We recorded another episode of The MoeGamer Podcast this weekend, and all being well it should be with you all to enjoy tomorrow sometime, depending on how long it takes to render and upload!

I've been really enjoying doing this podcast. It reminds me of the "good old days" back before the Internet turned to complete garbage, when my friends and I from the "Squadron of Shame" would convene semi-regularly for our discussions of various topics and specific games.

For the uninitiated, the Squadron of Shame was essentially a "gaming book club" of sorts. It span off from a discussion on a 1up Yours podcast from 1up.com and eventually became its own, surprisingly popular thing. We started a podcast towards the end of 1up.com's "first phase" of life — before it became a hollow shell of what it used to be, rather than before it closed altogether — and it was a highlight of my online "social calendar".

Sadly, for various reasons, all the members of the Squad have drifted apart over the course of the last ten years or so — which kinda bums me out a bit, because what I do with MoeGamer is exactly the sort of thing most of the Squad would have been into — but I'm left with both some fond memories, and some skills and experience that I've been able to carry forward into the new podcast.

I'm particularly grateful to my podcasting partner in crime, Chris, who has been consistently enthusiastic and dedicated to the cause of the podcast ever since we thought we'd just "try it out" more than a year ago now. I think we've got a pretty neat show, and I hope you enjoy it too!

Think I forgot one of these yesterday, apologies. The reason is Final Fantasy XI. It is not an excuse, it is a simple explanation!

I'm glad I chose to delay my coverage of Final Fantasy XI until I'd made further progress through it, because I'm having an absolute blast working through the story and levelling content so far. From around level 30 or so, things really start to accelerate — you start gaining access to a variety of new areas and some of the expansion stories kick off, so there's a very strong feeling of the world really opening up and providing you the opportunity to go in lots of different directions.

It's addictive. But what I'm finding is not that it's addictive in the same sense as other MMOs, whose addictive nature is often at least partially tied to their social nature. No, in FFXI, because I'm soloing everything, the addictive quality is the same as that I get from… a regular old RPG. It's really quite wonderful.

People often claim FFXI is "outdated" in many ways, citing the fact that its original incarnation very much followed the Everquest mould as evidence that it is borderline obsolete at this point. But having now spent a good quantity of hours on it, I can emphatically disagree with that; Final Fantasy XI in 2019 is simply a great Final Fantasy game that can be enjoyed yourself. It just so happens that you have to play it online, and that there are other people around.

I'll talk more about this when we do the full Cover Game feature, but the fact that the game was specifically designed as a spiritual successor to the NES/Famicom-era Final Fantasy games — particularly III — becomes more and more evident as you progress. We have the relatively vague "figure out exactly what is expected of you" instructions and dialogue of those games. We have non-linear dungeons in which navigating your way through is as much a challenge as fighting off their fearsome denizens. And we have all manner of delightful and charming sidequests that can reward you with access to significant new game features, content and all manner of other goodies.

I've reached a significant moment in my own playthrough now: the city of Jeuno, which is the "neutral" city outside of the main "three nations" that provide the initial setup for the game. From here, the Chains of Promathia storyline kicks off, which is supposedly one of the best in the game, and we start getting more and more significant challenges for our missions. There's also a number of the advanced jobs that can be unlocked once you get to Jeuno, too; I currently have my eye on Dancer, but it seems that achieving that might involve an itsy-witsy bit of time travel. Because Final Fantasy.

Anyway, I'm still having a great time, and don't forget that as Patrons, you can exclusively enjoy my playthrough so far with this playlist:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqmqFDuRsOsfx1Hov1I6YS50_3WgFtLKQ — a reminder, please don't share this link with anyone!

I'll release this to the public "in context" as part of the Final Fantasy Marathon video playthrough project I'm intending to kick off after Atelier Rorona is done, but for now, you can feel free to enjoy what I've been getting up to in semi real-time! 🙂

I thought I should follow up on yesterday's post given what's been going down.

For those unaware, there was some Internet drama yesterday concerning YouTuber ProJared, someone whose content I have always enjoyed greatly — and someone who I have cited as an inspiration for my own video work on more than one occasion. I have no connection with him — I just like his work, enjoyed his style and have followed what I thought was the good role model he exemplified in terms of content creation.

Let's not get into the specific details because I'm not a tabloid and I don't have first-hand knowledge of the situation, but suffice to say that some pretty unpleasant allegations have come out about Jared, supposedly with a lot of evidence. As a result, Jared hasn't been seen on social media since yesterday, his channels haven't updated with the usual schedule of videos and the former creative collective of which he was a part, NormalBoots, has severed ties with him. NormalBoots supposedly knew about these allegations since the beginning of April due to an unsolicited email they received, but they have only made a public statement now since the whole thing blew up.

Jared's actions, if true, are stupid and inexcusable, and assuming the evidence that has been presented is actually real, it looks disappointingly likely that the allegations are true. This is all a big "if", though; I'm immediately skeptical of anything the Internet immediately proclaims to be an unequivocal, unarguable truth, particularly when it results in an immediate dogpile on someone that a lot of people have clearly held a grudge against for a long time now.

The reason this is hitting a bit close to home for me right now is that I've been on the receiving end of exactly the sort of harassment campaign I've seen Jared suffering since yesterday… and I know for 100% fact that I didn't do anything.

Back in 2013, I suddenly received a message on Twitter accusing me of being a paedophile. This subsequently escalated to increasing numbers of people filling my Twitter mentions, Facebook comments and blog comments with accusations; I even ended up with an Encylopedia Dramatica entry about me.

Where it got really scary was when I started getting messages from friends, colleagues and family telling me that they had been receiving phone calls making accusations and threats about me. My parents and brother received such calls, and so did the owner of a site named Games Are Evil that I was running at the time. The harassers had tracked down people connected to me via a combination of the WHOIS data for websites I owned, and social media posts.

There was, of course, no evidence, because I hadn't actually done anything wrong. You want to know where these accusations came from in the first place? Because I had publicly stated that I was an adult-age man who enjoyed the TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. That was it. That was literally it. Someone explained to me that the group responsible for the harassment, known as the GNAA (don't look that up), had a habit of picking out random people interested in that show and attempting to smear them as a paedophile. Why? For the lulz.

I went to the police with a mountain of evidence. They told me they couldn't do anything. So all I could do was ride out the storm, close what social media accounts I could and lay low until things blew over. They eventually did, but it made the Internet a traumatic and scary place to be for a while, and I'm not sure I ever quite recovered from the experience, which is why I'm rather uneasy interacting directly with strangers online today.

The reason why the ProJared situation makes me so uncomfortable is because it seems to be unfolding in a very similar manner. There are people flooding his comments sections and mounting organised campaigns to deplatform him, and it seems pretty apparent that someone at Twitter has a beef with him, since he quickly lost his "Verified" badge (supposed to be nothing more than an indicator that the Twitter account for a public figure is who they say they are — but which appears to be treated more as an "Endorsement" badge by Twitter these days) and on top of that, there was a Twitter Moment highlighting the whole horrible situation, which I found incredibly distasteful.

The difference in Jared's case is that there appears to actually be evidence that he has engaged in wrongdoing… though ultimately that evidence is still just a bunch of pictures on the Internet. If the accusations are true, this "trial" should be going through legal channels, not through the kangaroo court of public opinion… but as ever, people would much rather start tearing the flesh from someone the moment they smell blood than follow appropriate, fair procedures to ascertain innocence or guilt… and to get actual justice for those wronged.

To clarify: if Jared has done the things that he is accused of having done, I am heartbroken, upset and disgusted, and hope the victims see justice done. I am steering clear of his content until (if?) the full truth comes out. But I cannot and will not be part of any kind of torches-and-pitchforks attempt to destroy both a man's livelihood and his very life based on some social media posts.

To be frank, given what I know of Jared's mental health, I'm somewhat concerned he might not actually survive this. I'm not talking about his career, which is almost certainly over at this point. I'm talking about his literal life. I really hope I'm wrong about that.

I stopped in on Twitter earlier to post a quick update and check messages, and was quickly confronted with some unpleasant news that has left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. It's pure Internet drama and I don't really want anything to do with it, but I also feel like working through some thoughts on "paper" might help my addled brain process it all somewhat.

You may recall that a while back I cited a YouTuber named ProJared (aka Jared Knabenbauer) as something of an inspiration for my video work in particular. Today he released a statement indicating that he and his wife Heidi would be divorcing. I had no idea that there were problems there, and indeed just recently my wife Andie and I watched through their "couple" playthrough of visual novel Asagao Academy; it was a delightfully wholesome watch that I enjoyed a great deal.

Everything I've seen on the subject so far is hearsay and Internet gossip, but there are several recurring accusations: Heidi claims that Jared was abusive and adulterous; supposedly Jared cheated on Heidi with another YouTuber named "Commander Holly" (who either was or is married to someone Jared knows, and has clearly been a friend of Jared for many years, as he often names RPG characters after her); and allegedly Jared sent inappropriate pictures of himself to fans via Snapchat.

At this point, I don't know how much of this is true — or indeed if any of it is true. The one fact of the matter is that Jared and Heidi are divorcing. The information regarding Heidi and Holly appears to be very much he-said-she-said right now, and frankly that stuff is no-one's business but their own. And as for the inappropriate images, the few that I've seen shared could be anyone. It wouldn't be the first time that someone has had fake images circulated in order to discredit them… but equally, it is also possible that they are real. (EDIT: I've since seen a couple more that look very much like him, lending some credence to this particular accusation, which is really unfortunate.)

I'm struggling to know whether or not I actually care or if I should care. One thing I do know is that I feel extremely uncomfortable seeing the "witch hunt" play out right now, with Jared suffering a torrent of abuse via all forms of social media, including the comments on his videos. Having been on the receiving end of cheating on more than one occasion, I don't like to feel that someone I like and respect might have been involved in that sort of behaviour… but I also know how much the Internet likes to jump on people the moment they smell blood. Particularly if there are past grievances involved.

It seems a lot of people interested in jumping on Jared right now are fans of the YouTuber JonTron, who was once part of the "NormalBoots" collective alongside Jared and a number of others. JonTron left the group (supposedly voluntarily) shortly after a high-profile incident in which he made some ill-advised comments regarding race on a debate stream, and since Jared tends to err on the "progressive" side of things (albeit without being the sort of perpetually offended outrage machine typically associated with that ideology) it seems he was at least partly blamed for JonTron being driven out.

Frankly, I don't really care about that side of the drama, because that's all it is: drama; the sort of "celebrity" gossip you'd find in a bottom-tier tabloid rag, only involving Internet personalities rather than people more broadly recognised in popular culture. What I do care about is someone I like and respect perhaps not being the person I thought they were — but at the same time feeling bad for the hailstorm of abuse they're enduring right now.

Suffice to say, my feelings on the matter are somewhat complicated, particularly as I'm aware that Jared has struggled with numerous mental health and self-esteem issues that I could very much relate to… and I find myself once again feeling quite grateful that 1) I'm a relative "nobody" in terms of broader Internet culture, and 2) I've never done anything that anyone might want to dig up and destroy me with.

TL;DR – feels bad, man

I'm not generally a big fan of modern-day PC Gamer, but there was an interesting article over there today that I think is worth discussing. The gist of it was that the expectation modern games have set is that there will be a continual drip-feed of new content beyond launch, and that when players don't get this they get pissy and companies' precious bottom lines suffer.

I don't deny that this is an issue, but where I take slight issue with the article is the implication that it is a universal problem. Once again, we have an example of a publication considering that the big-budget, triple-A side of things is representative of the entire industry, both from a development/publisher perspective and a player/consumer's perspective.

I'm not a fan of live service games (with the possible exception of MMOs, which are something of a special case); I'm of the belief that you buy a game, you play it, you set it aside when you're done, you move on, you perhaps revisit it another time if you feel like it for one reason or another. When I see the end credits roll and/or complete everything a game has to offer (the two are not necessarily the same thing, as any good RPG fan will tell you!) I have zero further expectations. I don't need or want anything else. I'm done. Finished. Time to move on.

And for the vast majority of games I play these days, that's exactly what I get. Sometimes there is some DLC available, but it tends to be cosmetic content, "cheat" items or perhaps an additional dungeon or two. Very rarely is it anything meaningful; much of Death end re;Quest's DLC was free, and I don't feel it added anything particularly worthwhile to the game. I mean, I didn't hate the new dungeons or anything, but it felt like stuff that had been slotted in after the fact, and didn't develop the main point of the game beyond what you got on the disc. I wouldn't have missed it if it wasn't there, meaning that if I want to revisit Death end re;Quest in [x] years' time when the PSN servers are no longer serving up PS4 content, I won't miss it then either.

In the triple-A space, though, we have games that you outright can't play if you're not connected to the Internet. We have games that "expire". We have games that are unrecognisable from their original forms. We have games that, in their packaged versions, are all but unusable without substantial patches. This absolutely is a problem, but it's not the fault of the players.

No-one asked for this. Gaming enthusiasts showed resistance to this sort of thing when EA first tried its "Online Pass" nonsense in the mid-360/PS3 era, and continued to criticise exploitative DLC practices, microtransactions and the seeping in of free-to-play and mobile-style retention and monetisation models into full-price packaged releases. Even the Fortnite kiddies didn't ask for this, either; they simply grew up in a world where this shit had, somehow, become normalised, and thus didn't know things could be any different.

The solution to all this seems simple — release a game and be done with it — but it involves greedy companies cutting off a significant source of revenue; the PC Gamer article cites the example of EA, who are now making more money per annum from fewer released games when compared to half a decade ago. Why would they give that up to make people happy? Making people happy doesn't make the cash money. Not directly, anyway.

And besides, if Steam reviews are anything to go by, being "done" with a game won't necessarily make people happy, anyway; at this point, there are countless user reviews of games that developers have decided they're done with that claim the game is "abandoned" or "dead". This is the end result of these expectations that have apparently been set; of the Fortnite kiddies being confronted by something with a definitive "end". An oddly alien concept to some, but one we really need to recapture.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: live services and continual updates represent a real crisis for game preservation and archival. What good is a packaged hardcopy of something if it has gigabytes of additional or modified content over and above what is on the disc in order to work as intended or expected?

Thankfully, as I say, the vast majority of games that I enjoy seem to be relatively immune to this side of things, but I can't pretend I don't worry about this sort of thing seeping down from the "big boys" to the smaller developers and publishers. Something's gotta give sooner or later.

I might have been a bit hasty! I think Final Fantasy XI is going to take a bit longer to get through than I anticipated, so I'm going to postpone the Cover Game feature for a bit until I'm further through it and look like being a bit closer to the end. Apologies for jumping around all over the place, but I want to make sure I do the best job possible on this one, as it's such an interesting game — and one that is very special to me.

I'm still planning to do it this year, but it's on hold until I'm further through the main story. For context, I'm only about halfway through the base game's main story so far; after that there are the Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, Treasures of Aht Urhgan, Wings of the Goddess and Seekers of Adoulin expansion storylines to do, as well as Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, so I think I may have been a little ambitious in thinking I could plough through it all in a month — particularly as I'm recording most of my playthrough for future publishing on YouTube!

Instead, for the next feature, I'm going to pull something out of leftfield: a recent release from PQube called Our World is Ended. This is an interesting-sounding visual novel with more than a touch of Steins;Gate about it. I was immediately intrigued by the concept and I really like the art style, so I'm looking forward to exploring it a bit more. Plus it's on Switch, so I can get an hour or so of gameplay in every lunchtime at work as well as in the evenings, which is always an added bonus.

Once again, apologies for jumping around, but when it comes to my flagship features I want to make sure I can do the best job possible — and on the timeframe I rather hastily decided I would never be able to do justice to the sprawling behemoth that is Final Fantasy XI!

In the meantime, if you want to keep yourself occupied for a good few hours, put yourself to sleep or whatever, I've put a bunch of videos from my playthrough up in Unlisted mode in an Unlisted playlist, so you can check them out right now here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqmqFDuRsOsfx1Hov1I6YS50_3WgFtLKQ — please don't share these right now, but feel free to enjoy them at your leisure! There are 12 episodes of varying length up already, and four more being uploaded later tonight, so they should keep you busy and give you a good look at how Final Fantasy XI's early game unfolds. Bookmark the playlist if you want to follow my playthrough in semi-real time, and when I finally get towards the end of it all, I'll bring out the Cover Game feature.

Thanks for your understanding! 🙂

Feeling a bit run down at the moment, probably mostly due to not feeling all that well. As I noted a little while ago, my hernia has been giving me some grief over the last few days. Normally if I have a morning of agony, it goes away for a few weeks and doesn't bother me, but this time around it seems to be sticking around and providing a pretty consistent sense of discomfort — not really outright pain as such, but enough to be irritating and exhausting.

I'm thankful for the fact that there have been so many opportunities for long weekends recently via a combination of time off that I'd booked and public holidays. I am less thrilled about the fact that any time I am too much in pain to go in to the day job, I have to do a guilt-tripping "Return to Work" interview upon my return, which seems to serve pretty much no purpose other than for me to point out that yes, I have an ongoing condition that occasionally precludes me from doing anything; no, there isn't really anything I can do about it right now until I lose a bit of weight; and yes, I am losing weight.

I understand why it happens, of course; it's an attempt to nip "sickies" in the bud, and heaven knows I pulled a few sickies in my earlier years — particularly when I worked in teaching, and some days the stress and depression simply proved too much to confront — but when it's a situation like this, it just feels like you're being punished for something beyond your control. I absolutely hate this sort of injustice — well, okay, "injustice" might be a strong word, since they haven't actually done anything to me… but every time I have to be off, I'm concerned that I'll be given some sort of bollocking for not being well. One of many ways the modern world sucks, I guess, but it is a problem entirely of our own creation.

How I long for the ability to work for myself, setting my own hours and expectations, and not having to follow any sort of Policy and Procedure manual. Bit of a pipe dream for what I want to do right now, unfortunately, but those of you who are kind enough to be in a position to read this, you at least allow me to have a bit of pocket money with which I can enjoy myself each month — so a sincere thank you for that. (Also, tell your friends.)

I've got articles to write and videos to record, so hopefully a bit of productivity will make me feel a bit better. I hope you have a pleasant Monday!

Hey folks! Been thinking a bit today, and in the near future I'm going to make a few changes to video having been "experimenting" a bit with format over the last little while. The long and short of it is that I'm a little concerned I'm taking on just a tiny bit too much at one time, so I'm going to rethink how I do things somewhat. Here are my thoughts.

First up, Atari A to Z is staying right where it is, in all three of its incarnations. That is, by far, my favourite video project and also the one that gets the most views and responses. You know me, I'm not super-big on metrics or anything, but it's clear that of the people who are stumbling across my channel, a significant majority of them are interested in the Atari content. Which is great! I'm always happy to share the good word of Atari with everyone.

Warriors Wednesday is also something I'm going to continue with primarily as a "vanity" project; I enjoy the Warriors games a ton, and having a suitable excuse to spend time with them each week means that I'm inclined to… well, spend some time with them. I'm having a blast with Warriors Orochi, and I'm excited to explore the other installments once I'm done with that.

New Game Plus hasn't worked quite as well as I hoped. I enjoyed the Project Zero series, but the Rorona playthrough has been a bit of a slog to record rather than just play. As such, I'm going to finish the Rorona playthrough and then give New Game Plus a rest for a bit… at least in video form.

What I am going to do, however, is launch an occasional New Game Plus series of articles, where I either talk specifically about postgame content in games I've previously played, or make an effort to go back and explore postgame content in games I've seen the end credits of but not taken things any further. That seems like a more practical way of doing this — though I'm not ruling out some video playthroughs of the other Project Zero games at some point, since I know Ken will enjoy those if no-one else! 🙂

Likewise Sunday Driving and Sunday Shooting are a little redundant given that I have the "Essentials" series on MoeGamer. From this week, I'm going to retire these series for now and perhaps do video versions of some of the Essentials articles — you may have noticed some readings of the Death end re;Quest Cover Game feature on the channel recently, and I really enjoy recording and editing those, so I'd like to do more of them.

Finally, as I've mentioned previously, I'm going to do a Final Fantasy marathon on video, because there are still some Final Fantasies I've never played, several I want to revisit and some that I want to draw particular attention to. This will kick off when the Rorona series finishes.

At present, I'm planning on doing all the mainline FF games (including X-2, XIII-2 and Lightning Returns as well as XI and XIV's main storylines) but I'm contemplating making this a truly comprehensive marathon by attempting to incorporate spinoffs as well. There are a few titles for which this probably won't be practical — DS and 3DS games specifically, although there are emulation solutions out there, I just haven't explored them yet — as well as some that are tough to track down. Even if I'm emulating, I like to own the games I'm playing. I haven't decided if I'll go through with this yet, but it would be an interesting prospect, for sure.

With regard to the earlier games, I'll likely play the PSP remakes over the NES originals simply because I like them better; for IV I'll likely play the PSP version (with The After Years, which I've never tried). For V, I'm not sure; I have the PSone version but the load times are a bit poo. VI is easy; I have a SNES mini, so I can just play the version on there. And I still have original copies of all the others and/or remakes for modern systems — I'd play FFXHD over FFX, for example, because the PAL version of the PS2 version was arse, and I'd play FFXIITZA over original FFXII because… well, it's just better.

There you go! Shop talk. As I say, New Game Plus will continue until I beat Rorona as I don't like leaving things unfinished, but after that things will change a little bit. Please look forward to it!

It's Friday night and I'm tired, so here are some pictures of cats. The Internet still likes cats, right?

This is Meg being smug.

This is Patti, not remembering what shape a cat is supposed to be.

This is Meg in a box.

This is Patti next to a different box.

This is Meg deciding the box is a good place to have a nap.

This is Patti being a lion. Or possibly yawning.

This is Meg on her "shelf" in the catio.

And up top there is Ruby, who sadly departed this world last November. There isn't a day goes by that I don't miss her, but I'm pretty sure she was happy while she was with us, especially if this picture is anything to go by. I hope she's sleeping peacefully and knows how much love I still feel for her.

Sorry there was no full article today on MoeGamer; I've had a pretty miserable day, all told. I woke up feeling a bit crappy, and just as I was leaving for work I felt the unfortunately familiar sensation of my hernia being particularly… aggressive. I turned back, went home and went back to bed to ride out the pain as usual.

Normally it goes away after about an hour or so, but there's been a bit of a dull ache all day today, which hasn't been especially conducive to either happiness or productivity. Now I'm back in bed again, hoping I wake up to a more pleasant day tomorrow.

Getting older (and consequently more prone to shit like this) sucks! I recommend against it. If you have the opportunity to remain forever young, take it!