The school district has granted us access to a nightmare warren of a website, topped by a ring of teetering plinths which gesture at a God that died a thousand years ago. It works differently on every device you use to view it, and has a fey sorcerer's mercurial air. One thing I was able to extract is that the only people making their kids do any of this shit were like… us, and one other person.

I have a lot of thoughts about how Media currently functions; I just deleted most of them. My doom, as always, is to understand at some level that everyone is doing the best they can in their local circumstances while also being conscious of the fact that the lattice that's been constructed around us essentially pulps and juices creators and audiences alike. This arrangement does serve somebody, but you and I have never met this person. It's arguable at some level that they can't be met: We've fashioned a kind of Omnissiah with these algorithms that drive and reward engagement, and we're determined to worship it even if it results in the self-replicating shit blizzard we currently "enjoy."

The Razor Crest is a really cool set, with many creature comforts, but if you didn't decide that you wanted it a while ago you are now subject to the same Chaos Winds that have made 2080's cost the same as a 3080 and a 3080 cost Fuck You.

I bought Caves of Qud in 2017, installed it, and then recoiled as though from as asp. An asp with chlamydia.

So, now that Cyberpunk 2077 has reached its nadir - with everyone offering refunds, getting delisted from the Playstation store, CD Projekt's stock price in the shitter, and investors considering a class action lawsuit - it seems like a good time to talk about the things I liked about the game. Purely just as a chance of pace.

Gabriel saw Tenet, or TENET, or whichever one is the correct one, but it sorta seems like it was the same as not seeing it...? Maybe it was like seeing it in reverse, or "unseeing" it. Powerful, if true.  Its director is angry that there is a pandemic and it changed some of the business assumptions that were thought of as material truths. I understand how it must feel. But I also think this shift has been en route for some time, and this is just us seeing those forces at work, as though visible through a faultline.

Thursday night is race night and the Penny Arcade iRacing league will be hitting the oval this evening. I did the practice race last night and had a pretty rough go of it. These cars are tuned super loose and it's very easy to lose it on the turns. By the end of the practice race I felt a little more comfortable behind the wheel but I'm super nervous about tonight. These oval races tend to be action packed. I'll be opening up the Pit Crew at 7:30PT to start with some more practice before the race actually starts. See you tonight!

Chris Pine might be "attached," I assume by a length of chain or rope, to the Dungeons & Dragons film. As for the strip, obviously no. But! If you've ever seen him with his hairs mowed real close to the ground he's basically there. A movie that is essentially a fantasy heist film, like the sort of shit we get up to at the table anyway, maps the concepts we like onto a structure that's perceptible by humans broadly. That's the sort of thing you could actually get made, it seems like. Also: read The Black Company. Consider this my annual request.

I don't remember the last time a developer came out publicly and offered refunds for a game at this level of expectation - one that hadn't been out for a week. I don't know if that's because it's exceedingly rare or if it's because it's never happened before.

Monster Train shares a lot of dynamics with Slay The Spire, a game I think it's fair to say will go down in, you know, the… game scrolls or whatever as a pinnacle achievement. God only knows how many hours have been eaten by this game? Before Coronaworld, Ryan and I would played STS (as it is known by rough and worldly youths) in beta and release for over a year and never got tired of it. And that was before I started spelunking its Steam Workshop, a septic fuckhouse where every twisted mechanical fantasy was made flesh.

I have coming up on fifty hours of Minion Masters, which may not seem like much - as I understand it, there are much larger numbers - but when you take into account the fact that a round of the game takes a few minutes at most, it's an incredible amount of play density. It's a deckbuilding strategy game similar to Clash Royale, except where Clash Royale maintains the MOBA concept of Towers, you're essentially going face with every unit you send over - hindered only by the units you've placed in their way. I'm back now after a long hiatus, and I expected to get fucking trashed, but (at least here in the genteel Platinum rank) it's still possible to play your way out of serious jams.

One of the best parts about PAX Aus for me is that there is a crazypants movie theater right next door to the venue where the show is held, a place with the deeply Aussie appellation Jeff's Shed. It exists in an array of theaters, actually, executed in a spectrum of fancitude. Some resembled the theaters you know. Some are the kind where you basically have fucking recliners and shit plus a button that will indicate to the proprietors that you are not drunk yet and it's a situation you'd like to resolve in the near term.

The Child's Play auction is this Thursday Dec. 10th! They've just added all of the silent auction items to the website so you can start browsing today. Keep in mind that if you want to bid come Thursday, you will need to purchase a ticket to the auction.  There will also be a live auction portion of the evening hosted by none other than Interweb celebs Kate Welch and Kris Straub! I've offered up a few items this year that will be a part of this section of the show. Three of my original acrylic paintings as well as an original color illustration by me of your D&D character. So head over to the site and check out the silent auction items and then buy yourself a ticket for the event this Thursday! 

When they want to craft another ambiguous Xbox platform, they should consider the nomenclature we deploy in today's strip - although from the sounds of it, there's just some performance weirdness generally on the new equipment. It's not a hundred percent clear depending on the game what's going on sometimes with the new hardware, and I have a ton of questions about it, because on paper these the new flagship systems are the sort of dragons you might find casually gnawing on the roots of Yggdrasil. I can't stress enough: I would have used that reference even if we weren't talking about the new AC. 

Join us tonight for the first race of the new season! After a week off, the Penny Arcade iRacing league is back at it. The Pit Crew will open at 7:30 PT

Among its other virtues, Leonard Cohen's famous song is a masterclass on how to rhyme things with hallelujah. You might not think you need to know that kind of stuff, but you never know. Could be a manticore type deal, spectral bride situation kinda thing. Knowledge is power.