ONE PUNCH MAN: A HERO NOBODY KNOWS is a game about acknowledgment.
I don't know if I am a black man who happens to be a nerd or a nerd who happens to be a black man. In math, where you place a factor in an equation means everything, in life, eh.
Or so I thought.
My belief changed thanks to having watched URL Genesis, the product of a marriage by the battle rap pioneers Ultimate Rap League and video game streaming startup Caffeine. At first blush, this seems like the perfect match as both communities celebrate toxicity, violence, and chauvinism as core components of their respective cultural DNA.
And thanks to the arm over fist money being raked in by both endeavors they can comfortably die on that hill without ever having to lose a second of sleep about the irreparable damage being done to chances of growth or change in either community. Like cancer being misdiagnosed as a birthmark. And all of that is fine, anyone trying to change this status quo has better odds invading Constantinople in the 14th century.
The gaming marketer in me saw this partnership as a solid strat for Caffeine. Twitch's Q4 was measured by the amount of blood in the water and YouTube and Facebook are divvying up poached influencers like a coyote and wolf partnership to sneak into Amazon's backyard. The gaming marketer who is also a battle rap fan in me saw no upside for URL as battle rap is literally the thesis of what gamers of terrified of.
Black culture? Ok! Black people? Cmon... Peter Pan.
The platform quality assurance engineer in me saw exactly what was coming. Server hugs, dripped streams, dead air. But I understand how Caffeine missed the bug because it's a barrier of entry issue. Let me explain. Caffeine is built to work on and is tested with high-speed internet connections. Battle rap fans aren't exactly a T1 connection crowd. What happens when eighty thousand turtles try and crawl over a wooden gate at exactly 5pm est?
For a company like Youtube that is no problem. That's why it's free and draconian. For a company that is over the moon to have thirteen thousand people on excellent connections visit the site over the course of a week, that is a big problem. It is what it is, who could have seen the issue coming? Some poor engineers at Caffeine did. But who is going to tell the C-Suite, Drake, Smack, and everybody else that math doesn't care about you not caring about how it happens, only that it happens? To those engineers in the trenches who did all they could, we see you and salute you.
Sometimes you just gotta sit back and let the factors pretend they run the equation. Such is life. 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: Refurbish
