As part of a conversation about developing your confidence to "speak" (i.e. with your voice) online, I happened to look back over my YouTube channel and I was astonished to discover that I've uploaded over 500 videos at this point. Not all of these have been published yet (30+ of them are for the beginning of my Final Fantasy XI run in the Final Fantasy Marathon, which is a long way off publication yet!) but that's still a pretty impressive number… and I had no idea!

I've really enjoyed getting a feel for what I want to do with YouTube. The "Let's Play" format that I spend most of my time doing may not be the most fashionable way of doing things any more, but I'm slowly but surely building up a thoroughly pleasant audience of supportive people who seem to enjoy what I do very much. I even got a "shout-out" from fellow Atari ST-related creator The Joy of Sticks earlier this week, which was really exciting and nice to see.

Creating cool things online really is about networking, even for antisocial bastards like me. You can create things in a vacuum all you want and there's a certain amount of satisfaction to be drawn just from the act of creating. But there really is something special about knowing that the things you do are actually "reaching" other people and affecting their lives in positive ways — even if it's just through simple entertainment or informing.

I digress. I was talking about developing self-confidence. While I'm still an anxious, nervous, depressed wreck in reality, I actually feel pretty confident with both my written and video content these days. I feel I've naturally settled into distinctive styles for both, and my complete lack of desire to be at the centre of any sort of drama or clickbait controversies gives me something that sets me apart from a lot of other stuff around today, too.

It's something that's come with experimentation and practice, though, and I'm glad I listened to people when they had things to say to encourage me. Probably the most noteworthy of these was my wife suggesting I should appear on camera in my videos rather than simply being a disembodied voice. I was extremely nervous and hesitant to do this as I'm not a big fan of my own appearance and I've always been afraid of mean comments about it — you know what the Internet is like.

But I gave it a shot anyway, and I feel all my videos have been much better since I started doing that, even if my actual camerawork has sometimes been less than optimal. (Hey, I'm doing the best with the equipment and environment I have available to me!)

If you're yet to check out my stuff on YouTube, please do take some time to have a look when you have a moment. I'm especially proud of my three Atari A to Z series, which look at Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Atari 2600, Atari 5200 and Atari arcade games; I take great pride in researching these as well as providing some anecdotes from my own experience where applicable, and I love showing off stuff from those home computers that don't get nearly as much love as stuff like the C64 and Spectrum. Atari was such a defining influence in my life that I'm happy to have the opportunity and the capability to celebrate it in some way.

Anyway. As always, thanks for being kind enough to take a look at what I do and supporting it. I hope it's abundantly clear by now that I love creating stuff, and I love expressing my passion and joy for the things that are important to me, so it means the world to me that people want to come along for the ride. And I'm not planning on stopping any time soon!

I'm doing a bit better today, thankfully. I didn't really want to find myself falling into the black pit I was in a few weeks ago; that's a really frustrating and unproductive place to be, so I'm glad I've managed to shake off the negative thoughts I've been feeling.

The fact that I'm less than a week away from a week off is helping me stay positive, I think. I'm looking forward to this time off — I have nothing specific planned for it, but like last time I took a week like this, I'm going to take the opportunity to get ahead of schedule on a bunch of stuff like videos so I can concentrate on other things when I'm back at work.

Oh, I've also been contemplating the possibility of some sort of weekly vlog exclusively for you patrons. Vlogging is not something I've done before, but doing the intros for my various videos (particularly the Atari A to Z ones) has given me a bit of confidence at speaking to camera, so I might give it a shot during my week off. If that's something you might be interested in seeing on a regular basis, let me know — I could use the reassurance! 🙂

I'm also greatly enjoying Peach Beach Splash, as always because of its characters. I'm in the middle of the Crimson Squad story at the time of writing, and their tales of attempting to secure new work by becoming "NewTube" stars are consistently hilarious. I love those girls. Love them.

Anyway, with that in mind, I'm off to go play some more of that very game, then hit the gym a bit later. I hope you have a pleasant evening!

I won't lie, I've had a bit of a rough weekend mental health-wise.

The reason for this is the news I mentioned yesterday: the untimely death of independent game developer Alec Holowka after unproven accusations of sexual misconduct.

The reason this bothers me so much is that I feel like it could easily have been me. Not because of the sexual assault allegations, I hasten to add, but because I've been through a similar case of being abandoned by people I thought were my friends.

I've talked about the story of the end of my career in the professional games press numerous times at this point, but it still hurts five years later, as it had such a huge impact on my life and overall wellbeing that it's hard to let go of it, particularly when things remind me of what happened.

Before I continue, I hasten to add that I am by no means attempting to equate my experiences to that of Alec Holowka over the past few days. I am simply saying that in another timeline, I could see myself having been driven to despair just as he was.

For those unfamiliar, the end of my time in the games press occurred on my birthday in 2014. I received an email out of the blue from Rupert Loman, head honcho of Gamer Network, the parent company of USgamer, where I was working at the time, and their more well known, well established cousin Eurogamer.

The email was simple and to the point. It informed me that the decision had been made (without me) to proceed with USgamer with an all-American staff. I had originally been brought on board to populate the site with content during my daytime, meaning that Americans would have something new to read on USgamer by the time they woke up, thanks to me.

I did a good job. I covered a wide variety of topics, not just those of personal interest to me, but I also made a point of having a unique voice and perspective — and over time, my contributions resulted in USgamer being regarded as both a reputable, reliable news source and a site that was friendly to games that often found themselves treated unfairly by other sites out there.

But all that was thrown out of the window that day. I was cast out of my dream job for reasons that I still believe were spurious; I'm all but certain it was because I didn't participate in modern "progressive" culture — or, as we now know it, that side of the media that is perpetually offended about one thing or another.

The reason I believe this is that before I'd even left the site completely, editor Jeremy Parish brought on board two of his sycophantic cronies, both of whom played a part in undoing a lot of the goodwill I'd generated with parts of the community often not well represented by the press.

But this side of things isn't why Holowka's passing reminds me of bad times; it's what happened alongside all this.

To put it simply, I lost a lot of friends pretty much overnight. None of them were publicly distancing themselves from me as Holowka's friends did over the last few days, but I was still abandoned by people that I once spoke to on a daily basis, and had even met in person a few times.

People I used to podcast with. People I started out working alongside. People I just liked. So many of them turned their backs on me, and have not, to date, ever reached out to see how I'm doing. Not one of them has stopped by MoeGamer or YouTube and said "good job" or even attempted to start a discussion.

I've made a lot of new online friends since, thankfully, but sometimes it's hard not to feel very alone, particularly at times like this. I'm thankful that I was just "ghosted" rather than "cancelled" as Holowka was, but it's still not a pleasant experience to have gone through, and I freely admit that even my experiences led my mind to dark places on occasion.

I'm not going to preach to anyone here about how to live their lives or anything; I just wanted to take a moment to express how the events of the last few days have made me feel, and what they've reminded me of.

Thanks for listening, and may tomorrow be a better day for everyone.

Earlier today, Eileen Holowka announced via Twitter that her brother Alec — an independent game developer best known for his work on titles such as Aquaria and Night in the Woods — had passed away, likely as a result of suicide.

For those who hadn't been following the story, Holowka was the latest in a seemingly ever-growing list of people who had been targeted by what has come to be known as "cancel culture" — an odious trend online that sees accusations being made against a person, then the broader community uniting in a witch-hunt against them to dredge up (and in some cases, fabricate) further accusations designed to ensure the individual in question is never able to work, have a relationship and/or show their face ever again.

In this instance, Holowka had been accused of sexual misconduct, and like a number of other instances like this, the baying mob of social media had been quick to pillory him before he'd had any opportunity to defend himself — or indeed for there to have been any time to ascertain as to whether or not the accusations made against him had any truth behind them.

It's fashionable these days to say that you should "believe survivors" of abuse, and it's important that these people feel listened to and able to share their stories with the appropriate people without fear of reprisal or retaliation. But herein lies the problem: any time these accusations come up, they're always aired on Twitter rather than taken to the appropriate authorities who might be able to investigate them further and take legal action as necessary.

The reasoning behind this? Cancel culture. The alleged victims of such incidents want to feel like they are able to take down their supposed abuser in a very loud, very public manner. And if you were to take such accusations to the police, everything would unfold quietly, well out of the public eye in most circumstances. No drama there; no opportunity to demonstrate how strong and brave you are.

And the problem with this, of course, is that the court of public opinion (typically held on Twitter, as I've said) has no laws, no obligations to follow due process, no requirement to see evidence. There are certain situations where just the word of someone is taken at face value, and the supposed perpetrator's guilt is decided immediately. At which point their "sentence" is carried out: perpetual, never-ending harassment; personal relationships being poisoned; family and friends being turned against them; financial security and employment being whipped out from beneath them. And, in what I've regrettably learned has actually been several tragic cases at this point, this can ultimately end in death.

I'm sickened and disgusted that this sort of thing is still happening, and the problem appears to be worsening rather than getting better.

Sorry this isn't a cheerier post for the weekend, but this has actually made me rather angry and upset, and I think it's important to talk about.

Please don't be part of cancel culture.

I've been using my new Samsung Galaxy S10+ for a little while now, and I really like it. I was a bit concerned that it might come preloaded with a bunch of Samsung bloatware and it sort of does — I had to give it quite a stern talking to to get rid of something called "MirrorLink" every time I wanted to charge it up in my car, for example — but it's easy enough to disable the stuff you don't want and get it working the way you want it to.

This has been the main benefit of Android that I've found since I switched from iOS after my iPhone 4S. I'm not big into like "hacking" your phone and doing crazy shit with it (mine isn't even rooted) but I appreciate the slightly greater level of control that Android affords you… and the fact it's a bit more inclined to tell you what is actually going on.

One thing I noticed with Apple products in general the last time I used them is that in the never-ending pursuit of user-friendliness, they made a point of simply not telling you stuff. A Mac might be doing something, but good luck getting it to tell you what. Your phone might save a file, but good luck finding it. This might have gotten better in the last few years, but it was offputting; I like to know what my computers and computer-like devices are up to.

Of course, this is an issue all around computing at the minute. Windows is getting bad for it too, with its "something went wrong" error messages and the like; since everyone uses computers now, it seems a lot of hardware and software manufacturers like to appeal to the lowest common denominator in terms of technical knowledge. Which I suppose isn't so bad; it'd just be better if it was a bit easier to get a bit more information.

But I digress. I like the phone. I haven't used a ton of its features, but then I don't really need to. It seems to run smoothly, access the Internet reliably, connect to my car's Bluetooth without issue, and the camera is lovely.

The camera was the main reason I bought it, to be honest. I nearly went with whatever the Huawei with the nice camera is, but several reviews I'd seen had suggested steering clear of Huawei in general while the whole trade ban or whatever it is continues, so, with O2 offering the S10+ at a total of £200 cheaper than it normally would be over the complete term of the contract, it seemed like a good choice.

There are technically five cameras. I don't really know why, but there are. From what I understand, each side has at least two so you can create blurred-background "bokeh" effects by basically taking a picture of the background with a blurry lens and taking a picture of the foreground with a focused lens. Or something. The back camera also has a third lens for wide-angle shots, which is pretty neat.

The back camera(s) are also capable of shooting slow motion video, which is a lot of fun. Super-slow motion can only shoot 0.4 or 0.8 seconds of video (slowed down, obviously) but it looks really cool if you time it right, while normal slow motion can, I believe, go indefinitely. It's not something I'll likely use all that much, but it's fun for the odd silly message to send on WhatsApp.

The thing that I mainly wanted to use the camera(s) for — shooting video — is great. The quality is noticeably better than my old phone (you might have noticed in more recent Atari A to Z videos) and even the microphone quality is better. Not quite enough to eliminate my desire to use the lavalier mic when speaking to the camera, but pretty good.

Anyway, I'm pleased with it, and glad I signed my soul over to the Devil for another fixed-term contract. Hopefully the device will last the duration!

Hello! Over the weekend, Chris and I will be recording a new episode of The MoeGamer Podcast, and we decided we'd do something lighthearted and fun after last time's fairly academic discussion!

Specifically, we were interested in talking about some of our favourite boss encounters (be they regular or final — though final bosses are probably an episode of their own!) and I thought it might be fun to involve you fine people if you feel like it.

So if you have a particularly memorable boss encounter you'd like us to mention in the show, drop me a comment below with a few thoughts, and we'll do our best to talk about them during recording. Then the new show will follow on Monday, all being well!

Hope you're having a lovely evening. I'm about to settle down for an hour of Peach Beach Splash before a pre-bed gym session. I wish there were more hours in the day!

You hopefully know me by now, dear reader; I have no particular desire to be any form of "famous", be it "Internet famous" or "actually famous". In fact, the prospect brings me a great deal of anxiety — especially given the "cancel culture" we presently live in.

There are times, though, that I'm glad I have a platform, and I'm glad I have the opportunity to use it to actually do something good. That has very much been the case in the last week since I published my article We Need To Get Better At Talking About Sex.

Those who have been following me for a while will know that I've long been dissatisfied with the way the mainstream games press treats Japanese games with sexual content, be that content fully explicit or simply fanservice. I've expressed those frustrations on numerous occasions, but no time I've attempted this has hit home as well as my article last week.

This time around, though, something's been different. People have been listening. People outside of the particular subculture who are continually concerned and annoyed by this have been listening, too. And there's a lot of agreement; moreover, there's a lot of people thinking that I'm somehow brave or otherwise doing something remarkable for speaking up about this.

One such example is Liana Kerzner's video which I've linked above. Liana, if you're unfamiliar, is a sex-positive feminist commentator who has, over the course of her career, worked in television, the commercial games press and YouTube. Her current YouTube work is particularly interested in, in her words, "improving the dialogue around video games" — something sorely needed — and explores a variety of topics, including politics and mental health, among other things, as they relate to both gaming and feminism.

Liana was kind enough to devote an entire video to my article, as she found it worthwhile and noteworthy. She praised me for having the courage to speak up about something like this, and reassured me that the things I said had value.

I won't lie, I'm both flattered and incredibly moved (I may have had a little cry earlier) that someone with a way bigger following than I do would do something like this for an article mostly written out of frustration. But more than that, I'm glad it's got people talking — and people outside of "preaching to the choir" territory, too, as will be abundantly clear from how Liana doesn't know how to pronounce "eroge", bless her!

I find it particularly noteworthy that in the week since I published this piece, I haven't had any negative or unpleasant comments, either — and I was expecting some, believe me. But no; I've had one just plain weird comment that I still don't really understand, and a parade of supportive and grateful comments from people who have been similarly frustrated about this topic, but felt, for whatever reason, unable or unwilling to speak up.

I just want to share one comment I received today as an example:

 

“the fact that emotional intimacy often brings with it the desire to be physically intimate, too. And, I can’t emphasise this enough, that is very much OKAY!”

This bit honestly moved me to tears. I’ve been so confused for my whole life about the validity of physical intimacy (thanks Catholicism), and while I’d kinda grasped at this idea earlier, I’m so happy to know that my feelings are normal.

I successfully touched someone with my writing, reassured them that something which had clearly worried them for a long time was, in fact, normal, healthy and perfectly okay, and seemingly generally made their day a bit better. That… feels pretty good.

I hasten to add that I don't wish to come across as if I'm bragging here; I genuinely think this stuff is important, and I'm glad that, for once, I've had the opportunity to make a difference, however small it might be in the grand scheme of things. But I got people talking. And that's good.

Thank you to everyone who has been kind enough to support my work in general and this piece specifically; it really means a lot.

I went pretty hard at the gym this evening, so I'm absolutely knackered. I'm pleased I pushed myself a bit more than usual, though; although being super-sweaty is gross, it's also extremely satisfying when you know it's the result of actually making some effort rather than just, you know, existing.

There's nothing worse than just sitting there sweating and not really being sure why you're sweating, other than the fact you're a fat bastard who should have made better life choices at numerous points along the route to where he is now. But oh well. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that.

Anyway, I'm rambling because my head is swimming with post-exercise endorphins and the enjoyment of the piece of toast I just had (seriously, toast is, like, the best) so I apologise I don't really have anything more meaningful to say right now, but I just want to have a shower and collapse into bed!

Oh, I did start Peach Beach Splash. It is a lot of fun. Also super-gay. Like, even more than usual for Senran Kagura. I am going to enjoy this.

Good night!

I sat down and spent a good few hours polishing off every last story in Senran Kagura Bon Appétit today ahead of writing about it on MoeGamer, so finally, at last, I'm ready to move on to the next game.

And I'm excited about this, because it's a game I've had on my shelf for… (checks) two years now! And I've been meaning to jump into it ever since I got it, but for one reason or another, I have never gotten around to it.

The game in question is Senran Kagura Peach Beach Splash, which I'm greatly looking forward to because, like Bon Appétit, it's something a bit different from Senran Kagura's norms. I actually have no real idea what to expect from it, because like with most things I know I'm going to cover at some point, I've deliberately not read anything about it, not watched any videos, not even looked at many screenshots of it. I'm going in as blind as it's possible to be in this modern age, and that delights and excites me.

There's another reason I'm quite glad that I've left it this long to jump in, too, and that's the fact that we live in the Age of Updates. The Peach Beach Splash I'll be playing from tomorrow onwards will likely be somewhat tweaked, refined and improved from the version that was originally released, and that means I'll have a perspective on it that launch day reviews won't have. In theory, at this point, two years after release, I should be getting pretty much the optimal Peach Beach Splash experience — but I guess we'll have to wait and see about that!

Anyway, I don't know how long Peach Beach Splash is so I'm going to make no grand promises as to when my article(s) on the subject will appear… but know that I'm working on it, and I'm really genuinely excited! 🙂

I've been much more productive today; I managed to record all the videos I wanted to get recorded, so now I just have to edit them. And that shouldn't take too long, so I'll probably get 'em all out of the way tomorrow so I don't have to think about them.

I thought today was going to be a repeat of yesterday as it was hot, sunny and sweaty all day. Partway through the day I just decided to head upstairs and sit in bed with the aircon on while playing Senran Kagura Bon Appetit, but after a while I felt my eyes getting heavy, so I thought I'd lie down for a nap.

I woke up at 6pm. It was a good nap. And, once I got up and had some dinner, I managed to plough through all the things I wanted to achieve without any difficulty, analysis paralysis or other forms of mental anxiety whatsoever. Just goes to show, then, that if you're struggling to maintain your focus (or indeed achieve any sort of focus in the first place)… you should probably have a nap!