#sometimes I think about going back to an early minecraft version just for the old mods | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

zehecatl · 3 years ago

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rec post for @f-eef that got too long for its own good, and is now just. a general rec post i guess

(as of writing, today is the steam summer sale! writing this before that goes live, so no guarantee everything on here is on sale, but! most of these are older games, so it’s likely. keep them in mind~)

- Iconoclasts my absolute favourite game, ever (along with OFF, but shh), if you check out one game from this list, let it be this one. it’s a genuinely almost flawless package, with gorgeous pixel art, fun gameplay, a really good story, and a cast of characters i just. adore. it’s so so so good, and three years later, i’m still not over it

- The Binding of Isaac so there’s this genre called roguelikes, wherein the whole gimmick is that, when you die, you gotta start from the Very Beginning; and the ‘point’ is getting better and better at the game, until you win! it’s super easy to just, play a few runs (they generally don’t last that long!), and then go on with your day, so it’s a really fun game to just waste time in, if you just wanna chill with some game. and, in my personal opinion, Isaac is the best roguelike game, with so much stuff to unlock, a whole slew of items to play with, and so much content it’s kind of unreal. i definitely think the DLCs are worth picking up, but it’s mostly for more content than like. actually being necessary

- Terraria it’s minecraft, but 2D. unlike MC, it’s got a bit of guidance, which i personally prefer, with bosses to fight and such. an absolutely BLAST with other people too

- A Hat in Time a 3D platformer, ala Mario, that’s just. super charming. it’s also really fun to play. i haven’t actually played the DLC’s, since i played it way back, but i’ve heard good things about Nyakuza Metro, which does look super slick, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

- Slime Rancher you are a slime rancher. you ranch slimes. it’s honestly just wholesome as hell, and just exudes happy vibes. mostly for running around and collecting slimes, ngl

- The Messenger really funky retro game, wherein you play a ninja on a mission. it’s primary draw is definitely in its gameplay, but there’s a surprising amount of story for this kind of genre? i honestly really just like this one. it’s neat

- Underhero you play as a cute minion, who kind of like. managed to kill the hero. and whoops, guess you’re doing his job now? it’s got that undertale vibe, though i’d say it’s less polished than it. HOWEVER, it’s absolutely lovely and it’s climax is REALLY good

- Hatoful Boyfriend bird dating sim. trust me. the ‘secret’ finale route is just. *chef’s kiss* fantastic

- Night in the Woods if you don’t mind having a very poignant sad time, oh my god, i could not recommend NITW more. it perfectly captures that period when you’re done with school, and suddenly your whole life is stretching before you, and you feel so so fucking lost, and overwhelmed and pained with it. it’s just. so good. a sadness worth experiencing

- Shovel Knight another retro game! this one is, pretty much, the king of the genre, and for very good reasons. the first one (shovel of hope) doesn’t have much story, but the latter ones really add on it. they’re honestly just, really solid games! with funky knight characters!!!

- Hyper Light Drifter man, it’s just a masterpiece. everything about it is perfect. it’s been like, five years, and it’s still one of the very best indie games

- Tell Me Why it’s currently free for june! and it’s a story game! plus, if you like the genre, the devs got the ‘Life Is Strange’ serie(s) to delve into!

- Cat Quest honestly, i just really like this little game. the gameplay is SO much fun, and everything else is just. really charming :’)

- Yoku’s Island Express metroidvania, where you play as a dung-beetle post officer, and the gimmick is that it’s pinball-y! it’s really fun, and very cute and just an all around good time :)

- Owlboy you play as an owl boy! named Otus! and you can fly around, and there’s GORGEOUS pixel graphics, and a neat story, and just. the BEST cast of characters. it’s delightful

- Yuppie Psycho + Count Lucanor just gonna bundle these two together, because they’re both REALLY GOOD. YP is the newer one, and is therefore probably ‘the better one’, but i like them both a ton! they’re 2D horror, but i wouldn’t say they’re that spooky? though that might just be because they’re pixel games! you explore spooky place, and weird stuff happens around you. just a really fun time :)

- Angels of Death my FAVOURITE rpgmaker game, it’s main draw is, a 100%, the main characters and the relationship that develops between them. i just love it a whole lot, and it’s got that lil’ tinge of horror that i, personally, fucking adore. there’s actually an anime based on this, but i haven’t seen it myself!

- Celeste curve ball! it’s a 2D platformer! it’s really good, got a ton of accessibility features, and has like. the tightest gameplay- and, on top of that, surprisingly emotional story!

- Bastion putting Bastion here, because it’s actually the only one i’ve properly played, but you could probably buy any of the Supergiant Games, and come out satisfied. Bastion is the oldest of the bunch, and is definitely a bit less polished for it, but i personally adore it; the gameplay probably hasn’t aged that well, but i think the story and presentation more than makes up for it

- The Darkside Detective funny point and click adventure, with great wit, and a pair of characters i kind of simply adore. it’s main draw is definitely its humour

- Littlewood very wholesome and chill farming game, that feels more like an RPG than something like stardew valley- i’d not recommend it over SV, but if you want more of SV, Littlewood might scratch that itch!

- Pony Island + The Hex absolutely adore both of these, though if i had to rec only one, it’d probably be Pony Island? they’ve both got that undertale-off vibe, though Pony Island definitely leans harder into it. very interesting plays, both of them

- Oxenfree another horror-ish game! primarily story-focused, but oh boy, what a story! i’m a BIG fan of this game, and the sequel was recently announced too! definitely worth a look if you like ghost shenanigans

- Creature in the Well wasn’t a 100% sure if i should rec this, but beside the finale boss, i really enjoyed my time with this! it’s this weird pinball inspired hack and slash, with some amazing vibes

- Kindergarten 1 + 2 they’re just fun little games okay. the 2nd is much more fleshed out, but the 1st one is really fun too

- the Henry Stickmin collection I JUST... LIKE THESE GAMES A LOT... i think you can find the old versions somewhere on the internet, if you wanna check them out first? idk, they’re fun!

- LIMBO + INSIDE personally, i like INSIDE more, but both of these are classics, and also they’re made by a danish team, and i like them a WHOLE LOT

- The Final Station i could not tell you why i like this game as much as i do, but oh my god. i love this game? it’s got a dying world, neat pixel graphics, big zombie apocalypse vibes, and a weird little story

- Year Walk i love Year Walk :)

- Smile For Me if you liked undertale’s lovely cast of characters, oh boy, you’d likely LOVE this game! it’s really, really, fantastic, and the epilogue (not in the actual game lol) hit me right in the feels

- Pikuniku just a fun little game! there’s not really much there, in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a wonderful little play, one of those games that just sets out to give you a good time, and absolutely success. i like it a lot :’)

- A Short Hike wonderful game, where it’s more about exploring the island than actively finishing the game. it’s real wonderful

- ULTRAKILL ANOTHER CURVEBALL! no idea if you like FPS, but oh my god. ULTRAKILL is so fucking good. just an absolute blast to play. there’s a demo to check out, and i’d definitely recommend it, because if it’s a genre you might like, you’ll love this one (OH also it’s in early access, which means it’s not finished yet! personally, i don’t mind that, especially considering this is more gameplay focused, but ya’ know!)

- My Friend Pedro it’s honestly just really fun to play, and sometimes i still think about the implied lore, and go all !!!!

- Little Misfortune another point and click! this one is pretty short, and is set within the same universe as their other game, Fran Bow, which is much bigger, but idk. i like this one. it’s dark cute

- This Strange Realm of Mine i honestly dunno how to explain this one, because it’s kind of weird and a bit odd, but i really like it, in all its weird poetic glory. it’s neat!

- Donut County you’re a terrible racoon who’s ruined the whole city with holes. it’s great and i love it

- OneShot another ‘gives me undertale vibes’, though this one was in development before UT, if i recall correctly! it’s so good, and it’s got some fantastic meta bits, and i love Niko. i love Niko so much

- Inmost gorgeous vaguely spooky game with a neat story... my favourite genre

- Sayonara Wild Hearts i’d call this more of a spectacle than anything else, but oh my god. what a spectacle it is! the OST is amazing, everything about it just hits right, and even if you suck at the gameplay (which i did), it really doesn’t matter, in my opinion? it’s just great all around!

#ze.txt #the sale likely just went live so #steam sale #hope there's something here to your taste feef!#i honestly haven't been playing any 'real' games in. A WHILE? so all of these are older-ish #and there's a bunch of good new games out there!#but here's my little rec post of older games :')#that i have. actually played #i think inmost is the only one i never finished? plus TECHNICALLY oneshot since it got a BIG update after i played it but shhhh #also TECHNICALLY also ultrakill but that's in ea so it doesn't count okay #i just love ultrakill so much. i had to rec it. I HAD TO #also keep in mind some of these probably require a mouse!! i know ultrakill DEF does #but you might have one?? i usually play on my big pc so i. would not know #oh also DST does have a single player version which is very good also

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aonogifreactions · 4 years ago

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Minecraft headcanons no one asked for

a/n: olcvfgmlkfm this hit me so randomly i dont even know. enjoy!! under the cut due to length!

★ Characters: Rin, Yukio, Mephisto, Amaimon.

★ Words: 1,6k.

Rin:

this sweetheart loves playing with you whenever you ask him to! it relaxes him a lot, plus just having fun with you is making him really happy.

he stays somewhere near you, ALWAYS. he’s way too embarrassed to admit he’s scared (same Rin, same), so whenever he yelps or jumps on his bed because he heard a zombie growl, you can laugh as much as you want, but don’t be surprised if he shoots a glare at you and pouts.

he’ll bring you whatever you want. wood? fine. iron? no problem, he’s already on his way to find a cave (even if he’s afraid of caves.. he’ll do it for you).

he’s not very good at building, so usually he leaves it to you, and it doesn’t really matter whether you live in a “house” made out of dirt or a full ass mansion; no matter what your building skills are, he’s gonna praise you anyway.

sucks at parkour. DON’T ask him to play a parkour map, he’s gonna whine and barely make one jump.

speaking about bad jumping, he’s really clumsy and somehow always ends up with the highest death streak. for example, he’s sprinting to kill a pig, but somehow doesn’t notice a fucking lava pool below him and jumps right into it. accidentally hits a zombie piglin (or pigman, depends on what version you play on) and he’s dead.

HOWEVER, he’s the guy who gets really lucky. do you remember/have a person/friend that always manages to get diamonds first? yep, it’s him. gets the best enchants. both on books and tools or armor. he also gets the ender dragon kill first too.

he won’t play without optifine and texture pack other than the default one. he hates it. his fave is faithful and if it doesn’t work, he’s constantly commenting on how the default one is hurting his eyes.

he will NOT survive listening to both disc “11″ and “13″ he hates it. don’t play it unless you want him to cry.

hasn’t played alpha nor beta versions, but he likes watching vids of it! he gets very nostalgic, which honestly bewilders him because he started playing way after beta. sometimes you can catch him listening to the old soundtrack all teared up, or falling asleep to it.

LOVES GREEN PARROTS. one of them is named after you.

MAY I INFORM YOU, HE DOES PLACE HIS BED TOGETHER WITH YOURS.

Yukio:

unlike rin, he’s always complaining about you asking him to play, but he’s obviously gonna do it (because he loves u,, even if he says he doesn’t). it also relaxes him, but mostly, he likes it because he’s able to get his mind off of “adult things” and finally get some rest.

wooo, he’s the brave one. he isn’t afraid of zombie gurgles or anything like that, so he’s always going to caves first (and gets lost because he’s literally going deeper and deeper FDMKFMV). however, there’s one thing that always startles him... cave sounds. he doesn’t scream, but if you’re near him, you can sometimes witness his character spinning or jerking his head in another direction because of it vcxkvnjhbv

don’t, i repeat, dON’T make fun of him afterward. he’s gonna go all the way back to you and kill you (and then go back mining.. like nothing happened).

the perfectionist. always mines all the resources he sees; during building something he also always makes sure everything’s proportional. gladly counts blocks for you, if your brain can’t work anymore.

now, building! not very skilled with building houses, but he likes building simple decorations, like fountains, gardens or farms. despite him always claiming it’s bad, his work always looks very detailed. not very good with ideas of those things at first, so mainly at the beginning he always finds some inspirations on the internet, but later gets the hang of it and builds his own ideas!

his favorite place to have a house in is somewhere near the ocean.

likes default textures. too used to have anything else.

doesn’t like listening to in-game music, unless it’s something from beta or alpha versions (like “Haggstorm” or “Wet Hands”). Usually listening to his own favorite songs on Spotify.

His favorite disc is “Far”. It used to be “Cat”, but due to him obtaining it like 3000 times he stopped liking it. nor hearing it anywhere near.

when he goes out to get resources and/or food, he comes back with full inventory and shulkers, just like a father that’s about to feed his kids. minimum 10 stacks of iron, coal blocks and food. the nearest 10k chunks of caves is already explored, so you better be ready for a long, lONG WALK to get something new.

he’s also fond of beta versions, but rarely plays them without you.

Mephisto:

this motherfucker wants to literally speedrun every fucking game. meanwhile you’re busy making a wooden pick, he’s out there typing “can’t wait to beat the dragon and get elytras~! ★”

remembers literally every recipe for all items and alchemy. personal minecraft wikipedia right there.

he MUST have a fucking mansion, otherwise, he isn’t playing. fortunately, he’s tried building before, so he’s perfectly capable of building one himself. it’s all made out of pink wool and concrete, along with white concrete accents here and there.

adding to the previous one, he also has a great decorating sense. the rooms look very good, space is filled nicely and is both pretty and practical. the mansion itself looks very good on outside and inside.

of course, the main bedroom that’s designed especially for you two looks WAY TOO GOOD. I'm not even gonna start on him messing with plugins and making it even prettier.

his skin is a random, pink anime girl.

master with redstone. everything’s automated, there also might be hidden rooms with surprises. there’s a hidden shrine dedicated for you. he hasn’t told you about that though... >_>

even though he gets many useful things from the swamp biome, like lily pads or that cyan flowers, he hates this biome with a burning passion. if he sees it anywhere near his render distance he’s spasming and immediately voicing his annoyance. hates that specific, “dirty and unsightly” green water and grass color.

he doesn’t do much mining, but happily goes with you if you ask him to. even if he has no armor on, he never dies. NEVER. there might be 6 creepers but he somehow survives their explosion.

not scared at all. he knows this game like the back of his hand. he might, however, attempt to scare YOU instead. on purpose. or accidentally hit you so you fall from a large height and die. if you get upset at him afterward, he’s gonna give you even better stuff you’ve had before.

HE LOVES PLAYING ALPHA AND BETA. he started to play probably around very early alpha, so coming back to such simpler times is making him somewhat nostalgic (even if he denies it). on those versions, he builds things that used to be popular back in the day, like simple towers of cobblestone or houses inside mountains. it hits him hard when old soundtrack plays.

Amaimon:

he’s very, very confused. first off, he’s not used to the game at all, but then, he googles almost any recipe or asks you thousands of questions about how to make things. after some time, he finally figures out that there’s a book with recipes in game.

he might steal your items, but usually, he gives you back better items. for example, you notice your iron pickaxe is missing, but suddenly he sprints into the house and throws at you diamonds.

oh, he’s aware of the existence of chests, but for some reason, he likes throwing various items at you. he runs off afterward, leaving you with everything on the ground.

don’t introduce him to bedrock edition, he hates playing minecraft with a gamepad, and will smash it immediately. java edition is the only help for this man.

he’s also clumsy, like Rin. he manages to do that less than him somehow, but he tends to die pretty often anyway. his deaths are the stupidest, sometimes he doesn’t even bother explaining it. he literally can die with gravel suffocating him.

once he goes to the nether, he doesn’t wanna go back to the overworld. he says something along the lines of it being similar to gehenna or whatever, but. no matter what version it is - pre- or post- update 1.16, he likes it and that’s it.

his favorite biome in the overworld is jungle - mostly because of the lively color of grass, but also tall trees. he likes having there treehouses and always asks if you can build one (because he sucks at building. even worse than Rin >_>). his fave in the nether is blue forest or basalt biome - however, he becomes mad quickly on the second one due to frequent gaps filled with lava and magma cubes.

he likes normal slimes though. he even has a pet slime!! QwQ

he named his pet slime after Behemoth. keeps it safe in a glass cube and checks on it regularly. Behemoth doesn’t know about it doe.

he bullies every single villager that’s within his sight. burns their homes. the only thing that survives is the iron golem because he thinks it’s cool.

plays with the basic Steve skin. partially because he doesn’t know how to change it and that he isn’t determined enough to look for any.

forgets that crouching exist and falls off almost every cliff or anything that’s considered high.

#Ao no Exorcist #blue exorcist #rin okumura #Rin Okumura x reader #Yukio Okumura #yukio okumura x reader #mephisto pheles #amaimon #Headcanon #Pure

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aoifeanamadan · 4 years ago

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After School Special

Fandom: Minecraft YouTube rpf (mcyt)

Word count: 6488

Relationship: DreamNotFound (DreamxGeorgeNotFound)

Summary:

The sky is blue, the sun is hot and Dream hates George.

Everyone knew Dream hated him, really hated him, all smug and sarcastic and closed off. Where Dream was friendly, loud and outgoing, George was quiet and pretentious. It was like he thought he was above everyone else.

Needless to say, neither of them were over the moon when they found out they had to spend two months working together in weekend detention.

Support this work on AO3 :)

Chapter Three: Rusty Swings

Dream was a winner, it was what he did. Ever since he was a kid, losing had always felt unnatural. It was wrong on a molecular level. The shame of it, the loss of control.

When he was younger, he used to challenge his older brother to wrestling matches. His brother thought it was fun, just some rough and tumbling. Dream on the other hand, Dream treated it like the Olympics. He would abandon any kind of formality if it meant he would win.

He would kick and scream, clawing and biting his brother. He ignored the feeling of skin under his nails, just focusing on winning. After the first few times, Dream’s brother stopped saying yes when Dream asked to wrestle. He counted that as a win.

He had the same spirit when it came to soccer. He had captained the school’s team to two state championship victories in two years. The entire school knew him, the entire state. They were the best team, in every soccer team of the entire state. They were winners.

It wasn’t all him, they were a great team, but Dream elevated them. When Dream got better, he brought everyone else along with him.

When college scouts came to watch their games, they were there to see Dream. But they couldn’t ignore the rest of the team. They worked as a unit, weaving and dodging as if they were all a part of one common entity.

Soccer was Dream’s life. He had been playing since he was a kid. It was easy. When he was playing soccer, he knew what he was doing. There were no big decisions to make, it was just get the ball in the net. It was as natural and breathing.

His talent was a huge added bonus, but even without it Dream thought he would still be playing.

Soccer was Dream’s life, but he now had other commitments. Well, one other commitment.

George.

More specifically, trying to figure out how to tell George he was going to need to reschedule the mandatory time they were meant to spend together. George was, in fact, the one who had managed to broker the weekend slots. He had saved the both of them from having to stay back after school three times a week. And, he had done it just so Dream would be able to keep going to his soccer training.

Considering all of this, it really was an annoying oversight that the soccer team had a training session scheduled for the exact time Dream and George had agreed to meet up. The fact that Dream had been the one to schedule it last month made it even more annoying.

So, Dream thought he justifiably worried about asking him to further change the arranged time. He had spent almost four days trying to figure out what to say, and how to say it without sounding like he was spitting in George’s face, when it struck him. The solution was so painfully obvious.

Dream was nothing if not consistent. He did the exact same thing he always did, the same thing he had always done. Lying on his bed, throwing his balled-up socks into a drawer across the room, he texted Sapnap.

Dream (10:41 am)

Ft?

Sapnap’s name was on his screen in seconds. Dream accepted the call.

“Sapnap, please help me.” Sapnap didn’t flinch. He just smiled warmly down the phone, a quiet giggle passing through the speaker.

“Okay Dreamie-Boy, calm it down. Whatever it is, it is not the end of the world. Chillax.” Sapnap had never stopped using chillax as if it was a regular verb, not since he started in 2011. Dream decided that right then was not the time to mention it - even if he wanted to.

“I can’t figure out how to reschedule with George.” Sapnap’s bark of laughter was not reassuring in the slightest.

“What?” Dream didn’t like the glee coming from Sapnap’s voice.

“I can’t figure out how to tell him I need to change our meeting time!” Dream hated the way his voice whined. “Dude.” Despite his best efforts to hang onto his panic, Dream felt the calm seeping in. The familiarity, it was an inevitable comfort. Sapnap continued. “You are a senior. ” “And?” Dream tried to throw one of his washed pairs of socks into the open drawer across his room. He missed. “I swear, sometimes you act ten years old.” His words were laced with annoyance but on his phone screen, Dream could see Sapnap smiling. He rolled his eyes. “Well, what do I do , Sapnap?” Instead of an answer, Dream was met with a change of scenery. His phone screen went to a close up of Sapnap’s face, to a blurry screen saying Paused. Sapnap had paused him to go to some other app on his phone.

“Chillax, and-” Dream’s frustration tipped over the edge.

“ Chillax is not a real word! Stop saying Chillax!” Dream groaned as another pair of socks missed his drawer. “Okay, well, hurtful. I know you don’t mean that. And I’ve texted George.” Dream froze.

“You what?” His words were full of warning. Saapnap either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“I just texted him, just there!”

“Sapnap! What the fuck? What did you even say? Oh my god, why would you do that?” Dream was cut off by a telltale ding emitting from his phone. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t move.

“I heard that!” Sapnap’s singsong taunt came from Dream’s screen.

George (10:48 am)

Cool

“Anything to say?” In FaceTime, Sapnap’s face was getting too close to the camera. Dream had to suppress his smile, he had to deal with George.

“Yeah, fuck you. And George says it’s cool.”

“Fuck you do, Dreamie-Weemie, Sapnap works his magic again!” Dream let his smile pass through, barely. Begrudgingly.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Sapnap was laughing as he hung up the phone. Dream was left alone with George’s text. He figured it was polite to reply.

Dream (10:49 am)

Sorry for not texting you myself

George’s reply was whizzing through the air in seconds

George (10:49 am)

its fine

Despite his common sense, Dream found himself replying. Every time George texted a reply, no matter how dry, how unenthusiastic, he kept trying to keep the conversation going. Eventually, he all but forced George out of his virtual shell.

Even as he was getting into Sapnap’s truck over an hour later, his face was stuck in his phone, in the conversation he had coaxed George into.

George (12:09 pm)

iron man will always be the best superhero. the whole mcu was built on his back that's just common sense

Dream (12:09 pm)

You sound like a nerd

George (12:10 pm)

well dont be rude

Dream (12:10 pm)

ughhh you sound like bad

You’d probably love him actually

George (12:11 pm)

Dream?

Dream didn’t think before replying

Dream (12:11 pm)

yeah ?

George (12:11 pm)

you know me and bad are like good friends

Dream ignored his burning cheeks as he got out of Sapnap’s truck and approached the soccer team. He had not known that.

The team were ready to go, as usual. They were dedicated kids. Dream had them running laps once he put his bag, and phone, in the changing room.

They were midway through a practice match, half of the team versus the other half, when Dream noticed him. George was leaning on the edge of the fence surrounding the pitch. He was early.

For Dream, an audience didn’t change his performance. He was good, he was always good. Behind all the training and technique was pure talent. A lot of the time, other players’ would bring along their girlfriends or some of their friends to hang around the training. Dream couldn’t have given less of a shit.

But there during that practice match, Dream felt something new. He hadn’t felt it at the State Championship. He hadn’t felt it when the scouts were analysing him. He hadn’t even felt it in his first-ever game back when he was 6 years of age. It was a kind of pressure, light and inconsequential. It was George’s eyes on him.

Normally when he was playing, there was a kind of understanding. The scouts knew he was good, the girlfriends and parents, the friends and families, the teachers, the coaches, even the other teams. They all knew Dream was good. They all expected him to play well. George was different. George didn’t give a shit what Dream was doing. He barely glanced at him. Somehow, the boy was more interested in his phone than Dream’s quest towards a hat trick.

He didn’t mind it, not really. It was just new. It was as if someone had gotten inside his mind and moved all the furniture ten centimetres to the left. If anything, he appreciated it. It kept him on his toes, gave him something to prove. It was another chance to see if he could up his game. Anytime he felt George’s eyes on him, it made him run faster, kick further, push harder.

The time went quick, and before long it was all over. Dream’s team had pummeled Sapnap’s, except for one goal. Sapnap had seen Dream’s weakness, he had stolen the ball right from under Dream when he was glancing over to see if George was looking.

After the handshakes, the water mixed with good-natured teasing, the lightening speed showers, Dream was left alone. His hair was dripping onto the hoodie he had pulled on. He was the last one in the changing room, he always was.

He told everyone it was because he was the captain. If anyone ever needed to talk, there was a sure place they could catch him alone. All they had to do was run back, claim a forgotten boot or hat, and he’d be there.

That was a part of it undoubtedly. But, if you stripped the layers back, peeled Dream’s skin away to look down at his pulsing core, you’d have seen privacy above all else. He kept to himself, minded his business. Other than Sapnap and Bad, no one fully knew him. And even that was pushing it. Sapnap and Bad knew the version of him that he showed. They saw some bad bits, but they’d never see the Dream that he hid.

They wouldn’t know the Dream that scrolled through Instagram on a Sunday night. They’d never know the Dream who cried when his toast got burned on a particularly stressful morning.

They saw him, the real him, but only the entertaining parts. They saw the anger and the tears, the elation and the subsequent fall, but they never saw him be boring.

If someone’s boring, they can be left. It’s easy to leave someone you don’t care about, and it’s easy to not care about someone boring.

So Dream let them see him, the real him, but only when it was entertaining. No one saw him alone in his room, watching podcasts on YouTube and folding his washing. That was the kind of person it was easy to leave. He couldn’t be that.

He kept it all to himself, the parts that didn’t fit into the Dream personality. Anything that didn’t match ‘State Champion Captain’. Anything that didn’t scream ‘Golden Boy’ was for his eyes only. No one can ruin something they don’t know about.

Dream was able to change his clothes quickly. He brought his body wash from home and he didn’t wash his hair. But, apparently, he wasn’t fast enough. Before he had his shoes back on, George was barging in, Sapnap trailing behind him.

“Sorry, I did try and stop him.” The grin on Sapnap’s face told a different story. Dream just rolled his eyes, grabbing his gear bag and leaving. They didn’t follow him out the door, but the room echoed. He could hear talking, mainly Sapnap.

“Wherever you guys end up going today, can you keep an eye on Dream? The adrenaline from training hypes him up too much. He might say something stupid and get punched.”

It was nice, to hear such solid proof that Sapnap knew him in the best way Dream would let him, that he cared so loudly.

“Oh, I get to see Dream being punched?”

George promptly snapped Dream out of his appreciation. Before Dream could move away from the door, they were walking on top of him. George’s smile dropped when he saw Dream eavesdropping, but Sapnap’s got bigger. He swiped for Dream. Despite Dream’s aching legs and exhausted lungs, he managed to dodge. Before Sapnap could swipe again, he was jogging towards the truck.

While Sapnap chased him, screaming about his stalker tendencies, George looked away, following slowly behind them. He had the decency to blush, slightly. Maybe manners weren’t completely dead just yet. Sapnap said his goodbyes before Dream could beg for a lift. He said he had ‘ errands to run ’. Which errands fell on the shoulders of an 18-year-old boy, Dream didn’t know.

Suddenly, it was all real. It was just George and Dream, staring at each other on an empty soccer pitch. Any words Dream tried to force out died in his throat. These were uncharted waters, George and him alone and civil.

To be George’s enemy was easy, but this new thing. This budding acquaintanceship. It was more complicated. It was so much easier to just go back to how it was, bitter and stinging. It was like a wound that had scabbed over, and Dream could never resist picking at a scab.

“Why are you here, George?” His tone was harsher than he intended, a cold contrast to the playful banter he had with Sapnap. Dream tried to ignore the split second of hurt he could see on George’s face.

“Sapnap got the time wrong.” George’s face was closed off again quickly. Dream felt guilt knocking at the door of his morality. He turned the key in the lock, determined to keep it out.

“Oh.” Dream hoped George couldn’t read minds. Because if he could, he would be able to see the way Dream’s conscience was floundering. This vague hatred was a lot less comforting when alone with someone.

Before Dream could ponder on George’s telepathic capabilities for too long, he was walking away. George’s back had turned on him.

Before Dream could make his protests known, George had turned his head in Dream’s direction.

“Come on, it looks like rain.” Dream glanced up, the sky was clear. He didn’t mention it. Instead, he followed George as he walked to the bus stop.

George took him to a café. It was a small place, quaint and cosy. The outside was a murky turquoise with glass panes everywhere. A pretentious coffee house. Dream thought it was a bit on the nose, even for George.

A tip jar was knocked over while George was ordering their drinks. Dream could hear the harsh clatter from the isolated table he had snagged them in the furthest corner. George’s face was burning red when he sat down with his americano and Dream’s hot chocolate, no marshmallows extra cream.

While George retrieved his things from his shoulder bag, folders, paper, pens, Dream started to think about the assignment. They were more complicated than they seemed, the speeches and the boys. The speeches had to have a five-page accompanying essay to explain how cooperation was beneficial, and to support all the points made in the five-minute speech. That was a page per speaking minute, if Dream’s maths was correct.

He tried to think, to plan how to go about it all. It was harder than he had expected. Most of what they had done the first day had turned out to be useless, upon Dream’s inspection when he got home. Before he could reach his epiphany, George was tearing him away from his introspection.

“I swear, if you keep doing that, I’m going to sew your eyelids to your kneecaps.”

Dream looked blankly at him, frozen in his confusion. George didn’t lessen up.

“Tapping your pen against the glass. Stop it.”

Dream hadn’t even realised he was doing it, an old nervous habit. Or it would have been, if Dream was the kind of person to get nervous.

He and George sat there, staring at each other. George didn’t look as embarrassed as Dream wanted him to. Dream didn’t look as sorry as George wanted him to.

“Please.” George looked like he had to force the word out of his mouth. The same George as always. Dream rolled his eyes, but he put down the pen.

“So,” Dream started them off. He was past the stage of letting any awkwardness seep in. “The speeches.” It took George a second to catch up, his mind was still at the counter where he had picked up all the coins individually.

“The speeches.”

The place to start seemed obvious to Dream,

“Tell me about yourself.”

George looked up at him, curious eyes and slouched spine. One of his eyebrows, just one, shot up. Dream rushed to clarify.

“I mean, for the speech. So I can write the speech.” George’s face didn’t change with the explanation. It was still staring at him from across the shitty coffee table. His brow was furrowed and his smile was appearing out of nowhere, slowly. Dream hated it. It was all so jarringly new, having someone in front of him who he couldn’t read.

George had this new kind of power over him. He’d felt it during the soccer training but here it was so much clearer. In the air between them, Dream was sure it would suffocate them both, that mantra of ‘what is he thinking ’, over and over. A constant roar. He was certain George could feel it too, he was giving himself away.

This wasn’t how Dream was meant to act. Dream was confident and collected, funny and commanding. Dream was the captain of the state goddamn champion team. Dream wasn’t on the edge of his seat, waiting to hear what George was going to say.

Before Dream could think himself off a cliff, George was breaking in.

“I fold my socks.” It seemed like a simple thing, but it stopped Dream mid-thought. It disarmed him completely.

Later, he would realise it was the idea that George did things that Dream didn’t know about that had caught him so off-guard. It was the realisation that Dream didn’t understand him as well as he thought he did, that he hated someone he barely knew.

From there, it got easier. George knew all the words to Doja Cat’s “Say So”. Dream had accidentally become a bit of a Barb, a title he had to explain to George, after his sister went through a Nicki Minaj stage. George pirated films from the internet. Dream had been leeching off his aunt’s Netflix for years. Dream thought zodiacs were stupid, but he always found himself looking his up. George loved astrology. They both liked the stars.

George proved Dream’s hypothesis from their meeting, the one held the previous week in Sapnap’s house. George was actually funny, and Dream didn’t mind being around him.

Eventually, George noticed the barista’s eyes shooting them daggers. Apparently, ordering a hot chocolate and an americano is not enough to warrant an hour of sitting time. They had to leave. George shouldered his bag and nudged Dream. He was trying to suppress his smile. It was all so different to the George Dream had known.

“Come on, let’s go.” He was already standing. Dream nodded up at him.

“Better to leave than to get kicked out.” George’s smile lessened.

“Is it?”

They walked through the streets, excited in a boring place.

They ended up in front of one of the city’s deserted playgrounds. No one wanted their kids to play somewhere you could find needles. Once he saw the empty swing set, Dream was running. George was zipping quick behind him.

Once they were on a swing set together, the competition was inevitable. Dream was swinging higher than George, but George was trying his best to dispute that.

Dream was throwing his full body weight into the swing, feeling his heels skitting along the floor, his legs careening through the air. He figured this must be what it feels like to fall, to jump. This floating feeling in his stomach, the lurch of it all. It must be what it feels like to fly.

George’s gleeful shrieks covered up the warning creaks of the rusty swing set. Dream wasn’t used to this kind openness around him. It was all so new, the giddiness. He tried to shift his swing into George’s path, the way his sisters used to when he was a few years younger. He got a slight kick in the back in response, but it was enough to dethrone him. He was left sprawled on the floor, George cackling behind him.

The time went too fast. Before long, they had tried everything in the playground. Dream was too tall for half of them, but he tried anyway. When he had stood on the swings, trying to copy George, he had banged his head on the bar supporting them. He could walk while doing the monkey bars.

They were back on the swings before long, swaying more than swinging. George was trying to make his swing work without any movement from him. Dream’s swing was drifting left and right. He didn’t do anything to put it back on the straight and narrow.

Dream’s mind was eating at him. The logic of it all didn’t add up. This was George, George , and George hated him. So why was he here, an hour over their mandatory time, on a rusty set of swings with him. Having fun, together.

“George?” The chains of the swing crossed over each other, trapping Dream between them. He threw his body weight the opposite way to free himself. A slow final battle.

“Dream.” George was looking at him, the same way he had been back in the café. All open eyes and open heart. Dream hated it.

“You hate me.” It wasn’t a question, Dream couldn’t bare a question. He just said it, hoping George understood.

George hummed in response, eyes locked on his shoelaces.

“I don’t.”

And that was it, that was what Dream was afraid of. This was skydiving without the parachute, he was freewheeling. Here he was vulnerable, here he was showing a soft spot. It was weakness.

He had always hated George, since age ten. And the reason, the pit of it all, it had always been because George hated him first . And George had kept hating him, for the last eight years. Without that, there was nothing there. Their hatred was the only thing binding them. But, it was apparently one-sided.

“Oh.” It was strangled. It was all Dream could manage.

“I could never do it.” George was still looking at him, unreadable. Always so unreadable.

“What?” Dream couldn’t look back at him. His eyes were locked on the soft ground below him. His voice was too strained.

“Hate you.” George’s voice showed no strain at all.

Dream hated the muffled ‘ Hmm ’ that left his throat in response. He didn’t understand how George could just say it.

Dream swung wordlessly, back and forth. Before the words had even entered his brain they were bubbling out of his mouth.

“Same.” It wasn’t eloquent, but George’s face showed that he understood. He had never hated him, not truly. Not in the real way, the irreversible way.

They were quiet then, just swinging together. George’s voice broke through the blanket of sedative still.

“You’re definitely not how I thought you were.”

Dream jumped at the opportunity.

“How did you think I was?”

George thought Dream was cocky. All he did was talk shit, and he could never back it up. Dream was quick to point out the two-state champion trophies his team had one, but George shook his head.

“No, not like that. I mean like, outside of sport.”

He was loud in class, talking over the quiet kids. And he never smiled at strangers in the halls. He never had his homework done on time, and he never got in trouble for it. He was mean, rough around the edges. George didn’t say cruel, but Dream could hear him thinking it.

He had figured that was what George thought he was - tough, angry, mean. But his edges weren’t that worn yet, he hadn’t learned enough to be tough.

He wanted to climb inside George’s skull and rearrange the pieces, sort it all out. It was true, a lot of what George said, but he wasn’t cruel. He was never cruel. He didn’t mean to talk over people, he was excitable. He didn’t notice the people in the halls, or the favouritism from the teachers

Above all, George thought he was fake. The act he put on, the loudness and confidence. He didn’t believe it.

Dream had thought the same about George. Alongside elitist, pretentious and stuck up. Also, plainwell rude. George listened as he explained it all.

“I just thought you thought you were like-” Dream looked up at the sky, letting his legs tilt-up above his body. He could feel blood rushing to his ears. “I don’t know. Like you acted like you were better than everyone else.”

George snorted. Dream’s head snapped towards him, incredulous.

“Kettle calling the pot!” George was smiling despite it all. It made Dream laugh as well.

“Actually though, why don’t you ever get involved? Like, ever.” Dream sat back up properly on his swing.

George just shrugged.

“I'd feel safer facing off a fucking pack of wolves." George’s voice was quiet, heading straight towards the ground. His feet kicked against the dirt. The swing wobbled.

Dream didn’t say anything, he didn’t think it was his place. He had never thought anything like that, it had never crossed his mind. He was Dream, being self-conscious wasn’t in his DNA. He wouldn’t have been able to bare it, the separateness of it all. He wouldn’t have been able to look in through the window at school life from the outside. But the way George was talking, muted and thoughtful, it made him want to understand.

Before he could think up a response, George was nudging his ankle.

“Come on, we should go. Before the sun sets.” George got up, started to collect his things.

Dream hadn’t noticed the shortening Autumn sunsets. He grabbed George’s sleeve.

“Watch,” he breathed, sacred. George’s limbs slowed, sinking him back to his swing.

Together, they watched the sun setting. The airy blues fading to dusty pinks, heavy orange. Before the sky was black, George was dragging Dream with him, mutters of Well, I’m not going to get mugged tonight Dream.

They ended up in the library, underused and underfunded.

Dream followed him inside, straight past the glaring librarian and up the stairs. He wasn’t used to it, following someone. Especially not George. But he knew the way and Dream didn’t, so he walked quietly behind him.

They turned a corner, and there they were. They were standing in a long corridor of computers, old and dusty. Dream wasn’t sure if it counted as a corridor, there was a wall at the other end, where the other opening should have been. There were long continuous desks on the two walls, and a computer every meter. They made the room thin enough to make them have to stand single file. He was practically standing on top of George, his toes brushing against George's heels.

Out of nowhere, George turned towards him. Dream flinched more than he would’ve wanted. They were left there, in the silence, George staring straight at him. Dream was a deer in headlights. He didn’t dare to move. They were barely inches apart.

“Dream, the door.” George’s voice was raspier in a whisper. His face was so close, Dream swore he could count the boy’s freckle. His lungs were burning, he had forgotten to keep breathing. “Dream?” George’s voice snapped him out of it.

“Right. Yes. The door.” He spun around, reaching for a doorknob to shut them inside the one ended corridor, but he was met with an empty space. There was no door. He heard George sigh in frustration. Dream felt his ears burning, he hated it.

“There’s no door.” He whispered it into the silence in front of him. George laughed, muted and soft.

“Here, show.” George tried to worm his way past Dream to get to the door, but the corridor was too narrow. His elbows banged into Dream’s gangly limbs, his knee hit the desk. His whispered shit came at the same time as the bang. They both froze, ears straining for any kind of ‘shhhh’ coming from downstairs. Nothing came. Either they both had bad hearing, or they were in the clear.

George managed to shove his way past a blushing Dream, where he easily grabbed the sliding glass door.

“Bullshit,” Dream muttered as George came back down the corridor towards him. George’s small, airy laugh accompanied the sound of Windows 8 booting up.

“Come on, get a seat. We’re under time pressure. I didn't expect you to be here for this.” One of the old computers was loading up a chess website.

“Wait, explain what’s going on now so you don’t have to midway through-” Dream paused. He didn’t know if whatever George was doing actually had a midpoint. “- midway through whatever you're doing.” Dream ignored George’s rolling eyes.

“Speed chess. Chess plus speed. Not hard to figure out Dreamer.”

Dream didn’t think George had noticed his quiet nickname, it made his heart stutter.

“Speed chess?” Dream looked at the screen. Rightfully so, there was a chessboard on it.

“Speed chess.” George pressed start.

Dream watched the pieces move, whizzing across the screen. It was like soccer, the speed of it all. The pace. Dream loved the quickness. Before he could catch his bearings, there was a banner on the screen and a smiling George was talking.

“So, that’s speed chess. But now I have to play an actual game. Against an actual person. It’s a tournament, every week. Normally it’s after school, but it got moved this week. And, Dream, I swear to god if you ruin this for me-” Dream cut him off before he could finish the thought. He knew George well enough now to know where it was going.

“I know, I know, you’ll kill me, no one will ever find my body, blah blah blah.” Dream ignored the way his heart lit up when George laughed.

George logged in and hit start.

Dream didn’t know anything about chess, he had never played and he never planned to. But he didn’t need to be a genius to tell that after a minute, George was losing. It was the furrow of his brow, the frown line set in his skin. It gave him away.

"You...do not look happy." Dream didn’t know how to help him, but judging by George’s gritted teeth, commentary was not the way to go.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

Before another minute had passed, there was a banner on the screen pointing out George’s loss. The ‘ Better Luck Next Time, Player!’ didn’t feel very sincere to Dream.

One glance at George and it was clear he was disappointed.

“Sorry, George.” Dream lowered his eyes from the screen. It felt disrespectful to even look at the message of pity. George shrugged his shoulders, shook out his hands.

“It’s okay, I have another game. I just can’t get a perfect score now, so I probably won’t win this time” His voice was dejected. It made Dream want to help him.

“Well, I mean, don’t be sad. Just, like, turn it off. Change it to anger.” George looked at Dream, brow furrowed again.

“Dream? That’s not, that’s not normal.” Dream froze. This was it, he was giving himself away. He wanted to reach out and scoop the pieces of him that he'd let out back between his ribcage. He didn’t want George to know about the switches and levers inside him, the careful calculation of his personhood.

Instead, he laughed lightly.

“Oh, yeah. I didn’t explain it very well-” Before he had to think up some other way to explain his inner workings, George was distracted. Another game was starting. Dream didn’t feel upset for the distraction.

The more Dream watched him play chess, the more he wanted to understand chess. The only thing he had to go off of was George’s closed face. As far as Dream could tell, he wasn’t doing well. The stitch of the skin next to his eye gave that away.

George’s mutterings of ‘ Shit ’, ‘ Fuck ’ and the classic ‘ Godamn it ’ also helped Dream reach his conclusion. George didn’t leave much up to the imagination.

Just as Dream was about to make his condolences known, all the stitches and the lines disappeared. George’s eyes widened then creased, and then out of nowhere the banner was back on the screen.

Except that time, it read ‘ Congratulations, Player!’

Dream couldn’t keep it in.

“Fucking clutch, bro!” George laughed at the congratulations.

“Careful Dreamer, you’re inner frat boy is showing.” He was grinning, giddy with the excitement of it all.

Dream tried to ignore the way the nickname froze his brain for a second, how every neuron stopped in their tracks to drink it in.

George got up from the chair. His smile was subtle but he couldn’t hide the energy, Dream could see him balling up and releasing his fists. He was just as excited as Dream at the win, just in a different way.

“Come on. I’m not playing anymore, plus I have to be home before my mother thinks I’ve been kidnapped.” Dream hadn’t thought about what his mother would say when he got home.

The guilt he felt, vague and untouchable, at being five hours late was pushed to the back of his mind the second it entered.

As Dream stood up, he felt his leg tangled between the chair and table. But it was too late. The second he pushed himself up he went careening back down to the floor. Before he knew what was happening, he was sprawled on his back, face on the dusty carpets. Instead of getting the sympathy he expected, George was standing above him, trying his best to contain his howls of laughter.

Dream cracked before he did. They stayed together, Dream lying flat on his back and George leaning against the desks, trying to muffle their shrieks.

Eventually, the librarian was standing above them. Dream wanted to say she looked more disappointed than mad, but she didn’t. She just looked mad. It was always so much harder not to laugh when you weren’t allowed to.

Dream tried his best to keep it in as she escorted them out but he didn’t stand a chance. The second he saw George’s foot catch on the last stair, he was a goner. George said only bats could have heard the frequency Dream reached when George fell.

Dream was like a tea kettle, crouched down next to George. George himself was a mirror of Dream in the computer room, sprawled on the floor, letting out sounds between groaning and snorting.

The difference was this time they had a stern librarian right next to them, shaking her head.

Eventually, the boys managed to bring themselves to their feet and stagger towards the door. Everything was setting them off.

“Shhh, boys.” Her voice was stern. Dream howled into George’s ear. He was leaning on the other boy to keep from collapsing.

“We’re already fucking leaving.” It was breathed into George’s ear - just for him to hear. There were tears brimming. George snorted, calling out to the woman at the desk behind him.

“Sorry Dorothy,” Dream’s wheezing upon hearing her name didn’t do their sincerity any favours.

“We’re leaving, we’re leaving!” The second they got out onto the library steps they were heaving. George had to sit on the step, he was in stitches.

It took them a while to calm down, for the giddiness to dissipate. The cold was a big help, as was the dark.

After they calmed down, Dream looked at him. He was slouched against the library wall, hair messy and cheeks red. His eyes were closed and his head was thrown back against the stone. The calm that filled him up when he was around George, it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t a regular thing. It compelled him.

“I’m sorry.”

George’s eyes opened to look at him, still smiling.

“Huh?” The way his head tilted to the side reminded Dream of the dog he had when he was younger.

“I’m sorry, for hating you.” George shook his head at Dream’s sudden apology.

“You don’t have to be.” But Dream still was, in every inch of his body. He wanted to take it all back, the years of bitterness. Even if it was replaced with nothing, it would take away his guilt.

George went home, and then Dream went home. The second he was in the door his mother was lecturing him. It all went in one ear and out the next The moment Dream’s head hit the pillow, it was a gearbox. There were new parts, cogs turning and wheels spinning. Dream couldn't stop thinking about it all. And, above all else, was the nickname. George had called him ‘Dreamer’. It was immortalized, cast in amber by his mind.

The next Monday, there was a routine soccer training after school. It was two days after Dream’s adventure in café’s and swing sets and speed chess but that day was still burned into the forefront of his mind. He was with Sapnap, doing a slow drill together, just passing the ball while they waited for the rest of the team to get changed. Dream decided it was time to let him deeper into his brain.

“Sapnap.” Sapnap passed the ball back to him gently.

“Dream.” He was smiling at him, always smiling.

“I have to tell you something.” Dream didn’t like the way his voice sounded. Sapnap and sombreness didn’t go together.

“Famous last words!” Sapnap had proven Dream right, he was still smiling at him.

“Well, I’m kind of- I’m making friends with someone. But I don’t know how you’ll react to who it is.” Sapnap was still smiling.

“Come on, dude. Just rip the plaster right off!” Sapnap jumped up and down on the spot, waiting for Dream to pass the ball. Dream passed it.

“It’s George.” Sapnap’s face didn’t change, but it froze.

“Put the plaster back on!” Sapnap kicked the ball, more towards Dream’s head than his feet.

#dnf #dreamnotfound #dream #dream smp #georgenotfound #dream/george #dreamxgeorge #rpf

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welcometomy20s · 4 years ago

Text

March 31, 2021

.Hololive Quarterly Report

I was trying to write this, then it became painfully too long, so I stopped and I’m going to try a much abbreviated version. I don’t why I’m writing this preamble.

Usada Constructions - Buy

CEO Pekora has come back from the creative crisis in late January, her response to the Akukin relay, Pekoland has been quite the success, and Pekora has hired three new people and taken two into actual production, and there has been talks of two more recruitments. Usada constructions has been the premier revenue maker in the server already and with renewed vigor, Pekora has inadvertently cornered the service industry, with her business associate Moon, making the HoloID mall, and hiring Botan or Menya Botan and Kiara of KFP in the process, and thinking hiring Watame, which has a food delivery service.

Future is looking bright for UsaKen and one should buy the stocks now.

Akukin Constructions - Sell

Akukin has a bright start with the recent hiring spree then the wildly successful AKukin Building Relay... and boasting 25% of the workforce in their wake. But CEO has been hampered with failure of her personal projects, first with her loss in the Mario Kart tournament, and then her failure to get the elusive solo Master in Apex. Perhaps, buoyed by her failure, she’ll return to Minecraft, but for now... there has been minor outing of the employers.

Both Mio and Marine went on Minecraft once after the relay, Marine to push Kanata to make her noteblock machines, and Mio in basically upkeep. Rest of the players have been quiet or have been associated with other people. Roboco have played once of twice, although she didn’t even participated in the relay. Choco has been mostly working as a broker for Flare, who is a contractor for Akukin. Lamy and Nene has been basically doing their own thing, mostly since they haven’t had anything else to do... and that’s it, I believe. Iofi, Mel, and Akirose never returned to Minecraft after the relay.

Well, Shion returned after four months with Rushia as the guide... but seriously, Akukin is all but over unless there is a serious reorganization. Sell them!

Shirauni-Elite Conglomerate - Buy

This is outside of current consensus, but it makes for me because it fits the current state of things. Miko and Flare first found their calling by basically gaslighting Kanata into operating a school. They have sense collaborated many times, Flare being part of the four heavenly kings and expanding their partnership in the urban environment, more specifically in Los Santos.

Flare’s turn in Minecraft basically leads me to reassess Flare’s strengths. Flare was kind of the straight man of the 3rd Gen, but she has shown that she could be as wild and unpredictable as the rest of the Hololive Fantasy. Flare eventually roped Polka into an apprenticeship, and Polka’s ability to pop into the most unexpected direction really helped with Flare’s stream as well.

Flare is having the time of her life, and her lover Noel has finally turn the tide on her devastating decline due to the great ASMR purge in early 2020, by embracing the English duolingo... finally passing up people, after falling so far.

Yeah, you should buy here. Although Miko’s recent pause is little worrisome...

Oozora Constructions - Hold

Subaru has been doing a lot of work... her biggest strength has been her free talks, she is a great storyteller, but that’s obviously hampered by language, which is why Subaru made the difficult move of having English summary in her topics, which is a great improvement for her... but her collabs have been on fire, and I mean Oozora Police was just amazing, with good timing as well.

Apparently Subaru has a new costumes, collabs, and original songs coming up in the next quarter, so Subaru is going to surpass already high expectation made during this quarter. As for her company though... well, Subaru has been a... lone duck in the situation. (Sorry for the pun)

Famously outcasted as Kanata and Marine were chatting up with Moona and Reine, Subaru has been lonely for quite sometime. Subaru has been working an actual commission from Korone, although Korone is most inconsiderate Hololive member (as evidenced by two consecutive Kuukiyomi tests), which is a bad sign. Rushia has been working well, both independently and with Subaru... now Luna... that’s the cinch of the situation at this moment.

I’ll talk about Luna later, but overall Oozora has its strength and weakness perfectly balanced. It’s a hold for me, although it can be a buy quickly...

Haachama Constructions - Buy

Haachama started off kind of lost. She recently moved back to Japan, and she didn’t really knew what direction to go off on... apparently a horror unfiction was her choice. It is a great unfiction, in all its spirit, the meta-component worked perfectly, the improvisational and interactivity was unparalleled, it is astounding that this a one-woman production, since even a dedicated team might not pull off this feat, taking images made minutes before the stream is due and incorporating them into the story flawlessly.

Akai Haato always impressed me, but this arc showcased that to everyone. And her future seems to be bright as she starts working on Season 2. Just buy!

OkaKoro Constructions - Hold

Both Okayu and Korone has been steady in their output, minimal collabs and continuing their series of old games. Korone has been particularly clever in her selection of games. Everyone playing Undertale, why not play the game that inspired the whole thing, Earthbound? People are playing Dragon Quest? Well, how about a classic version, Dragon Quest 3, instead of 11S?

But other than that, there wasn’t much going on... then the OkaKore anniversary concert happened, and I realized they still have so much progress. One commenter said how Bloom was a failure because there wasn’t any idols in that list, namely Watame, Okayu and Korone, and I started to agree.

But that’s just one performance, we don’t know if this would be foundation for something better. So let’s hold on the papers for now.

Kureiji Constructions - Hold

There’s always a bit of anxiety when one is lauded as the next new star, least to me, I was always anxious about Ollie’s growth. She could be great, she has plenty of talent, she’s a massive simp and a social collaborator, but her personality can turn on a dime if not careful. Fortunately, Ollie made good on herself, having one of the more explosive growth and becomes generally accepted as a peer, recently doing a large Mario Kart collab.

It’s still a hold, since I have residual anxiety, but this is a good stable company.

Seiso Pillars - Buy

I never really got the appeal on Sora, until she put on her glasses on. Her movement was so fluid and practiced, you can tell she’s a young lady with ambition, which is contrary to the goddess image. Azki has been making the move that Suisei did in end of 2019, slowly putting herself in the comedic spirit of rest of Hololive, and her Vtuber showcase is freaking phenomenal.

Suisei has been flirting with the pillar in Minecraft, and bring the third of HoloKazo(?) in Los Santos, letting her psychopathic side fully. Suisei used her arbitrary demonitization to her advantage, reinvigorating her streams immensely. I thought about holding, but honestly this is a buy. They are going to get better.

Shirakami Forestry - Hold

Fubuki wanted to finish her cherry tree by spring. Well, that didn’t happen. But Fubuki has been doing okay. Fubuki has made some radical moves this year, firmly associating with Coco. Remember that Fubuki’s explosive growth was due to Chinese fans, and this is true of Aqua as well (which is why Aqua has been more distant lately), so to associate with one of the most hated Vtubers by the ‘West Taiwanese’ is a risk, but one made with the knowledge that her base can be shifted, since this did not impact her growth at all.

So Fubuki is going to be Fubuki, no matter who she associates with. Hold.

Free Agents - ???

Matsuri might be the most valuable free agent, but she’s kind of like a public official, helping to keep stock on the commons, and helping Luna as well. This is why Luna is the kingmaker. Luna has connections with both Subaru and Matsuri, but their connection is either loose or non-associative. She can be convinced, but she could easily refuse... and who knows how that would affect Pekora.

Most people thought Matsuri was going to join UsaKen, and that might still be the case, although Pekora is notoriously uncomfortable of senpais.

Risu is next valued player. After her explosion in the 4th quarter, Risu has been struggling to keep afloat, although Risu seems to be fine with her laggard growth. Her impromptu Nier;Automata streams are always a delight, and her Spring soundboard has been fun as well. Risu also returned to Minecraft for a bit, so she might be on the hunt... she would be a great addition to UsaKen.

Ayame is the third player. Ayame has been inconsistent this quarter, mostly since she streams the least amount out of anyone. Her recent collab with Marine was something though, although that’s going to be paused for a bit.

Anya is the last person, just because she doesn’t have Minecraft and she is the least subscribed member. I think it was surprising how Anya’s stream has been. Instead of doing gatcha and perhaps talking stream, her game selections has been far off the beaten path, more so than Korone and Okayu, and she has been blazing (that’s another pun) her own trail much to her detriment.

I mean she’s fine in the grand scope of things, still very interesting move.

Okay, that was the short version, and even then it’s really long so... yeah.

#hololive #vtuber #youtube

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za3k · 4 years ago

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2020 Videogames

In 2020 I’m newly retired, so I’ve had free time. I think it’s fun to do reviews, so without further ado here’s every video game I played in 2020!

I recommend:

(4/5) Among Us – Very fun. It’s only fun with voice chat with friends, so I’ve only gotten to play once or twice. I’ve been watching it more than playing it. Also free to play for mobile gamers–I’m tired of the “everyone buys a copy” model of group gameplay.

(4/5) Brogue. Brogue is an ascii-art roguelike. It’s great, and it has a nice difficulty ramp. It’s a good “quick break” game. I play it in preference to other roguelikes partly because I haven’t done it to death yet, and partly because I don’t need a numpad?

(4/5) Cook Serve Delicious 3. One of the more fun games I played this year. You get really into it, but I had trouble relaxing and paying attention to the real world when I played too much, haha. I own but haven’t played the first two–I gather this is pretty much just a refinement.

(4/5) Green Hell. Price tag is a bit high for the number of hours I got out of it, but I haven’t finished the story. Great graphics, and the BEST map design I’ve seen in a 3D game in a long time. It feels like a real place, with reasonable geography instead of copy-pasted tiles. I love that as you walk along, you can just spot a cultivated area from the rest of the jungle–it feels more like it’s treating me like an adult than most survival games. Everything still gets highlighted if you can pick it up. I played the survival mode, which was okay but gets old quickly. I started the story mode–I think it would be fine, but it has some LONG unskippable scenes at the start, including a very hand-holdy tutorial, that I think they should have cut. I did start getting into the story and was having fun, but I stopped. I might finish the game some time.

(4/5) Hyperrogue. One of my recent favorites. The dev has made a fair number of highly experimental games, most of which are a total miss with me, but this one is fun. I do wish the early game wasn’t quite as repetitive. Failing another solution, I might actually want this not to be permadeath, or to have a save feature? I bought it on steam to support the dev and get achievements, but it’s also available a version or two behind free, which is how I tried it. Constantly getting updates and new worlds.

(4/5) Minecraft – Compact Claustrophobia modpack. Fun idea, nice variety. After one expansion felt a little samey, and it was hard to start with two people. I’d consider finishing this pack.

(4/5) Overcooked 2. Overcooked 2 is just more levels for Overcooked. The foods in the second game is more fun, and it has better controls and less bugs. If you’re considering playing Overcooked, I recommend just starting with the second game, despite very fun levels in the first. I especially appreciate that the second game didn’t just re-use foods from the first.

(4/5) Please Don’t Press Anything. A unique little game where you try to get all the endings. I had a lot of fun with this one, but it could have used some kind of built-in hints like Reventure. Also, it had a lot of red herrings. Got it for $2, which it was well worth.

(5/5) Reventure. Probably the best game new to me this year. It’s a short game where you try to get each of about 100 endings. The art and writing are cute and funny. The level design is INCREDIBLE. One thing I found interesting is the early prototype–if I had played it, I would NOT have imagined it would someday be any fun at all, let alone as amazing as it is. As a game designer I found that interesting! I did 100% complete this one–there’s a nice in-game hint system, but there were still 1-3 “huh” puzzles, especially in the post-game content, one of which I had to look up. It’s still getting updates so I’m hoping those will be swapped for something else.

(5/5) Rimworld. Dwarf fortress, but with good cute graphics, set in the Firefly universe. Only has 1-10 pawns instead of hundreds of dwarves. Basically Dwarf Fortress but with a good UI. I wish you could do a little more in Rimworld, but it’s a fantastic, relaxing game.

(5/5) Slay the Spire. Probably the game I played most this year. A deckbuilding adventure through a series of RPG fights. A bit luck-based, but relaxing and fun. I like that you can play fast or slow. Very, very well-designed UI–you can really learn how things work. My favorite part is that because it’s singleplayer, it’s really designed to let you build a game-breaking deck. That’s how it should be!

(4/5) Stationeers. I had a lot of fun with this one. It’s similar to Space Engineers but… fun. It has better UI by a mile too, even if it’s not perfect. I lost steam after playing with friends and then going back to being alone, as I often do for base-building games. Looks like you can genuinely make some complicated stuff using simple parts. Mining might not be ideal.

(5/5) Spy Party. One of my favorite games. Very fun, and an incredibly high skill ceiling. There’s finally starting to be enough people to play a game with straners sometimes. Bad support for “hot seat”–I want to play with beginners in person, and it got even harder with the introduction of an ELO equivalent and removing the manual switch to use “beginner” gameplay.

(4/5) Telling Lies. A storytelling game. The core mechanic is that you can use a search engine for any phrase, and it will show the top 5 survellance footage results for that. The game internally has transcripts of every video. I didn’t really finish the game, but I had a lot of fun with it. The game was well-made. I felt the video acting didn’t really add a huge amount, and they could have done a text version, but I understand it wouldn’t have had any popular appeal. The acting was decent. There’s some uncomfortable content, on purpose.

(4/5) Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (TABS). Delightful. Very silly, not what you’d expect from the name. What everyone should have been doing with physics engines since they were invented. Imagine that when a caveman attacks, the club moves on its own and the caveman just gets ragdolled along, glued to it. Also the caveman and club have googley eyes. Don’t try to win or it will stop being fun. Learn how to turn on slo-mo and move the camera.

(4/5) We Were Here Together. Lots of fun. I believe the second game out of three. Still some crashes and UI issues. MUCH better puzzles and the grpahics are gorgeous. They need to fix the crashes or improve the autosave, we ended up replaying a lot of both games from crashes. It’s possible I should be recommending the third game but I haven’t played it yet.

The Rest

(3/5) 5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel. More fun that it sounds. If you play to mess around and win by accident, it’s pretty good. Definitely play with a second human player, though.

(1.5/5) 7 billion humans. Better than the original, still not fun. Soulless game about a soulless, beige corporation. Just play Zachtronics instead. If you’re on a phone and want to engage your brain, play Euclidea.

(3/5) A Dark Room. Idle game.

(1/5) Amazing Cultivation Simulator. A big disappointment. Bad english voice acting which can’t be turned off, and a long, unskippable tutorial. I didn’t get to actual gameplay. I like Rimworld and cultivation novels so I had high hopes.

(3/5) ADOM (Steam version) – Fun like the original, which I would give 5/5. Developed some major issues on Linux, but I appreciate that there’s a graphical version available, one of my friends will play it now.

(4/5) agar.io – Good, but used to be better. Too difficult to get into games now. Very fun and addictive gameplay.

(3/5) Amorous – Furry dating sim. All of the hot characters are background art you can’t interact with, and the characters you can actually talk to are a bunch of sulky nerds who for some reason came to a nightclub. I think it was free, though.

(0/5) Apis. Alpha game, AFAIK I was the first player. Pretty much no fun right now (to the point of not really being a game yet), but it could potentially become fun if the author puts in work.

(4/5) Autonauts. I played a ton of Autonauts this year, almost finished it, which is rare for me. My main complaint is that it’s fundamentally supposed to be a game about programming robots, but I can’t actually make them do more than about 3 things, even as a professional programmer. Add more programming! It can be optional, that’s fine. They’re adding some kind of tower defense waves instead, which is bullshit. Not recommended because it’s not for everyone.

(3/5) A-Z Inc. Points for having the guts to have a simple game. At first this looked like just the bones of Swarm Simulator, but the more you look at the UI and the ascension system, the worse it actually is. I would regularly reset because I found out an ascension “perk” actually made me worse off.

(5/5) Beat Saber. Great game, and my favorite way to stay in shape early this year. Oculus VR only, if you have VR you already have this game so no need to recommend. Not QUITE worth getting a VR set just to play it at current prices.

(1/5) Big Tall Small. Good idea, but no fun to play. Needed better controls and level design, maybe some art.

(0.5/5) Blush Blush. Boring.

(3/5) Business Shark. I had too much fun with this simple game. All you do is just eat a bunch of office workers.

(3/5) chess.com. Turns out I like chess while I’m high?

(3/5) Circle Empires Rivals. Decent, more fun than the singleplayer original. It shouldn’t really have been a separate game from Circle Empires, and I’m annoyed I couldn’t get it DRM-free like the original.

(3/5) Cross Virus. By Dan-box. Really interesting puzzle mechanics.

(4/5) Cultist Simulator. Really fun to learn how to play–I love games that drop you in with no explanation. Great art and writing, I wish I could have gotten their tarot deck. Probably the best gameplay “ambience” I’ve seen–getting a card that’s labeled “fleeting sense of radiance” that disappears in 5 seconds? Great. Also the core stats are very well thought out for “feel” and real-life accuracy–dread (depression) conquers fascination (mania), etc. It has a few gameplay gotchas, but they’re not too big–layout issues, inability to go back to skipped text, or to put your game in an unwinnable state early on). Unfortunately it’s a “roguelike”, and it’s much too slow-paced and doesn’t have enough replay value, so it becomes a horrible, un-fun grind when you want to actually win. I probably missed the 100% ending but I won’t be going back to get it. I have no idea who would want to play this repeatedly. I’m looking forward to the next game from the same studio though! I recommend playing a friend’s copy instead of buying.

(2/5) Darkest Dungeon. It was fine but I don’t really remember it.

(2/5) Dicey Dungeons. Okay deck-building roguelike gameplay (with an inventory instead of a deck). Really frustrating, unskippably slow difficulty curve at the start. I played it some more this year and liked it better because I had a savegame. I appreciate having several character classes, but they should unlock every difficulty from the start.

(2/5) Diner Bros. Basically just a worse Overcooked. I didn’t like the controls, and it felt too repetitive with only one diner.

(2/5) Don’t Eat My Mind You Stupid Monster. Okay art and idea, the gameplay wasn’t too fun for me.

(2/5) Don’t Starve – I’ve played Don’t Stave maybe 8 different times, and it’s never really gripped me, I always put it back down. It’s slow, a bit grindy, and there’s no bigger goal–all you can do is live.

(3/5) Don’t Starve Together – Confusingly, Don’t Starve Together can be played alone. It’s Don’t Starve, plus a couple of the expansions. This really could be much more clearly explained.

(1/5) Elemental Abyss – A deck-builder, but this time it’s grid-based tactics. Really not all that fun. Just play Into the Abyss instead or something.

(1/5) Else Heart.Break() – I was excited that this might be a version of “Hack N’ Slash” from doublefine that actually delivered and let you goof around with the world. I gave it up in the first ten minutes, because the writing and characters drove me crazy, without getting to hacking the world.

(2/5) Everything is Garbage. Pretty good for a game jam game. Not a bad use of 10 minutes. I do think it’s probably possible to make the game unwinnable, and the ending is just nothing.

(1/5) Evolve. Idle game, not all that fun. I take issue with the mechanic in Sharks, Kittens, and this where buying your 15th fence takes 10^15 wood for some reason.

(4/5) Exapunks. Zachtronics has really been killing it lately, with Exapunks and Opus Magnum. WONDERFUL art and characters during story portions, and much better writing. The gameplay is a little more varied than in TIS-100 or the little I played of ShenZen I/O. My main complaint about Zachtronics games continues to be, that I don’t want to be given a series of resource-limited puzzles (do X, but without using more than 10 programming instructions). Exapunks is the first game where it becomes harder to do something /at all/, rather than with a particular amount of resources, but it’s still not there for me. Like ShenZen, they really go for a variety of hardware, too. Can’t recommend this because it’s really only for programmers.

(1/5) Exception. Programming game written by some money machine mobile games company. Awful.

(4/5) Factorio. Factorio’s great, but for me it doesn’t have that much replay value, even with mods. I do like their recent updates, which included adding blueprints from the start of the game, improving belt sorting, and adding a research queue. We changed movement speed, made things visually always day, and adding a small number of personal construction robots from the start this run. I’m sure if you’d like factorio you’ve played it already.

(3/5) Fall Guys – I got this because it was decently fun to watch. Unfortunately, it’s slightly less fun to play. Overall, there’s WAY too much matchmaking waiting considering the number of players, and the skill ceiling is very low on most of the games, some of which are essentially luck (I’m looking at you, team games).

(3/5) Forager – Decent game. A little too much guesswork in picking upgrades–was probably a bit more fun on my second play because of that. Overall, nice graphics and a cute map, but the gameplay could use a bit of work.

(3/5) Getting Over It – Funny idea, executed well. Pretty sure my friends and I have only gotten through 10% of the game, and all hit about the same wall (the first tunnel)

(3/5) Guild of Dungeoneering – Pretty decent gameplay. I feel like it’s a bit too hard for me, but that’s fine. Overall I think it could use a little more cute/fun art, I never quite felt that motivated.

(1/5) Hardspace: Shipbreakers. Okay, I seriously didn’t get to play this one, but I had GAMEBREAKING issues with my controller, which is a microsoft X-box controller for PC–THE development controller.

(2/5) Helltaker. All right art, meh gameplay. But eh, it’s free!

(3/5) Hot Lava. Decent gameplay. Somehow felt like the place that made this had sucked the souls out of all the devs first–no one cared about the story or characters. It’s a game where the floor is made out of lava, with a saturday morning cartoon open, so that was a really an issue. Admirable lack of bugs, though. I’m a completionist so I played the first world a lot to get all the medals, and didn’t try the later ones.

(3/5) House Flipper – Weird, but I had fun. I wish the gameplay was a little more unified–it felt like a bunch of glued-together minigames.

(2/5) Hydroneer. Utterly uninspiring. I couldn’t care about making progress at all, looked like a terrible grind to no benefit.

(1/5) io. Tiny game, I got it on Steam, also available on phone. Basically a free web flash game, but for money. Not good enough to pay the $1 I paid. Just a bit of a time-killer.

(3/5) Islanders – All you do is place buildings and get points. Not particularly challenging, but relaxing. Overall I liked it.

(3/5) Jackbox – I played this online with a streamer. Jackbox has always felt a little bit soulless money grab to me, but it’s still all right. I like that I can play without having a copy–we need more games using this purchase model.

(3/5) Life is Feudal – Soul-crushingly depressing and grindy, which I knew going in. I thought it was… okay, but I really want an offline play mode (Yes, I know there’s an unsupported single-player game, but it’s buggier and costs money). UI was pretty buggy, and I think hunting might literally be impossible.

(2/5) Minecraft – Antimatter Chemistry. Not particularly fun.

(3/5) Minecraft – ComputerCraft. I played a pack with just ComputerCraft and really nothing else. Was a little slow, would have been more fun with more of an audience. I love the ComputerCraft mod, I just didn’t have a great experience playing my pack I made.

(3/5) Minecraft – Foolcraft 3. Fun, a bit buggy. Honestly I can’t remember it too well.

(1/5) Minecraft – Manufactio. Looked potentially fun, but huge bugs and performance issues, couldn’t play.

(4/5) Minecraft – Tekkit. Tekkit remains one of my favorite Minecraft modpacks.

(3/5) Minecraft – Valhelsia 2. I remember this being fun, but I can’t remember details as much as I’d like. I think it was mostly based around being the latest version of minecraft?

(4/5) Minecraft – Volcano Block. Interesting, designed around some weird mods I hadn’t used. I could have used more storage management or bulk dirt/blocks early in the game–felt quite cramped. Probably got a third of the way through the pack. I got novelty value out of it, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it if I had ever used the plant mod before–it’s a very fixed, linear progression.

(5/5) Minit. This is a weird, small game. I actually had a lot of fun with it. Then I 100% completed it, which was less fun but I still had a good time overall.

(3/5) Monster Box. By Dan-box. One of two Dan-box games I played a lot of. Just visually appealing, the gameplay isn’t amazing. Also, Dan-box does some great programming–this is a game written in 1990 or so, and it can render hundreds of arrows in the air smoothly in a background tab.

(3/5) Monster Train. A relatively fun deckbuilding card game. It can’t run well on my computer, which is UNACCEPTABLE–this is a card game with 2D graphics. My MICROWAVE should run this shit in 2020. Ignoring that, the gameplay style (summon monsters, MTG style) just isn’t my cup of tea.

(2/5) Moonlighter. Felt like it was missing some inspiration, just didn’t have a sense of “fun”. The art was nice. The credits list is surprisingly long.

(2/5) Muse Dash. All right, a basic rhythm game. Not enough variety to the game play, and everything was based around perfect or near-perfect gameplay, which makes things less fun for me.

(3/5) NES games – various. Dr Mario, Ice Climbers. Basically, I got some Chinese handheld “gameboy” that has all the NES games preloaded on it. Overall it was a great purchase.

(2/5) Noita. “The Powder Game” by Dan-Box, as a procedurally generated platformer with guns. Lets you design your own battle spells. Despite the description, you really still can’t screw around as much as I’d like. I also had major performance issues

(3/5) Observation. I haven’t played this one as much as I’d like, I feel like it may get better. Storytelling, 3D game from the point of view of the AI computer on a space station. I think I might have read a book it’s based on, unfortunately.

(2/5) One Step From Eden. This is a deck-building combat tactics game. I thought it was turn-based, but it’s actually realtime. I think if it was turn-based I would have liked it. The characters were a bit uninspired.

(1/5) Orbt XL. Very dull. I paid $0.50 for it, it was worth that.

(4/5) Opus Magnum. Another great game from Zachtronics, along with Exapunks they’re really ramping up. This is the third execution of the same basic concept. I’d like to see Zachtronics treading new ground more as far as gameplay–that said, it is much improved compared to the first two iterations. The art, writing, and story were stellar on the other hand.

(3/5) Out of Space. Fun idea, you clean a spaceship. It’s never that challenging, and it has mechanics such that it gets easier the more you clean, rather than harder. Good but not enough replay value. Fun with friends the first few times. The controls are a little wonky.

(1/5) Outpost (tower defense game). I hate all tower defense.

(3/5) Overcooked. Overcooked is a ton of fun.

(4/5) Powder Game – Dan-box. I played this in reaction to not liking Noita. It’s fairly old at this point. Just a fun little toy.

(1/5) Prime Mover – Very cool art, the gameplay put me to sleep immediately. A “circuit builder” game but somehow missing any challenge or consistency.

(2/5) Quest for Glory I. Older, from 1989. Didn’t really play this much, I couldn’t get into the writing, and the pseudo-photography art was a little jarring.

(4/5) Raft. I played this in beta for free on itch.io, and had a lot of fun. Not enough changed that it was really worth a replay, but it has improved, and I got to play with a second player. Not a hard game, which I think was a good thing. The late game they’ve expanded, but it doesn’t really add much. The original was fun and so was this.

(3/5) Satisfactory. I honestly don’t know how I like this one–I didn’t get too far into it.

(4/5) Scrap Mechanic. I got this on a recommendation from a player who played in creative. I only tried the survival mode–that mode is not well designed, and their focuses for survival are totally wrong. I like the core game, you can actually build stuff. If I play again, I’ll try the creative mode, I think.

(3.5/5) Shapez.io. A weird, abstracted simplification of Factorio. If I hadn’t played factorio and half a dozen copies, I imagine this would have been fun, but it’s just more of the same. Too much waiting–blueprints are too far into the game, too.

(2.5/5) Simmiland. Okay, but short. Used cards for no reason. For a paid game, I wanted more gameplay out of it?

(0.5/5) Snakeybus. The most disappointing game I remember this year. Someone made “Snake” in 3D. There are a million game modes and worlds to play in. I didn’t find anything I tried much fun.

(1/5) Soda Dungeon. A “mobile” (read: not fun) style idle game. Patterned after money-grab games, although I don’t remember if paid progress was actually an option. I think so.

(4/5) Spelunky. The only procedurally generated platformer I’ve ever seen work. Genuinely very fun.

(4/5) Spelunky 2. Fun, more of an upgrade of new content than a new game. Better multiplayer. My computer can’t run later levels at full speed.

(1/5) Stick Ranger 2. Dan-box. Not much fun.

(3/5) Superliminal. Fun game. A bit short for the pricetag.

(3/5) Tabletop Simulator – Aether’s End: Legacy. Interesting, a “campaign” (series of challenge bosses and pre-written encounters) deckbuilding RPG. I like the whole “campaign RPG boardgame” idea. This would have worked better with paper, there were some rough edges in both the game instructions and the port to Tabletop Simulator.

(4/5) Tabletop Simulator – The Captain is Dead. Very fun. I’d love to play with more than 2 people. Tabletop simulator was so-so for this one.

(2/5) Tabletop Simulator – Tiny Epic Mechs. You give your mech a list of instructions, and it does them in order. Arena fight. Fun, but I think I could whip up something at least as good.

(3/5) The Council. One of the only 3D games I finished. It’s a story game, where you investigate what’s going on and make various choices. It’s set in revolutionary france, at the Secret World Council that determines the fate of the world. It had a weak ending, with less choice elements than the rest of the game so far, which was a weird decision. Also, it has an EXCRUTIATINGLY bad opening scene, which was also weird. The middle 95% of the game I enjoyed, although the ending went on a little long. The level of background knowledge expected of the player swung wildly–they seemed to expect me to know who revolutionary French generals were with no explanation, but not Daedalus and the Minotaur. The acting was generally enjoyable–there’s a lot of lying going on in the game and it’s conveyed well. The pricetag is too high to recommend.

(0/5) The Grandma’s Recipe (Unus Annus). This game is unplayably bad–it’s just a random pixel hunt. Maybe it would be fun if you had watched the video it’s based on.

(3/5) The Room. Pretty fun! I think this is really designed for a touchscreen, but I managed to play it on my PC. Played it stoned, which I think helps with popular puzzle games–it has nice visuals but it’s a little too easy.

(3/5) This Call May Be Recorded. Goofy experimental game.

(4/5) TIS-100. Zachtronics. A programming game. I finally got done with the first set of puzzles and into the second this year. I had fun, definitely not for everyone.

(3/5) Trine. I played this 2-player. I think the difficulty was much better 2-player, but it doesn’t manage 2 players getting separated well. Sadly we skipped the story, which seemed like simple nice low-fantasy. Could have used goofier puzzles, it took itself a little too seriously and the levels were a bit same-y.

(2/5) Unrailed. Co-op railroad building game. It was okay but there wasn’t base-building. Overall not my thing. I’d say I would prefer something like Overcooked if it’s going to be timed? Graphics reminded me of autonauts.

(2/5) Vampire Night Shift. Art game. Gameplay could have used a bit of polish. Short but interesting.

(4/5) Wayward. To date, the best survival crafting system I’ve seen. You can use any pointy object and stick-like object, together with glue or twine, to make an arrow. The UI is not great, and there’s a very counter-intuitive difficulty system. You need to do a little too much tutorial reading, and it could use more goals. Overall very fun. Under constant development, so how it plays a given week is a crapshoot. The steam version finally works for me (last time I played it was worse than the free online alpha, now it’s the same or better). I recomend playing the free online version unless you want to support the author.

(1/5) We Need to Go Deeper. Multiplayer exploration game in a sub, with sidescrolling battle. Somehow incredibly unfun, together with high pricetag. Aesthetics reminded me of Don’t Starve somehow.

(2/5) We Were Here. Okay 2-player puzzle game. Crashed frequently, and there were some “huh” puzzles and UI. Free.

(3/5) Yes, your grace. Gorgeous pixel art graphics. The story is supposed to be very player-dependent, but I started getting the feeling that it wasn’t. I didn’t quite finish the game but I think I was well past halfway. Hard to resume after a save, you forget things. I got the feeling I wouldn’t replay it, which is a shame because it’s fun to see how things go differently in a second play with something like this.

These are not all new to me, and very few came out in 2020. I removed any games I don’t remember and couldn’t google (a fair number, I play a lot of game jam games) as well as any with pornographic content.

2020 Videogames was originally published on Optimal Prime

#games #review #reviews #videogames #yearly review #cross-posted-from-blog

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gamerszone2019-blog · 5 years ago

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Phil Spencer Says Cloud Gaming Is Inevitable, But Won't Replace Consoles

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Phil Spencer Says Cloud Gaming Is Inevitable, But Won't Replace Consoles

Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, has a lot on his mind, from the next generation of Xbox consoles to helping build new development teams. He and the team are also managing an ecosystem that’s trying to serve as many players’ needs as possible. And as he sees it, cloud-based gaming touches all of those areas, which is why he’s been championing Project xCloud. It’s Microsoft’s game streaming technology that will let you access the power of an Xbox console through your phone via an internet connection. We recently got the opportunity to talk to the head of Xbox about a number of topics, including how he sees xCloud fitting into Xbox’s repertoire, and within an industry that’s traditionally orbited around consoles in the home.

“It’s one of the directions the industry is headed. To me, it’s about what you as a gamer want to do, and I’m not trying to tell you that owning a box that plays video games is a bad thing or that somehow that’s not needed.” Spencer continued, “I think that the cloud inevitability as part of gaming is absolutely true. But we have more compute devices around us than we’ve ever had, whether it’s your phone, a Surface Hub, or an Xbox. The world where compute devices are gone and it’s all coming from the cloud just isn’t the world that we live in today.”

Physical devices are still very much part of the equation when it comes to cloud gaming, but Xbox itself isn’t making a new device specifically for it. “Last year we talked about xCloud and then we said we were working on new game consoles, but that’s all I said.” Spencer clarified, “We didn’t say that [a streaming console was in the works]. I think maybe some people thought that that was the disc-less one that we just shipped. We are not working on a streaming-only console right now. We are looking at the phone in your pocket as the destination for you to stream, and the console that we have allows you to play the games locally.”

“If you bought a big gaming PC and you like playing games there, I want to respect that and meet you where you are and bring the content and services that you want to that device. If you want to buy an Xbox, if you want to play Minecraft on a PlayStation, I want to make sure that comes to you there.”

One of the chief concerns that has always surrounded cloud gaming is lag. Specifically, how fast your controller inputs will translate to action on a screen. It was an issue in some cases for Google Stadia demos, especially for fast-paced shooters such as Doom. Spencer recognizes this and makes no bones about those concerns, saying “I don’t think anybody should tell you that there’s no lag.”

“Going back to our transparency, there’s a truth that I think is always important for us to talk about with our customers. In xCloud, we are building a convenience capability to allow you to take your Xbox experience with you. Meaning, that’s why we focus on the phone, and the experience is not the same as running the games on an Xbox One X. I’m not going to say that it’s an 8k 120 hertz thing. That’s not what we’re doing. We’re going to bring convenience and choice to you on your phone.”

“You can jump in a party, we can voice chat. Everything works the same as it does when I’m sitting with my console from a community and content perspective but you’re running it from a cloud, which is going to feel different.”

We talk about Project xCloud and we use words like “trials” not because we don’t believe in our tech–our tech is as good as anybody’s tech out there, and the team is doing really amazing work–but this is about the reality of time and choice for customers.

Given that he’s been traveling with an early version of xCloud on his own phone playing games on it out in public, it would seem that xCloud is in a feature-complete state. Public trials start in October this year (a month before Google Stadia), but we asked if it’ll launch as a fully-formed service. “We will start in 2019, this year, in certain markets and then we will just continue to roll it out. We’re doing our internal trials with xCloud now, which means people on the team can now install the application on their phone and stream games.”

“One of the benefits we have working at Microsoft is the Azure data centers globally, which allow us to put hardware as close to people as we possibly can. And we can leverage the fact that Microsoft has spent a lot of money establishing data centers to help us accelerate this build. So we’re going to start in 2019 and have people playing Xbox games on their phones, and we’ll get a ton of feedback.”

Project xCloud’s launch this year only marks the beginning for the Xbox game streaming service; Microsoft will continue to iterate on it while its in players’ hands, and Spencer emphasizes that technological shifts take time. “I think this is years away from being a mainstream way people play. And I mean years, like years and years.”

Phil Spencer on stage during Microsoft’s E3 2019 press conference. — Photo credit: Jason Lewis

“Let’s take Netflix, which is 20 years old. I think we forget that sometimes because tech moves so fast. It’s 20 years old at this point, so it took two decades for us to get to the point where shows like Game of Thrones and House of Cards are some of the biggest shows in the planet and mainly watched via streaming. I think game streaming will get there faster than 20 years, but it’s not going to be two years. This is a technological change. While it seems like it happens overnight, it doesn’t.”

“It takes time for these services to evolve. We are building for the long-term, but that’s why choice is so critical. I’m not trying to say go sell your consoles today and switch over to streaming because the experience just isn’t the same as playing on your console, but I do think in terms of reaching everybody, the democratization of play and content, it’s important that we don’t lock all of these experiences behind purchasing a certain device.”

“And way over time, we’ll have a global service that can reach everybody and the infrastructure to reach any customer with a consistent and high quality internet service, but that’s going to take time. We talk about Project xCloud and we use words like “trials” not because we don’t believe in our tech–our tech is as good as anybody’s tech out there, and the team is doing really amazing work–but this is about the reality of time and choice for customers.”

Down the road, the evolution of xCloud could lead to some creative uses; we’ve seen hints of it in Crackdown 3‘s multiplayer and how it handles physics. But Spencer and the team are thinking outside of games themselves as they have plans to make it an integral part of the industry’s biggest convention, saying “At E3 [in the future], our plan is to allow people coming to the show to actually play games, play Xbox games on phones at the show.”

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Part of cloud gaming’s success, and xCloud in particular, rests in how developers account for the new technology. It’s also an aspect that Xbox is already getting ahead of, and Spencer detailed how the team is doing it. “We’ve already started putting xCloud servers near locations where our largest third party developers are. So now we’re starting to get developers at third parties on it so they can see their game on a phone, which is critical because there are things like font sizes that if you wanted to take advantage and understand how the game runs on the phone, you want to make it available. You want them to see it and experience it themselves.”

“We’ve also already put into the Xbox SDK, because if you’re streaming, a developer might want to do something different if the game was running locally. All the developers that are building Xbox games today have access to that capability of determining whether the game is being streamed or running locally, which I think is a great addition.”

“You’ll have certain developers that will take advantage of it early. We already have some of the early adopters asking for [it], because there are certain things that the cloud makes more possible than happened in the home. A good example of that is our blades right now that have all the Xboxes in the data centers have multiple Xboxes on one blade…basically like a bunch of Xboxes in your house that are hardwired together. So the latency between all of those consoles is negligible. It’s almost a zero because they’re literally hard-wired together. If we were to play games online, there is latency from where you live and I live, right? Our two Xboxes just take time to sync.”

More Exclusive Phil Spencer Coverage

Our conversations with Phil Spencer covered much more in addition to this deep dive into Project xCloud and cloud gaming’s place in the industry. For more inside looks at Spencer and his thoughts on the past, present, and future of Xbox, check out all our coverage in the stories linked below.

Source : Gamesport

#Game News

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freefortnite5341-blog · 6 years ago

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tvgold42 · 8 years ago

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Nintendo Direct Recap

So for those who can't tell from my twitter (@alisdair42), I've become a bit of a fan of Nintendo recently. so I ended up watching yesterday’s Nintendo direct. since I did a big review of the switch trailer, I tried to do something similar. only problem, that took about an hour to make for a few minutes of trailer footage. this is a full half hour long piece of news, that went so fast, I couldn't press pause during the live coverage. aside from some small typo corrections and edits, this is exactly what I typed. heads up, it's a lot of content...

New Pikmin game for the 3DS coming out on July 28, along with an Amiibo more info on that coming later. another 3DS game called ever oasis on June 23. monster hunter stories look like a monster hunter: pokémon rip off edition 3ds, this autumn. YO-KAI watch 2 was just released, and it has an early day exclusive with A June 2nd to be the expiry date for some in game itemsspr@kl3s as a code Culdcept Revolt on 3ds game, some card/board game September 1stRPG Maker Fes is now a 3DS is a thing there is a free player for that tooJune 23 Miitomo gets a sequel or DLC, I can't really tell, called miitopia release date is sometime this year.

new fire emblem, NOW WITH DLC, because who doesn't want DLC it also offers seasons pass. because doesn't every gamer want to spend more money on a game that they already own, without knowing the quality, content, or even release date of the thing that they're buying?

It's the 25th anniversary of Kirby, which is weird since it seems like we just had 25 years of Mario. I thought that Kirby was a lot younger, oh well. how are they celebrating this? with a 2d fighter game, out now. Kirby blow out blast looks to be a weird 3d puzzle game, and I just can't wait for the comparisons to Toad treasure tracker, even if it's not deserved, it's coming this summer, e-shop only. there also something that there not telling us about for this winter, so I can't really comment on that at all...

you know how Nintendo love to play on people's nostalgia, WELL THERE'S A BRAND NEW BRAIN TRAINING GAME : DDDDDD

Devilish training: can you stay focused?

I'm not certain if devilish training is the name of some diet chocolate or a porno, and I don't want to find out personally...

Also, new amiibo for the system, but that went so quickly I couldn't get any details written down

For full disclosure, I have a pre-order of Mario Kart 8 from family relatives, but I have not spent money on it. Mario Kart8 has 11 players online, which is weird since its normally 12 players online mode.

If you're playing with friends, then you can customise the rules quite a bit, and tournament mode has now been built into the game, making it seem more like Nintendo want it to become an e-sport. are a thing too

Ultra Street fighter 2 is being re-released for the switch with 19 fighters, but I'm not certain if this is more, less, or the same amount of characters. some weird person also decided that a first person mode that uses motion controls would be a good thing, so that's in the game, along with this, you don't have to remember Combo's at all for the portable mode, with on-screen buttons, (opinion) which is stupid since street fighter is all about executing ridiculous combo's.

Minecraft wanting more money is now getting a Nintendo switch verson, that allows an 8 player multiplayer mode, which is cute compared to the Java version, but this does also allow local co-op of 4 players, so you have that at least. It's getting a Mario skin pack as DLC, out may 12 e-shop, later for physical.

sonic forces - a shit 3d one that looks dark and gritty, that has old and new sonic in it, winter this year.

sonic mania -a good fan version that looks awesome, summer this year

project mekuru looks weird, good weird though, has a bomber man feel in its gameplay, releases this summer.

fate Extella for July 21'st, hate to say it but it kinda looks like a generic JRPG :/

Disgaea 5, has a demo to be released soon, release date may 26th, ill have to give that a look at, since anything that has a demo must be tried, seriousialy, its the one thing that i want devlopers to get back onto.

Puyo Puyo Tetris is amazing, I've played it, you have to try the demo from the JP e-shop if you can, don't go for the UK one, the voice actors just fall flat. it's coming to the EU soon, if you don't have a switch or another console to play it, this is why you need the switch. The demo is out now

monopoly for the switch, because you haven't hated your family over this game enough already Autumn 2017

Rayman legends: definitive edition, it's a 2d platformer, and you could have gotten it previously for free on PC, but this now has more DLC. out sometime this year

THQ Nordic are alive, apparently, i thought they died along with the hope of another good Saints Row. Sine Mora EX, its a 2d bullet hell game so im not touching that (unles it has a demo) to be released sometime this summer. battle chaser night war looks more interesting however, releaseing late summer.

PayDay 2 for switch, because if you've not played it yet, your me and you really should have, releasing sometime this year.

Namco museum: a glorified emulator for the console, probably not worth buying since you could find the rom files online, summer 2017.

change of pace now whilst i focous on somthing that works on a lot more meaty.

This first big block is Arms, if you don't care, skip the first, long, paragraph.

Apparently, you can customise the arms in Arms, as if we didn't already know this, it does, however, reveal that each arm has an element. fire, electricity, wind, ice, stun, explosion, and more I couldn't read quick enough. It also shows that in the game, you can use currency to unlock the different types of arms. this doesn't appear to be real world money, and I don't think that Nintendo would do that, but I still don't like the idea of unlocks in an arcade game. We have a new character called Mminmin, who is based on noodles, no, seriously. if that wasn't weird enough, she has an ability, where she can kick people in a boxing game... quick question, why? why did that seem like a good idea at all? doesn't that kinda defeat the whole point of it being a boxing game? wait, she has dragon arms that shoot lasers? all is forgiven. Spring Man is a new person (i think) who has permanently charge punches IF he has low health. he also has an electric shield for very quick deflects of almost anything. and coming back to Minmin, she has an area based off of her, it's a massive ramen bowl... no comment. we also have team battles for a 2V2 mode, because everybody can afford 4 pairs of Joy-Con's, clearly. speaking of Joy-Con's there's a bundle that contains the console, the game, and a set of yellow Joy-Con's, that look like a set of slightly off bananas. and if you just couldn't get enough Switch action, there releasing a Joy-Con battery pack, which is odd since I personally have never had to worry about the battery for the Joy-Con's at all, I will say that I have been charging them and the console overnight every night, so that may be why I've not been having any problems. The full release date for the game, the bundle, and the Banana-Con's (yes that's what I'm calling them) is June 16.

And now for the reason im here: splatoon 2, its not as long but still substatial, if you dont care, thats it for this article for you, good bye ^^ otherwise, onto splatoon 2, the main reason I wanted a switch at all.

we start with a with a weird trailer, that has the music of a discounted Toys R Us instrument set. Feeles like its from the 80's in a parody way. the main purpos of the trailer is to introduce "Salmon Run", a wave based PVE mode, which had me in full caps in my notes, accompined by a ":DDDDD" or 2. the main purpos is to kill the enimies to get power eggs, which is your form of in game currency that can be spent on the splatoon shop for cosmetics. keep on going however, and bosses will appear, these drop golden eggs that too can be exchanged for items. if you have bad players in your team, and they die, then you can revive them by walking over to get them back. The game adds in 3 new Amiibo, that allow people to save custom data to for clothing, but the old splatoon Amiibo's will also work. the game, the Amiibo will be released on July 21st.

#nintendo #nintendo switch #splatoon #arms #nintendo 3ds #nintendo direct

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marginalgloss · 8 years ago

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subwoofer lullaby

It's rare to find a novel that meaningfully includes a video game which actually exists. More often than not, representations of games in fiction tend to be entirely invented - think of Bedlam by Charles Brookmyre, or Ready Player One, or You by Austin Grossman. Perhaps for an author it is simply easier to invent an entirely new world from scratch rather than to bend the rules of an existing title to fit the shape of a novel. As a result, so much writing about video games is enraptured by visions of what could or should be; there’s a lack of fiction which provides insight into the value that real games create in the world right now.

It's easier to find a licensed tie-in novel for something like Assassin's Creed than it is to find a story set in our world which would afford it a significant mention. Setting aside the actual value of Assassin’s Creed for a moment, this seems strange to me. Is it because the potential audience isn't large enough? Is there an assumption that people interested in games don't also read? Or is it just that most games aren't worthy subjects? When it comes to fiction, the current presumption still seems to be that video games are still primarily a form of escapism, and that to play with them is to engage with something that is not really a valid part of this world. It's a depiction rooted in a crisis of confidence which says that this medium is somehow less worthy than other art forms.

A Boy Made of Blocks by Keith Stuart is an interesting recent exception. Partly based on the author's own experiences, it's a novel about a father attempting to repair his relationship with his wife and their son, Sam. Sam finds life especially difficult because he is on the Autism spectrum. Social situations, loud noises, strange food and unfamiliar places are extremely difficult for Sam to cope with — and when under pressure, Sam's behaviour becomes volatile. But Minecraft is a place where he can be happy. The game provides an endlessly creative world which, while not entirely safe, is at least predictable. The game's basic toolset of mining, building, crafting and fighting within a unique, mysterious landscape provides Sam with a constant framework in which all kinds of remarkable things can occur.

I've known about Minecraft since it was a cult classic in the early 2010s; if you need proof, here’s something I wrote about it over six years ago. I find it amazing that what started out as a strange little survival game created by a single person has grown into a multi-billion dollar franchise. It has a homespun feeling which I still find endearing. It is too odd a thing to have been developed by committee. In an era when so much pop culture aimed at young people is based on endless revamps of the same characters, Minecraft at least has the virtue of novelty about it. It is something genuinely new and open; as a play set, it’s as important as Lego or Star Wars for millions of children around the world.

The book is solid, enjoyable stuff, though the presence of the word 'uplifting' on the cover gives a heavy hint as to the tone of what's to come. The protagonist, Alex, begins by effectively walking out on his wife and son in a way which renders him absurdly unlikeable, so there's nowhere else for him to go but in a conciliatory direction. It is fairly apparent at each juncture what’s going to happen next; at times I was reminded of a Nick Hornby novel, or a film by Richard Curtis, with moments of realistic drama interspaced with a sort of world-weary comedy. There's even a subplot involving a charming/feckless flatmate, plus a love interest or two to distract from the final reunion we all know is coming. There are no surprises here, and despite the occasional stagey sequence, it’s very pleasant reading. The whole thing is expressed with a rich strength of feeling that’s carried off well.

At heart, it’s the story of a family relationship strengthened through a game. And to do that using the example of a real game that exists today feels like a significant gesture. We no longer have to wait for artists and writers to imagine how games will bring us together in the future because games are clearly doing this already. It's a wonderful message, and one I wish I could say is familiar to me, because my own associations with playing Minecraft are solitary. I would spend hours chipping away at some endless tunnel deep underground while listening to podcasts, or sometimes to the sparse, melancholy music of the game's soundtrack, and then I'd cart the material chipped out of the ground back to the surface and stack the blocks into vast towers that scraped the sky. I was 24 or so when I was doing this but I imagine I would have done much the same if I was Sam’s age.

All of this I did alone. Most of my experiences with video games have always been solitary; I never showed my towers to anyone. And this means there’s something about Sam’s life in this book that I find wonderful almost beyond belief. One scene, in which a group of his friends rebuild brick-by-brick his castle that they accidentally blew up, actually made me angry — not because it was sentimental (though it was) but because I suddenly realised that nobody would have been around to do the same thing for me when I was his age. I was never able to convince my family that games were anything more than a waste of time, and I suppose after a certain point I gave up trying with them, and by extension, with most other people in my life. It’s a version of that same old dilemma, that crisis of confidence we see repeated elsewhere in the medium; and it’s just nice to know that perhaps that situation isn’t as permanent as I had once supposed.

#books #gaming #minecraft #a boy made of blocks #keith stuart

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weekendwarriorblog · 5 years ago

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30 Minute Experiment: Kids #30ME

Okay, let’s do this. I feel a bit unfocused today, but I’m quickly learning that these topics are just popping into my head from some subconscious editor that just throws a word/topic into my head randomly sometime in the 24 hours between #30MEs, and then I feel obligated to write about said topic.

So yeah... kids. Boy, this is a loaded topic if there ever is one because as an older single male, I cannot say the words “I love kids” without anyone expecting something creepy or weird. Single people my age are not supposed to love kids in any way or fashion unless a.) It’s their own kids or b.) They’re grandparents. The problem is that a statement like that almost always takes on a creepy sexual connotation thanks to the thousands of sick individuals out there who have just made it so awkward and uncomfortable to make a statement like that. I’m not just talking about the likes of Michael Jackson or R Kelly or Catholic priests here but also those who have been an active part of #CancelCulture who immediately think the worst whenever someone makes a statement that doesn’t connect with their own world view.

For instance, I can’t post the statement, “I love kids,” on any sort of social media without someone either misconstruing it as something in the worst and most predatory way possible. If you know me at all, you’ll know that I have no sexual interest in anyone in any way -- it’s the very definition of being asexual -- but that wouldn’t stop someone from being weird about it. That’s probably because we do live in a society where there are so many predatory creeps who you seriously can’t trust your kids around...

Let me backtrack here because I should probably have prefaced today’s experiment by saying that I’ve always wanted to have kids. Just like with the topic of marriage earlier, it was something I’ve wanted when I was a kid myself because my relationship with my father was just so bad (only back then), and I always would think, “When I have kids, I’m going to be a much better father.” I was dead-set on proving that I could deal with my own kids better than my father could deal with me.

Granted, I was definitely a handful as a kid and even worse when I became a teenager. Heck, I probably was a nightmare, constantly punching my first through walls and windows and doing all sorts of constructive damage to houses where we lived (and probably were rent? I’m not sure.)

If you’ve also read previous installments of this then you already know that I can’t have kids, one of the “side effects” of the stem cell transplant I had to improve my immune system post-leukemia. Thankfully, I have a lot of friends with kids, some who have had kids since I first met them, and it’s nice seeing them grow as people when they become parents.

Since I have already resigned to the fact I’ll probably never be married and never have kids, it does leave this empty vacuum in me because I do really like kids. I mean, it’s fun playing games with younger kids as I did with my nephews when we could do all sorts of rambunctious games that would usually involve beating the living crap out of their uncle... but at a certain point ,they got too big and I couldn’t do that anymore since I would get seriously injured.

One of the reason I generally love being around kids though is that they have such an interesting unbiased worldview that hasn’t been affected by decades of cynicism that almost always creeps in as soon as we get to high school. (See previous writing on that subject.)

Kids are REALLY smart these days, even the younger kids when they are 4, 5 and 6, and it’s amazing to see how much smarter and worldly they have become just by having something like the internet to help them grow and learn about the world. In some ways, it almost makes parenting and teachers obsolete, but as we’ve been seeing lately, keeping up school work via Zoom while maintaining social distancing has become something the country has embraced by necessity.

Oh, I wanted to give an example of how interesting kids are and why it sometimes saddens me that I haven’t and may never experience the joys of being a parent. A friend, who’ll know she is if she reads this, has a son who I think was 7 last year. Well, he had a tablet/phone of some kind and when I visited them last year, he was playing a building game (sort of like a primitive version of Minecraft) but the idea of it is that you’re supposed to build a prison and you have to populate it with all the necessities to keep the inmates from rioting. I know, it sounds like a crazy game for a 7 year old if you think about prison in the real world with actual riots, factions, deaths, violence, etc... but this kid is so smart that his obssession with the game as well as LEGO building could lead to all sorts of amazing occupations in his future from architecture and building design to development and maybe even politics. To me, that’s pretty damn amazing and I think the sky is the limit for this kid, who I have had to fortune to see at different stages of his life and development over the years.

Maybe it’s cause my nephews are both over 18 and out in the real world that they don’t feel as interesting to me, but that’s what contributes to my constant interest in kids that unfortunately, due to the warranted fears I mentioned earlier, it’s not an interest I can really foster. I’m certainly not going to try to become a teacher at my age, because I feel the only thing I can teach at this particular age is how to do everything in life completely “wrong.” I mean, that’s probably subjective since there shouldn’t really be a “right” or “wrong” way to do life.

Shit... I just checked to see how much time I have left and realized I forgot to hit “Start” on my timer, only the second time i’ve done that but generally know when I started so I’ll give this another five minutes or so.

Going back to kids and learning and their growth and development, I’m trying to think of my own youth and how I learned and grew by playing and listening to music and reading comics. Maybe they didn’t teach me anything except to love both things well into my adulthood, but I like talking to my friends who are parents about how their kids are growing and developing since it’s nice to know that all of them seem to be doing things right. I just never feel as if I can do what half of them are doing right now in terms of maintaining a certain lifestyle and still being able to insure their kids can grow up and develop in a happy and exploratory way. Honestly, I have no idea how you do it but I’m perpetually impressed.

There’s clearly something good and great that kids bring to the world, including new ideas, new visions and new ways of thinking that hopefully will insure that the world will only get better rather than much, much worse... which right now, it just seems to be going that way.

I’m gonna assume that my time is almost up so will end this early... kudos and congrats to my friends with kids who have had to go through this with them, and I’m glad you’re able to spend even more time with them.

#30ME #30MInuteExperiment #Kids

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pisati · 5 years ago

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it’s weird. but part of me is just like, well, if it’s all the same, what the fuck does it matter? what’s more damage?

do you only see it as more damage?

pretty much. I mean, I don’t know. I used to see it differently, but I haven’t felt like that in a long time. I think more recently I’ve been using it as self-harm.

how do you mean?

well. farm jam a few years ago. I was going to the barn with alec and we met up with tom and one of their bandmates. the percussionist. he and I went in the barn to listen to the band that was playing, and it was really cool. then I felt him bump into me a few times, then he pulled me in by my hips. I felt like I wanted to throw up... but I didn’t tell him to stop. after that set I went back to his camp with him and I was mentally preparing to make some mistakes. I didn’t want to, but I did, you know? nothing ended up happening, and probably for the best; he was on a LOT of molly. but I probably would’ve done it. and I don’t know why.

mmhm. yeah.

I just don’t know how to see it like I did before. it all feels the same. not that I’d really know what it’s like when it means something. I don’t even know if I’d know how to handle it if it did. sometimes I just feel beyond fixing.

you’re not beyond fixing. you could use therapy, sure, but I think it would help you.

I mean, I know I’ve been depressed, and I can still do things. which makes me think it can’t possibly be that bad. but... I don’t know.

listen. look around you. you have a neat dresser with a clean top and cool decor. all your clothes are hung up in the closet. you have a clean living room. a neat kitchen. a clean bathroom. clean floors. you can get up and keep yourself together. you’re resilient as fuck. you met my one roommate vince, right? he’s still talking to his ex, which he shouldn’t be doing. he spends most of his time in his room. his bed is a mattress that doesn’t even have a sheet on it. he does laundry sometimes, but it ends up in piles on the floor. he has a cat, and he loves her a lot, but he doesn’t have a job and we basically buy his cat’s food for him. he is not functioning well. he’s very depressed. I do think if he got on meds he could maybe get that push to get a job, get some of his life together. but I don’t know. you, on the other hand, you’ve been through some really difficult shit. but you’re resilient. you’re strong.

I guess. I kind of feel like I just have to do all these things, because what’s the alternative? letting everything fall to shit? I can’t. I need to keep myself busy. staying organized helps me feel better too. but that’s also functioning. is it really that bad then?

that’s resilience. it could be bad, I don’t know. but some people don’t even have the strength to not let things fall to shit. you do.

---

it’s weird to be called resilient by someone who had a strong hand in making you that way.

---

now I just look at him and wonder, how could I have ever? how was I so in over my head? how did I let him hurt me so badly? how did I keep going back? getting my hopes up? I don’t think I could feel that way about him again even if I wanted to.

that post that says how can someone be sorry for shit they keep doing? keeps echoing in my mind. but I was always given options. I chose to keep hurting myself. to keep doing what I knew hurt me, rather. I know I’m making excuses. I can’t ever fully forgive what he did.

could just be quarantine fever. he held my hand. wove his fingers between mine. took a gentle hand and slowly brushed through my hair, rubbed my head just behind my ear the way he knows I like. he was really understanding when I told him I just didn’t have the brain energy for movies or new shows, which was nice. sometimes people push me too hard when they don’t believe me. I let him know when I was up to watching Parasite, and we watched it with Luca curled up between us. he brought down the Pearl Jam album he bought me just over a year ago and kept forgetting to give me; slowly starting to chip away at the money he’s owed me over the years. didn’t even poke fun at me when he bought it; he just took pictures and asked which I wanted. he kept me company when I crashed, got up and covered me with my couch blanket when I couldn’t even move my arm behind me to get it. went upstairs to get me my meds in the morning when I forgot them but was too tired to go back up. offered to sit with me and cut out template shapes for my masks, which really helped me cut down production time. showed me briefly how to play minecraft; I got it for switch and he got the windows 10 version so we could play together.

sad how the little things surprise me. how anyone could treat me with even that much kindness. I don’t always believe I deserve it. part of me does think he’s trying to make it up to me. I don’t know if he can, but this was nice.

he didn’t push me away this time. I was so scared for years and I thought it was going to happen again. but it didn’t. I don’t know how to feel about that. any of it.

I could never feel the way I did before. but it really is nice to be that comfortable with someone. just. that’s kind of what I imagine a relationship would be like. maybe with more actual affection, but I guess I wouldn’t know. I think I’d be just as scared if it were meaningful in that way. I’d probably stay closed-off. I’d always stop myself. I can’t get out of that headspace where me showing affection is bad and gross and weird. where I’m afraid that if I show any kind of interest I’m going to drive them off. I guess with him I’m not afraid anymore. I don’t feel it, I don’t have anything to show, let alone hide. it’s never meant anything. it won’t ever. but we’re still close. if there’s such a thing as friend soulmates, that’s probably the best word for it. I’ve never not cared deeply for him. I like to think he cares too. he’s apologized, and I don’t blame him for not having much beyond that. what do you do for someone you’ve hurt like that? so much they feel beyond repair? I don’t know what more I should expect from him. he’s treating me with respect now. not that he didn’t before, but there were times when he really was hurtful.

I’m glad I had a witness to a bad crash. finally. when it would happen last year my mom was never home. I don’t know how long the walk was, it was definitely at more of an incline than the walks I was taking last spring, but the crash wasn’t unfamiliar. it was maybe about 2 miles. we walked down from my building towards charlotte’s old house. around the block there and then back up the hill. I could feel myself getting out of breath near the top of the hill, asked to slow down a little. felt like I might be able to take a nap when we got home. he tried to encourage me up the stairs faster with a little jog, but some muscles in my legs were cramping up and I just couldn’t do it. he had to wait for me at the top. I was dizzy by the time we got back in. bumped into the wall on my way upstairs; I wanted to change clothes. felt like if I stayed upright for too long I might pass out. I got back downstairs. I remember chucking the cat off the couch and just flopping down. crawling up to one of the pillows, out of breath. I closed my eyes and couldn’t open them for more than a second or two for the next half hour. told him I wanted a blanket but couldn’t move to get the one behind me, he got up and covered me up. he talked to me a bit; I think he was playing my animal crossing to get me some more bells so I could pay off my loan to get another room on my house. eventually I fell asleep. it took me a while to wake up more fully. I do think it hit him that my body really just crashed; he told me I was just down for the count right after we got back. I don’t remember if it was that night or saturday night, but we watched Unrest too. that documentary about CFS. we couldn’t decide what to watch, I told him I liked that one, and it showed a lot of what I go through. I told him that when I watched it the first time, it convinced me I probably don’t have it, but watching it this time... I’m convinced I do. I’m not in the small percentage of people that have it so severely (on that fatigue scale I found; the 0-1s), but they did mention that some people with CFS don’t even look sick. some of us can appear functional, but people don’t usually see our crashes. looking at that scale, I think I push myself. I do feel like I can do the things they list in the recovery indices, but I hit crashes almost daily and need naps, and no sleep is ever restful. even during my gap year, the brain fog was unbearable. I had lyme as a kid, and my weird symptoms line up with post-infection weirdness. a lot of CFS patients get sick and then never recover; I did recover. but this shit all hit me later. that’s one of the only differences between me and likely the majority of others. otherwise it’s all the same. perfectly normal labwork. normal MRIs and ECGs. normal but our bodies don’t handle exertion well at all. mine’s been getting worse; I never used to crash like this until about last year. I at least never had distinct energy crashes immediately after physical exertion. I think it depends on the exertion though, because I could clean a lot at the shelter and not crash so hard so fast. apparently nice slow-paced walks do me in now.

it kept taking me a while to wake up every day. I hit my usual late-morning/early-afternoon crashes. didn’t really start waking up til mid-afternoon or so. that’s really frustrating for me. nothing to do about it I guess.

I shouldn’t be up this late. I was planning on going to sleep earlier. ah well.

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peter-ino-salinas · 5 years ago

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The Rise & Fall of Nerd Kingdom

First, let me say, while I adore and appreciate so much the underground movement and support of the select few who have kept Nerd Kingdom alive in your own ways, as well as our work, thank you. In so many ways you will never know those few of you have kept me going on my own path today.

Second, anyone who was involved who is looked at negatively, you shouldn’t, they are all brilliant people, but brilliant in their own regard, we are human, people had the best intentions, but sometimes values can change and shift when elements are introduced that people do not understand, for better or worse.

If any of you are reading this who were involved in any politics with Nerd Kingdom in any form, know that I always look back and appreciate the things I learned from all of you. Even if I did not always agree, I could have done better to listen and understand. In spite of my own best intentions, I lost myself with so many divided agendas and for that I am sorry. One day I genuinely hope we can be colleagues again, in whatever form that may be.

Genuine Intentions

The earliest forms of Nerd Kingdom were not EXACTLY what it was at the time, but the motivation was quite the same. It was based on some VERY old academic work and mutual interest of my colleagues in various fields. It was very simple, young minds in a social environment with the correct tools have the capacity to advance upon and outmaneuver larger entities which are subject to walls they engineer themselves into. Neat.

In not so technical speak, it was about Modders and Gamers. That was is. We had a quantifiable understanding (creepy topic, different post) that young minds who were not beaten into accepting conventions would define worlds. As it happened, the worlds we cared about were games for all the nerdiest and still most scientific reasons. Early on we had a variety of ways to access data or work with modders, but it wasn't the same as what happened when we saw Minecraft VERY early.

Comically the way we raised money in the first place wasn’t even intentional, we were just a bunch of outcast nerds who were not always understood in Academia or “Business” and we called out some truths about it before it happened. It was simple “The slow nature of content creation in Minecraft will inevitably lead to someone decompiling Java, building various versions and we can correlate that to the rise and fall of any industry or business. And low and behold, what we predicted happened.

To be clear, while we had a more technical articulation, at our core, we were also very much like many modders and gamers, we were passionate hackers who were ignored by masses and still did things that were valuable to people, even if very often we were taken advantage of. Admittedly, some of us had a chip on our shoulder early, but we hid it well, myself included. Assuredly, that chip is now gone, I have you all and my own children to thank for that to force me to see who I was and people around me.

ALL THE MONIES!

We were asked what we would do if we had access to money given that we just proved MAGIC (which was sadly obvious from our views of things) and the natural response was “Create a platform to empower people to learn and play and connect while also identifying measurable patterns of interactions to determine how to teach people how to solve problems and turn them into engineers or better creatives”. As you can imagine, this was confusing. We took some advice from some “Business Folks” we met and this was awesome and horrible down the road, but one of our first curses, which was what we had to do.

“It's like Minecraft with Better Graphics and we have PhDs and stuff”

As you can imagine. All the monies. Its something a lot of us had a conflict with, it was never about MINECRAFT, it was about an environment to play and understand. The reason we actually built our own engine was that the engines in the game industry, even now, are not REALLY all that great at empowering creation, its an inherent flaw in their architecture. So we had to go back to basics... SIMULATION! It's all nerd talk, but it's simple. A simulation engine or simulation at all is simply a single structure of code that allows access to all parts of it. Wanna know what else was a simulation engine, sorta? Minecraft Java. It's not really... well, it's slower than we liked, so we built our own. Several times over in fact, and each time we managed to benchmark performance of various areas that would actually outperform commercial engines, even now.

This resulted in some strange divides, however, this whole “Minecraft killer” thing, gave me anxiety EVERY day and I did my best to try and curb that from a market perspective, but I am sure many people saw it as a sales guise. It wasn't, but I get it, this is what “Games” and “Business” does, so I cannot even be mad about it. But as a result we actually became amazing friends with many amazing influential minds in Minecraft as a community, though the members of Minecraft themselves didn't pay much attention to us, I actually think some of them took jabs at us more than once. That was a bummer.

ALL THE DATAS!

What we tried to show, but did not always do so well with so much going on, is this really was a massive “experiment” that had a lot of potential impact in a LOT of places, not just games. But there is a good reason we kept attracting academics, amazing engineers, investors, and also REALLY pissing people of or outright confusing them. No matter what if you were exposed to what we were doing you paid attention in some way and you certainly had feelings about it in some way.

But our approach was meant to be genuine, its why we were always so transparent with stuff to the point that the industry saw us as these cathartic consumers, not developers like them. Also, nothing I can be upset about now, I get it, especially after now having spent so much time in the “Core Industry”. All that Data, all that research, all the things we were doing we wanted to go back to all of the community. To expose the environment to allow Academia to connect and understand people better, to demonstrate what young minds could do with the correct understanding, tools, and support, to break several walls with one elegant and comically obvious statement, the only way to solve a slew of problems, was understanding and empowering young minds to see how brilliant they all really are and not let us dumb adults or “professionals” make them feel otherwise.

What was NOT obvious to a lot of people, even some of them involved, is we were creating a massive digital brain. This was a result of the kind of engine we built and tools as well. The latest iterations actually had the capacity to understand the input of one thing and the output of another. And it was getting WAY faster with time. This impacted AI, which could learn from players, matchmaking, content distribution, everything. And it was funnier still that we got better at doing it the more we realized that doing it the way the game industry does, would never work.

This is something we wanted to build and give to everyone. It made the most sense that if we can create a great environment for people to play and learn from, they would naturally want to make their own versions of it and people would challenge those things and create new games with it which we could empower. This is also why we became VERY close to influencers in preparation for that. We had “big plans”, which were honestly ridiculously obvious, but we had too many motivations in too many directions which stopped that from happening.

Fighting Hacker Culture

Something that I often forget myself, but have found better ways of reminding myself of, is we are all hackers in nature, very few of us are architects or have the time to question “What was the impact of this thing”, we idolize a hack and create religions around it. Unity, Unreal, Playfab, Python, R, C++, Organic Food, Emotional Intelligence, Data Science, AI, etc, etc, etc. It all “Does a thing”, but we don't take the time to ask “WTF is it REALLY doing and how can it solve my problem better, or do I REALLY need to reinvent the wheel here”.

That being said, a hackers mentality very young when validated and accepted by the people that matter most, the masses, consumers, gamers, etc THAT is powerful and meaningful. THAT is what we wanted to empower. It's not that people who are set in their ways could NOT figure stuff out, it's sad that sometimes as adults and professionals we don't have time to ask why and we are trained to get ready to defend anything we believe in with emotions so big logic doest exist anymore.

But with games, this was powerful to us. We could empower young scientists, engineers, hackers, gamers, storytellers, who were not yet programmed in how to TREAT people, but still curious who could learn and leverage one another to do great things. That to use was disruptive, we didn’t talk about that dream much in the studio, we knew it would freak people out, but the few of us involved leading who drove it, or who was with us but had to leave, we all kept it as our motivation and reminded one another in every way we could.

The Power of Influence

The influencers were also people we became VERY close to early on, not just for their insights into the culture of gaming, but also to find ways of creating a new “Business Structure” for them to connect with indies and modders. Our goal was to not control that business, but create better connections and better tools. To us, this was sadly the most obvious thing to do.

Influencers have a LOT of Data, and even their MCNs have big teams that are sorta... well, built by humans with not great motivations, so it's hard to make sense of Data. On the contrary, we were CREEPY good with that stuff, so we were starting to explore that wedge in between. Not ironically, the same stuff we were building for our own stuff was going to be used for the data coming in from the influencers too.

To us, the influencer was the PERFECT game publisher and the solution would have been able to negate their own reliance on brands, advertisers, MCNs, etc. They would get access to games and content, they would be able to stay genuine, modders could monetize, profits could be split with influencers, we would use smart data and “AI” (still hate that term) to create a full loop. More data would come in, Science, Tech, Influence, etc would all create a symbiotic ecosystem and we would just take cuts of profits to keep building tools to keep making everyone better.

Saying Goodbye

As a few of you may know, I live and breathed this project. It cost me a lot on an emotional level. While trying to find balance and losing myself it cost me a relationship with my children, it did result in a divorce, and it led to a lot of pain and anxiety from failing everyone. I sadly was raised to take on the rough situations, but I always got good at “processing” and “growing” as it were, its also what led me to do things in Academia and in Business which would ALSO make people feel some kind of way about me :P

While its unfortunate things ended this way, and I still hold the weight of it and I refuse to ignore it, I understand why it happened. In the end, it helped make me remember who I was before we got caught up with the money. But the things I did AFTER Nerd Kingdom were interesting, things I still do today. And still, the things I do today either REALLY piss people off, resulting in amazing friends or outright confuse people, but when they hear of me or see what I have to say, or awkwardly and playfully call out every buzz word they throw at me, they pay attention in some form.

I have been offered executive roles at HUGE studios in games, many of which you all know by name, many of which are also in the public eye for missing the mark. I have become friends with “big name Venture Capitalists” literally around the world, I have become an advisor, mentor, colleague or friend to these brilliant minds who are Loved, Hated or Ignored in the space and I keep them close. More important to me, I keep them close and connect them with one another, its important to me that people have a chance to connect and understand to challenge their views but ultimately see they are wanting the same things, even if they forgot their path to getting to their success.

Saying Hello?

I noticed something a year ago after about 40 ish studios or tech companies that I was being offered work at, was advising, consulting, or just visiting to say hi... they all suffered from the pains they seemed to be ignoring. Their views on Data, Culture, Games, Technology, and even AI was... well, human. The very nature of the market in games and the creative passions and pains of gamers created a divide that results in... well, human responses, which are not so great.

As it happened the further I looked I would see little pieces of technology we were building or trying to build at Nerd Kingdom were popping up. I took the time to chat with them, even brought some of their own tech and tools into games at a few studios, then started to formally start chatting with more studios to just ask questions. Turns out, we built at Nerd Kingdom the earliest version of what a few big game studios are doing now and in tech, but they seem to be overlooking how they should connect, which simply comes from language barriers inside and no time to REALLY solve problems.

Then, those few big names from big studios out there now who know me, some famous designers, some brilliant engineers, a few investors and a handful of others put some pressure on me to get something going again. And I think it might. As it happens my meetings with people are becoming more frequent, my brain is fried, I am connecting and reconnecting with like minds in places like IBM, Qualcomm, Google, and even a few very large tech entities and it seems that with a bit of dialog we are all on the same page.

NOPE

Now, if something DOES happen, it happens because it makes sense and I would not be so bold as to promise we went back to making TUG, that would be tricky, though I did adore the world, which was also VERY calculated at the time, but what I can promise is that my work will always involve efforts of giving more power and understanding to all of you.

If somehow I do manage to make another thing I have to personally be more careful about who is involved, the money, and the terms. Hard lesson learned and I have to do it in a way that would allow things to be flexible enough to make it up to the many of you that invested a lot of time, or money where you could support what we did, while I will say it, assuredly, none of us ever forgot. And none of you were ever just “consumers” to us.

While I do have VC colleagues even if they wanted to, you can’t fund nothing without them taking a LOT of control fast, so some of the stuff I am exploring is simply a mutually beneficial agreement with a group I know well. Help them build a thing, let me take a thing and use it to make the deal work correctly. I have been fortunate enough to have a team of people, even a few very famous influencers you wouldn't suspect to support us when the time is right.

The names involved and the people in some form are easy to figure out, but others are not so easy to figure out and some names I am talking to now I won't name drop, because in my business world that is still rude until they are more comfortable with the idea of doing business is this... awkwardly honest.

Playing It Cool

While Nerd Kingdom is dissolved and TECHNICALLY this is within my “Legal Rights” I do understand that sometimes business against its better nature can result in “actions”. So I’ll do the same thing I do with each awkward conversation in games, just in case anyone is paying attention from the business world.

To whoever is potentially considering legal actions, it would be a silly thing to do. While your legal teams may not understand this, your executives certainly know it, I pay attention to details and I am not motivated by money, which makes trying to take legal action on me VERY silly. On the contrary, I’m collaborative, helpful and tend to make everyone else a lot of money ALL the time if I am given the ability to do so and their own internal politics do not devour the work I do.

In short, it's a short-sighted move to take action on someone that you know VERY well is capable of bringing people with a lot of potential together to do things with a lot of amazing potential. I do happen to have a LOT of friends in “big places” in the strangest way, I took the time to plant seeds and do a LOT of favors, any actions I am sure would be public for all the wrong reasons and in the end it would only validate the work I have done in the American and European market of the things we did and are capable of doing. So, I would rather just be friends :D

To My Nerds

To anyone that has had the patience to have gotten this far, don’t let me forget who I am, ever again. And thank you for the weight of failure I was able to pick up to remember it when I was important. I don't know how yet, or when, or in what form, but something is telling me that soon ill be doing something of interest, with a few people of interest, with a lot of potential.

Thank you, each one of you, troll, evangelist, or otherwise, you keep me human, in the best possible ways.

#Nerdkingdom

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veervr-blog · 7 years ago

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VeeR VR: Are VR Games Worth Buying Yet

If you were to ask a random person about Virtual Reality (VR), the first thought they’d have in mind is probably games. VR is particularly suited for gaming because of its power of immersion. In a way, no art can better utilize the potential of virtual reality than Gaming itself (yes, Gaming is an interactive art) – an experience that’s meant to be both immersive and interactive.

Looking at the greater picture, the whole VR gaming industry is, very much, at an early stage. We see loads of games on PSVR, OCULUS, and VIVE (hundreds, big or small). But as Ian Birnbaum from Motherboard put it over a year ago, “buying a new headset is a decision that should be justified by great content, which isn’t really here yet.” Frankly, most VR games are interesting developer experimentations… but errr (how do I put it elegantly)… disappointing consumer products. Sometimes, controls aren’t great, other times graphics are horrible, and worst case scenario, people just get bored from playing them after messing around for 20 minutes, thinking “well, that was enough of VR gaming.”

After investing hundreds of dollars on a VR headset, customers expect a completely new sort of experience made possible only by virtual reality. Plain and simple, but a hard measure to reach. It’s very promising, though – as of December 2017, we have many cases where the games have really stood out because of their VR capabilities.

Here, we break down (VR) games into six notable categories with selected examples. And I really mean to ask you guys this question –

Are VR headsets backed with enough interesting games to be worthy of purchase?

I think, from a pure game consumer point of view, these ‘categories’ are also important factors for game developers to consider in designing games. Often games combine elements from multiple categories. Since each factor brings a different experience to the table, what sort of mixed experience are you trying to create? and how should every detail (plot, character, visual, audio, control…) help to realize that?

I. High Sociability

If we assume VR gaming will become a common household activity, which likely will, games that are specifically targeted to fulfill a basic social need certainly has a market. Now, if you are thinking, “Oh! I’ve always liked getting on COD with my buddies,” then you are thinking wrong. There are games that are more fun to play with friends, like COD, but there are games considered fun only because it’s a social game (can you have fun playing King’s Cup, or Hide and Seek by yourself?… well if you still can, you should probably see a psychiatrist).

The main selling point of this kind of game, simply put, is to really just hang out with friends. The environment, character, and objective are there to support the “hanging out.”

Star Trek: Bridge Crew

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=romB8e5nMp8?start=82]

Apart from being a “Star Trek thing,” this game is all about sitting back with a circle of friends. You can follow the objective, sure, OR, why not just mess around and make each other laugh?

Werewolves Within

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxKy2lrGBBQ]

Werewolves Within is based on the old party game Mafia. Instead of meeting up physically, you can just “teleport” into a virtual world together and have a fun game night.

II. ‘Superhero’ Experience

By ‘superhero’ I really mean a badass main character in a reasonably engaging story. And in some cases, you are a known superhero, like the Batman. Superheroes sell as comic books, movies, TV series, and now, VR games. It not old because you can actually become a superhero in VR. It sounds like a simple concept but to make the experience realistic is a big challenge, especially with the locomotion options and control schemes currently available for VR.

Batman Arkham

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRfxn_WjDKE]

Batman Arkman has done a really good job in the details to bring the Batman experience to life – the visuals, sound effects, and just cool things you get to do as the man himself. Wait till you try it to make up your mind about this game because the trailer doesn’t quite deliver the awesomeness.

Another noteworthy game in this category is Arizona Sunshine, not exactly a “superhero,” but you do get to be a cowboy in a zombie apocalypse story.

III. Skill-Based/Competitive Gaming

Some games are better in VR because of the immersion it brings, others are better because a regular PC or console setup cannot achieve or utilize certain skills. Competitive games usually have a rank/stats system installed to help players motivate themselves to get better. PC/console games can try to be as realistic as they can, but certain actions simply can’t be done on those – checking what’s going on to your left but point the gun at an enemy on the right, and peeking around the corner, for instance. These are either natural or calibrated human actions in competitive situations. Sports games, too, fall into this category. When crosshair and line of sight controls are separated (sight by head movement, crosshair with controller), players can multi-task like never before. I genuinely believe that VR will come to establish a competitive gaming culture in the near future, like how CS: GO and League of Legends are to the PC world.

Eve Valkyrie

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdp-KW83a78]

In this live stream recording, notice how the player can check a certain direction before making a commitment to move. This movement is very much natural and it makes a big difference in action-packed competitive gaming. It’s a true test of player’s skills.

IV. Appeal To Exploration

We have seen plenty of games alike – from the good old Minecraft to massive productions like No Man’s Sky. These games speak to the audience because players get to be excited about the exploration itself. It is not for everyone, I suppose, since these games provide no apparent objective to ‘win’. In the case of VR, players get to be completely immersed in a new world – think ‘Oasis’ from Ready Player One.

Elite Dangerous

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaE16Ldpel4]

This game has been around for a few years, and the VR version has seen a lot of improvements. Comparatively, Elite Dangerous has quite a steep learning curving, inasmuch it throws some people off at a first try if easily discouraged by the ‘complexity’ of it all. But if you like space explorations, this game will not disappoint you after just putting in a little more patience. The graphics and sound effects are simply astonishing. And you have got a whole Universe to explore. Additionally, if you do not mind paying a little extra, HOTAS controller is most definitely worth the investment – it’s a controller that mimics the in-game spaceship controls. See a HOTAS demo here.

V. Horror

There are things you wish to never experience in real life, but the idea of having a try, in VR especially, can be appealing. Horror game has been more or less a genre of its own since the start: 1) they are usually built for a one time experience, not worrying about replayability. 2) like theater, each moment, scene needs to be well-choreographed. 3) almost exclusively single player. 4) a good horror game employs various psychological trickeries rather than excessively use jump scares. VR can only help to amplify that horrifying experience.

Paranormal Activity

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsna1ChGt0E] As a big fan of P.T.(Silent Hills Playable Teaser) myself, a highly acclaimed horror game that has been canceled, I see many resemblances to P.T. in Paranormal Activity. P.T. is just a brilliant game with hardly any jump scare. With masterful plays of visual and audio effects, it overwhelms players with fears they’ve created in their own head, but not so much to the point you’d want to just quit. In a way, paranormal Activity feels very much like a VR upgrade of P.T.

VI. Experimental

Let’s scratch everything, and create an experience that’s not-of-this-ordinary-world, original, interesting, never seen before, and totally unique. In VR, developers can focus on creating a world based on their own ‘laws of physics.’

Stifled

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6FlnZGWk3M?start=225]

Stifled is a voice-controlled horror game. As the player, you are stranded in a bizarre world where everything’s seen through voice and echo. The intricacy lies in finding a balance between staying hidden from the enemy while having no idea of what’s around you, and taking the risk of attracting unwanted attention to have a better sense of your surroundings.

Are you tempted to buy a headset? I guess it’s your own decision in the end. I will say, however, if you haven’t gotten one, now wouldn’t be a bad time to start looking. Many new games are in development for 2018 release. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im_l8fIvwb4]

Interested in Promoting Your VR Game?

Games or movies, a VR/360° trailer is a powerful way to engage your audience:

The Conjuring 2

This was made to promote the home-entertainment release of Conjuring 2.

VeeR is a free global VR community where many companies have used for marketing/promotion, including Warner Bros. Pictures, Associated Press, CCP Games, LinkedIn, EuroNews, RussiaToday, CNBC, PintaStudios and etc.

originally from VeeR VR Blog: Are VR Games Worth Buying Yet

#vr games #virtualreality #vr video

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gamerszone2019-blog · 5 years ago

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Phil Spencer: Cloud Gaming Is Inevitable, But It's Not Replacing Traditional Consoles Just Yet

New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/phil-spencer-cloud-gaming-is-inevitable-but-its-not-replacing-traditional-consoles-just-yet/

Phil Spencer: Cloud Gaming Is Inevitable, But It's Not Replacing Traditional Consoles Just Yet

Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, has plenty to think about, from the next generation of Xbox consoles to helping build new development teams. He and the team are also managing an ecosystem that’s trying to serve the needs of as many players as possible. Cloud-based gaming touches all of those areas, which is why he’s been championing Project xCloud, Microsoft’s game streaming technology that will let you access the power of an Xbox console through your phone via an internet connection. We recently got the opportunity to talk to the head of Xbox about a number of topics, including how he sees xCloud fitting into Xbox’s repertoire, and within an industry that’s traditionally orbited around consoles in the home.

Phil Spencer on stage during Microsoft’s E3 2019 press conference. — Photo credit: Jason Lewis

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