![\"\"](\"/assets/shortform/blog/29-07-25/BlogTaunting.png\")
I've never liked in game voice chat. I love talking to my friends while gaming though. As a PC gamer I was exposed to the ability to chat while gaming via voice earlier than most console gamers, but it was via third party apps which while clunkier offered significantly better voice quality than the ps3/360 generation of consoles. When voice chat on console games became common (before the ps3/360 generation but that didn't penetrate my friend group) devs made a damning but understandable trade off: quality for latency.
\nPeople got used to this crunchy, staticky, awful audio where it was normal for people to be on an open mic because push to talk is hard on a controller with limited buttons and configuring sensitivity is a pain in the ass. Especially with the headsets and microphones common during that mass adoption phase that were lower quality than even bargain basement call center headsets. I had mentioned this to my brother once at the tail end of that generation and he blew my mind when he said "it sounds fine to me, but I have insert name brand GAMER(tm) headset that's still junk so that must be why it sounds bad to you, your stuff just isn't as good." Meanwhile I'm rocking a semi decent professional mic and studio cans and am just shocked that people think that awful styrofoam audio was normal. I asked other friends, same replies "your equipment must suck, this sounds fine to me." while actively listening to the same audio I cannot stand.
\nThe main difference between PCs and consoles was that the console voice audio bitrate was 8 or 16kbps which is on par with the worst over seas call center you can imagine, meanwhile the shittiest ventrilo server I ever ran from my house was 128kbps and more or less crystal clear by comparison. I'd join public vent or teamspeak servers for EQ raids and sometimes they would be set to 8kbps and it would be the same trash audio, so I wasn't immune from it, but in my friend group we lived the good life. Then came the friendslop and prox chat.
\nLook, prox chat when handled well is cool: The We Were Here series is a stellar example of prox chat used well. The way the walkie talkie becomes the most important tool to solve these collaborative puzzles where you are physically split up is great stuff. I wish I had someone to play the newer entries with but that's a different blog post. But the modern friendslop trough: Repo, Phasmophobia, Demonologist, Peak, Escape the Backrooms, you name it. I don't think prox chat adds anything that adding a global chat option takes away from. Phasmophobia in that regard gets a partial pass from me, it does have global comms. I get what the rest are trying to do, they're trying to make it more spooky or atmospheric, and it can be hilarious when your friend runs by you screaming and you're left wondering "wtf" as a monster gets you but that isn't really what happens normally. You either bunch up never leaving prox chat range or play a lot of the game in silence and dude these are not the kind of games that NOT interacting with your friends benefits. These games thrive on the fact that I could have fun watching paint dry with my friends. As soon as you start thinking about what you're actually doing these games lose their luster so quickly.
\nAnd then there is the quality: we've left the days of 8kbps audio but not only does audio in these games tend to sound pretty crunchy there isn't any noise cancelling in it so frequently players are once again either hot mic-ing it constantly or having crazy amounts of background noise when they talk. This is a solvable problem, and I don't think devs are lazy necessarily but I wonder how much "bad audio funny" has just been normalized by twitch and lets plays as "good enough". Bums me out man.
\nAnd if you want an argument that's not from the aesthetics of audio and aggravation angle this has always been an accessibility issue. I now have hearing damage (self inflicted, I'm an idiot. Wear hearing protection during loud times kids.) and this crappy noisy audio is impossible to make out what people are saying half the time, and for people that have audio processing issues this poor audio makes that harder too. Basically I think we can do better, and I wish we were. We've started adding arachnophobia modes to game which affects like 5% of the population. So does audio processing disorder. And something like 20% of the planet has hearing damage. Last aside before I stop: I think arachnophobia modes are added not because it's so common but because it's so easy to add. It lets devs point at a list and say "look, we're accessible!" meanwhile colorblindness modes are still not super common, nor are audio accomodations beyond closed captioning.
\n", "date_published": "2026-05-26T00:00:00Z" } , { "id": "/blog/blaugust-3-low-stakes-hot-takes/", "url": "/blog/blaugust-3-low-stakes-hot-takes/", "title": "Blaugust 3 - Low Stakes Hot Takes", "content_html": "Krikket wanted our low stakes hot takes. I am here to stand and deliver!
\nI've never understood why people are so hung up on how other people like their food prepared. I actually get being weirdly irritated by others refusal to try new foods because everyone I know that's super picky and only eats stuff on the "picky 5 year old approved list" will also say they're able to find something anywhere and to just choose where to eat based on what I or others want but then will complain I only take them to places where they can't eat anything. But I'm the asshole for trying to accommodate their picky ass... but I think from that description you can tell it's not exactly their pickiness I'm annoyed with. What was I saying here? Right, how you like your food! Way too many people have strong opinions about how you should order/pair/season your steak, or your burger, or your sushi, ramen, whiskey, wine, pizza, cookies... whatever. You're welcome to your opinion on how you want your food, but attempting to guilt/shame/make fun of people that like their steak well done, or water in their whiskey, or don't like weirdly undercooked woodfired pizzas that are all the rage is weird and stupid.
\nI guess that's more of a low steaks hot take. Ba-Dum-Tsh.
\nThere is a community out there that is SUPER into buying little handhelds out of China that are used for retro games emulation. I own a few myself. But people really seem to buy these things... then never play games on them. Weirdly the buying of them, and the setting up of them becomes the hobby. This has spread to things like the SteamDeck and its competitors too. And it's insane to me... because I actually get it. The allure of it and the setup ends up being more fulfilling than playing MegaMan 3 for the 92nd time. I think that ends up being a failure of imagination more than anything - play something new! And actually play it, don't let the gamer ADHD take ahold of you. Handheld FOMO and constantly looking for the best new handheld to get is bullshit!
\nI played EverQuest for 10 years, I helped run a raiding guild. It was a full time job. I say this with confidence: MMOs are bullshit. They're predatory, they waste your time, they turn the human connections you make in the game into a way to keep your hooked and playing. The free to play ones are the worst, especially with predatory monetization, but all of them are effectively casinos with banks of slot machines just waiting to tempt you. Some of them it's time you pay with, some of them it's time and money. I'm also a huge fucking hypocrite here because I still have fond memories of both EverQuest and City of Heroes. Two things can be true I guess. I'm going to guess this will be my most divisive take given how many of the Blaugust peeps play FF14 and OSRS.
\nI thought of this after writing the short paragraph above, but I have even more problems with live service games. Not only are they predatory with how they try to trick you into wasting huge amounts of time on them they're also kind of creatively bankrupt. They're balanced for the meta which can cause large amounts of investment into a character, or gameplay style, to be wasted or lessened. They go belly up so frequently that I can't imagine really giving a lot of time to a new one. The communities are full of toxic shitheads. They're built upon thrones of crunch and hype and FOMO and all things that are just toxic to making a good, enduring product.
\nSo many games release in such a half baked state that they're unenjoyable, unplayable, unstomachable, etc but they have an amazing looking roadmap with either no timeline or an ill defined timeline about all the cool features they'd like to add. This roadmap is a lie. Even when it comes true, it was a lie when it was written. It was marketing and if there is one thing we should not trust: it is marketing. And video game genre descriptions. Those are also lies, but I wrote a blog post about that already.
\nThere you go, some low stakes hot takes, email me at chaosgoat@omg.lol or drop me a webmention to let me know how badly you disagree with me!
\n", "date_published": "2025-08-19T00:00:00Z" } , { "id": "/blog/blaugust-2-your-roguelikes-arent-roguelikes-sort-of/", "url": "/blog/blaugust-2-your-roguelikes-arent-roguelikes-sort-of/", "title": "Blaugust 2 - Your Roguelikes Aren't Roguelikes... Sort Of.", "content_html": "I love taunting people with forthcoming blog posts that will never actually come... but sometimes it has me thinking. And then the blogpost comes.
\n
Don't worry! I'm not gatekeeping your roguelikes, my roguelikes aren't roguelikes either because video game genre is meaningless. Do I have your attention? I hope that sounds as bold as I think it does. Here's the deal, we (humans... and especially nerds) LOVE to categorize things. Like seriously, we're kind of pathological about it, have you ever looked at music genres like on musicmap? It's nuts.
\n![\"\"](\"/assets/shortform/blog/2025-08-15-roguelikes/musicmap.png\")
Also I love that I happened to grab a screenshot that included d-beat while I'm listening to some. It's not for everyone but it fits the internal cacophony in my head at all times.
\nAnyways back on topic - we categorize things pathologically and I'd argue for cinema and literature that mostly works. You can view both of those through the lens of the author/auteur as well but when it comes to comparing and contrasting films/books or finding things similar to what you already like then the way we use genre works really well. It falls apart a bit with music because we hybridize things so aggressively that you end up in the weird realm of microgenres and that's not exactly helpful. For example: I like a lot of witch house but what I'm really saying there is I like synthwave with an occult aesthetic, both visually and aurally. It's so niche I don't think it's particularly useful as a point of comparison, especially since at least part of that microgenre is visually aesthetic in nature which is weird to include in music. I don't like Judas Priest because of the leather daddy/biker aesthetic, I like them because they're ass kicking metal.
\nSo how does that relate to genre in video games? When we talk about game genre there are two things that work against it. The first is that a lot of genre names/descriptions rely on historical context to make sense and without that they lose a lot of their intended meaning: Adventure, Simulation, RPG are categories that have all become at least somewhat meaningless. Bullethell has a fairly specific (though like all video game genres largely vibes based) meaning but gets applied to most STG/Shmups indiscriminately.
\nBullet Hell:
\n![\"\"](\"/assets/shortform/blog/2025-08-15-roguelikes/bullethell.gif\")
not Bullet Hell:
\n![\"\"](\"/assets/shortform/blog/2025-08-15-roguelikes/notbullethell.gif\")
But you can see, they're the same kind of game either way. You control a small character on a field with enemies that are exchanging fire with you. You're dodging bullets. You have a score. They have bangin' soundtracks. But vibes based... yeah one of those feels like being in hell, the other not so much.
\nThe second thing that works against video game genres being more meaningful is that they're almost exclusively mechanical in nature, there are a few that are more related to the experience you'll have like MOBA, Survival Horror, Walking Sim, or Bullet Hell, but most are purely mechanical:
\nPlatformer
\nYou're jumping from platform to platform. Mostly. Not always jumping, but it doesn't tell you about theme, visuals, story, difficulty even. Just that you're jumping.
\nRPG
\nEverything is an RPG, have you noticed that? That's because it meant "like a table top RPG (D&D)". So it's short hand for "has character progression and advancement." which generally means stats and leveling. It describes the game having some sort of character advancement but that's really it.
\nRoguelike*
\nThe asterisk is because this has two distinct meanings but we'll go with the popular one: It means the game has run based gameplay which is sometimes called permadeath but is closer to arcade like game loops than true permadeath, and high randomness and/or procedural generation. Again - nothing about the game other than having those two features.
\nFPS
\nTells you that it has a first person view point and you're shooting (normally) things. I'd argue Doom clones, COD clones, and Halo clones are effectively all different genres due to how different they feel to play while using the same limited vocabulary to describe them.
\nMetroidvania
\nIt's an action (meaning reaction time is important) platformer (has platforms and (probably) jumping) that emphasizes large maps where you acquire upgrades to backtrack and access previously seen but unreachable areas. Literally the only thing this is doing beyond "action platformer" is describing the game world traversal loop. I like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Super Metroid, I don't like many other games described this way, and it's because that "genre" doesn't tell you nearly enough about the game to matter.
\nIt's complicated. When it comes to playing games and getting enjoyment from them the answer is a resounding no. If you also get enjoyment from talking about and discussing them... then yeah it does matter. It can be really hard to talk about games in a coherent way without devolving to genre soup descriptions such as: It's a first person horror co op narrative survival puzzle game with some RPG mechanics (bonus points if you can tell me what game I'm describing, its popular) or getting into discussions that are tangential to the point along the lines of "what is a metroidvania really, do zelda and megaman count?" (no, but they're similar). If you're a librarian, a critic, or a researcher then I think it's actually a huge problem as this analysis shows. And if you, like me, are concerned about the discoverability issues with indie games then it's also huge because how the hell do I find more games like Noita without getting recommended a metric ton of generic "roguelikes" or "metroidvanias". That's a trick question btw, there are no games like Noita. Yet.
\nNope. The analysis I linked earlier proposes some solutions for the information studies realm that might work, including decomposing all elements of the game into a set of characteristics. But for fans, consumers, critics I don't think that's particularly helpful or useful. We're stuck in the Venn diagram of game genres being too granular like musical microgenres and too vague and ill-defined like my boss (or your mom) to be that useful. We're going to stay here too since I don't think "genre" is the best way to attack this problem. I don't know what would be either. I would suggest trying to be more descriptive of games rather than attempt to use genre shorthand to describe them but I know I won't keep that up, I doubt anyone else would either. It would be utterly exhausting. But I think it's worth thinking about next time you describe something as a roguelike-soulslike-vania what you're really trying to say and what other people are hearing.
\nI defeated the menace of video game genre vagueness forever. Totally. This is my fourth time writing this and this is the most succinct it's been so far. I kept having to resist the urge to dive into genre descriptions and to not rant like this kotaku article. Got a comment? Email me at chaosgoat@omg.lol or send a webmention.
\n", "date_published": "2025-08-15T00:00:00Z" } , { "id": "/blog/blaugust-1-horror-movies-are-best-shared-socially/", "url": "/blog/blaugust-1-horror-movies-are-best-shared-socially/", "title": "Blaugust 1 - Horror Movies Are Best Shared Socially", "content_html": "Well this is my first Blaugust post after spinning my wheels on what was meant to be my first post.
\nSo - Horror movies. I watch a lot of horror. There are a few reasons for this: I like seeing unhinged shit I've never seen before. Stuff like Mad God. I like getting insight into modern societies anxieties. Or anxieties of past decades: Jason from the Friday the 13th franchise is the Reagan Administration's social policies turned into a ghoulish mass murderer. Fitting for a guy that let the AIDS epidemic rage believing it was god striking down the sinful. Fuck Reagan. Anyways where was I? Oh right. Horror. But here's the thing, horror isn't best experienced on your own, in the dark. That might be the best way to be scared but it's a social experience.
\nThe best way to confront these anxieties is with people, like-minded freaks who also want to peel back the scabs of society and see what squirms beneath. There is an energy to a crowd, especially an appreciative crowd. It's not super different from the crowds at a midnight showing of a new blockbuster. Its fun to talk about the movies afterwards, it's weird: each death becomes it's own character; each one says something. These aren't just about societal anxiety, they're morality tales. That's why the kids who do drugs or have sex die. That's why strangers are "dangerous". That's why the other is portrayed as the villain. It works both ways too - there is a lot of queer horror out there. Everyone has anxieties.
\nLately I've been introducing my kids to classic(ish) horror. They're 16 year old spooky bitches and on Thursdays I've been dragging them to a local movie series called "Spook-o-Rama" where we watch sometimes amazing horror (Event Horizon) sometimes... not so amazing horror (Seed of Chucky). And they've been enjoying the hell out of it. So far we've seen:
\nEvent Horizon
\nNight of the Creeps
\nPet Sematery
\nJennifer's Body
\nCarrie
\nTexas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
\nSeed of Chucky
\nThe Hills Have Eyes (2006)
\nEight Legged Freaks
\nJennifer's Body was the only one not new to them and they've absolutely loved them. Event Horizon and Carrie were favorites of theirs. The remake of The Hills Have Eyes was a bit much which like yeah fair, the new french extremity isn't for everyone. It's not even really for me. But spending time with them, sharing my love of horror with them it's been fun. I'm also getting an eye into their anxieties and the generational differences are really interesting. They've got some pretty strong stranger danger which I think comes from consuming a lot of true crime media. I was more concerned with natural disasters when I was a kid... cause I lived through the Northridge earthquake maybe? Nah, it predates that. No idea why I was concerned with that as a kid.
\nThe next one we're going to see is likely going to be Night of the Demons (1988) and I'm trying to convince them to show The Keep (1983) which is an utterly insane movie with a plot that is at best vestigial but it's so damn stylish. Peak Michael Mann. I'd highly recommend sharing your love of horror (or cinema in general!) with your kids if you think they'd be in to it. It's a great way to bond.
\n", "date_published": "2025-08-14T00:00:00Z" } , { "id": "/blog/rime-of-the-ancient-grog-the-chase-of-the-bismarck/", "url": "/blog/rime-of-the-ancient-grog-the-chase-of-the-bismarck/", "title": "Rime of the Ancient Grog: The Chase of the Bismarck", "content_html": "\n\nThat is not dead which can eternal lie and after strange aeons even grog shit may die - Definitely H.P. Lovecraft
\n
Sunday, May 18th.
\nChandler, Arizona. Smash cut to the interior of a board game store/cafe. In the center of the dining room is a long, thin-ish table that can seat twelve. This is the scene of the crime.
\nThat crime? Grognard bullshit.
\nWhat's a grognard? It's someone who plays fiddly wargames that only truly masochistic individuals would call fun. My people in other words. It's a reference to Napoleon's soldiers, but if you've ever known someone who talks about how much better Dungeons and Dragons was in the 80s think of them. We're not all toxic or annoying, I promise.
\nMostly.
\nAnyways, this is the scene of a crime of high wargaming, it's going to be where I, with a local friend, play The Chase of the Bismarck: Operation Rheinübung 1941 by VUCA Simulations. This fucking game. We sit down around 11:15, and I start explaining the game. This doesn't take that long, maybe 30 minutes - the game is very procedural which makes it easy to explain, if slightly laborious to go over. We start playing. And for the next 5 hours we dance around the North Atlantic. I'm playing the Germans and my goal is to sail the Bismarck out to the middle of the Atlantic ocean and start preying upon merchant ships.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/21-05-25/starting.jpg\")
The Bismarck is a big, fuckoff sized batteship and is an absolute beast but, and this is only the first issue I have with this game, it's one of four, yes four, warships the Germans get. This board is HUGE for the amount of ships you get. As the German player you're going to be constantly rolling on tables to see which random bad bullshit happens to your ships, and trying to desperately sneak past the Allied player, which might be cool if it didn't take so long. The Allied player in contrast to the German player's four ships gets something like fifteen, still a low number for the amount of space on the board but more reasonable than four.
\nSo the Germans start off in Norway, and need to get to the mid Atlantic, the Allied player starts off arrayed between Iceland and Scotland as well as spread along the European coastline. I make the decision to, instead of trying to slip directly past the Allied fleet hook around the top of Iceland and sneak by them. This works, beautifully. When my opponent finally found me (from a bullshit random die roll...) I was far away from them and on the far side of Iceland - but this meant I spent so many turns doing nothing fun... just slowly moving the Bismarck to its final destination - the Allied shipping lanes.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/21-05-25/actionbutnotreally.jpg\")
Something important to know about how this game works is the Germans are almost assuredly going to lose, if you look into what happened to the Bismarck historically this makes sense. Also the obligatory thing needs to be said: Fuck Nazis. So I'm not annoyed by that, it's historical and bad guys losing always makes me happy, but when you have lopsided games like this a way to balance them, and clearly what was intended here, is to have both players play both sides and sum up their point totals to figure out who "actually won". In this game the way it works is: If the Bismarck is sunk the Germans lose. If the Bismarck goes to port, depending on which port, they get negative victory points. If you play out the FORTY turns of this game and the Bismarck ends at sea... that's also negative victory points. How do the Germans get victory points? Convoy hunting in the shipping lanes! which after 14 turns of game and 4+ hours we still hadn't gotten to. And they require a roll of a 0 on a d10, and the a 0,1, or 2 on that same d10. That's a 3% chance to find a convoy and get VPs. This fucking game.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/21-05-25/hoursin.jpg\")
If I had to put into a short list my problems with this game it's this:
\nLength
\nSize
\nRandomness
\nRulebook
\nLength: It's supposed to be a two to four hour game. I think four to six is more reasonable, even when many turns don't have anything to do: The Allied player just has so many pieces to move. I haven't even covered the fact that there are planes to move and makers to place in their flight paths and how you need to call out search hexes to see if you've found a ship there.
\nSize: It needs a 6 foot x 3 foot dining table and will take up absolutely all of it. This thing is a friggin monster.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/21-05-25/tacticalbattle.jpg\")
Randomness: so many un, or barely, modified d10 rolls. This is a very old school design because it's a minimally modified remake of a '70s wargame and this is full of standard design choices from that era... like the die rolls.
\nRulebook: VUCA just isn't great at making solid rulebooks, they look nice, but are missing rules, have large pieces of errata, misspellings. They're not the worst but for a premium product this is infuriating. And for a game that's been out for FIFTY YEARS it shouldn't be this rough, even with redevelopment and redesign happening.
\nThese complaints are me, long windedly, saying that this is an old school wargame with the normal foibles and irritations that go along with it. Would I recommend this game? No. I've been telling people what I think by saying "I can confirm there is in fact a game in the box." Which is a low bar to clear but a shocking amount of games don't manage even that, especially old war games.
\nWill I play it again? Probably. If I can find a victim partner to play it.
I flew back in from 4 days in DC and boy are my arms tired.
\ncrickets
\nOkay, okay. I know. Bad joke. But I just spent 4 days with some of the sassiest game designers and developers in existence. The bad jokes were everywhere. Fort Circle Games puts on a yearly con called "Circle DC", partially to promote their games, partially to snap up new designs. It's small, which I like, about 250 attendees - this means you can get some good face time with everyone there and it's well attended by established and upcoming designers.
\nI flew in on a red eye flight and landed about 7 AM local time on Thursday, went to my hotel and dropped my bag off. The room wasn't ready yet but that's fine. I took my backpack and walked to the nearby National Mall and started exploring the free museums on the Mall:
\nI went to the National Art Gallery and briefly perused it, they had a neat exhibit on documentary photography as art. Lots of photos of Black culture in the '70s, very cool.
\nThen I stopped by the National Museum of the American Indian and went through the whole museum. I'd highly recommend this one, they have a wing dedicated to a pretty thorough documenting of the history of treaties with Native American tribes including view points of both the US government and the Tribe at the time and an accounting of how it almost ever works out for the tribes. This is a topic close to my heart, I hate when the various Native American groups are portrayed as constantly breaking treaties because almost universally they didn't actually agree to this treaty that's being broken or the US broke it first.
\nI walked to the Hirshhorn and I don't have much to say about this but I love the lolrandom nature of modern/contemporary art. The boulder on car is a very me feeling piece.
\nI capped off a monumental amount of walking by finishing the journey across the mall and going into the Holocaust Memorial. Sobering. Powerful. I'd recommend it for anyone and everyone.
\nFriday - Suday I played games instead of walking all over creation to see museums.
\nSo what did I play? Warning: I have no pictures because I am a damn scrub.
\nPlaytests:
\nTwilight Struggle: South Asian Monsoon.
\nThis is a smaller take on Twilight Struggle (two player cold war game) that is meant for seasoned players who want a crunchier puzzle. Cool stuff. Needs some serious polishing but that's what development is for.
\nTsar
\nTsar is a co-op-ish game where the four players are ministers working under Tsar Nicholas the second. Your job is to run Russia well and keep the Tsar happy. Well actually your job is to rob Russia blind and increase your personal wealth. You do this while navigating a shared hand of events that require you to expend personal political power to resolve and occasionally build up the country... so that you can steal more stuff that isn't nailed down... or bring war, famine, etc for you to deal with. It's neat though not exactly my jam. The shared hand of events is cool, but it'd be more fun for me as an RPG experience.
\nFoxes and Lions
\nThis is about the Italian Wars and is hugely influenced by Machiavelli's writings. Five players, each playing an Italian Kingdom except the one that plays the Pope. Multiple non player factions representing the French, the Spanish, the Ottomans, etc. Mechanically it uses the COIN sequence of play which models the build up of actions over a "season" (whether that season is political, environmental, generational etc) where you have a few small tit for tat turns punctuated by large turns where the whole board state can change. Cool game. I look forward to Liz and Paul (the designers) getting it published.
\nThe Poisoned Chalice
\nThis is by Akar Bharadvaj, who is a professional war game designer. Yes that's a thing, wild I know. This game is about the Iran-Iraq war and takes what's normally a solitaire system - the States of Siege system - and turns it into a two player system. It's a neat idea, the crux of it seems to be the Iranians have to deal with dissidents and internal turmoil, the Iraqis have to deal with terrible military leadership because they're afraid of competent leaders leading a coup against Saddam's government. Lots of bad feeling decisions to make, imperfect knowledge, and failure. All the things I like in a board game.
\nNon playtests:
\nRainbow
\nUnicorn game from Allplay, it's a simple trick tacker with a nice unicorn rainbow aesthetic. Good time killer/family game.
\nHubworld: Aidalon
\nA new card game from netrunner fans, kind of like a non asymmetric netrunner. I like it for what it is, but I'll have to see more than the preview set to really develop an opinion on it. Also one of my companions jacked my demo sets by accident so now it lives on the east coast. Damnit.
\nPsycho Raiders
\nI ran this game for some friends, and we pulled in friendly passersby to join us. It's a 70s slasher movie mixed with a old school hex and counter war game. Very simulationist, a campers versus psychopaths experience where the kids frequently die early on. People love this gory, stupid gnarly game and I cannot recommend it enough if it sounds like your kind of nonsense. We ran it like a TTRPG and I would highly recommend running it like that and not worrying too much about the rules.
\nFerox
\nShowed a couple friends this, it's a two player deckbuilding game heavily rooted in the cannibal horror movies of the '80s. Movies like Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox and a bit of Zombi 3. Mechanically this game is a joy to show people, you pay for your cards with a resource called rage, that you pay to your opponent who then uses it on you creating a really appealing back and forth tempo. A tempo of atrocities but like that's kind of the point.
\nThat's all I played and while I'm torn on having attended based on the cost of the flight and hotel, I loved hanging out with friends both old and new, getting to meet people I only know online, and just the general air of camaraderie hanging out with other designers and developers. If you're into a hobby and almost exclusively interact with it online I cannot recommend going to niche conventions for it enough. I'll probably go back next year but not on a red eye this time, I've made that mistake once and never again.
\n", "date_published": "2025-04-03T00:00:00Z" } , { "id": "/blog/pagescms-a-test/", "url": "/blog/pagescms-a-test/", "title": "PagesCMS - A Test", "content_html": "This is a brief test of PagesCMS a Git based online CMS I'm giving a shot. I'm currently engaged in an effort to make my blogging a bit more high speed, low drag so I'm more likely to actually... y'know. Blog.
\nFirst you login with Github and then tell PagesCMS which project you want it to read, all good so far.
\nThen, you set up the mother of all YAML files to create the interface with which you'll interact with the CMS:
\nmedia:\n input: src/assets/shortform/blog\n output: assets/shortform/blog\ncontent:\n - name: blogs\n label: Blogs\n type: collection\n path: src/blogs\n view:\n fields: [ date, title ]\n fields:\n - name: draft\n label: Draft\n type: boolean\n default: true\n - name: permalink\n label: Permalink\n type: string\n default: "/blog/pagescms-a-test/"\n - name: date\n label: Date\n type: date\n - name: title\n label: Title\n type: string\n - name: body\n label: Body\n type: rich-text\nThat all creates a view like this for blog entry:
\n![\"\"](\"assets/shortform/blog/03-02-25/PagesCMS-MakingAPost.PNG\")
![\"\"](\"/assets/shortform/blog/03-02-25/PagesCMS-MakingAPost.PNG\")
And this for the list of blog entries:
\n![\"\"](\"assets/shortform/blog/03-02-25/PagesCMS-CMS-yStuff.PNG\")
![\"\"](\"/assets/shortform/blog/03-02-25/PagesCMS-CMS-yStuff.PNG\")
Speaking of which: You can use it to manage your media:
\n![\"\"](\"assets/shortform/blog/03-02-25/PagesCMS-AddingMedia.PNG\")
![\"\"](\"/assets/shortform/blog/03-02-25/PagesCMS-AddingMedia.PNG\")
Which is super neat. So far I'm a fan but only time will tell if I keep liking it. Also this is the first post and it might go tits up immediately which has been my experience with Webmentions so far (also recently added to this site... sort of).
\n\n", "date_published": "2025-03-02T00:00:00Z" } , { "id": "/blog/steam-next-fest-october-2024/", "url": "/blog/steam-next-fest-october-2024/", "title": "Steam Next Fest October 2024", "content_html": "I played so many games, warning - media heavy post. Lots of hotlinked webms.
\nNext Fest is a thrice a year event where game developers put up demos of what they're working on and let people go HAM and I love it. When I grew up I had my own computer, but I didn't have a lot of money for video games so I played a lot of PC Gamer/Computer Gaming World/Incite demo discs, and a whole lot of shareware compilation CDs with thousands of "shareware" titles sourced from legal and sometimes less than legal sources. I have fond memories of these demo and shareware discs, finding hidden treasures, trying something you'd never normally play because you're just bored out of your skull and Next Fest reminds me of that. So every time next fest comes around I end up streaming way too many demos on twitch and looking for that new hit of demo dopamine which is definitely not in anyway a symptom of ADHD absolutely not.
\nThis Next Fest I ended up trying TWENTY FIVE games which is actually not a record for me, but it's still ridiculous.
\nWARNING: starting from here there are going to be many hotlinked webm videos to steam microtrailers, which are a beta test thing Valve has been doing for years. They may at some point stop working, I've included store links as well. These microtrailers have no sound.
\nI'm a big fan of simple rating systems: You don't need a 10 point rating system, or 5 stars, or god forbid 100 point system to rate games effectively: Yeah, Meh, Nah is all you need. I've chosen to add a fourth level here because I'm indicating both how much I liked the game and also how likely I am to buy it:
\nAs a heavy metal stealth archer game I didn't know what to expect. The UI is brilliant, having it all on the bow and hand tattoos is such a cool take on minimalism. The low gravity environment makes getting hit super impactful. The world with massive snake skeletons and demons is radical.
\nCyclopean is an old school first person dungeon crawler with a top down overworld. Extremely old school in both visuals and gameplay. Lovecraftian through and through (space cats, gugs, zooz, dholes, the works.). Unforgiving. I kind of love it.
\nA single player MMO. Weird concept. Other players are simulated like bots in any shooter, with more elaborate chatter routines. Mixture of Runescape and Everquest as the influence. I liked it a lot, but it's very much an alpha product. Something to keep an eye on, I'd love to raid in this game (that's planned, or already done but not in the demo)
\nLethal Company but your conveyance to different floors in an endless building is a demonic elevator that must be fed. Really fun, great if you like this breed of janky co-op horror game.
\nReminds me a lot of Neurovoider. You're a protagonist without a body, you hijack temporary robot bodies using a resource that fills as you kill. When your body is ready to die you can hop to another one. VERY frenetic and fast paced, I loved it but am trash at it.
\nWhat even is this: A survival horror, top down shooter? Every room your view point changes: from sidescroller, to top down, to isometric with tankish controls, to third person. You're in hell, you've got a magical gun with six bullets (ala Heavy Bullets) and you get your bullets back when things die. You've also got a skateboard to skate with (runner segments) or beat the hell out of demons with. Good attitude, weird game. I like it a lot.
\nExtremely pre-alpha but also extremely promising. I've very much looking forward to what this will be like in Multiplayer. Top down, co-op GTA meets immersive sim (think Deus Ex/the new Prey).
\n![](\"https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/2063390/ss_f42eb91140a9a16df12c51b6661eeafcc01be910.1920x1080.jpg?t=1731847698\")
\nBastard love child of Furi, Nier Automata, and Risk of Rain 2. Hyper kinetic combat focused on parrying. Cool, weird glitch aesthetic and world. You really feel like a Robot Ninja while playing this.
\nSoulslike with simple shapes as the player/enemy. Reminds me of Triangle Wizard a lot which a good thing. Decent mechanics, probably on the simpler end of a souls like, I'm just bad at them.
\nDecent, follow up to Bio Prototype. Autoshooter where you craft your attacks, I like this more than your average auto shooter but it's still a bit boring. Graphics are cool though.
\nShapez.io but with lego blocks, blocks are constructed in a 4x4x4 cube and can be cut, glued, and stacked. Neat. Didn't draw me in as much as Shapez.io initially did though.
\n1980's cop game with a focus on, not realism, but "actual" police work. You give out parking tickets AND have shoot outs with bank robbers. Decent, fun GTA as a cop style game. Story lays on the copaganda a bit thick though.
\nKind of an Astroneers/Forager harvesting/automation game. Was cute, had a lot going on. Might be one to keep an eye on.
\nRoom/Round based Roguelite with a diablo style inventory/gear system. Seems like it has a pretty indepth skill modification system. More fun than I thought it would be. Aesthetic is very crunchy pixel graphics too which I love.
\nIt's Anno 1800 but you're a cult summoning eldritch creatures to fight the AI players. You can scarify your followers with symbols to change stats in a completely unnecessary but utterly cool pseudo mini game.
\nBasic Hotline Miami clone, stylish but didn't rock my socks the way OTXO did.
\nVersus Tower Defense (where you're sending enemies to each other), with resource gathering. It was fine.
\nSNES era style twin stick shooter feels very similar to Nuclear Throne in some ways, it's cute but not enough going on to make me want to play it. Your bullets can deflect enemy bullets on direct hit which is super neat and it does the Hotline Miami style thing where guns are to be used till they're empty then thrown/discarded.
\nBasic endless sky/escape velocity/star valor style game. Nothing to write home about.
\nWouldn't load, dev responded to forum post saying issue was fixed, issue was not fixed.
\nNot even an alpha, a bad tech demo. Might be an asset flip too. Basically unplayable.
\nClone of Thronefall but you're the super sheep from the Worms series. If that sounds random... yeah. It was.
\nAgrarian skies from minecraft but as a 3d god game. Felt really alpha and didn't gel with me.
\n", "date_published": "2025-02-26T00:00:00Z" } , { "id": "/blog/more-movies/", "url": "/blog/more-movies/", "title": "More Movies?", "content_html": "A return from my blogging break... with more movies!
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/20-10-24-movies/TheSubstance.jpg\")
This movie was amazing and disgusting like all good body horror should be.
\nA horror movie where the main villain - the root of all the evil in the movie - is our societies insane beauty standards. A bold, feminist piece of fuck you led by the always excellent Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. Featuring some truly shocking transformations for them and tons of gross out gore. I cannot recommend this movie enough. Make sure you watch it with a nice loud sound system, the foley work is next level good.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/20-10-24-movies/VHS_Beyond_Poster.jpg\")
The 7th entry into the V/H/S series and Shudder's fourth take on it. This time the loose theme is "Cosmic Horror".
\nOver all it's really good. Mike Flanagan written and Kate Siegel directed "Stowaway" is maybe a bit slow to start, but a super effective bit of cosmic horror. Justin and Christian Long's Fur Babies is probably the low point of this entry but also has an extremely charismatic Kathy Bates in Misery lead - Libby Letlow. I'd love to see more of her in a horror or thriller setting. "Stork" is the most obvious entry to use as a jumping off point for a new standalone movie like Siren and Kids vs Aliens were. "Dream Girl" is the first Indian entry in this series, complete with awesome Bollywood-esque song and dance which I loved. Rounding it out is another Radio Silence feature called "Live and Let Dive" which is kind of a call back (in my opinion) to the GoPro zombie apocalypse in V/H/S 2. All in all it was a very solid set and probably my third favorite of these movies after the first two.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/20-10-24-movies/ThePopesExorcist.png\")
I liked it, but it's not amazing. Skip if you don't want spoilers.
\nHigh points: Russell Crowe as an Italian priest, complete with better than you'd think but still bad accent. Decent throw back to The Exorcist.
\nLow points: They spend awhile world building with a conspiracy to cover up that the Inquisition was actually the work of the Devil from an exorcist being possessed. It's fine but... eh. Boring.
\nAwesome: The film is relatively restrained till the last 10 minutes or so, at which point a naked woman (she's a demonic apparition) covered in blood shows up, attempts to strangle our main character's plucky Spanish priest sidekick, who then slaps a crucifix on her head, and after a Transformers like powering up noise explodes her into a shower of gore. awesome. I was so taken aback by the noise I immediately rewound it to make sure I did, in fact, hear that. Yup. Then it's used to send another apparition down into a pit of lava, complete with second powering up noise. AWESOME. I would describe this as going full "Fast and the Furious" (i.e. rule of cool is all that matters.) and I'm here for it.
\nWe may be getting more sequels and I hope they double down on the absurdity of the last 10 minutes of this one.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/20-10-24-movies/Troy.jpg\")
Yeah I know this is the odd one out, it's been a weird month okay?
\nI've never seen this. I get why it got grief when it came out, but also... I liked it. It was a fun sword and sandals movie with dumb melodrama, some scene chewing, and some halfway decent fight scenes. You could do worse. I won't be watching it again but I enjoyed my time with it. Also Brad Pitt is extremely moody and petulant in this and it made me laugh.
\nI'll be back soon with some more blogs folks, I just finished up playing 20 games for Steam's Next Fest and will probably post about that next.
\n", "date_published": "2024-10-20T00:00:00Z" } , { "id": "/blog/what-i-ve-been-playing/", "url": "/blog/what-i-ve-been-playing/", "title": "What I've Been Playing", "content_html": "I went to an in person wargaming con AND played a new video game that blew my mind in the last two weeks. - Image Heavy!
\nEvery year in Tempe, the local college town, Consimworld holds an in person gaming convention with a focus on monster games.
\n... what's a monster game you ask? Oh sweet summer child...
\nThey're hex and counter wargames that are either very large, very complex, or (frequently) both. Maps measured in foot increments that sound more appropriate for small room footprints than a game, counters numbering in the thousands, play times in the tens to hundreds of hours. Those are monster games. This con started as a way for people to play it and find others to play it with them. I have kind of a perverse fascination with these games. I don't want to play them, but they're like a trainwreck. I can't look away. See the bottom of this post for some photo examples.
\nOkay so I don't want to play this massive games, why do I go? I have some friends that go and it gives me an excuse to play games with them for a week. This year I played:
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/AfterPablosm.jpg\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/PaxPamirsm.jpg\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/Fruitsm.jpg\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/Mariasm.jpg\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/Dynastysm.jpg\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/DominantSpeciesMarinesm.jpg\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/NewColdWarsm.jpg\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/fateelder.png\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/Crisis1914sm.jpg\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/Fruit2sm.jpg\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/busroute.png\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/duneimperium.png\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/RDRsm.jpg\")
Wow.
\nWow.
\nI'm not a big visual novel fan. This game isn't a visual novel, but it's closer to that than anything else. I loved this game. It's a twelve hour fever dream concerning itself with big sci fi ideas (alien invasions, clone societies, manufactured religions), inter-generational trauma, cycles of abuse and violence, and what we have to do as a society to maintain the health of our society. I have to be careful about what I say because I wouldn't want to spoil this game. But over the course of four characters lives, a thousand years, and multiple trips into the memories of the character that started all this (and it's very much like Satoshi Kon's Paprika or maybe The Cell) a truly fascinating story unfurls with betrayals, big reveals, literal (for me) jaw-dropping moments... just wow.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/flood.jpg\")
The game really has a point it's making about the kind of societies we create and how we can't just stand by while events happen that change those societies. You can't just assume that this is as bad as it can get, it can always get worse and you need to fight against that. Influenced by the experiences of Asian diaspora and the Hong Kong protests of 2019-20 the game really drives home the point that we are very much responsible for the societies we create and the ills that come with them. This, to me, is the best kind of sci fi: big ideas and strong statements about society.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/dance.jpg\")
Visually the game is full of just extremely vivid and psychedelic visuals, mostly occurring while sharing memories with other characters - but even some of the "real world" segments are spectacular looking, particularly when aliens are present. I would absolutely love to see this made into a big budget miniseries and truthfully I think that's the better medium for this story. Normally I would say that the studio was doing the game a disservice by making it a game but then treating it more like a passive form of media like books, movies, etc. That's my criticism of Naughty Dog's games normally, that it is clear they would rather be making movies. Here though the game has no pretenses about what it is while Naughty Dog force feeds you exposition while you "play" what are effectively interactive cutscenes. Slowly pushing a dumpster across an area to use it climb up to a ledge while being exposited at in Last of Us for example. 1000xResist is nothing but story (and the occasional platforming section, don't worry it's the opposite of a precision platformer) and so it just doesn't bother me the same way.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/crying.jpg\")
This game made me feel and made me think. Me over thinking something is common, but feeling? that's rare. I cannot recommend this enough.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/rooftop.jpg\")
There are some of the games in play at the con I grabbed shots of. Minor details in captions.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/threedaysofgettysburgsm.jpg\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/casebluesm.jpg\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/dayofdayssm.jpg\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/northafricagamesm.jpg\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/ostfrontsm.jpg\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/safmanillasm.jpg\")
![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/27-7-24-games/devilscauldronsm.jpg\")
While I'm toiling away on my Known Space 2: Fleet of Worlds post I wanted to take some time and talk about some movies I watched recently:
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/11-07-24-movies/axelf.jpg\")
Here's the deal, I - in general - don't like legacy sequels. I find that they rely far too heavily on nostalgia to be compelling on their own and that reliance on nostalgia ends up making them feel, for lack of a better word, bogus. Frequently they eschew good story writing, dialogue, interesting situations, what have you in favor of just hitting you with the nostalgia stick (remember that thing we did 20 years ago?! WE'RE DOING IT AGAIN!) and that just doesn't work for me, or I think most people.
\nAxel F kind of does that. The first Beverly Hills cop has the soundtrack blasting throughout because that's a part of the vibe of the movie, it's joyful and happy and loud. They double down on that in Axel F to the point where it starts feeling almost like an extended music video at points and yet...
\nI like it. I don't think it's amazing but one of the problems with legacy sequels is they tend to not be fun, even when they should be. Axel F despite it's faults is mostly a fun romp. The set pieces are dumb, but awesome. The music is good. Eddie Murphy actually seems happy which is wild considering the third Beverly Hills cop's movie attempt at being serious. Am I ever going to rewatch it? Probably not. Did I enjoy it? Yeah. This is easily the second best movie in the series, though in fairness that's because the bar for success is in the dirt.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/11-07-24-movies/maXXXine.jpg\")
A different kind of sequel, the capstone to a horror trilogy that explored our cultural desire as Americans to be famous through the lens of different kinds of movies. While X was influenced by Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Pearl was an extremely dark distillation of The Wizard of Oz or Mary Poppins by way of '50s Hollywood melodramas, MaXXXine is instead inspired by sleazy LA flicks and Italian giallo. For me, this is great. I love a good giallo film, I love the wild technicolor set design, the killers clad in black and always in shadows, the suspense, the drama. It's good, heady stuff. Even bad giallo films are fun. For those that don't know giallo films are the cultural antecedent to slasher flicks but instead of being violent horror movies they tend more towards being mysteries or thrillers. Less gore and horror, more suspense and whodunnit.
\nSo stylish pseudo-giallo, check. It's a movie set in the '80s and you can bet your ass the soundtrack slaps - Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Welcome to the Pleasuredome, Animotion - Obsession, Judas Priest - Prisoner of Your Eyes, New Order - Shellshock these are all certified bangers. The dialogue of Kevin Bacon and Giancarlo Esposito's characters is great - especially Bacon who just chews scenery as the worlds sleaziest private detective. Everyone looks fan-freaking-tastic.
\nAs a capstone to this series about the lengths we'll go to for fame I think this was almost perfect. Pearl is always going to be a film the critics will like better, it's a bit more high minded, it has a stronger performance from Mia Goth (not that she's a slouch here), I think it has a bit more to say. X is a more classic horror film, it's a slasher through and through with an interesting villain and a great build up of tension. But MaXXXine is special, we see the final outcome of the struggle for fame and the consequences of being truly willing to do anything to achieve it and it is fabulous (and terrifying, natch). I loved it.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/11-07-24-movies/horizonsaga.jpg\")
Let's get this out of the way first: I think Horizon as a package was maybe ill-conceived. A four movie series, where the first movie is three hours long, and doesn't have an ending. Shot in a close to 16:9 aspect ratio. And it's a western. They're slow. I love them but they're slow, they plod, they take their time. Horses are involved, we could even say they casually trot. This is why we love them... but this first movie is three hours of set up. You know what this is positively SCREAMING? I do: TV mini series. That's the general tenor of the online discourse and I agree. But.
\nBut.
\nBut.
\nI loved it. It's slow, sure, but things are happening. It's not boring. There are no less than five intertwined storylines and lots of character drama to go around. And it's interesting! Survivors of a massacre making a new life, the Civil War unfurling in the background, a family hunting down a woman who did them wrong (and you better believe we're rooting for her, not them), a wagon train travelling through treacherous terrain, a group of men looking for vengeance, and a horse trader stuck in the middle of this all. There's lots of juicy drama to enjoy. I am maybe less than happy at the initial depiction of American Indians but there is nuance there and I'm willing to see where this series goes with it and that's pretty good as far as western's go.
\nVisually, while I'm bummed out Costner didn't decide to use a more cinematic lens, the movie is lush, and gorgeous. Y'all, America is HAWT. Our country has got it going on, naturally speaking. Stark deserts, majestic mountains, lush forests, it's just a stunning looking film. The acting is great, from our villainous Sykes brothers: Jamie Campbell Bower as the taciturn Caleb Sykes and Jon Beavers as the cursed with a motor mouth like a runaway diesel engine Junior Sykes, Michael Rooker as a gruff sergeant in the Union army, Luke Wilson as a reluctant wagon train captain, Sienna Miller as an extremely capable mother and grieving widow.
\nI think it's clear, I like this movie. I have reservations about how it was released and some of the choices that go with that. But I think if you like westerns, or just big dramatic stories you should see it. And because of that I'm kind of sad. This is a new thing, an old story perhaps, but a new telling of it. It's not a sequel, it's not a remake, it's not just a reimagining of what came before and not only is it not doing great at the box office, which, again, I'm not shocked by. But people are gleefully ripping it apart and that just seems so sad to me. As of now part two was meant to come out in August of 2024 but has been taken off of release schedules due to poor ticket sales. I hope the series is finished and released, I'd like to see all of it, but I won't be surprised if we get a streaming release of part two and then nothing else. And that would be a loss for the diversity of our movies, I think.
\nAnyways, I watched these three movies in the last week and just wanted to write about them. I'll be seeing The Bikeriders and A Quiet Place: Day One soon and will likely write about those too.
\n", "date_published": "2024-07-11T00:00:00Z" } , { "id": "/blog/known-space-part-1/", "url": "/blog/known-space-part-1/", "title": "Known Space: Part 1", "content_html": "I have a soft spot in my heart for the Known Space setting by Larry Niven, I started reading them when I was a young teenager and was voraciously reading all the sci fi and fantasy I could get my hands on. I consumed books at a rate that frankly boggles my mind when I think about it now. I developed a taste for genre novels because they were cheap from the used bookstore and I was exposed to lots of awesome sci fi and fantasy: David Eddings - The Belgariad and The Mallorean, Ursula K. Le Guin - Earthsea, Anne McCaffrey - Dragonriders of Pern, the Dragonlance novels, Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game, Frank Herbert - Dune, Kim Stanley Robinson - Mars Trilogy, the Star Wars Extended Universe novels... I read anything and everything I could get my hands on, frequently even starting in the middle of various series.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/knownspace1/TalesOfKnownSpace.jpg\")
We happened to have a few of the Known Space books at home so I read the Tales of Known Space and Neutron Star anthologies, multiple volumes in the Man-Kzin Wars and Ringworld. Something about the books just clicked with me, even despite Niven's formula. When you read a book or short story of his the characters are generally authoritarian and evil if they're the antagonist, or that very Heinleinian sort of libertarian trickster/ultimate boy scout character that is skilled at everything and always gets the upper hand via their wits when they're the protagonist. Action tends to be rote and while not glossed over it is delivered in a perfunctory way. If there are romances or sex scenes they're delivered in the awkward kind of way that only a sci-fi writer from the '70s can really manage. Now I know I'm really selling it here but hear me out: He does two things well.
\nIn the Known Space novels you have the Kzin which are functionally anthropomorphic space tigers, and largely are similar to Klingons in Star Trek: patriarchal society, obsession with honor despite all of them being lying and thieving bastard cats, a stratified society where class becomes something of an obsession. But there's nuance there - Telepaths are required for the Kzinti empire to work, but also reviled, and are frequently sympathetic PoV characters. The Kzinti enslave other races and have complex relationships with them. They've undergone extreme natural selection after multiple wars with Humans that have not gone their way. They're interesting. My cat totally thinks she's a Kzin. They're the epitome of the all vibes no thoughts kind of alien, just instead of good vibes it's bloodshed and mayhem.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/knownspace1/Mkwars3.jpg\")
Then you have the Puppeteers which are herd animals. Herbivores with an innate cowardice that borders on pathological. They're such cowards that the only Puppeteers ever seen by other species are deemed insane by Puppeteer society, generally portrayed as a sort of extreme, over the top bipolar disorder or a sort of very fictional, hysterical schizophrenia. They're also absolutely evil (from an outside perspective, rationally self interested from their own perspective - those libertarian vibes again.) and will murder countless other sophonts in a bid to keep themselves safe. With their advanced technology they effectively power the economy of Known Space. Yes, the pathologically cowardly race are merchant-traders extraordinaire. What better way to spy on your enemies?
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/knownspace1/Puppeteer.jpg\")
Lastly you have the Pak which are effectively humans... well sort of. I'm going to skip the fine details here - read Protector if you want the whole story - but the Pak are a race that live in the core of the galaxy. Earth was a failed colony. It failed because the Pak live a two stage life cycle; the first stage is the "breeder" stage where they're born, grow up, and breed. Shocker. The second stage is the "protector" stage. They'll eat a plant that turns them into sexless (in a biological, no gender, no sex organs sense), insanely intelligent, biological death dealing machines that have the sole purpose of protecting their descendants from any threat. The plant they need to turn into protectors failed to thrive on Earth, and we know their breeders as "Homo Habilis". Yep, that's right, we're aliens. Checkmate evolved-on-earthists! And yes - modern humans exposed to this plant can still turn into Protectors. This becomes something of a theme.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/knownspace1/Protector.jpg\")
Okay so those are the main players, there are other, weirder aliens and backstories and stuff but you get the idea.
\nThe second thing he does well is the "Big Dumb Object" or the "Big Idea". That's why you read his books. Ringworld is the Ur example of this. Take the orbit of earth. Make it a ring of material a million miles wide, and almost six hundred million miles in circumference. This is similar in concept to a Dyson Sphere, and leaves you with a surface area of about three million times the earth's surface. Or think Halo, but way, way bigger. Damn. That's big. A big dumb object. Ringworld as a novel literally spends something like 15% of its length marveling over the technical feat it would be to create something like that.
\n![](\"/assets/shortform/blog/knownspace1/Ringworld.jpg\")
So, why am I writing about this? Well I recently started reading and re-reading two of his series: The Fleet of Worlds series concerning the Puppeteers and their special Big Dumb Object and the Ringworld series concerning... well the Ringworld and it has made me want to write about some things.
\nI'm envisoning this as a multi part series.
\nAssuming I don't forget about my grand plans. We'll see! Hit the feed buttons on the Blog Page to add me to your RSS feed!
\n", "date_published": "2024-06-28T00:00:00Z" } , { "id": "/blog/flow-state-vs-fugue-state/", "url": "/blog/flow-state-vs-fugue-state/", "title": "Flow State vs Fugue State", "content_html": "I hate Vampire Survivors and it's ilk. There. I said it. This is something I've talked about with friends and they're always surprised, many of them love the mindlessness of those games and find them relaxing. I get it, I do, but I feel like I'm sitting at a slot machine letting it drain me of energy. I've described it as feeling like it is "hacking my brain" and I have this extremely strong gut level negative reaction to it. I have that same negative reaction to endlessly scrolling on TikTok or YouTube, outrage or "haul" videos, binging seasons worth of extremely mid TV (Suits, Law & Order I'm looking at YOU). And I think I know why.
\nFlow State feels good.
\nWhen I play a game like Dig Dug or Robotron 2084 I slip into a flow state eventually. This is pretty common, we've all experienced being in the zone and losing ourselves in something. I, like most people, enjoy this feeling. Being locked in and firing on all cylinders without having to actively think about it is GREAT. No thoughts, just DO. I personally find my mind to be noisy, chaotic, and turbulent which is something that I've grown to like about myself but it can also be exhausting. Being caught in the currents of my ADHD can feel like surfing when it's good, or drowning in a tsunami of static when its bad. The flow state, the being locked in to the activity at such a low level that active thoughts are pushed away in favor of what feels more like instinctual action, can then become cathartic and offer a reprieve from the mental turbulence.
\nFor anyone that has ever gambled and has felt the allure of the slot machine, that mindless activity you can just zone out to with flashing lights and bleep bloop sounds that provides a drip feed of dopamine to the reward center in your brain, then you've experienced the pleasure of being in the flow state. If that sounds alien to you but you've also unintentionally played candy crush or bejeweled, or literally any other video game for hours in a near fugue state it's an identical thing happening. Now I just swapped the word flow state for fugue state and you can see my bias at play there. Sometimes flow feels good and soothing to me. Sometimes it feels bad and dangerous. What's the difference?
\nFor me the difference is the ease with which you slip into the flow. The games I mentioned up top are relatively difficult games like most arcade games from the '80s. To slip into a flow state with them requires: learned skill at them, concentration, and crucially it can't be kept up forever. I could mindlessly scroll TikTok or play a slot machine for hours and feel my life slowly draining away from me as I feed the destructive impulse gremlins that live in my brain but playing at a high level in, say, Defender? I can do maybe an hour of that and get 2 decent length runs in. I think my record is 35 minutes which I think is pretty good but is nowhere near a world record. It feels almost like working out a part of my brain as opposed to being truly mindless. A form of mindfulness maybe.
\nNow I've bashed TikTok, slot machines, and worst of all: Law and Order here. I'm not saying these things are bad to engage with, play, use, whatever. For some people they could be addictive, but almost anything can be psychologically addictive. If these are things you like or you find comforting or fun then enjoy them. What I'm doing here is exploring my own feelings on why I like some activities that could be described as mindless due to the thought suppressing nature of them, but not others. And I still really don't like what Vampire Survivors or slot machines do to my brain.
\n", "date_published": "2024-02-24T00:00:00Z" } , { "id": "/blog/looking-forward/", "url": "/blog/looking-forward/", "title": "Looking Forward...", "content_html": "Lately I've become reinvigorated for projects after a long slump. I feel like I had lost some of my voice and vigor over the past few years between overwork and just constant exhaustion. Restarting work on my website has been a big part of the reinvigoration. Because of that I don't want to look back on 2023 which was... fine I guess. I want to look forward to what I want to work on this year. I'm not normally the kind of person to put this kind of aspirational post out there, but I wanted to do this as part of the 32bit.cafe's 2023 Holiday's Event.
\nI may even make development public to try and show people it's not as hard as they think it is.
\nI have a nice high speed fiber connection and live in a solar power mecca, I should do something cool with those. Inspired by Low-Tech-Magazine.
\nI'm trying to bully many of my more normal friends into joining the indie/small/cozy/personal/whatever the hell we call this web, and I want to offer them a host and subdomain, similar to xandra.cc's Marigold.Town project but without the town ethos.
\nI'm not obsessed with sustainability but I love the idea of using paper mache to create things that you wouldn't normally use it for: Furniture, electronics enclosures, etc. I want to explore that more this year.
\nI want to host a capsule, I love the idea of the internet that wasn't. And I want to put unique, non gemini related stuff up there to do what little I can to enrich the ecosystem.
\nI'm not a fan of the name exactly, but I want to convert this blog into more of an exploratory experience and less of an on a timeline traditional blog. I may end up embedding a Quartz site into my 11ty site to accomplish this which seems janky and that appeals to me. I accidentally convinced myself of this when linking someone to some reading on the whole concept.
\nThis is simple, I work from home and it's not been great for my health. Time to fix that.
\nI like camping, I want to do it more this year.
\nThis list of things I want to focus on may seem like it's not grandiose enough to start my year off, but I know myself and I will get depressed if I aim too high and start not achieving it. If I keep my goals reasonable I'm more likely to hit them and actually keep going. There is more I want to do this year and more I will do, but for now this is a good place for me to start. And being kinder to myself is also definitely part of this list even if it's unspoken.
\n", "date_published": "2024-01-10T00:00:00Z" } , { "id": "/blog/top-10-lists-a-mild-take/", "url": "/blog/top-10-lists-a-mild-take/", "title": "Top 10 Lists: A Mild Take", "content_html": "I showed a friend this site recently and she loved it and loved the idea of it being a throwback to the early internet. She mentioned that one of the things a website like this needs is top 10 lists and I've seen others in the small web community talk about that too. So I think to myself "okay, cool let's bang out an interesting top 10 list." and after ruminating on it for a bit I hit on something: I hate top 10 lists. Well sort of. Hate is a strong word, maybe describing it as being aggressively indifferent works better.
\nTop 10 lists create this sort of forced arbitrary curation which can be an interesting constraint but only when it's not already it's own weird pseudo culture of discourse.
\nTop 10 roguelikes? Boring. "My favorite roguelikes that started out as 7DRL entries"? More interesting. Hell you can still include 10 of them but don't tell me it's the top 10.
\nObviously top is subjective, it's so obvious it doesn't have to be said. But wait it kind of does have to be said. Top 10 lists are rarely a ranked list and not even necessarily representative of what the author thinks is the best of the subject.
\nLike, yes, ideally you want the author to be telling you the top 10 things from whatever they're talking about but frequently it's more like the top 10 things the author wants to talk about at that given moment rather than the best of the subject. Which is fine but don't tell me it's a top 10, lean into that subjectivity! Give me your "Horror movies for when you're feeling emotionally vulnerable and you don't like it so you're watching horrorstuff to scare those feelings back into their hole." list! That's something I wanna read! I want to experience those opinions without them being filtered through decades of top 10 listicle culture.
\nLook, I have ADHD. I'm unmedicated by choice. I have enough difficulties with my attention span without listicle culture encouraging bad behavior on my part. Broadly speaking of online culture I think that's true as well, we've been gorging on troughs of short form "Content" (I hate that word. Hate it.) for so long that engaging with longer form "Content" (gagging noises) can feel onerous. Bring back the essay! Bring back the webshrine! Bring back the long form analysis vi- wait no that ones doing okay. I see you 20 hour Skyrim retrospective.
\nWhen you need to chop, slice, and dice your flow to fit into 10 evenlyish long sections it's going to lead you to making some of them too long and some of them too short. Let's say you're recommending movies:
\nPsycho Goreman is a what if scenario involving a power ranger villain being controlled by a sociopathic 8 year old.
\nEpic Movie is a deeply unfunny spoof that makes fun of popular mid-2000s fantasy movies, in the vein of Kentucky fried movie but bad.
\nOne of those is underselling what it's about, the other is if anything too many words expended on the subject. I'll leave you to decide which one is which. But that's the curse of the top 10 format, everything should be roughly the same length and it hamstrings your ability to make your point while also not being an interesting constraint because it is just so common.
\nMany, not all, top 10s are about discovering new things, showing off indie projects and just shining a light on overlooked stuff or underappreciated things.
\nIf that is your goal then don't make it worse by making your top 10 Mongolian throat singing albums post harder to find because it's a top 10 list and you're not great at SEO. Think that example is ridiculous? Go ahead and google "top 10 mongolian throat singing albums". It pulls up multiple lists that you probably won't be able to compete with in google's eyes, but I can almost guarantee anything the hypothetical 'you' would write about that would be better, you just can't fight the SEO (okay, you can but just like... ew SEO.). Speaking of...
\nTop 10 lists were at one time and probably still are good for SEO due to engagement, click through rates, the ease of production, the alignment of certain constellations and the fact that mercury is always in retrograde even if it isn't. Maybe. I don't know. The point is fuck SEO.
\nThey're too easy to consume which encourages us to be lazy readers, but they're also too easy to write which encourages us to be lazy writers and like, dude look at this nonsense. I do NOT need more encouragement in that department. You need to push your limits to get better at skills and writing top 10 lists doesn't really push your skills as a writer. It can push your creativity if you try to really bend the format but because the format is "10 subjectively best things with a bunch of asterisks after best" it's not likely you're going to be pushing those limits often.
\nI actually have more to say about this and may follow it up, especially with how it relates to discoverability but I'm stopping this before this becomes a meta top 10 list about how top 10 lists suck. Wait... Is it not being a top 10 list somehow more meta? Goddamnit. Whatever, the point is don't make top 10 lists. Be more authentically you and by doing so be more interesting.
\nI'm kidding. I'm not a big manifesto guy. No I'm more likely to be the guy sitting at the bar bitching about some esoteric nonsense... wait maybe I AM a manifesto kind of guy. Hmm.
\nAlright then, my short manifesto:
\nI think. But probably not well.
\nNice and simple.
\nWe don't need more long manifestos and I think the proof is evident when you start reading those by figures you vehemently disagree with. Ted Kaczynski (an American domestic terrorist) makes some salient points in his manifesto "Industrial Society and Its Future" and I used to be worried by that. "Crap, I agree with some of his points does that mean I'm crazy?" No, it's 35,000 words long, it'd be hard for me not to agree with at least something in that span of words. That being said I don't agree with any of his conclusions, this isn't me saying "the Unabomber was right, actually".
\nYou just can't fill 35,000 words without including at least some basic truths: the sky is blue, modern society kind of sucks, people feel more like cogs in the machine than empowered individuals, we're destroying nature, etc. That's why long manifestos suck. Repeated manifestos aren't great either, not because they exist but as a reader it gets boring to read the same thing over and over and over. I want new ideas, bold takes, and strong opinions. This is why this isn't a small web/indie web manifesto: everyone already has one, and I've got nothing to add to that conversation.
\nThis is mostly me just trying to get over the hump with putting more than just my game opinions out there. I don't mind being wrong, or having dumb opinions (Star Control 3 is the best in the series, don't @ me) but I want to at least be putting out the cream of the crop of my idiocy, not just the super basic, rote idiocy.\nSo in summary: No Manifestos, thank you for coming to my TED talk.
\nWait did I just write a short manifesto against manifestos? Goddamnit.
\n", "date_published": "2024-01-01T00:00:00Z" } , { "id": "/blog/first-post/", "url": "/blog/first-post/", "title": "First Post!", "content_html": "Welcome to my blog where I will talk about... stuff. Sure.
\nExpect me to complain about databases, new software I'm using (or abusing) or for me to wax poetic about things I've listened to, watched, read, played etc.
\nYou know. Basic blog stuff.
\n... look to be honest I just set this up for the 32bit Cafe's forthcoming blog club. I don't know what I'm gonna talk about. RSS feed to come, stick around for some more posts.
\nCiao!
\n", "date_published": "2023-12-16T00:00:00Z" } ] }