This Week’s Topics:
- Rundown Preamble Ramble: The Alleged End of Xbox
- TSF Showcase 2024-06 JK-ka Refle [JK-ification Salon] (Ch 1, 2, 3, and 4) by Kouji
- No Escape for Runescape! (Jagex Acquired by Private Equity Firms)
- The Wild Age of Yu-Gi-Oh! Games Returns(?) (Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection Announced)
- Metrics for Everyone (Natalie Complains About How Capitalism Won’t Give Her Sales Figures)
- The Unionization Effort Continues! (IGN is Unionizing!)
- Disney & Tencent’s Epic (Disney Invests $1.5 Billion in Epic Games)
Rundown Preamble Ramble:
The Alleged End of Xbox
…So what the hell happened with Xbox this past week? Well, the long and short of it is that myriad rumors have been floating around that Microsoft’s gaming division will undergo dramatic changes over the past few weeks and months. That their strategy for exclusives might be coming to an end and games like Hi-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves, Starfield, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Gears of War might be coming to PlayStation. That Microsoft is planning on transitioning out of the console race. That physical Xbox games might become a thing of the past. And the Xbox console experiment Microsoft has been pushing for the last 23 years might be over.
Now, it is important to note that nothing of this sort has been confirmed. Tensions are high, a lot of people are confused, and the discourse on X The Genocider’s Gooch (formerly known as TwitBitz) and premiere gaming forum RezEtCetEra has been absolutely wild.
The rumors and discourse are so intense that Phil Spencer has announced that there will be a “business update” released next week. A move that only served to put grease onto the fire. To me, that should be the end of it… except some Xbox enthusiasts have already accepted this as a confirmation, and have just completely given up. I’d make some comparison to Sega discontinuing the Dreamcast and going third party in 2000/2001, as a lot of people felt betrayed back then. However, this is not a reaction to something Microsoft said. Rather, a reaction to swirling rumors that have been mounting over the past few weeks and not anything official.
I could point at the Xbox fans who are hurt over this whole thing and highlight how some of their behavior has been… stupid and/or pathetic. However, I have too much empathy to view them as anything other than people who were hurt by a betrayal from a company they trusted. Not in a parasocial sense, but in a customer sense. These people bought hardware and engaged in an ecosystem because they thought they would be serviced and be provided with something exclusive, unavailable on the competition. There are millions of people who have been loyal to the Xbox brand since the OG Xbox, since the 360, and hearing that Xbox might be going away, that their library might become valueless… sucks ass!
From the perspective of the broader industry, I consider Xbox a net positive, as it is still a form of competition for other gaming platforms, and its mere existence forces platforms to do better. It would be a different story if major industries were given a moderate amount of moderation, but neoliberal whatever-the-frick is still en vogue with the geriatrics ruling much of the world. A duopoly with Nintendo and PlayStation is not a win for anyone, and while you could say there is competition from the island of mobile and PC gaming, that’s not really the case.
Mobile gaming has become so aggressively monetized and victimized by the whims of capitalism that I see it as a separate industry. It’s at least as different as films and TV are despite fundamentally being the same thing. Honestly, mobile gaming just makes me upset to think about because it just cannot be changed at this point. There’s too much money in it and it has become the dominant force in gaming.
While PC gaming is steadily losing appeal amongst younger people due to how they engage with computers, with many growing up with Chrome OS laptops and mobile devices. But even those blessed with a normal upbringing are forced to face a pretty dire looking future. GPU prices are super high, power has stagnated, and Nvidia is pushing away from being a graphics company due to the current AI boom. Sure, you can buy a GPU secondhand or go the increasingly viable APU route, but when compared to the ease and cheapness of buying a console sold at a loss, it can be hard to justify.
Tangent aside, for years people have been saying that Microsoft’s biggest goal would be to get Game Pass on competing platforms, and I still think that is what they ultimately want. To be everywhere, rather than consolidate things around a platform that has had profitability issues for years. I still think that Sony and Nintendo will not let them do that, but if that’s the price they gotta pay to keep Xbox out of the console market… they might just bite.
…Just to clarify, that last bit was not a rumor, it was just wild-ass speculation. And that’s what most of this is. Just a buncha people shitting outta their asses about shit they don’t know shit about. We’ll know more about it next week, but until then, calm yo shit down.
TSF Showcase 2024-06
JK-ka Refle [JK-ification Salon] (Ch 1, 2, 3, and 4) by Kouji
I could easily write a 10,000+ word essay on Kouji’s work, the themes they fixate toward, the dynamics they explore, and the sheer tenacity present across their body of work. Hell, I could warrant a TSF Showcase on nearly every one of their works. Their baseline of quality is that high! I won’t do that because I have a six month cooldown rule for showcasing the same artist, as I want to show off a wide variety of creators. …But I just passed the six month mark for my last Kouji showcase, so let’s dig into this well yet again!
You might think I would use this as an opportunity to talk about the incomplete, partially untranslated, yet excellent Mahou Shoujo La Valliere. Or their masterpiece, Turned into a Breast Milk Fountain by a Beautiful Vampire and the remake of the same name (that I briefly talked about in Natalie Rambles About TSF Comics). Instead, I want to talk about a four-part anthology of theirs, JK-ka Refle! Also known as JK-ification Salon. Or High School Girl-ification Salon for those who don’t know what a JK is.
As the title suggests, the series centers around an establishment that lets its customers temporarily transform themselves into high school girls of their choosing. After their transformation, they are serviced by a ‘real’ high school girl who gives them massages, lays with them, chats with them, goes out on dates with them, and so forth. …Well, that’s what they say initially, but they do also offer rambunctiously kinky sex for those with deep pockets.
It’s also at least somewhat based on JK businesses throughout Japan. A dubious ongoing trend where high school age girls are pushed into doing activities like compensated dating and reflexology. Activities that seem innocuous when phrased under these terms, but are dangerously close, if not interwoven into, the underage sex industry. …Look, when you dig into the hentai mines, you’re just going to find stuff like this.
With that taken care of, the first entry follows Hirose, an overworked Japanese salary man who thinks he is going to a regular JK business. A place where he can lay beside, get massaged by, and chat with a soft pretty girl. Instead, he becomes his ideal JK— a big-breasted gyaru— and is serviced by a “proper girl” named Midori. They’re lumped together in an isolated room and from there, things play out about how anyone versed in this niche would expect.
Hirose is pissed that he was duped into a transformation like this and just wants to go back to normal. Midori offers excellent service, giving him a massage to remove the kinks from his body— which I guess transfer over as part of the transformation. Getting stimulated like this gets Hirose more comfortable with his body, and he starts pivoting the session in a more sexual direction. He tries to act dominant in front of Midori, but she’s a professional and Hirose barely knows how his new body works, so he is quickly overwhelmed by her sexual prowess.
Afterwards, Hirose turns back to normal and returns to his mundane overworked office life, yet he cannot forget about that experience and wants to try his hand at Midori again, wanting to dominate her. Hirose uses his paycheck to pay for a night-long date with Midori, socializing with her as they do teenage girl stuff, before soliciting this child for sex at the local love hotel, because he’s a class act like that. But rather than forcing her into sex, he tries to convince Midori to have sex with him as a man. Hirose does not accept ‘no’ though, and Midori decides to cut him a deal. If he can avoid cumming for an hour, then she will go on a regular date with him during his off time. …Which she uses as an excuse to fulfill the ‘domination fantasy’ of this story, as Midori deceives Hirose with a fake timer, pulls out a strap on, and gags him for good measure.
While Hirose does not say anything for the rest of the comic, the framing of the last page implies that he was actually super into that, and would quickly become one of Midori’s regulars. Because, deep down, Hirose is into being dominated by a cute proper girl who is into some kinky stuff.
Describing it like this, it really does not sound too remarkable. It is just a TSF story built around the appeal of a male character being emasculated not only by becoming a woman, but being denied a dominant role in a sapphic relationship. However, what makes this stand out is, naturally, the details I skimmed over.
Kouji’s comics are always a visual treat for me. The paneling can seem cluttered, maybe even a bit hectic, when viewing its structure, yet it is seldom ever confusing how it should be read and has a dynamic flow that makes every page feel like its own canvas. The characters are incredibly expressive, with every face clearly having a lot of thought put into how it should contort and what it should say about the character. And while the characters do stem from archetypes, they do have some nice little back-and-forths as they try to feel out their relationship. With Midori being cordial and pleasant enough for Hirose to think she’s lowered her guard, only for her to slide into her more assertive side.
It’s good, though nothing too wild or remarkable beyond the high quality artwork and being a solid TSF hentai comic. One that sells itself on its oddball premise and an archetypical dynamic. Fortunately, this was just the beginning!
Part two follows Shintaro Tateishi, your typical virgin otaku software engineer who gets dragged to the JK Salon by his friend Satoru Saikida, more on him in the next chapter. Satoru arranges the transformation so that Shintaro is transformed into a replica of his unrequited high school crush, Ayaka Nagahori. An absurdly busty and remarkably cheery girl who Shintaro holds in reverence, rather than blind perversion. Conversely, his partner is Arisu, a short, flat, cute, and aggressive little palmtop tiger who, unlike Midori, takes a far more direct and honest approach. Because it takes all types to run an underage specialty brothel. Also, I know her name is probably supposed to be Alice, but the unofficial translation calls her Arisu, so she’s Arisu to me. It’s a pseudonym anyway.
Rather than being elated by this magical event, Shintaro crumbles as he is reminded of how kind Ayaka was to him during high school days, and feels like a creep just fondling her boobs. A pretty even-keeled reaction all things considered. But rather than letting him just walk out, accepting that he should spend his life as a creepy virgin, Arisu gets pissed off and drags him off to “grow some balls.” Even though Shintaro looks like he’s schlepping around basketballs.
This leads into the main showpiece of the chapter, which I would describe as… public bath exposure therapy. Where Arisu drags Shintaro out to a public bath and forces him to not only exist in a female space, in an extremely female body, and talk to women, while Arisu provides… sexual reinforcement. She uses Shinatro’s unfamiliarity with his body to threaten him with sudden intense sensations, rewards him for keeping up appearances, and helps him maintain his composure with a steady influx of sexual stimulation. …Actually describing it, it’s a pretty weird concept, but it also makes some sense. It’s positive reinforcement, forces Shintaro to de-other women, and in a business like this, the more the client orgasms, the better.
After spending all that time in the bath, Shintaro passes out and has Arisu escort him home, where he collapses and is inclined to just stay there. But Arisu, due to either her own disgust with Shintaro’s behavior or wanting to eke more cash out of this sucker, chooses to escalate things. Explaining that there are secret options involving girl on girl options, and pushing him into it. Because it doesn’t matter if he consents, it only matters that it happened. With the latter it referring to sex with a double-ended dildo while Arisu teaches Shintaro how to have sex as a man… while getting fucked as a woman. A scene that I… definitely looked at for inspiration before.
The contrast of seeing this little doll-like girl become this sexual aggressor, going from gentle kissing to whipping out this monster bigger than her arm is just hilarious to me. Same with the idea of her apparently being knowledgeable enough with sex to give tips like this to a man. It really gets my brain wondering as to just what she could have been doing… and how she truly views this job.
Arisu is assertive and aggressive around Shintaro, pushing him to go further and expand his comfort zone, albeit in unconventional ways. Though the reason for her behavior is left more ambiguous. She regularly mentions the fees, the options, and directly refers to the job as she justifies her actions, to the point she could be read as someone just exploiting a frazzled guy for extra cash. However, she also seems to have strong ideas of how men should behave, berates Shintaro for being so passive, and pushes him to be… better, going so far as to tell him to get a real girlfriend. Plus… she probably wouldn’t be doing something like this unless she got some enjoyment out of it. I guess you could say she has layers, but… she’s also honest at the same time.
Overall, I really like chapter two. It offers a completely different dynamic from the first one and I admire the creative route it takes to go from a timid guy becoming his crush to the sexually absurd conclusion. I’m a big fan of more mellow, grounded initial reactions to TSF, such as shame, loathing, or rejection of the impossible, and the hyper-escalation of a lot of short-form TSF stories. …And this offers both while, naturally, reaping the benefits of being a 50 page comic. It’s so good that I’ve taken ‘stuff’ from it both intentionally and accidentally.
Part three of this series digs deeper into Satoru Saikida, a shut-in day trader who manages to make obscene amounts of money that he spends on all manner of typical otaku things. Online games, figurines, and most especially sex. Being such an aficionado of prostitution and sex parlors that he considers himself to be the “Mating Press Geezer.” A big guy who likes to spend big and embarrass those who serve them before dominating them. So naturally the JK-Refle decided to turn him into the most child-like high school girl possible and pair him with a super tall curvaceous lady.
Satoru is hesitant to believe that this is all real, assuming that this is just hypnosis, but his servicer, Shiho, knows just how to make him feel tiny, dainty, and completely blow his mind. Through the power of cunnilingus and sizeplay, Satoru is made into one of the most avid patrons of JK-Refle, flaunting his wealth and cash in order to fulfill whatever sick, twisted, desires he has. …Emphasis on sick and twisted.
Satoru’s girl form deliberately looks like a child, right down to the uniform style, pigtails, and even the iconic red grade schooler backpack. So much like a child that Satoru gets into a love hotel by going potty in his dress. It’s blatantly in ‘jail time’ territory just from a visual level, yet from a narrative level everything about this is just farcical. Satoru pours himself a glass of alcohol, gets into a tight one piece, sings a girly pop song with his new voice, and when Shiho’s busty giantess friends, Anna and Ruiko, come in, he becomes king of titty mountain. Rubbing two difference sets while sitting between two others before getting gobbled up by a titty bed. Which then leads into Satoru getting sexually bullied by these three to the point he pisses the bed because… because Kouji’s just freaking weird like that.
It’s just an onslaught of being sexually overwhelmed for nearly 30 pages, and it is a spectacle not only in how it progresses, but how it manages to evoke a sense of scale. The sheer number of angles, perspectives, and ways Kouji finds to illustrate the size differences central to this chapter are staggering to behold. To the point where I want to say that some impossible space tomfoolery is going on… but I cannot find any proof. Chapter three is shameless, abrasive, and pretty disgusting… while also being home to so much care and skill put into it that I cannot look away.
As for part four, it’s also pretty messed up, just in a new way. This entry follows Akihiro, a businessman with a sister several years younger than him, Kana, who works for JK-Refle. Seeing as how their parents are dead and Akihiro had to basically raise Kana, he is naturally protective of her and goes to investigate this establishment, only for Kana to lure him in and transform him into her twin. Akihiro is vehemently baffled by this entire situation and begs Kana to give up this life of lite sex work, but with her image of a doting little sister already damaged, Kana reveals her true self. A sadist who gets off on men turning into women and dominating them until they become her little sister… and also a brocon.
With the previous hostesses, they seemed like relatively well-adjusted people, despite their bizarre profession. But Kana is straight up bonkers! She taunts and teases his brother, forcing herself onto him, and shows a complete disregard for any and all autonomy of control Akihiro has over his own life. She is convinced he will be happier this way, that her viewpoint is superior, and uses his unconditional love of her to just… torture him.
She walks him with a leash that’s attached to his neck and clitoris, with vibrators taped all over his erogenous zones. She rapes him in her classroom while demanding that he become her younger sister. She pulls out a strap-on while claiming that her job is necessary for the good of society, as some men need to become female masochists. And right after Akihiro voices objections, right as he is near the precipice of an intense experience in a new body, she completely and rapidly shuts down the character, just to make him admit that he wants it.
Kana is a horrific person whose disregard, disrespect, and entitlement of her brother is disgusting on many levels. She never doubts her convictions or her actions and conducts herself with such poise and composure that it feels as if she spent months planning for something like this to happen. She actively denies who Akihiro is as a person, molding him into her own image, strictly to confirm her own predetermined conclusions and fulfill her twisted sexual fantasy.
It is so extreme… yet I cannot help but admire how transparent and indulgent it is. There is no effort to humanize her, no attempt to truly explain why she feels this way about her brother, because it does not truly matter. Because this is about someone using the power of this magical place to fulfill a deep desire impossible in reality, and using it to fulfill their worst impulses. And there’s something beautiful about that. I often feel the need to complicate things but sometimes… a one dimensional character is best. (Also, some people are one dimensional.)
Viewing it as a series, JK-ka Refle is pretty bizarre. Every installment explores a different dynamic and brings with it its own flavor, and while it does ‘fumble’ in certain places, I was thoroughly hooked when I sat down to re-read it for this showcase. I would say that the first part does feel like the concept came before the story, and relies on that a bit too much to forge its own identity. …But for a 36 page comic, I can’t really blame it for feeling under-detailed, and the artwork alone makes it an entertaining read. The second entry has the strongest characterization and plot. The contrast between the main characters works well, the progression of events feels… pretty grounded all things considered. And it ends on a very humanizing note. While the latter two parts both impress with their relentless excess and devotion. Crafting scenarios that, for all my eccentricities as a creator, I still look at with a sense of awe.
Also, while I only gave it one paragraph before, I do need to sing the praises of Kouji’s artwork as they have consistently impressed me over the years I’ve been following them. Kouji’s ability to bring characters to life through their expression, the visual ebb and flow of their stories, and the striking angles they use always make their work a treat. And for all the artistic evolution they underwent, much of which can be seen here, there’s something about their style that I just adore.
Now here’s where I would make a comment on Kouji and what they are currently doing, and the answer is they’re still plenty active. They’re still putting out new comics regularly. Though they have taken a break from TSF based on their latest four works. I don’t really have the ability to pinpoint why, but I do understand it conceptually, as Kouji has been mostly doing TSF works since 2016. Here’s hoping that they come back with something soon, and if not… I don’t have any shortage of works to choose from when I choose to pluck another one of their works from the vault.
No Escape for Runescape!
(Jagex Acquired by Private Equity Firms)
Ah balls! We just had to have a last minute acquisition this week, didn’t we? Oh well. At least the story is pretty straightforward. Jagex is a British game developer best known for Old School Runescape and whatever the modern Runescape has become. A low poly MMO known for its ability to run on just about anything and for being the MMO of a lot of children’s childhoods during the mid-2000s. It was either that, Maple Story, Ragnarok Online, or any of the other ones I’m forgetting.
It is a game that people still like to this day, enjoying the simplicity, idle grinding, and the fact that it has years upon years worth of content widely available, among other features I’m not privy toward. I doubt it makes much money, being a free-to-play friendly title, which makes it weird that someone decided to buy up Jagex for 1.13 billion dollars.
They were acquired by not one, but two private equity firms, CVC Capital Partners and Haveli Investments, and if you know anything about private equity, it’s probably that they extract value from companies and then throw away the husk afterward. It is a habitual behavior at this point, and has resulted in the worsening or destruction of countless companies at this point.
…Now, I would go on about how this would hurt the studio, but Jagex has basically been traded between private equity groups for over a decade now. Insight Venture Partners, Hongtou, Macarthur Fortune, The Carlyle Group, and now the combo of CVC Capital Partners and Haveli Investments. I have to ask how they manage to stay around and how these private equity firms haven’t just shut them down or merged them with another game developer, because that is the most likely situation.
So, maybe Jagex will survive this unscathed… or maybe their luck will finally run out.
The Wild Age of Yu-Gi-Oh! Games Returns(?)
(Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection Announced)
A few weeks ago, I was poo-pooing the idea of bespoke collections to re-release unchanged versions of classic games, because there should be a more centralized third-party handling official emulation. However, in saying that, I failed to acknowledge how a collection can shine a light on something more obscure or forgotten. It’s similar to how a re-release of an album or film or TV series can act as a jumping on point for people.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection is an emulation compilation of various early Yu-Gi-Oh! video games. A concept that might seem straight forward, just a digital version of the card game. Digital card games are en vogue now, so it should be fairly easy for modern audiences to understand, right? Well, not quite. Back during the 90s, there was a different view on how a card game should be adapted into a video game. Developers wound up inventing a lot of novel RPG card game hybrids that persisted throughout the years.
With this in mind, the developers behind the Yu-Gi-Oh! titles (Konami) were put into an odd spot with how to make games for it. On one hand, they wanted to follow this route and create RPGs based on the series, its world, and its characters. On the other, they were incentivized to replicate the card game itself to help boost interest in competitive play and buying cards. Because if someone has access to digital versions of every card and builds a killer deck, they will probably want to try it using physical cards.
However… the developers of these games also made various changes to the way the card system worked and crafted titles that have their own niche followings. Such as The Duelists of the Roses. Also, there are… too many of these games. From 1998 to 2010, there were over 40 titles released. If Konami were to re-release these titles in a big fat collection, it would be a genuinely staggering thing to behold. A time capsule showing how the design of these games grew and shifted over time, how the rules of the game altered, and how weird the developers got with things over time. I say that as someone who got The Falsebound Kingdom as a birthday present as a kid, and that game… is nothing like Yu-Gi-Oh! because it is an RTS turn-based RPG. I did not know how to play it, and the production values were ass, but they had some ambition there.
Unfortunately, Konami has not revealed what games will be included in this collection, beyond a GameBoy Color and a GameBoy Advance title. …One of which was never localized into English. That’s another thing about the early Yu-Gi-Oh! games. A lot of them never came to the west, and when they did, there was often a one or two year delay between releases. So certain titles were skipped over. Because it barely made sense to release a GameBoy Color game in 2002. Let alone three versions of the same game. …And they also released a North American Xbox exclusive, because Microsoft (must’ve) cut them a fat check.
After some time, they just sort of stopped making these card game RPG hybrids and started making online-driven live service iterations of the card game itself. Stuff like Legacy of the Duelist, Duel Links, and Master Duel. …I miss when these games were called dope shit like Reshef of Destruction, Reverse of Arcadia, and Kaiba the Revenge. And I miss when there were these oodles of smaller ‘sandwich budget’ handheld games and oddball spin-offs of major media franchises. All because big companies think they’re too important to bother with small projects.
…Anyway, this collection will probably just be the GameBoy titles or something. They decided to not release a list of names for some reason. However, it was confirmed that this collection will see an international western release and would include previously unlocalized games. I have come to expect nothing from Konami after they sputtered out stuff like the MGS Master Collection, so hearing that they are putting in the effort to localize GameBoy Color games is… baffling to me. Maybe they’ll just steal fan translations…
Metrics for Everyone
(Natalie Complains About How Capitalism Won’t Give Her Sales Figures)
Something that I find woefully disgusting about the games industry is the lack of transparency with metrics. While some developers and publishers announce milestones for titles, and certain companies, like Nintendo, regularly report the lifetime sales of their highest performing titles, most companies do not. Now, you might be asking why that is a problem, why metrics are important, to which I say… you clearly never took a statistics class.
I kid, I kid. Metrics are a highly useful tool to gauge the performance, health, and general success of a project or series, and have been a cornerstone of entertainment for years. TV ratings were one of the best indicators of the success of a TV show before everything went to streaming. Movie enthusiasts have regularly fixated over box office performance. And while the New York Times Best Sellers list of books has never indicated quality, it does indicate success.
Enthusiasts, fans, and people within an industry love metrics as they allow them to understand how well something is doing, and in the world of gaming, the information is splotchy. Top physical sales are tracked by NPD for the US, GfK for the UK, and Famitsu for Japan. Steam’s API no longer reports reliably extractable sales figures (I remember when SteamSpy was good), though it does offer valuable figures. And various organizations are in the business of tracking this information through what I can only assume to be the eldritch culinary arts.
I just wish there was some independent body responsible for reporting this information to the public, though that is steadily becoming less common over time. TV ratings are not a thing for digitally distributed shows. There is no NPD equivalent for any digital storefront. And for as much as Spotify improved the quality of life for various music enjoyers… nobody has any clue what its metrics are and artists aren’t getting paid.
Why is this the case? Well, because big companies do not want their information to be publicly available… even if they are a publicly traded company. This is something that is better in certain other countries, but publicly traded American businesses love their privacy and only want to report the minimum. That, and things that will boost their share price. They love using metrics at companies like this, and use it to drive decisions. They just don’t want it to go public because it is a bad look and hurts the most important part of any public company, the share price.
…And I don’t have a conclusion for this other than to voice how maybe publicly traded companies are a bad thing. And then highlight how the entire pursuit of profit may be making society worse. Pointing out how the thirst for growth is why the modern cost of living is so high, why so many people are struggling, and the source of many evils in this world.
The Unionization Effort Continues!
(IGN is Unionizing!)
Well, this is a pleasant surprise. Workers at premiere gaming site IGN have announced that they are unionizing with NewsGuild-CWA to form the IGN Creators Guild. This is no doubt in response to the number of layoffs that have hit the games reporting scene over the past… Actually, layoffs and closures have kind of been a constant thing for that part of the industry since the 2008 recession. Just ask anybody who started in the industry back then, assuming they’re still alive.
This is a great thing to see, as it will give the current team at IGN far more security and control, allowing them to prioritize what they want to prioritize and better control how things work at the site. It’s a good thing for the games press and broader industry, and I wish the staff all the best with their efforts. However, it is important to note that the unionization is not 100% confirmed, and efforts like this can be squashed by, say, mass layoffs.
…Now is where I would comment on IGN as a site, but I have not regularly visited it for over a decade and view them pretty neutrally. I will always have a soft spot for Max Scoville and Brian Altano for their roles on The Comedy Button. …But I don’t know anyone else who works there nowadays.
Disney & Tencent’s Epic
(Disney Invests $1.5 Billion in Epic Games)
…So, you remember how Epic Games announced they were having problems a few months ago, laid off 900 employees, and divested Bandcamp? Well, when companies do that, they either need to buckle down, change their operations, or go sniffing around for investments. Now, I think it’s absurd that Fortnite manufacturer Epic Games, a 40% Tencent-owned company, would ever need to do this. However, they did, and now Disney is investing $1.5 billion into Epic Games.
Per the press release, the goal of this investment is to create a “new persistent universe [that] will offer a multitude of opportunities for consumers to play, watch, shop and engage with content, characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar and more.” All of which will be connected to Fortnite, though the term ‘connected’ is a fairly nebulous one. However, there is nothing nebulous about how the goal here is to create a monetization-drive live service platform for all of Disney’s myriad properties. Seriously, that quote is just ghoulish and I worry for the sanity of anyone excited to buy digital Disney skins.
This all makes complete sense as a business strategy considering the continued popularity of Fortnite. …But this is still a very strange move, considering how scattershot Disney has been with gaming for decades. They tried owning studios, and it didn’t work out due to harsh deadlines and limited funds. They licensed their IP and the results generally gave licensed games a bad name. They actually tried to create their own crossover universe a decade ago with Disney Infinity, and established a really good foundation… only to kill it off as it was evolving to a new form.
Disney has never been able to commit to gaming under prior regimes, and I am pessimistic of any move where they claim to commit into the medium. Sure, they had some successes in the past… when loaning out their IP to a third party who did all the work themselves. That method seemed to work for them… and now they are partnering directly with one big gaming company. And here I thought they learned their lesson after EA’s Star Wars run wound up mainstreaming loot boxes.
It will be years before anything truly comes of this investment, before any game is developed or truly revealed, but… this will be an interesting project to keep an eye on. Though, I guess you could say the same is true for anything involving Epic, as they have so much power you can’t really ignore them.
…And Disney too I guess. I know I did that Star Wars Ramble two months ago, but… that just gave me more reason to not care about them.
Progress Report 2024-02-11
I don’t know how clear this is, but my image editing skills are pretty primitive. The header image here is just an SVG from Wikipedia I exported into a PNG using Inkscape, which is a free pretty user-friendly SVG editor. Then I opened the file in Paint.Net, increasing the canvas size to my usual 1920×1080, turning the black logo to white using invert colors, and then adding a new background layer of the Xbox green, hex code 0e7a0d. Afterwards, I used a few built-in effects. Frosted Glass, Flames, Gaussian Blur, changed the fire layer to Multiply, and futzed with the transparency. It took me about 15 minutes, as I was trying to figure out what I wanted as I was making things, and I think it wound up looking pretty good. Though, I did have some weird issue with applying the text to the image, which appeared bigger in this PDN file than it should have.
By the way, I use Noto Sans JP as my go-to font, a carryover from when I was doing Fan Fiction Funsies, and I think it looks nice. Very readable, every letter looks distinct. I also use 60 point font as I want the parentheses and other special characters to fit in the borders. Borders that were… just standard letterboxing, but the black bars have 156/255 opacity, inspired by how the letterboxing worked in Nier Automata. …When is Yoko Taro going to make a new console game?
2024-02-04: Crud. I realized that VD2.0 CH 6-23 needed to have a sex scene strapped onto the end to end a minor character arc. Wrote 5,200 words for that chapter, finishing it and the Posse Logs. I then started working on the outline for the next chapter.
2024-02-05: I wrote the 3,000 word TSF Showcase, did some outline work, and Palworld‘d around with Cassie for too long again.
2024-02-06: Wrote 1,500 words for the Rundown and made a quick and easy header image. Did more outline work.
2024-02-07: Wrote 400 words for the Rundown and FINALLY finished the outline for Act 2 of VD2.0. I wanted to get started on the actual chapter after this… but I was just mentally drained and it was 23:30.
2024-02-08: I played more Palworld with Cassie before editing this Rundown and grabbing the images for the TSF Showcase. Then I wrote 1,700 words for Ch 6-24 of VD2.0. It’ll be a shorter one, as it is basically a side story involving a minor character.
2024-02-09: Oopsie doodle, Toaster Strudel! I played too much Palworld with Cassie and built a garish base just to goof around with her. So I didn’t actually start work on Ch 6-24 of VD2.0 until 23:00, where I managed to squeeze out 1,700 words before going to bed. Also, realized I would need to add a flashback section to better explain the background. I’ll make it a first-person one, as I haven’t had one of those in a while!
2024-02-10: Only 2,300 words for Ch 6-24 of VD2.0. I was busy with chores in the morning, my boss kept me busy from 13:00 to 19:20, and dinner plus dishes kept me busy until past 20:00. …Then I decided to watch a video essay on South Korean gender issues while playing more Palworld before doing my nighttime exercise and showering. I’m bummed that I couldn’t clear the 300,000 word count (fuckin’ hell, Nattie), but that just wasn’t possible.
Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp
Acts 1 and 2 Progress Report:
Current Word Count: 297,586
Estimated Word Count: ~350,000
Total Chapters: 33
Chapters Outlined: 33
Chapters Drafted: 27
Chapters Edited: 0
Header Images Made: 0
Days Until Deadline: 108
JK-ification was also really fun! Always neat finding new stories here.
Good to hear! That’s the intended outcome for most TSF Showcases!