We are working hard to get Thornwatch ready for our second major playtest, this time at PAX Prime. There will be a brand new adventure that will show off some new mechanics as well as feature a few tweaks we made based on feedback after PAX East. We’re also getting ready to send out our very first newsletter to folks who have subscribed. It should go out later today and I’ve included some cool behind the scenes stuff. I’ve taken some photos straight out of my Thornwatch sketchbook and will be including them with the news letter. You’ll be able to see how I sketch out an adventure as well as some early designs for the characters. Here’s a peek at one of the pages.

I was reading an interview with one of the producers on the new Transformers movie, and the thing that really got to me is that both the person asking the question and the person answering it thought they were communicating information.

I think the new ones are rad, and aren't really our normal deal. Fun designs against solid colors. Merch is here, in men's, and women's. Fleshreaper is here, for women and men.

My erstwhile companion Grabark has gone to The Wilds with his clan, and at last word he is still alive and apparently he is severely mistreating crabs.

So much of the current dialogue on Multiplayer is focused on social engineering slash incentivization structures, epitomized in the Riot Games milieu, where you sprinkle little bits of foil all throughout your UI and then empower Courts Of The People to adjudicate trials. By comparison, Nintendo has already reached the endgame content. They have defeated Onyxia, where Onyxia is not just a great wyrm but the representation of our will to harm one another. They have decided it's simply not worth it to allow people to talk to each other in most of their games. If you are looking to create an environment free of conflict, removing the humans from it is a great way to start.

The newest PAX happens in San Antonio, and it runs from January 23-25. You can enter the Queue for tickets here.

Applications for the Penny Arcade Scholarship are now open! Each year Penny Arcade recognizes one student with incredible potential to impact the game industry in some capacity with a $10,000 academic scholarship. Applicants come from many walks of life and disciplines, but they share the same passion for games and the games community. There are a few requirements:

After talking with some folks I went home and tried some stuff. I upgraded to Manga Studio 5.0.4 and wasn't getting the drawing lag I saw before. It still has the "hover lag" but that's just annoying not a deal breaker. I tried a bunch of different settings in Photoshop that people recommended and still could not get rid of the drawing lag. I'll draw another strip on it this week (this time using Manga Studio) and let you know how it goes. It seems like the majority of my frustration was coming from Photoshop and not the Surface which is good. Manga Studio is my preferred drawing program anyway but I figured the new Photoshop with its fancy tablet mode would be cool to try. To be totally fair the tablet mode in the new PS must be turned ion under "experimental features". So uh... maybe that stuff isn't quite ready for prime time.

More like MILD-Star, am I right people?

I am at the point of an illness where I don't remember what it was like before. Did I just... not hurt all the time? Was I less aware of my sinuses? Because right now I feel like I a gigantic sinus, rolling down the sidewalk, accumulating gravel.

I played some video games this weekend.

Fireworks are banned here, not that it keeps people from "discharging" them. I completely understand why a town might ban "recreational explosives," which frankly seems like a weird class of item, but I also have fond memories related to this specific breed of child endangerment. There is a consciousness threshold where I feel strongly compelled - as a father, as a man - to engineer a zone of Darwinian peril that will result in every child who is not vaporized being vastly improved. Except it's way, way down underneath the level that just wants to grill, which is itself far beneath the brittle ur-consiousness that wraps the whole of the world in terror. Luckily, I know a man more than willing to make "the bad decisions."

Never really played any Sniper Elite games, I dunno I felt like I had a pretty good idea what was going on there.

There’s only about 45 hours left to support the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter. For a $30 pledge you can get a calendar featuring original artwork by yours truly as well as some other super talented artists. It will be a piece based on the Reading Rainbow idea that a book can take you anywhere and let you be anything. This is going to be a fun project and I am so happy to donate my work to such a great Kickstarter.

The new episode of PATV today is all about my game Thornwatch. This one has been in the works for a long time. They have footage in there of the very first time I ran the game for anyone outside the PA offices, all the way up to our public tests at PAX East. Right now we’re preparing for another test at PAX Prime. We made some huge improvements after East thanks to the feedback from our playtesters and I’m excited to get it in front of folks again.

I’ve always thought “screen time” was a silly idea. I think it’s important to consider what’s on the screen. Maybe it made more sense back when screen time just meant television. The idea that sitting and watching Spongebob should be tossed into the same bucket as playing ABC Mouse is absolutely insane. I won’t let my four year old watch cartoons all afternoon but if he wants the iPad he is welcome to it. That’s because if he is using the iPad he is coloring and doing puzzles. Nine year old wants to lay on the couch and watch Ninjago all afternoon. Not happening. Want to play Minecraft with your friends all afternoon? Yes! I say that because I’ve gone into their Minecraft Realm. I’ve seen the hotel these kids built. I’ve played with the redstone machines they have designed. I've played games my kid built in Project Spark on the Xbox and Hopscotch on the iPad. That’s technically “screen time”, but those are experiences I will never put a limit on.