This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: Return to Inefficient Labor
• Nintendo Direct 2 Da Museum (Natalie Is Confused By The Nintendo Museum)
• Wukong Does Big Bananas! (In More Ways Than One!)
• The Gamescom Rundown (Because I Didn’t Want To Cover Everything…)
• Take Two Interactive’s Gearbox Is Back To Money-Making (Borderlands 4 Announced)
• A Reminder: Tencent Owns Techland (Dying Light: The Beast Announced)
• Dirty Liar Peter Molyneux is Back! (Masters of Albion Announced)
• How The Hell Is This Series Still Alive? (Mafia: The Old Country Announced)
• Oh Snap, TSF Creators Are Noticing Me! (And Another Aside About SwapHouse)
• Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp EOS Announced (But It’s Getting an Offline Version!)

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Return to Inefficient Labor

My vacation is over, meaning that this past week was a return to my work life and… I have such mixed feelings about my job. The actual work I need to do is pretty easy and I work less than a regular full-time job, giving me more time for other things. I work from home, at my personal computer, in the comfort of my bedroom. But the tools I need to use are shoddy and getting worse over time. I have little control over what I do, as I need to work so closely with my boss, so I answer to him. Which could be fine, but my boss is a major scatterbrain whose whims I am beholden to. The workflow we have set up is woefully ineffective. And my boss has a TERRIBLE habit of working on the same damn tax returns over the course of months before we finish them. When you are, ideally, supposed to finish a tax return in a week, tops.

I know I have skills that could be so much better used if I was part of a larger organization that recognized where I performed best. However, I have promised to stay with my boss for the next three years, and despite asking again and again if he could just sell the practice, he is intent on somehow growing it. Even though every attempt he has made to grow the practice has failed. Expanding into another country failed. Getting a third person failed. And the one golden ticket client wound up being a wife beater with a sex addiction who blew his chance to net $100 million ‘cos he got greedy.

I know I should just stop being a bitchin’ bitch and accept that I’m 29 and making like $80k a year (before bonuses). However, this lack of control, lack of autonomy, and reliance on an old man who lacks the desire to address his weaknesses… it just pisses me off. I’m a critic by nature, breed, and/or blood, and when I know that someone is screwing up but cannot do anything about it, it fills me with a sense of wrongness. Not because I could do his job better— I have the smarts to know what I cannot do— but because this goes against my fundamental belief in how leadership should be. They should be organized, regimented, and work toward the strengths of those under them. Unfortunately, only maybe 5% of the global population make for good leaders or managers. And most positions do not go to them.

All I want is a job where straightforward tasks and assignments land in my inbox. I want to do them, submit them, consult a database or peer when I encounter an issue, and do that until the end of my shift. But I am becoming increasingly disillusioned that such jobs actually exist, and that labor has any reliable structure that has long-since been relegated to machines.

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Nintendo Direct 2 Da Museum
(Natalie Is Confused By The Nintendo Museum)

Nintendo is such an established company that it makes all the sense in the world for them to open up their own museum to celebrate their history. They’ve been around for over a century, have a lot of weird, interesting curios to offer, and are one of the most influential companies in the biggest entertainment industry. Normally, I wouldn’t really care about this, as I am never going to go there, but Nintendo released a Direct going over the museum and… it’s strange. Not because of what they choose to feature in this museum, but rather how they are featuring it.

I love museums. I just visited a few over my vacation, had a great time, and much of the reason has to do with the art of the museums. Not the works featured within one, but the design of everything around them. The architecture of the building. The structure and arrangement of the exhibits. The way floor space is used. The way the museum staff turns the act of visiting a museum into a journey in and of itself. But what Nintendo has shown here, while only a snippet, does not seem to capture that sense of careful curation.

One of the core attractions is a room devoted to each of Nintendo’s systems and many of the games released for it. An incredibly important set piece that sees all of Nintendo’s developed/published titles arranged by system in large bookshelf-like displays. A fair enough approach, except for the fact that these are mostly visual arrangements and have a lot of empty space. With the Famicom display, I know this is partially due to their desire to allot the same amount of space to every game, but it just looks unfinished, and… why are there no screenshots for each game? Why is there no placard describing the game and giving some basic facts on it? Yes, there are TVs above displaying footage of each game, but with dozens of games and only 14 displays, you probably need to wait a while to even get an idea what each game is supposed to look like.

It’s possible this information is all available via a Nintendo Museum app, and if so… that’s kind of lame. It makes all the sense in the world for a museum to use an app to guide people through exhibits, give them extra information, and give them information in their preferred language. However, I am strongly opposed to the idea that you should need to use an app to get the full museum experience, as the point of a museum is to see displays with one’s own eyes. Virtual tours are a great accessibility feature that I think many museums should pursue, but the only time I want to look at my phone in a museum is to take photos. …Like this one!

This sparse display for their games is paired with a perplexing approach taken for Nintendo’s non-video game offerings. Their fitness-based products are all arranged together, including everything from a variant of Twister to a Power Pad, yet they are all awkwardly crammed into a small generic display. They are bundled together in a collage that takes away from each individual object, as it bleeds into the next one. When most museums keep all objects separated so you can better appreciate them. Their miscellaneous offerings— strollers, light guns, board games— are even worse, arranged so tightly that the display looks like something out of a hidden object game.

If the goal of this museum is to not present the history of Nintendo in an honest, if reverential, light, to inform the public on their history in a detailed manner, then what is its purpose? Well, based on this Direct, it seems to double as an amusement center. It has a giant floor screen that people can walk on in order to play a game. A Mario shooting game using shells from the NES Zapper and Super Scope. A recreation of the Ultra Machine ping-pong ball batting machine, set in a model 1960s Japanese household, where you can activate objects by hitting the ball in the right location. And a room where people can play games from Nintendo’s home consoles using giant controllers. …And that includes the Wii, meaning you can waggle around a meter-tall Wii Remote while playing a Wii Play mini-game!

Aside from the ‘that’s so Nintendo’ giant controllers, this entire museum just seems strange to me. Like a mishmash of disparate ideas from people who could not decide if they wanted to make an amusement center or a celebration of history. You can have both, but just looking at the museum elements… this does not look like it was designed by a proper museum designer. Maybe I’m wrong and this museum will be far more impressive over time. But for a trailer meant to get people to book vacations, I don’t think this worked.

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Wukong Does Big Bananas!
(In More Ways Than One!)

2024 has been a wild year for viral games so far. Things began with Palworld, continued with Helldivers 2, and are the latest game to join that club, nabbing a gob-smacking peak player count of 2,358,580 and selling over 10 million copies is… Black Myth: Wukong. 

Wukong is a modern third-person action game that has many cues from From Software’s Souls series— actually, no, that’s redundant. All modern action games all take cues from Souls and all feature RPG elements, so they are just straight up modern action games. More precise and stylish action has been siphoned off into its own subgenre. 2D action games are 2D action games, totally different. And Japanese-style ‘shooting action’ games have been partitioned into their own niche as well. 

Anyway, Wukong is a Chinese developed action game that I vaguely remember as being a graphical showcase prior to the release of the PS5. An ambitious title, with lavish production values, incredible levels of detail, quality animation, and a high level of spectacle. I admittedly got it mixed up with Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty for a while, because they are both Souls-inspired action games with a feudal Chinese setting with similar names. But Wukong is largely its own thing, and has done incredibly well. Why is that? 

Well, SteamDB does not track players by country, but just from the fluctuation in active players, it’s obvious that this game is getting most of its attention from a Chinese audience. Even though the western gaming world does rarely think about them, due to the language barrier and great firewall, China’s game market is massive. And a lot of Chinese gamers are interested in foreign-made AAA games. If you look at the Steam comments for games like Elden Ring, Sekiro, The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Civilization, PUBG, Palworld, and GTA V, you’ll find that anywhere from 20% to 50% of them are in Chinese. Combine this with the fact that a game like Wukong is seen as a source of pride for Chinese game-likers and that PC is the primary platform, and… it all makes sense. 

I was never too interested in the game— I think it commits the same sin as a lot of games by prioritizing fidelity over lighting and color design. However, I am very pleased to see a single-player action game doing so well in China. I have engaged in casual pessimism about the future of gaming due to the deluge of East Asian service games dominating the industry. However, this shows that it is possible for a single-player game like this to succeed both in China and globally. And the more single-player premium experiences like this that can thrive in this market the better. 

I would like to wrap things up here and now, citing this success story, and ending things off on a cheery note. …But the developer of Wukong, Game Science, just had to be a bit shit. 

Leading up to the release of this game, there were stories circling around last year about the studio and its leads having a long history of sexism. IGN’s article on the subject offers some great examples and insights, and… it’s not good, but it’s also not unique. 

East Asia is currently in the midst of an ongoing feminist movement. Social media has given women a voice. A rise in self-employment has given them more control of their lives. The rise in online creators has given way to more outspoken female voices entering the digital airwaves. And because of this, millions of Asian men are wracked with insecurity. 

A lot of Asian men are insecure, untrusting of women, and rather than listen or discuss them, they paint women out to be non-humans. As more women are demanding more respect and protections, demanding men to be better, more men are becoming actively toxic. It’s a cycle that has been repeating across societies for… over a century, at the very least. And is there a more iconic duo than gaming and toxic masculinity? No. No, there is not.

One could get angry about this, but it is merely a symptom of a broader issue, and it would be more productive to just make a donation to an Asian feminist organization or assist them. You cannot win a culture war with blind skirmishes involving a few people. But you can become a footsoldier, nurse, ambulance driver, or farmer growing crops for their rations.

However, that’s old news, and this subject only resurfaced a few days before the game’s release. Black Myth: Wukong Launch Campaign – Aug. 2024 – Do’s & Don’ts (backup) is a Google Doc that was circulating prior to the game’s August 20th release that was sent to streamers and those given keys for promotional purposes. But not game reviewers. It’s a simple document telling people to not mention certain things when playing the game for video creation. It starts basic… but then gets just stupid.

• Do NOT insult other influencers or players.
• Do NOT use any offensive language/humor.
• Do NOT include politics, violence, nudity, feminist propaganda, fetishization, and other content that instigates negative discourse.
• Do NOT use trigger words such as ‘quarantine’ or ‘isolation’ or ‘COVID-19’.
• Do NOT discuss content related to China’s game industry policies, opinions, news, etc.

…Actually read this, imagine that this was written by some 24-year-old Chinese male marketing intern, and then this makes a lot of sense. I’m going to assume this was not a deliberately created list that went through checks and balances. This was just some kid trying to put things into writing to avoid the game running into any controversies, or “negative discourse.”

Saying no violence in an M-rated game is stupid as fuck. The reason why they are saying no “feminist propaganda” is because that is seen, in some circles, as a neutral term for any form of feminist rhetoric. (It’s not though, the term ‘feminist propaganda’ is the ‘transgenderism’ of feminism, and the term is itself anti-feminist.) Game Science has come under fire for sexism in the past and this is their, very poor, way of saying they don’t want people who were given free copies of their game to criticize the developer or the game itself.

They similarly do not want anglophones to draw attention to this being a Chinese game, because anti-Chinese sentiment is still on the rise, and the last two points are their way of saying that. Mind you, their wording here is dogshit. Isolation is not a term owned by the pandemic. Discussing the Chinese game industry is one of the most relevant topics imaginable when playing a Chinese game. And telling video creators to not talk about their opinions is a telltale sign for stupidity if I’ve ever seen one. Why not also ask them to not speak during a livestream? Wouldn’t Twitch be such a better place if people just were not allowed to speak on it? …Don’t answer that.

This was just a badly worded and ignorant statement that stewed up enough controversy to be featured in the latest Dunkey vid. And I really wish that someone with more sense proofread or reworded this statement. Because I don’t like this culture war bullshit. I would like this game to just be assessed as a game. It makes things so much more pleasant. But in trying to prevent “negative discourse” they just instigated it. Hell, I didn’t even know the game was coming out until I saw this.

…Maybe this was a deliberate viral marketing campaign done to get more buzz about the game. I mean, Hogwash Lethargy (2023) sold 24 million copies, and the rampant transphobic discourse definitely boosted sales. I don’t know. I just wish it didn’t happen, as I actually really bloody want good news to keep coming out of China and want to see Chinese people do good things. 

I love that Chinese people are developing such high quality games that stand toe-to-toe with games from other countries. I love that they are pioneers of new work patterns and tools. I love that they are doing more than basically any other country to fight climate change. Printing solar panels like newspapers? Well ain’t that just orgasmic news! The government is trying to make electric cars affordable to end dependency on dead dinosaur juice? DOPE! But then the men choose to be absolute morons by refusing to acknowledge that half the human population are people. And if you are a Chinese man who is not sexist, then heed Malcolm X’s words of wisdom and make your people better. Chinese women, keep up the good fight. Chinese men, man the fuck up and learn how to respect others. And if you see your homies actin’ a fool and being sexist, teach them how a man should be! Even if you gotta use your big strong fists!

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The Gamescom Rundown
(Because I Didn’t Want To Cover Everything…)

Gamescom Open Night Live happened while I was working with my boss this week, and as always, I did not actually watch the showing. Historically, Gamescom has not been a haven for announcements. It is a massive trade show whose historic draw has been for people across Europe to play games before they come out. And… there really were not a ton of new announcements. It was a lot of building up on prior releases, and basically nothing tickled my eclectic fancy. (Why did I make my old alias Electric Nigma, when I could have been Eclectic Nigma?)

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was given a December 9 release date for Xbox/PC and will be coming to PS5 in spring 2025. Thus providing further evidence that Xbox exclusivity is going to become timed exclusivity or no exclusivity. I know it would be terrible for the industry, but I will legit laugh my ass off if/when Xbox ends as a console brand.

NetEase’s Marvel Rivals got another trailer and people are coming around to the title as just being the Microsoft’s Overwatch alternative that they’ve wanted since… 2019 or so. I don’t know when Overwatch ‘stopped’ being good, as I was wise enough to avoid that trainwreck of a game.

Genshin Impact is coming to Xbox Series on November 20. This would be an unremarkable event, except for the fact that the game could have come to Xbox back in 2020. Microsoft had the opportunity to make Genshin Impact an Xbox console exclusive, but Microsoft said no. This led MiHoYo to pair up with Sony as their de facto partner instead, which further made the Xbox less attractive, especially in the eyes of anime or Asian game fans. Better late than never, I guess but it’s also better to ship on a platform at launch, not 4 years later.

I wanted to keep going with headlines… but I kept on rambling.

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Take Two Interactive’s Gearbox Is Back To Money-Making
(Borderlands 4 Announced)

Borderlands 4 was announced, right after the Borderlands movie managed to be the worst video game adaptation in years. It was a CG trailer, so let me talk about the series in general. Because I have a bugbear to unleash! 

Borderlands 3 (2019) was a strange animal. It was a sequel that should have been out way sooner, except Gearbox made the mistake known as Battleborn (2016). Timing being what it was, it was one of the first major exclusivities for Epic Games Store, who paid $115 million for six months of PC exclusivity. Which, like I said in 2021, had to be more than the game’s entire budget. The game did well despite this, selling 18 million units. Though I feel it did not breach the same zeitgeist that prior games did, or leave much of a legacy. …Or maybe that’s just my bias talking, as Borderlands is among my least favorite and least respected gaming series. 

I played the first one, and thought it was mindless, pretitive, drab, and deeply mediocre. The sequel was slightly better, but ultimately hollow. The shooting felt fine, but lacked impact. The upgrades were middling and unremarkable. The primary form of play was navigating the world and faffing about with inventory. I played the first one to completion, tried the sequel twice, and my enjoyment curve went about the same. The first ten or so hours were a 7/10, but it dropped to a 3/10 by hour 30. 

As I said in my 2015 review of Borderlands 2, “Pretty much anything is a better use of one’s time than playing with this wet hot street trash.”

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A Reminder: Tencent Owns Techland
(Dying Light: The Beast Announced)

Dying Light (2015) is a game that I know I would not enjoy… but I have immense respect for it. It struck a chord with a lot of people, underwent some wonderful post-launch support, and was being worked on even as the sequel was hot in development. Dying Light 2: Stay Human (2022) was a game that was announced at E3 2018… meaning it took four years to come out. I recall reception being somewhat frosty at launch, but the game is still being supported, still getting free updates, and sold over 5 million units in its first month. So I’m guessing it managed to retain a devoted niche and it appears to have goodwill among the community. At least at a glance.

…But whatever goodwill people have for the developer, Techland, should have died when they announced their sale to Tencent last year. Techland is now Tencent, and while I just talked about how much I want the Chinese games industry to grow, I do not trust Tencent. They are too big, too powerful, and I hate that they have gobbled up so many developers. So seeing Tencent’s Techland announce Dying Light: The Beast is a non-announcement to me, and I am only bringing it up to highlight how this is a Tencent game, and that needs to be emphasized!

…Gosh, I’m one slur away from sounding like those Sour Baby fuckwits. But unlike Sweet Baby Ray’s Sweet Baby Inc, Tencent has actual power. Not imaginary power projected by people diet Nazis too deprived of hamburger in their noggins to understand that correlation is not causation. 

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Dirty Liar Peter Molyneux is Back!
(Masters of Albion Announced)

Renowned LIAR and veritable game industry icon, Peter Molyneux, is back after scamming people with his last game, Godus (2014), and some NFT game he launched last year. His latest game, Masters of Albion is positioned as a return to Lionhead’s cult classic god game, Black & White (2001). An expansive yet zany little title that was before my time, yet just scrubbing through footage, I can see how it became so beloved and helped aspire faith within Lionhead as a studio.

Masters of Albion… is basically that, but with some humor-flavored cues from Lionhead’s Fable series and some extensive creation and custom crafting elements. At its core, it is yet another god game, where the player controls the hand of Peter Molyneux and either tries to craft a functional society… or just messes around with their servants. It’s a well-established genre that, sadly, has never really clicked with a non-PC audience.

That all being said, I do not trust this game with a ten-foot pole. Molyneux has over-promised and under-delivered ever since he came into the public eye, and I cannot trust anything he does in good faith after everything that happened with Godus. And even if I did… something about Masters of Albion just looks wrong to me. The gameplay shown reminds me of three things. A fake video game that was made for a movie circa 2008. A low budget Unity or Unreal asset flip that Stephany Sterling would have covered in 2017. And that fake video game footage from that Sifl and Olly reboot series hosted on Machinima and Nerdist back in 2012 to 2013.

…And while editing this, I double checked some things and now I’m pretty sure this is just an updated version of his NFT game from last year. 

Go back into your hole, Peter! Go there and stay there until you are a skeleton! You could have been a hero, but you chose to be a villain! Get this man some horns!

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How The Hell Is This Series Still Alive?
(Mafia: The Old Country Announced)

 …I actually do respect Take Two for continuing the Mafia series, as it had… three good opportunities to die over the past 15 years. 

The original Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven (2002) was more of a sleeper hit PC title that did not transition to consoles with the most grace. It was unfavorably compared to GTA, when it was always trying to be its own thing. A less glamorous, more dramatic, and overall grounded crime story, executed with a good degree of early 2000’s eurojank. I’m tempted to make some disparaging comment about it not being like other GTA clones of that era, like the True Crime duology, Crime Life Gang Wars (2005), or Narc (2005). But I think many of those titles are hilarious and fun in retrospect. The early 2000s were a wild time for American culture, and people are still waking up to this indisputable truth.

Mafia II (2010) really suffered from being in GTA IV (2008)‘s shadow, even though the game was a lot more like L.A. Noire (2011). A period piece action drama with realistic driving, reserved shooting, a story focus, and another grounded presentation of organized crime. Some found it boring. Some felt that the game was lacking something— it did have a lot of cut content. And others considered it a cult classic. 

Mafia III (2016) is a game that wanted to do something unique. A criminal sandbox game set in the late 1960s with a Black protagonist, set in the deep south that wanted to embrace and acknowledge the racism of the era. It had the potential to be something impressive… but it just wound up being a disappointment. Jason Scrier wrote an excellent article on Mafia III’s development in 2018, but allow me to offer an abridged version.

Mafia III was built by both the original Czech developers and a new team from California, dubbed Hangar 13. Despite the more sleeper status of the prior two games, Take Two was determined to make this a big breakthrough for the series, and wanted the game to compete with GTA. It seemed like a good idea… if you didn’t know how anything worked. 

There was a cultural clash with the veteran Czech and new American staff. Much of the Czech staff’s existing code was written in Czech. Take Two’s interventions harmed the project more than anything. The developers were put on a tight deadline, given orders from the top, and knew the game had problems, but were not allowed to fix them. Which ultimately led to a game with repetition issues, a buggy launch, and systems that really should have been cut in testing, but couldn’t because there was no time. Still, the developers crunched away, hoping that the game would somehow be well received or sell well. …And it did neither. 

Mafia III nabbed a Metacritic score of 68— far from the 80/85 they were aiming for and shipped 5 million units in its first quarter. The latter might sound impressive but that’s only units shipped, not sold, and this was back when most of a game’s sales were through retail. And even though the title eventually sold 7 million copies by 2020, those were not the GTA-like numbers Take Two was expecting. 

It was a messy title that mostly came together, but bore the scars of a troubled development. However, the dev team was now situated, had a foundation, and were excited to work on a new game! …So Take Two conducted mass layoffs, canceled projects, and sent morale crashing down to the ground, because they know how to run companies

I half expected Hanger 13 to shift into becoming a support studio at the time… but then they surprised everybody by announcing a remake of Mafia (2002) as their next game in 2020. A full remake, faithful while modernizing things and built from the ground-up using Mafia III‘s engine. They could have called it Mafia Remake or Mafia: Subtitle Here. Instead, they called it Mafia: Definitive Edition (2020), when it was a completely different game from the original. It was a pretty good remake as far as I could tell. Definitely (or definitively) not a replacement for the original, but a nice way to keep the series active and give fans something to chew on and give the devs a chance to recoup morale.

Unfortunately, Take Two completely fucked up this game’s release. I explained why in May 2020, after they announced Mafia Trilogy. A $60 release that contained Mafia II: Definitive Edition, a spruced up version of the 2010 title that looked… fine. Better in some ways, worse in others, technically more impressive, aesthetically debatable. Mafia III: Definitive Edition, a repackaging of the game with all DLC included. And Mafia: Definitive Edition, a $40 budget remake that was coming out on September 25, 2020. Meaning anybody who bought Mafia Trilogy would be paying for a pre-order of a game that didn’t even have a gameplay trailer at the time. 

Take Two reported that the Mafia: Definitive Edition titles sold 2 million units by September 30, 2020, but have not provided a detailed breakdown or updated figures since then.

I assumed that after failing to be a big hit, twice, this meant that the Mafia series was pretty much done for, given how many layoffs kept hitting the modern developer, Hangar 13. Sure, they said a new Mafia game was in development in 2022, but did I believe that it would ever ship? No! …And I’m still not wrong yet.

Mafia: The Old Country was announced as a 1900s prequel to the Mafia trilogy, set in Sicily. A bold choice, as Sicily is an under-used setting that gets constantly shit talked by ‘real’ Italians, and given its era, I doubt cars will be a factor. Unfortunately… they skipped out on the whole ‘show the game’ thing, only providing scenic screenshots and a CG trailer with vague narration, telling people to check back in December.

…Glad I wrote up an 800 word history lesson before even watching this trailer!

Mafia Zero: The Old Country is slated to be released for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC in 2025, likely trying to get in before GTA VI caused global productivity to take a dip for a day or two. …Actually, GTA VI would only do that if it was released for PC at launch. It would get 3 million consecutive players on Steam, but Rockstar are cowards and want to release it on consoles first.

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Oh Snap, TSF Creators Are Noticing Me!
(And Another Aside About SwapHouse)

So, here’s something I never expected to happen. After I published TSF Showcase 2024-33: Pokémon TSF Series (Season 1 – 2.5), I received a comment from the creator. Yes, Vel the TSF bunnyboy left a comment thanking me for covering their work and even drew a reaction image to go alongside it. This floored me, as Vel is one of my favorite TSF creators, and I am simply not used to people with a bigger following ever noticing little old me.

…Although, in retrospect, I shouldn’t be that surprised. Kawaii Tsun’aho, author of Change Ring and former Student Transfer dev, is friends with Vel, and I know Kawaii checks out Natalie.TF from time to time. It was a delight hearing from them… but Vel wasn’t the only creator I heard from the past two weeks.

When going through my Pixiv feed, I saw a new chapter of SwapHouse, a comic I briefly talked about in a segment three weeks ago. I read the chapter, enjoyed it despite finding the execution of its swap to be… strange. And as I reached the author’s note I saw the creator, deltorii110, mention Natalie.TF and my coverage of the story. Although they called it a ‘review’ when it really wasn’t. I guess people will call anything a review these days!

This was a surreal experience for me, as I just mentioned SwapHouse as a brief curiosity, and never expected its creator to actually read what I wrote. Yet they did just that and responded to my comments about how unusual its transformations were, coining the term “body diversion.” A term that I… don’t think I understand. By diversion, I’m assuming they mean “an instance of turning something aside from its course.” Though I do not see how that describes what happens in the story. Because it’s more of a face swap, hair swap, and skin color swap, all rolled into one.

I actually sent them a Pixiv message about this… and they didn’t really give me an answer, admitting that “it’s a weird concept that’s hard to explain.” But they did slip that they are also a game modder who makes head swap mods, which is the most on-brand thing they could be!

I would leave it at that… but chapter 7 of SwapHouse also did something interesting that I think is worth a discussion. Previously, SwapHouse featured its own unique approach to swapping, where it would have characters exchange faces, hair, and skin color with other characters, and referred to this as a ‘body swap’. The latest chapter eschews all that and sees the characters undergo a… hybrid between a body swap and a head swap. The protagonist, Yuta, switches bodies with Kei, and is seen as Kei by most people. However, the denizens of the Hanazono Dorms and the reader see Yuta as Yuta’s head on Kei’s body.

It’s an approach that I’m not against, but it’s also rather strange. I have seen many body swap stories or comics mentally represent who a person is by featuring their original face as a key visual element. As a ghostly impression, accent to dialogue balloons, or just having the mental image of the character be their original self in their current body’s clothing. However, this is not a mental representation. This is introducing two layers of reality in how this swap is perceived, and while it is unconventional… I get it. 

This approach allows deltorii110 to have the visual of a head swap, without needing to deal with the more messy ramifications of a head swap. 

In my limited exposure, head swaps are rarely the subject of prolonged narratives. They are primarily done as photo or image edits, meant to look cool, creepy, cute, weird, or otherwise erotic. And when a narrative beyond shock is present, it tends to be pretty simple. If it is a swap between two people of the same sex, then they view their new body as an upgrade/downgrade based on how young, tall, attractive, or fit it is. If they are of opposite sexes, then they either view themself as a mishmashed freak, or embrace their new parts, despite how weird they likely look. But regardless of their initial reaction, in most instances, a head swap results in someone who does not look right. Someone who does not look like they belong.

Someone with a chubby face and a fit body. Someone with a youthful baby face on the body of a grown adult. A bearded young White man’s head on the body of a curvaceous young Black woman. A beautiful young Black woman’s head, complete with long flowing hair and earrings, on the body of a studly young White man. Just look up ‘head swaps,’ and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

This fact makes it difficult to write stories about people who undergo head swaps, as they do not fit in with the expectations of society. Which is typically not an issue for most other transformation types. 

A standard human-to-human physical transformation is the creation of a new identity. Twinning is either copying an existing identity or making a derivative of one. Possession and skinsuits allow the possessor/occupant to assume another identity. And a body swap is an exchange of identities between two or more parties. But head swaps are the creation of hybrid identities. Where someone is one person from the neck up and another person below. As a creator, I’m a bit stumped on how someone could write a creative story with that premise. Either the affected persons can try to suppress their body’s features, or try to change their face to better match their body. It is a conflict they need to deal with, but one that is far more complicated  than a body swap.

Sorry, I went on a little tangent there. But it was a good one… I think.

The point is, there are narrative limitations to a head swap, but I’ll admit they are a compelling image. Absurd swaps have their own obvious appeal, and there’s just something cute about seeing a woman’s head on a man’s body and vice versa. I can see why creators would want to use this imagery in a story, but as I described, those can be a mess to work around. So if a creator can keep the enemy but avoid the complicated conflict… well, that’s just a ‘best of both worlds’ scenario.

Also, if you have any recommendations of a head swap story, I would love to hear them. I’ve ignored the genre for too long, and I am willing to give it a fair shake. 

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Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp EOS Announced
(But It’s Getting an Offline Version!)

Well, I don’t think a story has made me go ‘oh no, why does this keep happening’ to ‘tuck yeah, this is exactly what I want to see, bay-bee’ within the span of a single second.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp was Nintendo’s fourth crack at a mobile game, originally releasing in November 2017. I played it for a few days, wasn’t really into it, and mostly remember the game for letting me play as a Black girl— a first for the series— and my fixation on locking animals in prisons.

Since then, it has been trucking on with respectable revenue, a spike in interest when Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020) came out, and some scummy monetization practices. However, after nearly seven years and with revenue dropping to maybe a million a month, Nintendo is shutting down the game, effective November 28, 2024.

This would be a devastating announcement for Animal Crossing fans. However, Nintendo also announced that an offline version of the game is in development and will be available as a paid title. Meaning that the game will be preserved and remain playable, hopefully forever.

…Wait, what?

Nintendo, of all companies, is actually preserving their mobile games after the end of service? This is something Nintendo has never done before. Miitomo (2016) was a social game that was shut down in 2018 and has no chance of coming back. Dr. Mario World (2019) was a fully featured game that made no money, but was played by a good chunk of people. Exactly the perfect thing to re-release as a premium title, but instead it was just delisted in 2021. My beloved Dragalia Lost (2018) was shut down with no word or peep about an offline version in 2022. …But at least there’s a private server that I should join. Unfortunately, playing a touch screen phone action game with a mouse sounds like a bad idea. 

I expected every mobile game they released, except for Super Mario Run (2015), to suffer from complete death, but Nintendo is seemingly changing their ways. …Now, I want every goldarn game developer to do the same thing.

I hold a bitter, angry, and vile grudge toward the industry standard practice of killing online games after they stop being ‘worth it’ for the publishers. This ruthlessly destructive practice has cost the industry hundreds of titles, lifetimes of labor, and billions upon billions in development cost. All for a product that only exists to make money, and only exists for a short length of time. And not for any good reason.

What Nintendo is doing here should be the standard, and if you want to make this a standard, then there are two things you can do. 

One, even if you do not care, purchase this game to signal Nintendo that you want them to release premium mobile games after live services declare EOS. Capitalism favors whatever makes money, afterall. It’s why I bought Mega Man X DiVE Offline, and why I’ll buy this, even though I don’t really like Animal Crossing.

Two, and this one is more important, visit Stop Killing Games, which wants this preservation practice to be mandated by law. Currently, they are working on a &tl; ahref=”https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home”>petition with the European Union, and this is probably our best bet to save games from complete destruction when they stop making publishers money. If you are a citizen of the European Union, or have friends from the EU, please spread the word and sign the petition. A month after launching, they’re at over 300,000 signatures now, but need to get 1,000,000 before July 31, 2025. They have a good chance of reaching their goal, but everybody needs to do their part and spread the word!

Regardless of how well this succeeds though, I’d imagine that Nintendo intends on taking the same approach with their other mobile offerings. Mario Kart Tour was put into maintenance mode last year, but is still alive and running, and has so much quality content that they ported some of it into Mario Kart 8.

Fire Emblem Heroes is still bringing in multiple millions of dollars every month (it made $4 million in June and July), but is getting on in the years and Intelligent Systems might be inclined to cap the game off while they’re ahead. And I know for a fact that both of these games have so much content that it would make for meaty games when/if repackaged.

…But I’m not sure how Pikmin Bloom would work as an offline game, as it is designed around social interactions and going on walks.

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Progress Report 2024-08-25

…Whenever I see graphs like this, I always get confused, as while I do have preferences, I try to be open to EVERYTHING and tend to be down for whatever the creator wants to do. The only thing I don’t really care for are the animal and inanimate— which is rich coming from someone who turned a character into a floating, talking dildo. While I love art, I’m a writer, so I prefer a story, and I would rarely treat kink as the primary priority. I’ve always been of the mindset that if you wanna get your rocks off, be efficient and low effort. Save the good shit for the upper brain, not the lower brain.

…Gosh, I have gotten so much out of that Godzilla reference over the years, and it’s based on bullcrap, as Godzilla’s second brain is in his ass, not his busted dinosaur dick. I really should get back into Godzilla again.

2024-08-18: Wrote another 2,100 words to wrap up the intermission chapter of PS 1988. Gosh does it feel good to be writing sub-6,000 word chapters again! Wrote 2,100 words for Ch 7, which is actually the 8th chapter because counting is for nerdz. Would have done more, but I got distracted by trying to fix my mother’s printer after she mucked something up by cleaning it. Printers fucking suck, even Brother printers. After over 90 minutes of trail and rage, I ‘fixed’ it, but it started making a terrible grinding noise when printing because I think a mechanism broke. My mother is never allowed to change an ink cartridge, drum, or clean her printer without me. Also, I got distracted by a trans girl reader of Natalie.TF messaging me at like 00:30 at night.

2024-08-19: Wrote 3,400 words for PS 1988 Ch 7. Yeah, this one is going to be the longest chapter, because I just HAD to write a 1,300 word FtM TF sequence. …Where the transformed literally ripped their tits off, because that shit’s HARDCORE! Also laid some seeds for the Rundown. 

2024-08-20: Wrote 4,000 words for this Rundown, because Gamescom. Added 1,000 words to PS 1988 Ch 7, mostly the deep lore of this crossover epic. Also, I spent too much time with PokérRogue again… Event weekends are bad for my spirit and productivity.

2024-08-21: Wrote 1,500 words for the Rundown, the intro and the SwapHouse section. I was busy with work, had to rewrite the SwapHouse section quite a bit, and generally distracted. Why does this always happen after a good day? Decided to edit this 6,500 word Rundown instead or doing anything else.

2024-08-22: Cleaned up the 750 word Animal Crossing bit I was writing before bed last night. Wrote 1,600 words for PS 1988 Ch 7. Today was one of those 12 hour work days for me, as I started work at 9:00 with a 6-hour-long CPE, but I bailed because it was bad and worked on PS 1988. Then I was busy with work for nine hours, barring a break to do dishes, because my boss FINALLY decided to work on a highly confidential client… right after we got important docs in for our most important client. Dude knew I would stay up late to work on it, and I was busy until 00:15. Then I had to exercise and shower before bed.

2024-08-23: Damn it… PS 1988 Ch 6 wound up being 12,284 words because the characters had to explain the rest of the story and the logic behind their actions. Wrote 3,900 words, took a break for the evening.

2024-08-24: Was busy with chores in the morning. Then tech support for Cassie turned into a hang out session. Then my boss made me work on a Saturday, doing work that he should/could have done on his own for two hours, before giving me a few hours of extra work for good measure. Then I went to a local festival/celebration that’s just two blocks away from me with my mother. It was WAY too crowded for me, but goldarn does my village know how to put on a good American summer festival.

Hella rides, hella food, loud ear-busting music, people were having fun, and all I could think while walking through this was… this would make a GREAT body swap scenario! 2,000 people, in a non-city, gathered for a festival, young and old, only for them to suddenly swap. I wish I took more and better footage to scrub through for inspiration, but that would have been a social faux pas, and I was already out of my comfort zone.

After I got home, I started work on TSF Showcase 2024-37, reading through a few volumes.

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Psycho Shatter 1988: Black Vice X Weiss Vice
Progress Report:

Current Word Count: 48,665

Estimated Word Count: 88,000

Words Edited: 0

Total Chapters: 16

Chapters Outlined: 16

Chapters Drafted: 8

Chapters Edited: 0

Header Images Made: 0

Days Until Deadline: 72