This Week’s Topics:
- Rundown Preamble Ramble: Fatigue Leaves The Body Erotic
- TSF Showcase 2024-11 Becoming Lindsay by CasualCraig69 & Someone From Internet Art
- Sweet Baby and the Most Disgustingly Sour Babies (Natalie Gets Political – March 2024 Ver.)
- An Anti-Cheat Conundrum (Natalie Rambles About Why Multiplayer Gaming Is Bad Part ⅓)
Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Fatigue Leaves The Body Erotic
Goldarn did I miscalculate EVERYTHING with Verde’s Doohickey 2.0. I thought I could consistently hit 5,000 words, when it’s getting hard to reach 3,000 a day. I thought I could work on it every day during a week, when I lose at least two days to these Rundowns and dang TSF Showcases. I thought I would be able to completely curb any interest in doing anything else, when my brain does not and cannot work that way. And I made the story way, way too ambitious for its own good. There’s a reason why sane writers just focus on a cast of a few characters and not over a dozen! The 18 in the header image are only SOME of them!
As a reminder for those not in the know, I am currently working on my eighth novel, Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp, and production on it has been wild. I foolishly teased it in August 2022 with the completion of The Dominance of Abigale Quinlan. At the time, I imagined it as a 100,000 word novel, consisting mostly of vignettes of various characters following the summer after Dominance. However, when I went to write the outline in February 2023, I realized that… I could not do that, as I had too many ideas and needed to better establish the cast of characters. I then spent a lot of time in conceptual waters, writing a novel’s worth of lore, before finally starting production on the story during the summer of 2023. Now, about nine months later, I am looking over a damn monster.
The story has evolved into something insurmountably large and complex. I have a 350,000 word draft detailing the first 40% of the story I want to tell, and only outlined a few chapters for the remaining 60%. The 350,000 draft needs to, somehow, be edited, adorned with chapter headers, and released starting on May 29, 2024. Also, I still need to draft the last chapter, the isekai chapter!
Now that I am nearing the end of this… I’m getting tired. This partial project is dramatically bigger than anything I have ever taken on, and I find myself rapidly losing steam despite seeing the finish line. The past few weeks, I’ve just wanted to play video games, write different stories, or pursue some mock game design spreadsheet project. Basically do anything but work on VD2.0, and I feel so bad about this. This work is my passion, it is my drive, and because of how time is finite, I am intimately aware that slacking now will only delay everything I want to create in my life.
When I started writing, I said I never wanted to be committed to an ongoing series while in my 30s, writing extensions of the same damn story I imagined when I was a teenager. …And while I’m not quite in my thirties yet… I’m within shouting distance.
At this point, I am adamant about publishing whatever I have for VD2.0 when it releases. And at this rate, I might not be able to fully edit the damn thing. I refuse to delay it any further than I already have and if the quality suffers for it, and it almost certainly will… then there’s not much I can do about it. In this current climate, in my current brainspace, I need to move on to my next project, Psycho Shatter 1988, which has been lingering in the ideas phase for over a year.
I try to deliver quality with my work but… sometimes you just want to ship a project and move on, regardless of how much you love it.
…Also, I don’t want to make commitments, since I’m bad at those but TSF Showcase will probably stop being a recurring segment after installment 99 with Rundown (12/29/2024). I love doing it, but almost every entry takes a day to read and write. That’s 52 days out of my year.
Anyway, enough venting from me. On with the Fundown!
TSF Showcase 2024-11
Becoming Lindsay by CasualCraig69 & Someone From Internet Art
I need something to break this stretch of manga showcases. Something western, something obscure, something with a cool idea that I doubt anyone ever talked about in detail outside of some hentai site, if even that.
Becoming Lindsay is an illustrated caption series that was originally published during April and May 2020. It follows William Taylor, an unemployed shut-in who one day wakes up in the body of Lindsay Miller, a 23-year-old redhead with a loving husband named Mike. Having just suddenly wound up in another body, Will panics. Running away from Mike, leaving this home, hastily getting dressed, and collapsing when he has finally put some distance between himself and the new life. It’s not a good reaction, as it just adds suspicion and stress, but it is an understandable reaction. Especially for a ‘heterosexual’ guy who wakes up with a penis resting in their ass.
Despite this manic display, Will tries to get a bearing on his new identity, going through his belongings, piecing together whatever he can, and pursuing a sensible plan. Visit his home, hoping to find Lindsay in his body. To Will’s surprise, that isn’t the case, as the person inside Will’s original body is… just another Will.
I don’t think there’s a name for this type of ‘transformation,’ but there should be. It’s not a body swap, but rather a duplication of identities. They’re not a hivemind, so that label doesn’t work. It’s more like their soul was split in twain, duplicated, or some form of possession that doesn’t involve leaving one’s body. Maybe mind duplication, mental cloning, or something of that sort.
Anyway, Will in Lindsay— who I’m just going to call Will(Lindsay) because I’m trying to mainstream that Mind(Body) format— is able to convince his other self who he is. Hours pass, Will(Lindsay) decides to stay with his former body rather than masquerade as Lindsay. At first, they try to keep things amicable… but Will’s a bit of a pervert no matter the body. When faced with a slight nudge from one, the other nudges more, and before they know it, they’re lying in bed together.
Despite my phrasing, the pacing leading into this works pretty well. It’s building on a stressful day filled with underplayed erotic tension, and Will(Lindsay) is acutely aware of how the other Will is looking at him, and what he wants to do. For Will(Lindsay) the ensuing sex scene is described more as a vicarious masturbatory experience, achieved through the perspective-bending power of mirrors. They allow Will(Lindsay) to dissociate from their body, seeing their virgin male self have sex with a woman close to their ideal girl. This also naturally includes a few kinks— spanking, choking, positions— because they just help make sex scenes more interesting, and add at least the impression of character.
The second chapter picks up the morning after, seeing Will(Lindsay) wake up, have regrets about last night, masturbate with a showerhead, only for Default Will to get jumped by Mike. He tracked Lindsay with a family tracking app, tore up Will’s house, and inspires the two to lay low in a hotel while figuring things out. A fair enough plan… except Will’s broke and even a dirt cheap $45 hotel room (which is unbelievable, even for 2018). So they need cash, and what do you do when you have a hot girl body and need cash? Go camming!
Now, there’s a minor plot hole with this approach, as Lindsay’s body came with “$241 in cash,” “several credit cards,” and presumably an ATM card to take cash out of her joint checking account (they seem like the type). But whatever. The writer wanted to do a camgirl scene, and this fits the bill well enough.
The scene features a good bit of overlap from the first, with Will(Lindsay) once again vicariously living out a sexual fantasy in the body of a woman. First by the delay in the webcam feed, helping him dissociate with his current body, and then by inviting Will to join in, allowing them to share in another mutual sexual fantasy. At least until Default Will decides to dehumanize Will(Lindsay) for extra tokens. Something Will(Lindsay) understands… but he doesn’t feel good about it. Which I guess is there to show a growing divide building between Default Will and Will(Lindsay), seeing Will(Lindsay) behave more submissively, i.e., womanly, with Default Will viewing him as less of a part of himself.
Three days later, after dozens of hours of searching for a way out of this mess and several nights of camming, the Wills have enough money to buy stuff. Again, I’d ask how they could get the cash that quickly. I don’t even know the name of a cam site other than Only Fans, but I’d imagine sites like this take KYC pretty seriously and everything involving banking takes a day or two. But that’s not the point. The point is that after living in squalor, Default Will and Will(Lindsay) head out to get clothes, a better webcam, and some other investments for their line of work.
This takes the form of a collection of scenes that give the story more texture and flavor. Will(Lindsay) shopping for girl clothes as they pour through the ample options in order to find the right outfits, wanting someone as cute as Lindsay to look good, while Default Will just doesn’t get it. Will(Lindsay) doing the trite thing where he wanders into the men’s room to change, which I’ve never been a fan of. And a sex store visit where Will(Lindsay) gets sex toy tips from a promiscuous blue-haired lesbian— a staple of the TSF genre. …I’m not actually kidding, I’ve seen this in at least three other TSF stories (first that comes to mind is Cellular Shift). It’s weird.
This blue-haired lesbian, Ivy, immediately comes onto Will(Lindsay), even letting him turn up her vibrating egg. This naturally leads into a sex scene back at the hotel, which Will(Lindsay) enjoys quite a bit more than the aggressive and demeaning things Default Will put him through. I’d make some comment about this pushing Will(Lindsay) in some further direction, but I’m not sure if it does. I mean, I know the appeal here is the fantasy of the, presumably male, reader being in Will(Lindsay)’s situation, or possibly being in Ivy’s situation, but I’m trying to take this narrative more seriously.
I guess it shows Will(Lindsay) being more sexually adventurous, seeing new people, and learning more on how to be a lover, but Ivy’s entire character is… kind of superfluous, as she gets thrown away a short while later. So her biggest contribution is bringing up how Lindsay is a Gemini— specifically by mentioning a necklace that the artist never included in any of the illustrations. Which is kind of a major oversight, as Lindsay being a Gemini is the crux of the rest of the story.
Chapter four begins by throwing away blue-haired lesbian girlfriend in favor of the real plot of the story. Something that Will(Lindsay) could have picked up if he wasn’t in such a rush in the morning, but it probably wouldn’t have made the story any better. Following a confrontation with Mike, Lindsay’s husband, Will(Lindsay) is given a note… from the person who was last in Lindsay’s body.
The note explains that Lindsay’s body has a strange ability. During the sign of the Gemini— May 21 to June 21— if the person in Lindsay’s body has unprotected sex with a male Gemini, the soul transfer occurs. The soul within Lindsay’s body is transferred into the body of the man who ejaculated inside of it. The soul of this male Gemini is presumably locked within its own body, or just erased. With Lindsay’s body empty, it is then filled with a copy of a soul from a nearby ‘compatible Gemini.’ And no, this cannot be done with the same people more than once, so all that sex Will(Lindsay) had with Default Will does not count.
Now, this is why I wanted to showcase this story because… the hell is this? This means that Lindsay is a vessel that has erased and replaced souls, forever trapping them within their own bodies, or sending them to Hell! This means that the real Lindsay had sex with another Gemini… and then became him, forever locking her out of her own body, who has presumably fucked off and traded hands. …Well, she turns 24 during this story, and I don’t know when she started having sex, but this happened at least four times! Hell, maybe ten people ditched her body in the same month! I don’t know, and I don’t wanna know!
This is not some widely utilized or circulated possession concept. This is some off the dome OG shit that makes Lindsay’s body a tool for prolonging one’s life, and stealing the lives of others! She is a soul multiplication device! And you know the best part? The story absolutely understands this!
Okay, but what’s the catch? Lindsay’s body has an incurable brain disease, possibly related to whatever magical brewhaha created her. So everybody has been trying to ditch this body so they could keep on double living, because what’s better than one life? Two lives! Sure, that other person isn’t you, you won’t feel or think the exact same thing. But you know who’s your best friend in the whole world? You. Also, the doctors estimate that Lindsay only has a year to live, so if Will(Lindsay) doesn’t want to die, he’s only got… two weeks!
The Wills try to avoid this cruel fate by setting up a game plan. They need a male Gemini willing to bust inside Will(Lindsay), preferably an unmarried, young, healthy, and wealthy one. They identify the likely avenues for wealthy young bachelors, but before beginning their search, Will(Lindsay) decides to have sex with Default Will. Partially to thank him for this help, partially to say goodbye to this body, as Will(Lindsay) has a winner’s mindset, and if you’re only going to be a girl for a few more days… you may as well.
Three days later, Will(Lindsay) hits up a bar for some eligible hosts for his bodyjacking soul, living the fantasy of being the hot girl in a lower end bar. He expressed some competence in dealing with the men who want him, trying to push them away without being a bitch, before listening to some wise coke enjoyers tell him to hit up La Fire. Presumably because El Fuego sounded too ethnic, and the rich hate ethnics.
At La Fire, Will(Lindsay) immediately lands a big one as he meets 28-year-old businessman Nick Tomlinson. Millionaire, mansion-owner, high-powered capitalist executive, Wikipedia page-haver, and most importantly Gemini-designated. He quickly begins using Will(Lindsay) for his own gains. Getting him drunk, moving his arms around while he isn’t looking, and hyping him up with dirty talk. Also Ivy shows up to throw a drink on Will(Lindsay) and leave the story. Nick then continues to schmooze Will(Lindsay), Will(Lindsay) continues to embrace the drunk girl within, and after a bout of road head in a supercar, Will(Lindsay) walks away with the guy’s number.
A lot of the encounter with Nick sees Will(Lindsay) go against his previous inhibitions as he pursues his ultimate goal. He hated giving head before, but now he does it with little hesitation. He was uncomfortable being embraced by men before, but he gets all handsy around Nick and does the same. He has succumbed to becoming Lindsay… because that is the only way to escape being Lindsay. Which I guess is kind of like a spin on the ‘you must fuck 100 guys to become a man again’ schtick I see in hentai. …And also (but not really) Nuts Hunter by Kurosaki Bunta. (Sorry, but when else am I going to talk about Kurosaki Bunta?)
Chapter six is mostly just the penultimate set-up. Will(Lindsay) realizes he’s on his period, meaning his creampie plans have been foiled. He goes out on a date with Nick as a fancy lady in an expensive dress. And Nick reveals himself as a sexually twisted bastard who gets off on hurting women. Which I’d imagine is true for most people with nine figures. Hell, it’s true for every hundred-millionaire I’ve met. …I’ve only met two, but that’s still something.
I’d write this off as just rightful punching up at the rich, but it’s more utilitarian than that. Will(Lindsay) needs to effectively kill someone to go on living, but the writer does not want Will(Lindsay) to seem like a thief or bad person, so two things need to happen. Will(Lindsay) needs to go through a trial by fire in order to ‘deserve’ the prize body he aspires to. And Nick needs to seem like a scumbag who ‘deserves’ to lose his body by abusing his power, without being too overt.
Anyway, the last chapter is all killer, no filler, and begins by hammering home the latter point by having Nick bound, gag, and blind Will(Lindsay) as he is lured down into Nick’s illustrious sex dungeon. Narratively, it is a final boss battle that tests the protagonist’s resolve, but being real, it’s just a bunch of mid-level kink fetishes sandwiched together. Walking on all fours, whipping, Sybian™ Fucking Machines, rope hanging shenanigans, the works. Stuff that I’m apathetic toward, but I can see people enjoying both ends of the fantasy.
For enduring this sexual gauntlet Will(Lindsay) is rewarded with a new body, his soul transferring as Nick cums, leaving Lindsay an empty husk. Will(Nick)’s plan worked out, and the story wraps up with a final page that, while a bit too light for my epilogue-loving tastes, wraps up the story on a mostly satisfying note. The Wills now have access to great deals of wealth and power, can live whatever life they want together, and some unfortunate soul is going to be splintered off into Lindsay’s body come morning. Will(Nick) gives a heartfelt goodbye to her, struggling to write the best note to convey the situation to whoever lands in her body, and leaves, hoping to cross paths one day.
…Except the odds of that are low, as Lindsay’s body is going to die in a year, and its brain might stop working right before then. Also… did the writer forget about Mike? Lindsay is still his wife, and they just leave her body in a hotel room. They leave Mike with preciously low odds of ever seeing Lindsay again. Which is just a shitty thing to do. Maybe don’t tell him the full story, but at least tell him she’s got an identity disorder (which is not untrue) and to care for her. It would give whoever winds up in her body some much needed support, and would help Mike cope with the loss of the woman he loved. Sure, it’s not Will’s story at that point, but… I don’t care.
Overall, I like Becoming Lindsay enough that I, one, remembered it almost four years after reading it and two, enjoyed it when revisiting it. The structure is very… sex-driven narrative, with every chapter ending in some manner of sex scene, but by making sex such a central narrative mechanic, it does not feel intrusive or unwanted. It has a unique spin that avoids the trappings of a straight body swap or possession story and benefits from the dynamic between its split protagonists. And when it comes to the actual writing, it’s pretty good, but not great. There are more than a few typos and formatting mistakes I noticed— mixing up words like bra and bar, forgetting periods of commas, and the majority of the script is written in tight punchy sentences.
Now, there are many benefits from this shorter sentence structure. It gives the story a greater sense of flow, can make things feel urgent, and makes the story more digestible in certain contexts. However, when overused, it can make the story feel very abrupt and bereft of personality. When writing, you want to balance prose with quick actions. Load up any grammar editor and it will urge you to aim for sentence variety.
The writer ends this comic by saying he wished to create “characters that felt real.” While I can see his attempts at doing so with certain details and actions, his punctual approach does rob the story of a few details. Sometimes as a writer you want to pick a character’s brain, see what they like, and throw in extraneous details to make them feel more real. Mentioning the food, clothes, music, or things they like to do, or even going on small tangents. They should be imagined as people from top to bottom, and a writer should be able to write several paragraphs about each main character. Backstory, personality, appearance, drives, skills, interests, all that shit that makes a cardboard box into a person. And I’d be hard pressed to do that with any of the characters here. Also, any writer who writes “we liked the same bands and both had the same favorite games” while providing no further details should need to donate $15 to a reputable charity.
…That being said, I think this was fine enough. Craig was clearly putting in some effort here, and I’ve paid money for erotica with way worse characterization than this. …But not worse font choices, because the readability of this font, Comic Neue, isn’t great. I don’t know why they went with gray text instead of plain black— it’s a standard for most writing for a good reason. This, combined with the changing font size of the pages, makes the visual design of this work a bit amateurish.
Though, I do like the artwork. While I love a colored picture with great shady as much as any sane person, I admire when artists stop at the line art stage like this. They capture the essence of the image, put their foundational skills on display, and move on. Someone From internet Art does a good job within these limitations, capturing the right details with most images, brushing aside the others, and emphasizing the tone of any given page. It’s good supplemental artwork, and the turnaround was probably pretty quick. Though, there are a few times it does not quite fit, like page three of chapter two, and, for whatever bastarding reason, the story was exported as 1280 by 768 artifact-riddled jpgs. Like this is 2009. At least it plays decently with Waifu2x…
Here is where I would point out what the creators of this work did since then, but “Some From Internet Art” is not a very SEO friendly name, and their socials have not been active since September 2023. While CasualCraig69 said he was working on a story that sounded like it could have potential… but has seemingly vanished outside of doing CYOAs on Reddit. I don’t quite get why some people stop creating like that, but then again I’ve been writing for the same website for 12 years. I’m the weird one here.
Sweet Baby and the Most Disgustingly Sour Babies
(Natalie Gets Political – March 2024 Ver.)
I wanted to avoid this… but screw it. I’m writing this on Wednesday and I don’t have much else to talk about.
When this story did the rounds last week, I thought people were overreacting when calling it GamerGate 2. Which is just plain silly, as the real sequels to GamerGate are the Alt Right, PizzaGate, QAnon, and the myriad right-wing conspiracy theories born from exaggerations or literal nothing.
For those who were untainted by this malarky, there has been another rapidly growing harassment campaign from a radical offset of the broad gaming community. This time their platforms have largely been Steam forums, curator groups, and Discord servers dedicated to a company by the name of Sweet Baby Inc. (Also, to cite my sources, I’m pulling information from Kotaku, GameDeveloper, and The Mary Sue, as I’ve got better things to do than investigate these dummies.)
This group, bannered under the name Sweet Baby Detected, believes that Sweet Baby is responsible for the rising influx of ‘Blacks’ and ‘gays’ in various mainstream games. Which is just an absurd notion, but so are most things these genres of humans believe in.
That is what these people believe in, but in reality Sweet Baby Inc. is a narrative consulting company with 16 employees, based in Montreal. Their clients are game developers who want outside assistance, consulting, or expansion of various elements of a game’s narrative. Help writing lore to help the world come together, making sure characters feel right and authentic in many ways, or producing other supplemental materials. They’re a support studio for, mostly, AAA studios who want their games to tell better stories with better characters.
…However, much of their more high-profile work has involved Black characters from AAA games. The developers came with these characters, their race already determined, asked Sweet Baby to help make them better, and took their advice.
For bigger productions of any medium, this sort of thing is normal. Writers hire editors or consultants to help with characters all the time. Whether it be for insights into a culture, an event, a scientific concept, a technology, whatever. Hell, a lot of scripts for TV shows and movies get sent to writers who help punch things up. This is not a new concept. It has been around for decades, if not longer. And the power play of these relationships is perfectly clear if you stop and think about things for… a few seconds.
When someone is commissioning someone else… the commissioner is in control over the final product. When paying for a consultant, one does not need to listen to their advice if they disagree with it or heed their advice. If a college student needs to go to an academic writing center so someone can review their paper, they probably want to listen to what the editor has to say to get a better grade. …But they also don’t need to.
What I’m getting at is that Sweet Baby is an entity with virtually zero power, especially next to billion dollar entities like… Sony. To reach the conclusion otherwise represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how media companies work, how creativity works, and how the world, in general, functions. It assigns power to the powerless while assuming that those with power are somehow being forced into participating in… not even progressive, but generally accepted cultural standards.
This has been going on for so long that I do not view the backlash against Sweet Baby as actually remarkable. It is merely an iteration of a problem that has been plaguing the world for quite some time, but especially over the past decade.
There is something wrong with the world. I’m pretty sure most people would agree on that. But the world has gotten so complex and people’s access to information sources so broad, that the differences in opinion over what is wrong has become radicalized. One one end, you have people acknowledging the failures of long-standing systems and wanting to see society progress to something more sustainable, accommodating, fair, and empathetic. On the other, you have a group of people who vehemently object to the shifting directions of generally accepted cultural standards and wish to veer things in the other direction. People who want to uncomplicate the world by returning to a point in history that never actually existed, and demonize anything that they perceive as new. …Regardless if it is new or not.
Why is this radicalization happening now? Well, it has been happening for decades, yet it was harder to push in prior information climates. Most people got their information from newspapers, radio, and television. Sources of information that generally aimed for a more ‘centrist’ direction with their reporting, sharing both sides… and if they weren’t, it was harder for that to get out there. People weren’t carrying cameras or taking video back in the 60s, and if they wanted to share their story, they had few ways of sharing it.
…But the information climate radically changed during the eve of the 21st century as more people got information from anonymous, decentralized, and incorrect online sources. 9/11 broke millions of Americans’ brains and began a new era of conspiratorial thinking because of how it did not make narrative sense. And as millions of people shifted to using social media, a lot of people fell into wells of misinformation that saw them enter echo chambers of hatred that, eventually, trashed their minds.
…Also, the Nazis went online in around 2013/2014, had a successful recruiting gambit, and started trying to pull the Overton window further right. A lot of people did not fall for that shit. But enough did, and this new generation of… capital-C Conservatives kept following that realm of acceptable thought, with many getting lost in the paranoia nexus.
…What does this have to do with Sweet Baby Inc? Nothing directly, but everything foundationally. The Sweet Baby Inc kerfuffle is about Sweet Baby Inc as much as PizzaGate was about pizza, or GamerGate was about Zoë Quinn and ‘ethics in game journalism.’ This is just a promotional event for queer-hating White supremacists to rally up a fuss and bulk up their numbers. One likely inspired by a widespread ennui in the current state of gaming and the fact it’s an election year for the most important country in the world. Yes, I am saying that, because it is correct. You don’t need to like it, I don’t like it, but it’s true.
That’s what this is. Just another cog in an outrage machine meant to churn through people, drown them in misinformation, and make them broken drones who promote right-wing ideologies. All in an attempt to change the political spectrum and create a culture indicative of the values of a powerful few.
I want to say I think this is all futile and these people will lose. But I lost faith in the political machine in 2016, and the longer this political discontent goes on, the more bitter I become… But I still vote. I vote for FOUR people! And I’d vote for five if my dad would let me!
Also, the people behind these Sweet Baby harassment campaigns are massive cowards. Just like the masterminds behind GamerGate. Funny how that works.
An Anti-Cheat Conundrum
(Natalie Rambles About Why Multiplayer Gaming Is Bad Part ⅓)
Hmm… it’s Thursday night and I want a fourth topic to round out this Rundown, so… screw it, let’s talk about cheating in online multiplayer games. Most people would just call that ‘cheating in games’ but I view it as an important distinction, as only insecure losers care if people they don’t know cheat when playing a single-player game. And the topic of cheating in an offline game is so broad that quality of life modifications could be considered cheating.
The reason I’m bringing this up is because I recently came across some discourse of ‘how can publishers prevent rampant cheating in online games.’ It’s a cyclical discussion, has been for years, and pretty much nothing has worked. Dedicated anti-cheat software does not work. Kernel-level modifications don’t work. And even if it is impossible to cheat in-game, people can cheat by using a second screen, mechanical peripheral, or even software built into a display to give them an advantage over other players.
People are constantly pursuing new ways to cheat in online multiplayer games, and as their tools grow more sophisticated, it becomes harder to both spot and punish these players. This is presented as the problem: There is an overabundance of cheaters in multiplayer gaming, and it is making the experience worse for a large number of players.
So, what’s the solution then? Well, cloud gaming actually could eliminate most avenues for cheating, and… it makes sense. Most online games depend on central servers and without them, you cannot play them. So them being cloud-based won’t be a major difference. …Except for the developers, because holy hell would that be expensive. You’d need to make every online game subscription-based to justify that.
However, I think that is more of a reactionary approach to this solution, rather than a systemic approach that aims to look at the roots of the issue.
Why do people cheat in games? Because they want to win. Why do they want to win? Because people generally want to win, yes. But also because there is an incentive. People cheat in school because they want good grades and everything that comes with it. People cheat when money is on the line, because money directly improves (most) people’s lives. And the higher the stakes are, the more likely people are to cheat.
Okay, but we’re not talking about education, or the money shuffling industry that is esports. We’re talking about regular-ass humans playing regular-ass multiplayer games. What reward can they possibly— oh right.
Ever since the very concept of a multiplayer game was irreparably changed during the 2000’s, people have been highly fixated on multiplayer metrics, on rankings, on tiers. On not only enjoying a game, but of having admirable, enviable, and quality performance.
When stakes are introduced, an incentive to cheat is also introduced. When players gain access to statistics detailing their play performance, a number to ‘make go up,’ that’s an incentive. When there is an unlock system that rewards players regardless of their performance in a match, that’s an incentive. When players are brought into any sort of ranking system that can be measured by a tier or number, that’s an incentive. Leaderboards are an incentive to fill leaderboards with bogus scores, just for the thrill of seeing oneself at the top of a list. Having any sort of diamond rank encourages people to be hostile, aggressive, and generally bad at enjoying the game. Because every match could be one that steals away their reward and gives it to someone else.
From a design perspective… cheating the system to ensure secure and reliable rewards makes sense. I would even say it is the intended outcome. If there is a reward for winning… an incentive to cheat exists.
Now, some might look at this and say that I am reading the situation… wrong. They might argue that I am talking about games, and games are, by definition, something with winners and losers. That something without a win/lost state is not a game. And that games must have rules that are adhered to, or else it ceases to be a game. Which is not necessarily wrong, but it is also a narrow view of what a game is. Games are a form of structured play, and while the purpose of play can be to test one’s skill, that in and of itself is not a game, and the quintessential part of something being a game is… entertainment. Fun. PLAY.
Now, this is a somewhat contentious interpretation, due to how broad and spanning the word ‘game’ truly is. A game can be two kids playing a board game together. A game can be professional athletes engaging in a competition that people are betting billions of dollars on. A game can be an interactive narrative experience created by a queer person to cope with how they had to turn to prostitution in order to live. The stock market’s a game. Life’s a game. Having sex with strangers is a game, as you could get some disease or conceptualize a child. Throwing a ball against a wall is a game. That shit going down in Israel is a game for a lot of the White folks doing the killing. Game is a nebulously broad concept… but for over 90% of people, video games are an interactive piece of entertainment, and the primary goal is recreation. That is not just ‘casual gamers.’ That is just people, in general, who like video games.
I feel that online competitive gaming has just completely skewed an entire generation to this fact, teaching them the wrong lessons about what games are and should be. Teaching them that the ultimate goal of games is performance, is victory over recreation. …And maybe that’s (partially) why I taste such vocal ennui with gaming these days. Because they realized winning at a game does not make them happy anymore, as it does not actually improve their lives beyond making numbers go up.
…What was I supposed to be talking about then? Right, cheating. Cheating is an intended side effect of the way online games are designed, and if devs don’t want cheating… make online games with no progression systems, no achievements, no stats, and no trophies. There should be no reward for winning compared to losing, and people should want to play games because they’re fun experiences. Do this… or else cheaters, disconnecting players, and general toxicity will continue to bubble up.
Unfortunately, competition is used as a primary driver to keep players engaged with games over time. It is a quintessential part of live services. It has become a culturally essential element of many genres and games in particular (East Asian) regions. …And if there is a monetary incentive to do something, you bet your succulent ass cheeks that publishers are gonna do it!
If I had it my way, there would be a bigger pushback toward this era of… competition-driven dogshit. If you wanna play games with others, stick to ones where winning means nothing, deception is encouraged, and co-operation is the goal.
Akumako: “So you want the industry to reject eSports and instead play games like Helldivers 2?”
Maybe? I dunno dinny fuchus about Helldivers 2. I just know it’s a PvE game with some vocal Nazis in its community, because those twits cannot discern parody from tribute.
Akumako: “But what if people cheat in a co-op game?”
If it’s agreed by all parties, it is fiiiine. If it is not… that’s just being a li’l smegma brat, or LSB if you’re in the know. …Also, if you make a game too hard, then you’re just asking people to cheat at it. That’s been true since 1990, when Game Genie made hundreds of NES games better.
Okay, that should be enough for a Rundown. Time to wrap this up and to to bread.
Progress Report 2024-03-17
…Yo, what? Someone commissioned Vel to do a Student Transfer comic? …Oh, it was that Christian dude, Ranger Alex. Yeah, I guess that adds up. That dude always finds some way to crop up into TSF artists feeds.
…Why haven’t I talked about Vel in a TSF showcase by now? He’s one of my favorite TSF creators, and there is so much shit to dig through. Though, any showcase would mean spending like an hour cleaning up my Vel folder, and possibly going through untranslated Korean comics. …I wonder if I could use my outstanding requests to get him to translate those into English. I gave him like 6,000 yen last year for being cool.
2024-03-10: I had to work this afternoon, and slept in late because daylight savings time STILL hasn’t been abolished, but I managed to write 4,000 words of Ch 6-27 of VD2.0. Took longer because I had to re-outline the sex scenes because my initial notes were LAME!
2024-03-11: Knocked off another 2,300 words for Ch 6-27, getting to the FINAL scene. But I need to rejigger some ideas for it, so I re-read the showcase fodder before going to bed.
2024-03-12: Wrote another 3,100 word TSF Showcase without even trying. Then I wrote another 500 words for Ch 6-27 before my brain made like a hamburger and got fried.
2024-03-13: Got distracted today because my buddy Cassie wanted to start a Minecraft server, and I wound up playing it with her for a fair bit. FINALLY finished off Ch 6-27 of VD 2.0 by adding another 1,800 words. This chapter is a disgusting 27,724 words in the current draft and that took me 2.5 weeks! Also wrote 1,700 words for the Rundown, the preamble and Sweet Baby bit, while making the Sweet Baby header, which took me like 20 minutes ‘cos I’m slow. I had to search the font, export the SVG, play around with canvas size, play with the color before going with a magenta, invert the baby mouth, and re-export a higher quality logo. Then I centered everything along with the Tokimeki Memorial checkerboard background.
2024-03-14: Cobbled together the header image and staged a cheating header image. Wrote the 1,300 word cheating segment. Edited the Rundown for publication, because buck waiting until Friday, it might be a 12 hour work day.
2024-03-15: I had a half day at work and managed to write a 4,100 word draft of VD2.0 Ch 6-28, the penultimate chapter. I’m not quite happy with it, and will need to revise the ending and sex scene when I get a clearer head.
2024-03-16: I kept going until I got 3,000 words into Ch 6-29 of VD2.0. I would have done more, but I had morning chores to do, 2.5 hours of work, and wound up chilling with Cassie and the dog friend in Minecraft for like 4 hours. Oops.
Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp
Acts 1 and 2 Progress Report:
Current Word Count: 357,242
Estimated Word Count: ~370,000
Total Chapters: 33
Chapters Outlined: 33
Chapters Drafted: 32
Chapters Edited: 0
Header Images Made: 0
Days Until Deadline: 74