This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: The Enigmatic Children
• TSF Showcase 2024-15 TS Boshi Techou by Seto Kouhei and Matsuzono
• Contemplating Console Cataclysm (Response to the Consoles Are Dying Discourse – Wave Two)
• Natalie Rambles About the Triple-A and Triple-i Naming Convention (A Tangent That Overtook the Original Topic)
• Eman Looc’s Possession Scroll is Divesting from Student Transfer (Add Another Great Standalone TF Game to The List!)
• Minor Musings About Unionization and Costs of Living (Avalanche Studios Starts Unionizing)
• The Illest Quote From 1951 (Natalie Hyperfixates on 30 Seconds From a 38 Hour Documentary)

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
The Enigmatic Children

For those not privy to my whole life situation, I’m 29-years-old, living in a condo (that I own) with my mother in her early 60s. My friend group is people ranging from early twenties to early thirties. And I have not worked in a real office since… early 2021. I work remotely with my late 60s boss via Zoom, and aside from meetings with people from ages… 22 to 80, I don’t really speak or see other people. 

Using the generational terms that society has forced me to learn, I mostly interact with Boomers and early Gen Xers. A few elder millennials who made it hard with crypto. And a good chunk of people my age. As for people significantly younger than me… I had some good chats with Natalie.TF regular commenter Skillet, who’s 19— I think. And I sorta encouraged an 18-year-old to start HRT when they made themself out to be the most eggy trans girl I’ve ever done seen.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, as someone about to pivot into her thirties, I have been, as is tradition, thinking about children. Not having children— my balls are long gone and I’m a dateless wonder— but I have been wondering what children of the modern era are like. Because I simply do not interact with them or see them enough to fully understand them or how they are different from the micro-generation I was in or the generations that preceded me.

I see and hear about people my age, and a bit younger. But when I try to go beyond a decade, I not only have no idea what they are like, as I do not have any way to really engage with them. Instead, I only get bits and pieces, vague statistics, predictions from ‘professionals,’ and soundbites describing what the youths today are in broad terms. 

Now, I do not trust these claims, as it is fairly easy to present garbage data as legit, especially when money’s on the table. And I personally know better than to trust these soundbites because… I remember when they tried to do this with Millennials a decade ago. And I remember hating having traits assigned to me back when I was an angsty teenager. 

Also, I’m trans, autistic, and weird, and trans autistic weirdos generally dislike being shoved into boxes by society and authority. And, unlike most people, I have internalized that ‘you should treat people the way you want to be treated.’ Which is to say with kindness and compassion. …Unless someone is not using their ample power to better the world. In which case, I would kill myself and create a charitable foundation of an appropriate scale, so they should die too! My logic is infallible! 

Akumako: “Bad Natalie, keep your tangents in your pants!” *Sprays with vinegar spray bottle.*

Okay, so I try to recognize that the generation below me is a population of millions upon millions of people with their own unique experiences. …Meaning they’re remixes of the same 108 genres of human beings. 

Akumako: “Now’s not the time for your goofs, bitch! Be serious!”

Yes, Miss demon in my head!

…I recognize that the younger generation is full of people, above all else, but I am growing increasingly worried and concerned about them, and… in pretty much every way. In short, I worry that they might be broken. More broken than even me!

I worry that COVID, the loneliness epidemic, and over-exposure to unrestricted media might have warped their minds. I worry about algorithms radicalizing them at a young age, because if someone is spoon-fed hate speech before they develop critical thinking skills, then… deradicalizing them may be impossible. I worry that parents are too overburdened with the responsibilities of life to monitor their children (care and monitor are two separate things, and monitoring is harder). I worry that children might not be given adequate time to be away from screens, outside, and forced to talk to other people. I know I hated that crap as a kid, but spending 45 minutes outside before elementary school, being forced to socialize… was good for me. 

…Also, the reason why I spent 45 outside during elementary school is kinda funny. I used to live a block away from school and I always finished my morning routine by 7:45. So I just walked to school, said good morning to Ike the crossing guard,and walked around for 45 minutes until they left me into the building. I was almost always the first kid at school, wandering around unsupervised, no matter the weather. It could be negative 10 degrees Celsius or pouring rain, and I’d still be there, 45 minutes early with a 5 to 8 pound backpack full of books, and lunch. …And that’s probably why I don’t need glasses. Because I was walking around, outside, looking into the distance. It prevented my eyes from getting too tube-some!

Akumako: “…Why didn’t you just pack a book and read it or something? You had that bench area all to yourself, didn’t you?”

I actually hated reading as a child, as most books are horribly formatted. And I have to wonder how many children were just like me. Who thought they didn’t like reading… when they didn’t like reading walls of cramped justified text in a tiny ugly font on yellow-brown paper. I did not realize this until I was 21-goldarn-years-old, and I have to wonder how many kids were like me. Intimidated by the inaccessible formatting of books.

On that note, I worry that the burgeoning generations will find long-form reading more difficult, as they might have screwed up their brain’s dopamine functions. I have the patience of a saint, but my attention span has gone to shit over the past few years, as I shifted to almost always having my computer in front of me. So now I rarely go an hour without checking something. A site, my email, my RSS feed, Discord, etc. And I have to imagine it’s far worse when someone uses a phone regularly. Yes, I have a smartphone, but I use mine for three things: 2FA, phone calls, and watching videos while doing chores and exercise. (And formerly gacha, but that stopped when Dragalia Lost got dead-ed.)

Hell, education itself is an area where I am filled with this formless and nebulous worry. Stories about test scores going down, the younger generations not being as tech savvy as my generation, and needing to learn things like folder hierarchies… It strikes me as wrong. 

Last I checked, schools were accused of ‘teaching for tests.’ And with platforms like D2L and Blackboard, I’m pretty sure you can just generate infinite practice tests. I mean, that’s what I did when studying for my Enrolled Agent certification (Surgent is a bad text provider BTW). And shouldn’t children be placed in technical literacy classes as part of the streamlined Science, Technology, English, and Mathematics curriculum? Hell, I had ‘computer classes’ from grade three to seventeen. 

Akumako: “One, you can’t call your graduate college year ‘grade seventeen.’ The pigs will shoot you for that shit! Two, English isn’t the ‘E’ part of STEM, you dumbass! It’s engineering!”

…I never took an engineering class, and I have a Master’s in Science (Accounting). So you must be both a liar and a whore. 

Also, part of the reason why I have this nebulous level of concern over the youths is that… I’m not actually supposed to interact with them. The only people who are supposed to act with children are parents, family members, teachers, child specialists, and workers at child-centric businesses. American society, the only society that I know, is heavily segregated by age. Minors are in schools, designated areas for children, and generally seen as a liability in most public spaces not explicitly made for children. Elderly people are cooped up into houses and Christian Compounds, rarely going out for anything beyond basic shopping, as movement is too hard for them, so they are cooped up into rooms as their bodies DECAY! Especially during COVID. Losta old timers just died from atrophy when sealed in their rooms. Like my great grandma. I miss ya, Addie.

Hell, even in the workforce, things often settle into an age-based hierarchy, because mo’ experience means mo’ money, mo’ office space, and ‘higher level work.’ Whatever that means. I’d say something like how ‘ front-facing society is made for people ages 21 to 71,’ but people are working past their 70s a lot more to game the American government pension system.

It’s almost like this system is designed to breed animosity between people of various generations… Nah, that’s freaking stupid. Capitalists just saw something and decided to exploit it for money and profit, as if they can control society, they can profit.

Akumako: “…Okay, where’s the point? Because I’m pretty sure you ate it at this point.”

Uh… the point is more my recognition that my perspective of the world is limited, and indirect venting about how I have no clue what kids these days are like. Why am I thinking about it now? Probably because I’m doing that pederast-scented writing sin of writing teenage characters even when I’m closer in age to their parents. Also because news junkets have started bitching about the Zoomies and Alphers instead of Millennials in order to stew a generational divide. And I’m plenty wise to their bullshit this time around. It’s just like how ‘woke’ is just a rebranded version of ‘SJW,’ as 2024 is the political Right’s attempt at making 2016: The Reich Version. Or 2016-2: Genocide Spookaloo.

Akumako: “Hol’ up a minute. Zoomies and Alphers?”

Gen X was always a stupid nondescript name that did little more than enforce that they were a non-generation denied their own identity, as X means placeholder. It’s been 50 damn years and nobody has found a descriptor for them, because it’d be more profitable to treat them like Baby-Baby Boomers. Not to be confused with Baby Boomers Wave Zwei: Beyond the Waves. 

Millennial is a shit name that means nuthin’, but at least it sounds cool. Gen Z has the same problem as Gen X, so just call them something with a Z. They are put into a turbulent world with little guidance, and the term Zoomer was used for a hot minute, but it sounds too much like Boomer. So I modified that to Zoomies. Also, I think about this bit from the Duane and Brando Earthbound EP way too much.

Similarly, I think Gen Alpha is a shit name by people with ground possum for brains— as opposed to the typical Gentrified Neo-Albertan ground beef. However, there isn’t a good alternative available at the moment, and the only ones I can think of define them by how they were little kids during COVID. Which should not linger over these kids’ heads forever. That’d be like calling Gen X the Oil Crisis generation, or Oilios. Zoomies the War on Terror generation, or Terrorkinz. So I just morph Alpha into Alphers, because I think that’s a funny British-ism. Changing words that end with ‘a’ to words ending with ‘er.’ They’ll get a real name when they grow up, just like real humans…

Akumako: “Wow, way to show that you respect and care for the younger generation, fucklo.”

I guess you could say I had a good thing going but then I lost it, and now I’ll never get it back again.

Akumako: “…Wait. Natalie, no, don’t—”

Akumako: “…You really cannot keep focused on anything can you?”

It’s tax season, my brain is manufactured chaos!

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TSF Showcase 2024-15
TS Boshi Techou by Seto Kouhei and Matsuzono

It’s still tax season, so I’m tackling another shorter TSF work this installment. Don’t worry, I’ll get back to doing 500+ page deep dives next time. I promise. In the meantime, here’s a recent release that hits enough notes to get a showcase, TS Boshi Techou.

The comic follows Ayumu Randou, an eager young man who wants to spend his summer break becoming a man by picking up girls. Which I’m 90% sure is code for cashing in his V-card. His friend, Ryuji Kusanagi, is the more serious and experienced sort who tells Ayumu to temper his expectations and not get into a relationship just for sex. Then… Ayumu just looks at the ground and sees a maternity health record book and flips through it, causing him to transform into a woman. …And that’s when I decided this had to be featured on TSF Showcase, because I’ve seen some cheddary, popcorny TF triggers, but what the heck is this? The protagonist picks up a cheap magical booklet in a park and gets poof TF’d!

It’s efficient if nothing else, same with how Ayumu puts his hands down his pants, like all good TSF protagonists, and finds out that he’s on his period. That seems like an odd choice, but the comic quickly establishes its general premise. Ayumu has been transformed into a woman by a magical “gender morph maternity handbook,” a tool to help men become pregnant to, presumably, help Japan’s declining birth rate. And it immediately caused Ayumu to start menstruating, because the ‘pregnancy period’ begins with the start of a menstruation cycle. …I did not know that, but now I do.

Anyway, the book turned Ayumu into a woman for 28 days, and if they get pregnant during that time they’ll stay a woman forever. If they avoid getting pregnant for a month, they’ll return to normal. Ayumu is adamant about taking the latter option, but is currently dealing with their first period. Cramps, pains, dripping blood all over the damn place (even with pads), and general discomfort. The only thing that gets them through this is Ryuji who, naturally, is a proper gentleman, giving him hot chocolate, back rubs, and general affection.

He is such boyfriend material that, on day seven, after Ayumu got through their period, they put on Ryuji’s shirt, and start masturbating over his scent. …Kinda like in A Gender-Bent Maiden and a Confession Under a Starry Sky, except not really. Ayumu has far fewer reservations about embracing their new form. They happily shower in it, recognize it as a great body, and are eager when it comes time to play with themself. They put on a performance of moans, cry from the rush of emotions, sniff Ryuji’s shirt while fingering themself. It shows Ayumu to be an emotionally loose person who can easily get lost in the throes of sex… and that they desperately want to bone Ryuji. 

Ayumu tries to hide it at first, yet quickly succumbs to buying a bikini online and begging Ryuji to go to the beach. …Only to get cold feet when presented around others, misread a social cue to think that Ryuji cares more about ‘real girls’ than him, and hide in the corner. It’s actually a super humanizing sequence in my book, as I did something like that a good 40 times in high school alone. It makes Ayumu seem like a socially stifled dork.

Now alone on the beach as a hot girl, Ayumu naturally gets harassed by a pair of sleazeballs who want to take them onto a boat. …Kinda like in Boku Tamasaburo, but with less jellyfish. Fortunately, Ryuji comes to save Ayumu from these thugs, and the two have the best beach day! Delicious pool snacks, volleyball, swimming on inflatable dolphins, learning how to swim with flotation devices, and giving Ryuji sand titties. 

Ayumu rightfully recognizes how great this day was, and says they learned how to not act like a sleazeball in front of girls. They have “grown as a man” through this experience… but they also want to learn more about women and think the best way to do so is… to have sex with Ryuji! Partially to satiate their curiosity, partially because they believe that this will help them get girls, but also because their inner damsel wants to reward Ryuji for helping them so much. 

Ryuji reluctantly agrees and, with the protective power of condoms, the two have sex. Ryuji starts by stimulating the nipples, fingers Ayumu to get them all wet, and while his technique is a bit aggressive for a lovey-dovey dynamic like this, Ayumu’s narration leaves little to the imagination. They love it, they’re floating, and gradually get over their uncertainty if it’s okay for them “to remember a woman’s pleasure.” In fact, they get along so well in bed that they go through the box of condoms within four days and decide to do it raw, because “it’s actually not that easy to get pregnant.” Which genuinely reads like something out of a safe sex PSA. 

From there, the two have nonstop, passionate, affection-riddled sex with each other, and keep trying out new positions. Anal, blowjobs, 69-ing, cowgirl, doggy style, all conveyed through a fixed angle time lapse of their apartment, seeing the sex get wilder as the trash piles up in their corner. Some might call that slobby behavior, but I call that love and priorities. They prioritize it so much that, even on the final day, they are still having sex, somehow thinking they’ll go back to being friends after having sex every night for over two weeks.

Predictably, Azumu does not turn back to normal on the 29th day, is shocked to see they’re still a girl, and does the pregnancy test meme. Actually, she’s holding it in the wrong hand, so maybe it’s just a coincidence? Anyway, with Azumu’s fate as a woman sealed and a baby on the way, she goes through a page full of preamble leading up to that point. Getting permission from both families to get married, getting an engagement ring, getting married, attending childcare classes with Ryuji, having eight months pregnant sex, and holding her newborn daughter in her hand.

The story properly ends with Ayumu, pregnant with her second child, talking to her young daughter about her maternity book. Explaining that it’s what helped her become a mother. It’s pretty sweet… except every time I look at this page, I keep expecting there to be a second one that goes the full chaos route and age progresses Ayumu’s daughter. I mean, that’s probably the worst way to solve any birth rate crisis, but it is a solution.

On one hand, I feel like I should criticize the story for brushing past its ending so briskly like this. I love long-form stories that pile on minute details like cream cheese on a New York City bagel and just keep on going. However, I also acknowledge that the lack of detail can get the imagination going and that, just from detailed snippets with recognizable characters, the mind can fill in the blanks. It goes back to my pet theory that sometimes people can attach themselves more to any idea than anything that actually exists.

Okay, so why did I bring this to the class to share for this installment of TSF Showcase? In short, I think it’s just a very cute TSF comic. It’s simple, direct, and honest with what it is, not pulling in many twists beyond an oddball trigger and the bold choice to start with menstruation. Ayumu, as a protagonist, is an adorable little cutie capable of some wonderfully exaggerated reactions and carries with her an airheaded optimism that I enjoy and respect. She has ‘sexy housewife and great mom’ written all over her from the moment she transforms, and someone like Ryuji is perfect for her. Experienced, responsible, and loving. Very loving.

The cuteness of its characters is also carried over into the artwork. Everything looks soft, the content shown is kept pretty safe and squeaky clean beyond the sex scenes. The paneling keeps things simple and easy to read, while still having a few more dynamic or creative layouts, which I always love to see. And the entire thing feels like it came from a trained professional. …Which is why I was surprised when I realized I’m actually familiar with Matsuzono.

I know them from the manic, semi-intelligible nonsense (that’s a compliment) of Succubus, Level 1, which had such a different art style I never would have guessed it came from the same artist. And the grossly detailed transformation insanity of Sex-Swap Machine [Nyotaika Kikai]. A comic is basically just a crossdressing boy getting raped by a machine, because their friend thinks they’re trans. It’s gross, the protagonist looks like a 12-year-old, and I’m not going to feature it on my website. 

Actually, both Seto Kouhei and Matsuzono worked on Sex-Swap Machine, when that is basically the polar opposite of TS Boshi Techou, and they worked on 9 other works together, in about three years. Either they have incredibly broad ranges, or they’re both some flavor of insane. I don’t know which one, it’s probably both, but regardless I’m glad that people like them are making so many contributions to the TSF genre.

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Contemplating Console Cataclysm
(Response to the Consoles Are Dying Discourse – Wave Two)

So, I’ve been seeing a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about the future of consoles in the usual gaming community zeitgeists that I poke around in. And it makes a lot of sense why. I initially wanted to just list a few reasons why this console death FUD has become so common… and I came up with over a dozen.

• The PS5 and Xbox Series console generation has yet to truly establish its identity, despite being in its fourth year on the market, with most major titles still being cross-generation releases. 
• The continued success of the Switch, with no announced successor, has caused some stratas of Nintendo fans to grow paranoid about the future of Nintendo, and Nintendo is about half of console gaming nowadays
• The massive layoffs hitting the industry has created a sense that things are breaking and falling apart.
• The rising costs of game development have grown so much that the console space alone lacks the players needed to make back the budget of many AAA tentpole titles. Just look at the budget versus the sales of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (2023).
• There has been persistent doom pedaling across the gaming community over the past two years. Largely due to people playing too many video games during the pandemic and growing fatigued with live services..
• Sony announced that the PlayStation 5 is in the latter stage of its life cycle, which makes no sense, as they are still releasing and producing PS4s.
• There is word about pro consoles going about, when nobody really sees a point in that, as modern consoles still have not reached their full potential.
• There is still a good amount of FUD about the future of Xbox (after the false alarm), as people question if there is any future in the platform as a mere console.
• People have crunched the numbers and revealed that the console scene has largely stagnated following a peak in 2008.
• PC has grown to be a bigger market than console gaming… for the past decade, due in part to the death of dedicated handhelds.
• Mobile has overwhelmingly overtaken console and PC annual revenue.
• Younger people are less attached or interested in consoles, probably because they were always able to play games on their phones or tablets or laptops.
• The ease of use, accessibility, and success of handheld devices like the Steam Deck and Switch has raised the question if TV-based consoles are really necessary. Especially with so many young people preferring handheld gizmos, because they need to live at home.
• A recent study revealed that people are playing fewer modern games, indicating a lack of growth in the game industry as a whole.

Now, I think there will always be a meaningful population of people who want to just buy a box they can plug into their TV and play games. I don’t think streaming will ever take off as much as the industry leaders want it to, as internet quality is shaky in so many major markets, and will not get better because capitalism demands that it remains shit. Also, streaming will always have worse image quality and performance. But I am highly doubtful that the console market will ever grow again, as… What is the point of a dedicated gaming device when computers and mobile devices are so powerful?

Modern phones have been able to play open world, high fidelity, games for years. And everyone in modern society needs a smartphone, as it can handle their basic technological needs. It can check emails, browse the internet, access government websites, play videos, give directions, act as a payment device, act as a security device, the works. And don’t tell me that some people use dumb phones. As an outlier, outliers aren’t people!

PCs will always be the most powerful gaming devices on the planet, offering higher performance, better visual effects, and generally prettier games. And if someone needs to do any sort of desk/office work, they need a computer. It does not need to be a good computer— people can get by with just Chromebooks for a surprising number of tasks. But even if you have a damn potato for a computer, it can run a surprising number of games. Even dirt poor people in the Global South can run 15-year-old games with little issue on their work computers. You know, during their off-time from doing microtasks for pennies that are disguised as artificial intelligence or algorithms.

The biggest boon for consoles is that they are relatively cheap, powerful, and simple to use. …But they aren’t really useful next to how versatile a phone or laptop can be. Aside from streaming apps that are built into a lot of modern TVs, or available via a $50 to $100 TV accessory, they are just video game machines. And to use them, you need to use a game controller. An iconic and immediately recognizable piece of technology… but one that is unlike the input devices people typically use. 

The overwhelming majority of people know how a keyboard, mouse, and trackpad work. They might type like a damn bird because typing classes skipped a generation, but they can write an essay on it. People know how to hold a phone and navigate the UI with gestures and swipes.. People know how to use the buttons and gizmos attached to things like kitchen appliances. And they know how to use a remote, even though remote controls got WAY too complex 20 years ago and kept getting more buttons. 

However… the same cannot be said for a controller. A device with a dozen buttons one is supposed to use and find based on touch, a directional pad, and… two sticks that are unlike anything that people use for things outside of video games. Seriously, if someone does not play video games, when in their life would they use an analog stick?

I know this seems crazy but… controllers are a barrier. People did not just figure out how controllers work after the Wii and Kinect boon. There are millions of people who got out of gaming and forgot how to use a controller. And while kids might be big into stuff like Minecraft, Fortnite, or Roblox… those games are input fluid. You can easily be invested in games without knowing how to use a controller proficiently, but consoles require the use of controllers.

Looking at the graphs I borrowed from professionals, it is clear that the console space has stagnated after 2008. It has plateaued. And I think it will start shrinking eventually. I do not think it can sustain modern game development budgets… without branching off into the lucrative and growing PC gaming space. Which is why companies like Sony have continued to push games into the PC gaming space. Because it’s a great way to make extra cash.

I think that the PC and console scene, as a collective unit, will continue to grow and is not in any material danger. The market for PC gaming is going up. A lot of ‘console games’ are released on PC. And by covering both platforms, sales records have been routinely broken. Furthermore, I think that the PC scene is accessible enough to draw in those who would not be interested in buying a console, but would enjoy ‘console games.’ And that’s more important than consoles doing well, as consoles are just vessels.

Okay, but what about for the younger generations? Those who are raised on phones as their primary computing and entertainment device? (Except for schools, where they have laptops.) …Honestly, you can only predict how the younger generation will act as much as one can predict the future history of the world. 

I personally think that younger people— weaned on gaming through the likes of Minecraft, Fortnite, or Roblox, will fall into a few camps. People who stick with a few games. People who bail on gaming as they pursue power, pussy, cock, capital, drugs, and/or skills— the real baby-bop-baller shit. People who get trapped in the live service feedback loop… for the rest of their lives. And people who find The Real Video Games™, which is already happening with some of the Zoomies and Alphers.

This is pretty much how things worked for Gen Xers and Millennials. There are plenty of people born in the 80s and 90s who just… stopped playing games after a point ‘cos they had other shit to do. It’s something that happens with games, as they are a major time investment. When people get older, things get taken from them by the burdens of age. 

…Also, hold up a minute, didn’t we just have a ‘console are dying’ narrative like a decade ago. Back then publishers thought that the 2012 dip in console sales meant the industry was over and mobile would become the only gaming? Sure, the industry is different now, so it makes sense to ask the question again. After all, the seventh generation saw about 500 million hardware units sold, compared to… like 270 million before counting the Switch, so that’s like 400 million. …Huh. Considering how many people moved to mobile and PC in the intervening decade, that makes primo wicked sense.

While that is a decline, that is not enough to spell doom, and I think that any kind of console crash is… kind of impossible, and people need to stop looking back at history for parallels here.

I lowkey hate the fact that the 1983 Video Game Crash happened, because I don’t think people understand what it was and like to overstate the harm it did. It wasn’t the 2008 recession, which stifled the development of an entire generation and ruined part of the economy. It wasn’t the dot com bubble, which hurt everybody in the stock market. It wasn’t the 2001 recession caused by 9/11— which is the actually important part of 9/11 by the way. The loss of life didn’t mean shit. What mattered is that it hurt capitalists, industry, workers, American freedoms, and the broader American psyche, while propping up the military industrial complex. Without 9/11, there couldn’t be an alt-right!

God, I need to stop these posterior hamburgian tangents…

Anyway, the 1983 crash only lasted two years, only affected the arcade and console space, and mainly affected the American market. In Japan, Atari was never huge, and was quickly forgotten after the Famicom came out in mid-1983. …Which ultimately took a few years to become a proper console, as it didn’t see its 30th game until 1985. In Europe, the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum had just come out and were doing well. Sure, American arcades took a nosedive as owners stopped buying more games. Stores tried to clear out their consoles and game catalog ASAP. And the market was so hostile that Nintendo had to make a Trojan Robot and Nintendo of America had to do some insane work to make the launch a success. Seriously, a movie about the shit NoA workers did during the summer of 1985 would be one of the best video game movies.

The crash of 1983 is a good story… but it may as well be for a different industry. Because it was a different, region-specific, industry, 40 damn years ago! Most of the people talking about it now weren’t even sucking milk from they’s momma’s succulent teats when this shit was going down!

Akumako: “Hey hey! Your meds are wearing off and you’re seeing me again! So wrap this shit up or I’ll swallow your soul!”

Huh? Oh, right. My imaginary fairy friend is here!

Akumako: “I’m not a fairy, I’m a demon!”

I thought you were Persian?

Akumako: “When you put it that way, it sounds real racist. Just wrap this scumbag off and fling those millions of ghosts into the trash! Where they belong!”

Okay, so… consoles! I think more people will continue shifting away from consoles and toward PC. I think the unindoctrinated younger generation will jump straight to the PC. But I think there will be enough people playing on consoles for it to remain an important and viable platform for at least a decade. Beyond that… no idea. With the world in its current state, you can’t be confident where things will be in one year, let alone ten. So maybe consoles will just stop being a thing in 30 years and will be replaced with Neo Steam Machines. Remember those? I do, because I have been doing this for way too long!

Also, I think mobile gaming is going to undergo a decline as people are unable to pay for microtransactions due to the increasingly uncertain economic climate. Though, that’s probably just me projecting my desires onto the world and hoping that they become real. Because while I want to support mobile gaming, the practices in a lot of games are deceptive and harmful. And the only ones who think otherwise drank the Libertarian death cult’s Flavor Aid of ‘personal responsibility.’

Also, if anyone reading this Rundown is confused about what I’m saying in this article, please ask for clarification in the comments. Because I am intermingling references upon references, and any editor worth their salt would tell me to streamline my language.

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Natalie Rambles About the Triple-A and Triple-i Naming Convention
(A Tangent That Overtook the Original Topic)

Independent game showcases have been a thing for a good while, though they generally only happen at around E3 season, and tend to be very independent to their core. However, the entire spectrum of indie games, AAA games, and so forth is currently undergoing what may be a dramatic mutation as the industry tries to adjust to a new generation. Smaller studios are growing into something sizable, some studios are reaching absurd highs as they push out $200 million titles, and various AAA studios are being cleaved up by layoffs. 

As such, I won’t be surprised if the language used to refer to games changes over time, and… I think it should, as it’s a load of bone dry clams. It’s fairly common knowledge at this point that the namesake of AAA games is derived from the credit rating system for bonds. AAA are the best bonds with the highest credit worthiness. AA bonds are still solid bets, with higher risk. And there are about 20 rankings in total, but you’re basically throwing money in the toilet if you buy a CCbond.

This term became widely used across the retail side of the game industry. Stores/chains viewed promoting/stocking a new game as a sort of investment, and they only wanted to promote games that are surefire hits. So the term AAA came into prominence, both as a way for retailers to gauge games and for publishers to sell them. 

…Or, alternatively, the term was borrowed from 20th century Hollywood, where blockbuster films were also called AAA films, as they were great investments for theaters and studios. I’ve heard conflicting accounts, and this stuff wasn’t super well documented. Which is why I love things like the FY 1997 Sega leak.

Now, this entire comparison is… kind of stupid when you remember that bonds are not entertainment products. They are based on the credit of the lender and are used strictly as a tool for people to exchange money in an organized manner. You could argue that credit worthiness is correlated with quality, but that assumes that quality games are the best investments when… that’s a gross oversimplification.

I don’t mean to diss bond traders by saying that their industry is far simpler than some rudimentary shit next to the world of video games. …However, they are only comparable if you’re insane, dumb, or don’t care about the difference between a video game and a shovel. They’re both goods after all!

Also, bonds are rated by three major institutions who assess financials and environments and have their own complex system of mathematically determining a bond rating. Video games don’t have anything that looks over the market, developer, publisher, financials, or quality to assign a game’s quality. Unless you count Metacritic, and I don’t, as plenty of 65s made oodles of cash and 87s have bombed at retail. And you know why there’s no trusted party who assigns the likely success of a game? One, the industry is secretive as hell, and the only thing they hate more than regulation are unions. Two, you simply cannot view games as an investment vehicle, and if you try, you’d be lucky to get a 70% accuracy rate. 

Okay, okay, I explained why I think that the bond comparison is stupider than… sesame salami sarsaparilla stew, but the terminology has evolved as the old guard has mostly retired. And in the modern climate… the term AAA has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with budget. AAA just means a big budget game. AAAA means a game with a budget that’s bigger than big, $200 million or bust. AA means a game with a semi-sensible budget of… under $50 million or so. And indie just means a low budget game. It doesn’t mean a game made by independent developers, just a game with a smaller budget. How small? Honestly, it can be anything from $50 to $10 million. Which is a stupid scale.

I think there is a lot of merit to dividing game budgets into tiers like this, but the problem with this approach is twofold. The accounting for game budgets is as messy as Hollywood accounting, so you can see some drastic rounding errors. Especially with live services… And most publishers would sooner whip and chain up their employees ‘contractors’ than give a precise number for a budget.

But if there was a way to assign a budget scale to a game, what approach would I take? Well, I wouldn’t use letters, because the global education system has demonized anything less than a B. And I don’t think that the growing dichotomy of AAAA, AAA, AA, indie, and triple-i is a sensible or good naming convention. What do I think would be better? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is mega budget, big budget, modest budget, low budget, and micro budget. But how many tiers should they be, should there be a more sensible naming scheme— maybe something using metric prefixes? I could get used to calling games peta, tera, giga, mega, kilo, centi, milli, micro, and nano budget games. It makes sense to me, but I’m a freak who uses the metric system for everything. …Except when talking to Boomers, because they’re too old to learn new tricks.

However… what would be the dollar amount thresholds? Would there be overlapping ranges? How would the dollar amounts be indexed? And how would one get the gaming industry, community, and vital triple-k kore kommunity, to respect this terminology? I don’t know, and I doubt they would even change their terms, because sane people have better things to worry about. Like whether the PS2 actually sold 155 million units or 160 million units. A figure that’s objectively, scientifically, morally, and racially more important than the body count of any war…

Akumako: “…Natalie, you had one job. Talk about the Triple-i Initiative 2024 showcase and the cool games it showed. But instead… you delivered this unhinged scat-some spree and capped it off with two back-to-back Anti-White-Gamer jokes.”

Babe, we’re on Rundown number 606 and you’re still not up to snuff on the program? Honestly, I don’t have much to say about the announcements from the showcase beyond basic-ass takes. I think that it’s weird to promote licensed DLC in an independent showcase. I don’t consider Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn to follow the definition of an indie game, as it looks too expensive. Most of the games looked quite good. The rapid genre shifts between titles seemed a bit odd, but I guess that’s to prevent people from zoning out too much. 

The only game that really raised an eyebrow to me was The Rogue Prince of Persia, a 2D reinvention of Prince of Persia… releasing a few months after another 2D reinvention. But I’m still not talking about Ubisoft, and won’t until they announce a new Rayman.

Akumako: “Wow, you’re a ripe bitch, now ain’tcha? All it takes is a new game in a series you like two games from before you forgive a publisher for a decade-plus or abuse.”

I won’t forgive them. I’ll just refer to them as chronic abusers whenever they show up.

Akumako: “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

Sleeping on my side, drawing my curtains, and masturbating?

Akumako: “…I need to get a new job, pronto.”

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Eman Looc’s Possession Scroll is Divesting from Student Transfer
(Add Another Great Standalone TF Game to The List!)

While I have many a bugbear with myriad minor elements of Student Transfer, I still adore and admire it as a vessel and platform for TSF storytelling, and serving as a jumping off point for creators. Mice Tea and re:Dreamer probably would not exist without Student Transfer, and the same is true for its plentiful fan-made scenarios. I actually just did a quick, likely overstated, tally, and it’s at 262. Damn.

However, I also believe that while it makes sense to use Student Transfer as a platform if one wants to tell a smaller story, it stops making sense if their ideas get too ambitious or deviates too much. It’s the same principle that applies to a lot of fan works. If one wants to tell a short story with specific characters, then it might make sense for it to be a fanfic. But if one wants to remix, twist, and alter characters and lore while spinning a 100,000+ word story, you might want to file off the serial numbers at some point. …Which is pretty much what Darknost is doing with Eman Looc’s Possession Scroll, as they’re spinning it off into their own game!

ELPS is an incredibly ambitious, and long, Student Transfer scenario that I covered last year. While I had issues with certain plot points, redundancies, and felt that the pacing was slow in spots, I still found it to be a great scenario. It’s well worth checking out, and a testament to the creativity people can interject into an established framework and characters. Also, if you want a lower commitment, the supplemental scenarios, Yrammus Dar’s Ghost Hunt and Why Can’t I Be Sayaka? are shorter and… better. I haven’t played Mamma’s Me: Who We Are Again? or Gadgets versus Ghosts, though they’re probably dope. 

I think this is great news, as it will give Darknost more freedom, attention, acclaim, and possibly less criticism for making a female-to-female possession story. Characters will get new names, various elements will change, and outfits/edits created by the ST dev team will seemingly be retired. Which… I don’t quite get, because the sprites are from other creators and the ST dev team has no permission to use these assets. 

The ST characters, backgrounds, and CGs may have been edited or touched up, but they are not original creations. They are ripped from commercial VNs by Japanese developers with no presence outside of Asia. …Which the dev team does not credit in-game as far as I can tell. Actually, the dev team is pretty bad at the whole crediting creators thing. And no, the shitty credits globe on the website does not count, and I don’t consider the Git page good enough. This is like their third Git page at this point, and a lot of contribution history is no longer available unless you wanna go digging for several hours.

…One of these days, I’m going to need to have a loooong chat with the dev team about things like this. They probably won’t listen to me though, because I’m crazy and want them to do things that would take a few hours of work. I’d try to reach out, but I’m too chronically asocial for that.

Anyway, I think Darknost is making a great move here, wish them all the best, and I’d love to see other creators follow in their footsteps. Because… I think some Student Transfer scenarios are too good to be relegated to mere scenarios. 

Also, you might be asking when I will cover the standalone ELPS, and the answer is… definitely not 2024. I gotta write too much crap this year to take on anything. …And do the same ding-dong thing next year. Oh Psycho Shatter and VD2.0. I love ya, but you’re gonna make me go craaaazy.

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Minor Musings About Unionization and Costs of Living
(Avalanche Studios Starts Unionizing)

At this point, I am convinced that Europe is the singular force that has the will and power needed to make the modern digital world a better place. The European Union is among the most sane governments around, and are the most likely key to things like… basic consumer rights protections around the world. However, I have not heard much about them regarding the modern unionization efforts in the game industry. Which is weird, as if there is any continent that should be pro-union, it’s Europe.

Anyway, the actual story here is that developers at the Swedish Avalanche Studios have begun unionizing. For clarity’s sake, they’re the developers of Just Cause, Rage 2, and Mad Max (2015). Not the Utah-based Disney Infinity and [REDACTED] developer Avalanche Software. Of their 500 staff, over 100 of them have unionized. Or, rather, are in the process of unionizing, as it takes a while for the paperwork to be processed and approved. Still, this marks one of the largest unions seen yet in the games industry and is a good thing to ensure that developers will be able to work sensible hours and working conditions.

…That’s where the story ends. But the more I thought about this, the more bitter I got over how slow progress has been, as it’s not like there’s something stopping new studios from around the world from starting up unions every week. There are thousands of game studios across the world, and this issue of overwork and underrepresentation must be addressed broadly if there is going to be any meaningful change. Otherwise, new studios will keep popping up, keep perpetuating abuse and crunch, and game jobs will continue to be shit for a lot of people. 

Now, I expect this to be a problem in America specifically, where corporations are the real people and humans are mere gristle. But why aren’t most major game studios in Europe unionized? Or, hell, why not Japan? Japan is a conservative country in a lot of ways, but they have a century-plus history with unions and are pro-union in many ways. But in the game industry… I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a game industry union. Even though it seems like there should be, as overwork is quietly rampant and most developers don’t make diddly. 

I remember a Tim Rogers anecdote (which was apparently reiterated in this Insert Credits podcast episode) that during the PS2 and PS3 era, Japanese developers were typically paid based on their age. With a twenty-year-old being paid 200,000 yen per month and a 30-year-old being paid 300,000 yen per month. Also, this was back when the USD to yen rate was closer to 1 to 100.

Is it better now? Yes, but not by much. Even a game producer in Japan makes less than $50,000 USD per year. And Konami has recently announced that their starting wages, as of March 2025, will be less than $2,000 a month. That sounds like some malarky that should not be tolerated… but Japanese game companies rarely see mass layoffs unless the studio is in a dire financial position. More importantly, the costs of living in Japan are way lower than the US. Especially if people live outside of Tokyo. And if an industry treats workers humanely, giving them job security and an acceptable living wage… then you don’t need unionization. 

Which isn’t me poo-pooing unionization. I think most professions and trades should unionize and unions should be powerful enough to shift industries through democratic elections. But I also know that establishing something like this is highly unlikely from happening in this burgeoning modern dystopia.

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The Illest Quote From 1951
(Natalie Hyperfixates on 30 Seconds From a 38 Hour Documentary)

Do I have anything else to add before I phase things out? Uh, one more thing that I want to note, because I don’t know how else I can incorporate it, and I don’t want to forget it. For the past week, while working on tax returns, eating food, and doing chores, I’ve been watching a disgustingly long video on The Beverly Hillbillies. While I think it is horribly paced and overly detailed in many respects, it has a lot of nuggets of detailed research between the dry summaries of each episode. And something that really stuck out to me, aside from how much of a veritable ethnostate 60s TV was, was one quote that I just adore.

The quote comes from a 1951 novel compilation known as The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. A book that spawned a popular late 50s and early 60s sitcom about some preppy Boomer— technically, he would be a member of the Silent Generation— trying to get laid. By that I mean go steady. By that I mean scope out a babymaker. By that I mean date. By that I mean own a woman as property and a piece of His estate to be inherited by His son. So the bloodline can continue without any contamination.

The author of this book, Max Shulman, originally wrote several similar short stories about a young man on sexual conquests, and decided to throw them together into this book. But he didn’t do much more than change the name to Dobie Gillis. He didn’t change the ages, the years, add interstitials that bridge one story to the other, or fix inconsistent elements of the character. He straight up did not give a fuck about the consistency of these stories, and just wanted to get paid for shit he already wrote. So, he began his novel with this following note:

“Mean, small, captious, and niggling readers will notice certain discrepancies in the following stories. In some of them, for example, Dobie Gillis is a freshman, in others he is a sophomore. In some he is majoring in law; in others he is majoring in chemistry or English or mechanical engineering or nothing at all. In some he is shrewd; in others dumb; in some aggressive; in others meek. In some he is seventeen years old; in others eighteen; in others nineteen. These tiny variations will be noticed, as I said, by mean, small, captious, and niggling readers. But to the intelligent, greathearted, truly American reader, they will be matters of no consequences.”

Max Shulman, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

This is some pompous shit that craps in the face of the continuity obsessions that would come to dominate a lot of popular media. I can barely imagine any modern creator having the gall, the audacity, to say that anybody who cares about continuity is mean, small, captious, niggling, unintelligent, weak-hearted, and unamerican. That would cause a damn riot in the user reviews. Motherfucker would get doxxed and canceled for that! It half makes me want to appropriate something like this for Psycho Shatter 1988 instead of taking the humble route. ‘Cos these days, humble gets no respect.

Akumako: “Natalie, that’s a line from Virginia by Clipse, from their debut 2002 album, Lord Willin’. Though you only know the Ocarina of Rhyme version, uncultured swine that you are. You are two decades removed from that being relevant. Also, if you use the word niggling in the preface of a novel called Psycho Shatter 1988: Black Justice X White Genocide, people will just think the story is regular racist, not anti-racist.”

…Shit, I gotta actually write the outline for that and do some research into the crimes of Ronald Wilson Raegan.

Akumako: “Is there a single topic this week where you could actually maintain focus?”

Nope. It’s tax season, so my brain is Going Places!

Akumako: “…I pray to Luci The Almighty Hell Ho that I don’t live to see what this girl’s like when she’s on the sunny side of forty. She’s probably going to be more bat than ape.”

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Progress Report 2024-04-14

You know, for as much as I second guess my more overt and extreme political takes on this site, I am routinely reminded that I’m not as extreme or hyperbolic as some people. And not just anonymous entities in the social media slurry. 

I probably shouldn’t mention this, but this past week I sent a return to be signed by a former supreme court nominee. A paragon of the bitch we call law. And when my boss gave the supreme court nominee a phone call, the nominee said the following: 

“In order to get rid of the people who are not virtuous, a neutron bomb might need to be dropped on Washington [DC].”

And if a public figure— bangin’ it real dawg style in the second highest court in the country— can talk like that to their tax bro, then why the fuck can’t I say comparably radical shit?!

2024-04-07: I was busy with work for most of the day, so no work was done on VD2.0. Instead, I wrote the 2,000 word segment about consoles and 1,400 words for the preamble ramble. I stopped when I forgot what I was talking about…

2024-04-08: Edited 14,000 words of VD2.0 before getting BORED! So I wrote a 1,500 word TSF Showcase. 

2024-04-09: I got distracted by organizing my image collections and spent way too long trying to download images from a delisted Patreon page archive. All because I wanted to organize my potential TSF Showcase candidates… Also, my friend told me to play a browser-based Pokémon roguelite, which ate up two hours. I just edited 5,000 words of VD2.0…

2024-04-10: Last day before my boss went to a funeral, so I was busy like a beaver boning a beehive. When I wasn’t, I was futzing away on more Pokérogue. Also, edited 7,000 words for VD2.0. 

2024-04-11: Wrote 1,700 word in tangents for this Rundown. Wrote 4,000 + 8,500 words for VD2.0. And cleared a run of Pokérogue while streaming it to my buddy who worked on Student Transfer back in 2015. My damn Nidoking with scorching sand wound up being an MVP…

2024-04-12: Edited the Rundown, edited the remaining 8,000 words for one chapter of VD2.0 and 4,500 for another. …All of this editing is making me legit SICK of my own writing. I’m over halfway done, but… ugh.

2024-04-13: Finished the 13,000 words for VD2.0 Ch 6-19. Now for a break on editing, with 145k words to go.

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Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp
Acts 1 and 2 Progress Report:

Current Word Count: 372,153

Estimated Word Count: 372,000

Words Edited: 227,598

Total Chapters: 33

Chapters Edited: 23

Header Images Made: 0

Days Until Deadline: 45

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Also, I high-key wanna write a possession story about a dysfunctional couple hopping between bodies, based on Heads Are Gonna Roll by The Hippos. It’s a crazy idea… but I think I’m the only person with the right home brand of crazy to pull it off!

Akumako: “Home brand doesn’t mean what you think it does. It’s not a euphemism for cum flavor.”

It means whatever I want it to mean!