#oneaday Day 9: The Culture War is a Problem

Earlier today, someone I haven't spoken to for a while popped up on Steam and asked if I was OK, because I'd been "posting way more politically than usual" of late.

Confused, I asked for more details, since I wasn't aware I'd been doing anything of the sort, and it transpired that he somehow thought I ran the Twitter account for a certain website that I'm not going to name for reasons that will probably become obvious. (It's not Rice Digital, the site I used to be in charge of, before you wonder!) I explained that no, that was nothing to do with me, I had never written for that site and I wasn't even on Twitter any more, which I'm not.

Hopefully reassured, my acquaintance wished me well and that was the end of that.

He got me curious, though, so I went and looked at what the account in question had been posting, and it didn't take me long to stumble across what the issue was. It seems that the main problem stems from a story the site in question had recently posted that was, in essence, nothing but a rumour with sources that could be called questionable if one was being charitable, non-existent if one was being realistic. The thrust of the story was that it was one of many instances of a supposed conspiracy that "DEI" (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) consultants are destroying modern gaming.

I'll address some things up front, because I have spoken about these things in the past, often critically, and I want to make it clear what my own stance on the situation is.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are not bad things. Do some companies and individuals take things a little too far in terms of pussy-footing around protected groups in an attempt to not offend anyone? Absolutely, particularly in the corporate space. Have there been instances of games journalists slagging off games that they knew nothing about because there was sexually suggestive content in them? Most definitely. Both of those things are, I believe, still worthy of criticism. Any creative work deserves to have a fair shake at expressing what its creators want to express without interference, and without those engaging with it treating it in bad faith.

However, this current conspiracy theory — and make no mistake, it really is a conspiracy theory — goes a lot further than those things. The current belief is that a cadre of games journalists and diversity consultants are running an extortion racket on game developers and publishers in the name of making all the women ugly and not white. To these people, if this situation continues unchecked, all of gaming will be completely destroyed, because having the opportunity to select your pronouns in a first-person role-playing game where you play a self-insert avatar is somehow responsible for the complete downfall of western society. It'll turn all your kids into immigrant transgender gays, I tells ya.

This is, of course, complete bollocks. It is true that the triple-A space has been making some marked steps towards improving diversity in many of its games, but as I've argued numerous times both here and over on MoeGamer, the triple-A space is just a tiny piece of the complete behemoth that is the games industry. Just because some triple-A blockbuster game has a woman with "woke chin" (an actual quote from one of these nutcases, criticising the new Joanna Dark for having a wider chin than she used to) does not mean that games with anime titties are going anywhere. Right now, you can play Final Fantasy XIV as a bunnygirl with big tits running around in bra and pants if you want, and Steam is filled with games where you can fuck your aunt. Hell, there are physical releases of Switch games that feature uncensored jizz-filled vaginas. Jizz! In a Nintendo game! (Actually, don't, you'll need to do more than blow in the cartridge afterwards if you do.)

Here's the thing: diversity means that you end up with diverse things. Some of those things will appeal to you, personally, while others will not. Those things that do not appeal to you, personally, are not a personal affront to you. Consider something that you really really love, but which other people don't seem to get. Now contemplate someone with a completely different worldview to you — be it a differing political ideology, racial background, sexuality, gender identity or any of the myriad other distinguishing characteristics we all have — finding something that they really really love, but which you don't seem to get. It's the exact same situation, only you're seeing it from the other side. Neither of those things cancel out the other.

The longstanding concern that this conspiracy theory stems from is that the growth in progressivism in the games industry — and particularly in games journalism — is somehow going to be responsible for the death of games that push boundaries or cater specifically to those with particular tastes, especially if those tastes are "playing games with conventionally attractive female characters in them". Well, ten years on from the shitshow that was GamerGate, I think we can say pretty conclusively that this has not happened. If anything, we're far more likely to encounter boundary-pushing games today than we were ten years ago… arguably to a fault, in some situations, such as with the amount of AI-generated "Hentai"-labeled crap that infests both the Nintendo eShop and Steam.

What we have now is a landscape that has changed. Triple-A may well be taking aim at a more diverse market, and that's entirely understandable, because with budgets spiralling out of control and layoffs happening left, right and centre, those games have to appeal to the broadest demographic possible. And just because some set-in-his-ways white dude doesn't like that a new big-budget game has black/gay/transgender/[insert minority group of choice here] people in it doesn't mean that others won't like it. It makes the most sense for triple-A to try and include as many people as possible, because, cynically speaking, that's how you make the money.

But the thing to remember is that none of this is "taking your games away" or "killing gaming".

I will freely admit that, ten years ago, I had some serious concerns that the strong push for progressivism in games journalism in particular would push certain forms of interactive media underground or possibly even cause them to dry up altogether. I almost certainly made some ill-advised comments during that time which are likely still on this blog and MoeGamer somewhere — but I'll say now, in 2024, those fears some of us had ten years ago completely failed to materialise, and I'm not afraid to admit that I was wrong about those things.

Triple-A has changed, yes. But ten years ago I wasn't concerned about triple-A because I'd bounced hard off that part of the industry several years prior — and I still don't care about triple-A today. I was worried about the games I did enjoy, which were B-tier titles, primarily from Japanese developers and publishers, that had a laser focus on their target audience.

Despite never engaging with triple-A beyond games with "Final Fantasy" in the title, I have never been short of things to play. If anything, I have too many things to play, as my rapidly filling shelves will attest. If I threw triple-A in the mix, I'd really be overwhelmed.

There's no "great replacement" of video games. There's no "DEI" or "Modern Audiences" conspiracy to make every woman in gaming ugly. There's no "extortion racket" causing games journalists to circle the wagons and protect a firm of diversity consultants from the "true gamers".

There is, however, a problem with intolerance. And it seems to be getting worse, fuelled by conspiracy theories such as this. I've seen way more in the way of racism, homophobia and transphobia in Internet comments — particularly in busy, public places such as YouTube and what is left of the burning garbage fire that is Twitter — than ever before.

Just last week I watched an episode of the Game Grumps' spinoff show Ten Minute Power Hour, in which Arin and Dan got gussied up as drag queens with the assistance of a professional. While there were plenty of comments in support of the episode — particularly as it aired during Pride Month, which is ongoing as I type this — there was some serious ugliness further down in the comments below where the moderators had been doing the majority of their work.

I'd say I was kind of shocked, but I've seen this intolerance and outright hatred rising over the last few years, and it's not pretty at all. It was particularly shocking to see it in the comments of a Game Grumps video, though; while the Grumps have toned down some of the more colourful elements of their humour over the last 10+ years — no more "Sad Hoshi" in an exaggerated faux Japanese accent, for example — they certainly have not, in any way, abandoned who they are or the overall vibe their humour creates. What has changed, however, is how vocal the intolerant and hateful have become.

Browsing Twitter as I was earlier, I stumbled across an absolutely enormous thread by one fan of the website that started this whole discussion, collecting "evidence" of the supposed conspiracy — actually just screenshots of games journalists saying that maybe this website shouldn't report on stupid rumours without even attempting to verify them, or commenting in support of progressive talking points. As I scrolled through page after page of this guy collecting these tweets, all I could think of was the old wisdom that if more and more people seem to be against you, perhaps you are the one who actually has the problem.

Look, I have absolutely no time for the militant end of the left wing. I find them insufferable, tedious and just plain annoying. But I feel like I'm seeing a lot less of them these days; the problem we have right now is coming from the opposite end of the spectrum. And it is a problem. When people like me, who have long made a specific effort to try and steer as clear as possible of anything even vaguely politically charged or controversial, are noticing an uptick in intolerance and hatred, there's definitely an intolerance and hatred problem.

It may be a cliché to say, but it sure would be nice if we could just all get along. We're talking about video games, after all.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 7: Suggested Content

One of the "innovations" of modern tech and software that I am most consistently baffled by is the concept of "Suggestions".

Don't get me wrong, I am under no illusions as to what "Suggested Content" really means on websites and social media platforms (it's advertising, in case you somehow weren't savvy enough to know that by now) but I'm talking more in contexts where it's not obviously advertising, or where it doesn't make sense for advertising to try and worm its way into places.

Places like, you know, just Microsoft Windows in general. Or Google Drive. Both of those have features where they provide you with a list of "Suggested" files, and I absolutely, genuinely do not understand why that feature is there or what it is for. Right now, for example, my Google Drive "Suggested files" list is a non-chronological index of things that I have opened or edited recently. Fine, you might say, except there is a perfectly good "Recent" option in the sidebar which does give me a chronological list of things I have opened or edited recently.

Likewise, the Windows 11 start menu on my "work" computer (it came preinstalled, otherwise I would have been quite happy continuing with 10 as I do with my "play" computer) appears to "suggest" applications almost completely at random, with its first two suggestions usually being the things I have installed most recently, and the others being… pretty much anything that I have installed, for no discernible reason.

Under certain circumstances, I get the idea. When it comes to media, a "suggestion" feature might inspire you to look at photos or listen to music that you haven't enjoyed for a while — though this can also backfire somewhat. Earlier today, my phone's "Gallery" app decided to send me an unasked-for notification that I presume someone somewhere thought was "cute", with the text "Feline footprints in Southampton". The attached image? Our dearly departed cat Meg. I'm still quite upset about Meg's passing, so I emphatically do not want my phone randomly bringing her up out of the blue for no apparent reason. I will look at pictures of her when I'm good and ready, thanks very much.

The push for "AI" in everything is only making this shit worse, too; the Gallery app on my phone recognising that the image in question was a picture of a cat is a result of improving image recognition technology, and I suspect as generative AI becomes more and more pervasive and invasive in our daily online life, situations like this are only going to become more and more common — because you can bet your bippy that all these "Suggestion" features are going to be turned on by default.

What happens when your phone decides to "suggest" a photo of something you'd rather keep private at an exceedingly inappropriate moment? Well, some might say you should keep your private photos private, but realistically, practically speaking, most people these days are not that organised, because we've made the mistake of trusting our software and online services to do the organisation for us. I actually like the fact that Google Photos can pick out, say, pictures of cats, or pictures that mention something specific in a piece of text, because that is indisputably useful — but what I don't want is my phone going "HEY REMEMBER YOUR CAT THAT DIED? HUH? HERE SHE IS, I PICKED HER OUT FROM ALL YOUR PHOTOS, AREN'T I SMART?"

There's a place for some — some — of the innovations that are currently going on in tech. But, as always, it seems we're going to have to endure a period of people pushing things to absolute breaking point before we settle into something approaching a useful routine. And, unfortunately, that period appears to have been going on for quite a while now… and people don't seem to be willing to push back against the more unreasonable uses of these features.

"Suggested Content" can get in the fucking bin. I know what I need on my computer and when. And, more often than not, when I'm browsing the Web, I know what I'm looking for, too. Sadly, it feels increasingly unlikely that I'm going to be left in peace these days.

If anyone mentions Linux, they are getting a slap.

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#oneaday Day 3: Talking is Exhausting

I'm sure discussing things with people online wasn't always as exhausting as it feels these days.

I have some extremely fond memories of time spent on 1up.com's forums and "club" pages talking about games with a varied crew of folk, all of whom had come together through our shared interest in the video game medium. We didn't always agree on things, but that made for interesting discussions as we strove to understand one another's viewpoints. There was no shaming, there was no telling each other we were wrong (apart from on one podcast, where a couple of participants got a little more heated than a reasonable person perhaps should over whether Fallout 3 was playable from the third-person camera) and there was just a nice atmosphere of mutual respect.

These days, it's becoming more and more of an effort to open my virtual mouth online in places supposedly made for "discussion", because to a disproportionately large number of people, "discuss" appears to mean "disagree vehemently and aggressively". And it's inevitably over something that simply doesn't matter, but the nature of such exchanges make it easy for hot heads to prevail and things to get stupidly, absurdly aggressive over an absolute nothing of a subject. (No, I'm not citing specific examples, for reasons that I hope are already obvious.)

This is a disappointing development to me, because 20 years ago, I would have sat here and quite confidently said that on the Internet, I could be my "real" self much more than I could be in "the real world". I actually do still feel that way to a certain extent — outlets such as this blog, MoeGamer and my YouTube channel allow me to express myself in the way I want to, rather than how I'm "supposed to" — but even in those places, there's always the risk of some weirdo turning up and getting weirdly angry about something which absolutely does not matter.

Thing is, I sort of get it. I get why those people exist, because there are times when I'll read something online and I'll feel my own heckles rising (you feel it start around the balls) and contemplate posting some sort of snippy remark in response. Most of the time, I've conditioned myself to not do that. Occasionally one slips through, and I pretty much always regret it, because it inevitably leads to a disproportionately furious argument over something I actually don't feel that strongly about, because the whole "sense of honour" thing kicks in and you want to save face, no matter the cost.

It's exhausting. It's exhausting when you get pulled into situations like this, and it's exhausting making an effort to avoid situations like this, because it's very easy to take things much too far and end up simply not wanting to talk to anyone. I have definitely reached that latter end of things, as there are times when I feel extremely lonely but unable to reach out to someone because I simply don't have the mental fortitude to be able to fully process how today's online interactions tend to work.

I think about this sort of thing quite a lot, and when I do, I always end up asking myself if it's really worse than it used to be, or if my perspective has just changed. And honestly, I'm not completely sure of the answer to that. I suspect it's a bit of both, because I know I have deliberately changed my online habits for the sake of a quiet life — but then I'll look at something like this legendary thread from Usenet circa 1997 and see that people getting really very cross about things that don't matter was still a thing back when I thought the Internet was much nicer.

I guess the difference is that there was a certain "barrier to entry" for the "tougher" parts of the Internet back then; I never went on Usenet, so I never saw any of that sort of thing. These days, that aggressive means of interacting with one another is just the norm; social media has become what Usenet was, only rather than being neatly segregated into interest groups, everyone has all been plunged into the same vat of boiling piss to fight it out among themselves and see who has the loudest voice. I'm aware that was an utterly tortuous metaphor but I don't care. My blog, my rules.

The other difference, of course, is that today I am aware of my own mental health conditions, including depressive and anxious episodes that occur sporadically, along with my underlying condition of Asperger's. Being aware of why I find certain things about socialising difficult is useful, but it can also make me feel more hesitant than I perhaps "should" be to engage with certain scenarios.

I don't really have a conclusion for all this; I just felt like thinking "out loud", as it were. And so there you have it. Now I'm off to go and eat chilli.

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I finally nuked my Twitter account completely.

There are a few main reasons for this, and I'd like to talk about them a bit today.

Firstly, Elon Musk's idiotic changes to the terms of the Twitter API, which has priced literally everyone out of being able to use it, have made the platform next to useless as a means of automatically sharing your work to an audience that supposedly signed up to follow your updates. It's both hilarious and tragic to see company after company sharing news posts that effectively say "lol, fuck Twitter".

Secondly, my previous justification of keeping my Twitter account around for the sake of friends and contacts just doesn't really feel like it's… justification any more. The friends in question rarely bother to get in contact, and there are other means for professional contacts to get in touch.

Thirdly, I'm just fucking sick of the most likely response you get to posting literally anything on there being vitriol and hate.

On the latter point, I recently posted an article about my negative experiences trying Ubisoft's Riders Republic via PlayStation Plus. The gist of the article, if you're one of those Internet denizens whose attention span has been shot too much to bother clicking on a link, was that the game was designed in such a way that it is genuinely insulting to the intelligence of anyone over the age of about 12. It doesn't let you just play; instead, you're bombarded with hours of mandatory tutorials and obnoxious zoomer slang, and this was enough to make me not even want to bother seeing if the game "got good" later.

I think this is something worth talking about, because it's the first time that I, as a 42 year old video game enthusiast who has been involved in the medium since the Atari days, felt completely alienated by a brand new, supposedly mainstream game. So I talked about it. Then I shared that article on Twitter.

One of the first responses I got was from someone who yelled at me, based entirely on the assumption that I'd said the exact opposite to what I'd actually written in the article. He'd obviously read the headline, made an assumption and then decided to shoot his dribbling, zit-encrusted mouth off at me, despite it taking nothing more than a single click and a minute or two of reading for anyone to see that he was talking complete horseshit. But you can bet anyone who "liked" his dumbshit comment wouldn't go and check whether or not he was right.

I spent a few hours last night and this morning feeling stressed and anxious about this. But then it just sort of dawned on me: fuck it. Why the fuck should I care what some obnoxious cunt on the Internet thinks? Why the fuck should I let one idiot have such power over my mental wellbeing, based entirely on the fact he's too much of a lazy shit to actually read something I wrote?

And the answer to that is that I shouldn't care; I shouldn't let one idiot do that. And since Twitter is the primary means of allowing idiots to do that, it needs to go. Completely. So it has.

On a related note, this news isn't finalised or official as yet, but it's pretty much confirmed that as of the beginning of July, I will be getting out of the professional "content creation" (ugh) game completely.

I won't go into details for now because things are still being hammered out, but suffice to say for now that it's nothing anyone needs to worry about — I'm simply changing my professional role in such a way that it means I can focus my attention entirely on the Evercade project, which I'm incredibly passionate about and is something where I feel genuinely valued by both my colleagues and by my "audience", such as they are.

I'm both happy and sad about this. I'm happy because it means that I can focus my professional life on something that I love, and because it means my free time will genuinely, completely be my own again. No more will I find myself "having" to play something for the sake of timely coverage; instead, I can just enjoy things at my own pace, and I'm really looking forward to that.

I'm sad, however, because I spent so much of my early life desperately wanting to follow in my brother's footsteps and be part of the games press — and yet by the time I actually managed to get there, it had changed irreversibly from what it used to be. And it only got worse from there.

Again, I won't go into details for now, as that's something to talk about in more detail once everything here has been finalised. But I'll say again, it's nothing to worry about — I'm proud of what I've worked on to date, will continue to work on things like this until the beginning of July, and this change is my decision rather than anyone else's.

I'm just tired. So very tired of "content creation" being such a completely thankless task. The modern Internet has set up a completely adversarial relationship between writers and their audiences, exemplified by the Twitter exchange I described above, and that is emphatically not why I got into this.

I got into writing about games because I love them. I got into games writing because I think they're culturally important. I got into games writing because I think despite that cultural importance, they're not being written about and analysed in anywhere near the depth they deserve.

And I got into games writing because while the big, dumb, obnoxious games like the aforementioned Riders Republic get to ride the wave of commercial success regardless of how shit they are, there are myriad games released literally every day that run the risk of languishing in obscurity without people telling others about them.

The trouble is, I've discovered over the last decade and a half or so, is that no-one really seems to actually care. Online, "content" is piss in the wind. It's only relevant for the day it's posted — if you're lucky enough to get anyone to notice it in the first place — and it's fucking impossible to get people to give a shit about something after the fact, unless, as I've seen on MoeGamer, you're literally the only person to have written something meaningful on a particular topic. (In my case, sex sim Honey Select Unlimited.)

Google is flooded by manipulative, exploitative, SEO-optimised sites posting vacuous individual "guide" articles for things they don't care about for no other reason than it brings in the clicks. And no-one at any point in the process gives a shit; the average Internet user doesn't have enough in the way of critical thinking skills to see the cynical way all this has been set up, and the writers at the sites themselves don't give a toss as long as the numbers go up.

All of this is the fault of everyone who has normalised the idea of "consuming content" rather than "reading interesting articles" and the like. You, collectively, have ruined both the games press specifically, and the broader Internet in general.

It's demoralising and infuriating, and if you've been around all this for as long as I have, seeing the way things have been going, it should be no surprise that I very much feel like stepping down from it all.

And so that's what I'm doing. From hereon, my professional work will be in something that actually matters, that I care about — and that other people actually care about, too. I suspect I'll be a lot happier as a result, but I can't help but feel a bit bad about that dream young me once had, and how it was never really possible.

It's becoming increasingly important to remember that the Internet -- and social media in particular -- presents a grossly distorted vision of how things actually are.

People love to complain. This is a trait traditionally and historically associated with the British, but it's most definitely not an exclusively British thing. Perhaps it once was, but it most certainly isn't any more. And as with so many things, we can probably blame the way in which the Internet has brought people together — something which should, inherently, be a good thing, but which has somehow become corrupted along the way.

As I've noted elsewhere, I'm not spending a ton of time on Twitter any more due to a combination of the horrible atmosphere that seeps from every pore of that website and the constant ridiculous changes Elon Musk keeps making on a seemingly daily basis. But occasionally, I can't help myself from clicking on one of the Trends out of sheer curiosity.

The other day, I happened to see that Evri was trending. Evri, if you're unfamiliar, is the new name that the courier company formerly known as Hermes decided to adopt for themselves a while back. I don't know the reasons for the rebrand and honestly I really don't care, because they're inevitably absolute bullshit and everyone knows that Evri is "really" Hermes anyway, so it's largely irrelevant.

However, what I found when looking at the Evri trend was that everyone was complaining about Evri. Everyone had the same stories to tell of parcels being lobbed over their fence, of packages arriving broken or tampered with, or generally some tale of misfortune and woe related to getting their package delivered from this one specific carrier.

Here's the thing: I've never had a problem with Evri or Hermes. I spent a brief period working for them while I was looking for a proper job and I know what it's like "from the inside" also. While it was a time-consuming, underpaid and largely thankless task for the couriers, it was a reasonably well-run operation in general, and there were various ways in which said couriers were encouraged to do a good job, up to and including being "watched" through the scanny things they're supposed to carry around with them.

As fortune would have it, for some reason during my brief time with the company I never actually got a scanny thing, so I never had to worry about such things — not that I had anything to particularly worry about anyway. But I digress.

I'm not saying no-one has ever had a problem with Evri or Hermes. But if you were to look at that trend on Twitter, the conclusion it would be easy to come to would be that they were a company that should be absolutely, completely and without doubt avoided at all cost, because literally every delivery they do is the absolute worst possible thing that has ever happened to someone, and they have ruined too many Christmases and children's birthdays to count.

This is nonsense. While it's foolish to assume that they're completely without fault — in any sort of "gig economy" sort of situation, you have a risk of bad apples, but this is also true for more formally structured corporations — it's also ridiculous to put across the impression that they're a complete failure that should never be trusted.

It's just one of many examples of the Internet painting the worst possible picture of something. And I could provide plenty of other examples at this point, but I'll refrain from doing so for the sake of time.

What I will urge you to do, however, is that if you see any sort of seemingly universally negative reaction towards something — particularly on any sort of standards-free platform such as social media or user reviews — then be cautious. Chances are the thing that is being ranted and raved about is nowhere near as bad as people are trying to put across — because let's face it, people are a whole lot more likely to complain about something than post about how they had no problems whatsoever with a company or service.

Perhaps we should change our outlook on such things. Perhaps we should start posting positive comments when a company does the right thing and does what is expected of them. Or perhaps that's ridiculous — after all, a service that is being provided to you conforming to your exact expectations should not be particularly worthy of comment at all, because, well, it's what you expected.

But then that means the negativity will always win, because the complainers will always speak up, while the satisfied customers will just quietly get on with their day, thinking nothing more of the company they've interacted with or the service they've received.

Perhaps the answer is just not to listen to anyone and make your own mind up.

My Twitter replacement

Photo by daniyal ghanavati on Pexels.com

Those who have been following the saga of social media for a while will know that Twitter is a right old mess right now. Between Elon Musk's incredible ego and a series of bizarre policy changes and introductions (most of which are likely related to Musk's ego in some form or another) it's certainly been interesting to watch the world's most popular social media platform (for how much longer?) go through some trials and tribulations.

But those of you who have been following me for a while will know that Twitter hasn't been much fun for a long time now. When I first joined (which must have been around 2007 or so, maybe?) it was a great place to make new friends, enjoy good conversation and just generally have a good time. But as the years have gone on — and particularly since the significant online upheavals that can be at least partly attributed to the "Gamergate" mess of 2014 — it's become a less and less desirable hangout, for a variety of reasons.

Chief among them for me is the combative, confrontational tone the site as a whole has taken on. While it is still possible to have civil conversations there, it feels like it's much more likely that if you post an opinion of your own someone will come along and shout it down before long. Even if your opinion is not, in the grand scheme of things, particularly important or worth getting upset over.

Anger seems to be the default state for many posters on Twitter, and this is often expressed through some seriously unpleasant behaviour. Anyone who is into Japanese games, for example, will doubtless have seen the disgusting vitriol that gets thrown the way of localisation staff (more specifically, female localisation staff) on a fairly regular basis, regardless of whether or not any "mistakes" have been made. And the same is true in all fields; the quote-tweet dunk is a universal constant, and it does not make for a friendly environment where one wants to hang out.

But alongside all this, Twitter itself has been changing in functional, mechanical terms. The rise of "The Algorithm" on all manner of social sites — with the most notorious being YouTube, of course — has meant that no longer can you count on your social media experience being your own, if indeed it ever was. Rather than showing you the things that your friends have been posting in the order that they were posted, you now get shit you didn't sign up for pushed into your feed as "recommendations", based on the ill-defined assumptions that Twitter makes about "quality content".

I never signed up to Twitter for "quality content". I signed up to chat with folks from a forum we all used to frequent that we weren't able to use any more due to the site's closure. That's all I really wanted. And that's emphatically not what the site provides these days.

So between the change in atmosphere, the change in the way the whole site works and the whole Musk fiasco, I've come to the conclusion that it's simply not worth wasting time pissing around on Twitter any more — if indeed it ever was. Rather, I think it's high time that I brought this blog back, since it's a much better means for me to express myself — plus the comments section is a much nicer way to hold a conversation in most cases. (Unless those people find their way here, but you know how it is.)

So that's what I'm going to do. I'll be keeping my Twitter account open because it's still useful for things like news aggregation and PR contacts, but pretty much all I'll be posting on there is links to stuff I've done, either for work or for pleasure. When I want to actually talk about something, I'll do it here, like in the good old days.

I'm not making any grand promises about posting frequency or anything like that, this is just going to be an "as and when I feel like it" sort of thing. I'm also not going to commit to doing silly comics or anything, even though I know one particular reader (whom I hope is doing well, given that I haven't heard from her for a while) is a big fan! This is my scratch pad, my brain dump and my place to express myself. No "algorithm" rules the roost here, and as such it's a much better means of getting to know me than the toxic bird site.

So see you around here, I hope!

2541: Farewell

This is my last daily post on this blog, to coincide with the last hour of the last day of 2016. I'm not going to rule out posting on here again when I feel like it, but this is the last of my daily entries. I feel that the exercise has run its course, and I'm definitely satisfied with what I've accomplished over the last 2,541 days.

Why am I stopping now? Well, it's part of a broader plan I outlined a few days ago. I want to unplug and get away from the constant noise of online culture in 2016. It stopped being fun a good while ago — roughly coinciding with the rise of the outrage brigade who love nothing more than using their social media clout to shame people for enjoying "problematic" material — but it's also been becoming increasingly apparent that the reasons I've been keeping my social media accounts active for as long as I have simply don't seem to be the reasons other people keep them active.

On previous occasions when I've considered deactivating my Facebook and Twitter accounts — Facebook in particular — the thing that has always stopped me is the thought that "oh, people won't be able to get hold of me easily, since everyone uses Facebook nowadays rather than anything else." But over time it's become apparent that while everyone does indeed use Facebook, pretty much the last thing they use it for is keeping in touch with other people. Rather, the inherent encouragement of narcissism in modern social media encourages people to post everything about their lives — or rather, everything in a heavily edited, idealised version of their lives — in an attempt to make other people feel like they should be having more fun/sex/babies/delicious meals/strong opinions about Donald Trump. And while that occasionally leads to heated debates in comment sections, it very rarely seems to lead to good conversations.

Twitter comes at it from a different angle. I've heard Twitter described as being like going to a party where everyone is shouting things at the room in general hoping other people will come and join the conversation, and that's a fairly apt description. The particular trouble with Twitter is that its original selling point — its 140-character limit, intended to encourage people to "microblog" rather than post walls of text — isn't conducive to nuanced discussion and debate, which leads to particularly obnoxious behaviour when people of differing ideologies and/or opinions about which anime girl is hottest come into contact with one another.

In short, I've been finding social media to be more trouble than it's worth, so I'm unplugging from the noise in the hope that those people who do value my friendship will make use of other, more private and personal means of contacting me rather than everything being aired in public. And this blog comes under that header, too.

This blog has been valuable "therapy" for me over the course of the last few years, which have been, to say the least, rather challenging and difficult for a variety of reasons. I've faced many obstacles — some of my own creation, some by other people being colossal jackasses and my not really having any power to do anything about that — and, while I wouldn't say my life is where I want it to be in the slightest, I feel that I've grown stronger as a person as a result.

But I feel like I need to start a new chapter. Leave behind the past, and look forward to a hopefully brighter future. It's not easy to shed emotional baggage — not to mention the physical baggage that mental stress can leave you with — but severing my ties with the past, be they social media accounts or indeed this blog, feels like the right thing to do right now.

I'm not disappearing entirely, mind you; as I mentioned in my previous post, I still intend to keep writing weekly on MoeGamer, which will become my main place to write about games I've found particularly interesting or exciting, so I encourage you to subscribe over there if you like what I'm doing. And for more general writing, I'm starting up a weekly TinyLetter — effectively a small-scale mailing list — for personal notes to those of you who have been kind enough to show me friendship and support over the last few years. If you're interested, you can sign up for that here. (Those of you for whom I have email addresses already, I'll be taking the liberty of signing you up automatically at some point on New Year's Day; I hope you don't mind, and if you do, please rest assured that if you decide you don't want to receive my notes, you can unsubscribe easily.)

Aside from that, though, at this point in my life I feel like broader Internet culture just doesn't hold the value it once did for me, so out the window the unnecessary crap goes for 2017. I'm not encouraging any of you to follow my lead and I'm certainly not casting any judgement on those of you who still find value in social media and Internet culture at large; I'm simply saying it's not for me, and explaining where I'll be going if you do want to find me.

If you'd like to stay in touch more privately, please either subscribe to my TinyLetter — which you can reply to just like a normal email — or drop me a message via my Get In Touch page with your email address and/or any other contact details you'd care to share.

For those who have supported this blog for any period of time — be you lurker or regular commenter — thank you, good night, and I wish you a happy, healthy and hearty New Year. Here's to 2017 being a better year for everyone.

2531: Planning to Unplug

After some discussion with my friend Chris recently — partly inspired by my recent post on mobile phone apathy — I've made the not particularly difficult decision to try and "unplug" as much as possible from the general noise of the Internet in 2017.

And I'm talking about more than just stepping away from Twitter and Facebook like I have done a few times in the past, as positive as those experiences turned out to be for me. I'm talking about a pretty thorough purge, and a return to a simpler, quieter life with fewer external stressors.

You see, the allure of the Internet and its ability to connect people from all over the world has kind of worn off somewhat for me. The last few years have demonstrated that there are a significant number of people out there who are more interested in conflict, oneupmanship and narcissism than actual meaningful interaction. The fall from grace of the games press — and many game journalists' pretty much unveiled hatred of their audiences — is just one of many examples of this, but the overall negativity that infuses what feels like the vast majority of online communications these days is just proving to be more trouble than it's worth.

I don't need that. It's not adding anything to my life — nothing good, anyway — so, I figure, why continue to put up with it? There's no need to.

As such, starting on New Year's Day, I'm going to begin a process of unplugging as much as I possibly can. Twitter and Facebook are both going completely, since the annoyance both of those bring to my life far outweighs the benefits of both of them. More significantly, I'm planning on ditching the smartphone age in favour of an older, simpler phone that doesn't bug me every five minutes with updates and notifications. At this point, I'm strongly considering picking up a second-hand N-Gage I've seen on Amazon, since that has the added benefit of being an underappreciated and increasingly rare gaming platform as well as a phone I very much enjoyed using when I originally had one.

I'm also going to draw my time with this blog to a close. I'm satisfied with what I've achieved here since I started, but the time has come to move on. I'm not going to give up regular writing, mind you; I'm still going to post weekly articles over on MoeGamer, since those have a clear focus, and I'm also intending to start a weekly TinyLetter as a more private, more personal substitute for my daily updates here. I'll post details on how to sign up for that towards the end of the year, so those of you who want to continue to follow what I'm up to can do so.

I'll be keeping more personal means of communication open. My email address and Google Hangouts accounts will still be active, as will my gaming accounts on Steam, Xbox Live and PSN. But the shouting into the void that is public social media will, hopefully, become a thing of the past. It's no longer enjoyable, useful or fun, so I have no need for it.

I'm not going to put my personal email, Google Hangouts and gaming account addresses in this post for obvious reasons, but if you are interested in staying in touch via any of these means, please feel free to drop me a line via my Contact page explaining who you are and how you know me. If we've chatted before in the past, great, no problem; if we've never spoken before, however, please do include a bit about yourself in your message.

That's the plan, then. And I anticipate that it will lead to a happier, more peaceful and less stressful 2017 for me. At least I hope it does, anyway!

2528: 30 Day Video Game Challenge All in One Day Because Otherwise I Won't Remember to Do the Rest of It

Every so often, one of those "30-day challenges" does the rounds on Twitter, Facebook and whatever, and while I'm often tempted to participate, I know that a few days in I'll probably forget all about it.

So to prevent that from happening, I'm going to answer all 30 prompts from the "30 Day Video Game Challenge" — which most people seem to have been doing throughout December, which is nearly over, anyway — in one post because fuck convention, I do what I want because I'm a strong independent woman who don't need no man.

All right. Let's begin.

1. Very first video game

Honestly hard to recall, because I grew up with gaming as part of my household. I was born in 1981 and estimate I probably started playing video games around the age of maybe 4 or 5 or so, which would mean my first video game would be one of the hundreds of pirated Atari 8-Bit games that my father and brother had acquired from the local "computer club".

Let's go with Star Raiders, even if it wasn't, because Star Raiders is awesome and naming that as my first video game surely gets me some gaming hipster cred.

2. Your favourite character

I have a whole bunch of favourite characters from a variety of different franchises, so again it's hard to pick one. If absolutely pressed to name just a single one, however, I think I'd probably have to go with Estelle from Trails in the Sky. She's cute, sassy, tomboyish and immensely appealing to me in all manner of different ways, both in terms of her looks and her attitude.

3. A game that is underrated

The original Hyperdimension Neptunia. While its technical shortcomings are self-evident from the moment you start playing it, and it makes some baffling mechanical decisions, it's one of the most memorable games I've ever played, through a combination of its absolutely charming characterisation and those aforementioned baffling mechanical decisions.

4. Your guilty pleasure game

I have no guilt in enjoying any games whatsoever, regardless of their content. I guess the only one I probably wouldn't make a point of talking about in polite company would be Custom Maid 3D 2, and even then I have been known to talk about its interesting stat-raising gameplay as much as its explicit polygonal pornography.

5. Game character you feel you are most like (or wish you were)

I've encountered quite a few relatable characters over the course of my years in gaming. It's tempting to pick someone like Noire from the Neptunia series for her somewhat solitary tendencies, though I wouldn't describe myself as tsundere as she is. Someone like Rosangela Blackwell from the Blackwell series of adventure games from Wadjet Eye Games springs to mind; she's a writer who attempts to make the best of a difficult situation. And okay, I don't have a ghost partner with whom I put restless spirits to rest, but I did feel a certain degree of kinship with Rosa's general personality and attitude.

6. Most annoying character

The dude who had the "FOLLOW" marker over his head for almost the entire duration of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, who got to do all the interesting things while I ran along behind him shooting predictable waves of bad guys. That was the last Call of Duty I ever played.

7. Favourite game couple

Gotta be someone from Grisaia here, though I'm somewhat torn between Yuuji and Amane (Amane was my own personal "best girl") and Yuuji and Yumiko (whom I felt arguably made a "better" couple). Let's say Yuuji and Amane.

8. Best soundtrack

Final Fantasy XIV. My enthusiasm for Square's reborn MMO may have lapsed for the moment, but I never, ever tire of its masterful soundtrack by Masayoshi Soken.

9. Saddest game scene

The end of To The Moon. That was the first game since the first time I played Final Fantasy VII to genuinely make me sob uncontrollably.

10. Best gameplay

This is near-impossible to answer because I play so many different types of games that aren't directly comparable. If we're just talking games I've played in the last year, Dungeon Travelers 2's beautiful mechanics and level design are definitely near the top of the pile.

11. Gaming system of choice

Again, hard to pick one, since I do a lot of gaming on a variety of different platforms. I think in terms of "platform that has the most games I want to play on it", though, it's between PS4 and Vita, with Vita having the slight edge by virtue of having been around a little longer as well as being backwards compatible.

12. A game everyone should play

Splatoon. It's just such an utterly joyful experience — and totally free of the arrogant elitism that often plagues online games, thanks to Nintendo's arguably overprotective approach to online interactions — that even the most staunch anti-multiplayer gamer can't fail to have a good time with this one. And then it goes and has a fantastic single-player mode with one of my favourite final bosses of all time, too. Everyone should play Splatoon, and I hope it makes a comeback on Nintendo Switch.

13. A game you've played more than five times

I'm assuming this means "to completion". Final Fantasy VII is the first that springs to mind (I completed this at least 10 times during the first summer I became aware of the series) but you can also throw in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, too.

14. Current (or most recent) gaming wallpaper

15. Post a screenshot from the game you're playing right now.

(Stock screenshot, I know, but I can't be arsed to turn my PS4 on and go through the faff of getting a screenshot off it.)

16. Game with the best cutscenes

The big "oh shit" moment halfway through Final Fantasy Type-0 is going to take some beating this year, but Final Fantasy XV also has plenty of incredible cutscenes, too. I can't in good conscience give this one to anything but a modern Final Fantasy game.

17. Favourite antagonist

Metal Face from the original Xenoblade Chronicles. In the English… uh, British dub, he struck an incredible balance between being comedic and terrifying. I remember I was genuinely shocked at quite how far that game went with the brutality and unpleasantness, and Metal Face was a great figure to express your anger towards.

18. Favourite protagonist

I've already given "favourite character" to Estelle from Trails in the Sky, so it's only right I give this one to Nepgear. Yes, Nepgear, because she was totally the protagonist of Neptunia mk2/Re;Birth2 and I will not hear a word said against the dear girl by anyone. Also I like Nepgear because she reminds me of myself. If, you know, I was a pretty young girl with a figure to die for rather than a 30-something hairy dude.

19. Picture of a game setting you wish you lived in

20. Favourite genre

RPG, no question. Honourable mentions to point-and-click adventures, visual novels and arcade-style racing games.

21. Game with the best story

If you count visual novels, The Fruit of Grisaia, with absolutely no hesitation.

If you don't count visual novels, which I know some people don't, then I loved the Ys series, particularly Ys Origin. The amount of thought which had gone into the lore of that world is simply incredible, and Origin brought the legends you learn about in the first two games well and truly to life.

Damn, now I want to play Ys Origin again.

22. A game sequel that disappointed you

Mass Effect 2 is the only example that springs immediately to mind. I was one of the few people who actually rather liked the clunky RPG systems of the original, so I was disappointed when 2 felt like more of a conventional shooter, both in terms of mechanics and structure. The story was decent and I enjoyed my time with it, but not enough to want to either go back or play the sequel.

23. Game you think had the best graphics or art style

I absolutely adore the art in the Atelier series, particularly the Arland trilogy. The lovely soft lines and pastel colours project such a wonderful aura of calm about them, and that's something that's altogether much too rare in an era of increasing grimdark.

24. Favourite classic game

At last, a question where I can honestly put Star Raiders as my answer and know there can be no argument about it.

25. A game you plan on playing

Trails in the Sky SC, Trails of Cold Steel and Trails of Cold Steel II. I've only played the first Trails in the Sky, but that was enough for me to fall in love with Estelle.

26. Best voice acting

The original Corpse Party on PSP. This was the game that made me switch from dubs to Japanese voiceovers whenever I get the opportunity. Although the audio was in a different language to one I understood, the sheer amount of passion that the actors infused their lines with was incredible, and a big part of the reason that game had such a profound impact on me.

27. Most epic scene ever

Battling Bahamut in Final Coil in Final Fantasy XIV is hard to beat, if that counts as a "scene".

28. Favourite game developer

I'm a fan of Falcom and Square Enix's Final Fantasy team, but I've grown to adore Idea Factory/Compile Heart over the last few years, so I think it's only right to give this title to them.

29. A game you thought you wouldn't like, but ended up loving

Criminal Girls. I picked it up mostly out of curiosity — and partly because I'd heard people call it shit and wanted to judge for myself — but discovered to my surprise that it was a brilliant game with some inventive mechanics and a thought-provoking story.

30. Favourite game of all time

I haven't played it for years now, but whenever anyone asks me this question my immediate thought is always Final Fantasy VII. So it's probably that.

Honourable mentions to Recettear, Geometry Wars 2 and Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+.

2488: That Happened

Are you familiar with the subreddit /r/thatHappened? It is one of the more popular subreddits out there, devoted to posting the sort of "PLEASE LIKE AND SHARE!!" garbage that people so like to festoon their social media walls with these days.

Posts that crop up on /r/thatHappened typically have a number of things in common.

Firstly, they usually involve someone making a point of saying they were doing something entirely mundane, like going to school or filling their car with petrol.

Next, they introduce another character of some description, typically a stranger, but one whom the author of the post mysteriously seems to know absolutely everything about, right down to their ethnicity, age, employment status, affluence and anything else you'd care to mention.

Optionally, a child can be involved in the story. If a child is involved in the story, said child will be quoted saying something that no child in the world has ever said, something which can easily be discerned by the use of vocabulary or turn of phrase. Even at my most precocious growing up, when I knew what words like "floccinaucinihilipilification" and "antidisestablishmentarianism" meant (and how to spell them), I still spoke like, y'know, a kid. Kids in these stories never do, usually coming out with some sort of profound wisdom you'd normally expect to hear from a wizened old karate master or something.

The author of the story, the character they introduced (who is inevitably a minority of some description) and/or the child will then become involved in some sort of altercation with an antagonist, who is almost definitely a white male, because as we all know white men are all literally Satan.

The story will then go one of two ways. 1) The author, the character and/or the child will then devastate their opponent in some exaggerated manner, either physically or with razor-sharp wit. The white male(s) will then inevitably leave with their tails between their legs. Alternatively, 2) The author, the character and/or the child will suffer some sort of sexist, racist, ableist, homophobic or transphobic indignity that is so profoundly terrible that the author's immediate reaction was to post it on Facebook rather than take it to the authorities.

In the case of 1): If the altercation took place in a public place such as a school, petrol station or coffee shop, everyone surrounding the author, the character and/or the child will then spontaneously break into applause and at least one person will be crying.

In the case of 2): The author will blame the altercation on a major event that has happened in the news recently and will confess to be "crying right now", with bonus points if they are doing so "into [their] cereal" or some other foodstuff.

In both cases, the author will then attempt to sign off with some sort of quasi-poetic but ultimately asinine truism and encourage everyone to Like, Comment and Share their post to "raise awareness". Said post (which is inevitably set to Public visibility, even if the author typically keeps their social media pages private) will then receive multiple thousands of Likes, Comments and Shares through the phenomenon of virality, with a significant number of people sharing it doing so blindly without bothering to ponder how exactly something quite so improbable happened, or indeed questioning the author on further details of the incident. (This was a terrible racist/sexist/ableist incident, don't you know? You can't ask questions, you might traumatise the poor soul further!)

Once you're familiar with this template, you can spot bullshit a mile off. I encourage you to get intimately acquainted with it before clicking that "Share" button in the future. On a related note, I also encourage you to familiarise yourself with Snopes.com if you aren't already.

That is all.