I feel very badly for the folks affected by this nasty Insomniac leak. As someone who makes things for a living, I can say that having your work seen before it’s ready really fucking sucks. It’s like someone tasting your dough instead of a finished loaf of bread. I have to imagine it’s only made worse by the fucking glee with which what passes for games journalism these days has reported on every detail. Certainly reporting that someone's pants have been pulled down is in line with their job description, but detailed articles about the color and state of the victims underwear seems ghoulish to me. 

We have attempted to catalogue the means by which Reacher frontman Alan Ritchson became some kind of noble gorilla warrior king. But, let me reveal now: the comic strip and its contents are intended primarily as a vector for mirth. They are not intended to represent an authentic technique for bulking, or even becoming yolked. It's not possible to become a man-god in this way. For one, the arm that was lifting Gabriel would see no change whatsoever. The arm that was lifting me would mount a bicep the size and, indeed, rigidity of a bike helmet.

I may not be on Twitter anymore but I’m still full of musings. Here’s what I would have written on there, if I was still on there. 

Essentially, Twitter just sorta makes Mike feel bad. I know a few people who have decided that it wasn't improving their lives, and escaped; Laura Frohmwerk and Kris Straub are both exploring Blue Skies and Tickity Toks and seem to be having more fun than they were previously. Or, at any rate, their actions aren't feeding Twitter's in-house AI bot or providing value and interest to someone they despise. There were many discrete thresholds where Morak might have decided that this was "his stop," and leave, but ultimately I think it was the return of Alex Jones that he couldn't abide.

I think it's important to establish a few things regarding this Hasbro Wizards stuff, just because they're counterintuitive. It's simultaneously more complex and much more simple, depending on the angle you view it from.

Our initial writing on Monday's strip was wide-ranging, and had a couple lines I couldn't leave well enough alone. So, one brief exhumation later…

The new God of War Valhalla DLC has been a really nice surprise. I will start by saying I was not a huge fan of God of War Ragnorok. I like the combat in these games but unskippable cutscenes absolutely killed the second one for me. I don’t understand why they will give us a “story” mode for people who don’t like combat, but can’t give us an “action” mode for people who don’t like the story.

I’ve had a couple weeks with my new Steam Deck OLED and I thought I’d put together a list of what I’m enjoying on it. 

A lot of people did a lot of great work in gaming, for years, but a significant amount of the conversation around The Game Awards was about how The Game Awards were a singularly poor context in which to celebrate that work. I literally turned it off - I couldn't look at it anymore. I can't look at this smug goon mugging with puppets, and I can't tolerate how this goblin merely stands adjacent to incredible work, and some measure of that talent - that light - somehow accrues to him.

Merry Christmas! I feel like we're sufficiently beyond the turkey threshold to make such an entreaty. I'm in the market for a Merry Christmas; having returned from PAX Unplugged primarily with a sense of profound gratitude, all that remains really is to… actually feel it? I'm gonna try. Let's both of us try.

It's probably too inside baseball, or… inside mucous-encapsulated ova, but occasionally we must be allowed to amuse ourselves on our own website. I hauled a case of ravenous insects all over hell's half-acre, and only had a chance to use them the very last night of the show - at 3am, we had to pause right in the middle. But that's when this conversation came up. Technically, it was with Eric but if I'm gonna call someone an idiot multiple times in one panel it's probably more strategic to have it be the same person I've shamed for three decades.

I hardly know what to say. PAX Unplugged is always a highlight of the year, for various reasons. For one, it's just very good. I like all kinds of games but with the advent of Battletech: Alpha Strike and various Tendrils of Warhammer I think that painting and playing with dolls is steadily rising to the fore, alongside anything that involves the scooting of various chips, wooden people, and the clattering of cubes varied and lovely. Even by these standards, this show was a supernatural portal to a Realm Beyond.

Gurb turned me on to a kick-ass book called "The Mysterious Case Of Rudolph Diesel," and I think you should read it if you're interested at all in the world, but you should buy it with cash in a town you don't live in and read it in a dimly lit cavern. Because if you don't, if The System finds out you read a book about a fascinating historical character and his mysterious disappearance, you'll be clocked immediately by their tendrils as… whoever this is.

This motherfucker was on Reddit immediately after opening the box because it was already goof troop somehow - already brutalized by his cyberdeath nimbus. He just had to go to desktop mode and restart it. But still! I'm confident it was his fault somehow.

Bullet was one of the things that made the last part of the Dark Times tolerable at my house. I'm glad Mork found a character he could get into for the art, because I like this game a lot and I wanted us to be in there somewhere. Anne-Claire is a an optional item in the new " Bullet Universe" Kickstarter, but we'd launched it as a charity goodie originally and that turned over ten thousand and change to mental health charities. So, yay! But her design is really neat, and deserves to be part of a larger set too.  I had a lot of fun filling Google Sheets fields with her custom text.

In lieu of buying ads, the folks behind the Bullet♥︎ Kickstarter have decided to spend that budget on commissioning original art for their game! This is an idea I love and not just because I am one of the artists they approached. I'd love to see more companies take this approach honestly and they don't even have to come to me!