July 2018 Wrapup!

I blogged every day, so that’s that goal met. The most notable blog posts of July included the four Kamen Rider essays, which I really enjoyed writing. They were originally going to be a video, but I realised the scope of the editing was just beyond me without source material, and I’d have to go hunting on Youtube for video I could use. I also liked my post showing the day-long process of creating the engine for a boat card game, and the surprisingly positive hindsight view I have of Rise of the Eldrazi.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - The Meaningless Heterotopia

Next up, the video! This month’s video was Meaningless Heterotopia, a 20 minute long video essay about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, a game that has nothing to say despite being convinced it has absolutely got something to say. This video was quite a bit of work, but I did it almost a month before it got released. Notably, this video got made because I already had made video of the gameplay experience, which has taught me about when to record video footage, and how ‘play experience’ cuts together into an interesting video.

I think in hindsight, with a few mistakes notwithstanding (there’s a point where some animations are out of sync), I learned a lot making this. The biggest problem is that in my efforts to keep the video moving, to avoid still images, I shot through a lot of things way too fast. It’d have been better to space out my speech more, if I’d given the text on screen more room to breath.

That said, it hit almost 400 views in a few days and is at 600 views as I write this, which is a huge improvement over Ziggurat. Thank you so much!

This month’s game release was Domains of Meh, which went up on DriveThruCards. It’s a little trick-taking army game, and had to get made between a bunch of other stuff, so I’m pretty happy with how it worked out. The Nyarr is almost good to launch too, I’m just waiting on the last of the artists to get back to me. Working with other people has a time frame all of its own!

Here’s this month’s t-shirt: BAD BEETS.

I also had to get back on unemployment benefits in anticipation of work not coming through, which meant I got into that bureaucracy for just long enough to be reminded of how much it sucked.

Also, my grandmother died.