Cruel Calculus

At an earnings call last week Activision-Blizzard posted record profits and a round of historical layoffs. 800 people lost their jobs because one of the biggest entertainment companies on earth didn't plan growth properly. That's sh*ty and it won't stop until a video entertainment union worth a damn sprouts up out of nowhere. That could take years, maybe more. What worries me most is what happened during the rest of the earnings call.

COO Coddy Johnson drew a line between what he believes were two halves of the company. One half were artists and programmers (development)  the other marketing and customer support (non developers) This was mostly for investors but a message was sent loud and clear to the peanut gallery. "We just sent 800 of your colleges packing. Don't ask any questions about Bobby Kotick's stock options and get in your designated box."

A-B has chosen to rule by fear. There's nothing illegal about it. Not even investigation worthy. Everything that company did was above board. That's what bothers me. We live in a world where your boss can make you petrified about your job security and if that person can prove it boosted sales that person gets promoted. Or gets a bonus bigger than most earn in a lifetime.

I ask you, reader, shouldn't that be a crime?

My Cherry Valentine.

And I didn't get you guys anything...

Hollow Knight is a masterpiece and Team Cherry is the indie dev team to beat. Even kotaku's intrepid investigative reporter Jason Scheier agrees. These guys are goddamn magicians. The 3 of them and a genius composer spent the last year giving HK free DLC while toiling away in secret on a sequel. They said Hornet was going to get a stand alone chapter and I'm so jazzed they changed their minds over how big that "chapter" might be.

Behold:

Hornet looks to be more of an engineer than the knight's black mage loadout. I see her launching buzz saw traps and bombs. I also see huge intricately animated bosses that they couldn't afford the last go round. This looks amazing. I could totally wait another year for it but I hope it's only a few months out. It's good to know that Activision and EA could burn to the ground tomorrow and Team Cherry would still be merrily plugging away at what will most likely be my favorite game of the year. I mean ya'll... this sh*t looks finished.

Hell of a Game

Lemme set the mood:

I am constantly falling in and out of love with Civilization. I loved V and remain impressed by VI but Civ unlike any other piece of entertainment can absolutely wreck my day. There’s a feeling you get when you’re 4 hours into a game (about renaissance era) that you’re completely effed. Your army survived your protectorate war but was it worth blowing half your troops saving a city state that only nets you 17 gold? It wasn’t and now you can’t afford a settler to find oil and aluminum so you’re about to be shut out of the late game too. You put Civ down emotionally and intellectually defeated.

It sucks.

But then there’s the other side of the coin. When you out think and outplay everyone on earth. Civilization is the only game that can make me feel like an evil genius. Such a game was one I played last weekend with Gorgo. A military terror early on (love them hoplites) her greatest strength is her late game capacity for culture. Her theater squares become acropolises which can be built in half the time of everyone else. Thanks to one of the governors from the rise and fall expansion I can make it so I have a near monopoly of all great writers and artists.

This is how I can make pure diplomacy work. Usually when you make too many libraries and museums the less civil leaders tend to sniff around your weakest links and pounce out of nowhere. But if you can buy them off with a piece of literature or two and make them dependent on your spices and dyes you can come out on top with a profit. In this run I was trying to see how many alliances I could forge at one time. I managed to max them out, you can only have 5, and went on to have the most blissfully peaceful game of civilization I can remember. I was everybody's friend and if anyone picked on me or my buddies they were bombed into the stone age.

He shouldn't have laughed at me... he shouldn't have laughed!!!

I made a point to cross the sea before everyone else and cornered the market on aluminum. Which meant that I’m the only one with an air force worth a damn and since I’m everybody's “friend” no one thought to put up air defenses. The last kerfuffle with my cranky roman neighbor was as brief as it was hilarious.

Near the end the tension kind of went out of the game. I had built a massive empire over three continents making 700 gold a turn. Money was no object and I had everything lined up for a science victory. Two cities with two launchpads makes it so I’m 50-ish turns away. But then came the sabotage. My fair weather friends had been biding their time and making spies. Suddenly parking my own spies on launch pads and neighborhoods wasn’t enough to keep my victory projects from resetting and mini boss quality tanks (spy made partisans) from popping up in the middle of my capital.

If I was in any actual space race I would have lost… but the beauty of the culture victory is that I sometimes forget I’ve already got it made. Within 20 turns I was the tourist capital of the world and I posted my best score in Civ since 2014. Hell of a game. I don't get a whole lot of self respect out this hobby so when it does happen I need to document it!

Oh and does the gathering storm come out tomorrow? ...I hadn’t realized.

Russian Doll Review: Stop Hitting Yourself.

I’m jealous of groundhog day. I can’t be the only one who is. It's a unique concept executed perfectly. If you try to drink from the fountain of Bill Murray’s best movie (come at me) you best have a damn decent show in mind. Thankfully, Russian Doll does. It is both darker than it wants you to think it is as well as more complicated. Groundhog day was essentially a sardonic morality play. Boiling down to the message of “Hey! Don’t be an asshole.” Russian Doll has a bit more on its mind.

While at its core it remains a relationship drama it also sits a nifty science fiction puzzle in front of your nose and gives you 6 episodes to figure it out. I did not. For once I got a bit more than timey-wimey hand waving and was disappointed I didn’t piece together the rotting fruit bit earlier. That’s just one piece. You get your first real clue after the initial death. You’d have to pause a lot and take notes but you could do it.

That is how you get your cake and eat it too. Do you have a good relationship story? Maybe about how turning your terminal self loathing into a lifestyle is a sh*t idea? Then maybe sprinkle in some time travel shenanigans to prove that it would take divine intervention to get some people to notice. Basically it only uses time travel to tell a better relationship story and that’s what I respect most. You can be as story driven as you want but if your characters and their choices don’t make sense episode to episode (SHERLOCK) I’m not going to be happy enough with you to bother with a write up.

"Sweet birthday baby" is the new "Ned Ryerson"

I’m dancing around the story because I don’t want you to know anything going in. Are you a self loathing introvert or extrovert? This show is gonna say some things that might hit you in the gut. Stuff that’s quite a bit more heady than simply hating yourself is wrong. It’s also the rare netflix show feels exactly as long as it needs to be. The first few were so dense and delicious I wasn’t sure if they were 50 minutes or not. Not a second over 30 it turned out.

The best thing I can say about the writing is that every character has a point. Everyone. The jerks, the homeless, even a philandering jackhole has a point. Except the 3 minute scene where Nadia shows up to her programming day job. That was just a bad scene. A noticeably RARE bad scene, but there it is. It’s just nice to see a show about depression and self destruction where everybody's pain matters. Even the villain’s.

I can’t say you’re going to love Russian Doll. I sure as hell did, but it might get a bit dark for some and if you’ve never dealt seriously with depression it might be too navel gazy. But it’s got a good puzzle worth solving and if you start I’m confident you’ll finish it. You also may not like how it ends but again, I sure as hell did.

Out of Boredom

I’m bored. I’m so bored I’m doing that thing I do every 2 years where I try to get into an MMO. It almost never works. I’m not a fan of the theme park vibe and I only put up with it in Destiny because the actual gameplay was sublime. Not so in Final Fantasy 14. It’s funny how much it has in common with 12 what with the arrow that spews out of enemies that target you and the floating blue dots denoting the edge of an area. I just wish it had 12’s art direction. Or 12’s score…

I’m an archer. I’m not sure if I’m in an area for archers specifically or if all the newbies wind up in this forest. The music is a lazy synth hodgepodge of Newman’s Shire stuff. I’m not impressed. But it IS pretty and I’m not not enjoying it. Runs like a dream too. Not that a game made in 2014 that's also on a PS4 is going to knock my socks off but its still impressively crisp.

I’ll stick with it for a month. I had to jump through enough free trial hoops to get this far. You bet your butt I’m gonna get my un-money’s worth. Hey, maybe I like it so much I feel compelled to pay $12 a month for it. Maybe in the same month I find the one and we get engaged after winning the lottery. In an infinite universe many things are possible.

February Doldrums.

Chamberlain had the perfect word for the last week: “doldrums.” I hadn’t realized how long I had been stuck in it until he brought it up. It was time to start asking myself certain questions. Questions such as “do I like this?” and "am I actually having fun?" I don’t ask myself that nearly enough about what I’m playing. My screen time these days are more vanishingly small than ever and I feel like I’m stuck in a rut. A loot rut.

If I’m not playing Destiny 2 I’m playing Diablo. If I’m not playing Diablo I might be in Borderlands 2. There’s a few slay the spire runs in between those but suffice it to say I haven't seen any games I feel like playing that are coming out in the next 6 months. Well that’s not true. I see you over there Civ VI. Can’t wait to have the United Nations back in a week or so. But still I can’t say I’m ITCHING to play it. Sure The Outer Worlds and Psychonauts 2 are coming but neither have nailed down a date and I sincerely doubt both come out in November, let alone this year. Tim Schafer scares easy, is what I’m saying.

So I shuffle off to my digital casinos. That’s what it’s starting to feel like. That I’m no longer an active participant but just stuck in front of a video poker machine for 2 hours a night. Am I having fun? ...Yes. Yes with an asterisk. There is still way more skill involved in staying alive in all 3 games then I’m giving them credit for. Sure these games might share some aspects with mindless gambling but I’m not exactly just sitting there. Though I’ve played them each so many times it is starting to feel that way.

It’s not like I don’t have a pile of shame to deal with. I could give monster hunter world another shot. There’s got to be something about that game I keep missing. Far too many people like it way too much for it to only be the exercise in frustration I thought it was. I got options, I guess. I’m sure the winds will pick up eventually.

The Terror Review: Save our Souls

Do you ever get the feeling when you’re watching, listening to, or reading something and think that this might be your favorite thing? I thought that a lot watching The Terror. It also scared me off writing a full on review. I liked it too much. It had so many things I loved in one place. Great English actors on sailing ships, 19th century exploration, paranoia thriller plotting, and a solid idea for a cgi monster with the budget to make it happen. This review will not be objective. This is the only box set I’ve bought in a decade. I’ve watched it more than 3 times all the way through. I love this show and hope some of that wafts off me in your direction.


Your experience may hinge on how much you enjoy watching English people in uniforms arguing life or death stakes. Can you deal with hours of that? Can you put up with that for fleeting jaws-like glimpses of a demonic polar bear? If you were sold on this by the formula of Ridley Scott + arctic + cgi monster = Victorian Alien, I have some bad news. This is way more about the hubris of Sir John Franklin (Ciaran Hines) and the infuriatingly optimistic way he gets every man in his service killed.

Slowly.

Over 3 years.

His doomsaying second officer (Jared Harris) is driven deep as he can go into the bottle after pleading for The Erebus and The Terror to take a slower, steadier, route away from the ice pack. Instead they press on, becoming part of it, never to be rescued. That's just the first episode. This is just how it all starts.




It’s the kind of thing you don’t see much of outside of HBO. A real cast of thousands. 10 episodes is a lot of time from the right perspective. This is another ingredient to the secret sauce. It’s a movie not a series. These are 5 acts in 10 parts. This was originally planned as a multiple season series and it shows. Every episode makes significant changes to the status quo. There almost never is a “status quo.” Instead there is faltering leadership, starvation, madness, and mutinous designs.

Should I keep going? Spoil the breakout stars, the mid season twists, and the tuunbaq’s song? I kinda want to. But seeing everything and everyone in it fresh is one of the best viewing experiences I’ve ever had. Just know that there is a through line for every story from the first episode to the last. I’ve looked for them. The Terror is so dense that there are some characters I forgot about the first go round that I made a point to focus on the second time.

Everybody gets a beginning, middle, and end. Some certainly more than others, but everyone gets at least a little spotlight. Even the guy who becomes comatose after being mauled by a demon bear. Know that Henry Goodsir is the BEST sir. You can’t finish it without loving that sonofabitch. Paul Ready knows how to perfect the goody two shoes character so that you not only like him but actively root for him. That’s as spoilery as I feel like getting. 

The Terror got effing robbed at the emmys. A year out and it seems everyone forgot about it. There’s a new series in the works set in the California Japanese internment camps which sounds neat. But this season was a miracle of horror film making and more people need to see it. I bet it pops up on nexflix or something before the new season but the $25 I paid is more than enough for a show that captures an absolutely brutal feeling of dread and sustains it effortlessly over 10 hours.


$17 at wal-mart. Just. sayin’.

The world didn't deserve you Mr/Dr. Goodsir.