjudicate trials. By comparison, Nintendo has already reached the endgame content. They have defeated Onyxia, where Onyxia is not just a great wyrm but the representation of our will to harm one another. They have decided it's simply not worth it to allow people to talk to each other in most of their games. If you are looking to create an environment free of conflict, removing the humans from it is a great way to start.
The newest PAX happens in San Antonio, and it runs from January 23-25. You can enter the Queue for tickets here.
Applications for the Penny Arcade Scholarship are now open! Each year Penny Arcade recognizes one student with incredible potential to impact the game industry in some capacity with a $10,000 academic scholarship. Applicants come from many walks of life and disciplines, but they share the same passion for games and the games community. There are a few requirements:
After talking with some folks I went home and tried some stuff. I upgraded to Manga Studio 5.0.4 and wasn't getting the drawing lag I saw before. It still has the "hover lag" but that's just annoying not a deal breaker. I tried a bunch of different settings in Photoshop that people recommended and still could not get rid of the drawing lag. I'll draw another strip on it this week (this time using Manga Studio) and let you know how it goes. It seems like the majority of my frustration was coming from Photoshop and not the Surface which is good. Manga Studio is my preferred drawing program anyway but I figured the new Photoshop with its fancy tablet mode would be cool to try. To be totally fair the tablet mode in the new PS must be turned ion under "experimental features". So uh... maybe that stuff isn't quite ready for prime time.
More like MILD-Star, am I right people?
I am at the point of an illness where I don't remember what it was like before. Did I just... not hurt all the time? Was I less aware of my sinuses? Because right now I feel like I a gigantic sinus, rolling down the sidewalk, accumulating gravel.
I played some video games this weekend.
Fireworks are banned here, not that it keeps people from "discharging" them. I completely understand why a town might ban "recreational explosives," which frankly seems like a weird class of item, but I also have fond memories related to this specific breed of child endangerment. There is a consciousness threshold where I feel strongly compelled - as a father, as a man - to engineer a zone of Darwinian peril that will result in every child who is not vaporized being vastly improved. Except it's way, way down underneath the level that just wants to grill, which is itself far beneath the brittle ur-consiousness that wraps the whole of the world in terror. Luckily, I know a man more than willing to make "the bad decisions."