DOTA’s strange heritage - that is to say, its origin as a non-profit knot of distributed design - has allowed this type of game to reproduce in a strange way. The known quantity of that map and the shared controls make it easy to flit from one manifestation of the concept to the another. This is what makes DOTA2 especially dangerous to this space: Valve polish, with no up front costs? Jesus Fucking Christ; it’s the sort of thing that makes you question your life choices.
Just two quick things:
After doing the “calibration phase” for UFC Trainer, it ranked Gabriel at the beginner level. But Beginner for a mixed martial arts gladiator was not beginner enough to reflect his useless body, and he was punished.
Recently I’ve been getting back into streaming while I draw the comic strip. I’ve messed around with a few different services and Ustream still seams to be the best overall. It’s fun to draw the strip live and watch people chatting in the social stream. I like seeing people guess what the strip is about just from the art and then laugh as I drop the text in at the end. The only problem I really have is really the quality of the video. Robert and I talked about a way to record the drawing at a higher quality and I think we may have a solution. We set up a camera over my shoulder last week while I was drawing and you can see the results on PATV today.
We're in Spokane for the Fourth of July, and presumably sometime after, as we wait for a break in the Bloodstorms to make our escape.
I wonder what the mix would be like at a convention devoted exclusively to Call of Duty. I got so good at muting the people who play that game that it became a kind of game in itself; I could mute more than one person per second at my apex, it was a point of pride. That shit is wall to wall brigands.
I’ve had a few people ask about the Alienware laptop in the strip. Some people want to know if I have one and if so, do I like it. A couple have even asked if I am getting some kind of payment for putting it in there. It’s probably worth mentioning that advertisers can not purchase space in the comic strip. That’s just not something we offer. The truth is I do have a couple Alienware machines and as far as my experience with them, it’s been sort of mixed.
It's true: you can see for yourself! Well, technically, it's $112,099.73, but who's counting? Me. I am counting.
League of Legends is still a thing, that rare creature whose appeal slices through so many distinct strata that it can build consensus even in our fractious crew.
I recorded today's stream:
There is really the most incredible offering of Bungie treasure going on now on eBay, in a sequence of unstoppable charitable auctions. Some fairly shocking things in there, including original concept art for what we now understand is Halo. Just amazing.
I read on Krizz Kaliko that Microsoft was ”rumored” to be approaching developers about Free To Play games on their service. But they aren’t rumored to be, as the steel mask of Kakrotticus knows full well - they are, because Free to Play doesn’t represent some rapidly plumping metastasized future. It represents the flowing and present ultranow.