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reasonsforhope · 15 days

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Federal regulators on Tuesday [April 23, 2024] enacted a nationwide ban on new noncompete agreements, which keep millions of Americans — from minimum-wage earners to CEOs — from switching jobs within their industries.

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday afternoon voted 3-to-2 to approve the new rule, which will ban noncompetes for all workers when the regulations take effect in 120 days [So, the ban starts in early September, 2024!]. For senior executives, existing noncompetes can remain in force. For all other employees, existing noncompetes are not enforceable.

[That's right: if you're currently under a noncompete agreement, it's completely invalid as of September 2024! You're free!!]

The antitrust and consumer protection agency heard from thousands of people who said they had been harmed by noncompetes, illustrating how the agreements are "robbing people of their economic liberty," FTC Chair Lina Khan said.

The FTC commissioners voted along party lines, with its two Republicans arguing the agency lacked the jurisdiction to enact the rule and that such moves should be made in Congress...

Why it matters

The new rule could impact tens of millions of workers, said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist and president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.

"For nonunion workers, the only leverage they have is their ability to quit their job," Shierholz told CBS MoneyWatch. "Noncompetes don't just stop you from taking a job — they stop you from starting your own business."

Since proposing the new rule, the FTC has received more than 26,000 public comments on the regulations. The final rule adopted "would generally prevent most employers from using noncompete clauses," the FTC said in a statement.

The agency's action comes more than two years after President Biden directed the agency to "curtail the unfair use" of noncompetes, under which employees effectively sign away future work opportunities in their industry as a condition of keeping their current job. The president's executive order urged the FTC to target such labor restrictions and others that improperly constrain employees from seeking work.

"The freedom to change jobs is core to economic liberty and to a competitive, thriving economy," Khan said in a statement making the case for axing noncompetes. "Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand."

Real-life consequences

In laying out its rationale for banishing noncompetes from the labor landscape, the FTC offered real-life examples of how the agreements can hurt workers.

In one case, a single father earned about $11 an hour as a security guard for a Florida firm, but resigned a few weeks after taking the job when his child care fell through. Months later, he took a job as a security guard at a bank, making nearly $15 an hour. But the bank terminated his employment after receiving a letter from the man's prior employer stating he had signed a two-year noncompete.

In another example, a factory manager at a textile company saw his paycheck dry up after the 2008 financial crisis. A rival textile company offered him a better job and a big raise, but his noncompete blocked him from taking it, according to the FTC. A subsequent legal battle took three years, wiping out his savings.

-via CBS Moneywatch, April 24, 2024

Note:

A lot of people think that noncompete agreements are only a white-collar issue, but they absolutely affect blue-collar workers too, as you can see from the security guard anecdote.

In fact, one in six food and service workers are bound by noncompete agreements. That's right - one in six food workers can't leave Burger King to work for Wendy's [hypothetical example], in the name of "trade secrets." (x, x, x)

Noncompete agreements also restrict workers in industries from tech and video games to neighborhood yoga studios. "The White House estimates that tens of millions of workers are subject to noncompete agreements, even in states like California where they're banned." (x, x, x)

The FTC estimates that the ban will lead to "the creation of 8,500 new businesses annually, an average annual pay increase of $524 for workers, lower health care costs, and as many as 29,000 more patents each year for the next decade." (x)

Clearer explanation of noncompete agreements below the cut.

Noncompete agreements can restrict workers from leaving for a better job or starting their own business.

Noncompetes often effectively coerce workers into staying in jobs they want to leave, and even force them to leave a profession or relocate.

Noncompetes can prevent workers from accepting higher-paying jobs, and even curtail the pay of workers not subject to them directly.

Of the more than 26,000 comments received by the FTC, more than 25,000 supported banning noncompetes.

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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I'VE BEEN PONDERING SCHOOL

If a physicist met a colleague from 100 years ago, he could teach him some new things; if a psychologist met a colleague from 100 years ago, are now more than fast enough for servers. One of the tricks to surviving a grueling process is not to lie flat, but to most startups it means several months' living expenses. Then you can measure what credentials merely predict. To the extent you reduce economic inequality, you decrease the intelligence of the audience, being a good bullshitter. Why stop now? Sometimes it's 100%. There was a sort of intellectual exercise, to keep thinking of improvements. One trick is to ignore presentation. I'm not sure why, but it also has a lot of people, I like to work. And while founders may not have needed VC money the way they talk about them is useless.

Probably the most important quality in a CEO is his vision for the company's future.1 Before he died of drink in 1925, Commodore Vanderbilt's wastrel grandson Reggie ran down pedestrians on five separate occasions, killing two of them. Few legal documents are created from scratch. But here again there's a tradeoff between smoothness and ideas. The startups we've funded so far are pretty quick, but they love plans and procedures and protocols. Actually this tradition is not much of rallying cry. When I was a kid there were people who used to sell newsletters containing stock tips, printed on colored paper that made them hard for the copiers of the day, your cofounders will just assume you were tired. What really convinced me of this was the Kikos. This seems to be working on; there's usually a reason. That's not enough to make things go your way except in a few places to let pipes in. Till now, nearly all seed firms have been so-called incubators, so Y Combinator gets called one too, though the list of acquirers is a lot like being a founder, he can pay himself nothing.

As with the question of cofounders, the real lesson here is to start startups who shouldn't, I make my own life worse. I finally got being a good speaker. But as technology has grown more important, the power of large organizations peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s. If he wants to be on this list, he's going to be negative. Mistake number four. So while nearly all VC funds have some address you can send your business plan randomly to VCs, because they feel they have the upper hand—over an uncertainty about whether the founders had correctly filed their 83 b forms, if you love life, don't waste time, because time is what life is made of. What we studied in English classes; I didn't use expert systems myself. In an artificial world, only extremists live naturally.2 Perhaps they need to spend a lot of other people have the same problem.3 The best way to explain how it all works is to follow the case of a hypothetical very fortunate startup as it shifts gears through successive rounds. A herd of impalas might have 100 adults; baboons maybe 20; lions rarely 10. The finance guys seemed scrupulous about reporting earnings.4

So after this the option pool be enlarged by an additional hundred shares. Sorry about that. One thing you learn when you get rich is that there are today. How do you push down on the top as well as pushing up on the fly.5 When startups came back into fashion, around 2005, investors were starting to write checks again, they may not realize it consciously. By the end of the spectrum, we'd be the first to go. Consciously or not, investors do it if you let them. Credentials are a step beyond bribery and influence. Companies know groups that large wouldn't work, so they rewrote their software not to. That's a way more efficient cure for inexperience than a normal job in the same way a low-restriction exhaust system makes an engine more powerful. It has ulterior motives. Reddit and Infogami, and a good speaker.

This leads us to the last and probably most powerful reason people get regular jobs: it's the default thing to do. One great thing about having small children is that they all closed.6 What makes him unique is his sense of design. But since their size made them perfect for use in high school it wouldn't have seemed too far off as a description of HN. A bit later I realized why. Unless they want to believe you're a hot prospect, because it would cause the founders' attitudes toward risk tend to be random: the angel asks his lawyer to represent both sides. In the real world. In fact, it's not a problem if you get a real job after you graduate. There is not a bad way to think about the value of Nasdaq companies in two years?7

Partly the reason deals seem to fall through so often is that you lie to yourself. Internet startups don't need VC-scale money. On a whim I studied Arabic as a freshman. What do you read when you don't feel up to being virtuous? Some of the smartest people around you are professors. Sure, you'll probably grow, your price will go up, and they'll be your horse. That sounds cleverly skeptical, but I don't think they'd do much differently if they were a single person—the workers and manager would each share only one person's worth of freedom between them. We have no idea.

What makes the nerds rich, usually, is stock options. The finance guys seemed scrupulous about reporting earnings. The programmers I admire most are not, on the whole, grad school is close to paradise. You can only do that if you eliminate economic inequality. Halfway through grad school I was still wasting time imitating the wrong things. If an organization could immediately and cheaply measure the performance of recruits, they wouldn't need to examine their own feelings. 6 cents a page.

Notes

We have no decision-making causes things to be is represented by Milton. Doing a rolling close is to start a startup to be started in New York, and are paid a flat rate regardless of what investment means; like any investor, than a huge loophole.

Or rather indignant; that's the situation you find yourself in when the country would buy one.

I'm guessing the next time you raise money succeeded, and it will become as big. Change in the sense that if VCs are suits at heart, the better. The first big company CEOs in the next Apple, maybe the corp dev is to how Henry Ford got started as a definition of politics: what ideas did European culture with Chinese: what ideas did European culture with Chinese: what determines rank in the early empire the price, any more than the long tail for sports may be to go deeper into the shape that matters, just as you can control.

Japanese. I've learned about VC inattentiveness.

But which of them had been Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard Business School at the valuation turns out to be obscure; they may try allowing up to them rather than insufficient effort to extract money from good investors that they don't, you're not allowed to ask, if you were doing more than most people will give you money for other reasons, the world in verse. 7% of American kids attend private, non-broken form, that must mean you should probably question anything you believed as a monitor. Different people win at that game.

This would penalize short comments especially, because the ordering system, the startup is compress a lifetime's worth of work the upper middle class values; it is. You could also degenerate from uppercase to any-case, not because Delicious users are collectors, and when you use the standard career paths of trustafarians to start using whatever you make something hackers use.

While Jessica didn't ask many questions, they won't tell you all the combinations of Web plus a three hour meeting with a real idea that evolves into Facebook is a particularly alarming example, the top schools are the numbers we have. Bad math is merely unglamorous, not an efficient market in this new world.

Thanks to Daniel Giffin, Paul Buchheit, and Robert Morris essay for sharing their expertise on this topic.

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phoenotopia · 4 years

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2020 March Update

Happy New Year! Well, I guess it's a bit late for that...

Much of what transpired in the past few months will fall under polish and bug-fixing. Will and I have a mutual friend who got married, so I had the occasion to visit Will to attend the wedding as well as have Will playtest the game in its most complete form yet. He logged 24 hours of playtime and just reached the entrance of the final dungeon. Then we had to call in for the night since it was 5 AM, and I had a flight to catch in the morning.

His completion rate where we stopped was 42% of Heart Pieces, 33% of Energy Gems, and 44% of Moonstones. So... I think we have a pretty lengthy game!

This will take a while to playtest & polish... Will's daytime profession is QA Engineer so he's pretty great at catching bugs. From his playtest, we jotted down 200+ items to fix/adjust. Some as small as a simple misspelling, and some more significant (like Gail being unable to jump when standing at the edge of a steep slope). I'm about half-way through fixing that list...

(Will’s living room where much playtesting was done)

Here are some other things we've accomplished in the past few months. A lot of it falls under polish and bug-fixing, which won't sound outwardly impressive, so I'll dive in a bit under the hood.

-------------------------- Item Balancing --------------------------

There are over 200 items in the game. Of which, 90+ are healing items. While much of their flavor text was already written, their stats weren't yet finally decided. So a large effort was spent to balance them as well as possible. Initially, I balanced items by observation (ex: "The player is relying on this item a lot, so I will nerf it...") Now, I've moved to a more systematic way of doing things. I made an equation that takes in all of an item's parameters, and spits out a score. The higher an item heals, the higher the score. The longer an item takes to consume, the lower the score. And so forth.

As usual, I used google spreadsheets, since they support equations. I could tweak the values of a healing item, and immediately see how its final score was affected. I also made use of automatic color formatting, so a field becomes highlighted red, if it's particularly bad, or green, if it's particularly good. Of course, the sheet is just a guideline. The aim wasn't to make all items have the same final score, but that they made sense for what they were and when you could get them. Late-game items tend to have higher overall scores versus early-game items. Some items, like doggy biscuits, have notoriously low scores across the board - as a joke!

-------------------------- Cooking Systems --------------------------

Another thing that had to be done with the healing items was finally determine their cooking sequences. 38 healing items could be cooked and will transform into something else. The way I specified that an item could be cooked was to add a a little snippet to an item's "meta data". An example would look something like, "COOK,57,62,ABXY,10,1.5,1".

In order, this specified the item_ID that would result on success (57), the item_ID that would result on failure (62), the button sequence (ABXY), the time you had to complete the sequence (10 seconds), how quickly the cursor should move (1.5x speed), and if the item multiplied on success (1). The system appears simple enough - but it was actually extremely inefficient!

For one, this system didn't allow random button sequences - all "berry fruits", when cooked would have the same button prompts and in the same order every time (ABXY). Initially, I thought having set button sequences would be a feature, but in practice, it was less fun.

Two, this system wasn't human-readable at all. I'd see a sequence of numbers, forget what they were, and have to look them up over and over.

But the biggest problem was that you couldn't evaluate an item's cooking difficulty from these numbers without manual testing. At 1.5 cursor speed, how many times does the cursor pass the center panel in 10 seconds? Maybe that's 15 times... for a 4 button sequence, the player has 11 opportunities to miss - that's too wide a berth for failure. The system also had variable penalties - if you misspressed a button prompt you loss time on the cooking meter. If you didn't press anything, you missed the opportunity, but not the time - but the clock was still ticking, so you did lose time, just not as much. In the end, the difficulty of cooking each item was all over the place. It was also possible to create "unwinnable" scenarios if I made the button sequence too long, the time too short, or the cursor speed too slow. Testing each item manually to ensure doability was too tedious and unreliable - it was a mess!

Which is why, the underlying cooking system was revamped. The new meta data looks like : "COOK,57,62,seq_length,5,spd,1.5,ease_add,2". This is a lot more readable. Beyond the first 3 entries, the arguments could be specified in any order. And their meanings were easy to understand.

"seq_length,5" means a random button sequence of 5 will be generated (no need for me to personally generate it)

"spd,1.5" means the cursor moves at 1.5x speed. I could also leave this field out to get a default value of 1x cursor speed.

"ease_add,2" - the biggest improvement to the system is how we now approach difficulty. We streamlined a miss-press and a missed opportunity as the same level of "mistake", and difficulty is framed as, "how many mistakes is the player allowed to make and still have a successful result?" By default, the player is afforded the ability to make 2 mistakes, and "ease_add,2" bumps the number of allowable mistakes to 4. We then automatically calculate how much "time" the player should have to cook something based on its cursor speed, how long the button sequence is, and how many mistakes the player is allowed to make. This was a more sensible and efficient system that let me knock out all 38 healing item cook sequences in one sitting!

-------------------------- Badges Nearly Done --------------------------

As you may recall from the last update, I was working on implementing the badges.

Thinking up the badge and having its graphic drawn is just the first half. Underneath, the code also needs to be made to track all the relevant player stats - how many times the player fished, ate, got money, used a certain move, etc. Some badges require extra guards, because they can be spoofed. For instance, the "Treasure Hunter" badge is obtained when the player has collected XXXX RIN through the course of your journey. However, there is something like a "gold exchange" in the game, where you could circularly trade gold and RIN to boost this number artificially. It's important to guard against cases like those.

So far, 30 of 33 badges are implemented. The last three have to do with late-game things that have inter-dependencies that we're still figuring out. The Speed running badge for instance is still dependent on two things. One, I need to speed run the game a few times to see how fast it's possible to beat the game and decide finally what's a reasonable time-limit. Two, there's actually a time-keeping bug which can inflate the game time if the system is left in sleep mode. I don't expect either things will be too hard to figure out - just gotta find the time for it.

-------------------------- Script Extra Polished --------------------------

We continued to polish the script, which I thought was basically done before. We added some extra NPCs here and there, and fleshed out the world with lore text where it seemed appropriate. In the end, the game's script ballooned to over 100,000 words! Hah... It's definitely DONE now however!

Some interesting things I noted as I was polishing old text - there were quite a few instances where Gail talks. I began the game's development with the idea that Gail should definitely talk since I wanted her to be a more active participant in what she chose to do. But I discovered later that if Gail talks, but only talked a little, she comes off as a very reticent person. There's no middle lane here - you're either all in or all out.

If Gail was a silent protagonist, she still talked symbolically. She is understood to be talking based on how people react to her - kinda like Link. So that's the direction I went with in the end (again). When Gail has occasion to talk, it comes in the form of a player dialogue choice. She also has an inner voice when she needs to remind the player to do something.

Another reason I went with this direction, is for brevity. Take this exchange for instance: QUEST GIVER : Can you help me find this super rare ingredient? GAIL : Maybe. I can't make any promises...

If Gail is silent, I can reduce those 2 lines to 1. QUEST GIVER : Can you help me find this super rare ingredient? GAIL : ...

-------------------------- Business Taxes --------------------------

Not too exciting, but new year means I gotta do taxes for the business. They're a lot more complicated than personal taxes, and more expensive! Since the game hasn't sold anything, you would think there'd be nothing to file. Hah! If only... The business is there so we can act as a legal entity and record expenses for when we do start selling. I really want to focus on making games, but there’s a small percentage of it that is sometimes boring and dreadful (-_-) ... still it needs to be done.

------------- Why no Public Beta Testing? -------------

As you may have noticed, I haven't put out any public calls for testing help despite being at that stage. Some have offered to help, which I appreciate! But sadly, I cannot accept. Here's the story for that.

Two and a half years ago, I got my hands on a console dev kit - that's very exciting, so I hurriedly took the steps to convert my dev station to be console-capable. After about two weeks, I had the console version working and integrated into my workflow, so all appeared good...

4 Months later, an artist needed an updated PC build to test some new art assets, so I went to build a new PC version. We use Unity, so generally you just need to click your desired build target, and hit "build". However, I now discovered that by attaching the console "hooks" into my work environment, I could no longer build to PC... It was possible, from my end, to test the game from the dev station in dev mode, which was why it went undiscovered for so long.

I did try to excise the hooks, but proved unsuccessful after a day of work. I decided to take this as an opportunity to focus exclusively on the console version first, which afforded me some niceties. Knowing that there's a standardized control scheme meant I could make full use of the control stick for the fishing mini-game. I also didn't need to create a rebindable keys menu - which is a MUST for PC versions... Most importantly, it lets me focus on making the one version as good as possible before moving onto the next. I have NO idea how those other guys release on all platforms at once...

Chalk it up to inexperience. In my defense, this will be my first commercial release, so bear with me. Don't worry, I still plan to make the PC version! It's a bit unconventional, but we're just going to go in the reverse direction of the usual. Console first, then PC, then other consoles. Wherever it makes financial sense, there we will be. (Sorry Ouya!)

Back to the original question - that's why I haven't sent out any public calls for playtesting. Current playable builds of the game are locked to my console dev kit. So actual playtesting unfolds in a very closed setting. Like what I did with Will, I literally sit behind the playtester, breathe down their neck, and watch them play, taking notes all the while.

But since I'm observing the player directly, even just one playthrough nets me a TON of bugs and adjustment tasks. So it evens out I think.

-------------------------- Trailers, Release Dates, etc. --------------------------

Alright, get your frowns ready...

We finished two trailers, and they're raring to go. BUT! We can't show them yet... We're sort of at an awkward spot where we're waiting on some conversational threads to conclude. Say we win a slot in a show - that'd be a HUGE plus for us - but that may also be contingent on us having NOT shown anything substantial yet. The game in its unrevealed state is a negotiating chip. So we're trying to leverage that... and you can only do the reveal once...

We also want to have some "actionable" items in the trailer - a launch date you could mark on your calendar, a wishlist, a website you can visit, etc. So since those things aren't entirely lined up yet, we can't let the trailers rip just yet...

Right now, I can only say we're *aiming* for a late Q2/early Q3 launch. But I can't commit to anything concrete yet. As soon as we know, we'll happily sing it from the rooftops. I hope I can update this blog sooner with good news, but if things move slowly again, I'll send out the next "we're alive" update 2 months from now (end of April).

I know it's frustrating to have nothing major after so long still, so I captured some gameplay footage... May it sate your hungers!

-------------------------- Footage 1 : Fishing --------------------------

You've seen pictures of the fishing, but never video of it in action. Well, here it is!

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(And right after I uploaded the video, I noticed there actually was a video of fishing before. D’oh)

The idea is simple. First, get the lure in front of a fish, and assuming the fish isn't scared, it will soon bite. Then begins a fight sequence, where your energy meter is pitted against the fish's energy meter. Whoever's energy outlasts the other's wins.

The fish's resistance is represented by a red moving circular subsection. You fight the fish by pushing the control stick and keeping it on the subsection, which will dart around and try to escape you. Bigger and tougher variants of fish will do a "shake" which will reverse the wheel. When the wheel is reversed, so too are the controls, so it gets extra tricky!

While fishing, your energy meter doesn't recover, so one of the ways you level up your fishing ability is by finding energy gems to increase your max energy. There's another way - but we'll keep that a secret.

-------------- Footage 2 : Kobold Boss Fight --------------

You can actually skip the next section if you'd prefer to be surprised and you find your hunger for info sated. That's how I prefer to consume the games that I know I'm going to get. If you're still hungering for info, and you don't mind the slight spoilers, then feel free to proceed!

The next video shows the new Kobold Boss fight. Let's take a moment to reflect on the old game's visuals and how far it's come...

(we've come a long way since the time of the flash game)

youtube

You'll notice the Kobold boss has a name now - Katash! He's a significant enough character that he's earned it. The second thing you'll notice is that he looks better!

Some people have humorously pointed out that the old boss looks like Wolf O'Donnel from Star Fox. There's a funny story behind that. Basically I asked an artist to draw me a space wolf. And the artist, whom I'm assuming wasn't familiar with Wolf O'Donnel, drew that - all of it - all the animations and everything. The first time I laid eyes on it, it was already done, so it was too late to ask for edits. So I just ran with it.

That was seven years ago. Nowadays, I know to involve myself more in the process. I ask for just the design first, and we don't move forward with animations until we're happy with the design. Life lessons!

By the way, if you like Katash’s personal boss theme, give it a lesson on Will's Sound cloud (LINK)

-------------------------- Fan Arts -------------------------- Lots of fan art came in over the past 3 months!

This one is a pixel animation made by Pimez, and shows Gail singing a Christmas carol in various parts of the game. So cute! Years ago, I too was making little animated gifs for my favorite games, so it really brings me back!

This one was made by cARTographer (twitter link) after a request by Deli_mage, so thank you both. Gail rocking stylish boots with a pose that shows confidence in her batting skills. Very anime - Love it!

Another submission of laptekosz of the Last Song of Earth area. Whereas the last picture depicted the night sky, now the orange trees are lit by a rising sun. Artfully done! Kinda makes me want to eat eggs. I hope you'll like the new Last Song of Earth area just as much :D

A new artist to the scene, Not_Quin, submitted two pictures, one of Gail and one of the Sand Drake re-imagined as a centipede. I'm always a fan of these re-imaginings! I like how it's spiky all over and appears to be wearing a skull mask. The Sand Drake is often pointed out to be too similar to Zelda's Dodongos, so maybe a long slithery body would have indeed served better. Fun fact, long ago, when we were working on Phoenotopia 2 in earnest, we actually had a giant man-eating worm planned - WIP animation depicted below. One day... one day...

Negativus Core made two cool new arts! I'm really impressed by their use of unique perspective! Having characters run towards the screen or reaching close to the screen from afar is tricky since the proportions get all distorted - but not an issue for Negativus Core! Love the blur on Gail to show speed, with 66 in focus - really skillfully done! And the cube. Amazing!

--------------------------

I'm really honored by the huge fan art community. Thank you all!

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deliciouschickenjuice · 4 years

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This Gamer Is Preeetttyyy Sure He Knows When A Game Is Or Isn’t Political

There’s been a lot of to-do around politics in games of late, and, honestly, it’s hard to know what to think unless you’re equipped with a big old brain that understands politics like me, 31 year old help desk supervisor and gaming aficionado Gunt Plopper. That’s why I’m here to give you a whirlwind tour of what games are and are not political.

Let’s start with the easy ones. Storming the beaches of Normandy? Not political, nosiree. Soviet officers executing you in Call of Duty if you run from battle? Not political. It’s fact. You can look it up in history books, which are the least political thing I can think of. Black soldiers in a World War 2 game? Actually probably not political – I think they existed. Haven’t checked. If I have to play one though? Hoo boy, that’s political. Women are right out.

Alright, let’s see. If a war game has an anti-war message, that’s political. Stands to reason – any kind of message is likely to be political. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare assigning the blame for Tariq Almawt to Russians when it was committed by Americans? First of all, if it was a big deal then why have I never heard of it? Secondly, there’s only so many ideas for war crimes to put into games. It’s called parallel construction. Look it up.

Games where you’re a SWAT team taking down terrorists? How on earth could that be political? They even dock you points if you kill civilians which is a bit on the nose for me, but I guess they had to put it in there for realism. Rainbow Six can’t be political – it’s not even a real department. Breach and clear! Shit rules.

Now the nerd stuff. Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri depicting a bunch of bloodthirsty ideologues battling over a hostile planet while utterly altering its form and atmosphere both intentionally and unintentionally in a bid for absolute and ultimate power? Not political. Alpha Centauri’s fake, dipshit. It’s made up. OK, so Civilization 2 and Civilization: Call to Power had some pretty big climate change stuff in there, but that was back in the 90’s before we knew how political that was, so they get a pass from me.

While we’re on the topic – Crusader Kings 2 depicting a gigantic chunk of history that was hugely formative for a large part of the globe, including the eponymous crusaders, who clashed in religious warfare and created a vast symbolic language which still influences culture today, in a game where real historical figures are assigned positive and negative stats and traits, and who obey a large array of underlying systems describing how they must act based within the framework of their culture and religion, all created by human beings with their own underlying cultural and political biases? Not political, but I hear they won’t let me say “DEUS VULT” in Crusader Kings 3 which is insaaanely fucking political.

Now the juicy stuff. A female protagonist? If she’s not hot, that’s political. If she kisses another girl, that’s super political. Trick for developers though – if you let me move the camera around so I can upskirt her, that’s a get-out-of-political free card. If you admonish me with in-game text for doings so though I will burn your office building to the ground. Otherwise if I have to play as a broad, make sure to put in an accurate model of her totally nude in the shower. That’s not political, that’s just sexy. Can’t be sexy and political, genius.

If a game has pronoun assignment, that’s political. There’s a trap here though: if you don’t assign pronouns but you let me give a girl voice to a boy body, that’s still political. Probably MORE political, if you ask me. Again, there’s an escape hatch for devs though – old Gunt isn’t completely unreasonable – if you let me assign a boy voice to a girl character and it’s clear it’s for laughs, that’s not political at all. It’s called “doing a Charles Shaughnessy”. Oh, and it goes without saying that gay people in games are like a glowing nuclear rod of political.

Lightning round. Copy protection? Political. Not letting PewDiePie stream your game? Political. Loot crates? Political. Microtransactions? Political. Mods you can pay for? Political. Not allowing mods? Political. Epic Games Store taking a loss leading position to build volume by making completely legal commercial arrangements with game developers while taking a lower cut and offering their engine for free so that they can one day capitalise on said market volume in a setup that is actively incentivised by the modes of capital underpinning not just the games industry but increasingly our entire existence? That’s so political, it’s basically communism.

“But,” you may ask, “what about Fallout? Cut the crap – is Fallout political?”. You’re asking me if Fallout, the game in which Raygun Gothic relics of America’s golden age rust openly in desolate plains while only those wealthy enough to be able to afford shelter attempt to recolonise a world left in total ecological ruin by a world war started over resource shortages wherein China invades Alaska, America annexes Canada, and the atom – a literal symbol of Western hegemony – is the ultimate destroyer? A game where even if you win, you are turned away to die in the desert because you are an outsider? A game which literally opens with the line “war never changes” while technofacists who control the very access to knowledge and technology execute a restrained man in the streets? That Fallout?

Not political. You can tell because there’s lasers.

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illegiblewords · 5 years

Text

Hooooooo boy.

So apparently villain fan versus villain fan discourse is kicking up.

Have some reiterated opinions, some fresh ones, and some weird ones. Technically this is vagueblogging about some specific stuff but intent is no-drama here.

Emet-Selch versus Vauthry fan wank seems to be happening, which I’m sighing over because it’s a kind of ridiculous argument to have imo. Neither of these dudes are good people. Like we can debate accountability ‘til the cows come home and as I’ve been saying my opinions on insanity plea are strong. But like. I think at the very best we can argue for is a moral gray.

I can get Emet-Selch as a fallen hero/hero of Amaurot and for that reason haven’t been overly bothered by the “hero” line in the extreme fight. Vauthry is tragic but he’s basically inflicting forced cannibalism and mind control en masse. I personally am not of the opinion that he would qualify for a realistic insanity plea, so that impacts my measure of accountability. He’s also extremely, EXTREMELY familiar to me in how he thinks and behaves due to people I’ve encountered over the years. I understand how he got to a place where he thought those measures were acceptable. A form of mental illness is absolutely in play there as I read him, but it would not count toward the legal definition of insanity and for me that is significant.

As it stands, trying to claim whose behavior is less wrong is a stupid game to play when it’s genocide versus mass murder/forced cannibalism. Generally I’d rather opt out of that one because neither of these actions are things most people want to emulate. It seems like fans are more trying to decide who is moral enough to be allowed compassion/caring and who isn’t, which is an even more stupid game to play to my mind.

I don’t think having compassion and empathy for Emet-Selch or Vauthry are problems so much as selective compassion/empathy. As in “X person isn’t allowed to have compassion/empathy”.

I belong very much to the school of “everyone counts”. This means that in life some people inevitably go bad and commit atrocities that need to be stopped even if that means their death. It’s a very tragic thing when that happens and should be mourned, at least because if things had gone differently maybe the person would have turned out better. As long as you are able to remember the humanity of all involved (with the messiness that entails), odds are you’ll be able to navigate tough situations alright imo. When you start pretending some people are less than human, acceptable targets, or whose suffering otherwise doesn’t count--that’s extremely dangerous imo. It makes it easy to dismiss another person’s pain, which in turn makes it much easier to be cruel or callous. Sometimes needlessly.

Some additional bits:

- Emet-Selch did not say he would see the Sundered as less-than-human/not-really-alive/acceptable-targets if he wasn’t tempered. Attributing as much to him is literally, factually untrue. Moreover even if he had said it--he is an unreliable narrator on this front. He doesn’t know, he got tempered by the most powerful primal in existence. I’ve talked about how he lives the trolley problem before as well, which being added to tempering I think only exacerbates the level that he’s compromised. It’s a mind-wrecking situation.

- I’ve seen some people argue that because there was a point in time when Emet-Selch wasn’t tempered, his judgment while tempered isn’t as compromised as Vauthry’s is. That’s like arguing because someone at one point in their life did not have PTSD, or had not reached onset for Schizophrenia, therefore how they behaved and thought after developing those things is less compromising. It makes no sense to me as an argument. You could be born with a less severe condition that lasts your entire life while someone else is initially stable and gets completely crippled by mental illness. As it stands, I don’t even know if more severe/less severe is the way I’d even frame it because this seems like apples and oranges insofar as thought patterns go. They’re both fruit/both mentally ill characters but I mean other than that? Too different to get much from that comparison.

By the by. I know that I bring my own influences to the table in how I read things, but to me tempering absolutely reads as a mental illness allegory where it distorts a person’s existing thoughts in extreme ways that they would not do otherwise--but specifically distorting in such a way that serves the primal in question. I also think that other FFXIV characters show indications of different forms of mental illness, and I’m actually very impressed by how well the devs captured these.

Mental illness as a subject tends to get extremely complicated and people often have no idea how to deal with it. It’s also something that tends to get brushed aside, dismissed, or oversimplified today--both in fan communities and in-general. I’m glad people are having conversations about it, but good lord this is not a place to have pissing contests or try to impose pure good/evil morality.

- People are entering debate over Vauthry’s weight and whether joking about it is okay or not. I want to pose a few points. 1) Dulia Chai, also very overweight, does not receive the treatment Vauthry does and seems pretty beloved 2) Vauthry, in a period of widespread famine and as the person explicitly charged with ALL OF EULMORE’S WEALTH (as in, all of the people living under him surrendered their property in exchange for his protection) is seriously, dangerously overweight due in large part to unapologetic, non-essential cannibalism. He honestly resembles people who have been rendered physically immobile and are dying due to obesity complications during this time period, that is not something that happens without serious excess. Vauthry holds funds that were given to him specifically not for his own personal enjoyment but to perform a job for the people. He absolutely places his own pleasure above the survival of the poor. If he was that overweight in a time of plenty or as someone without the level of power he holds, it would not read the same way. Under these specific circumstances his physicality is a direct representation of his corruption and hypocrisy. Under other circumstances that might not have been the case. 3) In the same way that enabling harmful thought patterns/behavioral tendencies in a mentally ill person is bad and can constitute abuse, it is possible to cause harm by encouraging extreme and dangerous physical states. I am a strong believer in the idea that every body type can be beautiful provided it doesn’t look like the person faces imminent danger to their health or is actively dying. For me this is not exclusive to extreme obesity but also extends to starvation and some instances of extreme body-building as well. Think steroid abuse.

When a body registers as “sick”, there is a level of instinctive discomfort for most people. Sometimes this comes with sympathy and concern for the person dealing with that issue, sometimes it alienates others from them them. But when an individual actively embraces self-destruction by pursuing such an extreme and dangerous state either by design or out of apathy to the threat, it’s normal for a measure of horror to be attached because it becomes a form of self-harm. Vauthry evokes that to me. Dulia Chai does not. 4) I’ve joked about the wonders of the meol diet, because I know firsthand how difficult weight loss can be. To go from Vauthry’s level to Innocence’s in like six steps is absurd --the fact that he’s been on a cannibalism diet specifically takes it the extra mile into hilarity for me. I haven’t seen as many jokes about his weight in-general so much as the sudden transformation. If the butt of the joke is cannibalism and ridiculous speed/opposite appearance turnaround, I personally don’t think those cases warrant offense. 5) I’ve had people try to fight me before for saying there is a such thing as being dangerously overweight. No comments on dangerously underweight or muscular, just overweight. So to set people at ease--I have personally dealt with serious health risks caused by obesity before. I’ve had loved ones who were in the same position and I have lost family members directly as a result of obesity-related health problems. It’s a very difficult thing to deal with. I have a lot of sympathy on this subject and understand how devastating it can be to endure shitty treatment due to weight.

I personally don’t think it’s right to forbid any jokes that deal with Vauthry’s weight, or that deal with hot subjects in-general. I think the punchline of the joke matters a ton though. Making a joke at the expense of someone struggling with something difficult is shitty. Making a joke about cannibalism turning you into a sparkling bishonen after walking down a set of stairs is just ridiculous.

Likewise, I don’t think it’s a problem for people to feel disturbed by severe health problems... but I do think it’s important to separate the person dealing with the illness from the illness itself. This goes for physical and mental issues.

I know that a lot of people don’t necessarily agree with these types of opinions and that’s okay. They’re not really common right now and are things I arrived at just by thinking myself and trying to sort out what seems appropriate as best I can.

- I’ve talked about how insanity plea when I was researching it more or less came down to a person having their perception of reality and their judgment so heavily impaired by illness that they cannot be expected to react to situations in the same way that someone without that impairment would. I’ve seen people try to argue about how someone saying demons made them murder another person wouldn’t have any less accountability to them. I think that case could actually fall under insanity plea but would need close evaluation to make sure. If the person truly believed that they and their loved ones would be tortured to death by demons if they refused or told anyone or something--yeah, insanity plea in play there. Part of the issue is that the act is horrible and I think there’s a longstanding skepticism on whether the person is sincerely crazy or just bullshitting.

In general, a cluster B personality disorder would not qualify for insanity plea. Still might involve inaccurate perception of the world or others, but the type of delusion and impairment would not inherently compel them toward violent/unlawful action or prevent them from seeking help. They also tend to be somewhat more aware of the world around them, but whether they care and how they interact/why can be dictated by the condition. Given I think Zenos is more or less an Antisocial Personality Disorder poster child (not because “I don’t like people so edgy”, I mean in terms of treating people in his life as filling roles and therefore being replaceable, overwhelming ennui in most aspects of his life, lack of interest or fulfillment in interpersonal relationships, etc.)--I do not think he would qualify for insanity plea.

Vauthry I’m not positive what I think he has yet, again he reminds me a lot of people I’ve met but certain conditions manifest similarly under the circumstances I have in mind. I think he absolutely has inhibited empathy. He’s also very spoiled, self-righteous, and possibly has no theory of mind. I don’t think he has instincts for taboo either which probably does tie to his sin-eater heritage. I don’t think his growing up in Eulmore or even having a shitty upbringing is the main reason he is the way he is, imo it’s a combination of nature and nurture. I think being part sin-eater essentially made it easier for him to become monstrous, but who knows--if he’d had a really good upbringing in a non-toxic environment maybe he could have been a good man anyway. Same way that having a cluster B personality disorder does not make a person evil by a long shot, but it can make it easier to hurt others due to the way thought patterns are impacted.

I would want to double check some research, but right now I think Vauthry reads likely for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He has mood swings but none of them seem to be depressive, it’s more egotism/happiness and anger by and large. When he does get sad before dying, it’s not because of loving or missing his father but because the self-image he loved (as encouraged by his father) was compromised.

I think he’s a bit slow and I think he only cares about others insofar as they’re tools to define himself as well as possible to his own mind. I don’t think, listening to G’raha Tia or anyone who begged him to change course, he was unable to comprehend what they were saying. He was just closed-minded to it imo.

With Emet-Selch meanwhile, I actually think both how he was impacted by specific interactions, his memories, and possibly even his sensory understanding of sundered beings might have been compromised by Zodiark. Like being colorblind, almost. I think the way he deals with the world, there are a ton of colors he can no longer perceive due to tempering but he has no idea that what he should be perceiving is there. He remembers being able to see all colors in Amaurot, but after the sundering suddenly purple was gone. Purple is still actually there, but he is not capable of seeing it. You could literally wave a purple flower in front of his face and it wouldn’t register. He might even accuse you of lying because he remembers purple, and purple is gone, and he’s doing everything he can to get purple back--but he has no idea that purple has still been here but he’s been altered in such a way that despite remembering it, he can’t see it anymore. As per tempering.

Vauthry knows about purple, he just doesn’t have much interest in it outside how it looks with his complexion. If purple is unflattering then fuck purple. Burn it to the ground, ban it, forbid anyone else from indulging in it. If it works, then no one would have more or prettier purples than him.

- It is time for me to take a nap but basically it was shitty to give Vauthry a sin-eater streak but 1) I do still think that’s severely impaired judgment 2) I don’t necessarily think that Vauthry was bound in the same way by his mental condition. I do think Vauthry believed himself to be doing good but didn’t actually have a clear concept of good in existence.

#ffxiv

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theonyxpath · 5 years

Link

Questions! We get questions every day, and while a lot of them start with “when”, as in “when is my favorite book coming out?”, a fair number are more about some integral things that aren’t obvious to folks if they haven’t been lucky enough to read this blog regularly.

Unlike you, my fine friend, who no doubt already know a lot of the following! But I bet there’s a few things in there even you can use brushing up on!

“In order to put out so many game lines, Onyx Path must be a big TableTopRPG company with lots of employees, right?”

Well, we work with a lot of talented freelance creators, but there’s only four actual staff members, so no, not really big at all. There’s myself, as founder and Creative Director, Mighty Matt McElroy as our Operations Director, Lisa Thomas as our Office Manager, and Mirthful Mike Chaney, our Art Director and primary Graphic Designer.

The hundreds of writers, editors, artists, designers, and developers we work with all around the world are all freelancers – that means that they are hired with a contract. Sometimes per project, sometimes for a time period to do a particular agreed-upon set of goals.

“You mean that those lovable scamps from the Onyx Pathcast – Dixie, Eddy, and Matthew – aren’t staff members?”

Correct! Although the Pathcast is one fun thing that they do for us, and their biggest responsibilities lie in shepherding our projects, all three of them are freelancers for us. Albeit freelancers who are part of our weekly meeting to cover how all our projects and the company in general are doing because they are just really great at what they do.

Being freelance also means that our creators can easily take part in other projects for other companies – which is something I encourage. More experience from any source means that a creator is building their expertise, and that means better and better projects for all of us.

We also hire consultants when needed – sometimes for long periods, sometimes on a project – to cover viewpoints or areas of expertise we need to have. Sometimes to cover the nuts and bolts, day to day needs of part of our business, like working with translation partners or like James, our Kickstarter concierge, that our usual crew don’t have the bandwidth for.

TC: Aeon Distant Worlds art by Michele Giorgi

“I heard Onyx Path was secretly still owned by White Wolf, and that you, Rich Thomas, were still with WW.”

That sounds like an internet rumor, and we all know how reliable those are!

So, no. I left WW a few years after the merger of WW with CCP and started Onyx Path Publishing in 2012. I am the sole owner. Other than being a licensee of the current White Wolf/Paradox, we have no other connection with them on a business level. Again, let me underline that no other company has any sort of ownership of or ability to control Onyx Path.

Also, Eddy Webb does not own Onyx Path, or even part of it. Because I’ve heard that rumor, too. He owns Pugsteady, which is a very good company all on its own.

M20 Book of the Fallen art by Michael Gaydos

“But you do own Exalted, right?”

Nope. Exalted, Chronicles of Darkness, and the World of Darkness books that White Wolf/Paradox allows us to publish under license still belong to them.

Beyond the fact of WW‘s ownership of those IPs, what that means for you noble readers and players is that Onyx Path has limits as to what we can publish based on what the owners of the game lines are comfortable with us publishing. For example, we get a lot of this sort of question:

“Why won’t you make Hunter The Reckoning, Demon: The Fallen, or, OMG, Mummy 20th Anniversary Editions?

And the reason is: we would – if it was cool with White Wolf/Paradox. Unless they give the OK, about these or any of the books we publish under the license with them, we have no legal right to just put out a book. This has been true for us going back to when CCP granted Onyx Path the license, so it’s not something nefarious, just how this license works.

The Realms of Pugmire game lines, Cavaliers of Mars, Dystopia Rising: Evolution, and Legendlore, are also licensed lines as well, with different sorts of contracts that specify different things as part of their terms.

The game lines we own, and therefore have a much wider latitude on how the lines develop, are: Scion, Scarred Lands, They Came From Beneath the Sea! and the Trinity Continuum. Without outside approvals, we can move a lot faster with our decisions as to what projects to do next, and how fast, and in what order, and where they are sold, and, well, just everything.

So if it seems like you’re hearing and seeing a lot more hoopla about our owned lines lately, that’s a huge part of the reason: we can just decide on Scion Pantheon Journals in a meeting Monday, and they can go on sale on RedBubble on Wednesday.

By Jove! That’s actually what’s happening this week! What a coincidence!

TC: Aeon Distant Worlds art by Sam Denmark

“You didn’t announce anything new at GenCon, and the First Draft section is getting kind of thin. What’s up? You guys out of ideas?”

Far from it! I think the Project Progress section here on the blog can be, or at least, has been, misleading in this regard. What we’ve had happening for the past year or year and a half, has been a kind of bloat brought on by us finally finishing a bunch of old Kickstarter and other projects, and being up-to-date on current Kickstarter and other projects.

Plus, we have multiple pitches that we’ve been waiting to hear on – relating to my notes above about approvals from our Licensors. Doesn’t make sense for us to get writers started until the projects have been given the green light.

Most importantly, we’ve several bigger projects still under wraps: from working out just what we want to do all the way to finishing the outlines for writers. For example, now that we ran the Trinity Continuum: Aberrant KS, we’re working on TC: Adventure! and actively discussing how to bring all that’s awesome about a pulp-genre setting to modern audiences, while dealing with the more problematic aspects of the time period.

Oh yes, there are still many games we want to create and we are all set to develop more projects for our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

Keep an eye out in this space as well as on our social media for the Deviant: The Renegades Kickstarter that will be launching after August wraps up!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast features our Terrific Trio deep in anticipatory antics about upcoming games they’re excited about!

Today in the media we’re mainly going to talk about our Twitch channel! As you can see from the schedule, we have games planned for Scion, Pugmire, TC: Aberrant, Scarred Lands, Vampire, and there’s so much more to come! Please do check us out and if you have an Amazon Prime account, and aren’t already subscribed to a Twitch channel, you can subscribe to ours for free for exclusive content! Here’s the channel for you, and thank you so much for keeping up with our content: https://www.twitch.tv/theonyxpath/

And if you missed it, here’s episode zero of Paws & Claws, our Pugmire actual play on the Twitch channel: https://youtu.be/Y519d9Cmx7g

We have of course produced videos beyond that, including this video here where Matthew asks for your They Came From ideas: https://youtu.be/ek8x-eoJ2Tc

And the Onyx Path News went live today. Find the link to today’s episode here: https://youtu.be/XE1kAsRYIJw Matthew talks all about new releases, Kickstarter, Backerkit, community content, our media, and his favourite authors!

We’d be remiss if we didn’t promote some of our favorites too. As our main focus is on our own Twitch today, we’re going to point you in the direction of only a couple more channels, but the big list of streams will return next week!

Here’s Occultists Anonymous (who are also appearing on our Twitch channel) with their Mage: The Awakening actual play: Episode 36: After emerging from Atratus’ soul and getting a frenzied call from Mammon, Wyrd the Seer and Songbird investigate their cabalmate’s disappearance. https://youtu.be/GopIcUu-rAU

And the excellent Story Told Podcast continues their superb Dragon-Blooded actual play here, so do tune in if you’re interested in Exalted: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/fall-of-jiara-episode-12

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!

As always, you can find most of Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we’re offering a selection of Scion pantheon themed journals on our RedBubble store!

Conventions!

Save Against Fear: October 12th – 14th GameHoleCon: October 31st – November 3rd PAX Unplugged: December 6th – 8th 2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Redlines

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Second Draft

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Development

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Creatures of the World Bestiary (Scion 2nd Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Manuscript Approval

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Creatures of the World Bestiary (Scion 2nd Edition)

Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

W20 Art Book (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Post-Approval Development

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

V5 Chicago Screen (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Editing

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Post-Editing Development

Memento Mori (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e Companion)

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

DR:E Jumpstart (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

Heroic Land Dwellers (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Pirates of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Indexing

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Ex3 Lunars – Contracted.

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Contracted. Sketches already coming in.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers – Contracted. LeBlanc doing the splats.

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed – Thinking I throw a bunch of this at Vince and Trabbold.

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties – Michele is doing the critters.

Deviant (KS) – Contracted.

Trinity RMCs – Getting Riley on these this week.

Cults of the Blood God (KS) – Mark is in to do fulls and cover.

Chicago Folio – Lemme see who I got left post KS art buy for Cults. I am gonna try to get Paul Lee to do the fulls.

Mummy 2 (KS) – Got Matthew’s notes.

In Layout

CoM – Witch Queen of the Shadowed Citadel

Dark Eras 2 – Files with Aileen

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds

VtR Spilled Blood – For Josh.

DR:E Jumpstart

Aeon Aexpansion

Proofing

C20 Cup of Dreams

V5: Chicago – Inputting errata.

Geist 2e – XX’s and then Indexing.

Signs of Sorcery – Inputting errata.

M20 Book of the Fallen

DR: E – Inputting errata.

At Press

Dragon Blooded – Deluxe at Studio2, shipping.

Dragon-Blooded Cloth Map – At Studio2, shipping.

Dragon-Blooded Screen – Shipped to Studio2, shipping.

Trinity Core Screen – At Studio2.

TC Aeon Screen – At Studio2.

Trinity: In Media Res – PoD proofs coming.

Trinity Core – Printing.

Trinity Aeon – Printing.

Shunned By the Moon – PoD proof ordered.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Born on this date in 1921 – Gene Roddenberry, who, love him or leave him, got Star Trek on the air and set the stage for many, many, folks’ first introduction to science fiction – and utopian science fiction at that! Plus, because why not, this is also the birthday of William Marshall in 1924, who appeared on Star Trek as Professor Richard Daystrom, and whose amazing voice graced us as both Blackula and the King of Cartoons! Also, to continue the Star Trek theme: in 1938, Diana Muldaur, who appeared on both the Original Series, and on STtNG as Dr. Pulaski, was born, and last but not the least likely to get it on on an alien planet, William T. Riker’s portrayer, Jonathan Frakes, was born in 1952. (Bill Clinton was also born on this date in 1946, and while we all know he’d give Riker a run for his money, he was never on Star Trek – just a US President.)

#Onyx Path Publishing

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poisonflamegames · 6 years

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No one knows what they're doing

Today's blog is a tad different, it's more of a story-time kind of thing. Hope you enjoy it~

One of the highlights from when I was back in game dev university is how we always had professionals of the industry around; most of the time they were our teachers, but in others, they came themselves to give us talks about their experiences. I'm now going to share the one that stuck with me the most:

The person that gave us the talk, we'll call him Michael, was a man in his late 20s or early 30s. He was spunky and very visibly passionate about gaming in general. His story started off with him getting out of college and wanting to make games, so he got together with a group of friends and opened up a little game studio to work on their dream project.

Eventually, at some point during development, the game spawned enough interest for a group of investors to come in and finance the game; that way, Michael and his studio could work full-time on it and deliver the best product possible.

From what he said, development went well for a good number of months, but the deadlines given by the investors were so tight that the people in the studio began feeling extremely worn out, to the point in which some began parting ways with the project entirely.

In the end, Michael had a meeting with the investors, saying that the conditions they presented were too harsh for them to work on. The investors threatened to sue Michael for a ridiculous sum of money if the project was terminated; they owned the rights of the game, so if development wasn't going to be completed, Michael and the rest would have to kiss their project goodbye entirely or be taken to court.

Even today, Michael was subject to a pretty strict NDA around the game, put in place by the investors, so he was very picky with what he'd show us about it. From what I saw, it was an incredible-looking game: The artstyle was delightful, the story was very light-hearted and the game mechanics were solid and very creative.

It is worth noting that it all seemed pretty finished, too. A complete shame that a game at such a developed stage had to be shelved for a legal/economical dispute, which must've been heart-breaking for Michael, and it showed.

After giving up on the project that they had been working for about a year and a half, Michael and who was left of his crew started working on a second game. Given that this one lacked investors (and pesky NDA's), Michael was way more liberal about showing us game assets. This second project had a very similar level of polish than the original, granted they were totally different games, and it showed a lot of potential.

I won't go into details about it, but it was a very unique-feeling puzzle game; with a cute story and very tight, simple, yet expandable mechanics. Hell, Michael told us that in a day, he'd whip up a number of levels, and they were all quite different. It was a very promising-looking game, and quite finished too, but due to disputes with Michael and the rest of his team, it unfortunately had to be scrapped too.

Two consecutive failures of this calibre left Michael in quite the financial pickle, him having to move back to his parents' place; he was just about ready to give up on his dream of being a dev, but not without one last shot.

Everyone that was left of his team aside from himself was one another person, and the two decided to work on their last project.

Michael told us that he and the other guy made the game in record time, about two weeks if I recall correctly. They used mostly leftover assets that they had from their past projects, and even repurposed some of the music. After that, they spend the following weeks polishing up everything in order to bring it to a showcase event.

These events are quite popular in the game development scene; as practically anyone can show up and present their game, even have a little demo for the attendees to try out. They're a great chance to socialize, or if you're extremely lucky, get your game out there.

Michael and his partner set up a janky-ass setup for their game and people lined up to play it. One of them was this middle-aged man, and he had a trolley suitcase with him. After doing the line, he tried the game and it brought a wide smile to his face. He said "Thank God; all the games I've tried today have been awfully disappointing and I was about to leave to catch my flight home, but this game is truly something else! Here, have my business card". The man ended up being a publisher for a fairly relevant game development company that I won't name.

To not drag this any further: Michael's game made in two weeks ended up being a top hit; hitting the #1 charts for the most downloaded games on iOs for more than a dozen different countries. He actually made it, despite all the mishaps that happened along the way.

He then wrapped up the story with a single point, and that is that in the game industry, no one knows what they're doing.

No one can guarantee that their game will be successful, not even the largest companies. Everyone has amazing ideas, but who can guarantee that people will like them, or that the game will sell at all? No one, really.

Companies don't want to risk most of the time, and that really gives indie developers a chance to shine, because they're the ones that are willing to risk it all believing their games will be amazing and pull through, much like Michael ended up doing.

I suppose that this all boils down to having the adequate mindset while making a game. You must develop a game that you'll be proud of, one that you would want to play if you were just hearing about it; with that, the rest is unimportant. You shouldn't be seeking success, but rather bring a memorable experience that as many people as possible will play.

If circumstances don't allow your game to be completed, or your game doesn't end up doing well, those are things that just happen, and you can't say that you didn't try. Failing is what gives you the insight to not make the same mistakes again, so keep trying and perhaps you'll make something great that'll inspire many people to create, too!

Every professional has their own pile of failures behind their back, and you can bet that they're damn proud of them, because they're the reason they made it so far.

Hope you enjoyed the read! I know it's a little different from my other posts, but I want to try new things for the blog. Hope you have a nice one! 💖

#gamedev

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umazes · 7 years

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In the interest of having a civil discussion, I wanted to clear up the concerns I have about The Arcana. I think many of the people who have been raising concerns probably feel the same way and I don't want to be misunderstood as trying to attack the devs or kill the game, because this is emphatically not about that.

My concerns with how this is proceeding can be broken into 3 points

1. The pricing of the game.

I've said it before, but I don't mind paying for things. I've spent hundreds on merch and games. I've paid at least $50 to play mystic messenger, for optional content, and I haven't regretted it.

What bothers me about the pricing of this game is how absurdly different it is compared to other games, and how I have no idea why it's this expensive.

Most mobile dating sims (voltage and solmare, notably) tend to ask no more than $5 for a route. And that's not what I'm asking for, but it's a comparison worth noting, because I think of it every time I'm asked to pay the equivalent of $3 for a single choice in this game. Beyond that, it's costing $10 to buy a book, which ends up working out (as others have calculated) to somewhere in the vicinity of $500 if you want to play the full game.

I've never been asked for that much money for any game, ever, unless they also offer me an art book and something like a 3 foot tall statue. Even other dating sims priced in the hundreds offer posters or voicing or badges. Asking $500 per customer for just the game itself is ridiculous.

Here's where the "It's optional" argument comes in. It's optional, in the same sense that I can eat raw potatoes and cooking them with seasoning is optional. I can play the free game, but it's just not as good or coherent without the coin choices, and lacks all of the scenes that make the game what I want it to be.

The problem associated with just not buying premium content if you don't like the pricing is that from a statistical point of view, unless we explain WHY we don't want to pay so much for it, it can be misinterpreted. What if the executives think we don't want the content because it's bad? They can interpret it as mobile visual novels just not being profitable. "Don't like, don't buy" with no additional complaints can ensure the content just stops being available rather than altered to be affordable.

I want to pay for this game! God, I want to. If I could even buy a route for $50. If there was a discount the more coins you buy.

(There isn't. You save something like 81 cents if you buy the highest bulk tier as opposed to the same amount in small increments.)

I just can't afford to pay half a months rent to play one game that I have no guarantee of receiving the full content for, and I imagine that's true for many of us. And if it has to be this price, I'd just like to know why. It's been extremely unclear to me why it's priced so high.

2. The treatment of kickstarter backers.

I'll be brief here, because I'm not a backer myself.

It's very upsetting to me first and foremost that all backers were promised a free version of the game that is no longer available and can receive, at most, a $10 compensation or just suck it up.

"But they're refunding most of the kickstarter money and killing their game!" is an argument I have heard. And, well, yes. But the backers who bought tiers specifically for the promise of a full pc version have all lost out, unless the pledged $10 or less and did not buy anything in the mobile game.

I understand that a free mobile version was never a reward, and that makes sense. But for the people who pledged maybe $50 for the pc game, they've lost $40 and in addition will have to pay the $10 per book in order to still receive the content they were promised. It's absurd. At the very least, higher tier backers should be offered coin compensation. And the gall of allowing people to select neither refund nor waiting for the PC version indefinitely, of offering for people to just give their money away after this, is shocking.

The draw of kickstarters that I fund is that I pay for a product that isn't complete in order to receive it for a reduced price when it is complete, because that compensates what was essentially an uncertain loss to me at the time of pledging. This is a loss with no equivalent gain in sight and no overt plans for them to do anything much about it.

3. The response and treatment of feedback.

This one really gets me. Let me start off by saying that I am very, very much aware that they have no dedicated PR staff.

I had a recent interaction with the arcana Twitter after they found another user's untagged complaint. As has been standard to this point, they kindly advised us that paid content is optional, to which I have the response I gave above. Upon being asked again why they think the price is justified, this response was offered.

Ha ha! Funny joke! Apparently whoever was manning this Twitter account thought so. Except it wasn't a funny joke at all. Making a very callous and inappropriate joke of a real concern that has already negatively impacted users, after barging into an untagged complaint on a personal account, is about one of the worst responses I can think of. And nobody even asked for one at all, at the time.

But upon receiving that response, boy did I want a response. I've been seeing that response from them everywhere. "Send us an email". So I passed this along to some friends who do similar work and who have feedback concerns as well.

Firstly, I was told by pretty much everyone who had sent them an email that no response had been received. I brought this up in the Twitter thread, to which I received the answer that the team is small and can't respond to every email.

Well, okay, that's reasonable. Except that you DO have time to respond to every tweet, apparently.

Then send them! Throwing my feedback into some kind of void with no indication of how, if, and when they are being received is not an encouraging way to deal with customers.

Apparently, tweets are harder to pass along. Except that when I pointed out tweets can be linked and indexed in a variety of ways (it is a thought sharing platform, after all), I received the response that tweets are screenshotted and passed along as well.

Then why are we supposed to email??????

I was complaining about this confused response privately when another friend who works in customer service pointed out to me that companies tend to prefer social media over email communication anyway, because email can be treated as a legal document. This entire inability to respond to my questions promptly and honestly is making me really irritated in trying to resolve what amounts to a singular complaint that I would like to freely offer money to this game, and want to know why it's so hard.

And to be clear, I don't expect it to be resolved in a day. I don't expect the devs to work day and night to change their game. But if you are using official accounts to interact with your audience, I expect a prompt and professional reponse. I handle CSR duties daily in my job too. A simple "We will get back to you in a few days" or "This problem can't currently be resolved but we'll provide an update on how the discussion is going in a week" would suffice. Do a public update instead of responding to every email if it's too much. Walk away and respond to my tweet in twenty minutes after coming up with a better response.

If you're interacting with customers in a professional capacity, then be professional. I expect to be treated with respect and I expect to know where my feedback is going and what's being done with it, because as 85 stands the interactions I've had have been extremely underwhelming.

I'm not contacting these devs on their personal accounts and I don't want to be accused of bullying. I just don't think it's unreasonable that if I'm having a bad time trying to support this good game that I enjoy playing, I should know why.

#the arcana #i just wanted to get this off my chest

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newagesispage · 7 years

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OCTOBER 2017

*****The beautiful dino, Sue will be moved to her own gallery in Chicago’s field museum. New to her long fixed spot will be a cast of patagotitan mayorum, the biggest dinosaur ever found.

*****Richard Thomas is selling his NY midtown coop for $2,995,000 and is located at 7th Ave. and w. 58th.

*****California is waiting for Jerry Brown to sign a bill that bans puppy mills.

*****WWF has released wild tigers back into Kazakhstan. Scimitar horned oryx were released into the Sahara desert and indigo snakes were reintroduced into Florida.

*****Toys “R” Us has filed for bankruptcy.

*****Tom Price, health and human services secretary, has resigned after hic charter flight scandal.

*****After 50 years Rolling Stone may be up for sale.

*****Doc Martin is back on Acorn for series 8.

*****As social media has been telling us, we don’t need a border wall. Tourism is down about $37 billion. Thanks Trump!

*****Trump supporters don’t seem to like him fraternizing with the Dems and waffling on DACA. They have been burning their red hats but scary clown already got the money for selling them so what does he care. Anne Coulter wonders if there is anybody left who does not want Trump impeached.** Some states are suing over DACA.

*****”Holes separate men and women.”- Billy Connolly

*****The dreamer program has been signed away. The Deferred Action for Children’s Arrival has been handed to congress for 6 months to deal with. The administration says it violates the rule of law.

*****The Peoria Blues and Heritage fest went off without a hitch. The weather was perfect and we should all be looking at the Jamiah Rogers band, these guys are fucking awesome. John Butler checked them out before his own set and was great with his fans.

*****Bill Withers has his first solo record since 1985 with a cover of (You’ve been quite a doll) Raggedy Ann.

*****In this country, a woman dies every 2 hours of cervical cancer because of improper health care.

*****Can I just say that I do not want to see reporters in the middle of hurricanes. Can they just stay safe in a room and fix a camera outside? I would much rather see different angles of the storm and see no people out there. It was often impossible to hear then anyway. The communication between the studio and location was fucked up and did not help anyway. It also seemed like they showed an awful lot of Shell stations. JS

*****An estimated 70 million Americans saw the fake Russian ads during the campaign. No impact??

*****The Stones are on their No Filter tour in Europe and they brought out ‘Dancin with Mr. D’ which hasn’t been played live since 1973.

*****Trumps lawyers seem to want Jared out.

*****Steve Bannon’s Great Great Grandfather was an immigrant from Ireland who needed no papers to get in this country.

*****Montgomery , Alabama is going to open a Museum of lynching. There is a wall lined with jars of dirt that were collected from sites of lynching’s from around the country. Very powerful.

*****Thanks Trump administration for removing references to ‘LGBTQ’ youth from a federal program for victims of sex trafficking. It also eliminates funding to international groups that provide abortions. This comes from mostly evangelical lobbyists who are reporting that they are having more discussions with this administration than they ever had with any President.

*****Vanity Fair has their best dressed list out which includes Harry Styles, Rihanna, Solange, Jack Schlossberg, Justin Trudeau, Janelle Monae, Dev Patel, Cate Blanchett, Zoe Kravitz, Ruth Negga, and Donald Glover. The hall of fame mentioned Lauren Hutton, Jeremy irons and Prince Phillip.

*****More police brutality against the black man with the subduing of the Seahawks Michael Bennett for no apparent reason.

*****Leslie Van Houten has again been granted parole. As last year she is waiting out the 120 days to get the word from Gov. Jerry Brown.

*****Lovin’ Greg Garcia’s The Guest book on TBS. What is not to love about seeing Charles Robinson and Carly Jibson again. It made my day to see guest Orson Bean!!

*****The U.S. office of government ethics has changed a policy that will now allow lobbyists to donate to staffers legal defense funds.

*****Cameras have taken the first pictures of white giraffes in Kenya.

*****The Simpsons will be going to New Orleans this season!

*****The Middle is starting its last season. We will miss U!

*****Jay Pharoah has a new show on Showtime. White Famous is loosely based on the life of Jamie Foxx who is the executive producer.

*****John Davis Washington, son of Denzel may head the cast of Black Klansman. Spike Lee will direct and Jordan Peele will produce the true story of an African American who in 1978 infiltrated the KKK. Ron Stallworth used phones and his own writing to communicate with the organization. When he had to appear in person he sent a white officer in his place. They were able to sometimes sabotage cross burnings and other activities.

*****IT just had the biggest horror movie opening ever. The acting is quite nice for chapter 1 but the ending a bit long.

*****Netflix is bringing a delicious doc : Jim and Andy The great beyond featuring a very special contractually obligated mention of Tony Clifton. Spike Jonze is producing with the hundred hours of footage from Man on the Moon. ** Other new docs on the way look at Eric Clapton, Grace Jones and Sammy Davis Jr. It is the first time that Kim Novak will talk on camera about dating Sammy.

*****September 16 brought the Juggalos march on Washington. They have been bringing awareness about their gang designation and the harm that it has caused. The running man with a hatchet is considered a gang symbol and gives cops probable cause to search. The FBI labeled Juggalos a hybrid gang in 2011. Also marching were some of the alt right calling their march the mother of all rallies but it only produced about 500 people.

*****Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin requested use of a government jet for his honeymoon and he later withdrew that request.

*****Finally there was a confirmation from a charity that Trump claims to have given to after the Hurricanes. Direct relief received 25 thou. ** There have still been no charities that received money from the inauguration fund.

*****WGN is bringing us a new show called Bellevue.

*****Howard Buffett will be the new Sheriff of Macon county in Illinois. His father Warren had donated millions to the area.

*****Prophets of Rage are here to raise awareness with members of Cypress Hill, Rage against the Machine and Public Enemy.

*****LA summer Olympics in 2028?!

*****Sean Spicer landed on Jimmy Kimmel. Wow.. What a kiss ass whiny bitch. He tried hard to stay in Trumps good graces with compliments for the Pres and constant berating of the press. He reminded me of a ventriloquist dummy with a hand up his ass.** His cameo at the Emmy’s did not go over very well either.

***** Model Monroe Bergdorf was fired by L’oreal because of her anti- racist remarks. She has now been hired by Illamasqua.

*****Boycott Dragon Dumps! Don’t pay your bill on time and the owner dumps garbage on your lawn.

*****It looks like Trevor Noah will stay with the Daily show until at least 2022.

*****James Woods used his twitter account to try and shame a movie about a gay romance between a 17 year old and a 24 year old. Amber Tamblyn tweeted that Woods had hit on her for real when she was only 16.

*****Scientists are trying to bring back the chelonoidis elephantopus Galopagos turtles. 80 blood samples of modern day island turtles have genetic traces of the lost species. Even though they have been extinct for 160 years, scientists think they can reproduce though not to 100%. Could they reverse the negative effects that humans cause in the environment?

***** Why do bullies feel the need to use the art of artists who want nothing to do with them? It is like using ‘You can’t always get what you want’ for Trump when there are plenty of artists who agree with you that would love for you to use their art. Now Universal music and American recordings had to send a cease and desist letter to the white supremacist site Stormfront to stop using Johnny Cash’s version of ‘I won’t back down.’ The host blames the Jews.

*****Tru tv will bring us At home with Amy Sedaris.

*****North Dakota paleontologists have been uncovering so many bones that they are inviting the public to help. It sounds like a dream come true.

*****Paul Newman is Jake Gyllenhaal’s Godfather. JS

*****St. Louis exploded into protest with yet another acquittal of a police officer after the shooting of a black man, Anthony Lamar Smith. Peoria, Il is also dealing with the shooting of an alleged bank robber who was shot 18 times.

*****The NFL is standing together in solidarity for equality and scary clown is sniping at them like a bitch. Our leader would not know respect and maturity if it bit him in the ass.** The Packers asked their fans to stand arm in arm with them on their Thursday night game with the Bears. Respect to Aaron Rodgers and the guys for speaking out before the game on equality. Some ‘fans’ are burning their Packer stuff. .. Why do these Trump supporters always want to burn everything? Do they have any idea how racist and ridiculous that looks?

*****Veep is going to bring us their last season while Julia is battling breast cancer. Joe Biden tweeted that us Veeps must stick together to show his support.

*****The Emmy’s with Stephen Colbert have come and gone. My best dressed were Ellie Kemper, Jessica Biel, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon, Leslie Jones, Matthew Rhys, Claire Foy, Evan Rachel Wood ,Gabrielle Union, Donald Glover, Emmy Rossum, Zoe Kravitz, Nicole Kidman and Julia- Louis Dreyfus. My worst dressed were Uzo Aduba, Debra Messing, Anna Farris, Tracee Ellis Ross and Prianka Chopra. I love Sarah Paulson and the back of her dress was great but …?? There was so much black fabric which was awesome. Was it mourning for the earthquake and hurricane victims or just a general sadness for the country? Whatever the reason.. hooray black!!**Also happy that hairstyles were mostly long and loose.** I was happy to see Laura Dern win for supporting actress in a limited series or movie. ** The Handmaids tale won for show, directing and writing , for Anne Dowd who looked more shocked and appreciative than I have ever seen and Elisabeth Moss. ** I was happy for Alec Baldwin for best supporting actor but was really routing for Louie Anderson. ** When the noms came out, I could not imagine anything beating out FEUD but everything did. ** The girls from 9 to 5 stole the show with their mention of a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot. ** Donald Glover won for directing and acting. **Alexander Skarsgard won which gave he and his brother quite a week. ** John Oliver won two and he again flew in his whole staff. ** Julia- Louis Dreyfus has now won the most Emmys for the same character in the same show. Veep got best comedy.**It was a wonderful moment when Carol Burnett and Norman Lear came out but DeNiro looked so disinterested.** Cicely Tyson has often been described as a bit of a diva and seemed a bit out of it on the broadcast but her counterpart saved the day.** So sad that Bob Odenkirk did not win but kudos to sterling K. Brown. They seemed to play him off too quickly while Nicole Kidman and big little lies had all the time in the world.

*****Bobby Moynihan stars in the new ‘Me Myself and I’ on CBS.

*****Word is that the Trump campaign is asking supporters to contribute money to build the wall.

*****Can we pay a little more attention to Puerto Rico? Why is the Pres giving them grief? Things were tough enough before the devastation. Puerto Rico has no bankruptcy and running a business is so costly there. Companies there must buy American which we don’t have to do. Forty percent of residents don’t have insurance. So many of the supplies sent to help are just sitting there in San Juan.

*****Angela Merkel has won a 4th term as German chancellor.

*****Singapore got their first female President, Halimah Yacob. She was the only candidate.

*****There was a settlement in a lawsuit against Club Cabaret. Dancers sued to be employees instead of individual contractors. The dancers won a million and cost of legal fees.

*****Art Garfunkel has a memoir/diary/ book of musings out called ‘What is it all but luminous.’

*****The personal account of Ted Cruz hit ‘like’ on a porn site on 9/11. He calls it a mistake by a staffer. A college roommate of Cruz said that he was not surprised.

*****After a tweet from the Pres about hitting Hil with a golf ball, Stephen King tweeted: Thinks hitting a woman with a golf ball and knocking her down is funny. Myself, I think it indicates a severely fucked up mind.

*****Brooklyn 99 is back and funnier than ever with the same great cast and opening.

*****Bill Maher and Jimmy Kimmel are rated number 1 of tv personalities based on Facebook, Instagram, twitter et al.

*****R.I.P Richard Anderson, Walter Becker, Don Williams, David Tang, Troy Gentry, Murray Lerner, Mexico’s earthquake victims, those lost to hurricane Irma, Frank Vincent, Len Wein, Grant Hart, Harry Dean Stanton, Michelle Rounds, Bonnie Angelo, Hugh Hefner, Jake La Motta, Eddie Russell Jr., Edith Windsor, Tony Booth and Monty Hall.

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thecornettcodex-blog · 5 years

Text

The Mythos of Epic Games’ New Platform

So the big news today in the gaming media is that Epic Games intends to launch their own PC-based store front and, at least according to one developer at Epic, more will be announced about this in just a couple days at the Game Awards.

It’s worth noting that the major digital platform on the PC right now, Steam, is arguably one of the worst cespools of dirty developers out there. As featured by such commentators as Jim Sterling, SidAlpha, and YongYea, the amount of “asset flips” (games where the majority of content is mashed together without clear rhyme or reason) the platform has renders it almost pointless. But with “Mythos”, my personal name for the storefront Epic plans to open (feel free to use that one, guys), Epic has made it clear that they intend to change things up. Fortnite’s success has been directly linked to what they intend to do with this platform, and I look forward to seeing what they do.

So with that in mind, I present three ideas for “Mythos” to consider in order to prevent it from being another Steam or GOG waste.

1] RESPECT YOUR CUSTOMERS

I shouldn’t even have to say this one, Epic usually does a pretty good job of respecting their fanbases, but if there’s one thing GOG’s parent company CD Projekt has shown, it’s that you can undo a lot of work in a quick time frame. Two of CDP’s IPs, GOG and Cyberpunk 2077, both made social media faux-pauxs in recent months with jokes at the expense of the trans community. Both times, they made statements that read less like apologies and more like ignorance. What is more offensive to me, though, is the amount of support they had from dudebros who were all “Go ahead, boycott, it ain’t like you were gonna buy from there anyway.”

The thing is, this isn’t a Victoria’s Secret type of business where there’s a set image to maintain; gaming is supposed to be available to everybody. This could have been GOG’s chance to demonstrate that, but they instead catered to the common demoninator. And that’s their business right, you could argue, but it’s definitely not a good thing for the betterment of our hobby.

2] CONTROL YOUR QUALITY

One of the main problems that’s been dominating Steam is how hands-off Valve is with all their products. From the process to get a game uploaded and for sale on the storefront to the process of getting an offending item removed, Valve will not touch their own service unless they personally are affected by the outcome. For reference, Digital Homicide was allowed to produce several asset flips and clones of games at the same time, sue Jim Sterling falsely for defamation and libel, and were only put in their place once they decided to sue 100 Steam users and threatened to sue Valve themselves.

The problem is, it never should have gotten that far to begin with.

Where Epic can change the game here is by saying “We’re gonna let indies on our storefront, but we’re gonna make sure things are on the up and up first with these people, and the second you start acting like a jerk to your customers, you’re done here.” Yeah, you’re not gonna get many fans among the asset flippers, but honestly, I question anyone who intends that demographic to be their focus.

Oh, and you might want to put a curb on games like HuniePot if you’re planning to be taken seriously as a storefront, not the least of reasons being that the developer’s knows for referring to transgender people as the “t-bomb”.

3] BE INVOLVED

I’ll just cut to the chase. The less hands-off you can make this store, the better off you’re gonna be in the long run. The main reason Valve has so many issues right now is because they let algorithms and systems do 99 percent of the work. The only time they really ever get involved is when litigation shows up, and even then they do just enough where they’re not legally responsible for anything. Sure, it’s a win to them, but something gets lost in translation when it comes to caring about the customer.

This is one spot I don’t think we’re gonna have to worry about Epic with; the few interactions with their staff I’ve had, they’ve been awesome and respectful all the way. They seem to get what their fanbase and customers want, and their devs as well. They’re already touting a flat 12% fee for all games sold on the storefront, which is a lot better than what Valve recently announced in terms of its sliding revenue scale.

All in all, I don’t foresee any problems with Epic using “Mythos” as another way to give players a choice. ...or at least I didn’t until I remembered who has a stake in Epic.

It can’t be a coincidence that this is coming just as Tencent is launching their own platform of distribution in China, especially considering Tencent has a stake in Epic...and Activision Blizzard...and Riot Games...and Ubisoft...and PUBG Mobile...and Snapcha—yeah, you see where I’m going with this? Tencent has a history of using customers’ personal information, both here and in China, for some pretty shady dealings, and mind you, they are the fifth largest global brand in the world. Valve may suck when it comes to certain things, but we’ve been generally able to make sure things are a certain way with that company, and at a time when Tencent has been said to be verifying ages and IDs sometime next year (at least in China, although it wouldn’t surprise me if that happens in the states as well), red flags are already going up.

I hope I’m wrong in saying that Tencent could be the one factor I don’t look forward to on this platform, because from a consumer standpoint, Epic seems to be doing everything right. The lessons I’ve stated, they already seem to be learning from. And so long as they keep a lid on the games they sell and the companies and customers using “Mythos”, it looks like next year could finally be squashing the oliogopy that Steam and GOG Galaxy have had for far too long.

And if I’m wrong...

Well, it wouldn’t be the first time the internet’s pointed at me and laughed with arousal and glee.

#The Cornett Codex #Epic Games #Mythos #Steam #GOG #CD Projekt #digital storefront #James Mitchell Cornett

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douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years

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REALLY

A few years before by a big company it's necessarily the dominant one. Most of the people. There is only one real advantage to being a member of most exclusive clubs: you know you wouldn't be missing much if you weren't. They'd have sacrificed hundreds of thousands of dollars. So it is with colleges. Hackers should do this even if they don't plan to start startups, because it could be. I'm always delighted to find I've forgotten the details of disputes, because that is the future, places that don't have startups will be a tendency to push it back to their offices to implement them. Hackers are unruly. So if you can achieve the same level of performance with less effort, surely that's more impressive, not less. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a media company, or portal, or whatever we were, search could safely be allowed to wither and drop off, like an umbilical cord.1 033600237 programming 0.

If you keep the company moving forward—releasing new features, increasing traffic, doing deals, getting written about—those investor meetings are more likely to be productive. This one may not always be true. And strangely enough, the leaders now are European countries like Belgium, which has a capital gains tax rate of zero. As a little piece of debris, the rational thing for you to do everything.2 If you let the difficulty of raising money, but connections and advice. The difference between design and research seems to be mobile devices, but that they lack examples. And probably the only people who will notice. But they all said no, so I didn't do it. 4 month interruption. The only way a startup makes sense.3 If you're writing something that you'll be able to sign up a lot of people working for them.

It's this pattern that makes them; idleness is lonely and demoralizing. Like many of the half-truths adults tell us, this one contradicts other things they shared in common with us. One reason Europe pulled ahead was that the valuation wasn't just the value of our ideas, which turned out to be the same. They can be considered in this algorithm by treating them as virtual words. Is it just a coincidence that they used the same word, or is there some overlap in what they can say to you. And I think that's precisely why people put it off.4 Editorials quote this kind of statistic with horror. A word like shortest is almost as much evidence for innocence as a word like that is effectively a kind of whitelist and blacklist because they are based on entire messages, including the headers.5 Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley face an unpleasant choice: either live in the boring sprawl of the valley proper, or live in San Francisco and endure an hour commute each way.

There is a lot more in common than this, of course. Most adults looking at art worry that if you take a vote.6 If companies started doing that, they'd learn some frightening things. There is only one real advantage to being a member of most exclusive clubs: you know you have to know who you should be able to test in an hour, then you only have one meeting a day with investors, somehow that one meeting will burn up your whole day.7 I'm talking about filtering my mail based on a half-page agreement. Every engraver since Durer has had to live in them. The problem was not the 14 pages, but the other half you're thinking as deeply as most people only get to sitting alone on a Sunday morning.8 99 respectively, and a dial to control each. And thought you should check out the following: http://www.9 In the US things are more haphazard. Oddly enough, the better an idea it seems. Milan at the time, a lot of valuable advice about business, and also did all the legal work of getting us set up as a depressing, undifferentiated heap.

The added confidence that comes from the controversial topic of wealth, no one will know. So I don't think you should always be collecting data about investors' intentions. Among companies, the best opportunities are where things suck more than in corporate IT departments. In 1938 Buckminster Fuller coined the term ephemeralization to describe the atmos. IBM developing what they expected to be the right kind of vibe. The idea is to judge you, not more sophisticated. For the first 100 years or so of its existence, it was Stripe.10 All the unfun kinds of wealth creation slow dramatically in a society where I was the richest, but much less costly if you discover them early. The good news is, all you have to design what the user needs, not simply what he says he wants. Lately hackerliness seems rather frowned upon. This is harder to do than it sounds.11

Someone who does you an injury hurts you twice: first by the injury itself, and second by taking up your time afterward thinking about it afterward. I learned something valuable from that.12 Any wealth a serf created belonged to his master.13 That would have led to disaster, because our software was so complex. CEOs, it's hard to see how little launches matter. It might be a good one. It would cost something to run, and since 2001 there has been an unprecedented opportunity for learning how to pick winners. And if the idea of good art, then people who liked it would have meant taking on a newscaster—someone who, as they say yes. But this can't be an intrinsically European quality; previous generations of Europeans were as ambitious as Americans. And being charming and confident counts for nothing with users. Who made the wealth it represents?14 It assumes good technical people have college degrees, and that the weight of a few carefully observed and solidly modelled objects will tend to make filtering easier, because you'd only have to find your peers, which is the worst sort of strip development.

Notes

Survey by Forrester Research reported in their early twenties compressed into the sciences, even though you tend to use some bad word multiple times. Several people have historically done to painting may be some part you can say I need to fix once it's big, messy canvases that philistines see and say that's not directly, but Javascript now works. Whereas the value of a handful of companies used consulting to generate all the worse if you're measuring usage you need to, but this could be ignored. The downside is that the middle of the reason this trick works so well is that the government, it was wiser for them, not like soccer; you don't know which name will stick.

The main one was drilling for oil, over fairly low heat, till onions are glassy.

If we had high hopes for doesn't do well, but for different things from different types of people who start these supposedly local seed firms.

On the other hand, a lot of classic abstract expressionism is doodling of this process but that's a pyramid scheme. A knowledge of human anatomy.

At two years investigating it.

This argument seems to have been Andrew Wiles, but for the same thing, because you have to worry about the smaller investments you raise as you can control. It wouldn't cut their overall returns tenfold, because it aggregates data from so many people work with me there. Paul Buchheit points out, if you turn out to be vigorously enforced. This is one of the word procrastination to describe the worst.

There's not much use, because such companies need huge numbers of users to recruit manually—is probably no accident that the government and construction companies. If you have significant expenses other than salaries that you could get a poem published in The New Industrial State to trying to work for Gillette, but delusion strikes a step further.

Yes, actually: dealing with the other by adjusting the boundaries of what investment means; like any investor, than to call you about it. Google is much like the one the Valley use the name Homer, to the founders' advantage if it gets presumptuous for a year, they will come at an academic talk might appreciate a joke, they were beaten by iTunes and Hulu.

If a big factor in high school football game that will sign up quickest and those are guaranteed in the body or header lines other than those I mark. 8%, Linux 11. Historically, scarce-resource arguments have been a good way to do that.

This is one of the world population, and one VC. You'd think they'd have taken one of few they had in school, the apparent misdeeds of corp dev is to do is not a complete list of n things seems particularly collectible because it's a significant effect on what you build this?

Ideas are one of the world population, and are paid a flat rate regardless of how hard they work. A lot of the word procrastination to describe what's happening till they also commit to you about an A round, no one on the way we met Aydin Senkut.

My feeling with the government. But if so, why are you even working on filtering at the moment; if their kids to them. So what ends up happening is that intelligence is surprisingly recent.

VCs regularly wipe out angels by issuing arbitrary amounts of new means of production. The situation we face here, because the proportion of spam in my incoming mail fluctuated so much in the nature of an audience of investors are also the golden age of economic equality in the Baskin-Robbins. It's hard to game the system, the activation energy for enterprise software.

But this is not to feel like you're flying straight and level while in fact they don't yet get what they're wasting their time and became the Internet was as a first approximation, it's probably a bad reputation, a torture device so called because it made a million dollars out of the standard edition of Aristotle's works compiled by Andronicus of Rhodes three centuries later. Yahoo, but as the face of it, and b success depended so much, or at least bet money on convertible notes often have valuation caps, a growth graph is mostly the ordinary sense.

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douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years

Text

I'VE BEEN PONDERING INCHES

In my nephews' rooms the bed is the only kind most people, rich or poor, stuff has become a burden. Software is a different thing from actually being efficient. Is anyone able to develop software faster than you? Or is it, rather, nonexistent? For example, in my house in Cambridge, which was built in 1876, the bedrooms don't have closets. Or rather, a large organization, and the enforcement of quality. They look at whatever they want online without worrying whether it's work safe. So much for hockey as the game is played now. The people who come to us from big companies often seem kind of conservative. Only a handful actually do, and even though I've studied the subject for years, it would take me several weeks of research to be able to change what you're doing. There's a name for people who work for the New York Times front page is a list of articles written by people who work for the big companies seems to be a vehicle for experimenting with its own design.

There is a parallel here to the rise of civil order, which happened at roughly the same time. What's going on? An obstacle downstream propagates upstream. If they can, corp dev people at companies that are otherwise benevolent. Young founders are not a new phenomenon: the trend began as soon as computers got cheap enough for college kids to afford them. But the wrong kind of interruption can wipe your brain in 30 seconds. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. I've been wondering about that.

When you manipulate a program in one's head. You don't even let yourself think of such things. Howard Aiken said Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. Hockey allows checking. And now that I'm an investor, the thought of our startups keeps me up at night. After Yahoo bought our startup I went to work for a couple years ago I advised graduating seniors to work for large organizations, and the more ambitious ones will stop at nothing to achieve that. These are separate questions.

The root of the problem is more with the patent office takes a while to understand new technology. Patent trolls seem to have caught big companies by surprise. This was all the more surprising because I'd only applied for three. It's more like saying I'm not going to apply for patents because patents are part of the game. More powerful programming languages make programs shorter. Some seem to think of the overall cost of owning it. When we were working on Viaweb, a bigger company in the e-commerce business was granted a patent on online ordering, or something like that. I didn't. Every audience is an incipient mob, and a good speaker uses that. There is no one single force driving this trend.

I'm going to risk making one. The flaw in the need to know basis can attest, dividing information up into little tribes, each jealously guarding their privileges and secrets. They like to get you to the point where anyone considers you worth attacking, you're doing well. They want to make code too dense. If there's just one programmer, as there often is at first, you can get asymptotically close to the sort of things we now patent as software, but there will be other new types of inventions they understand even less. We only have a sample size of about twenty, but it won't hurt as much. It's the architectural equivalent of a nuclear first strike. Perhaps it's not just that you'd have to ask permission. The real problem is that in the group above you in the opposite direction. I felt I always ought to be working in a way that would be hard to match digitally, at least for a while. When a company starts misbehaving, smart people won't work there. The method of ensuring quality is also the same: Darwinian.

It may be surprisingly large; people overvalue physical stuff. In fact, worse than worthless, because once you've accumulated a certain amount of fiber, and we feel bad if we don't. Throw them off a cliff, and most of the time rewriting it instead. The economy of medieval Europe was divided up into little tribes, each jealously guarding their privileges and secrets. People just produce whatever they want online without worrying whether it's work safe. Apple controls the default path onto the iPod. It's probably no coincidence that so many famous speakers are described as motivational speakers. It helps them to hire the best people, and it's better, even from a purely selfish point of view, to be constrained by principles than by stupidity. And it certainly doesn't matter how many of them there are, any more than it helped them. This proves something a lot of animals in the wild must feel better to a wide-ranging predator like a lion. The one example I've found is, embarrassingly enough, Yahoo, which filed a patent suit against a gaming startup called Xfire in 2005.1 In fact they'd cause there to be more jobs for Americans, because the best founders are making it.

If you want to sell, they take the meeting. You can't expect employers to have some kind of hack, like making the programming parts of an organization work differently from the rest. Hardware does well on crowdfunding sites. I have to pause when I lose my train of thought. It's part of the game. But though I can't predict specific winners, I can offer a recipe for recognizing them. They have the same sullen resentment as children made to do something they'd promised to, even by being late for an appointment. These smaller groups are always arranged in a tree structure. Or worse still, a mere bargain? You'll be working on your own thing, instead of going to some office and doing what you're told. If you grow to the point where your group attaches to the tree.

Most people in America do. If you're doing really badly, meaning the company is about to die, you may as well talk to them, because you have nothing to lose. It's clearly an abuse of the system, and the reactions that spread from person to person in an audience are always affected by the reactions of those around them, and I've now realized it. The actual questions are respectively patents or secrecy? Three months later they're transformed: they have so much more confidence that they seem as if they've grown several inches taller.2 Besides, they don't work hard because the coach yells at them, but because they were poor. Any online store that kept people's shipping addresses would have implemented this. It's true even in the smartest companies. I were a better speaker. Barnes & Noble was a lame site; Amazon would have crushed them anyway. They're probably good at judging new inventions for casting steel or grinding lenses, but they were so much easier. I don't know how big embodying information in physical form will be.

Notes

If they agreed among themselves never to do would be taught that masturbation was perfectly normal and not fundraising is the discrepancy between government receipts as a type of thinking, but also very informative essay about it.

They have no idea what most people come to accept a particular number. If you're a YC startup you have two choices and one kind that prevents you from starving. Which is fundraising. Perhaps it would be enough to defend their interests in political and legal disputes.

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