I bought the new Modern Warfare long before all the Blizzard controversy. Personally I thought they made a terrible decision when they banned Blitzchung and and even worse decision when they lied about the reasons in their PR bullshit after the fact. I have been a Blizzard fan for decades but I think it’s very clear that this is not the same company it used to be. With that said, I think that there are a lot of people at Activision/Blizzard who are just trying to make cool games and they have nothing to do with these stupid business decisions.

Last year, Call of Duty was like three different games on one disc - three separate experiences with three separate progression systems. That's one way to do it. It was like having access to three distinct buffets simultaneously, yet still being bound by the volume restrictions inherent to a finite creature. I tried a bit of each, and loved Blackout - I think Blackout is probably the best BR there is. Kiko still plays every week. I had the same kind of fun with the regular multi that I usually have, which is a fair amount. It's just something I do with my friends, like, I dunno. Pickleball. It's a place I go to do a thing.

I've played through the intro of Outer Worlds, and came away impressed and just generally warmed by the experience. It's unfortunate that it sounds so much like Outer Wilds. Every time I type it, I'm like… is it the other one? At least they're both amazing; it's not like there's one you need to avoid. I advocate wholeheartedly for this newly christened Outerverse in its entirety and I think it's standing on firm legs.

Shroud is one of the streamers I actually, like… watch. I knew about Ninja because I'm a living, conscious being, I've seen him play and felt wonder, but after Apex Legends hit I watched me a ton of Shroud as he more or less defined excellence there. And now he's joining Ninja at Mixer. Which will ultimately have the same effect, I'm sure. But it is incredibly fun to talk about.

Super Spin Digital is a company based in Melbourne, Australia - a place which is some call "Melbs," which sounds vaguely plural. As though it were possible to have more than one Melb, and thus a word was required. This team was formed from talents extracted from Halfbrick responsible for effortless fun like Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride, and this might be why their new game Spin Rhythm XD feels like a fundamental entry in the Rhythm genre even though it literally just hit Early Access. I have games that never left Early Access; I have games that emerged from Early Access no better than they entered it. I think we've all played the Beta that we bought much later in a bloom of optimism, the bugs we reported fully secure, perhaps even canonized.

After multiple aborted attempts, both on my part and his deep knowing that The Witcher is awesome, Gabe is finally digging into The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. But, like… on the Switch.

There were a lot of questions during the Aussie Q&As from a person whose first name started with M and their last name started with K. They involved… well, take a look at the strip.

I got home from Australia yesterday in something like a Cordyceps infected state, maddened but somehow also lethargic, too dry in some places while unforgivably rank and greasy elsewhere. When I get down to the very bottom of my reserves, I'm lucky to have a level of consciousness that is up to most of the things society asks of us with virtually no resource requirements. It just handles it. My actual self, the one that writes these, just has to float in a sac and gain strength.

I've been trying to take more time to draw for fun recently and here is the result. I'm 100% hooked on Destiny again and it feels great to be back on the moon kicking ass. If you've been away for a while I recommend jumping back in and giving Shadowkeep a try.

This was the fortieth PAX, which means it was my fortieth PAX. A couple things about that.

You aren't going to believe this, every neuron in your brain will shriek at the revelation. But we live on a sphere(!!!). I thought I was the only one having a hard time with some of this stuff, so I asked Kiko to perform some feat of chrono-cognition for me. He's my rock, but he couldn't map time appropriately either. He just sat down slowly, with his hand on his knees, shaking his head as though he were remembering "the war."

Gabe mentioned it during a Q&A at PAX West, I think it was during the Make A Strip panel, but when he's stuck somewhere he has a very particular way of narrating the experience in his mind. It's an intoxicating format and I'd like to focus on it exclusively from now on, but in the time it took me to type that sentence out I no longer think so. I'm glad we did it this time, though.

Someday I will return to the land down under but until then, know that I am there with you in spirit. Some say that wherever two or more are gathered to play games...I am with them. That's not true obviously. For those of you who can go to PAX Australia, here's all the great stuff we made that you can buy!

I think it was when I heard Watch The Stove that I started to really get it. The cadre I'm ostensibly in, Generation X, was notoriously resistant to traditional advertising - but God damn. Once we got on, we've brought a kind of sinister genius to the field. It's pretty anime, when you think about it. We were asymptomatic carriers.

Of course, Shadowkeep comes out right when I'm about to travel for an entire day, but what I've played the last few nights is showing me things I wanted to know from the jump. Gabe stayed home to go hard on it, he's at something like 890 Light, right up against the soft cap - it's delivering meaningful content to him regularly. But I put "meaningful content" as a link, so maybe something else is happening there also. But if you've stuck around with Destiny for awhile, you're gonna see some shit, and it's not gonna take long to see it. Plus Eris Morn is back, the Dark Daria of the setting has returned to haunt the lunchroom of the Moon.

I head out Monday for PAX Aus, and when you leave Monday for PAX Aus you actually arrive on Wednesday. I'm sure that I say that every year, I'm not even going to check. I'll never get used to it. I can look directly at the time it is in another part of the world and disbelieve it. I'm sure I've said that too. Last year I did the posts like twelve hours in advance because I didn't trust anything. Surprisingly, having reality perpetually called into question does not hamper my enjoyment of said trip.