This Week’s Topics:
- Rundown Preamble Ramble: Natalie is Depressed!
- The Sonic Unleashed Effect (Natalie Muses About… More Gaming Ephemera)
- United Videogame Workers Union is Open For Membership! (ALL AMERICAN GAME DEVS! UNIONIZE! NOW!!!)
- Assassin’s Creed Shadows… is Doing Pretty Well? (Natalie Just Wanted To Ramble Bout AssCreed)
Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Natalie is Depressed!
Akumako: “Okay Natalie, what’s the topic this week?”
More complaining about my job and complete lack of work-life balance…
Akumako: “Seriously?”
Look, if I am working all day, I am not able to do the things I enjoy. If I am working 14 hours days, then I cannot do anything else. No time to write anything, read a comic, or play a video game. No time to do anything more than horde images. Doomscroll through my RSS feeds as the narrative of America’s demise plays out in real time. Or parse through a randomized assortment of videos I can watch to give me some spark of entertainment as I bounce between a dozen different clients.
When I do have the opportunity to do something, I don’t have enough time to commit to something, or I am left worrying if something comes in to draw me back to the mines. One email can give me an hour of work, the client portal is being populated during all hours of the day, and when there’s a lull in things coming in, I get worried about whether I missed something. And sweet bunnies is it easy to miss things when jumping between a dozen different crypto clients, waiting for them to get back to me regarding what the fuck they were doing, needing to give all of them the same bloody speech about how crypto taxes work. You need to upload EVERY wallet into your reporting platform of choice. ALL deposits and ALL withdrawals need to be categorized or matched. And ONLY when that is done to all MATERIAL transactions can I generate the report, identify any sus shit, and move on.
All of this would be bearable if I felt I had someone to truly split the workload with, or I had executive level control of things, but my boss controls that end of things. …And my boss is also NO FUCKING HELP when it comes to these things. He is inclined to just lay back, take phone calls, and goof off. I don’t know WHAT he does when not working directly with me, because he does not bill it, yet I figure that he’s just playing chess and reading his business articles rather than doing work.
Oh, sure, he has tried to review things on his own, rather than making it a team effort, but it takes him FOREVER to review anything without me. Meaning I need to do more work, but I cannot get paid for it. Because we have a salary agreement, and he treats this fucking company like his own bank account, takes out massive loans, and then tries to slap me with his debt by making me an owner. When I do not want to be an owner. Not of this company because, as a company, it’s a lopsided sack of poo.
And because the company is so fucked up financially, I have elected to not take any payroll for last month, and won’t be getting paid next month. Because unlike my boss, I understand that YOU SHOULD NOT PAY YOURSELF A BONUS UNTIL YOU PAY YOUR DEBTS WITH OVER 10% INTEREST! What kind of dumbass takes out a $50,000 line of credit to pay bonuses? Except he is not going to pay down the principal on his debt, as he thinks it is a ‘cost of doing business.’ Yeah, and I’m sure that taking out an $75,000 shareholder loan to yourself is also a ‘cost of doing business.’
Akumako: “You make him sound like a monster.”
No, he is not malicious. He just has Rapid Onset Senior Syndrome. He is growing less active, less engaged, and less capable of doing things as his office gets messier, belly gets fatter, mind grows more senile, and he drops the balls I throw at him. I normally like to avoid direct contact with most clients, but he has forced my hand, as he just was not sending out emails or making phone calls.
I have seriously reconsidered his plan of selling the practice, because I refuse to work for another man like him. However, I need someone to check my work, fill in my gaps of knowledge, and keep me honest. I need to work with someone, but I would NOT trust someone who’s over 50 at this point, as they’d be five years from showing their first signs of ROSS, and I need some stability in my life. I just want to do my fucking accounting work, at a firm, for like thirty years. Then I would retire, and spend the rest of my life doing what I can to better the world by any means necessary.
So I guess what I’m saying is that… I really need to find someone who I can partner with. …Except I have no exposure to the outside field of accounting. I do not know people, I made zero connections when I was in university, and I am so eccentric that I would need to find someone whose personality meshes with me and skill set is more on the big picture extrovert end of things. And I feel that I cannot trust a corporation to take care of me at this point.
Because over 70% of all American businesses are run like shit, and I’d rather just roll with a simple 50/50 partnership. One with no office and as lean operations as possible. Because if we have a good client list of like 150-200 people, a website, and list ourselves as a Chicago-based CPA firm that specializes in the niche of crypto taxation, then we would be able to sustain ourselves for years, each making $100,000. Word of mouth matters a lot, and if you deliver quality work products for a reasonable price, then clients will recommend you to their friends.
Akumako: “Didn’t you say you never wanted to start your own business, as you lack the mindset of a business-owner?”
Yes, but would I rather be my own boss or have a boss who does not even tell me how long the work day is going to be, or when we will start working, until the morning of?
Akumako: “…You sure this guy is not an exception?”
He’s a fuck-up, but there are a lot of Boomers and X-oomers who are the same genre of person. …And they won’t retire for a good decade at this rate.
Akumako: “And wouldn’t this hypothetical partner also want to make more money or expand the business over time? That’s how most businesses work, right?”
For centuries, a business was just a single store. You don’t need to grow it perpetually just because that’s what The Capitalist Bible says. I am also someone who values time far more than money. Because my goal in life is to create things, and I cannot create things with money. All I could do is commission stuff, but… I’d rather just create whatever I can.
Akumako: “Uh-huh. Good luck finding somebody like that. …So, what’s the plan for the rest of the next month?”
Be depressed! Because work sucks, I am tired, and my spirit is slowly decaying as I am denied the ability to create things or do the things I love. Also, my country is falling apart, and nobody is there to stop it. I could try, but that would make everything worse. If there’s a monster destroying your village, the worst thing you could do it rush at it with a stick. Because you will die. But at least you will die knowing that you tried!
Akumako: “…Fuck’s sake Natalie, you stupid little fuck, I know that you have been flirting with suicidal ideas since you were fucking eight, but maybe don’t temper the beast.”
That’s your takeaway from what I just said? Just keep my mouth shut and repress it? Well, fuck you, my un-imaginary friend!
Akumako: “…Okay, that meets the 1,000 word soft quota. Now talk about your video game dog and pony bullshit some more.”
The Sonic Unleashed Effect
(Natalie Muses About… More Gaming Ephemera)
The main levels are pretty good, but the others are just ASS. I tried the first DLC stage, and it was as if it was designed to show the problems with this gameplay system.
Two weeks back, I talked about how the Sonic Unleashed recompilation was both a technical marvel and an opportunity for people to re-experience a game that has been stranded on Xboxes for a decade. And now that I have had some time to ruminate on the subject, I realized that I was noticing two phenomena in place here.
The first is what I dub the ‘the pure past’ effect that is common to see in retrospective works and reassessments of older works. Whenever a game turns a decade or two old, there opens up a cottage industry for people to talk about it, what it represented, the neat ephemera it boasted, and many of its faults become endearing quirks. It’s not that people become less critical of a work, but because it no longer has the pressure of being something new, something modern, that makes it easier to appreciate. What was once a trend-chasing idea becomes a trait of a bygone era in the medium. What were once major issues become easier to accept and view from another perspective. And what was once given weight as the brand new latest entry in a series or lineage becomes a part of its past and history.
I see this a lot with how people pushing 50 talk about the SNES. The way guys in their 40s talk about the PS2. The way people a few years younger than me talk about the PS360 collective library. The way 30-year-old Nintendorks talk about the GameCube. And the way Pokédorks talk about the GBA and DS games, before Father Game Freak touched them ‘Us‘ in an unkind way by transing the dimensions. (I meant Father as in a holier than thou paternal figure who allows His children to drink from his Fountain, but I like the double meaning.)
Now, one might call this nostalgia, or perhaps anemoia, but I think it is something different. It is looking at the past, just broadly, in a more positive light, due to how it is easier to engage with. It is something fixed, prime for examination, and where all the facts are known. Which is far more… comfortable than the overly busy modern world of gaming. Where live services, updates, patches, DLC, and a deluge of content for engagement’s sake make it harder to engage with the present. Because there is so much noise, so many distractions. Hell, that’s probably part of the reason there is this supposed trend of youngsters gravitating toward older technology and media. Because they have seen the present and desire to go back to something where things were… not better, but there was less static. The world ran at a lower volume.
The second phenomena is what I call the unavailability bias. Nowadays, you can play pretty much any game you want on a reasonably powerful computer, dating back to decades. From Atari to Saturn to DirectXbox (2001) to Xbox 360, along with roughly every game released on Windows. However, the ability to play so many games at such high quality levels is a relatively new trend. Saturn and PS3 emulation five years ago was in a far rougher state than it is now. Wild ideas like decomps and recomps were a rarity. And emulation generally had more snags and errors than it does nowadays. Currently, things are far from perfect— thanks for that Nintendo, ya inverted soggy cow’s stomach. But despite game publishers doing a shitty job of preserving their games, you can play an impressively large percentage of all games released from the 1970s to the late 2000s on a computer.
However, that has not been the case for long, and various games were just trapped on their original hardware. Back in the 2000s, emulators were typically only for 2D games, and even then, things were shaky. When people tried to play N64 games, they were notably compromised, and PS1 games still had loads of problems. Combined with the fact that games were still primarily distributed via physical media, it made it far harder to access and play thousands of games. This allowed certain individuals, for various reasons, to spread acclaim toward these rarer and less available titles, treating them as hidden gems.
This happened to Sonic Unleashed (remember, the load bearing pillar for this segment). But it also happened to various other Sonic games. Back before the Christian Whitehead port of Sonic CD (1993) came out on consoles and PC, it was not uncommon to see it be claimed as ‘the best classic Sonic game.’ And since so few people owned a Mega Drive CD, they were unable to say that’s wrong. And while Sonic Gems Collection (2005) and the old PC ports were a thing… they were not the most widespread releases. This was back in the day when if a game had a small print run, it was doomed for obscurity. Then peopled played it and realized that, while Sonic CD has some good parts, it is also very hectic and confusing. …Which I say in the same breath and saying that Sonic CD s my favorite classic Sonic game. I know I’m wrong, but that won’t change my opinion.
However, as time goes on, I seriously think we will start seeing less and less of this unavailability bias. While the official channels of the games industry rot on the vine, the unofficial channels are still doing their best to make as many games available as possible. Which I think would make for a better medium. Film is richer when one can watch works spanning decades, and a world where games of all eras are available to anyone is a wonderful thing.
…Except for how this will almost certainly hurt the sales of new games. Why pay $70 for a game with a $30 season pass that launches in a broken state, when you can just grab a better game on sale for $5? Or play the first game in the series via an emulator with quality of life mods? But it strangely would not stop people from dunking their heads in live services. Because they already invested time into them, know they like them, and are likely involved with the community. So, how do you fix this problem? …You don’t. You just let it decay, and hopefully you won’t lose anything too important in the process.
United Videogame Workers Union is Open For Membership!
(ALL AMERICAN GAME DEVS! UNIONIZE! NOW!!!)
As somebody who has been working crazy crunch hours at my job, I can safely stand with game developers in solidarity and say that crunch is fucking bullshit! And while I have never been laid off, I would have absolutely zero idea what to do with my life if I just lost my current job. So, as a worker, I have nothing but sympathy for game developers. And as a game-liker, they are the ones who make video games happen. Not companies, not publishers, not brands, but people. I think that game developers need to rally together, stand up to publishers, and tell them no more. With workers rights on the chopping block across America, people need to organize and unionize however they can. Unions need to expand to be as large as possible and encompass thousands upon thousands of people.
Which is why I’m glad that at this year’s GDC introduced a new direct-join union that any developer across the United States and Canada can join. The United Videogame Workers dash Communication Works of America Local 9433. Or UVW-CWA Local 9433. Or United Videogame Workers, because the organizers wrongly think it’s videogame, when it is, objectively, video game.
Unions are power, a way to leverage rights of the workers, and to attack the destructive interests of capitalists who wish to do nothing, reap all the benefits, and leave behind nothing but broken people and a broken planet. People need unions now more than they have in decades, and if this union takes off— if every games worker in the US and Canada joins this organization— and they should— they could radically redefine the games industry in a matter of months.
However, this is still a work in progress, and just because everybody should rally behind a cause does not mean that they will. Just look at how Europeans have dropped the ball on the Stop Killing Games initiative. At this rate, they’re not even gonna get halfway to their goal! You could have saved gaming, but you didn’t! Thanks a lot European games media!
Now, I will always believe in the power of collective organizing— because it works— and game developers are far smarter than the average gamer, so I have higher hopes for this initiative. I mean, it is just a few hours of paperwork and you don’t need to look your boss in his soul-deprived eyes. So anybody affected by a layoff has no damn excuse to not join unless they suffer from CLBR (Conservative Libertarian Brain Rot). In which case… they need to fix their heart on their own.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows… is Doing Pretty Well?
(Natalie Just Wanted To Ramble Bout AssCreed)
So, Assassin’s Creed Shadows launched this past week, and while I have not looked into the game too much, I find the air around the game to be very, very strange. Back when Assassin’s Creed was this showpiece prolific series of the PS360— I hated that term, but now I love it— era, people wanted an Assassin’s Creed for every cool country. But the biggest suggestion appealed to garden variety ‘core’ gamers, the weebs, and the gramers (if you know, you know) alike. Japan! …Or China, because this was before China was seen as a ‘true economic threat’. However, there was a pushback from the developers at the time, who thought that Colonial America was a more interesting setting. When, based on how often people think about Assassin’s Creed III (2012)… it wasn’t!
This was the culture around the time of Assassin’s Creed 2009: Italy, which I mostly remember for how you fulfilled every Catholic’s dream of killing the pope. Assassin’s Creed 2010: Brotherhood, the Rome one. Assassin’s Creed 2011: Revelations, the dual protagonist one set in… Istanbul. But those were all pretty lateral location moves, all feeling kinda similar before things got shaken to the Caribbean with Assassin’s Creed 2013: Black Flag and Assassin’s Creed 2014: Rogue Flag. (This was before rogue meant roguelike.) Then Revolutionary France with Assassin’s Creed 2014: Unity— which is getting its own critical reassessment, rather than getting slapped with controversy for a buggy launch and a really bad interview. Dirtbag London with Assassin’s Creed 2015: Syndicate, the one with dual protagonist gangsters with grappling hooks, and also Karl Marx!
Side Bar: Assassin’s Creed: Unity had a multiplayer feature where players could assume versions of the protagonist in different robes. However, people thought these were different characters in preview events, and some asked why one could not play as a female character. Rather than say, they’re all the same dude, someone said girls were too hard to animate. At least per my recollection. I’m not researching the deets, because the deets don’t matter! The Frequency Vibrations matters! The sane folks said that this was a bad explanation, jumping off on a more progressive tangent about how more female leads would be appreciated. While others stewed in anger that such a question was being asked, and channeled their frustration into GamerGate. Which was the cultural impetus for everything bad happening in the US right now. Yes, I am blaming the rise in Fascism primarily on video game discourse. Tell me I’m wrong! (You can’t!)
This eventually led to the series getting a soft reboot with Assassin’s Creed 2017: Egyptian Origins, Assassin’s Creed 2018: Greek Odyssey, and Assassin’s Creed 2020: Nordics Valhalla. All of which explored interesting and previously suggested locales, but it was not until 2024 when they announced Assassin’s Creed 2025: Shadows Over Nippon. …Except they were delivering on an idea a bit too late. The Saga of Souls – Sekiro: Double Darkness Death (2019) and Sucker Punch’s The Ghost of Tsushima are among the most definitive modern samurai action games around, and people also got other open world samurai action games with the likes of Rise of the Ronin (2024). So there was not as much appetite for a by-the-books open world action game in Japan.
…But that’s not the reason why the game was mired in ‘controversy,’ it’s ‘cos they decided to make the protagonists a hot Japanese ninja lady… and a hot Black guy. Specifically the African samurai, Yasuke, who was a real man and absolutely a samurai. He’s even got anime and movies based on him and shit!
I thought this controversy was disgustingly and overtly racist, but I was also deeply tickled by how pathetic these people were that it inspired me to incorporate Yasuke as a character in my 2024 novel, Psycho Shatter 1988: Black Vice X Weiss Vice. Where he was an isekai’d samurai who was fucked to the future by the protagonist, married a transgender transracial woman named Tomoko Goto, and helped the Chunichi Dragons win the Japan Series. Because samurai were excellent at baseball!
Akumako: “Natalie also added him because she needed a Black man to help fight… the transracial transssexual god of White Supremacy by conceiving a child bereft of Caucasoidal sin. …Natalie, what the fuck are you— “
And that’s why you should read PS1988! …But only like three of you did!
Akumako: “GET BACK TO TALKING ABOUT ASSCREED!”
Righto! …So I think making Yasuke one of the main characters of a mainline Assassin’s Creed game was a dumb idea. Making a game about Yasuke going on adventures and fucking shit up? Dope! Having him be a historically relevant character in an Assassin’s Creed game? Also dope! Making a standalone expansion featuring him as a protagonist à la Assassin’s Creed 4: The Cry of Freedom (2013)? Cool like butter, bay-bee! But as the protagonist in the next major Assassin’s Creed game? Nah. He is just not what most people would want or expect from Assassin’s Creed Japan. They would want to play as a Japanese dude. I mean, they didn’t do this with the Egypt, Greek, or Nordic games. Which had Egyptian (Black), Greek, and Nordic protagonists. So why do it with Japan? I’m sure that some developer interview offered some explanation, but I feel that this was against the ethos of the series. …Admittedly, you could argue that the characters from Black Flag should have been non-White, like a lot of pirates of the era, including the crew the protagonist amasses. But when most westerners, i.e., White people, think of pirates, they think of sexy Caucasians.
Anyway, I bring this up because the game came out this past week— specifically on Thursday, as I guess games come out on Thursday now— and the reception has been… pretty good? It broke past 80 on Metacritic, which is about what one would expect for the series. It accumulated over a million players by day one. And with Monster Hunter 6: Wild World (2025) and Hazelight Projekt #4: A Split In Fiction both a few weeks away, it seems to have gotten time to breathe. All of which I ultimately think is good.
While I dislike Ubisoft, I do ultimately want this game to succeed, as it is the result of half a decade of hard work from skilled designers and artists, and the more money Ubisoft makes, the better chance they have of avoid the clutches of Tencent. While Ubisoft is a den of abusers, I… actually, no. I was going to make a jab at Tencent, but I’m rooting for the economic collapse of America at this point. I’d weirdly rather they be food for Tencent than Microsoft, who is strangely one of the less awful major American tech companies these days. Bah! Point is, I want Ubisoft to remain its own company, because it’s better than someone else getting all of their resources. So it is good that a, seemingly, good game is doing good.
…And I think that meets my quota. Good night, kids!
Progress Report 2025-03-23
And that should be enough for a Rundown. A bit light, but whatever. I am stupidly busy, so… Here’s a Comedy Button reference to you! The cover of Cool: How a Kid Should Live! Which is one of the most deceptive covers ever given to a published work. You thought this would be a cool bear book, but nope, it is some Christian propaganda that tries to teach children that no one is good, no one in the whole world is innocent! Also, a throwaway joke in that episode— it was an early one— was ‘Depression: How a Kid Should Live!’ So this damn, long-dead, bear is forever linked in my mind to depression.
…Look, about 10% of my sense of humor and my personality is just The Comedy Button, aight? Number one biggest influence! Right up there with Press-Switch! I wouldn’t still be writing novels today without that there Press-Switch!
2025-03-16: Finished up the image process for TSF Showcase 2025-03, meaning it is ret-2-go with a week to spare. Hell yeah! Then spent much of the evening doing research for local elections, so that I can basically vote three times, since my family will copy my ballot.
2025-03-17: Worked a 14 hour day, so I didn’t get to do shit. Well, I did vent and write about 600 words of the preamble during the call.
2025-03-18: I really do not like working with old clients and helping them with technical issues. After a certain point, the human brain becomes incapable of understanding time and needs to have everything explained to them thrice.
2025-03-19: Another 10:00 to 2:30 day, so I didn’t do anything.
2025-03-20: Today was a light work day, as I spent 2.5 hours going out to the dentist. Yes, really. It used to just take me a little over an hour, but since I live further away from my dentist, I need to take the bus and walk a full mile to get to the office. I might need to switch to a more local dentist or rearrange my schedule so my mother and I go in at the same time. Also, wrote 3,400 words today. Yay~!
2025-03-21: Worked from 10:00 to 22:00, basically. Then the work stopped coming in, so I edited the fundown!
2025-03-22: No work todaaaay! Except because I was so busy with work, I had nothing to really resume, so I decided that today would be a digital cleanup sort of day. Going through the manga pipeline, organizing my files, eliminating inefficiencies in my storage system, changing email stuff, and updating shit. Boring stuff, but necessary stuff for me to exist as a computer-er.
I would be willing to bet the massive availability of games from the past is the main driver behind companies trying to get every game they release nowadays loaded with always-online requirements and microtransactions and shit. Besides the ability to constantly force payments on unsuspecting players (because greed), it also allows them to force the games off the market once the developers are done with them, with very little chance of them ever coming back.
… Of course, that’s what Sony and Nintendo thought with the PS3 store and the Wiiware store, and most of that is easily available online if you know where to look, so…
I do not think that it works that way. Companies initially switched to always online models to combat used games and unauthorized distribution of games, forcing all players to establish an account or pay a fee to access a game. The ability to force games off the market has the added benefit. In the minds of publishers, older games stopped making money for them when they stopped being supported, and need to be re-released to make money again. I don’t think publishers actively want old game storefronts to close, but they already got pretty much all the money they were going to get off of these old games, so it’s not a big deal to them either and, as you said, it thins out the market.
Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft never really planned long-term when establishing the PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360 online services. They viewed them as a revenue center, they were, and they were only shut down when they became too much of a hassle to manage. Well, except for Sony. They are just barely letting the PS3 live on.