$60 Man's Sky

A post on the official US Playstation Blog this morning had, briefly, the preorder date and price listed for Hello Games' upcoming space exploration game No Man's Sky. To whit: preorders open on March 3rd (tomorrow) for $60.

It's still unclear who is actually outraged about the price, but the lack of a scandal won't stop Twitter from kicking off about it. Dozens of furious tweets poured onto the internet, decrying the (very possibly non-existent) idiots who thought $60 was too much to pay for No Man's Sky, based on one blog post that suggested that the small development team size might be one reason that customers might see the price tag as excessive.

Of course, people will complain about the price and team size will undoubtedly enter the conversation now (albeit only because of the Twitterstorm). But nobody justifies Battlefield's price tag by pointing out how many people worked on it, in the face of complaints about a campaign lasting "only" four hours or a lack of multiplayer maps. And with billions of planets to explore, it'll be difficult to argue that Hello Games haven't provided enough content despite their small team.

I happen to think that the price tag on No Man's Sky is going to hurt sales - simply because nobody seems entirely sure, yet, of what the game is. It's still a big question mark, and $60 is a not-inconsiderable amount of money to drop on an unknown quantity.

Giant Bomb

Disclaimer: I don't read Giant Bomb. I've got an account, but their aggressively American approach and labyrinthine forums have always combined to produce a community that I find difficult to immerse myself in*.

They recently hired a new writer, and there's been some disappointment expressed on Twitter that it's another white guy. The Giant Bomb community has rallied to the site's defence, and their general argument appears to be, under a lot of bile, that New White Man is a good fit with the site's established editorial style and humour.

I also understand that these places hire people they know, and it's a fact that white guys are higher-profile in the games industry and enthusiast press, as a rule, than any other combination of race and gender. So it makes statistical sense that a bunch of white guys running a videogames website would know and hire another white guy.

But I have difficulty accepting either of these arguments as good enough.

If you care about the quality of opinions and writing, then a different voice than the ones you're already getting can only be a good thing. I already know how white guys feel about Call of Duty. Give me a new perspective.

The statistics are harder to argue with, bit the weakness in that argument is the assumption that Giant Bomb couldn't have possibly found any women or non-white men to hire at all. It would have been harder to find that voice, maybe, but if we really want a more diverse, inclusive industry - and if you don't, I'm afraid we can never be friends - then the established networks like Giant Bomb have to be prepared to put your legwork in.

That they didn't think this effort was worth it - I'm not sure if that's better or worse than the thought never occurring at all - speaks volumes about their (lack of) commitment to improving the industry they're part of as well as the one they cover.

*And I'm a straight white guy, their target audience. I am only imagine how daunting an experience that place must be for women or non-white users.

Overthinking

Not updated in a while because all I've had to talk about is Fate, and I'm pretty sure that was getting boring.

So, of course this'll be another Fate post.

I've been thinking about the campaign too long. I'm starting to second-guess every aspect of it. The "no magic" rule is close to being scrapped because I'm liking the idea of paranormal elements (specifically, the broader scope for encounters); I'm considering either expanding the playable races to include more options, or stripping it back to just humans; there's a possibility to update the technology more to allow airships, although I still want to avoid cars so that could be difficult.

And all of this is having the knock-on effect of making me question the entire backstory I've written, and the broader narrative I was thinking of telling within the campaign.

Of course, a large part of Fate is to do with collaboration between the GM and players, so maybe it makes more sense to bring a certain set of ideas to the table and let the others add or expand with their own ideas and characters.

Part of this self-doubt probably comes from the realization I had last week, that I shouldn't be trying to come up with endings for the scenes I was writing. Trying to predict outcomes in a tabletop game isn't just pointless, it's a waste of time and runs the risk of railroading your players. I've instead just come up with the setup and characters - who they are, what they want, and where they are - with the hope that my understanding of, and ability to explain, the rules will allow things to flow more naturally.

That leads me, of course, into a position where the PC-level elements of the plot aren't predictable, which is where my lack of faith in the narrative I was originally thinking of.

Really, what this boils down to, is that I desperately need to sit down with the group and talk about this thing. A couple of our regulars have been unwell the last couple of sessions so there've been boardgames with stand-ins instead. But I don't want to start talking about this game when a. we're all in the middle of learning a new game and b. there are people there that I don't know and won't be playing Fate.

I really just need to get the game started before I lose all enthusiasm.

Nothing new

Welp, there's my first missed day of this year's effort.

I'm trying to figure out why it's so much more of a struggle to get things down this time around. Maybe it's the pressure I'm putting on myself after "failing" last year, but I'm starting to wonder if it's just that I'm not doing enough new stuff.

At the start of 2013 I was still getting back into anime "properly", so there was a lot of catching up to do. But now I feel like I've seen everything I want to, from the years I wasn't following new releases. There's still plenty on my MAL Plan To Watch queue, but finding the time and enthusiasm is getting difficult the longer they stay on there (and the older the show is generally).

The stuff I'm watching at the moment, I've already written about or doesn't seem like it's worth discussing at any length.

Even games seem to have fallen by the wayside; I've tried picking up Dishonored, but I'm finding it more a chore than would be ideal. I've yet to finish the first episode of Broken Age (which I've already posted about anyway), and I'm struggling to think of anything else on that front that I've put any time into.

I'd talk about work if I could think of a way to explain the problems I'm solving (read: finding answers for on Stack Overflow), thought they were broadly interesting, or could separate them from the specific project. I'm lacking the confidence in my programming abilities to make much of my code public in any case.

Man, I can write a lot about nothing. Why isn't it this easy to write about a specific subject?

This is legitimately disappointing.

Nothing to write about today. Have a draft in die need of editing/rewriting, but it's nowhere near ready for semi-public consumption.

Didn't think I'd find myself phoning one in this early in the year. I considered trying to limit myself to just three a week, bit then I'd still feel obliged to stick to some kind of update schedule and at least daily posts keeps me in the habit (in theory).

Still find myself trying to write about "worthwhile" stuff, rather than just writing. I should probably do more with drafts, just so I don't get to half eleven and raise I'm totally stumped. Having three or four possible stubs could help.

So much for that plan

I started off 2013 with the intention of writing something - anything - on this blog every day. I didn't even manage three whole months. I missed one day in March, four in April, and after that I just kind of ran out of steam.

I have an idea why. Part of the reason I wanted to try writing more regularly was because of a website project I had turning over at the back of my mind, but it would be a big commitment and I wanted to make sure I could keep up the volume of writing it would require. I also wanted to get better at writing, and that means writing more. The down side of this approach - writing for a purpose, rather than just for the sake of it - is that I wanted everything I posted to be interesting. I should have just sat down and picked something and wrote about it and published that. Of course, you need feedback for that, and I can't take critism well, so I never really told anybody that I was doing it, never asked for feedback, never shared what I'd put up here.

Another side effect of the "wanting to be interesting" thing was the number of posts I started, abandoned and deleted because I couldn't say exactly what I meant consisely; I didn't want to have thousands of words of anime backstory before I could explain my dilemmas about Kill La Kill, but getting my point across for a reader unfamiliar with the show is difficult (another problem: I don't know what, if any, audience this thing has). I've had a post about agnosticism sitting in draft status since February 7th, 2013 because I can't figure out how to explain myself.

In 2013 I published 138 posts - which is one every 2.64 days. I don't think I ever expected to actually reach 365, but I'm still disappointed that I didn't get more done. Still, that's almost as much as I wrote between the start of 2005 and the end of 2012, so I'm not thatbothered.

I'm going to try again this year. Hopefully I'll make it longer than the 29th of March before skipping a day, this time.

Shape of Arcadia

I must have completed Skies of Arcadia a dozen times, and abandoned playthroughs another dozen, but something struck me on my most recent journey back from Yafutoma that I haven't been able to dislodge from my mind for the last couple of days.

Just what the hell shape is this planet?

Warning: this is really self-indulgent.

Graffiti

I've got a weird appreciation for graffiti. I don't mean "street art" - though I do recognise the skill and speed requried - or "tagging", which is just untidy. At least when a dog marks his territory I don't have to look at the messy result for weeks afterwards. I mean the random, angry accusations and (in my experience, usually sectarian) vitriol you get on bus shelters and school desks.

The undirected aggression and violent allegations that can only be expressed anonymously, in biro, on a wall for strangers to see, like a caveman form of the internet.

I find anger hilarious. Apoplectic rage caused by a situation you could have avoided but directed at someone (or something) that can't change anything now. Which is odd, considering how impatient I can get myself.

Misspelled invective, obscure and improbable accusations about everything from my parentage and political affiliation to baseless assumptions about my sexual preferences and physical appearance. If nothing else, the creativity on show is impressive, even if the penmanship or artistic ability of the creator is disasterous.

My favourite piece of graffiti however, which I unfortunately saw before I carried a permanently-connected internet-enabled communications device with built-in camera and GPS locator¹, was on a bus stop in Belfast. Scrawled in smallish permanent marker block capitals was the immortal (for me) phrase "Higgins is a fool".

I have no idea who this Higgins was, or why he was foolish, but there's something about the lack of offence in the phrase that really sticks with me. Compared to the usual caliber of sectarian profanity you get on bus shelters on the Ormeau Road, the inoffensiveness of that sentence really stood out for me.

But my wife has seen something even better - years ago in England, someone apparently felt so strongly about the issue that they had to deface a wall to spread the important message, "I love my dog".

¹ It's amazing how quickly we not only take this incredible borderline magic - which would have been unimaginable in my own lifetime - for granted, but we get frustrated and angry when we're only able to get a 2G signal.

The comic at the top of this post is by Phil Selby of The Rut, and mostly inspired this post when I found a copy of it in my Dropbox.

Hmm

We were supposed to get six inches of snow last night, but none of it materialised, so we just have the last couple of days' slush. Part of me's glad I didn't have to excavate the car this morning, but I'm still a little disappointed.

In other news, I have every Friday off between now and Christmas (only three of them, but it's three long weekends!), and our work Christmas party is this weekend.

Almost done moving in

We've now been in our new house for nearly two weeks, and it's still getting more messy rather than less. There's still a few things in the self-storage box that we've got to transfer out before the account runs out at the weekend, but I don't know if the living room can take much more.

For instance, here's the change over the course of a few hours of yesterday:



The box is nearly cleared out though; we should be able to fit the rest of it into the car for the trip home tonight, or if not then we'll definitely be clearing it out tomorrow.

One slight problem is that the back bedroom, which we'd been planning to use as a storage area for a while, is going to be out of commission for at least another week while we repaint it a colour a little more muted than its current bright pink.

Internet Social

I'm fascinated by "social networking tools" (which I think is a stupid name for them, but whatever) and blogging stuff in general. Which is really weird, when I think about how highly I regard my own opinion (that being, not at all), and how frankly pointless I think putting it online at all is (which, now that I think about it, might be a major contributor to the demise of my anime blog/news site).

But still, I get drawn into Twitter (and Twitpic), upload occasional YouTube videos and had to stop myself from requesting a 12seconds account; as cool as the idea is, I can't see myself vblogging, really - not when I blog "properly" so infrequently. And that's without having to really identify myself to the wider internet. I was still more excited than I probably should have been when I discovered that I could post (and watch) YouTube videos from my phone, though.

I still enjoy seeing how The Internet (by which I mean, the people and entities connected to and via it) finds new ways to communicate with itself. On their own, individual Twitter posts are just pointless minutae (and in a lot of cases, seem rather narcissistic), but there's something interesting about how they form a single cohesive narrative over days and weeks and months in a way that self-contained blog and journal entries don't. There's a lot to be said for the minute-by-minute reactionary nature of Twitter too; it made watching the second Presidential debate much more interesting, for instance, to see hundreds of other people's reaction in real time as it progressed.

That sort of thing isn't maybe what the creators of Twitter had in mind when they started it, but I find it fascinating to see how The Internet has adapted to the application and how they've adapted the application itself for their own way of communication.

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