Issue : Games : Testimonial

 

Tell Me Why is a game about experiential growth.

I was on a call with this journo and they asked me about esports. What I think about it, how it was in the olden days, where it is going. That kind of thing. In particular, they wanted to know about the fighting game community, as I have been grinding away in the mud since the early nineties. 

Instead of the usual spiel - esports is a hot property right now, massive growth potential, positioned well in this covid landscape, yadda yadda yadda, I decided to be honest. Yeah, I know. Famous last words.

I told them the fighting game community is in the same place everyone is right now. Depressed, toxic, adrift, and surviving off pure instinct. Imagine how well that statement went over on the call and subtract a few points for my offputting speech style and you are in the ballpark of where the mood of the call went.

Journo asked me to paint a picture for him, so I did:

I said the best comparison I could muster was to say that I began smoking cigarettes at the same time I began playing Street Fighter. The same month, same day. I know that because I started smoking because I wanted to be part of the crowd of players who skateboarded and smoked in the parking lot of my local arcade. 

I didn't like smoking, didn't want to smoke, I just wanted to be part of a community. I wanted them to like me. It's over twenty-five years later and I still smoke, even though my health is failing, even though it's wildly expensive, even though the act omits me from more communities than it gains me access to.

Yet here I am. Every reason to let it go, the only reason to continue - It's part of who I decide I am every day. The esports community decides who it is every day. The gaming community as a whole decides who they want to be every day. The world decides who it wants to be every day. Such is life.

The journo, after a long silence, asked if I ever believed I would be ready to quit smoking.

I said, "Man, I'm scared if I let go of that part of me, won't be nothing left."

Journo said, "I'm sure something would take its place."

Anyway, shout's to information. 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 : Tandem

Issue : People : Zhuzh

 

Mortal Shell is a game about physiology.

I used to think kids are dumb because they just are, but now I think they are dumb because they just don't understand that the first and final boss in the game of life is time. I am forty and thankfully about halfway through this goddamn farce we call existence, and couldn't be happier about it. 

I know that sounds like some emotional doomer drivel but catch this, a proper understanding of time gives you the ability to not be scared you are running out of time, not feel like you are misusing yours, you just sort of end up hanging around this large shopping mall called life, bored out of your mind, carrying all this baggage.  

Starting around age fourteen I became obsessed with the concept that you can "beat" the game of life. Like there was some unspoken ruleset where if you accomplished this or accumulated that in this amount of time then you set yourself up for the "Good Ending."

So for a long time I beat myself up because I thought I was falling behind, that there were people winning at life at eighteen years old, at twenty-four years old, at thirty-six years old. Or that there were things that happened that would haunt me to my old age. The idea of how fuckin stupid that sounds to me at this age is astounding. 

And I'm only forty. I can't imagine how these things sound to a sixty or eighty-year-old person. I mean, I don't really have to imagine, on Reddit, there are ten-year-old children having whole ass conversations with fifty-year-old people and the scary part, you can't tell who is who.

That's the scary part about the internet. It allows the essence of who a person is, their communicated thoughts, to shed corporeal form and exist in a Peter Pan community. Now an old person who wants to be a young person never has to leave Hot Topic. No existential crises, no growth, just pure escapist catharsis.

I used to wonder how memes would evolve. As in, "What's up," evolved to "sup," evolved to "Image of a person moving their head in a way as to provide the clear visual as to what the gesture means." Turns out, they won't. 

And don't get me wrong I never expected the internet to ever be anything more than the tool it is. Give a hammer and nails to a group of dummies expecting to come back to a group home and not a bunch of dead dummies and a shitty house with one person in there is wishful thinking but, wait, what was I talking about? 

Oh, that's right, time. Kids, none of the people or things you care about, none of the accomplishments you chase, none of the humiliations you suffered, will matter as much as you think they will in the future. All I'm trying to say is I know shit sucks rn and feels like it's never gonna change, but it's not as bad as you think, and don't give up. Nipsey said it best, its a marathon.

Anyway, Mortal Shell is like a Dark Souls situation but more forgiving at a better clip. Look just stop pretending you have shit better to do and play it. It's something. 

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 : Games : Dulcet

Issue : People : Yaw

 

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is a game about momentum.

Kamala Harris, huh? That's the move? It's fine. I don't even care anymore. I was known to say it could literally be an Iron Maiden VP pick, the band or the torture device, doesn't matter, we rocking with that. And they went and tapped both.

I thought I used to know the devil as something to avoid, today the devil is just something on the board. I used to think voting an extension of the bread and circus, and still do, to some extent, but I'll be damned if it hasn't become a way to get to November one way or another. Like a Netflix series you can't stand but if you aren't watching it, what are you doing?

I never thought I would understand what Cypher was talking about with that steak. Still don't agree, but I get it. 

Being raised in Nor-Cal we minorities were taught that DA Harris, now Senator Harris is the devil. Like one of those old west Sheriffs. If you were a young black man whose case fell on her desk it was a wrap. No soft sentence, no crime left behind. I was of two minds about it. I mean, the bay area in those days was a crime, for her, the fish were jumping in the boat. Criminals were doing their job well, why wouldn't she?

I ran across her once back in the day. It was some family event with the good side. Oh, by the way, for people that didn't grow up a certain way. Some black families, well, families in general, literally have a duality in the family. 

A side of the family that hustles, and a side of the family that takes care of people and maintains order. And the crazy part, they both show up to the barbeque and eat and laugh without judging each other, knowing that one day they may be on polar opposite sides of an issue. Crazy right? 

Anyway, it was the early 2000's, I was a twenty-something military indoctrinated idiot dragged to Alameda for some HBCU political function, and she had just become DA. I was at the snack table stuffing my face with crudites and she strikes up a conversation. Of course, I don't know who she is, don't care, and my internal routine begins, which is, receive smalltalk as an attack, uncontrollable armpit sweat, and the complete inability to control the rhythm or pitch of my voice.

It was a long time ago, but to my recollection, the conversation went like this:

DA Harris: How's the food?

Me (full mouth): *HRsmP*

DA Harris: Oh, well they tell me you are military, thank you for your service.

Me: *Shrug* It is what it is. Getting out soon.

DA Harris: Oh? Ever thought of joining the police force?

Me: No.

DA Harris: Why not? don't like cops?

Me: I like good cops, ain't met any around here.

DA Harris: *Laughs* Well maybe you can become the good cop you know.

Me (Reaching my Smalltalk limit): Maybe.

DA Harris: Well, it was nice to meet you. Also, you are hella handsome and buff.

Me: Calm down lady.

----------------------------------

I made the last part up but that was the gist. I didn't find out who she was until the ride home when I told the fam that some lady was hitting on me at the food table and they started yelling at me when I retold my version of the conversation. 

I fell in love with the senator that day for many reasons, some of them having to do with her being very, very, veeery attractive. But most of all it was the way she carried herself. An Oakland girl with magnetic confidence and an earnestness that is hard to explain, you have to experience.

I'm proud I get the chance to vote for the best cop I know. Which ain't saying much, but still. But it's also bittersweet because the reality is an old fuckin' goofy and a hall monitor paladin are walking into the arena for a no-holds-barred pit fight where truth is nerfed and lies are buffed. 

They made the choice that makes the most moral and politically strategic sense. That in and of itself proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that they have no fuckin idea what they are up against. Best of luck. All told, the true winner in this pick is Maya Rudolf. Can't be mad at that.

Anyway, rip tb rip tc rip tall-t. Love is wise, hatred is foolish. Get out there and do great things, also jobs.

The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : Games : Horizon  

Issue : People : Demure

No Straight Roads is a game about forced perspective.

After my last post, the homie got in touch to perform a wellness check and report a bug. He reminded me that while I didn't directly monetize Default Tester the blog I did in fact attempt to monetize Default Tester some years ago and in fact, it was a whole ass company with a website, staff, and a failed Kickstarter campaign. To that, I responded, "Oh yeah... that."

See, the reason I managed to forget such an important part of my personal history was that at the time I didn't consider Default Tester the company an actual company because I was using it as a cover to test a data aggregation hypothesis.

Ok, this may take some explaining, let me back up.

Way back in 2009 I was a video game industry platform quality assurance engineer who played a lot of Team Fortress 2. Over time I became a well regarded local in now-defunct global community ironically called No Heroes.

At the time the internet as we know it today was just taking shape and games like TF2 and servers like NH became the communal intersection for tech-heads, hacktivists, and 4Chan trolls. Valve provided the perfect storm of global reach, solid gameplay, and lax restrictions. To say you could find no greater hive of scum and villainy this side of the darknet would be an understatement.

Hiding from such folk is a fool's errand, so pretty much everyone knew who I was and what I did, and likewise. It was never a big deal, most people would do was complain or try and press me on bug fixes. But after the company I worked for suffered a security breach I was very salty and made my feelings known.

An acquaintance got in touch to let me know it was all just business and to not take it personally. I was like, "I'm not mad, just disappointed, but also can you please unpack this for me?" They explained that while they did not do it they understood who did and why. That the hack was not malicious, but necessary for the data points. There wasn't anyone to catch, it was a business transaction. But they could use a patsy, and all of my stomping was noisy, so just chill.

At the time I was stone-cold dumb, still am, but I was then too. So I needed more explanation. They explained that no one was interested in the credit card info and bankrupting anybody, but the data was necessary for marketing purposes.

The most important info was the email addresses that would be used to track where people went on the internet and what social networks they used. Basically, the who, what, when, where, and why they did things so they could create a profile to guide a user anywhere they wanted and sell them things targeted directly to their soul.

I still didn't fully understand the full danger of anyone with access to such data and why it would have to be stolen, but I knew enough to understand the implication. I asked why they were telling me all of this, and their answer was threefold. One, because you were crying about it. Two, because there is nothing you can do about it. Three, because we like you and think over time you will find it funny like we do.

The information sent me down the rabbit hole. In my spare time, I began researching companies that could possibly use that information, but it turned out literally every single company could use that information. Then I started realizing that social media sites were like free aggregators for that exact information. And then I started noticing companies like Cambridge Analytica popping up, and I thought to myself, "Ok, all of this tracks, but it can't possibly be that easy to get access to such personal data."

So I started a company in line with any other startup that could use such data and got in touch all of the types of organizations that sold such data to see what they would just give some random person that asked for it. And, wow. It was enough information to sway elections, sway opinions, to sell a person anything. And they knew exactly what to do with it (I swear that in 2012 this was a revelation, today, not so much.) I had to imagine there were people way smarter and capable than me that figured this out, so why wasn't this all over the news?

I realized the homie was 100% right and I was a dog chasing a car, I caught it, but now what?

Turns out there was no now what. I tried to tell people at my work and in my personal life, with obvious results. Then came the seven stages of grief, not sure which one I am on now. I had also created a whole ass company with people depending on me, and one thing I neglected to do was let anyone know what I was doing or why I was doing it.

When it fell apart because I just didn't care enough to invest in its success, the look on my teams face as the seams came loose made me realize that no matter the narrative I created in my head, in my quest to defeat the baddie, I became the baddie, at least to the people closest to me. So I erased the data from my head to keep going. My selfish streak continued.

I had convinced myself that when I had definitive proof then I could stop lying to everyone because they would have to accept I wasn't crazy and that there were a group of individuals accumulating massive amounts of information that they were using to corrupt the global communication server in ways that may be irreparable.

Boy was I wrong. About so much.

Doesn't even matter if any of my soapbox preachings turned out to be true. If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't have worried so much about the macro and focused on my loved ones and the peace I can hold, because looking back, they are all I see.

Anyway, looking at how 2020 is going I can fully admit that I was obviously crazy because none of my dark premonitions came to pass. False alarm folks, carry on. Also, thanks for checking in big homie, hope all is well on the other side of the world.

Oh, and P.S.: If you are wondering why I am openly admitting to all this stuff, I will say I never would have previously but please ask yourself, "Is this the craziest thing I found on the internet today?" I'm betting it isn't.

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 : Games : Ombudsman

Issue : People : Vituperative

Paper Mario: The Oragami King is a game about folding.

There are over 600 million blogs in the world, spread out over 1.7 billion websites. There are 31 million active bloggers posting at least once a month in the United States alone.

I say that to say I am always humbled when someone gets in touch saying they enjoy my weird little blog and wish to explore the possibility of growth and monetization. The conversation usually goes south when I inform them that I am fully aware that this blog is unable to be monetized because should that happen it is at best highly immoral and at worst highly illegal.

I am literally stealing every piece of content you see on this thing with full knowledge of what I'm doing. I simply don't care, and only continue to do so because no one is stopping me. No one is stopping me because one, I don't have a large enough community to pull aggro, two, I am not receiving any money for it, and three, the platforms (Google/Youtube) created tools that allow me to manipulate other people's intellectual property in a way that makes them complicit. We in this together.

It's one of the reasons the blog is called Default Tester. Find a bug and exploit it until it's fixed. If it's not fixed, it's a feature.

The next step in these conversations is when the pitcher recognizes my moral turpitude they ask why I don't satellite monetize by way of Patreon. I respond the same way I always do to workarounds like that, which is by saying that getting paid through crowdfunding is the same as establishing a line of credit I would have to pay back to the true creators sooner or later.

Using my current system all creators that I brazenly steal from are repaid via direct clicks on creations, which in the marketing world is a clear return on investment. In return, I get to edify my broken spirit by sharing things I enjoy with my friends and get to answer a question I always wondered, which is, "Would I embark on an adventure that paid nothing, made me look crazy, and is guaranteed to fail, just to say I did?" Turns out the answer is yes I would, for at least ten years.

Anyway, I say all that to say when a potential publisher, reader, or business community peer expresses second-hand embarrassment for me when they find out I write this pretentious, grammatically atrocious, preachy, blog for free with no promotion, please know that I understand where you are coming from.

But I'm just another blog in 600 million doing the best I can. No more, no less.

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 : Games : Pejorative

Issue : Games : Requisite

Ghost of Tsushima is a game about portholes.

An extra-medium time ago I was a fresh eared Navy boot at Great Mistakes. As I've stated before I joined the Navy because I'm lazy and the Marines sounded harder. People suggested the Army, Air Force, or the National Gaurd, but I said no because I wanted to be in the military.

Also, signing up for an organization with a monastic dedication to both inflicting and dying from gun violence is something I could have found on any northern Californian streetcorner. Why go to the grocery store if there is food in the house?

Anyway, it turns out the Navy was hard too, and boot camp really crushes that easy narrative the moment you step off the bus. The Recruit Division Commanders were pit bulls, the training was non-stop pain, and every single person involved in the process, including fellow recruits, took great enjoyment in watching people wash out.

I remember laying in my rack one night after taps debating pissing my pants or not because our RDC got frustrated that recruits thought "Pissin' was free." so he made the rule that anyone who got up to use the head would have to run a mile in the Illinois snow before going to sleep. I thought to myself, "this ain't it."

I decided I needed to lower the game's difficulty, and my salvation came the second week by way of the recruit petty officer program. The rpo was designed to identify leaders among the recruits and give them clout and responsibility. One of the rpo positions was a religious petty officer title. Nobody wanted it, nobody signed up for it, and neither did I until I read the roles and responsibilities.

The RRPO was allowed to skip drills to go to church, go to the library, pick up mail, and could get food from the mess hall for something called "communion." All of these freedoms at my fingertips for the low price of pretending to be into something I wasn't all that into.

I already joined the military when I could literally give a shit less about the United States falling off the face of the earth or getting attacked by sentient salamanders. I signed up and within two hours I was in the mess hall at 16:30 during drills eating ice cream and playing dice with the cooks.

The only downside was that other recruits would come to me in their times of great need, talking about loss of family members, unspeakable personal issues, questioning their faith, and a bunch of other soft ass shit I did not sign up for. To keep up the ruse I helped where I could. Convincing the RDC's to lighten up on this one because he was going to break, sneaking that one off to church just to get a break, helping a guy through suicidal thoughts here and there.

Fuck it was annoying. It's like, just because I signed up to be a cop doesn't mean I'm a cop all the time. Anyway, one day years later I'm in Navy rehab talking to my caseworker and while looking at my file he notes that I was the religious petty officer in boot camp and I told him this story almost verbatim.

He looked at me like I was a whole fool and said, "So, to keep up appearances you... You did the job you signed up for." I gave him the smuggest look on earth and said, "Yeah, and those idiot's were none the wiser! Fuckin clutch right?" He fell out laughing, uncontrollably. He said I was one of the most special versions of stupid he had ever run across, and to keep on fooling everyone because it's working great.

I appreciated the compliment at the time, but looking back, I think he might have been disrespecting me.

Anyway, Ghost of Tsushima is off the charts. Fantastic. 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 : Quaerere

Issue : Games : Indite

Neon Abyss is a game about procedural generation.

Martin Luther King spit a crazy bar during his spoken word concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Dude said, "I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but the content of their character."

I messed up when I first digested the quote because I interpreted it as an entreaty to look past race and all good-hearted people should hold hands into the sunset yadda yadda yadda. Given the current climate, I went back to this quote and am having a "Slow it down, he just dissed you." moment. Shouts to Conceited.

Reverend King was a top-tier orator min-maxed in speech and diplo that didn't use filler words and never left his morally balanced semantic logic open to bad faith thread pulling. But in this moment, instead of anything else in his bag of tricks, he used the word "Judged."

I can't believe I didn't see it before, he was sneak dissing Hoteps.

Oh, sorry, I know a lot of my readers are spread out so ill explain. A Hotep is the African American version of a fuckin' idiot. But don't worry, it's just a palette swap of the same idiot. For instance, a white supremacist is hotep, that stone age Asian uncle that refers to blacks as Kalu, hak gwei, etc.., uses religion as a weapon, openly hates the idea of women, and refuses the acknowledge the existence of "gay," is hotep. Folks like that.

The funny part is the only way to suss these morons most times is to follow Dr. Kings outline. As in the Hotep will judge you by the color of your skin, then initiate a conversation that allows you to judge the content of their character. For instance.

Black person: "Sup."

Hotep: "Good afternoon, King."

Black person: "Crazy times we are in, yeah?"

Hotep: "Preach, what we need to be doing is coming together and building black wealth."

Black person: "I 100 percent agree."

Hotep: "Power to the people, and we can start doing that after all the Jew's are gone."

Black person: "Ah fuck..."

Hotep: "Oh you scared, little house nigga? Well run on into the house and hug massa then!"

Black person: "Alright. Imma head out. Good luck with all of that sir."

Hotep: "And go put on a skirt, cause 5G made you a docile female!"

Black person: "Say less."

Anyway, that's the net-net of any conversation with these types. Swap the irrational racial fear for whatever appropriate bogeyman of that color. Dr. King was basically saying he hopes to live in a world where all idiots of this type are judged by what they say and how they behave, regardless of color.

And in the world of today where idiot's of this certain type are emboldened beyond measure that is getting so much easier to do. Dr. King was super good at this stuff, wonder how better things would be around here if he wasn't murdered.

Oh, and Neon Abyss is a side-scrolling "Enter the Gungeon" and if that description dosen't excite you we just live a different kind of life. Shouts to information, 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 : Games : Recollections

Issue : Games : Emulate

Rocket Arena is a game about fast friends.

A medium-long time ago I was a tester. Not a quality assurance professional, not a platform engineer, I was an "Answer an ad in the classifieds section of the Reader, show up to a cattle call, sit in a chair, do this thing till we say stop," tester.

As I said before I loved the job. Up to that point, I had never worked a job where being treated with respect or even common decency would ever come up in conversation, it being grounds for immediate termination and all. So a job with all the conditions I am used to but doing something I actually enjoy? Sign me up twice!

My peers were weird, couldn't stop complaining about it. It would be all "Oh my me-ma died and they won't let me take a day off for the funeral." Or, "I have debilitating cramps thanks to the carpal-tunnel I acquired here, but I'm scared to say anything because they will %100 fire me." Or, "The boss is pressuring me into sex but I can't say anything about it because their roommate is HR."

My lead would sit the new folks near me because I was just super quiet. They knew I came to write bugs and go home. A safe bet in a room full of wild cards. Yay me. And for some reason, the new folks would confide all this stuff to me. It's that Shawshank Morgan swag, I don't know.

Anyway, my response would be, "Fam, aren't all jobs waking nightmares where the people in power are monsters and all your peers are at best silent and at worst complicit? Where you been working, heaven?" They would be like, "No, no to all of that, and it's terrifying that you think that's normal." And I would look at them like they were from Jupiter because you know what, to me, at that point in my life, that is where they were from.

And what's more is I looked at them with great envy, because they made me realize there was a significant portion of people living life with a whole different set of expectations than me, and I couldn't center how that was fair at all.

So what I would do was I would turn to them and say, "Listen, this environment is toxic and you will think it will change over time, but it won't. You will. At the end of this road is an industry that you love, but doesn't love you back. What you should do is get up, leave, and find a place that truly respects you. I'm not kidding."

And that is what they did, they would get up and leave the gaming industry.

The office made up some stupid name for me for the way so many new testers would just get up and leave after a few weeks of sitting next to me. The "Noob Slayer" or some-such. Earned me a lot of clout in the building. A lot of theories thrown around for why it was happening. No one got it right, and I never bothered to correct them. Some days I would sit there and stare at the empty chair next to me and prayed that the person that left was walking toward something better, then I would wonder when it would be my time to move on.

The average lifespan of a tester is two years, I did eight. Like I said, I loved the job. Would have done it till I retired, if the game was designed that way. Anyway, 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 : Obsolete

Issue : Games : Farrago

Gatewalkers is a game about allies.

I don't know how all of this led to Blanche Devereaux getting canceled but check this out if I am not allowed to enjoy Golden Girls to be part of any movement do me a favor and throw me under the jail cause I would do anything for love, but I won't do that.

I swear to god we will literally do anything except address the issue at hand. Toppling the monuments of slave owners is cool or whatever but please show me how that brings George back or swerves the next George. Pulling episodes of TV shows that featured blackface is cool but please wake me up when the police demilitarize. And for the love of god let me know how every content creator releasing an "I apologize for being a version of myself that is now a liability" video helps anything.

It's hard to explain to an ally that their well-intentioned actions are a liability.

It's Bernie all over again. When it became apparent that he wasn't gonna get the nomination thanks to black people, somehow, there were all sorts of weird energy like we betrayed a civil rights leader. We were like, "Nah fam, he stood with civil rights leaders, wasn't one. You can tell he wasn't because he wasn't murdered like a dog in the street." They were like, "How come you couldn't come out for him like you came out for Obama?" We were like, "You don't want that answer."

And then something weird happens, it's that thing where you know the person is thinking "Ungrateful N****." but would never ever say it out loud because that is so off-brand it's not even a comfortable instinctual thought. And you know it's in the air, you know that you have somehow betrayed this person because you are not thinking or feeling or agreeing or acting the way they decided to be in your best interests. And that moment just sits there, awkward and stinking, like a sock on a shower rod. And it's at this moment that the friends in the room feel just as dangerous as the obvious enemies.

Anyway, back to Golden Girls. Listen, the shits not fair, I'm just sayin'. Christ man they even addressed the issue in the show! Well, a spin-off, but still. Why am I so fixated on this? Am I attracted to the Golden Girls, especially Rose? Maybe! Is that weird, I don't know fool whats with all the questions? This is a dumb conversation I'm off it, miss me with all that you keep it, just leave the Golden Girls the fuck alone and we all just keep on keeping on.

Any-Anyway, Rip TC Rip TB 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 : Antebellum

Issue : Games : Crux

The Last of Us Part 2 is a game about being provocative on purpose.

You may have noticed that I rarely talk about video games in this blog about video games. I do it that way because I believe games speak for themselves. There is nothing about a game I could say that you wouldn't learn by playing it yourself.

Also, I secretly resent video games for ruining my life, but I can't stop playing them or working in the industry because I am terrified of the thought of who I would be without "grumpy video game guy" as my whole identity. What was I talking about?

Oh right, The Last of Us 2 and how I'm not going to talk about The Last of Us 2. I'm going to talk about how people are responding to The Last of Us Two. Which is, predictably.

Everyone is mad at the game because it is not about them. Many in the gaming community are mad because the game is about things that make them uncomfortable. They say it's about the story or some such, but that's a lie because they hated the game well before it ever came out. A bunch of elements of the story leaked, and they were like, "How dare they make me have to play this gay shit!" How dare they indeed.

Journalists are mad at the game because it's forcing them to play as a person that makes uncomfortable decisions. They are like, "I'm ok that the protagonists are gay, that's fine, I'll allow it, but why do the protagonists make choices I don't feel comfortable with and force me to brutally kill people and zombies and dogs all the time! Why are the developers forcing me to decide to play like this, or not play at all?" I know right? Fuck them.

For the record, I think the game is good and both arguments are... what they are. But at this point, we all expect nothing less from a community composed of 15-year-olds and 20-50-year-old 15-year-olds.

My biggest takeaways from the game are that if the world depicted in The Last of Us 2 is overly brutal to anyone, they should look hard and long at the state of the real world, think about its logical terminus, and make a choice, fast. And if I had a kid like Ellie or Abby I would be very, very proud.

Rip tc rip tb 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 : Fraternize

Issue : Games : Harangue

Persona 4 Golden is a game about facades.

A medium time ago I worked at a jazz radio station. I was brought on as a copy assistant, a title created to describe my nebulous job responsibilities, which included cataloging 50,000 vinyl records, rolling blunts for DJ's, and listening to my bosses rambling diatribes about old people shit. Needless to say, it was a chill gig.

The first week my boss asked me if I enjoyed jazz music. I told him I was born hearing jazz and blues played all of the time, and I think it's boring. He told me that wasn't an answer, but a statement. I responded, "You are a white guy that chose to like jazz, I have to live it." This sentence still makes me cringe uncontrollably to this day.

The bulk of my day to day would revolve around my "pull list." The DJ's would give my boss a list of artists they wanted to use for the next set, and I would have to go into the storage room and pull them one by one. The room was supposed to be alphabetized, but imagine how little an old jazz man would care for mise en place, divide that number by everything, and they cared less than the number in your head.

It was fine. After a while, I realized that the music you are looking for finds you.

Some DJ's always put their returns in the front. Some would group certain artists next to another artist they liked, some DJ's would put the same artist in the same place, every time. I learned quickly that it was a lot more efficient to ride the wave of users' behavior than institute a structure that doesn't fit the vibe.

Anyway, on my last day, my boss hands me a pull list with just one album on it. I grab it, we go into the booth, we light some Bobby B up, and he puts it on the turntable. While we were listening he turns to me and says, "Sound familiar?" I responded, "Yeah, another bunch of old heads beating on dead animal skins and farting into a horn." I swear to god I really used to talk like that, Jesus Christ.

He said, "Should sound familiar, that's your great-granddad farting into that horn." I didn't have a response, I was in checkmate. Man said to me, "You're born how you are born but you still have to choose. People have given me shit all my life about wanting to be black. I never wanted to be black, but I do want to understand how somebody else feels. Music helps me do that, it could help you too if you let it. Now get the fuck out, and do great things. Take the album with you."

I'm good for ignoring all the gems dropped at my feet, but I never forgot that one. That old head is probably still there, I suppose.

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 : Loquacious

Issue : Games : Troubador

Sea of Thieves (PC) is a game about synonyms.

So the music industry is going hard in the paint on DMCA takedowns on Twitch. An interesting approach to take from a music industry dying of thirst in a desert because they bought a bunch of sand and didn't know where to put it.

And it's an interesting problem to tackle for a video game streaming platform whose business model relies on a lightly modified version of the very theft the music industry is trying to curtail.

And I know, I know. Who gives a fuck? The world has way bigger problems than some quarantined lawyer at Atlantic Records walking past his kid on a laptop, hearing "Bodak Yellow" playing in the background of a Twitch stream, and getting a nosebleed from the erection.

But this is where we are in life, and these are the things we need to worry about now because the devil is literally in the details. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been growing in power since 98 and has reached its final form. The fall of western civilization is almost assured, but damn bruhman, we can't listen to a little music while the ship goes down? That's too much?

And I know, I know. "J4, that's how the world works. They own the music and they have the right to taketh away." God, do I hate the phrase, "That's how the world works." The world is not working right now, literally or figuratively.

Think of the internet as a series of tubes. On one end is a person who wants to share a product of their intellect, be it a meme, music, game, what have you. on the other end is a person who wants to receive that product. In the middle is an algorithm designed to halt this process and veto at will. If that fails then any rando human loosely related to the IP can.

"Hmm, you didn't create this thought, this sound, this concept, this art, so it can't be shared... Without my cut."

It doesn't matter if the creator understands organic marketing and says it's ok. It's not theirs anymore. Even if they have the masters. Now, if this tube was a water hose, that stoppage would be called what it is, blockage, not how the hose works. But I digress, it's almost curfew and I gotta gear up to buy a pack of smokes and hope the roving gangs of cops, military, actual gangs, "patriots," or garden variety crazies don't yank on me.

Tell me again how we aren't in the preface to a Cyberpunk novel?

Anyway, shouts to info, rip tb rip tc rip tall-t. Love is wise, hatred is foolish. Get out there and do the best you can with the time you have, we believe in you. Also Jobs.

The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : People : Antonyms 

Issue : People : Eolian

Those Who Remain is a game about psychology.

There is a saying in business. It goes, "If your boss does not like you, that's your problem. If you don't like your boss, that's your problem." Such is life.

A good number of people that read this missive in a masochistically serial manner are from out of town, out of state, out of country. Many have met me in rl through business or found me through keen internet sleuthing only to find I am afflicted by a sexually transmitted condition called "Black in America."

Some have gotten in touch to ask if I am ok and I won't bury the lead any more than I already have. I am 5 by 5, my family is buttoned up, the team has conditional prep for just this situation, like tornado watch. We good.

Others have asked if I'm scared. Scared for myself, scared for my people, scared for my country. This is an easy question to answer. No, the answer is no. But the reasoning behind why I would not be scared for myself, for my people, or for my country is tough to explain without years of context that metastasizes into an innate feeling in one's soul.

Let me try and explain.

Imagine you roll a toon and the game force starts your run in a Mythic mode dungeon, on a hardcore pvp server, with no instructions, no option to change settings, no gold, no inherited traits, and no gear. Other players refuse to party with you based on race and aggro generated. Most other classes in your start area are twenty levels higher than you, all the mobs are red text, and calling a GM results in permadeath.

Oh, and you can't log out. You are never not a target and will for sure get ganked while idle, so you always gotta be moving, gotta grind high-level areas with low-level stuff, become a trader, entertainer, gladiator, do whatever you can to acclimate to the environment. And at any time, for any reason, a person can file a complaint against you that gets you banned. Can't fight it, because the developers don't see any problems with the code. You are the bug.

Every couple of seasons there's an in-game demonstration that starts because someone posted a clip of a hardcore player getting super ganked. Players will call for the developers to change the broken functionality. The developers will publicly denounce hackers and racists who gank and spam in chat and promise to do some vague "better." Some players keep it civil, some figure, "fuck it," and gank at will. Whenever this happens, no lasting changes occur except it gets exponentially harder for the players on the hardcore run.

How long do you think a person would survive in that game before the procedurally created violence of the everyday grind stole their trust in anything, pushed fear deep, deep down into a hole, and whittled their emotions down to only one prevailing imperative: Survive, by any means necessary.

Anyway, I say all that to say I'm not scared for myself, I'm scared for the people just waking up to the horror show that we call everyday life around these ends. These people are prone to wild acts born of hubris, thinking they are protected by a magic shield of righteous that formed in eight minutes and forty-three seconds. Ok.

They do not fully understand that when this server marks you as a hostile faction, they are not fuckin' playing with you. If you are not with the shit, don't play with them. Please, play smart, please, play safe.

Shouts to information. 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 : Games : Compunction

Issue : People : Longueur

Signs of the Sojourner is a game about the everyday grind.

A relatively long time ago I worked as a candy vendor. I never thought too much on the gig, I was just another link in a supply chain. In California candy is big business, always has been. Generations upon generations of communities wasting their money, rotting their teeth, and taking in empty calories like a steak meal. Such is life.

My bosses spotted my talent for the job even before I did. I was, and still am, notoriously private. They knew all I cared about was sleep, video games, and self-preservation. In that order. So that meant no worries about what I could say or what I would do if left to my own devices. A very handy soft skill for such work.

They knew I was, and still am, a notoriously agreeable misanthrope. As in, people are people, and that's not good or bad. So they knew I could be at an east Oakland sideshow, a Bakersfield honky-tonk, or a Maritime Hall rave and there would be no problems and no concessions. An attractive person wants a discount? "Don't we all." A whole nazi denigrates my race to my face? My response, "Cool, so you need two Laffy taffies and a pixie stick. Got it." That kind of thing.

But most of all, they knew I hated the job with a passion. I hated my role in the systematic dismantling of communities, I hated that I couldn't disassociate who I felt myself to be from what I was doing, I hated the guilt. The issue was though, I am bound by the promises I make. It's a family thing, started way before I got here. Fucking sucks, but it is what it is.

This skill actually turned out to be best for any job. Keep the promises you make, but be very careful about the promises you make.

Anyway, I say all of this because once again it was my boss that fired me. He was an old rave promoter from bad London who came over here and just never left.

He sat me down at the back of a farm party outside of Tracy and said, "Hey kid, you're done." I asked him why, because by this point I was getting really tired of getting fired by people that generally only let people leave under the dirt. He said, "Cause you're a preacher playing punker, you knob. Enroll in college, do computer science, I'm paying for it. After you're done If you wanna do this, then fine, but I'm betting you won't."

I joined the military instead because fuck him. Try and save my life, fuck out of here, Billy Pistols sounding ass, I'll just find a better way to get shot. Yep, I really showed him.

Anyway, I say all that to highlight to one particular person that "so-called" good people do bad things. Time doesn't absolve, just contextualizes. And to avoid the people in my inbox asking behind like, all the riot activity. I don't know what to tell you brodie. I'm not the person for that conversation anymore, seriously. There is still time for the right people to do the right thing, and I believe that will happen. I know, can't help it.

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 : Games :  Homonymous

Issue : People : Neoteric

Maneater is a game about hostile environments.

Alright, kid, I get it. You've been anointed gamer royalty by the council of the nine. You got yourself a rabid and only moderately toxic following on Twitchtube-tok-book, and your content is generating enough raw energy to eclipse the sun.

Now you wanna bling that boogie and swim with some serious sharks in Hollywood. Cool, I'm with the shit. It's my hobby and job to connect the dots and my callsign at the end of this blog is far from cap, I do believe in you and want you to go out there and do great things. I only have one piece of advice, don't do it.

Why? Well, the answer is three-part.

One, Hollywood is on fire. The serial rapist that ran Hollywood died due to common decency snipping the hair that secured the sword of Damocles that hung above his head. This led to a feudal war between digital platforms like Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Hulu etc.. Nobody in the town can tell up from down, shows about people reading the phonebook are getting greenlit then buried in the desert, and every intern has crowned themselves the true Lord Rahl. And all this has been compounded by covid, which solidified streaming as the only game in town.

So basically, the industry is scrambling to position themselves where you already are.

Two, Hollywood doesn't know what it is doing. Let's say you decide to sign on with one of the four old gods; CAA, William Morris, UTA, or ICM. Inside that building are people trained to never say no and strangle a baby seal to close with no hesitation. Most important of all, they don't respect gaming, they don't respect digital content, and they don't respect you. Once they get to talking it's easy to get blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce in the middle of the night. But they don't and they won't. Please don't forget that.

So the question becomes, what can they do for you that you haven't already done for yourself?

Three, You can do it yourself. Build a staff on your terms with people you trust. Organize local events to build real organic community bonds and partner with endemic brands on your own terms. Create a business plan and push hard into merch as a rev stream. Stop working as an influencer and start working as an influence. Sell your content to brands and platforms, not yourself.

A boilerplate five-year contract with an agency you don't trust on a platform you don't even know will be popping in five years might as well be a lifetime sentence. If you wanna see your future in that scenario just talk to any musician that got roped into a record label 360 deal.

Anyway, I know you are gonna do what you are gonna do, so do that and I'll back your move. I've been working in the shadows long enough to know that "Those who can't do, teach." is real talk. My only job is to amplify your value because I believe in gaming and I believe in you. And I'm fine with that. Just be sure to not make your first move your worst move. Alright, fuck off please, my Zoom crochet class is starting. Turtleneck day, I'm hype.

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 : Games : Contempo

Issue : People : Pelagic

Tonight We Riot is a game about naive idealism.

I was walking out of a Starbucks on Hesperian, the one in the parking lot of Rasputins where a car manages to run into it at least once a month when I hear a call from behind me. "FITZ! FITZ!"

No one has called me by that tag in at least twenty years, so I knew I was in for a flashback episode. Fucking hell. Sure enough, I turn to see a memory shuffling toward me in brooks brothers business casual carrying fresh produce from Ezzys kiosk up the block.

I knew who it was immediately, we skated together, worked punk gigs, and performed extracurriculars in service of "the cause" through most of the '90s. Even though I don't remember ever seeing him sans army jacket, G.G. Allen t-shirt, and chucks.

We get to catching up and he asks me what I've been up to, after the synopsis he says, "Sounds about right." I thought to myself, "Why does everyone say that?" He tells me he got married, became a CPA, kicked the bottle, and had kids. I said, "It happens."

He lived a few blocks up and invited me to lunch and to meet the fam. I asked if that was the move considering the current state of the world. He replied, "Bro, really? You just walked out of Starbucks." I stared at my Caramel Macchiato like the traitor it was and said, "Let's go."

We pull up to a nice crib on the good side of San Lorenzo. He introduced me to his husband and kids, who instantly began to give him shit for bringing someone over. I was like, "See!" I heard drums in the garage so I head out there to find his daughter, looking eerily like him back in the day. I ask her what bands she's into, she replies, "No one, everything sucks."

I head back in, look at him incredulously, and motioned back towards the garage. He begins laughing his ass off and says, "She has no idea, thinks she is rebelling against me. I'm having too much fun to tell her. Not that she would believe me if I did."

The only other time I had a chance to talk to his daughter was when I snuck out to the backyard to smoke. She saunters over, bums one, and asked, "Was my dad always this lame?" I had no choice but to tell her the truth, "He's cooler now than he was then."

Anyway, Tonight We Riot is a video game that is trying very hard. Pardun the passo reductive but I'ts basically State Of Emergency using tools at hand. Play it and have fun.

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 : Games : Shore

Issue : Games : Decoupage

Octopath Traveller is a game about home.

They say the strongest thing a person can do is pull themself out of a dark place alone. Sound good, might be true, I wouldn't know though, cause I've never done it alone. Whenever I find myself in a hole the only way I've managed to escape has been someone reaching out a hand.

My job in the extraction is three-step. First, apply the first law of holes. Second, decide if I am ready to leave the hole. Third, accept the hand. All three steps are hard as fuck to accomplish, that's why so many people wake up in a hole and say to themselves, "Welp, this is where I live now."

The first law is hard to accomplish because many people get stuck in holes they dug. Digging a hole can be fun as fuck at the start and it's easy to surmise that if you double down and keep digging sooner or later you are gonna find yourself on a beach in Australia. Sounds good.

The second law is hard to accomplish because it fully closes the door on the first. It's one thing to stop digging, it's something else entirely to decide to start climbing. This is when your brain will transform into Johnnie Cochran and start hitting you with stuff like, "You are a digger, not a climber!" or, "Fine, climb out of this perfectly fine hole just to fall into a worse one. Dummy."

The third law is the toughest because if you can't accept that another party member is required for exfiltration then there is a high probability that the second law wasn't properly workshopped and if you do leave the hole, you are still in the hole, if you get me.

Anyway, I say all of that to say I know there are a lot of people in holes right now and I just want all of you to know that OH GODDAMMIT I just realized Leo explained this to Josh way better on the West Wing. On god, I can't stand Aaron Sorkin sometimes.

Double Anyway, I finally finished Octopath Traveller. It's aight. It's cool.

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 : Thesis

Issue : Games : Amygdala

Streets of Rage 4 is a game about demographics.

Kid, I know you firmly believe that once you make it to [INSERT TECH CONGLOMERATE HERE] you achieved the good ending. Just know that given sufficient time at your dream corporation, watching how the sausage is made from the inside, sooner or later, you will want to break rank, as well as a face or two.

My least favorite part of the marketing mercenary life is pitching. I've been told I'm good at it, but being good at something and enjoying that something is not mutually exclusive. Most clients want campaigns that are produced at a high level and also cheap. That is something that is mutually exclusive.

History has proven successful campaigns in any endeavor require skilled soldiers, experienced strategists, and quality ingredients. Every client you meet will try and break the meta and still win. Bless their hearts. It's fine that they try, it's not fine to forgo your worth.

Here is an example of how a recent pitch went:

Client:
The deck looks great, the vision is great, just great. Couple followups. We are looking to aggressively steer toward the millennial and gen z crowd. Now, I am Gen X, so I'm far from an expert, HAHAHAHAH, but, I'm wondering how we can insert more hallmarks of their demographic in its campaign DNA.

Me:
Such as?

Client:
Well, I see you included a robust social campaign, Ad buys, competitive analysis, DM's, projections, budget, and whatnot. That all well and good, the basic stuff. But, and please don't take this the wrong way, bro, but we asked you to pitch because you are known as the guy to call when a campaign needs to be "Swagged up," know what I'm saying?

Me:
No.

Client:
HAHAHAHAHA I love your style man! You remind me so much of Ray Holt from Brooklyn nine-nine. Has anyone told you that?

Client 2:
Oh wow Boss, now that you mention it he really does! You are so right! Sorry, I just wanted to say that!

Me:
Ah, I see. You want to hear about the influencers, the music, the networking, the social engineering, the lifestyle, money, and the drugs. The so-called cool guy stuff.

Client:
Yes! Exactly, where is all of that in this presentation?

Me:
It's up there, disguised as the boring stuff.

Client 2:
HAHAHAHA he's so funny! That was a joke!

Client:
... I see. Well, that number seems high, can we chop at that tree?

Me:
Of course, it's your party. It's just gonna be a smaller, less exciting tree.

____________________

I lost the contract because I knew I wouldn't be able to provide the client what they wanted at the price they were willing to pay. I mean, I could have lied and got paid, I did really need the money, but these days I've become intimate with the belief that a lie is no different than taking on debt. The bill always shows up, and you don't learn how much interest has accrued until its time to pay.

Anyway, your network is your net-worth as they say, so to keep the relationship solid I put them in touch with my homie who has zero problems taking anybody's money and they got paid as fuck and put together a pretty dope campaign. That hurt, but I'm not mad because I still have my dignity HAHAHAHA. I changed my mind, kid, keep that job at Splooglezon forever, fuck integrity.

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 : Limbic

Issue : Games : Zephyr

The Complex is a game about magical realism.

A relatively long time ago I was a college student by necessity. The Navy handed me my DD 214 and honored its promise to set me free when my contract expired if that is what I wanted. And it was.

I landed back in civilization with new skills. The ability to identify small arms by sound from a mile away, the ability to assemble and dismantle explosives, the ability to follow orders that don't make sense, and the ability to run two miles in full gear at 4am after drinking a 40oz of Old English and a fifth of vodka the night before.

Not many of those skills transferred to the civilian workforce so I decided to cash in my G.I. Bill and learn new things. Well, to tell the truth, I needed the money.

I declared a Journalism major because I thought it to be the best use of my new skill of following orders that don't make sense. I figured in Journalism all you are doing is recording information that doesn't make sense. I still believe I was on the money, but what do I know?

A creative writing course was a required part of the program, I rolled my eyes hard, said, "hippie shit," and signed up. The creative writing teacher was an old adjunct who looked like Kurt Vonnegut in the way a kid these days will try to look like Trippie Redd but get really mad if you accuse them of trying to do it on purpose.

Here is how he introduced himself to the class:

"Congratulations on deciding to grasp the low hanging fruit of a writer's life. A few things you should know. One, you will never write anything you are proud of. Two, writing does not contain the ability to make you love you. Three, it's not the job of the audience to understand, all you can ask is they try. If you can accept those three things, then you are a better person than me. If not, then I suggest an engineering major."

I laughed and thought, "Well, with that attitude no wonder he's an adjunct professor at a shit tier school." He asked me what I thought was funny. I said, "Well, with that attitude no wonder you are an adjunct professor at a shit tier school." He laughed and said, "True, and here we both are." Then he started the class.

After class, the professor stopped me as I was walking out. I was expecting to get cursed out or kicked out. I wasn't worried about it, the story of my life. He asked me, "What's your major?" I said, "Journalism." He asked, "How many times have you been punched in the face for saying what's on your mind?"

I stared at him obstinately, but I knew the answer. It was fourteen times. I had been keeping count. When it became apparent I wasn't gonna answer he said, "Well, whatever the number gets up to, don't let it stop you."

I shrugged and walked out, but looking back he provided the best advice I ever received. Knowing what I know now, I would have gone with an engineering major.

Shouts to information, 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 : Garnish

Issue : Games : Obstinate

Minecraft Dungeons is a game about For-Profit Education.

A homie hit me up to test an online crawler they are working on. We go way back to the Pre-EQ days when bugs were written on paper, so I couldn't say no. Well, I could. Shit, I should have, now that I think about it.

Anyway, after the NDA's are penned I hop onto the server and am met with a gathering of the old heads and we get to catch up. Some left the biz, some had kids, some came up, some came down. All said we were pretty much the people we knew last time we clocked out of the same office.

We party up, assign roles, calibrate what we need to pay attention to and get to it. The game was wack (don't be mad homie, it's what you asked me there to do and search your heart, you know it's true), so we spent most of the time grinding on autopilot while arguing life from our vastly different perspectives.

Our healer was elated about the current state of the world. I am not, but recognize it is what it is. The healer asked what my problem was because they remember this particular chain of events being all I enjoyed talking about during our twelve hours, seven days a week sit-ins.

The conversation went like this:

Healer: "But it's so cool! It's like we are living in France before the Revolution!"

Tank: "If you say so, Le Miz."

Healer: "First off, fuck you, Le Miz is the shit. Second, you don't think so?"

Tank: "Nope. Cause in the American version Jean Valjean is a lazy fool, Inspector Javert is a Nazi, Fantine is a ho, and the internet makes poor people think they are the 1%. The system is working as intended, they ain't doing shit."

DPS: "Goddam, I see time ain't give you any chill, old man."

Healer: "One of these days people are gonna surprise your grumpy ass. Also, watch the play again cause those characters were already pretty much those things."

Tank: "Hey, I believe we are in the age of heroes. I just don't believe we are the heroes. Our kids are, or their kids, maybe. Us, we just gotta do the best we can where we at."

Healer: "... But I wanna be the hero."

Tank: "Then keep healing."

Anyway, like I said, the game is wack, but if they keep at it and listen to the developers and the community they could birth something special.

Shouts to information. rip TC rip TB 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 : Mulish

Issue : Games : Umbra

Resident Evil 3 is a game about deliverance.

Let's pretend that the USPS hadn't been dead since 1971. Let's pretend all this hoo-ha isn't just this week's distraction. Let's pretend this isn't a long play frenemy takeover by a strat sav going ham on the free market.

Let's pretend Wingstop is open cause I'm cravin' lemon pepper wings something fierce and yes I know they deliver but you should know I ain't paying 40 bones for a 14 dollar order stop playin' with me.

What was I talking about? Oh right, deliveries.

You kids might find this hard to believe 'cause you're fuckin idiots but back in 1775 the American States had a hard time communicating. As in the information didn't get around well and if it did it was all bullshit. People were making shit up, selling wolf tickets, putting dead raccoons inboxes and sayin' like, "this is from your momma," basically doing whatever, it got bad.

So the American central government held a continental congress and said, "Ey, we gotta tighten this shit up or this union ain't working out." Benjamin Franklin said, "I got this," stepped up as the first postmaster general, and thanks to a strong central government's focus on providing information efficiently, consistently, and fairly, the US made it through some tough times.

Then came the Postal Reorganization act of 1970, which turned the United States Post Office into an independent agency. Welcome to Gen Pop, dummy. So yeah, the government it saved signed the USPS' death warrant in 1970 and ARPANET ratified it in 1971, but video killing the radio star is old news.

The post office failed in the free market because it was a location-based service. Everyone in the US is accounted for, every delivery person is taken care of as well as possible. Free market delivery is algorithmic-based services, so basically, location means nothing and all employees are playing against the computer.

Every time a person pushes a button, the algorithm begins creating a scenario in time and space that takes an SKU from point A to point B. Once a thing gets from point A to point B the algorithm creates a data point that says,"alright, it took this long to go from A to B, so now let's increase space, and decrease the time." That's it, that's all it cares about, running that script at optimal settings. Something breaking is just another data point.

You can walk outside right now and you will see three types of delivery persons. The USPS, crisp uniform, walking from home to home and stopping to chat with people. The UPS guy, sharp uniform, walking at a brisk pace, ringing a doorbell and getting a signature for a package. And the Amazon guy, street clothes and branded vest, driving erratically while throwing items at porches, literally running full seed, ten hours a day, for their life. I wonder who works for a person, and who works for an algorithm.

Anyway, 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 : Obscuration

Issue : Games : Gibe

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a game about social exploration.

Welp, it's that time again. Every few hundred years America runs into a bug in its system called, "What do we do with our slaves?"

Not slaves in the way you are thinking, of course. Slaves in the literal definition, as in, noun; a person who is legal property of another and is forced to obey them. Or the verb, which is to work excessively hard. So the capitalist version of a slave, like laborers, soldiers, prisoners, and athletes.

This bug occurs when a problem arrives in America that it can't shoot. The bug just keeps on keeping on, indiscriminately corrupting every player it comes across on the server, like a child calling an adult ugly because it doesn't know there are some things you just don't say to certain people even if it's objectively true.

Anyway, in that indiscriminate swath of death lies the bug. If slaves stop slaving, the bug has no way to spread, but if slaves stop slaving, money has no way to spread. Dilemma, Dilemma.

How do you get a slave to accept their place? As in, accept the reality that somebody gotta die to keep the machine running, and that somebody was always the slave, even though it wasn't expressly stated in the new slave patch notes. Well, there are a few fixes.

The first is to pay the slave in exposure, a common occurrence in the entertainment industry. It's the deceptively simple practice of encouraging cannon fodder into place by saying thank you and promising to shout them out on Instagram.

Grocery, supply chain, and infrastructure workers have all been knighted as "essential jobs." And will receive a set number of salams until they fuck up the order or someone figures out a way to force them to do it. Because slaves not slaving is a problem America can shoot. This social currency stimulus package absolves the need for complicated fixes like higher wages or unions. Who would want that?

There are more fixes but none of those are gonna happen and I gotta catch some Bluegill to donate to the museum and they only jumpin' from 9am to 4pm. I might grab some Char and Yellow perch to make some quick cash and get my crib lookin' right.

Wait, is Animal Crossing actually a saccharine imbued dystopian hellscape, analogous to the slow march toward the dark reality our waking life is currently on a path for? Nah, I'm trippin.

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 : Sublimate