Games (still) Matter

Posted on By Wil

I’ve been playing a lot of video games for work (I can’t say exactly what, but I should be able to pretty soon), so in addition to being late to the party on Journey, I’m also late to the party on God of War (I know. I know.).

These games couldn’t be more different, but I loved them both for their own, very different reasons. Journey felt like a meditation, and I found myself actually feeling pretty emotional toward the end of it. It’s so beautiful, I’m going to play it again when I have time.

God of War is so intense, and so fast-paced, it’s not something I could play to relax or unwind the way I could with Journey, but holy crap is it fun to level up skills and beat up on the bad guys! In fact, I had so much fun playing it last night, I completely lost track of time and it was 4am when I finally realized that I should probably go to sleep.

And my thumb hurts in that video game controller pad way that I haven’t experienced since the old Sega Genesis days and their attendant marathon sessions of NHL 94.

Just a quick thing to think about and consider, because if this hasn’t occurred to me in a long time, maybe it hasn’t occurred to some of you who are reading this: video games are supposed to be fun and entertaining. Games can certainly be art, and games can and do run the whole range of experiences from simple narrative experiences like Dear Esther to complex experiences like Civilization to challenging team-based experiences like Destiny or WoW. Games can and do entertain us the way a movie or TV shows does, but I don’t think I would have stayed up until 4am watching movies last night.

I’ve said before that games matter, and I continue to believe that (whether they are tabletop or video games). I also continue to believe — and this is the point I am taking a very long time to make — that games are supposed to be fun, entertaining, distractions.

A lot of the oxygen in the world that supports video games has been taken out of the room in the last several months by dickwagons, and I know that I lost interest in spending lots of time playing games, and didn’t even want to identify myself as a gamer.

But when I spent some time actually playing some games, I remembered why I identified myself as a gamer in the first place. That’s something I’d forgotten about, and if you’ve forgotten about it, too, maybe this will inspire you to dust off a controller and dive back in.

TITANSGRAVE: The Old Chaotic Neutral

Posted on By Wil

So I really loved that Leonard Balsera came up with some cool beer names for the Beer Baron in episode one of Titansgrave.

It appears that the Internet agrees with me, and a lot of folks have asked me if we’re going to release a homebrew recipe for The Old Chaotic Neutral.

I would love to do that, but I’m not sure what style it will be … so maybe you can help me out?

[poll id=”2″]

I’ll leave this poll open for a few days, and get to work when a clear consensus emerges. If you have further ideas or thoughts, please let me know in comments.

Titansgrave is now on YouTube

Posted on By Wil

Our release schedule for Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana is

We’re doing this for a bunch of business reasons that aren’t interesting enough to go into, and because we’re working on making Geek and Sundry dot Com a destination for videos, sort of the way a TV channel works. Like, you go to ESPN for sports, you go to literally any other cable channel for bullshit reality TV, you go to MTV when you never, ever, ever want to see a music video, or you go to Comedy Central to see comedy.

Based on the feedback I’m reading all over the Internets, the video player Geek and Sundry is using sucks for a lot of you (and I hate it). I just wanted all of you who have expressed frustration with the player to know that I hear you, and I’ve conveyed your feelings and concerns to the business people at the Mothership who can hopefully do something to address it, and make it better for everyone.

I’m not sure that I can do anything about it, but I want you all to know that I’m doing my best.

And now, here’s episode zero and episode one of Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana on YouTube, for your embedding and TV streaming and sharing needs.

Also, we’re partnering with DFTBA Records to make some cool Titansgrave merchandise, if you wanted to get in on that action.

 

#SaveTheBeer!

Posted on By Wil

For weeks, I’ve been a wreck. The stress dreams were relentless, my appetite was unpredictable, and I got massively sick for the first time in years.

My depression and anxiety have been as bad as they’ve been in months, and it’s been a challenge to get to the end of every day.

This is pretty normal for me when I care deeply about something, and I know that all of this has been anticipation about the release of Titansgrave, which is something I’ve been actively working on for about a year, and something I’ve wanted to produce since Tabletop first began.

I feel a responsibility to the cast and crew, to the editors, to the director, to our partners at Green Ronin, and to the thousands of backers who made it possible for us to create the show.

I’ve been making creative decisions every day, watching edits and rewatching edits and giving notes on edits and watching the edits with those notes applies so much, I started to lose perspective on the story. When I’m spending all of my energy focusing on what I can cut and what I need to change, that’s all I can see, and it’s easy for me to forget that there’s all this stuff there that’s genuinely cool.

My deepest fear has been that we wouldn’t be able to share with the audience how we felt while we played, that we couldn’t be able to communicate the fun, the tension, the camaraderie, the anticipation and excitement. I was worried that everything I thought was awesome, because I was there, wouldn’t translate.

By the way, I felt exactly this way before Tabletop was released, so this is nothing new for me.

As I told Ivan yesterday on Twitch: all I could hear was Carrie’s mom in my head, hysterically screaming that they were all going to laugh at me.

Well, it’s about 24 hours later, and contrary to everything I’ve been taught, I’ve been reading the comments. It looks like the hard work of our team from the first few ideas I wrote down in a notebook to the first few steps our party took together to the final edit I signed off on last week was worth it.

So far, everyone seems to love the characters, the players, and the story as much as I do … and that makes me so incredibly excited because I know what the future holds for all of us, and now I wish it was next week as much as you do.

Thanks for watching, everyone, and thank you for your feedback. A very, very special thank you to our backers, and to everyone involved in the creation and production.

Oh, and whoever decided that #SaveTheBeer was going to be a thing? You get +3 to awesome today.