People seem to like what we're doing with the PAX shows. We have a lot of very unique experience bottled up here at Penny Arcade, earned over almost twenty years of planning and executing cons, and as our partner ReedPOP founds or finds cool conventions around the globe they've asked us to share some of that hard-won knowledge with local teams. Wherever we can be a help to these shows, we will - and honestly, sometimes that's going to mean standing back and trusting that team's local approach. Check out the launch site for more info about the first Powered By PAX event!

Making a tabletop game is a lot of work you guys. Thankfully I am surrounded by some ridiculously talented folks at Lone Shark and Penny Arcade. Kiko has been working on finalizing the layout for our cards and they are looking really cool. For a long time our cards have gotten the job done, but now it's time to turn this stuff:

I was very, very late to the game on Destiny. As someone whose primary axis of engagement with Bungie was via their lore, please act surprised, Destiny as a launch experience was missing the nanoscale furrows that would give me entre. Or, it sort of was.

I haven't had a chance to play The Surge yet, so I don't 100% know what's going on with it. Gabriel doesn't seem to like it, so I assume that means it's great.

I picked up The Surge not really knowing what to expect. I heard it had some cool combat mechanics and figured it was worth a try. It only took a few minutes of playing to realize it was Bloodborne but you can chop off body parts. Honestly that probably would have been enough for me if it didn’t look so stupid. Bloodborne is a game that oozes character and style and I think that’s why I was able to get so into it. On the other hand, The Surge reminds me of and 80's cartoon.

Something I've never been able to understand is how you could forget what it's like to be young. I haven't, but I have a weird memory where if I remember something I experience it and generally shudder or make a sound. God only knows; maybe not forgetting it is itself evidence of some spiritual malnourishment. It could also be empathy! That's another thing it could be.

Of course, we're only goofing around with Pat Rothfuss, who is also Viari. We are inveterate goofers. I have every faith that the book will come out and what's more that it will be really good. He should make a deal with me that he'll release his book when I release mine; that would provide the necessary impetus. The web-borne pressure would build up behind my mind, and the book would be launched like a cannonball.

We read a fascinating article on Krontiqi called "I Paid Women To Play Overwatch With Me, And It Was Fantastic" and that headline is so robust that I don't feel any compulsion to explain it.

Oh, man. We've got it super bad for Has Been heroes, both of us now. What's weird is that I told him specifically, "Hey, this is a mechanic I think you'll find interesting, but please do not take this as a recommendation." He was playing it when I came in the next morning, and he was in the part of the game where you are hitting your head against it so hard, so very hard, and you are wondering why you would hit your head against it even one more time, when suddenly a crack appears. We're gonna play it on the stream today at 3:30pm PST, if you want to see what I mean.

Here's the newest additions to the team, transmuted by forbidden sorceries into wearable garments! Enthusiasts, of The "C" Team thus far unserved, I hear you. We're moving on it.

Gabe and Kara entered the Skin Mines to… actually, let me generate another metaphor. I don't want the mental image of a "Skin Mine" sloshing around in my skull-zone.

Once you have been alive long enough, you begin to see the superstructure.

It sort of goes back to the podcast for this week, entitled "Medley." For me, games are novel models of phenomena, keyhole glimpses into a manifold and incomprehensible reality. For my longtime friend and ally Gurpy Grops, videogames are a visual medium, a novel way to experience art. I start at the abstract and work down, he does the opposite.

Hey, what are you doing November 17th through the 19th? You want to come out to Philly, PA - an auspiciously truncated state - and roll some motherfucking dice?!? Tickets for PAX Unplugged, our new tabletop themed show, are available for purchase!

I left my Switch at home yesterday for Brenna, and I really missed it. I have yet to play it au parc but I don't see a situation where that doesn't happen. Like Google Glass, there's going to be things about it that make the social fabric… taut, for lack of a better word. I played Mario Kart at a brewery and the novelty factor of this projected a small distance into what others perceived as rudeness, as though I had brought in a television from home or something and just started watching it. It's okay to watch the television installed in the bar, and it's okay to be at a table with other people looking and interacting exclusively with your phone. But if you and a friend are playing a game together, now it's rude.

We have a lot we want to accomplish in the next few years, and we need somebody to help us do that - the help we're looking for right now is in the "Graphic Design" realm, and it's somebody we'd like to have in-house. From Acquisitions Incorporated to the Eyrewood to Automata, I feel like it's time to really investigate what these things mean. I had Kiko put together a slab of text to explain the skills they're looking for in Design. Here he is: