Artificiality in Gaming

I had a conversation with Liz last night and she said something that really stuck out to me: 

I think I'm starting to outgrow some of them stories. I am starting to crave more mature content and I don't mean racy or full of expletives. I mean more complex stories with deeper character development. 

What she said had me thinking about video games. Vaati, a mainstay in the Souls community, makes a lot of comments about artificial difficulty, but there's a different kind of artificiality that seems to be pervading the entire gaming universe. What I'm talking about is the artificiality of the "mature" rating for video games. There are so many games I've played in recent years, that really the only way they were "mature" is that the main character(s) just cursed every time they opened their mouth. Let me tell you something, from the perspective of a gamer, that I think devs need to understand, just because your character curses a lot, that does not make them gritty or edgy. It makes them sound overdone. 
It seems to be most common in games that are set in wartime, and I understand there's that whole saying that someone "curses like a drunken sailor." However, even in that saying, there is a distinction being placed on the sailor, namely that he or she is drunken. The idea that every single soldier is so inexplicably inarticulate, that they MUST express themselves by yelling "FUCK!" every single time they open their mouths, is laughable, but it's also pretty upsetting, that the devs that have created this whole world around the characters, couldn't be bothered to try and give them a personality. There is no prerequisite within the "grizzled veteran" archetype that states that they must curse every second. In most cases, I've found that it's actually the opposite really, with a grizzled veteran, they're usually pretty articulate. Why do people think that during the feudal ages in most countries, it was actually the warriors who were shown to be the most artistic? Heck, in Japan and China the instincts of poetry and war are still said to come from the same source. 
I guess what I'm trying to say is that game developers have more power than they've ever had before at their fingertips, but they seem to be cutting more and more corners. I can't tell you the number of games I have played recently where changing the difficulty just means you take more damage from enemies. You couldn't even... I don't know, change their colors? Give them one more behavior to show off? All you did was tweak their damage, and that's lazy. I understand with all this changing technology it costs more and more to develop, and publishers don't care if the game is finished or not when it ships, but seriously, the developers themselves should care about what they're releasing. 
I'm noticing more and more as I get older that I can't just jump into a game and pretend I live there anymore. I can't be part of the ecosystem in that game anymore because I know too much now, I am stuck on the flaws inherent in it, rather than just trying to be a part of it. Some of that is because I'm older, and that I expect more, but there's also a pretty large component of that problem coming from the games themselves. Don't you want to at least be proud of what you've released? 
Perhaps I'm just a hopeless romantic, but I still think that being able to take pride in what you've done should be more important than what you're going to get out of it.

The problem with Let's Plays

I'm sure there are actually tons of problems with LPs, but the major one for the person filming it is the fact that they have to film it. I was thinking that it was only me that seemed to be encountering this problem, but I recently discovered it was not unique to me. I guess it all depends on the choice of game, but this is a major problem when it comes to recording entire games for me.
I suppose it's a little different when it's a game that's brand new to you, as opposed to a game you've played through multiple times, but I have real issues getting certain Let's Plays done. This doesn't count for games you can finish in one sitting, such as Rushing Beat Shura or Sengoku 2, but when it's a game you're playing for the first time, you often just want to sit and play and enjoy yourself. I learned the exceptionally hard way choosing to play Co-Op first. On top of my personal issues with filming, such as the fact that I had to set up my EasyCap and my PS3 and my laptop just right to get the actual footage, I also had to make sure that my schedule matched up with GrimJak's just right for us to get meaningful footage for our playthrough of Saints Row the Third. I chose the game because I knew I wanted to play it, but there was just so much that kept me from actually getting to play that I began to dread it. In all honesty, the only full playthrough I've done that was not my first play of a game was my run with Adrian with Shadow Matter through X-Men Destiny on X-Treme difficulty. 
That want you have to play a new game can really get in the way. You could try just stockpiling footage, but I've never really been one to do that. I suppose that's just the way you'll have to do it if it's a game you really want to play, but I mean, most of us out there on the YouTubs have tons of games to play, and having to set up a game to make sure your recording settings are optimal versus just jumping in and playing one is usually an easy decision to make. That sentiment just builds up over time.
It would certainly be easier if I could just keep my setup ready to go all the time, but I actually like being able to walk around without tripping over any wires, hah. I figured I'd get this out there quick and ask what you guys think about this? What are some ways you've thought of/employed that minimize the stress that accompanies a LP?  

YouTube Fan Funder and other news

If you frequent my channel a lot, you're going to have noticed there's a new little bar on the side! YouTube's finally gotten their Fan Funder feature into beta and you can display it on your channel. My original impression was a channel-centric Patreon type dealie, but it seems more along the lines of a personalized "THROW MONEY AT ME IF YOU LIKE ME" button. I am totally okay with that, if someone wants to help out! 
Speaking of people wanting to help out, I just wanted to give my buddy TheBurningPunch a shoutout. He's guest starred on my channel before, but we've never actually played a game together, and I feel like that's something that definitely needs to change, and the sooner the better!
Back on topic though, it seems like there are a few stipulations with the YouTube fan funder. You cannot receive less than a dollar from someone, or more than 500 dollars from the same person in a single day. There's also fees that YouTube takes out based on the donation amount too, so not all of your donation actually goes to the person you want to support. From what I could tell, it seems like the preferred payment method is Google Wallet (Which I personally didn't know existed until a few weeks ago...), but you should be able to use other forms of payment. Just thought I'd give you guys a heads up on what's goin on with that. If you want to see if your channel is able to opt-in to the beta, you can head to your YouTube Settings>View Additional Features.
Now, back to actual channel news, for both my YouTube and my Twitch this time, no less! I've been hatching new ideas for series in addition to what's going up on my channel in the near future. I'm working on the intro for Unfair-Y Tales so I can use it as the opener to all of the videos, which means you can expect the first episode to debut in January. To tide you over, why not sit back and enjoy A Dramatic Reading of a Yearbook Signing? This video serves as the pilot, and it's doing pretty well so far, so I'm excited both to work on and the response to the full series! I've got twenty episodes planned for the first season, but I have plenty more stories than that to tell! 
Tethrinblaze and I were joking about how I could make a compilation of all the times GrimJak has messed me/us up in games, and I decided that I probably will start a compilation series of just... Let's call them GrimJak-isms. I will make sure to at least get some work done before I start the daunting task of combing through my videos for all the occasions in which Grim has set me on fire, blown me up, and/or killed me/the rest of the team. 
In the near future, I'll have a new set of Victory/Defeat animations for SMITE, this time for the 13 Assassins in the game (NOT COUNTING AO KUANG, BECAUSE HE'S A GODDAMN MAGE, IT SAYS SO RIGHT NEXT TO HIS NAME). I also will do my best to finish off the DMTV Movelist series before I move on to any more tutorials. No more Rumble Fighter BM Tutorials, so I want to devote my... "helping" talents to something else productive! I also plan on getting back to finishing a lot of my older series. On top of that, if you've been paying attention to my channel, I've made a couple new playlists, and that was actually a hint that I plan on adding more videos like those (If you're wondering, those would be the Boss Battles and Beats of Rage Mods playlists)
If you've been to my Twitch Channel lately, you'll notice I updated/added to the list of games I will be streaming in the near future. Some of the games I chose are ones that I think will broaden my audience, while others are for practice. This may give you some clues as to what videos will be coming up on my channel in the near future, so stay tuned! 

Channel News 11/16/14

Sorry, I just couldn't come up with a clever title... What? I've been watching terrible kung fu movies from the 70s with titles like "Blazing Ninja Warrior vs. Warrior" and "Bionic Ninja" all day, you can't expect too much of my creative faculties right now...
HOWEVER, I was having a chat the other day about planning for the future of my content the other day, and I came up with the name of my Rogue Legacy series! It'll be called Rogue Legacy Heroes with Issues! Yay! I did something creative! 
In other channel news, my good buddy JackBauer has been watching a lot of Two Best Friends Play and suggested that we do some horror gaming. As you know though, I'm pretty much a gaming hipster. Since everyone started doing horror games to try and follow in PewD's footsteps, naturally I am against that kind of thing. I mean, there's also the fact that I just don't really play survival horror anymore. I had a... phase for a year or two, but I really haven't done much in the genre since. 
I'm talking about all of this because JackBauer suggested we play horror games together. He specifically suggested Silent Hill. I don't have any of the games in the series but... I do have the demo for the first game on PS1! Since JackBauer doesn't really do anything YouTube related anymore, he suggested we upload to mine.
So, you can expect the JackBauer Horror Special (Until he wins) up on my channel sometime in the near future! Maybe he'll get a regular spot guest starring on my channel in the future if this turns out to be something really interesting and fun. 

2 games down, MANY MORE to go!

As of Tuesday (11/12/14), I have a second full-game playthrough up on my channel! Liz and I actually completed a game as part of Couples' Co-Op! Ibb & Obb, to be specific. This is pretty much uncharted territory for me, since as most of you know, I get bored incredibly easily. We stuck through it, even through intense frustration, and I think we're both the better for it! Though Liz could still use a little jumping practice. In any case, I think this is going to set a precedent for me. I've actually had something go right for once, and I'm excited about it!
If you were wondering, the first game I played all the way through was Rushing Beat Shura/ルッシングビート修羅. Technically the first complete Let's Play on my channel should have been Saints Row the Third, but I actually finished that on my Twitch channel. At some point I will export the final three streams to YouTube and it will be complete, but for now I've just got the two Let's Plays. I hope these two will serve as the first of many, since that's what I'm planning on!
The next game I'll be playing all the way through is something I started a couple months ago; Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects. When I started it, Ibb & Obb was still going and I realized it was eating up too much of my upload schedule to run two LPs at once. I decided I'd instead go for one at a time. I'll be starting up MN again in December, and once I'm done with that, we'll see what comes up next. 
The plans are still on for Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons as part of Couples' Co-Op, but I think I may be waiting for a bit before we start up another cooperative game. I'd like to get a little bit of Couples' Versus and Couples' Competition going before we start anything new. 
There's also a LP of Magicka in multiplayer, but that might be a ways away, and the T'ai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger let's play that I've had planned forever as well. I'm going to try and make sure that my LPs do not occur on the same console in succession, so we'll see how far that gets me, hah. While maybe not Let's Plays per se, I'd also like to do runs in Super Amazing Wagon Adventure and some runs of Rogue Legacy using heroes with disabilities, I think that'd be really fun to play and at least somewhat interesting to watch! 
So yeah, that's what I've got planned for the near future!

Change isn't necessarily good

As most of you know, when college started for me, like... way back in '07, I pretty much dropped off YouTube. I uploaded sparsely if at all, and I stopped replying to comments and messages and all that jazz. I turned my back on the community I had spent pretty much a whole year building, and I know that was a mistake.
I've been doing quite a bit of YouTube related research lately, and I have noticed something about the channels that I enjoy watching-- at least in regards to ones that are largely popular. The gaming channels I frequent, stuff like STER_, Jerma and of course, my all time favorite YouTuber, Robbaz, all have something in common. It's the fact that regardless of what they do or put up, there's a game or two that they always return to. Inbetween random uploads they always go back to something. 
I haven't been a fan of STER_ or Jerma for that long, but from what I can tell, they've always been releasing Team Fortress 2 content. That's their fallback. When I started to watch Robbaz, he was big into Battlefield so he'd go back to that after an upload or two. After a while though, he branched out, and now he works on multiple game series. 
That's something that I don't have anymore, my fallback game was M.U.G.E.N and I've been pretty neglectful of that... I haven't really stuck to anything since me and Liz started Couples' Co-Op and I realize that's one of the many places I went wrong. 
I've been deliberating whether or not M.U.G.E.N can still be my fallback. I'm not sure about that, but... I would definitely like to put up more beat-em-up and fighting game footage for you guys! My uploads have been hella erratic lately, but what can I say? I get bored REALLY easily.

Amazon Associates

Quick blog post, seriously guys. 
I've been an Amazon Associate, which means I have a referral code for Amazon that gets me referral fees for people I send there to buy stuff. I've been a member for about a year, and I've been having a ton of problems with it. I know tons of people don't have any issues with it, but naturally I seem to have run into all of them, hah. 
Anyway, the first five orders, from the first month or so I became an associate went through fine, but since then, I've had something like 60 orders made with my ID and not a single one has been credited to me, and I'm fed up with it.
I e-mailed Amazon, and the response they gave back to me said they checked and all the orders they looked at are ineligible, and probably all of them in total are ineligible, but they can't look at all of them or provide me any information as to why. They also said basically the only reason someone should be using your code is if they came across it at random and wanted to use it out of curiosity. 
Basically what they're going for is a way to weasel out of giving me something like 3-5% of the profit they make off a single item. You're Amazon.com! FFS, cut a guy some slack! You rake in BILLIONS of dollars a year and you can't give me 3% back on not even 10 of those sales? 
I'm writing this to say that I'm going to be removing the Amazon links from this blog, my twitch channel and my YouTube page, and referring you guys elsewhere when applicable from now on. You can't even close your associates ID yourself, you have to talk to Amazon about it. I'll be happy to send someone a bunch of capital letters at this point. It'll be swell. 

NYCC '14 Pictures

This year's NYCC was actually kind of slow. This was the first year that I ever finished doing everything I wanted to do before the show was over, so there was no rushing, pretty much at all. Liz and Kenbei and I actually just sat around and talked for a couple hours on Saturday and Sunday... I didn't take that many pictures, but I figured I would share with you guys what I did take! We're going to have a video up on my channel this Sunday about our NYCC experiences, so I'm not going to blog very much about that, but I wanted to share with you some pictures I took! I spent most of my time with Liz and Kenbei, as James(GrimJak) and Dan(The Laundry King) were off doing other stuff, so we all probably have different pictures. I know this year everyone took pictures of what they wanted to see, as opposed to everyone taking the same pictures.

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, ENJOY! (You can click any of the pictures for a full-size edition)

The largest booth, WETA, had a sleepy Smaug!

The Teen Titans in their Go! incarnation were blown up outside for the whole weekend

Mega Bloks had a huge display this year, they had a Mechwarrior and an Assassin from AC.

Scale model of Serenity

Dat Aqualad tho

Last year was Supes' 75th anniversary, this year was Bats'.

You can't really see it, but she had these terrifyingly blue contacts on... Definitely the best lasso I saw though.

This assassin had his poses down-pat

While not specifically related to NYCC, there was a Walker hand counting down to the return of TWD. Lost a finger each day until Sunday-- REALLY COOL

The only new Casey Jones we saw, and I don't think anyone could have topped this! Kid's a genius-- and a really nice person too. 

Kenbei spent the entire weekend trying to find a Vegeta. Followed these guys around for like an hour until we could get a photo op, hah.

Trap Team Impressions

This won't be a review, since I'm only halfway done with the story, or, at least, thereabouts, but I'd just like to say some stuff that's been on my mind.
I went to midnight launch with Liz for Skylanders trap team and we got quite a haul, which you can view here. That video was about the toys, so now let's talk about the game itself!
First of all, WELCOME BACK Toys for Bob! It's good to have you guys back. That being said, this game, pretty much right off the bat, feels like it should have been the sequel to Giants. Although there are characters from Swap Force, it feels like the old Skylanders games did, and IMHO, that's a great thing. I don't think it's as hard as Giants was (IMO, Giants is the toughest game in the series), but it's still leagues away from Swap Force's difficulty. 
The backgrounds and the setting are all completely fleshed out, which is something I'm glad about. They've FINALLY allowed us to choose to jump off cliffs, and this even sometimes leads to hidden areas. You'd think I was suicidal the way I leap off cliffs now! It doesn't even do damage to you, which makes me feel a bit sad about it. If you're in an arena match and you get knocked off it will deal damage, however. 
Unlike Swap Force, the Giants have a purpose again, they can do basically everything that they could in Giants, though their jobs are less frequent. They can once again lift giant boulders and break bomb doors without a bomb. The best part about the giants in Trap Team is that THEY ACTUALLY FIT ON THE STAGE AGAIN. The new team, the Trap Masters, are about 3/4 the size of the Giants so it makes sense. It seems like they actually playtested them before they released the game, unlike Swap Force, where the giants served really no purpose at all and often caused the game to wig out since they didn't really fit anywhere. They had giant chests though, which have been replaced in Trap Team by villain chests, but they're basically exactly the same except for the symbol on the front. In Swap Force it was Tree Rex and now it's Kaos.
The new gimmick for this game is the traps, and while I love that they've come up with the idea to reverse the formula, where you capture the characters and then play with them, some of them appear to be a little lackluster. Not all of the trappable villains have three attacks (actually, I think that most of them have 2), and some really don't make all that much sense to me in their elements. There's also not the same amount of villains for each element. The fact that they talk to you and comment on what's going on from inside their traps (The speaker in the portal, actually), is a really nice touch that helps with the immersion. 
I said in the video that minis/sidekicks have no special purpose, but there is actually a section in the Academy (your new hub world) with tiny paths just for them. I'm not sure if it happens anywhere else, but on the Mystic Mill stage, one of the villains, the Shrednaught, has areas that only he can access in his evolved form, which is actually a really nice touch, it makes it seem like the villains have some purpose once they're with you, besides dealing TONS of damage. The cores themselves don't seem to have any sort of special purpose anymore though, since elemental gates can now only be opened by Trap Masters. Everyone else has something special to do though. 
The minigames now have some meat to them as well, there's a new version of Skystones, that sort of functions like somewhat of a mash up of Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon cards, and it usually turns out to be really fun. The more villains you trap, the more cards you get for the game, so capturing villains serves more than one purpose. The Skaletones showdown is a kind of... Rock Band-lite rhythm game that is personalized to your skylander OR villain, where they sing along to music of varying styles with another NPC singing lead. The four difficulty levels mean that everyone has a chance to try this out. The expert levels are actually REALLY challenging and remind me of Amplitude/FreQuency on the PS2.
The traps are actually really interesting themselves, since there are all different sculpts, but it's not really necessary to have more than one of any element's traps, beyond the sake of having them. I also learned that the 'evolved' status of a villain is held on the trap itself, not by the game, so you'll have to do the villain quests over and over if you intend to buy more traps, which is kind of unfortunate... You might be wondering what villain quests are? Well, they're what replaced the missing heroic quests. Each villain has a quest somewhere on a stage, that can range from just talking to an NPC to playing Angry Birds with a sheep cannon. I heard a lot of players whining that there are no more heroic challenges for them to help up the stats of skylanders they like, but I don't have a problem with this. There also appear to be more traps than there should be, since there are 5 or 6 sculpts for each element, but some elements *cough* MAGIC *cough* only have three trappable villains.
The Arena is back, but each set of 3 waves has a different goal, and none of them are just "HIT THESE GUYS HARD." You don't have to follow the gimmick of the map, as it won't kill you outright if you ignore it, but you needn't usually rely on the gimmick of the map to get by. Player vs Player though, is completely gone and sort-of replaced with the Kaos Doom Challenge, which is sort of like if Skylanders was played like Dungeon Defenders. You can build towers and you have a box to protect. While I miss SkyGoals a lot, since it wasn't even in Swap Force, there are allusions to it in the arena challenges. One of the 3 round matches involves you carrying the ball from SkyGoals and it powering you, or any other carrier up. 
The co-op is actually the only real problem I've had. The tether keeping you and your partner together is REALLY short this time around, and it leads to some unfortunate respawn chains, especially when a bounce pad is involved. The game itself seems to be more glitchy than ever before. I've been stuck in the floor multiple times, my cutscenes often hang for absurd amounts of time, and there's even a weird glitch that happens in co-op every once in a while where none of your buttons do anything. You cannot attack, but you can walk, while the other player has no issues. I've also noticed that about 20% of the time I move something off the portal, the game does not recognize that anything has been moved for a minute or so. Unfortunately, it seems like the portal is just slower to recognize and activate items in general this time around. Some of the items have had their effects changed, so maybe it's trying to figure that kind of stuff out?
I think that's about it for my impressions, this post is long enough already! 

DO ANY OF YOU GUYS HAVE ANYTHING TO ADD/ASK?

Upload Changes for Phase 2

I've been talking a lot lately about Phase 2 of my YouTube channel here and there, and I just wanted to go into a bit deeper detail about what all of that junk entails. So I'll go right ahead and tell you guys what my uploads are going to be like once Phase 2 begins!
First off, I'm going to do my best to have just one Let's Play going at any given time. I was doing two at the same time recently, and it was just eating up my upload schedule (Couples' Co-Op has Ibb & Obb going and I was working on Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects myself, if you were wondering). As of this week, the footage I had of MN has all been uploaded, so I'm going to finish uploading Ibb & Obb (WE ACTUALLY BEAT THE GAME!) and then I'll go back and finish off Marvel Nemesis. I'm not 100% sure what the next LP will be, but chances are I already have it written down somewhere. I'm going to concentrate on taking things relatively one step at a time. For Let's Plays though, I've decided that I'll be uploading them in the 11 o' clock timeslot on their respective days. The upload schedule itself will remain the same: 

• Sundays: Vlogs/rants/Unfair-Y Tales
• Tuesdays: General Gameplay
• Wednesday: Twitch highlight(s) every other week [Gonna stick to 2 at max]
• Saturday: Fighting games/beat-em-ups

The next Couples' Co-Op game we'll be going through will be Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. That much is certain. As for my own Let's Plays, I'm not too sure. Since we have time to work on something else, you can expect Couple's Competition and Couples' VERSUS to start up sometime soon! 
I will be getting back into finishing off my old series as well in Phase 2. I need to get back to my roots, and back to the reasons why people watched me in the first place. I'll definitely be going back and finishing off my GNT4 1v3s, since that's something I have been wanting to do for a long time. I'll also be cycling through new content and finishing off the requests that I still have. I really will get to them, regardless of people telling me they'll help me film and they don't actually.. As for the new stuff, I have a set of probably... 100 or so games that I want to film, sooner rather than later. I have a lot of data to go through and hopefully it will help me out in the future.
During Phase 2 I would also like to have one tutorial series going on at a time. When I played Rumble Fighter somewhat religiously, my goal was to make one adventure mode tutorial per month. That was a little hard to follow through with, but I tried. Since RF left OGPlanet, I haven't looked into it so I won't be doing the bm tutorials anymore, unless there's a huge clamoring for them (Which I highly doubt). Therefore, I'll be going back and finishing the DMTV movelist first, and then what I've decided to do next is work on path guides for Skylanders. As far as I know there's only one other person who does this and I find his series terribly unpleasant to watch. Even though his videos grate on my nerves he gets a metric butt-ton of views on them, and I know that I can do them better, with more insight than he provides. After I finish path guides for Skylanders, I'm not too certain what the next thing would be, but I've got ~70 skylanders, so the videos will probably take quite a while to get through anyway. I was considering making God breakdown videos for SMITE, but they started the Know Your Enemy series, and I do not think I can compete with the actual game doing the videos. 
Speaking of SMITE, I was thinking of making MMO videos a once-a-month kind of thing. I was strongly considering doing the victory/defeat animations things once a month,  but I think instead I'll just release them when I get a chance. 
That's what I've got so far, and I hope you're just as ready for Phase 2 to start as I am!

PARTY HARDY~!

My birthday is coming up, on Sept. 20th, and that's pretty much what I've been spending most of time doing lately, getting ready for an AWESOME party. My mom will be visiting the favorite child in Arizona, so I have the house almost to myself, since my aunt is still here. Barring being trapped in Shitopia, this is going to probably be the best party I've had in years. 
We ran into a couple of snags, but all of that should be out of the way by the time the 20th rolls around. You might be wondering why I'm writing about my birthday party here on my blog when generally speaking, my blog has been about my internet persona. Well, that's because I'm going to try doing something new at my birthday party this year! 
If all goes according to plan, I'll be streaming a PvP tournament of Skylanders during the party, so all of you guys that are too far away, have a chance to join in the fun too! It's not totally finalized yet, butttt... 

These are the rules as they stand now

I wrote up the rules with Liz in tow so we could come up with the best wording and how to place them. I wrote them down on a sheet of my easycling Instant Whiteboard paper, so I can actually stick them right to the wall. As you can tell from the rules page, I'll actually be running 6 tournaments, SkyGem Master and SkyGoals in Spyro's Adventure and Giants, and Battle Arena and Ring Out in Swap Force. This is also the first time I'll be able to hand out prizes for the tournament! I've got tons of posters, skylanders, and even a few comics and a game or two to give away! However, most of what I have as prizes are also items that are available in my eBay Store, so if you happen to be looking for variant skylanders, or promo posters from NYCC, look no further than that link right there! I'm pretty affordable too! 

I'm trying to make sure that all of my skylanders are at least level 10 for the tournament, so they won't just get knocked out right away by someone with a level advantage, and if other participants want to bring their own army, they are more than welcome. I'm relatively certain that my friend Caitlin and even Tethrinblaze will be bringing their own. In order to facilitate this, I've been streaming a lot of Skylanders lately over on my Twitch channel, so you might wanna check me out there. That's also where the actual tournament will be streamed!
As many of you know, I'm a cheapskate, so rather than buy the first set of Cards Against Humanity Cards, I decided I would print them and laminate them myself, so that's been taking quite a bit of time out of my days as well. I've finished all the black cards and about half of the white ones so far, so that should be over and done with by the 20th. 

I've also outlined the first 20 episodes of Unfair-Y Tales, so once A Dramatic Reading of a Yearbook Signing debuts, expect more videos than you can shake a stick at! 

ALSO ALSO ALSO, on the topic of Phase 2, I just found out that I'm getting an HDTV from GrimJak, and that means that I may be moving up to an HD capture card waaaay ahead of schedule, so that's great news for all of you that enjoy my console content! 

Phase 2

I know I made a post a little while ago about stuff that was coming out soon, but I wanted to update that, so I decided I'd make a new entry. Also... sorry about not posting anything here for like... an entire month... It's been hard for me to come up with ideas about what to write.

Now that I've got something in mind, I'd love to be able to let you guys in on what's going to happen with Phase 2 of my YouTube channel, since a couple people have been saying "Why do you keep saying that?" Allow me to explain!

Calling it "phase 2" is just cooooool! Well, I mean, there's that, but that's not the only thing about it. A Dramatic Reading of a Yearbook Signing is going to preface Phase 2 of my channel, as well as be the opening to Unfair-Y Tales. With that started, I'll move on to a lot of things I've been wanting to get into! I'm done with all the lame tasks I had to do to get my channel up to snuff, so I finally have the time necessary to work on and get ready for new stuff!

A Dramatic Reading is going to come up around the time that Liz and I finish Ibb & Obb, so you can get a feel for the timeframe (There are 15 stages in Ibb & Obb and as of right now we're on 10 or 11). I've got time to work on more semi-scripted stuff, and also just plan out my next videos, so you can expect a lot more obscure game videos, and also plenty more Sunday uploads in the future! 

However, phase 2 isn't all about moving forward and changing stuff up. I also intend to go back and fix up what I'm lacking. I'm going to cycle through the requests I've still got too, but as Liz brought up a very valid point, there's not as much point in me filling out requests for people that don't exist on YouTube anymore, so I'm going to root out the ones that are superfluous as of now, while getting through the meat of them. I also plan on finishing off/continuing series that I used to work on way back when, while also making them even better! 

I will definitely be revisiting the Selected Genre Series, with help from you guys, of course! I ran into a snag with the third episode, as it was fighting games, and I planned on filming Aggressors of Dark Kombat, but couldn't... I will in the future though!  In addition to that, I'll be going back into my 1 vs 3 videos to finish off the rest of the cast, which is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I'll also finish the DMTV Movelist during Phase 2! I'm hoping to have at least one series going at a time that I can upload weekly, like I'm currently doing with Ibb & Obb. Me and Liz will also be branching out during Phase 2 with Couples' VERSUS and Couples' Competition once Ibb & Obb is finished.

I also plan to stream a bit more often than I do now. I'm finally getting a community going, and they're helping me to advance with the games I'm playing, so I've been really excited about streaming for probably.. The first time ever. You can expect plenty more Skylanders streams in the future! 

There's a bunch coming up, so don't forget to tune in! 

MUGEN, I missed you

I've got a lot of games, that much is certain. There's not a lot of them that I actually go back to once I stop playing them, there has to be some crazy urge or pull towards them if I'm going to go back. However, there's only one real engine that I work with, and that's MUGEN. I guess with infinite possibilities, there's always something new to come back to, though I haven't really thought about anything regarding it in a while.
I had a bunch of characters waiting to be tested and I've been compiling a collection of stages to try out, for basically years. I finally went back in and put all the new characters in and playtested them, and now I'm working on adding the stages, which is a lengthy process for me. Actually adding them isn't really a problem, it's finding themes and characters to go on them. For every stage in my MUGEN, I've got a base theme, and then two characters that will appear on that stage in arcade mode and they have their own themes, and it takes me literal hours to find the right themes for most of these guys. All that work, but when it just feels right... That feeling is amazing. I think you could only get that kind of feeling with an engine that you can work with, it's not the same as customizing a character in an already complete game. 
Anyway, I'm actually getting through a lot of the stages in the folder, and I'm ready to jump back in to MUGEN on the regular as well, so you can expect quite a few new matches up on my channel in the near future. I realized recently that I started my channel basically as a MUGEN-only channel, and once I got my first EasyCap, I kinda just stopped caring about MUGEN. 
I've still got a ton of requests, and also tons more stuff since I last had a video up. A lot has changed in my life since I first started YouTube, but I still do play MUGEN, and I intend to go back to it. I have been playing faaaaaaaaaaaaaar too many shooters lately, and I would love to get back into fighting games. What better way to head back into fighters than to play one with everything I love?

Stuff on the horizon

Hey guys! It's been a bit since I posted a blog, and so I figured I'd let you guys in on what's gonna be goin' on, especially regarding my Twitch channel!
Yesterday I decided I would hop on Twitch with some more Swap Force so I had a chance to unbox my new Hyper Beam Prism Break and Phantom Cynder and also so I could try and grab as many stars as I could. Unintential consequences of this happened to be a really great stream and lots of audience participation. I realized afterwards that Skylanders just might be the kind of stream I'm looking for, since I have a purpose (*TO BECOME THE GREATEST PORTAL MASTER EVER!*), to finish off the rest of the challenges in the game, and also the audience can participate by telling me what Skylanders I should be playing! This is great for me, because it also fuels me in completing the game as well! I figure I can still stream Swap Force for a bit, and if need be, I can go back to Spyro's Adventure or Giants, because there's still a few things missing here or there that I can still grab. I also found I have friends that would be willing to join me in playing should they be around and the time is right for a stream, and for that I am grateful.
I was talking it over with my friends about what we could do to share my birthday party fun with everyone, and we decided I could stream a tournament, and the game I figured everyone would have a bit of interest in/could easily learn would be Skylanders, so streaming Skylanders a little more regularly will help me get all the Skylanders I own up to at least level 10 and get most of their abilities, so they'll be battle ready, and no one will be severely outclassed during the tournament, should someone decide to play them in a match!
I've also been working hard on Unfair-Y Tales, which will be prefaced with A Dramatic Reading of a Yearbook Signing. I'm not exactly scripting what's gonna go down with that, but I am outlining it. The next problem with it will be figuring out a time to record it, since I need my family to not be around to fuck it up, and I'll need someone else to be holding my Vita for the actual recording as well. The second part of that isn't as troublesome as the first though, so hopefully it will be soon. Once that begins, Phase 2 of my YouTube channel will commence.
In regards to what's already set to go up my channel, you can expect more SMITE, Dynasty Warriors, Skylanders and Marvel Nemesis in the near future, as well as a return to MUGEN! From Twitch highlights, there'll be more Saints Row the Third and some Ogre Battle up too! 

I'm ready for action, and I hope you guys are too! 

What kind of Let's Play do you prefer?

Hey everyone that reads this! I decided I'd write what I hope will be somewhat of a quick entry today when the thought popped into my head. So, just like the title says, what kind of Let's Play do you prefer? 
Hah, I bet you thought it would be just as short as that! I gotta explain what I mean at least! To me, there are two kinds of Let's Plays. I'm gonna use my series, Couples' Co-Op as an example for the 'every second of play' kind of LP, and pretty much anything the King of Sweden, Robbaz does nowadays as the example for the other kind of Let's Play, where the audience gets to see basically only the parts that the creator deemed fit to show.
I ask because I've come to find that every second LPs like Couples' Co-Op with Ibb & Obb can sometimes be incredibly long, even when the goal is right in front of our faces, and I've begun to start speeding up slower parts (I actually got the idea from another friend of mine, GravityWon). I feel like if we want you guys to share in the experience, I want to give you a glimpse of everything that goes on.
On the other hand, there are LPs where the creator cuts things up to the point that they only show footage that they themselves find interesting. Sometimes it can be a little confusing because you've missed something that led up to what you're seeing, but at least there is very little, let's call it "down time," in each video. 
So I'd like to pose a question! In your opinions, which kind of LP do you find to be more enjoyable to watch?

Schedules

I'm pretty big into organization, which could be a pro or a con depending on how you look at it. My entire life basically revolves around lists and schedules, and I hadn't realized until my aunt came to live with us again, just how much having someone constantly in the way can interfere with my daily goings-on. 
My basic schedule for life at this point is focused on an every-other-day schedule, let's go with As and Bs for now, since that's simple. On A days, I work on YouTube and Twitch stuff all day long, and on B days, I do everything else, but usually this involves eBay maintenance and errands and editing/tutoring if I've got any of that to do. The only thing that basically never changes is that I have an hour every night set aside to talk to Liz, though something usually comes up and gets in the way on most nights, and after that I end up playing Late Night Smite over on Teth's Twitch channel (We usually start around 11 PM, if you're interested! Come join us!). 
I am not really a morning person, so I generally don't get up THAT early, but my aunt has been making my mornings miserable for the most part because she lives in the room next to me, and is always on the phone SCREAMING because she can't hear anything. I end up going to sleep at 3 AM or (usually) later 'cuz of Late Night SMITE and that means I hope to get some restful sleep until it's time to get up, but that usually doesn't happen. If she's not screaming into her phone, she's in the kitchen with the tv at max volume and screaming over it into her phone. I usually end up waking up with a splitting headache, and I just lay in bed uncomfortable until it subsides.
It's not unusual for my family to get in the way, but at least my immediate family surprises me. Though, it's not really a surprise if you know us, if I have something to do, they're certainly going to get in the way. Really, I'm writing this blog to vent, and maybe offer some kind of excuse as to why I don't really take care of what I should be doing on the internet all the time, but especially when it comes to Twitch. I never really planned on streaming as a regular thing, but 80% of the time I do set aside some time to stream, my family ends up getting in the way. 
I know that I said that I wanted to keep this blog related more to my online exploits, and therefore it would reflect Kage_Okami more than Scott, the person behind the keyboard/controller, but I feel that once I start up Unfair-Y Tales, this will probably also start to become more of a personal blog. I've never really been afraid of opening up to people (except for my family, of course), and I think that some topics are too hard to make seem comedic, so I might just reserve the blog entries for other things I'd like to talk about. 
Don't worry, I've outgrown my xanga phase. 

Summer months are slow

It's kind of a little-known fact, at least for most people that don't really sell things or do anything online, but the winter months are actually easier to make money in. It's got something to do with the fact that people are stuck inside/they don't want to go out at much, so they're home most of the time. When the weather is nasty people are also more likely to spend more time on the internet. It's a way of getting out without actually leaving the house. This also increases the chances that people will buy stuff online. Since I'm an eBay seller, I had done a little research and asked around and found that it is pretty common for the summer months to be really slow, but it seems like everything relating to the internet is a little bit slower. 
More people are outside, and even though the media keeps saying everyone is inside on their computers and not enjoying life "the way it should be enjoyed," that just isn't really that true (Like most of what the media says). This is probably the longest dry spell I've ever had on eBay without a sale, and that's pretty sad, since I currently have the most things listed for sale in my shop that I've ever had. A lot of choices, but no one's biting. 
While I never really imagined that YouTube would be my primary source of income or anything like that, what little I make is actually currently the only stable source of income I've got at the moment (I don't have a real job, the one that I had kind of... let's say, got deported, it's a long story...). 
I realize that I should probably advertise more often as well, about everything I do online, and while I am not really one of those people that is too prideful to ask for help, I find it difficult to urge people to take an interest in me. This is one of the many reasons I end up getting screwed over pretty often, but that's another story altogether. One of the things that is very well established in the YouTube community as a way to get your audience to come together is to issue a "Call to arms" at some point in each of your videos. Now, the creators are not asking you to start up a revolution, it just means that you should rally people to do something, and in the case of YouTube, that's like, favorite, comment, subscribe and dislike. 
You're probably a little confused as to why all of those things are positive and then I added dislike to the list, and that's actually a little known fact about YouTube. Likes and Dislikes actually count exactly the same on a video as part of its metadata, and likes and dislikes are what help rank videos in search. For example, a video with 100 likes and a video with 50 likes and 50 dislikes will be ranked the same in search, even though half of those should be 'negative.' So, in reality, you should actually be thanking the people that took the time out of their busy schedules to dislike your videos!
ANYWAY, since I hit you with that knowledge, I just wanted to put out there that I am in fact an eBay seller, and it would be exceptionally helpful for me and also for my YouTube channel (More sales means more gear and games!) if you checked out my eBay store every now and then! I've got tons of stuff up there now and I generally add new merchandise to the store every other day. I've also got a Spreadshirt store thanks to being a Fullscreen partner, so you could grab some new threads I designed and help me out too! Alternatively, if you don't wish to spend any extra money, you could always use my Amazon Associates ID, or use the Amazon search on the side bar of my blog to purchase something, in which case I would get some advertiser fee out of your total purchase on applicable items. You're also helping me out just by reading this, since AdSense is connected to this blog, so I thank you very much for that too!

I also have a PayPal donation button waaay down at the bottom of the page, but I don't feel very comfortable being like "GIMME YO' MONIES PLS." 

NYCC Ticket Fiasco

Going to New York Comic Con has become a thing with me and my friends each year. As of right now though, this year it doesn't seem very likely that pretty much any of us will be going. This is the second time in as many months I've had the... experience? Yeah, let's put it that way... To witness what a big company really thinks of its customers.
The first instance was OGPlanet, the longtime publisher of Rumble Fighter, as well as quite a few other MMORPGs, basically reacting in the most spiteful, negative way to losing Rumble Fighter. It was pretty much a given that OGPlanet had a terribly low player satisfaction rating with Rumble Fighter, but even before that, they had troubles with Lost Saga. Lost Saga's developer simply cut their contract off and went to a new publisher, pretty much out of nowhere. This did not really spur OGPlanet in the right direction when it came to taking care of their customer/fanbase though. Instead they decided they would sit on their laurels with the rest of their games as well. If you've never played a game that is published by OGPlanet, when I say "resting on their laurels," I really am not insinuating anything good.
They rarely patch games that are desperately in need of a patch, and when they do patch the game, they obviously don't actually test anything out in the patch, so it causes a TON more problems. Not to mention the servers are spotty, at absolute best. In any case, when it came time for Nimonix to renew their contract with OGPlanet this year for Rumble Fighter, they just, well, opted out, and all of us as players got to witness exactly how they would handle knowing they were going to lose a game beforehand. The very first thing they did was erase all posts that Nimonix had made regarding the transfer and what we could do about it, and then they went on a spree of deleting information and negative posts from actual players. While there is something inherently wrong with all of that, what's funny about it is that THIS IS THE INTERNET, someone out there probably has proof you screwed up and that's going to come back to bite you in the ass. 
It's true that Rumble Fighter was OGPlanet's cash cow, but the way that they dealt with the situation really does not help their reputation at all. I understand that they were angry about it, but to lash out at the community itself, which they are supposed to be fostering by basically making it impossible for us to transfer to the new publishers, was definitely not in their best interest.
The NYCC thing is not exactly the same, since naturally ReedPop isn't changing publishers or anything like that. Tickets are always staggered for NYCC, and this year, when 3-Day and Single Day tickets were supposed to be sold, the site IMMEDIATELY crashed. I realize that there are probably more and more people interested in NYCC each year, but you should probably do a load test before you release something to the public. After the page came back, they instated a virtual queue for all of us to wait in, with no real indication of where you were or how long you would be waiting. They then told us officially that it was totally okay to refresh the queue because nothing would happen. About an hour later they told us that refreshing the queue page probably would drop you down waaaay to the end of the queue. 
To make matters worse, while all of this was happening, instead of updating their frequently used Facebook page, they spent about an hour trying to delete all of the negative feedback people were leaving as comments. ON TOP OF THAT, after basically lying to us all about whether or not the tickets were sold out, they deleted their post telling us what we should be doing if we wanted our tickets. While the 'right' thing to do would probably be to own up and apologize, they've done basically the worst thing they could possibly do, by pretending it never happened at all. I could understand if this was some small, start up con, but with something as big as this, plenty of people will be bound to notice that you made a mistake, and that the way that you dealt with said mistake was not really the best way to go.
Kenbei brought up a valid point to me, that "reputation>sales" but I think in this case, their reaction was actually very hurtful to their reputation. They made sure we all sat and bought as many tickets as possible, and if they weren't the tickets that we actually wanted because we were lied to, then "oh well." I see a lot of people complaining that there are so many tickets being sold by scalpers right now, and while I see how upsetting and obnoxious of a practice that is, there were literally thousands of us that didn't get the tickets we wanted. 
Almost every kind of ticket sold out within 24 hours of its release, and that means that there was a TON of people trying to attend the event. The place was packed last year, and tickets were out for ~a month or so before they sold out. I can't even imagine how many people are going to be packed like sardines into the event. Either that, or they released exponentially fewer tickets to the masses. Which is very strange to me, since NYCC takes up more of the Javits Center each and every year, which means more floor space, which translates into more attendees. 
In any case... If this is the way businesses want to treat their customers, I'm pretty scared for the future. Seems like the average Joe's like us are just going to get shit on every single day. I'm pretty much happy with not getting a ticket at this point, as I don't really think with the way they handled the situation they deserve support from me this year. If you're still looking for a ticket though, I hear some retailers are gonna be selling tickets at some point. 

Leaderboards ≠ Multiplayer

There was a huge push in the last generation against local multiplayer, either couch co-op or splitscreen versus types, which really distressed me. There has been such a tremendous push occurring lately towards outright getting rid of local multiplayer altogether that I just can't seem to understand. I've heard a lot of arguments against it, and one that I hear a lot is that "it's just an added expense," which makes it sound like it's more difficult to add local multiplayer than online multiplayer. 
That just can't be right though. Personally, I've never worked on a game that was intended to be played online, so I can't really say for absolutely certain, but at least logically it can't possibly be right. If you want online play to work properly, you have to configure the internet connections properly for each person to join up with others, designate proper ports to be accessed, as well as provide servers for everyone to sync up with, unless you intend to function on peer-to-peer play. If you already had multiplayer in mind when you were designing the game then you've already gotten the balancing down at least to a functional level, so I mean, there's no real extra balancing required between online and local. Therefore, I'm reasonably certain that simply finding a way to split the screen would be much simpler and cost-effective than all of the stuff you need to do to get the game to function online.
That being said, another thing that really irks me about games nowadays is that they tout the name 'multiplayer' when really all they mean is that you can see other players' scores on a global or area-wide leaderboard. I don't understand who thought that being able to see someone's score was the same as actually playing with them, whether it was online or not. This is not multiplayer, though I suppose it does create a sense of competition with other players. 
While it's nice that there's a huge push for globalization in all forms of media nowadays, and it's amazing to be able to play against someone that lives across the country, or even across the globe from you, there's something missing that used to be there in a lot of games. I'm not saying the experience is exactly the same for everyone, but I absolutely thrive on a group getting together to play something. I love my friends, and I love having them over just to play things. Back when we were children during parties, I distinctly remember playing things on the Genesis and SNES where we would be doing a two-player game and people would line up and swap out at a character's death, this ESPECIALLY being the case with TMNT: The Hyperstone Heist & X-Men 2 on the Genesis and Turtles in Time on the SNES. That sense of camaraderie you get sitting with your friends is amazing. 
A lot of people think that gamers are solitary creatures, but we're actually some of the most sociable people on the planet. While it may be hard to get a glimpse of our world if you're looking in the window from the outside, once you're in, you're pretty much golden. It's hard to find a game that no one else in the world likes, so you're bound to make some new friends in any situation. I can't tell you how many times personally I've been able to include someone in a local multiplayer game that never would have participated otherwise. I've helped so many international students feeling alone and scared open up to people around them through video games that I feel like I should teach a class on how to make people that think they're excluded from everything realize they are more than welcome to be included in things if they just let it happen! 
But... I digress. There's also a similar push to add multiplayer where it's unnecessary. A lot of games nowadays, especially in series that are known for their single player campaigns, have multiplayer sections seemingly tacked on to later iterations of the series. While it's great and all to get people together around something, sometimes it's a totally unnecessary addition. If you're not going to spend the time on something to make it right, then I don't really see a point in adding it. Sure, the idea might help grab a few new people, but the backlash from releasing an incomplete product will most likely hurt you far worse in the long run.  
I see more than a few games that have different options when playing online and local, which really confuses me. Games like Street Fighter IV and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 have different lobby and match options, some of which you can't even change when you play online, but you can when you play offline. If you have it for one, why not have it for the other? You've already done the work once, so you might as well just move it over, it can't really be that difficult. 
We need to find a balance between single and multiplayer, and I think game developers need to understand that such a balance exists in the first place before we can actually take a deeper look at it. Most games have their own strengths and weaknesses, and it's important that you work with those in mind. You can't just add leaderboards and say your game is multiplayer now, that's just not how it works. Take Skylanders for example, they say there's an online component of the game, which happens to be a leaderboard. That has absolutely no bearing on the game, and I honestly care nothing for it at all.  
Humans are social creatures, and that feeling of inclusiveness and camaraderie you get playing a game with someone can be exhilarating, but in my opinion it's even greater when you can reach out and touch that person for an extra high five or even a clink of beer cans. I've got friends that I hang out with, people we all know and love like GrimJak and D-T, and I absolutely hate the idea of having to send them home so we can play together. That just doesn't make sense to me, when I could have even more fun while they're sitting right there next to me. I can tell you that while I don't frown on a little friendly competition, it's just not the same when I'm looking at someone's score, as opposed to actually seeing them work for that score, whether that be online or in person.