This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: Natalie Vs The Medical-Industrial Complex
• CaptainCaption Posted Another Life Update! (It’s A Cascade of Bullshit!)
• Natalie is Anti Hardware Innovation (On The Wrong Side of History Yet Again…)
• RIP RyujiNX (Nintendo Shuts Down Ryujinx, the Other Switch Emulator)
• Palworld Mobile Announced! (That’s All!)
• Epic Royalty Discount! (Release Games on Epic Games Store, Save 30% on Unreal Fees!)
• Keep It Peashy, Nippon! (Japan’s PC Game Market Grew 260% In 4 Years!)

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Natalie Vs The Medical-Industrial Complex

As an American living in the current year, I have a rather… fraught relationship with the healthcare industry. I recognize the vital importance of getting proper healthcare in all its forms. I understand that medical issues can happen even if you do everything right. And as someone whose grandmother spent decades working for a hospital, whose mother works for a doctors’ practice, and who works part-time for the same practice, I have a good connection to it. And as a trans person, much of my continued existence/sanity can be attributed to the facial and bottom surgeries that skilled surgeons performed on me. Also, I need HRT to not physically and mentally collapse. 

However, I also loathe dealing with the healthcare industry and deliberately want to avoid it as much as possible. Partially out of disdain for the overpriced insurance I am forced into by everyone I interact with on a daily basis (my boss and mother). Partially because I am sorta locked into getting healthcare from a queer-centric healthcare provider in Chicago, Howard Brown, whose offices are a trek away from me. Partially due to the fact that a routine annual check-up needs to be manually scheduled via a phone call months in advance, but not too far in advance. And partially because I just do not like being in these places. 

The constant waiting, the sensitive timetables that force me to hurry up and wait, the constant fear of germs, and the fact that these tests are all pretty basic. Yes, I understand the value of having a professional look at my mouth, ears, check my heartbeat, and make sure I don’t have any weird spots or something. But the most valuable thing is the blood test they perform after the visit. And I’d rather just go to some place closer by, get my blood drained, and go on with my day. Except, somehow, there are no good places within walking distance, even when living in the downtown of a village with 70,000 residents. Everything’s three miles away and in the city.

I’m also a teensy bit soured on the whole ‘visiting the doctor’ after my latest visit to their new offices. Where a nurse insisted they clean my ears with a water flosser. I get it. My ears have a wax build-up because I don’t use Q-tips— I was instructed not to by a previous doctor— and I wear in-ear earbuds for 10+ hours a day, so I get it. But as an autistic person, there are some places that I don’t want anybody or anything else to touch… and my inner ears are one of them.

Strangely, I consider dentist offices to be far in a way preferable. They’re less rigid operations, typically consisting of offices with a single doctor and a few rooms. They’re local and more common than doctor’s offices, which are typically concentrated in multi-doctor practices. They are fairly priced by comparison, without the usual deluge of surprise fees. You just give them a card, pay a flat amount, and that’s it. Sure, some might have dental insurance, but I have never heard of a good dental plan unless someone needs a root canal or adult braces. 

Best of all, everything a dentist does has a clear purpose. Poking your teeth with that awful metal pick? I get it. The rinsing that hurts my teeth because I have temperature-based sensitivity issues? I get it. The thorough brushing? I get it. And when they tell you what to do, I believe they have a comprehensive understanding of your situation. Dentists only have one area of expertise, so they are far better equipped at offering medical advice. Even if mine just says to water floss harder, when I use a full tank at full power. I dunno what else they want!

I guess what I really want is a local doctor’s office that I can visit, get my blood drawn at, pay a reasonable rate without going through insurance, and maintain a more clear relationship with. Because I’ve been transferred between doctors like three times at this point at Howard Brown. Unfortunately, NorthShore University HealthSystem dominates where I live. And even more unfortunately, I would not fully trust independent physicians. 

I have not gone a week in the past decade without hearing my mother bitch about the doctors she works for. Having worked in the same office as some of them, having done tech support for their offices, I can safely say they are absolute assholes. If someone is an asshole… I just do not trust them to give a shit about me. And if a doctor doesn’t give a shit about me, how can I trust they will do their job?

If they are a specialty provider, like the people who gave me my gender surgeries, then I trust them. But if they are just some schmuck I see once a year, depending on who is available, then there is no trust.

So what I actually want is a doctor who I can pay without going through insurance, is a nice and pleasant person, local, and who I can form a decade-long relationship with. Unfortunately, that does not exist, so fuck me I guess.

My faith in big medical is also at its all time low as of late, because my mother’s health insurance denied numerous procedures she had done this past year. Which were apparently unpaid despite being routine procedures done four to ten months ago. So now she has several thousands of dollars in crusty old debt and will need to spend hours upon hours playing phone tag with someone to fix this shit. And if this happens to her, then what’s to say it won’t happen to me?

Now, I know that I am incredibly privileged to have the luxury to not depend on the American medical industrial complex. I’m young, I’m healthy, I’m relatively thin (177 cm and 63 kg), I’ve only been to a hospital for something serious once in the past 20 years, and I only have one medication. But I still just hate the whole damn system of American hospitals. And with the UK being the UK and Europe pivoting toward fascism thanks to xenophobia (White people are inherently racist), I don’t see socialized medicine being a thing outside of Asia in 25 years. That might sound crazy, but 25 years is a lot of time.

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CaptainCaption Posted Another Life Update!
(It’s A Cascade of Bullshit!)

I was going to end the medical hoopla there, but good old CapCap—

Akumako: “They don’t like it when you call them that. They prefer Cap or CaptainCaption.”

…CapCap posted the latest paratextual hotness for re:Dreamer, going into their own medical issues. For those who do not know the story… read it ya fricks! I’ve only done five reviews on their excellent game, and their life story is better than their game!

Cap has had a rather… unique medical history ever since they were diagnosed with Parkinson’s on their 21st birthday. That is a devastating blow that could wreck any normal person’s life… but that was just the start for Cap. It turned out to not be Parkinson’s after a few years, but corticobasal syndrome, and now it might be corticobasal degeneration, which is similar but also different. It’s a rare case, so rare that Cap is running out of medical providers willing or capable of helping them, and in practical terms… it means their brain is rotting. They are constantly in pain, constantly bombarded by ailments, and it is hard for them to live, let alone hammer away at their life’s work and the primary thing they will be remembered for.

It’s a shitty situation that has only gotten worse, and estimates for their life expectancy are in a freefall, in part because they don’t know what part of their brain will ‘go’ next. …And then the entire field dedicated to treating ailments like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s got gut-stabbed last week

Eliezer Masliah, one of the top neuroscientists in the world, has been exposed as a fraud who faked his research for 25 years. He lied about his findings, got people to trust him or colluded with him, and skirted around peer review because people were too lenient on him, allowing this acclaimed veteran to push whatever he wanted through. This means the entire field is fucked. People with neurodegenerative diseases are fucked. And people with highly atypical diseases, like CapCap, are Xtra Fucked.

But don’t take my word for it, here’s what Cap had to say:

I am not exaggerating when I say that I am confident that this single-handedly set back the field of Alzheimer’s and Parkinsonism research by about a decade. The scale of the fraud was simply that massive, because there was just such a wide web of assumptions in later papers through citations and “taking the next step” that were built upon that falsified research. 18,000 papers citing at least 132 of his doctored papers over a period of over two decades is a towering amount of science that is now shown to have a very weak foundation. There are likely many more faked papers, but the sleuths investigating Eliezer Masliah stopped looking at 132 papers as they’d assembled more evidence than they’d ever need to state their case. This means that almost everything derived from this man’s research has a heavy shadow of doubt cast upon it.

Akumako: “And that’s another reason the medical industrial complex can go fuck itself! Fuckwits keep lying about shit for fame, dochy, and pussy!”

Correct. But! This means that any hope of medical advancements saving Cap are to be thrown out the door, through the window, and down the stairs. This is bad for them in general, but the part that really stings is that Cap probably wouldn’t have had issues if they hadn’t done two, in retrospect, incredibly dumb things. Took the offer presented when they were 24 and denied doctors the permission to publish about their unique case. …And if they were not manipulated by a cabal of groomers and rapists into starting DIY HRT, only to fuck themself up so badly they could not get off HRT.

Now, if this whole fraud thing were the only thing about this update… this would still make for one of the worst weeks in Cap’s life. (Or at least the top ten twenty thirty.) But then the American southeast and Appalachia were devastated by hurricane Helene. It’s a tragedy, shows just how terrible America is at responding to weather, and how poorly equipped many of its subsidiary governments are at responding to disaster. Homes are gone, hundreds are dead, thousands are injured, and entire towns will be abandoned and left to decay, as there is no money in the affected communities. 

This affected Cap’s home city of Atlanta with floods… but then they had a chemical plant disaster that filled the air with dense chlorine gas! Which has the risk of will give thousands of people permanent respiratory damage as the air is cancer!

Cap has asthma, putting them at greater risk of all this crap. They have two baby kittens, who are at risk of getting lung damage because they are teensy adorable critters. It’s a disaster… but the government doesn’t want to evacuate, so they have been underplaying this absolute disaster. 

Cap’s life is a fucking mess that it should be made into a 250,000 word autobiography. Except no publisher would believe it for a golddarn minute, because it is so absurd that it reads like the machinations of an absolute hack. …Like me! (No, I cannot write a biography for a person, I barely managed to write one for a character and that was only like 20k words.)

In light of all this, I think it is safe to say that there is an absolute zero chance that re:Dreamer will even see one (major) route getting complete before Cap dies. And while the big beats are all covered by the outlines, this still stings. re:Dreamer being incomplete doesn’t prevent it from being a deeply special, unique, and meticulously crafted game that is well worth playing. However, I really wish Cap would focus on writing the damn script and working on it while they still have functional use of their hands. 

re:Dreamer is a work of literature before all other disciplines and only Cap can write the script. Someone else can manage the art, the CGs, animations, the meticulous edits, and the music… was going to need to be replaced anyway. No. Cap is such a unique and complex person that I do not want someone else to continue this story. Because they would do it wrong.

Akumako: “Too bad they can’t write it out like that, because of C.H.E.A.T.S.”

…C.H.E.A.T.S. was a bad idea. I try to play it coyly in my reviews, but I think C.H.E.A.T.S. are the biggest waste of time and energy present in all of re:Dreamer. It makes the writing process far slower (it simply has to), and the code for it looks disgusting. Variables are good. But this is hard coding the dialogue to respond to hundreds of possible variable combinations. It makes entering the dialogue a bitch, editing a bitch, and trying to get the full experience is a bitch.

Akumako: “…Do you think Cap’s going to read this?”

Fo’ defos.

Akumako: “Do you think they’ll be pissed that you published this without clearing it with them?”

…Probably.

Akumako: “Do you think they’ll change their approach to the game?”

I don’t think their brain has rotted enough to think they should listen to me of all people.

Akumako: “Self-depreciation isn’t a good look for ya, love.”

When I was a kid, I thought I was a broken piece of shit and would never amount to anything and kill myself by the time I turned 13. When you’ve got a backstory like that, you’re sorta stuck with a self-deprecation part. I just learned to live with it.

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Natalie is Anti Hardware Innovation
(On The Wrong Side of History Yet Again…)

Oh bother, I knew this would turn into a topic after I saw the topic for this week’s episode of Stephanie Sterling’s The Jimquisition. With said topic being hardware innovations and how they think Steph thinks they are a good thing, far more exciting than games boasting better technical performance of specifications. I won’t recount every point, as this is not really a direct response, but this episode set me off in a bad direction. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love Steph! I’ve been following their work for the majority of my 29 years, and that’s not gonna change anytime soon. I generally agree with them 90+% of the time, and they have done much to shape my opinions and values on… many things over the years. If I had to make a list of people in games discourse/media/culture I respect the most, they’d be number two. You can probably guess who number one is.

Moving into the topic at hand, innovation in gaming is a concept that I have more… fraught relationship with. On one hand, I truly believe that games can and should be anything. The conventions of genre are great starting points, but there is a truly infinite number of things one can do in the realm of video games. Innovation through game design is how games get better, more interesting, and more sophisticated. Its how genres are born, and how people are kept invested in the medium. I might not personally enjoy these innovations, but I love to see them.

However, I am also very much not a fan of console innovation or hardware innovation. To the point where I believe that it represents a preservation and accessibility barrier that could destroy decades of the medium’s history if repeated en masse. This is not really a new take of mine— I actually did a Ramble about this five years ago— and while I don’t remember what I said back then, my opinions are probably the same. While I have a lot of love for certain games that used the unique dual-screen display of the Nintendo DS and 3DS, and love me some Wii games, they are hard to go back to. Not because of their game design or graphics. But because of their controls and displays.

DS and 3DS games were designed for two screens arranged in a particular way, and that makes them far harder to replicate. One can arrange the DS screens in various ways on a single display, including giving each screen its own window. They can have two screens and arrange them to resemble the DS if they have the right equipment. They can get a niche handheld designed primarily for these games. Or they can stick with original hardware that will, inevitably, stop working as the decades compound.

There is no single best solution for playing these games, as the DS and 3DS used their screens in so many different ways. Some just used on screen for HUD info, some switched gameplay between both, some were basically designed around a single vertical display, others were played with the system on its side. Meaning that every attempt to play these games will feel a bit hacky. With tall stacked screens, wide vertical displays, or one big window and one tiny one. 

For some games, this works. Most RPGs fare fine, as do standard 2D action games that primarily use one screen. But touch-screen-driven titles like Kirby: Mass Attack (2011) are unplayable with a controller and feel weird with a mouse. And games like The World Ends With You (2007)…work if you set the partners on auto-play, but just get the Switch version. (It’s the better version with better visuals, controls, music, progression systems, and gameplay. People generally disagree, but they’re wrong and probably played the Switch version with garbage motion controls..)

Meanwhile,  Wii games… were often built around the Wii Remote, and playing them with something else requires compromises. For as much as I love Super Mario Galaxy (2007), the game frequently makes use of the cursor or tilting features of the WiiMore, and there was an elegant simplicity to just waving something around to grab star bits. Doing that with a right stick though? It works, but it does not feel right. Even for games that are mostly played with standard button inputs, like Super Paper Mario (2007) or Metroid: Other M (2010), players had to point at the screen to use certain features and progress in the game. It requires work to get these games working with a more standard input device, and even when it works, it will always feel like a compromise. 

Also, I am not even mentioning the Kinect and PlayStation Move, which have this problem, but even worse. It’s at the point where I forget these games exist. That’s how hard to play and irrelevant they are.

So many games of this era will always have this legacy, and I just wish they didn’t. I would much rather they be standard controller-based and single-screen experiences. Like the countless games that came before it and came after it. Yes, you can cling to the old hardware and just play that. But that represents an accessibility issue, as retro gaming has gotten way more expensive after the pandemic, and most people do not give a shit about old tech. Because the tech industry has told them to keep moving forward, to keep chasing the new.

Hardware-based innovations in gaming only have lasting value if it becomes the standard. Otherwise, it becomes a historical bane that only goes to hurt games in the long-term. As such, I am against hardware innovations that affect how games are played and believe that the ways that one should interact with a game have reached their final form. Touch screen phones and tablets. Keyboard and mouse. Twin stick controllers with four face buttons, four shoulder buttons, four menu buttons, and four directional buttons. …And motion-based VR headsets that will remain in their little niche that likely will never become mainstream. Because it is too much work.

Does this prevent what can be done with gaming? Yes, yes it does. But I value consistency, accessibility, preservation, and playability above innovation. Yes, it makes it more boring, it makes it more samey, and prevents certain experiences from being made. However, why make an experience that can only be experienced under specific conditions, when you can make one that can be carried forward and re-experienced by generations of people?

Some say that the most valuable part of a piece of art is when the largest influx of people experience it, when it is in its prime. But I view art as something that can, and should, last forever. That has not always been the case, but now… we have the technology.

…Also, at some point, this was going to be a response to my my Astro Bot bit from last week, but it got away from me. However, I had a revelation about why I personally dislike the rumble feature in games, so I’m going to insert it here:

I think I figured out why I don’t like rumble. It is the game telling me what to feel, thrusting sensory impulses onto me, and making me internalize them, even if I do not want to. I do not like it when I am not in control of my sense of touch. When others are touching me without consent, when I am forced to touch something I don’t want to, and when I am not allowed to touch things. I am always fiddling with something, holding it, or keeping my hands busy. Holding bags, holding my purse, or on my wooden desk with its familiar grooves, or just resting my hands on something. As a kid I put a high value in having a toy at arm’s length when in my room, because only when it was near, and I could touch it, I felt like things were right. …And now at least part of my  continued sanity is dependent on a chewed up stylus I received for pre-ordering Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. If I lost this thing, it would ruin my week. 

…Or in other words, my sense of touch is just kinda messed up. 

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RIP RyujiNX
(Nintendo Shuts Down Ryujinx, the Other Switch Emulator)

Back in February 2024, Nintendo sued the popular Switch emulator Yuzu, and the documentation they filed, while hyperbolic in some sense, had some damning evidence. The developers of Yuzu surrendered before discovery could begin, which killed off the Yuzu project and also the 3DS emulator Citra. Some attempts have been made to revive these emulators, such as with the coyly named Suyu, but Nintendo has maintained their aggressive anti-emulation stance and even shut down Pokémon ROM hacking community Relic Castle about two weeks later.

Actions like this make sense, as Nintendo’s most valuable assets are their IP and they must protect it if they want to make convincing arguments in the event of any disputes. They have chosen the path of aggression, because Nintendo without its IP is only worth a fraction as much. However, they have been emboldened by the success of the Switch, the casting (metalwork definition) of a new generation of Nintendo fans, and their burgeoning multimedia ventures. This more outgoing behavior has left me paranoid about the future of gaming, preservation, and the ability for people to take control away from corporations. …And this past week, things got worse.

Ryujinx was the last remaining noteworthy Switch emulator following the fall of Yuzu, and it was one that avoided the same obvious misstep of incriminating Discord messages and paying for early access. They had a Patreon, but it was effectively a tip jar and it is far harder to go after someone just for having a tip jar. From what I can gather, they have been keeping their heads down for the past six months, not making any fuss, but Nintendo’s lawyers have access to the same tools anyone else does. They found Ryujinx and, through unspecified means, shut it down. 

The story provided by a member of the development team is that Nintendo’s lawyers contacted the owners of the project, gdkchan, and they reached an agreement to shut down this project. To cease working on it, remove all assets, shut down the website, delist the GitHub, lock off the Discord, the works. The details of this agreement are not public. It could have been some compensation package, threats to sue the developer and destroy their life, actual physical abuse and coercion (but probably not), anything really.

I’m sure that some people will attempt to build upon this foundation, but Ryujinx as a project is over. There is no longer any widespread development going on for Switch emulation. If you look around, you can find the latest version of Ryujinx, but Switch emulation is likely going to be in this stagnant state for the next few years.

Some people have asked why now, but I think it stems from three basic reasons. 

Nintendo’s next system (Switch 2) is likely going to be announced within the month of October and they want to clear the air of emulation in order to convince more people to buy their new hardware.

The Switch 2 is likely going to be iterative and feature technology that experienced emulator developers will be able to crack. If Nintendo had not intervened, the Ryujinx and Yuzu teams likely would have moved on to working on a Switch 2 emulator shortly after the system’s release. They would have used their existing knowledge and technology to launch a Switch 2 emulator in record time. (Not counting the GBA, where emulators dropped months before the system even launched.) This would be bad prospects for the Switch 2, and Nintendo wants to prevent this scenario by disbanding the teams and instilling the fear of God into them.

Nintendo will likely feature some form of upscaling technology for the Switch 2, enhancing the resolution and frame rate of select Switch 1 games. If this rumored feature is true, then a major selling point for Switch 2 would be how it plays games you already own with better visuals and performance. However, this selling point would not be as strong if, from day one, people could achieve superior results via emulation of Switch 1 games. (Which they can do, as these emulators run some games very well.)

I understand why Nintendo is doing what they are doing. Because this is how they choose to operate under copyright and IP law and believe this approach is necessary considering the gob smacking value of their IP. They are willing to look the other way in many instances, but crack the whip when certain things get too big.

…But fuck ’em. Fuck the system. And fuck the self-appointed moderates who spout shit like ‘this is what you get for emulating current gen games.’ This isn’t a win for anybody but Nintendo the corporate entity and their shareholders. Certainly not for gaming or game-likers.

Now is the point where I could get into a tirade about the value of emulation but… no. This event has finally brought me to the point where I am openly pro-piracy. No exceptions, no criteria. I do believe in supporting the games industry monetarily— and I personally do with great regularity. I’ve spent $786.86 on games so far this year, $496.81 in 2023, $868.54 in 2022, and $711.94 in 2021. (Not counting games I bought for friends.) But I also believe that corporations should never have the sole control of their intellectual property and the means of distribution. 

I do not care what the law says on that matter. Conceptually, laws should exist to protect people, and in many instances, laws do. However, in the modern climate, that is not often the case. Due to the capital of corporations, wealth of the wealthy, and the fact that most congresspeople are aspiring executives, laws are largely written for the benefit of corporations and the wealthy. Not for individual common folks, and most certainly not for the arts. The law can also easily be abused and used by people who desire to only bring harm to others, and that should be evident by anyone who has looked at the SCOTUS over the past few years. 

Piracy is the existence of an option to get around corporations, to deny them full control of industries and artforms. Without piracy, the preservation of countless works would be impossible. Without piracy, corporations would have far more control and less reason to access their vaults of properties. And piracy is not theft, because pirates do not steal digital files. They make unauthorized copies. Does this violate the copyright? Yes. But why should someone care about a 40 billion-dollar corporation’s copyright? Sure, like their products, want them to stick around, and ‘support’ them if you like. But know that they only see you as an object that gives them money, a fickle animal to cater to.

I don’t have a good way to end this segment, as this is just a shitty situation, perpetuated by systems, and I view every party in here as a mere actor, doing what the system tells them to do. However, this is yet another warning that Nintendo is going on the offensive, and the time of relative peace that emulation enjoyed may be coming to an end.

As such, I can only recommend what I am doing. Invest in storage and back up loads of games that are not currently available to purchase, and even games that are. Because as the internet shifts and becomes more restricted, as rights holders search for greater ways to ‘civilize’ this vast land of freedom, things will be lost. I look at things like the legal hurdles faced by the Internet Archive and ROM site shutdowns, at that Video Game History Foundation report from last year, and see a dark future. Sure, personal backups and archives do not mean much, but Nintendo does not care about people hoarding games on a NAS. They do care about sites like Vimm’s Lair though, and will demand they remove games, if not shut them down entirely.

So… download shit, torrent it, spread it, and make sure you update emulators regularly and keep backups for your own benefit. 

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Palworld Mobile Announced!
(That’s All!)

To follow up that corporate Nintendo W, we have another story in the growing Palworld (2024) saga! After becoming a hit game and opening up a production company in collaboration with Sony Music and Aniplex, Nintendo launched a patent infringement lawsuit against Palworld developers Pocket Pair. This has staggered the launch of the game’s PS5 version in Japan (which actually came out this week), but has seemingly not affected the game’s development anymore than any other legal snafus would. I was a bit worried that this would negatively affect the game’s momentum, but production on the Palworld Entertainment ventures is still going ahead. Or at least it is publicly. 

This past week, Krafton announced they secured the rights to a Palworld mobile game and that the title is in development at PUBG Studios. It is not clear if this will be a mobile version, which could work. I mean, kids are playing things like Fortnite (2017) and Minecraft (2011) on mobile just fine. Well, depending on your definition of fine. 

I don’t really mind Krafton as a publisher. They seem to have the rare type of CEO who understands the value of making games that connect with players on a deeper level, rather than trying to suck funds out of them. And I’m sure this game would do great on the mobile market if it’s put in front of enough children. The only reason I’m bringing this up is to note that despite the litigation, all systems are seemingly going with the Palworld expansion project. Which is good, as I like Palworld. It gave me many things a Pokémon game couldn’t. Like a slave camp, castles, and fun times with Cassie.

Hiiiii Cassie~!

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Epic Royalty Discount!
(Release Games on Epic Games Store, Save 30% on Unreal Fees!)

Epic-Tencent has been having… issues with their Epic Games Store. They launched the store back in 2018, poured billions into it, but the store is still vitally lacking in many key features of Steam. It just offers a far worse experience, and despite having accumulated hundreds of games from the weekly freebies, I still haven’t installed the launcher since I played Journey (2012) 5 years ago. Because I don’t trust them to honor my purchases. Steam though? They’ve been around for 20 years and are still strongly pro-customer. I mean, Valve has problems, but I’m trying to stay on topic here.

EGS is not doing too well, but Epic-Tencent’s biggest pillar, after Fortnite, is Unreal Engine. Which they monetize to game developers by charging a 5% licensing fee on games that make over $1,000,000. This is pretty cheap, keeps software costs low during development, and gives developers of all sizes access to a robust and feature-rich engine. Not always ideal, but good for indie games and AAA alike, and kind of the go-to option after Unity’s great BETRAYAL.

Unreal is doing well, EGS is not, and in order to encourage more developers to release games on EGS, Epic is launching a new program, “Launch Everywhere with Epic.” In short, if developers using Unreal simultaneously release their games on Epic Games Store and other platforms, they will decrease the licensing fee to 3.5%. That’s a 30% savings in terms of fees, and while it is not a ton, it definitely adds up. A game that makes $10 million in revenue would save $135,000 while one bringing in $50 million would save $735,000. 

It’s not a groundbreaking amount of money… but it’s something, and for relatively little cost. Maintaining and updating a store page on EGS is indeed work. You need to add the logo to trailers, mention it in press releases, reference it on social media, make sure it works properly through the launcher, and so forth. But I think it’s a nice benefit to developers and far better than what Epic could have done. They could have updated the terms and demanded that every Unreal Engine game releasing on Windows would need to be released for EGS, or impose a higher fee on games that don’t launch on EGS.

So… thanks for not being a jerk and giving developers a carrot instead of a stick.

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Keep It Peashy, Nippon!
(Japan’s PC Game Market Grew 260% In 4 Years!)

I was a huge PC port beggar back in the mid 2010s, and it makes sense why I was. I went from being a big old Japanese game-liker to a PC game-liker, and I was more than a trifle bit chuffed when big and small Japanese titles skipped out on PC. But, throughout the years, that started to change. I remember the surprise success the Neptunia games had on PC, and made the series more than just some random Vita weeb thang. How countless random Japanese companies agreed to try bringing games to PC via Steam. How publishers like NIS America fumbled through experiments like Disgaea PC (2016) before adopting PC as a core pillar. How Spike Chunsoft got into western publishing by bringing over the Danganronpa games via… sufficient ports that were basically emulated and used WAD files. 

Companies like Atlus dragged their ass until the year 2020 to actually support the platform. No, Catherine Classic does not count. The entire Catherine experiment was a mistake. Sega went in hard with the Like a Dragon series and released a flurry of ports. Square Enix screwed around for too long before actually taking the platform seriously and taking time to optimize their ports for the platform, before eventually making it a key pillar. They still suck at discounts though. 

Koei Tecmo routinely tried to bring its games to PC, but it was always a crapshoot of quality and there is a reason why titles like… Toukiden: Kiwami (2014) are sitting with middling scores. Because the ports are bad. And while publishers like XSEED were yanking Falcom titles to PC where they made loads of money, Falcom kept dragging their ass on English language ports. Oh, they let Chinese ports release on the Chinese version of Steam, but not on the western edge of the platform.

…If you dig through the Rundowns archives enough, you will find dozens of instances of me talking about how Japanese publishers should value the platform. All while going back to how ‘PC gaming is very uncommon in Japan.’ Which was true during the mid-2010s, but as Japanese games started coming out on PC, the darndest thing happened. The Japanese game market grew exponentially. 

Per CESA and as reported by Kantan Games, who I previously cited when discussing the financials for The Pokémon Company International, the Japanese PC market has grown by 260% in 4 years. Which is just crazy! The kind of growth that would make a capitalist all wet and creamy. The PC market went from representing 82.2 billion yen, about 5% of the totalJapanese games market, to 236.4 billion yen, about 13%. That’s kind of incredible to me, though the most incredible thing is that this did not represent a shift from console to PC. At least, not really. The console market went from 18% to 21% of the market at the same time, so the difference came from the mobile market, going from 76% to 66%. 

This is actually really sobering news, as it indicates that the PC market can succeed if more games come to it and there are fewer exclusives. Shocking, I know. …Or at least that’s how I want to read it. I keep going back to that statistic from an analyst hired by IGN for the Concord (2024) fiasco, saying that over 80% of all gaming revenue comes from live services. And the thing about PC gaming is that a lot of revenue generated on it comes from live services. Free-to-play shooters, the burgeoning wave of gacha games launching on PC, and garbage like League of Leggings (2009). It’s not all from people buying AAA prestige titles, weeb RPGs, or creative indie games on Steam.

Also, the pandemic and rise of VTubers definitely had something to do with this. A lot of people were on lockdown and forced to work from home, so they bought good PCs or built them as best they could with crazy prices. And a lot of VTubers typically play games on PC, meaning a lot of their audience would want to get into PC gaming too. 

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Progress Report 2024-10-06

Oh shit… When did this happen? Apparently, in October 2023, the largest language of Steam users switched from English to Simplified Chinese, going from 32.22% to 36.57%. Damn. This is probably old news, but it really speaks to the size and influence of the Chinese gaming audience. And, well, it makes sense that there are so many. Europe, Canada, and the United States cumulatively have fewer people than China. 

I find this surprising, when I really shouldn’t. While the Chinese games industry was, to me, underdeveloped a decade ago, the country has been rapidly growing into a global tech superpower and has been pursuing more and more cutting-edge games. As such, that’s going to bring a lot of people into gaming. I guess part of me still thinks of the Chinese games industry through games like Alice: Madness Returns (2011), bad MMOs, and Icey (2016). But that is a deeply wrong perspective that ignores the rampant innovation and scale of this country.

It all makes me feel that I am missing out on Chinese gaming culture, as the language barrier simply prevents that type of discourse. Which sucks, as China had a considerably different gaming history than America or Japan due to restrictions on imports, cultural standards, and all that guff. It is one thing to see numbers, but I want to DL on what games teens are into across the world, what they’ve vibing with and what they desire. Because teens are the future and will forever shape it. And if they have terrible values, I want to know ahead of time.

…It’s weird how I went from being a very insular person when I was a teen to now caring more about the world around me. Is that because of age, seeing more news, the turbulent times we are all living in, or HRT? Ask a Magic 8 Ball for the answer!

2024-09-29: Distracted morning, had movie time with friends, watching Alien (1979). The pacing was not quite what I remembered it to be, but still a great movie. Got distracted and a bit unmotivated during the afternoon, did some work that came in and spent quality time with my mother. Wrote 4,000 words for PS 1988 Ch 13, almost getting to the end, before realizing that I had 1,000 more words to go and it was 1:00 in da morning.

2024-09-30: Oops! It turns out I needed 1,988 (lol) words to finish Ch 13 of PS 1988. Wrote 870 words for Ch 14, the penultimate chapter, and wrote 1,000 words for this Rundown. Technically, I wrote more than that, but I had to scrap a couple hundred words and scrapped words ain’t shit but horses ‘n’ grits. …I could go for some grits. Throw in some seasoning— but no salt or butter— and you’re gonna have a good time. Unfortunately, oats are healthier than corn, so we only have oatmeal in the house. And oatmeal always tastes too thick and viscous, even when watery. …But oatmeal is good when cooked into a quick bread with some fruit. …Nope, still wanna mess around and see if you can mix grits and eggs together. You never hear about people boiling egg goo with something in a pot, but that seems like a fun disaster to try when my mother goes on vacation.

2024-10-01: Added 2,800 words to the Rundown during work while my boss was on the phone and not telling me what he wants me to do. Then stayed up until like 2 AM working on PS 1988 and the penultimate chapter. Got 2,200 words in. So today was a good day. Also, this was easily the worst part of the entire story, so I chose to keep the details light. I’ll glorify and provide a nearly fetishistic amount of detail to a White person dying. But that shit’s just wrong when it’s a bunch of Black kids, even if they are mentally a bunch of White politicians and dudes with a 100m+ net worth circa 1988.

2024-10-02: Uh… how the hell did I only do 1,500 words when wrapping up this Rundown? Felt bad about that, so I edited what I could a day early. 

2024-10-03: Oh grief. This is the final real chapter of PS 1988 and I ran into an issue with explaining how some characters know things while others don’t, so I had to add in an un-outlined 1,400 word introduction section, which took me a while to figure out how to structure, so lots of words were thrown out. Except deleted words DON’T COUNT! I wanted to wrap up the chapter after that, but only got an extra 2,300 words in. I still need to write the presidential speech and the post TF reaction. …I said this was not a TSF, but I cannot help myself from throwing in a TF near the end. Also, got distracted by that new Pokémon TCG Pocket game that I foolishly decided to check out.

2024-10-04: Finished PS 1988 Ch 13 with another 1,900 words. To be fully honest, I did consult ChatGPT to determine some of the tone and talking points for a presidential speech because… I have legit never listened to one before. Also skimmed through some actual presidential speeches for reference. I tried checking this text via three AI text detection tools, and while one returned 30%, it strangely marked the parts that were all my own words as being AI generated, rather than parts that paraphrased similar ideas. Meanwhile, the same generator said that 77% of 100% original text straight from my brain was AI generated. Weird.

Also got about 700 words into the epilogue chapter before deciding that I was tired enough to stop. Kinda bad results, but my work schedule as sloppy, and I work best when I can focus on writing for several hours. Well, I guess I also did do some song research into funk and R&B music from the era for the ending song, and I think I found one that fits. …Actually, I stayed up until 2 AM drafting fake lyrics for a parody or spoof or whatever of Take It To The Top by Kool and the Gang. Probably not the best song choice, but after bopping through like 20 semi-random options of 80s R&B, I realized I was actually looking for 80s funk, Kool came up pretty fast, and this was on the first album I listened to. #FuckItItWorks

2024-10-05: Final 2,300 words of the draft of PS 1988. At 115,048 words, which is over 27,000 more than I originally estimated, and after 80 days since the writing process began, PS 1988 has reached its first big milestone, with only a month left to go before its due date. I knew I could do this, but I am still flushed with relief and joy that I could get it done despite the constant delays and a vacation that ate up nearly two weeks of my life. I just hope it comes together properly in the edit, because despite sticking to a basic structure… this story is really weird, and more than a bit confused.

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

Current Word Count: 115,048

Estimated Word Count: 115,000

Words Edited: 0

Total Chapters: 16

Chapters Outlined: 16

Chapters Drafted: 16

Chapters Edited: 0

Header Images Made: 0

Days Until Deadline: 31

I have a month to go… but the story is drafted at this point and just needs TLC and art assets. That is GOOD!

Also… I think I need to break the story up into more than 16 chapters. Which is fine. I already screwed up the original 14 chapter goal for the story to end on my 30th birthday. Now… I flop!