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theangrypokemaniac · 4 years

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Sinnoh has massive flaws as an era, although it's starting to feel like the good old days compared to the present piss-poor offerings.

The major drawback is the amount of 'recurring characters', ones not good enough to be in it fully, but inflicted upon us nevertheless.

I did care about Ash. I did care about Team Rocket.

I was prepared to care about The Misty Replacement, as in the girl shipped with Ash.

I was prepared to care about The Brock Replacement, that is the older brother figure who does all the cooking, carries the medicine, and knows about Pokémon.

I don't give a toss about extras who outstay their welcome.

Hoenn only had Drew and Harley. What was wrong with that?

There are just too bloody many.

Why does Dawn require so many opponents, as if she's of the greatest importance? Why won't Jessie suffice?

I accept the necessity of Paul as The Rival, and we were at least permitted to resent him initially, before the writers fanboy'd like there was no tomorrow.

I admit I liked two of them. They therefore featured the least.

Typical.

Nando

The Blondel of Iberia

A softly-spoken, raven-locked troubadour, roaming the many pathways of life, playing his songs for those weary travellers he encounters on the road.

He's wearing a cloak! The finest use of material to ever be invented!

All this ethereal grace considering the dub lumbered him with the most appallingly unsuitable name possible.

It could've been Raphael, or Dante, or Leonardo.

Oh no, let's name him after a restaurant chain. That adds gravitas.

His lyre pays tribute to Mew, because Nando knows she's The Rarest Of All Pokémon, thus refuses to be impressed by any deformed horse like Arceus throwing its weight around.

Damn straight.

Ursula

A pretty girl with lovely clothes and the spark of a proper personality.

You're not wanted round these parts, love.

I have no particular animosity towards Dawn, but it irritates me how the world revolves around her whims, where if she's lost in the woods, it's a major disaster, and if an attack heads in her direction, she must be protected in case she shatters.

It makes a refreshing change to find someone firmly inoculated against the lures of the temptress.

Also, alongside Ursula from Dinosaur King (the real Jessie), I'm glad of any attempt to reclaim that name, considering most of my generation, upon hearing it, think only about evil old octopus women.

As for the rest?

It's that bad I prefer the Unova bunch to these.

Reggie

Reggie is even more of a knob than Paul. As above, being Ash's enemy meant that, if only by narrative, he was intended to be somewhat disliked.

Not Reginald. No, he's the kind one.

Oh really?

When Ash and Paul have their showdown, Reg starts wittering that it's just as well Chimchar took up with Ash, since he wasn't suited to Paul's 'battle style'.

Battle style.

Is the what he calls mental and physical cruelty?

In Reg's amoral cesspit of a mind, there is no right and wrong, so do whatever you feel.

Reggie is quite aware of how his brother tortures Pokémon, and not only is he unconcerned, he excuses it with euphemism, hoping the audience will obligingly forget too.

What's more, he implies it's Chimchar's fault for not pulling his weight, and Paul abandoning him was the compassionate thing to do.

Cynthia

Suffering severe Bridge Nose Syndrome.

She may be Champion, but I don't remember Lance turning up all the time where he wasn't wanted.

She doesn't even use her influence properly. Rather than give it straight to Paul, order him to shape up and stop spanking the monkey, she fannies about with her cod mysticism, emptily preaching about how Ash and Paul are spiritually linked, with magical, beeyewteefull events taking form just because they met.

That's right, don't bother about Paul clearly being a psychopath, for 'tis ART!

It's the same as trying to convince me that Ash, Dawn and Brock were the Divine Trio because they all saw Something Nasty In The Lake District, as if they have an intrinsic bond foretold in ancient prophecy.

The writers pull this knowing two thirds of the Holy Trinity, plus Paul the Fallen Angel, will be leaving, at which point we'll be expected to stop being overawed at the great majesty they all apparently possess and transfer allegiance to their usurpers.

What's the point?

Angie

Yet another smackhead from that lunatic stare.

What shining genius decided giving all the characters contracted pupils was a good idea?

She looks like one of those kids whose parents dealt with nits the traditional way:

Shaving the entire head and painting it purple.

A barnet resembling privet hacked at by a paralytic gardener before he conked out.

I've seen her arc three or four times, and I still remember nothing about her, except for the amazing skill she possesses to make Ash sneeze on command from a distance.

Conway

One word: nonce.

A clichéd weirdo fitting into Pokémon's Four-Eyed Freaks fixation, where anyone with a slight visual impairment is a weedy, know-it-all bastard or on a register.

Oh yes, and this lad comes with hidden delights, because his glasses gleam like a giant cockroach, just in case he wasn't creepy enough.

Zoey

The human black hole. Has the incredible ability to suck all the joy out of a room just by appearing. A personage of absolute lead.

Too nice and over familiar, lacking a single detectable personality trait.

Bland, empty, and with the charisma of vomit-sodden cardboard.

Sinnoh is a prolonged saga as it is, padded with nonentities like her and Kenny.

Alright, episodes must be devoted to Dawn's Contest career, however tiresome it is, but why exactly do we need any about Zoey and Kenny? Why should we care?

Every time I sat through a competition Dawn lost, I resented that she was no further along on her quest, equating to another episode eaten away by this shallow, blackened hymn to superficiality.

Compare this indulgent treatment to the sneering disrespect shown to Jessie, an actual main character, who not only had to win her Ribbons practically off screen, but the writers delighted in hammering home how worthless she was in only scraping into the Grand Festival because Princess Salvia took pity on the deluded wretch.

They favour their own inventions over the original cast, then dump 'em as soon as the next generation arrives, so how could they ever matter if even the creators eagerly cast them aside?

After all the effort on my part to put up with the entire witless farce, Zoey beats Dawn in the finals!

Why?!

I understood the unspoken law of Ash not being allowed to win a League until the very last series, for fear whatever came after would be anticlimactic, but why should this deadening failure apply to May and Dawn?

By the culmination of the Contest rigmarole, it's obvious they'll be making their exit for the next region's Girl, so why couldn't either bid farewell to the fans with a victory?

Why must they be incompetent too?

Even if achieving their dream dampened any hunger to carry on, they're departing anyway, so what difference does it make?

At least Ash will continue, but for May and Dawn, it's the end.

How could any fan be satisfied with a smarmy vacuum of a creature like Zoey succeeding instead?

Barry

Eyes of molten evil.

The second-worst character ever created (Iris is top of the ranks), Barry is a smug, arrogant, screeching dweeb jabbering his oh-so endearing catchphrase about fining anyone who slightly irks him, so sure is he that his feelings should come above everyone else's

He truly believes he has a God-given entitlement to demand lesser lifeforms should arrange themselves to suit his pleasure, that they are morally compelled to shield him from meagre inconvenience.

Twat.

Knocking the little geck out of the League was the most noble thing Paul ever did. It practically redeems him.

This is what I cannot comprehend:

Ursula is openly conceited, rude to Dawn, and brags about her own excellence even after losing.

We're asked to dislike her.

Barry slags Ash off constantly, is convinced of his own divinity, and jeers at Team Rocket.

We're supposed to see him as a 'good guy' and welcome his arrival.

Why? Are Ash and Team Rocket fair game, but offending Saint Dawn's intolerable?

Again, it astounds me how temporary, region-specific stars seem to count for more than those who've been here since the beginning.

Whilst they're here, that is. Once gone, you wouldn't know they'd existed.

Kenny

He wears a matador outfit to compete.

It's a crying shame Tauros was never given the opportunity to gore him.

As usual, it's Piplup I blame.

Each generation likes to flaunt the starter Pokémon, presumably in the hope of flogging more games, that's why Ash usually catches all three, or they're spread out amongst his friends.

It's about time Team Rocket had one.

Can't do that, they only appear five times per series now.

Piplup is a whiny attention whore who refuses to evolve. In consequence, he can't advertise the next stages in the evolution chain, so we have to keep seeing Barry and Kenny instead, that's why Empoleon and Prinplup are always walking about.

This equates to three characters having the same Pokémon, albeit in different incarnations.

There's variety.

However, Kenny's true purpose is much more grim than that.

Fans will ship Ash with The Girl, a useless endeavour when it's destined to come to nothing when she's kicked out.

In Hoenn and Sinnoh, an effort was made to wean shippers off in preparation for the upcoming split, so alternative suitors were introduced, with the girls effectively pushed on to them.

May got Drew.

I don't mind that. He had some refinements.

Dawn got Kenny.

...

What, you want me to cheer for such a revolting couple?

Have I not suffered enough?

What unpardonable crime did Dawn do to deserve such a horrible fate?

She's not a bad-looking girl. She can do better than an ugly, portly, shrunken, pie-faced cretin!

You do this to me when Nando exists?

Sod the age gap, that never concerned anyone here.

This being the Kenny who spends four years belittling Dawn by constantly reminding her of a humiliating childhood experience, even giving her a nickname too!

Dawn is visibly distressed when he does this, but he's a fine candidate for romance?

She has to settle for a sweaty, lecherous herbert like him, who doesn't even try to atone for his unfortunate mug by being kind?

I suspect the whole Sinnoh adventure was really him wearing down her self-esteem until she believed he was the best available, wanting her to be grateful for his slobbery attentions.

It won't stop there either. He'll trap her for the rest of her life by isolating her from friends, followed by accusations of how undeserving she is of his 'love'.

Such is Dawn's lot: absent father, pushy mother, whinging penguin and abusive boyfriend.

Kenny's already a perv:

He's not looking at her face.

She knows he's not.

Ash and Pikachu have noticed an interesting feature further down.

Aipom likes it too.

#pokémon #nando #ursula #reggie #cynthia #angie #conway #zoey #barry #kenny #dawn #jessie #sinnoh

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sorenmarie87 · 6 years

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Vampires and Pecan Pie

Picks up right after The Apple Pie Life.

Summary: You decide to take Dean up on his offer to move into the bunker and have him teach you how to hunt. You spend time watching one of your favorite movies with Dean.

Square Filled: Vampire (SPN Genre Bingo)

Pairing(s): Winchesters x Reader (Platonic)

Word Count: 1,796

Warning: Reader punches Dean twice. Training.

A/N: Written for @spngenrebingo. I want to thank @fictionalabyss for looking this one over <3 Also all grammar mistakes are my own. Also the movie the reader and Dean watch is Vampire Hunter D.

I do not own any pictures I use in my aesthetics. I found them all on Pinterest.

Forever Tags - @lovetusk @coffee-obsessed-writer@mirajanefairytailmage@kazosa@soythedemonqueen@docharleythegeekqueen@holyfuckloueh@ellen-reincarnated1967@ravenangel33@clockworkmorningglory@lefthologramdeer @disneymarina

SPN Tags - @underestimatemethatwillbefun @nyxveracity

It had been a month since the boys had rescued you. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time and for your safety, the boys had taken you back to the bunker. You were planning to leave the next day when Dean made you a deal. He offered to teach you about everything supernatural and how to defend yourself from it if you stayed. You left and as you made your way home, you actually thought about Dean's offer.

The next day you started packing up what belongings you had (it wasn't that much to begin with). There were two boxes of books that you couldn't leave behind, your clothes, laptop, television, your game systems and the few games you had. You called Dean to tell him the good news, but it went straight to voicemail. You bit your lip and busied yourself with cleaning up your studio apartment. You were in the middle of scrubbing your shower down when your phone started ringing.

“Hey Y/N, is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine. I just wanted to let you know that I thought about your offer and wanted to let you know you have a new room mate, if you still want me.”

“Of course we still want you!” You laughed out loud and wiped the sweat from your forehead. “We had a hunt pop up, but we should be back home in a few days. We can swing by your house and you can follow us back to the bunker, once we're done?”

“Yeah that sounds fine. That'll give me time to settle everything here.”

“Dean! I could use a little help here!” You heard Sam cry out in the background and to make matters worse, the line went dead. You tried calling back, but there was no answer.

You were pacing when you heard the familiar rumbling of the Impala outside. Peeking out your window, you watched as the boys make their way to your door. As soon as you heard the knocks, you threw the door open punched Dean in the face. Dean's eyes widened and you could tell Sam was trying to hold back a laugh. “What the hell Y/N?”

“Two days Dean - two days that I didn’t hear a word from you. I was worried something bad happened to you!”

“What do you mean - oh shit! Y/N, I'm sorry. I was going to call you back once we took out the vampire’s nest but they broke my phone.”

“I’ll get you some ice.” You muttered as you made your way to the kitchen. You found a stray wash cloth and filled it with ice. “Hey Dean?”

“What's up short stack?”

“Ha. Okay if vampires exist, do dhampirs exist too?”

“What in the hell …”

Sam chuckled and folded his arms. “It's a possibility. We haven't run into one, though.”

“Dean, I have a movie to show you once we get back to the bunker.” You paused and turned to look at him. “You don't mind watching anime do you?” You heard Sam snicker and Dean glared at his younger brother and told him to shut up.

They helped you move all of your boxes to your car, and what didn't fit, went in the back seat of baby. “Is that everything?” Dean asked as he shut the passenger door.

“Yep. I told the landlord earlier that if there was anything another family could use any of the furniture I left behind, he could just take it.”

“Well, let's go home then.”

“I forgot how huge this place was.” You muttered to yourself before turning your car off.

“Hey Y/N, we'll help you unpack tomorrow, okay? That hunt was exhausting.”

“That's fine, just point me to a room where I can sleep for the night.”

“That shouldn't be too hard, come on.” You chuckled and followed the two of them down the maze like hallways. “15 is our unofficial guest room. Don't get freaked out if someone pops in here from time to time.”

“Okay..” Sam and Dean left you alone after that. You sighed as you flopped back on to the bed. Maybe you could start unpacking tomorrow. That was the last thought you had before your eyes fluttered shut and you fell asleep.

You spent the next day getting everything unpacked. Sam helped you with all the cords and heavy lifting but Dean was nowhere to be found. Your room was down the hall from Dean's but right next door to Sam's. It wasn't until you were getting your laptop set up that you heard movement.

“Dean! Come on…” You called out from your room and you heard his boots stomping down the hall. “Watch this with me and I'll make you as many full sized pies as you want!”

“Can I pick the flavor?”

“Yeah sure, just get some drinks and snacks!”

“He's 10,000 years old? Benny wasn't even that old.”

“Doris please, haven't you ever heard of the strong and silent type?” You muttered as she attempted to fight the hunter in front of her. You heard Dean chuckle and glanced over at him. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“She was bitten sure but there is more to the process.” Dean took a swig of his beer and you looked at him confused. “Vampires don't have to bite you nowadays to change you. All you have to do is ingest some of their blood and the rate someone changes, that depends on the person.”

“You know a lot about vampires…”

“I'm a hunter Y/N. Why else would I know so much?” He really didn't want to tell you about his time as a vampire.

“Well they were hot.” Dean muttered as the snake women transformed.

“Really Dean?”

“I hate to say it but a candle wouldn't incapacitate a vampire. Dead man's blood and beheading, that usually kills them.”

“Oh come on! This dub changed one of the best lines.”

“What do you mean?”

“In the first dub, Doris basically tells D that he can sleep with her if he wants.”

“She was throwing herself at him pretty hard, I don't see how he could turn her down.”

“Well he did.”

“I think she might be a little pissed off after finding out she's the same as D..”

“No really, what gave you that idea?”

“No way he went down that easy! Also what the hell, his left hand is alive?”

“Yeah that was never really explained. You might get some more information if you look it up.”

“If his left hand can talk, do you think he's ever used it during sex?” You choked on your drink and Dean patted you on the back. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” You didn't want to admit that you had the same thought days before.

“Kid I have to say that fight was a little anticlimactic…”

“Yeah, I know. There's so much you have to teach me.” You muttered eating a handful of popcorn.

“Sammy can teach you some more lore, and I'll show you how to defend yourself. I'll even teach you how to take out a real vamp.”

“There's a catch isn't there..”

“Of course four pies - all pecan.”

“Do you even have the ingredients?”

“That's what supply runs are for.”

You spent the next day with Sam as Dean went on a supply run. You made sure to look up a recipe for pecan pie so that way Dean got exactly what you needed for it.

“Here you go, Y/N.” Sam placed a huge stack of books right in front of you and he watched as you frowned. Sam chuckled and handed you another book. “This one is special, that’s our dad’s journal - read through that and if you have any questions, just ask.” You watched him take a seat across from you with his laptop.

“So vampires don't look like monsters at all…”

“They look completely normal. Well minus the rows of fangs.”

“That sounds scary.” You mumbled to yourself as you went back to reading. You heard Sam's phone chime as you looked up from the journal. “Dean's back..”

“I guess it's dinner and pie making duty for me.” You mumbled as you got up and stretched. “Care if I take this to the kitchen with me to read?”

“Just be careful with it, okay?”

“Always.”

--t had been a few hours and you had finished reading John's journal when you heard Dean shuffling into the kitchen.

“Did you make them all?” Dean practically rushes into the kitchen with you trailing behind him. “Y/N, I've never asked this but marry me.” You watch the smile grow on his face as he reaches the counter to see four pecan pies cooling. You have to remind him to wipe the drool from his mouth.

“Dean, I love you and I’m forever grateful for everything you’ve done for me. There’s just one thing I have to tell you - I’m not interested in you like that.”

“So Sammy’s your type?”

“He has the smart, well read, and the tall part down but it’s the same with him.”

“No sexual attraction to either of us. Wow, I never thought I’d see the day.” You called out to Sam to come eat and he appeared in the doorway with a book in hand. You chuckled as you swatted Dean away from the pies - something you learned from the mini apple pies you made him was that Dean loves pie. “I think it’s going to be my goal now to find out what gets you going.” Dean muttered as you put a plate of food in front of him.

“Should I ask?” Sam thanked you as handed him his plate. You shook your head as Dean took a huge bite of his cheeseburger.

“Nope.”

Dean was teaching you how to defend yourself but after a while it just turned into sparring practice. It wasn't until Sam interrupted, that the two of you took a short break. “Hey Dean?”

“Is something wrong?” Dean was distracted and you landed a blow to Dean's side. “Okay, okay we're done for the day. You've improved quite a lot Y/N.” Sam handed you a towel and you quietly thanked him.

“I just got a phone call from Jody. She said she's having trouble with another vamp nest near her.”

“Does she want us to come help?”

“Yep.”

“What about me?” You asked and wiped the sweat from your neck and face.

“Just this once, we'll take you. There are some rules though - you follow every instruction we give you.”

“And if we tell you to stay back, you stay back.”

“Okay, I got it.”

“Now both of you go take a shower, and pack your bags, we have some vamps to hunt.”

#spngenrebingo #Vampires #Winchesters x Reader #Platonic

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lady-alayne · 7 years

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Game of Thrones: An Angry Recap

Season 7 Episode 4: The Spoils of War

Winterfell:

Littlefinger once again portrays he's the smartest man in Westeros(TM) by GIVING BRAN THE DAGGER SENT TO CUT HIS THROAT????? Clearly he wants Bran to remember all the fun he had while lying in a coma while his mother fought off the man sent to kill him. Ah, good times. “Remember how your mom tried to find out who that dagger belonged to, and that started the war, and then your dad was killed, and then the Boltons took Winterfell and burned it to the ground so you had to flee, and then your mom and brother were killed, and then Jojen was killed, and then Hodor and Summer were killed, and then Rickon and Shaggydog were killed? Well, if these things hadn't happened you wouldn't be this creepy kid saying creepy stuff to his surviving family members today, so if you really think about it, isn't it a good thing all of that happened? As I recently read on pinterest, Happiness isn't a Destination; it's a Journey. I'm so wisdomly.”

But Bran has been on pinterest, too, and he has seen the Baelish memes. “Chaaaaaaosss is ah laddah!” he replies, and Littlefinger is not amused. “This is what happens when you don't stick to the accent you had in season 1! I knew I never should have tried to improve upon my creepiness,” he grumbles and leaves to carve “Petyr luvs Sansa,” into the privy door.

Enter Meera, who has come to say a tearful goodbye and remind Bran of all the sacrifices his companions have made for him along the way. But Bran has grander things on his mind and doesn't really appreciate being reminded of mundane things like his friends and pet dying for him. Seriously, Meera, you're so annoying. With your feelings. Ugh.

And then it's YET ANOTHER STARK REUNION! D&D really are wasting no time getting all of these kids back together again. After a recycled “The guards won't let Arya in because she doesn't look like Arya” scene (how original, that never happened before! *cough* King's Landing *cough*), Arya manages to sneak into the crypts. WHAT THE HECK IS UP WITH ALL THE STARKS HANGING OUT IN THE CRYPTS THIS SEASON???

Sansa finds her there, and the two sisters catch up on their girl talk and how they both wanted to kill King Joffrey. Arya talks about her kill list, and... does Sansa think she's kidding, or why is she laughing awkwardly?

Bran wastes no time creeping Arya out, too. “I know everything about everyone, including your kill list. Want a Valyrian steel dagger?” he asks his sister, who happily accepts. So this is why Arya had Littlefinger's dagger in the Entertainment Weekly pictures? BORING!!!!

Arya immediately puts the dagger to good use during a practice lesson with Brienne, where we learn that Arya and Brienne are about equally well matched.... Sure. That makes perfect sense. Next week on the Briarya Challenge: Who bakes the better pie?

Meanwhile, Sansa and Petyr... talk??? What?!?!?!? I thought Sansa was super annoyed by his presence and wanted him to go away? Or at the very least, I thought Sansa was very wary of him??? But now she... shares her experiences with him??? What?!?!?!?! I never understand these two. I want season 4 back.

King's Landing:

Queen Cersei has promised swift repayment to the Iron Bank, and Tycho Nestoris is pleased. But why stop business relations there? Tycho promises support for all of Cersei's new ventures, as long as the Lannister soldiers proudly display the Iron Bank's logo during the next battle. No, but wouldn't that be awesome?

Dragonstone:

Jon does all he can to convince Dany of the threat in the North. After he's lured her into a cave (and we all know what Jon Snow is capable of in caves) he gives Dany her very first dragon glass boner, and then lures her even deeper to show her some very convenient pictures on the wall... “So this is what happened to Princess Shireen's finger paint!” Missandei thinks to herself.

“These carvings are super old, and not new at all,” Jon assures Dany. “That's why the paint looks so new! It was, uhm, extra durable super paint. I totally did not just paint these to convince you. That white stain on my shirt? Oh, that's... from when I was at the wall. We, uh, renovated, because the IKEA Mole's Town had a super sale.”

Dany is convinced and promises her help... if Jon bends the knee. But let's face it, it wouldn't be the first time Jon bends the knee to a woman in a cave, amirite? Should I stop with the jokes?

But the (supposed) joy does not last long, because Tyrion and Varys have come to share the sad news: They took Casterly Rock, but lost the Reach. “That does it!” concludes Dany. “Enough with the clever plans, at least half the viewers don't really get them, anyway. I will jump on my dragon now and give the viewers the battle they've been craving for.”

Jon begs to differ. “The viewers are fed up with those stereotypical Good vs. Evil/Big Battle/The Good Ones Win-Fantasy stories, your grace. They watch us because we are different! We are smart, our characters are morally ambiguous, and not all of our battles are won on the battlefield. Some of them are won with quill and parchment. The season finale is still three episodes away. It would be anticlimactic to have a big battle now. Wait three more episodes, and talk to Tyrion in the meantime. He might say a few more funny things that look good on a T-Shirt.”

Davos, in the meantime, ships Jon x Dany, and... I think he tries to flirt with Missandei? Later Theon returns, and he and Jon have an awkward reunion.

The Reach:

Sadly, Dany did not listen to Jon. Jaime and the rest of the Lannister soldiers are escorting their booty back to King's Landing and have just paused for some smalltalk with the squarest man I have ever seen, Dickon Tarly. Because D&D have class and dignity and their Emmy was well deserved (hint: HEAVY SARCASM), we are treated to a dick joke, when...

IT'S DOTHRAKI SURFING ON HORSES. Yes. Dothraki surfing on horses. Just when I thought this show could not get more ridiculous we get Dothraki. Surfing. On. Horses. Seven save me. Did D&D watch one too many westerns???

For a reason I cannot fathom, Jaime & friends took Qyburn's dragon-killing crossbow thingy WITH THEM, because... #alwaysprepared??? And Bronn, heroically, SHOOTS DROGON!!! YAAAY— Wait, what? No! I don't know! Drogon just torched a lot of (relatively) innocent people, but... that's what dragons do, right? Besides, Dany made him do it, so it's not his fault! All in all, I think my love of animals wins out here. Poor Drogon. I hope you don't die. But I also hope this experience has changed you, and you won't kill anyone ever again. #worldpeace

#game of thrones #got season 7 #got recap #got an angry recap #anti d&d

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thecharlesdilaurentis-blog · 7 years

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7x19: FArewell my lovely

*WARNING SPOILERS*

"Hanna monas AD." GIRL U ARE FARTHER FROM THE TRUTH YALL GOTTA STOP JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS SO QUICK EVEN WE COULD SMELL THAT RED HERRING FROM A MILE AWAY

"I'll convince her" ok yea Caleb cause y'all are secret agent friends we all know it just admit it already

Ezra talking like he knows AD personally or something, like he's been the one getting texts or something. I see u Ezra u can't fool me.

But he was right about everyone in the room making mistakes & the look on everyone's face when he said it HA I loved it

Ooooo looks like AD stole the game back "time for pie"??? Is that not screaming EzrA to anyone??? especially the crows.

Mary really does seem like she's the nice twin but I can't help but think she's still more involved than we think

"It took me so long to finally get here w/ you, I'm not gonna loose it now." MY EMISON HEART UGH EMILY YOU DESERVE THE WORLD ALI BETTER GIVE IT TO YOU

AD PUT A GAS LEAK (But nothing ended up happening so i’m confused wtf marlene)

Did anyone else notice how when the video of ali kept playing on a loop she wanted emily to quickly turn it off, almost like she didnt want anymore questions raised about ‘That night’

"I'm not interested in you doing anymore sacrifices for your friends" BOYYYYYY IF U DONT GTFOH WITH ALL THAT THE ONLY SACRIFICES SHES MADE SO FAR ARE FOR YOUUUUUU OMG I AM DEAD I HATE EZRA I LOVE IAN HARDING BUT I HATE EZRA

YEAH OF COURSE MONA LOOKS NERVOUS SHE STOLE ADs GAME AND THAT ASSHOLE KNEW & STOLE IT BACK I WOULD BE NERVOUS TOO SHE ONLY GOT INVOLVED IN THIS CRAZY SHIT AGAIN B/C HER POOR LIL HEART STILL WANTS TO BE ACCEPTED BY YALL UGH IM SO MAD

Hanna the only one who ever gives Mona the benefit of the doubt now that's a somewhat real friend lmao

"You two are fighting like a married couple.." AWKWARD we are. Spaleb who??

Lmao Caleb annoys me a lot now but I am not gonna lie dude has BALLS idk if that's a good or bad thing tho.

But like I said before him and Mona are too comfortable around each other. Look how easy she's talking to him and how calm he is with her. They have to be working together they just have to be!! (Not like as AD but idk as investigators to track AD or something, they know each other tea choices THERE AIN’T NO COINCIDENCES IN ROSEWOOD)

"There's always been someone watching, manipulating." Girl yes I been saying this since day one!!! Bethany young, twincer, wren, ezrA you may make your appearance now.

Lol I knew that waiter left a note from AD, like u said Mona, they be watching

By the looks of Mona running they had to have said meet me in the back or something, Mona READY to see who keeps jacking her games lol

ANOTHER SECRET PASSAGE WAY GAH DAMN ROSEWOOD PROBABLY GOT THE WHOLE DAMN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD UNDER THERE

YES ARIA TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS I LOVE IT AT LEAST SOMEONE IS

Come on though I knew that body was gone the minute I realized they left it in the car

I'm not mad that they reshot the classroom scene or that it ended up being a dream but I would've much rather the dream be Ali's than Emily's dream the "emma thornwald" name would be a lot more relevant b/c how in the fucking world would emily know that. & why put that scene as the cliffhanger?? That's so anticlimactic! They could've put the liars burying Rollins but not showing who it was, or charlotte clutching the rose, or fuck even the fucking girls sipping mimosas w/ Mona would've been more climatic than that shit.

"AD doesn't get notes they give them." Finally someone has a clue, go Caleb I get points.

Btw idk if I really enjoyed that spaleb moment or if I just really love Troian & her amazing acting, her whole part in that scene was just perfect!

Was it a little weird to anyone else that Alison was the one who apologized to aria first?? I think it's because she knows she still has her own secrets/mistakes that haven't come to light.

Ooooo I bet this tunnel that spaleb is in is going to lead to the church and radley.

So Mona must have a split personality disorder or something cause the way she's telling on herself to Hanna and how she's dressed just give off a total old school Mona vibe like radley Mona vibe. Hanna really fucked up by letting her fuck with that game she should've just killed charlotte and GOT GONE GIRL. lol Ali 2.0 forreal this time.

I also figured she had some altercation w/ charlotte that was the only person I could see her saying "am I supposed to be scared of you?" Too lol I love ceces sass.

I love how Mona knew everything & I also think it's funny but slightly choosy how charlotte said "you always were the smart one Mona, not spencer."

I think this charlotte flashback is the FUCKING BEST THING EVER

Ceces such a bitch it almost doesn't seem like she's the charles she explained in her story. Like literally she’s not charles.

So I guess Mona does have a personality disorder and she's even convinced one said that the liars are actually her friends wow I'm sad. I love her :(

& I think it's now clear cece was planning to start the game right back up again but this time bigger and better it seems "not only did u lose the game you lost the story, its mine, everything's mine... god I hate this town I guess I'm supposed to do something about that too."

Fuck janels performance is EVERYTHING I am loving this flashback!!!!!

But did anyone else notice how we never actually SAW mona push the body off and fake the suicide. She could’ve ran and someone else came and covered it up. Like mona said to hanna she didnt mean to mess it up but what exactly did she mess up?? she didnt cover up the murder someone else did.

I think Hanna spoke for everyone when she said "not really an answer"

I told y'all Mary was gonna take the fall

Wow andrea Parker did so well at playing both Mary & Jessica

In the end im still confused and my brain hurts

OKAY SO, obvi alot of my predictions were a miss but I did get a few, I knew mary was gonna take the fall, I did see a few ali clues not a ton though maybe ill find more in the rewatch, I was right about mona getting into a fight with charlotte and somehow being involved in her murder & the episode did feel like a lame finale so I guess thats pretty good! This episode was amazing from start to finish they really kicked it into high gear for these last few episodes i’m finally seeing a picture in this crazy ass puzzle we call PLL. I’m trying not to expect alot from the finale but I just really hope it is as satisfying as all the cast say it’s going to be.

After this i’m really starting to hop on board with twincer, ezrA, or even Toby after seeing the finale promo. I’m going out of town for the next week so tomorrow i’ll post my finale PLL theory & then ill be off til the finale! It’s been real guys and although i’m ready for closure i’m also going to miss reading everyones amazing theories and all the possibilities this show could have gone with.

Tell me all you last minute theories!!! I wanna know what everyones thinking before the finale and how we all see this shit tying together!

#PLL #PLL thoughts #pll theories #pll spoilers #PLL post #pll final episodes #pll 7x19

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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Opening the Gold Box, Part 6: A Troubled Marriage

This pie chart prepared by the investment firm Piper Jaffray Research provides a snapshot of the American computer-game industry as of 1993. Sierra leads the pack with a market share of 11.8 percent, trailed closely by Spectrum Holobyte, who have just increased their profile dramatically by acquiring MicroProse Software. Electronic Arts comes in at only third place here, even following their recent acquisition of Origin Systems, but this chart reflects only their computer-game sales; their total sales including computers and consoles are vastly higher than those of Sierra by this point. SSI manages to come in at a respectable fifth place, thanks not least to the two aforementioned acquisitions of comparably sized competitors, but their trend lines are all moving in the wrong direction; their last new release to cross the magical threshold of 100,000 copies sold was Eye of the Beholder from February of 1991, while their biggest game of 1993 will sell just over 70,000 copies.

Two individually unhappy spouses aren’t the recipe for a happy marriage. By 1992, the computer-game publisher SSI and the tabletop-game publisher TSR, whose announcement of a partnership had so shocked both of their industries back in 1987, were learning this reality the hard way. Dungeons & Dragons, both on the computer and on the tabletop, was in trouble, and the marketing synergy which the two companies had so successfully created just a few years before had now turned into a deadly embrace that threatened to pull them both under.

In many ways, SSI’s problems were typical of any small publisher in their changing industry. Players’ audiovisual expectations of the games they purchased were growing rapidly, and it just wasn’t clear where the money to meet them was to come from. SSI had ridden their Gold Box engine for Dungeons & Dragons CRPGs way too hard, churning out nine games using it — eleven if you count two reskinned science-fictional Buck Rogers games — in a span of less than four years. The engine had received some modest improvements over the course of that time, in the form of rudimentary mouse support and VGA- rather than EGA-standard graphics, but at bottom it still played like what it was: an artifact from an entirely different epoch of gaming, designed around the affordances of the 8-bit Commodore 64 rather than the latest 32-bit Intel wonders. It was so outdated as to seem almost laughable beside a boundary-pushing wunderkind like Origin Systems’s Ultima VII.

Just as distressingly, SSI hardly seemed to be trying anymore even when it came to their Gold Box designs. No later Gold Box game had possessed anything like the creative flair of Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds, the first two games of the line and by far the best.

And so, as the technology had aged and design standards had fallen, gamers had reacted appropriately: sales had dropped almost linearly from title to title. Pool of Radiance had sold 264,536 copies upon its release in August of 1988; Dark Queen of Krynn, the anticlimactic end of the Gold Box line, sold 40,640 copies after its release in May of 1992. SSI was still profitable that year, but only by a whisker: during the fiscal year which ended on September 30, 1992, profits amounted to just $168,000 on sales of a little under $13 million, the latter of which fell short of expectations by $1 million. What would the next year bring?

TSR was a larger and more diversified company, but they were facing the same essential problem: sales of their own Dungeons & Dragons line for the tabletop had been going in the wrong direction as well for the past couple of years, and it wasn’t immediately clear how to reverse that trend. A flood of new rules supplements and settings — by 1993, TSR would offer an extraordinary eight separate boxed “worlds” in which to play the game, ranging from traditional high fantasy to the Arabian Nights to the depths of outer space — certainly wasn’t doing the trick. In fact, by making Dungeons & Dragons ever more impenetrable to newcomers, the torrent of product was arguably hurting TSR more than it was helping them.

Thanks to these trends, Dungeons & Dragons was in danger of seeing its position as the commercial ne plus ultra of tabletop RPGs usurped for the first and only time in the history of the hobby. The biggest threat to its status came from a new RPG called Vampire: The Masquerade, whose rules-lite, storytelling-oriented approach was the antithesis of the baggy monstrosity which Dungeons & Dragons had become. By catching a wave of “goth” inspiration that was sweeping pop culture more generally, Vampire had even accrued a degree of street cred the likes of which TSR’s nerdier, more pedantic offerings couldn’t have hoped to match even in their early 1980s heyday. TSR’s entire Dungeons & Dragons gaming line was in danger of becoming the world’s most elaborate loss leader, fueling sales of the one part of their empire that was still consistently earning money: their vast and ever-growing lineup of fantasy novels based on their gaming properties.

Human nature being what it is, it was perhaps inevitable that SSI and TSR, these two partners with good reason to be profoundly worried about their futures, would each come to blame the other for at least some of their difficulties. SSI noted pointedly that the Gold Box line was supposed to have been a creative as well as financial partnership between the two companies, with TSR’s staff contributing much of the content for the computer games and TSR themselves publishing tie-in products for the tabletop. All of those synergies, however, had dried up after Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds. (The status of these two very first games as the very best of their line begins to seem like less of a puzzle in light of TSR’s active involvement with them.) SSI had been left to their own devices from 1990 on, albeit still subject to the frequently exercised veto power which TSR enjoyed over their ideas.

Meanwhile, even as SSI complained about their creative abandonment, it was hardly lost on TSR that the Gold Box engine had fallen badly behind the state of the art. As they judged it, its antiquity had become extreme enough to actively hurt their brand, not only on the computer but on the tabletop as well; when struggling against their tabletop game’s popular image as a kitschy relic of the 1980s, TSR’s marketers weren’t excited to be confronted with computers games that themselves looked like products of the previous decade. TSR was also unhappy with SSI’s failure to port the Gold Box games from computers to consoles; out of all of them, only Pool of Radiance had been ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System, by a Japanese developer rather than SSI themselves. SSI tried to point out that this port, which played badly and sold worse, only served to illustrate all the ways in which this style of game just wasn’t suitable for consoles, but TSR was having none of it. In their view, the porting issue was a problem for SSI to solve rather than to explain away.

Behind all the bickering loomed a daunting reality: SSI’s exclusive license to Dungeons & Dragons was due to expire on January 1, 1993. One of the partners had far more cause for concern about this fact than the other. For those in the boardroom at TSR, the question of the contract’s renewal was just another business debate to be hashed out, but for SSI it was quite possibly of existential importance. After signing his first contract with TSR, Joel Billings, SSI’s founder and president, had rejiggered the public and private face of his company, from that of a maker of hardcore wargames inspired by the tabletop grognard tradition of Avalon Hill and SPI into the Computerized Home of Dungeons & Dragons. While SSI still published some wargames in the early 1990s, they generally sold even worse than the final stragglers from the Gold Box line, and were made strictly by outside developers; almost the entirety of SSI’s internal development efforts had been devoted to Dungeons & Dragons for the past five years. SSI’s identity had become so bound up with TSR’s flagship property that it wasn’t clear what they could or should be without the Dungeons & Dragons license.

The uncertainty surrounding the future of the contract left SSI paralyzed. It was obvious that they needed a better, more modern engine if they were to continue to make Dungeons & Dragons CRPGs, but it would be foolhardy to embark on that expensive project before they were sure of retaining the license that would let them use it for its intended purpose.

Thus Billings must have breathed a sigh of relief in early 1992, when TSR, despite all their recent misgivings about SSI’s handling of the license, agreed to an eighteen-month contract extension. It would take the license out to July 1, 1994, giving SSI enough time to make a new engine and at least one new game with it. Still, the short length of extension served notice that they were on probation; if the marriage was to continue, SSI would have to deliver a hit of Pool of Radiance proportions.

Billings put his people to work on an engine that would build upon the best ideas of SSI’s competitors, not least Origin’s much-admired Ultima VII engine. Like that one, this one would be designed with a mouse in mind from the start; would offer free-scrolling real-time movement over a large world; would go almost entirely mode-less in terms of interface, integrating combat into the same view where conversation and exploration took place. Gone would be the fussy paragraph books, graph-paper maps, and code wheels of the Gold Box games, which could make the experience of playing them feel almost like a hybrid between a computer and tabletop game. SSI had a very different experience in mind this time out. They planned make the engine effortless enough for the player that it could be ported to the Super Nintendo for play on living-room couches. And if that version did well, other console ports would follow.

TSR, eager to give a boost to one of their sales-challenged alternate settings, convinced SSI to set the first game made with the new engine in the land of Dark Sun, a desert world with a vaguely post-apocalyptic feel. Billings, aware that he was on shaky ground with TSR, also initiated development of an original science-fiction game that was to use the engine as well, just in case the Dungeons & Dragons license went away.

Creating such a complex engine alongside the first two games to use it was a truly enormous task — by far the biggest thing SSI had ever attempted, dwarfing even the initial software engineering that had gone into the Gold Box engine. Development dragged on and on after the Gold Box line had petered out with Dark Queen of Krynn. SSI attempted to plug the Gold Box-sized gap in their product line with such second-string releases as Prophecy of the Shadow, an internally developed, non-licensed CRPG-lite (25,875 copies sold); Pirates of Realmspace, a buggy computerized take on TSR’s Spelljammer setting from an outside developer known as Cybertech (23,280 copies sold); The Summoning, a simple action-RPG from Event Horizon Software (25,273 copies sold); Veil of Darkness, a game of a similar stripe to the previous from the same developer (9866 copies sold); Legends of Valor, a poor man’s Ultima Underworld from Synthetic Dimensions (12,588 copies sold); and Unlimited Adventures, a final hurrah for the Gold Box in the form of a public release of many of SSI’s internal development tools, thereby to let the diehards make more games of their own of the old type (32,362 copies sold).

As the sales figures above attest, none of these games set the world on fire. Indeed, their sales managed to make even the latter days of the Gold Box line look pretty good by comparison. In all, SSI released just three games between the summers of 1992 and 1993 that managed to top 40,000 units: Great Naval Battles in September (43,774 copies sold), Tony La Russa Baseball II in March (70,902 copies sold), and Eye of the Beholder III in May (50,664 copies sold). Of this trio, only the last was a Dungeons & Dragons title, and only the last was developed internally. Needless to say, the bottom line suffered. During the fiscal year which ended on September 30, 1993, revenues fell to $10.5 million, and the company lost $500,000 — the first annual loss SSI had posted in more than a decade.

Joel Billings wrote in that year’s annual report that it had been “the most difficult year in SSI’s 14-year history.” He spoke his personal truth not least. Throughout this period, over the course of which development of the Dark Sun game and its engine kept dragging on far longer than expected, Billings was scrambling madly to stem the bleeding. He put an organization that had always had the atmosphere of a family company through the trauma of its first-ever layoff, slashing the employee rolls from 115 to 75 employees; the memory of doing so still haunts Billings, a gentle soul at heart, to this day. Having been forced to cut the staff needed to create the science-fiction game earmarked for the new engine, he cut that as well, putting all his eggs into the single basket that was the Dark Sun game. Even the Super Nintendo version of that game, which his programmers had been struggling mightily to realize, would have to be set aside as well, at least for now. Much to TSR’s chagrin, this latest Dungeons & Dragons game too would have to live or die on computers.

Yet all of Billings’s scrambling constituted no more than financial triage. The existential obstacle which SSI faced was that of being a small, boutique publisher in an industry whose economies of scale were making it harder and harder for such an entity to survive. It was getting ever harder to win shelf space at retail, harder to pay for advertising in the glossy magazines — and, most of all, harder to foot the ever-increasing bill of developing modern games that met all of the expectations of the 1990s. Billings reluctantly concluded that he had but one choice: he had to sell out, had to find a buyer for the family business he had spent almost a decade and a half building from the ground up.

Accordingly, he spent much of his time in 1993 beating the bushes for just such a buyer. Yet here he was stymied once again by the realities of the marketplace. SSI was far from the only small publisher looking for a port in the storm, and many of the others had — or at least were judged to have — more attractive portfolios of extant and forthcoming games. Thus Billings faced a dispiriting, borderline-humiliating series of near misses, of seeing SSI cast aside in favor of alternative acquisitions in the fast-consolidating industry.

At the beginning of June, he thought he had made a deal with Spectrum HoloByte, an oddly bifurcated publisher that was almost entirely dependent on two wildly divergent games: the ultra-hardcore flight simulator Falcon, whose manual was roughly the size of a Tom Clancy novel, and the casual phenomenon Tetris, a game so brilliantly simple that it took only about 30 seconds of experimentation at the keyboard to spawn a lifetime’s addiction. Both of these games, radically different though they were in personality, were equally successful with their own demographics. Just as importantly, Spectrum HoloByte was absurdly well-connected with the movers and shakers of international finance, and was awash in venture capital as a result.

Due diligence between SSI and Spectrum HoloByte was completed, and a plan was made to meet again and sign a letter of intent as soon as that year’s Summer Consumer Electronics Show was behind both of them. At that show, however, Spectrum HoloByte met with Microprose, whose financial circumstances were even more desperate than those of SSI but who had a much more impressive array of upcoming titles to show to potential suitors. To make a long story short, Spectrum HoloByte bought MicroProse instead, leaving SSI stranded at the altar.

A few months later, the same scenario repeated itself. This time the would-be acquirer was Electronic Arts, a company with which SSI already had a longstanding relationship: Trip Hawkins had been a member of SSI’s board since before he founded EA, SSI had been piggybacking on EA’s distribution network as an “affiliated label” since 1987, and EA in fact already owned 20 percent of SSI thanks to an investment made in 1987, when the smaller company was first scaling up to take on Dungeons & Dragons. For all these reasons, the deal at first seemed a natural one. But Hawkins, the biggest proponent of the acquisition on EA’s side, was busy with a new semi-subsidiary known as 3DO and no longer had the day-to-day involvement necessary with the parent company to push it through. After kicking the tires a bit, the rest of EA’s management decided that SSI just wasn’t worth the asking price — especially given that EA already owned Origin Systems, one of SSI’s biggest rivals in CRPGs. Contrary to Joel Billings’s best intentions, SSI would thus be forced to exit 1993 as they had entered it: still an independent company, facing a future that looked more perilous than ever.

SSI’s struggle to find a buyer was a sign not only of their own weakness but of the diminished commercial profile of Dungeons & Dragons. Five years earlier, three quarters of the industry would have rushed to scoop up SSI, if only to acquire the enviable licensing deal they had recently signed. Now, though, the tabletop game was at a low ebb of its own, even as it seemed hopelessly antithetical to all of the winds of change in digital gaming. Where did this nerdy game played in parents’ basements, all tables and charts and numbers, fit in an industry rushing to make slick, kinetic interactive movies featuring real Hollywood actors? Dungeons & Dragons just wasn’t cool. It had never really been cool, of course, but that hadn’t been a problem when the computer-game industry as well was thoroughly uncool. But now, as computer-game moguls were busily penning paeans to themselves as the next wave in mainstream entertainment, its uncoolness was extremely problematic.

Amidst all of this — in September of 1993, to be specific — Dark Sun: Shattered Lands finally got completed and released. It was the most important game SSI had published since Pool of Radiance; the future of the TSR partnership, and thus their own future as a company, rode on its success or lack thereof.

When viewed separately from all of these external pressures, as just a game to be played and hopefully enjoyed, it revealed itself to be a nobly earnest attempt to improve on SSI’s most recent efforts in the realm of CRPGs, even if it wasn’t an entirely unblemished one. On the technological side, SSI’s next-generation engine largely delivered where it needed to: it was indeed vastly slicker, prettier, easier, and more modern than the Gold Box engine, feeling like a true product of the 1990s rather than a holdover from the last decade. It was an engine that could even stand next to the likes of an Ultima VII without undue embarrassment. Indeed, SSI seemed to have learned from their rival’s mistakes and done Origin one better in some places. For example, in place of the real-time, well-nigh uncontrollable frenzy that was combat in Ultima VII, SSI’s engine lapsed seamlessly into a turn-based mode as soon as a fight began; this allowed combat in Shattered Lands to retain most of the tactical complexity and interest that had marked its implementation in the Gold Box games, with the additional advantages of increased audiovisual interest and a less cryptic interface.

At the same time that they endeavored to keep combat interesting, however, SSI’s design team had clearly made a concerted effort to move beyond the exercises in incessant combat and very little else which the Gold Box games had become by the end. Shattered Lands offered much better-developed characters to talk to, along with heaps of real choices to make and alternative pathways to discover. The new approach was enough to impress even so committed an SSI skeptic as Scorpia, Computer Gaming World magazine’s longtime adventure columnist, who had been roundly criticizing the Gold Box games in print for their “incessant, fight-after-fight” nature for half a decade by this point. Now, she could write that “SSI is taking their role-paying line in a new direction, which is good to see”: “the solution to every problem is not kill, kill, kill.” Shay Addams, another prominent adventure pundit, had a similar take: “It’s no secret that I never liked the Gold Box games. Dark Sun, however, kept me coming back to the dungeon for more: more combat, more exploring, more story.”

Still, the game had its fair share of niggles — more than enough of them, in fact, to prevent its achieving a classic status to rival Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds. While SSI was to be commended for attempting to give the setting and plot more nuance and texture, that just wasn’t the sort of thing they did best, and they were still receiving little to no help from TSR on that front. The writing and plotting were derivative in several different directions at once, hackneyed even by the usual standards of the genre. Mind you, the writing wasn’t actually worse than most of that which had accompanied the Gold Box games — but here, moved as it was from a paragraph book onto the screen and expected as it was to do a lot more heavy lifting, its weaknesses were magnified.

Shattered Lands was also damaged as a computer game by its need to conform to TSR’s tabletop rules. The boxed set which presented the Dark Sun setting for the tabletop included a whole range of new rules complications and variations to distinguish it from the already convoluted Dungeon & Dragons base game, and most of these SSI was expected to implement faithfully as part of their licensing agreement. And so Shattered Lands came complete with a bunch of races and classes unfamiliar even to most Gold Box and tabletop Dungeons & Dragons veterans, along with a veritable baseline expectation that every character would be double- or triple-classed. Clerics suddenly had to choose an “element” to worship, which limited their selection of spells — and now everyone had access to a whole parallel sphere of magic known as psionics, and had to choose a specialty there as well. No game designer starting a CRPG from scratch would ever have inserted so much cruft of such marginal utility to the ultimate goal of fun; it was the sort of thing that could only arise from a company like TSR throwing rule after rule at the wall over the course of years in order to sell more supplements. Certainly none of it made much sense in a game explicitly envisioned as a new beginning for Dungeons & Dragons on computers, a place for fresh players to jump aboard. Nor, for that matter, did the choice of the oddball world of Dark Sun as a setting; for all that critics like me have long railed against the tendency, gamers for time immemorial have been demonstrating their preference for CRPGs set in generic high-fantasy worlds — such as that of TSR’s own Forgotten Realms, home of the most commercially successful of the Gold Box games — over more unique settings like this one.

But whatever its intrinsic strengths and weaknesses, Shattered Lands suffered most of all from one undeniable external failing: it was deeply, thoroughly unfashionable in the context of 1993. At a time when the whole industry was moving toward multimedia “talkies,” its many conversations and descriptions were still implemented via screenful after screenful of boring old text. And in addition to the old-fashioned implementation, there also remained the fact that the Dungeons & Dragons name just wasn’t the force it once had been. A measure of the industry’s attitude toward the game and its commercial prospects can be gleaned from its placement in the magazines. Even as they were giving it reasonably positive reviews, Computer Gaming World buried it on page 124 of 276, Shay Addams’s Questbusters newsletter on page 8 of 16. (The lead review of that issue, evidently judged to be more immediately interesting to the newsletter’s readers than a review of Shattered Lands, was of Legend Entertainment’s Gateway 2, a fine game in its own right but one which still had a parser, for God’s sake.)

So, you’ve probably guessed where this is going: Dark Sun: Shattered Lands proved a devastating disappointment to TSR and especially to SSI. After costing more than $1 million and eighteen months to make, with the additional opportunity cost of preventing SSI’s internal developers from doing much of anything else over the course of that period, it sold just 45,917 copies. To put this figure into perspective, consider that it’s barely 5000 more copies than the last tired release of the old Gold Box line, or that it’s about one-sixth of the sales of Pool of Radiance — this in spite of an expanded marketplace in which the number of copies which a hit game could hope to sell was actually far greater than it had been five years before.

When SSI and TSR met again early in 1994, after it had become all too clear that Shattered Lands wasn’t to be the next Pool of Radiance, TSR stated matter-of-factly that they no longer wished to remain in the marriage. Some tense negotiation followed, during which TSR did make some concessions to a frantic SSI, who were facing down the apocalyptic prospect of a license due to expire in less than six months while they still had a lot more Dungeons & Dragons product from third-party developers in the pipeline. TSR agreed to extend the exclusive license for six more months, to January 1, 1995, and to allow SSI to continue to release new games under a non-exclusive license until July 1, 1995. After that, though, the marriage was through. TSR emphasized that there would be no further settlement agreements.

Thus SSI’s final string of Dungeons & Dragons releases, of which there would still be a considerable number, would have something of the feel of a lame-duck session of government. DreamForge Intertainment provided two real-time CRPGs set in TSR’s Gothic world of Ravenloft and a third set in the Forgotten Realms; Cyberlore Sudios provided a similar game set in the Arabian Nights World of Al-Qadim; Lion Entertainment provided a Doom-influenced hack-and-slasher set nowhere in particular. An overoptimistic SSI had launched into Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager, a sequel to Shattered Lands, before the commercial verdict on the first game and TSR’s final judgment on the whole partnership that had led to it had come in. They finished that game too up, after a fashion anyway, and released it, still full of bugs, unimplemented features, and placeholder writing. It became their final in-house-developed Dungeons & Dragons title. It made for a slightly pathetic way to bow out, but at this point they just couldn’t be bothered to do better; they were now a long way indeed from those enthusiastic early days of Pool of Radiance. None of these games sold more than a few tens of thousands of copies. But then, no one, least of all SSI, had much expected them to.

The news that TSR and SSI were parting ways reached the magazines almost immediately. The two newly minted divorcees couldn’t resist a bit of veiled sniping in the press. SSI, for instance, told Computer Gaming World that they were “unhappy with the rules and restrictions imposed with the license that limited their creativity,” and said they could be perfectly happy and very successful making original CRPGs instead. TSR, for their part, said they’d learned a lesson about binding themselves too inextricably to others, and thus wouldn’t be entering into any more exclusive arrangements at all. Instead they’d play the field, signing deals with publishers on a title-by-title basis, and might just learn how to make computer games of their own.

Yet behind all these brave words lurked a difficult reality for both companies; it was by no means clear that either or both of them would really be better off apart than they’d been together. As if it hadn’t had problems enough already, tabletop Dungeons & Dragons was now getting pummeled by a new arrival with huge appeal to the same demographic: Magic: The Gathering, a fast-playing, accessible “collectible card game” of fantasy combat psychologically engineered to sell an endless amount of content to gamers looking for that one perfect card which could give them an edge over their chums. Magic decks were soon eating up much of the shelf space in hobby stores that had once gone to Dungeons & Dragons, and pushing it out of their display windows entirely. TSR’s only solution was the same as it had always been: to churn out yet more source books. And so the spiral of diminishing returns continued.

The contrast between TSR and Wizards of the Coast, the upstart makers of Magic, was a telling one. The latter engaged with their customers directly at every opportunity, skillfully goosing the grass-roots excitement around their products to yet further extremes. But TSR, still led by the widely disliked non-gamer Lorraine Williams, seemed out of touch, utterly disinterested in their fans and their opinions. Ryan Dancey, who has done a lot of research into TSR’s history, sums up the company’s attitude in damning fashion:

In all my research into TSR’s business, across all the ledgers, notebooks, computer files, and other sources of data, there was one thing I never found — one gaping hole in the mass of data we had available. No customer profiling information. No feedback. No surveys. No “voice of the customer.” TSR, it seems, knew nothing about the people who kept it alive.

The brainy kids who used to fall into the Dungeons & Dragons rabbit hole around the time they entered junior high were now getting their first Magic decks at that age instead. With the red ink beginning to pile up to a truly alarming extent — even the novels were no longer selling like they used to — TSR looked to be headed for an ugly reckoning.

And yet, if TSR was in dire straits, SSI’s position was if anything even worse. Without Dungeons & Dragons, they had almost literally nothing; the strongest remaining item in their portfolio was the Tony La Russa Baseball franchise developed by Stormfront Studios. But a baseball simulation alone wouldn’t be enough to sustain the company, and the sales picture of their other recent products wasn’t pretty. They were still in desperate need of a savior, but now lacked even the TSR connection to offer to potential buyers. Who in the age of multimedia would want to buy a failing publisher of stats-heavy wargames and traditionalist CRPGs? Joel Billings didn’t know, but he had no choice but to keep looking for someone crazy enough to take the plunge.

(Sources: As with all of my SSI articles, much of this one is drawn from the SSI archive at the Strong Museum of Play. Other sources include the book Designers and Dragons by Shannon Appelcline; Computer Gaming World of September 1993, December 1993, April 1994, and December 1994; Questbusters of October 1993. Online sources include Matt Barton’s video interviews with Joel Billings and David Shelley and Laura Bowen.

The two Dark Sun games are available as digital purchases at GOG.com.)

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/opening-the-gold-box-part-6-a-troubled-marriage/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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