Issue : Games : Wheedle

We Were Here Together is a game about tundras.

A long time ago a friend said the most disrespectful thing to me. We were talking about what we wanted to be when we grew up because we were dumb kids who truly believed what you want has any bearing at all on who you become.

I told the kid I wanted to make video games. The kid looked me dead in my corneas and said, "Nah man, I can tell you are going to find a stable job, get a house, settle down and have some kids, and just be that old guy watering the lawn at 9pm. "

I was ready to punch that dude dead in the jaw. How dare he say some shit like that to me! Find a stable job? Homeownership!? Have a peaceful and fulfilling life?! This fool had me all kinds of fucked up and he needed to know, so I told him he was tripping and set out to do none of that.

And guess what, mission accomplished.

After twenty years of contract gigs and no stable living arrangements, children, or foundation by which to figure out the rest of my life; midway through my life, I can now admit that maybe that kid was onto something and perhaps, perhaps, I was, at that moment, Boo-Boo-Da' Foo'.

I often wonder if I had just listened to what the kid was saying and moved toward that life, who would I be? Anyway, I stuck with that video game dream, out of spite I suppose, and here I am. Is what it is.

Last I heard of that kid he got addicted to meth and was stabbed to death in a Bakersfield bathroom. I always wanted to thank him for thinking so highly of me as to wish me a calm life, but then he died. He wanted to be a mechanical engineer, btw.

Now that I try and think about it no one I know at my age range is a homeowner. No one I know has worked the same job over seven years, no one I know that has kids is with the person they had the kid with, and none of us ever plan to retire. If it's this bad with us, what's the next generation got in store?

On my drive to work, there is this old guy out there on his lawn watering a shrub. Green hose, thumb over the nozzle so it sprays wide, a big old grin on his face.

Some days I want to punch him in his smug mouth. Some days I want to stop and politely ask him to die. Some days I want to ask him how he did it. I already know the answer to the last part, that is what he was shooting for the whole time.

Anyway, We Were Here Together is a chill game. And like most things, better experienced with a friend. Shouts to info, rip Tb rip TC rip Tall-t. Love is wise, hatred is foolish. Get out there and do great things, we believe in you. Also Jobs.

The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : People : RoboCalls    

Issue : Games : Blandish

Negative Latency sounds like a made-up thing, but I guess it's not.

It's the latest tool in the box Google is using to try and convince people to invest in Stadia.

Oh, let me back up. Google Stadia is some kind of gaming console, that is not a console, but it also sort of is in every way a console. I don't know anymore. What it is supposed to do is to let you play video games over the internet. I'll give you a second to put your socks back on, cause I know they just got blown off.

"Play video games over the internet, you say? Tell me more." Well, let me tell you that with Google Stadia you can play all kinds of "Big" games on the internet, and all you need to do is pay money. Oh wait, and you need a hella fast internet connection. Actually, you need a lot of shit to make it work right. But the crux of the situation is that all you need is love.

Anyway, negative latency is a real thing because Google harnessed the power of machine learning to create a way to predict the inputs a user makes in a video game so that the computer doesn't have to wait for your slow ass to make up your mind. How brilliant is that?

That is legit what negative latency is, a computer doing stuff for you so you are not slowing the gameplay down with thinking. This is how Google is marketing its new product. Using the word "Negative" to lead into how game players, people that define themselves by deft hand-eye coordination and input manipulation, don't have to do that anymore because now there is a better way.

This is where we are now.

The president is streaming on Twitch, hot off the latest mass shooting, streamed on Twitch. Veteran game industry professionals are on a mass exodus the hell out of Dodge. Game companies are finally getting to the "Fuck you, pay me" part of their relationships with Chinese equity firms. Esports has still not made a dollar over the open market in twenty years. And Google is working on video games that play themselves.

If you do not see a catastrophic market crash happening by Q3 of 2023 at the latest you are a fucking moron. And if you are an investor who put chips in because you listened to these bullshitting, carpetbagging, so-called "Gaming experts" against your better judgments on how all markets work, you are even dumber. I don't know how else to say it. Maybe I should just call it negative latency.

But to end on a positive, Red Dead Redemption is coming to PC. I am legitimately excited. I know, gigantic hypocrite, but it looks like a fun game.

Anyway, rip Tb rip TC rip Tall-T. Love is wise, hate is foolish. Get out there and do great things, we believe in you. Also Jobs.

The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : People : Cajole     

Issue : Games : Redound

Noita is a game about the procedure.

The Q Score is a measurement of familiarity and appeal of a brand, celebrity, company, or entertainment product. The higher the Q Score, the more popular a person, place, or thing, is. This is how advertising, marketing, media, and public relations make decisions.

Panelists are chosen as representative samples of the population. The way they respond to an athlete, brand, celebrity, or entertainment offering (ex. a TV show), or licensed property create a metric that decides if that thing will continue to exist.

Panelist populations are segmented by demographic groups such as age, education level, gender, income, or marital status. Respondents are given choices for each item being surveyed.

A. One of my favorites
B. Very Good
C. Good
D. Fair
E. Poor
F. Never hear of

Q Scores are calculated by counting how many respondents answered positively (A-C) relative to the number of respondents that answered negatively (D or E).

Q = liked/known x 100
Q = disliked/known x 100

Jack Landis created the Q score in 1963. Who was Jack Landis? Was Jack Landis a good guy? Nobody knows, he doesn't have a Q score.

Everything else does, tho. George Clooney, The Smurfs, Shaquille O'Neil, Game of Thrones characters, The revolution in Hong Kong. There is a popularity score attached to them provided by your racist uncle because he had time to pick up the phone or to take a Facebook quiz.

The scariest thing to happen to a creative in the entertainment industry is for a product to get popular. That means it becomes measurable. That means there is a meeting on the horizon. In that meeting, there will be you, the producer(s), and a room full of suits.

In that room, they will talk among themselves. When they get tired of congratulating themselves they will move on to you. They will say, "X is doing so well. Can we get more for X to do on the project?" You worked a long time creating a product that told a story. You did that work because you are a fan of the thing and want to do right by it. The project's hypothesis proved itself through success. Now, these people are saying, "Fuck all that, the people know what they want. Don't take a risk on what they haven't seen yet."

You know you can't change anything and keep the project on track. Lotta assets need to be changed, a lot of hurt feelings, a lot of betrayed fans. The thing they want more of isn't even that interesting in the long run. It was interesting in juxtaposition to that few moments in the story. They are asking you to scuttle the ship because some random person professed to "liking" boats with holes in them at some point in the past.

So you, as that creative. Do know what you say? You say, "Yeah, we can."

You say that because you don't want to sit in that car outside your house waiting to tell your S/O that you lost another job "Fighting the good fight." You don't want to go back to set to tell a team of 200 people depending on you that their kids can't eat because "Art." But most of all you say yes because you know you lost the minute you took the job. This was always the job.

They say numbers don't lie, people do. I'm sure that idiom has a high Q Score because it does a perfect job of saying something that sounds smart but gets exponentially dumber the longer you think about it.

When I see fans losing their shit on the project leads over how the project played out over time, I don't feel a type of way for anyone anymore. I just wonder if there will ever again be a time art isn't a metric.

Anyway, shouts to info. Rip TB rip TC rip Tall-T. Love is wise, hatred is foolish. Get out there and do great things, we believe in you. Also Jobz.

The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : People : Accrue