AC IV is happening today at 2:00 pm Pacific. Come hang out and chat with us. We're happy to answer questions about PA and games while we're playing. I've had a few people ask what game we will stream next after AC. The new Strider hits the PS4 in a couple weeks and I'm pretty excited for that. The new Thief will also drop around the end of February. My guess is you'll see us streaming both of those. I'm gonna see if I can score early copies of either of them as I think a stream before a game launches could be cool.

Robert Khoo is not a person who sends rousing links via email. It's not part of his persona. But he did send us this one; given my unique malady, it more or less demanded a strip. It's a real thing you can seek out on your own time, after class. My position on anything like that - up to and including prayer, meditation, what have you - is that living in an intentional way is more likely to result in your goals being achieved. That said, I'm not sure that crystalline formations affect the upward face of a thrown die.

It sounds like hundreds of you were able to complete the Killer Instinct Pin challenge last month and earn yourselves the Combo Breaker pin.

If you have ever savored our podcast, either via the Security Level ULTRAVIOLET official link that backers enjoy or directly via the front door, our creative process resolves to a point eventually but is a distribution for most of it that could become any number of things. "Creative process" may be too ennobling a phrase. It's certainly the process by which something is created, I guess. Webster would give us the thumbs up. Generally speaking it feels like pissing into a sieve, and retaining the stones.

We've been streaming from the office semi-regularly, as in, like, most weekdays for some reason. I genuinely don't know how it came to be this way, other than going out in the lobby and pushing the Share button I guess. I understand how the fait gets "accompli'd" in a purely physical sense, but how it became a habit I don't have super dialed in. I'm not even the one streaming! I'm just there while he streams. I answer questions and sing the occasional shanty. I only need the barest hint of an opportunity to sing a shanty, but since we're playing Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, I feel like I can get away with it free and clear.

We talked about Google Glass back when those were a thing, specifically about how the technology challenge is one aspect but the social shit is another thing altogether that you might not really be able to solve for completely. Independent of any technical sorcelomancy or geekward fetishism, a machine that reads your hot blood is weird even when it is cool.

I was looking at the video again for Shadow of Mordor, trying to cook up another comic because... I don't know, I spend a lot of time thinking about it, and I saw that Talion and/or his friendly ghost are indeed walking across a bracketed, three-strand cable! This means two things. One, I need to be watching things in crisp, full-screen HD. Second, ALL IS FORGIVEN.

The Valentine's Day pin is now available!

Kiko heard me watching the Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor trailer, and he looked in my door to nod vigorously re: his approval. Gabriel says yes as well. I liked it also, not least of which because it is every game I like at once. As a father and entrepreneur, the time savings would be incredible.

The Pinny Arcade Valentine’s Day pin will go on sale Monday at 2:00pm Pacific. Previous limited edition pins come with the number of pins in the run stamped on each pin. We will not be producing those designs again so they are limited in the sense that if we make 1500, those are the only 1500 that will ever exist. The Valentine’s Day pin is a bit different.

The two big stories right now, mainstream gaming ones, are stealth promotional campaigns on Youtube and the Candy Crush Saga saga.

I have too many games and not enough hours in the day right now. What am I playing?

The Bravely Default demo doesn't really scratch the surface of the game. To a certain extent, that concept is contained within the word "demo." But it communicates specifically incorrect information, a partial class list, and a couple systems are simply missing in action. It also makes the game seem like it has that sort of MMO statelessness, where you're just sort of floating around an environment hauling monster organs from place to place.

Today's comic strip actually came right out of a stream we did last week. I was playing AC and joking with folks in the chat about the shanties. We were all laughing about how a captain might adjust his "playlist". Tycho and I will be at it again today playing more AC IV. The plan is to start around 2:00pm pacific time.

Like the music pages in Assassin's Creed 3, mystical tunes flip around in 4 and they must be seized. The extent to which they must be seized of their own accord varies from brain to brain. Most "collectables" exert no force upon me; I can take or leave them. I might feel a twinge upon completion to see some minimal percentage, but I'm not getting any younger. Nobody is; that's not how it works.

Camera's on.