50,000 Monkeys at 50,000 Typewriters Can't Be Wrong
I have many things to write about, and many experiences to share.
But right now I am emotionally and physically exhausted, so here’s a picture of a Beholder:
Did you go to GenCon? What did you play/buy/playtest/demo that you loved? Any huge hits or misses you want to share with the rest of us?
I wanted to have the whole series finished and released by today, so we could have the book come out after the story had wrapped up. Life happened, and now we won’t wrap up the whole thing for another two weeks.
This means that on Thursday, the script for Titansgrave — including the two unaired episodes — is going to be available. This means that anyone who wants to can find out how it ends.
I’m not the boss of you, but I beg you not to skip ahead, if you’ve been following the story week to week. I watched an edit of the finale yesterday, and it really is some of the best stuff we’ve done. If you know what happens before you watch it (at least, according to the module), you’re going to rob yourself of some cool stuff.
I want you to buy the book. I want you to love the book. I want you to run The Ashes of Valkana for people who haven’t watched the show. I want you to have your own adventures that are inspired by the book.
But I don’t want you to spoil the end for yourself, or for anyone else. So please, read carefully.
Thanks for listening, and if you do get the book, I hope you have fun in our world.
Oh, speaking of Titansgrave … here’s today’s episode:
And here’s a delightful song a young woman wrote about Jeremy:
Finally, if you have found or created Titansgrave fanart of any kind, I really want to see it so I can share it with the cast and the team. I’d love it if you’d leave links in the comments.
Today’s Conversations with Creators features a conversation with Naughty Dog, who you assuredly know brought us legendary games like Uncharted and The Last of Us (which as it turns out is in my top five games of all time).
I’m particularly fond of this episode, because I just loved talking with these guys about a couple of my favorite games, which it turns out were developed by their studio … but I don’t want to talk about that today. Today, I want to talk about Satoru Iwata, who died far too young at 55, this past weekend.
Satoru Iwata’s contributions to the gaming industry have touched every developer, every programmer, every designer, and every publisher. I wanted to take a moment and acknowledge how profoundly he touched my life, without ever knowing that I even existed.
I’ve been playing console video games since the Atari 2600. I’ve been playing handheld video games since Merlin. I grew up in arcades during their golden age, and video games have been part of the fabric of my life for almost as long as I can remember. But it was my NES and my Gameboy that tipped me from a kid who loved games into a kid who lived games.
For those of you who are maybe a little younger than me (probably a lot of you), let me give you a little context. Early consoles had limited graphics capabilities, and while most programmers used that to their advantage, the thing we always wanted was something that would truly let us recreate the arcade experience in our homes. Colecovision did that to some extent, but the NES was flawless. Games like Excitebike, Mario Bros, Donkey Kong, Duck Hunt, and Super Mario Bros. were actually in my house, on my television, exactly like they were in arcades. This was a huge leap for my generation, but then Nintendo and their partners began releasing original NES games that fundamentally changed what console gaming was. Games like Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Blades of Steel, and R.C. Pro-Am kept me up all night long during many weekends and summer nights, sitting in the CRT glow of my 27” television, fueled by caffeine and the kind of salty snacks that I can’t even think about eating late at night — or at all — now that I’m almost 43.
So … that was a lot more context than I intended, but now that you have it, I hope that you’ll understand why I want to dedicate this episode of Conversations with Creators to Satoru Iwata. It isn’t unreasonable to consider that this episode — and, indeed, the entire series — wouldn’t even exist (at least with me in it) without the contributions Mr. Iwata gave to the industry. I wanted to include a graphic in the episode itself, but we were already locked and that wasn’t possible, so here we are.
I hope you enjoy today’s new episode. Next week, I have a conversation with Trey Arch, where I find out that I like FPS games more than I thought I did, even though I am terrible at them.
It’s become an annual San Diego Comicon tradition: HopCon, at Stone Brewing’s Liberty Station. We release W00tstout, have a big old party, and tap a bunch of rare kegs and interesting casks for fans of great beer to enjoy … and the whole thing is a fundraiser for The Hero Initiative!
This year, something special is happening, and I’m turning it over to Mike Palmer to tell you exactly what that is:
Among the über-cool upgrades we have in store for Hop-Con 3.0, we’re taking the giant plot behind building 12 (aka the garden bar) and turning it into the HOP-CADE! Our dream of creating an outdoor arcade and beer garden from last year has been realized. We’ll have only IPAs on tap, our oversized lawn games (Jenga, Connect Four, etc), two pinball machines (Twilight Zone and Theater of Magic), Donkey Kong, Miss Pac-Man and a Skeeball machine. Not enough? How about an arcade game with a 25 foot screen driven from a used beer barrel converted into a vintage arcade console? This last feat will be created by our friend Hunter Bond, Troll Slayer and resident Pinball Mechanic at J!NX, with custom metal routing by San Diego’s ReproHaus. This is all in addition to the five vintages/variations of Stone Farking-Wheaton w00tstout, exclusive beers we brewed with Aisha Tyler and Kevin Eastman, epic food and all-around geeky good times. See you on July 8th!
Tickets and more deets can be found here…
hopcon.stonebrewing.com
I think this is pretty great. This year, HopCon is not just for people who love great beer, it’s also for people who love great beer and classic arcade games, which is basically a Venn Diagram describing me.
Tickets are going fast, so if you want in, go get yours today!
Chapter 3 of Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana is online, like, RIGHT NOW.
The Beer Baron and Keg-E bid farewell to the party after considerable celebration and revelry. In an attempt to learn more about their mysterious orb, the group heads to Nestora in search of Farkiah the Antiquarian. Excited for an opportunity to bargain, barter, and more importantly, shop, the heroes quickly head to the market district, but they soon find that it holds more than goods. What does the city-state have in store for our heroes? Tune in to find out.
Looking for sweet Titansgrave loot? Check out the store here!
This is a reminder, because we think this seminar will fill up quickly, and if you care about that sort of thing, I want you to be able to join us:
And if you do care about that sort of thing, you probably want to be reading Chris Pramas’s blogs about the game design. for Titansgrave.
This happened last night:
I was checking my network speed, because Netflix was trying to stop me from watching the end of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and nothing would stream off my media server in the house. I couldn’t figure out exactly what was wrong (I even tried turning it off and back on again), and the whole troubleshooting experience felt like trying to get the Babel Fish. But, eventually, things sorted themselves out and I got that insanely fast network speed, so I could finish the show.
In general, I liked it. The first few episodes were fantastic, and some of the middle ones were real stinkers, but I kept watching all the way to the end because Ellie Kemper is just so fantastic and such a joy. The show has a lot of problems that have been discussed to death elsewhere, so I’ll just leave it at that.
Finally, this is a show I’m doing for Playstation Network:
We’ll release new episodes, every Tuesday in the US and Canada, on PlayStation Store. You’ll get them for the low, low price of FREE on your PS3, PS4, and PS Vita. What’s that? You loaned your device to your cousin and she went out of town, locked it in her house, and didn’t give you the key? Don’t worry. If you don’t want to try out those lock-picking skills just yet, we’re also going to make our episodes available on PlayStation’s YouTube channel.
So, I hope you’ll join me and some really interesting people as we talk about games like Destiny, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Uncharted, The Last of Us, God of War and more. I’ve already taped a couple of episodes, and I’ve had some really fascinating conversations about the similarities and differences between videogames and movies, the origins of Destiny, and exactly how The Last Of Us scared the hell out of us all, while simultaneously making us care about Joel and Ellie more than we care for actual people we work with in our real lives. Yes, Mark, I’m looking at you. You are never going to get a spot in my zombie survival compound, Mark.
I’m actually on my way to the studio in about ten minutes to do interviews with the team that brought us Black Ops, and the Santa Monica Studio team, who brought us God of War and Journey, among others.
Let me tell you this: I am profoundly late to the party on Journey, but it’s maybe the most beautiful and emotional experience I’ve ever had playing a game. If you have the means, I highly recommend it.