Darklord Rooke

Congratulations on your promotion Politics and delays, ain't that the way of things ... Also I wouldn't worry too much about Fata Morgana, you're not missing much

Rating systems are useless at delivering any sort of detailed information to the viewer. All it gives is a rather vague impression of whether a person liked or disliked it. The important information is the reasoning (text) behind the rating, often given in the form of a review. Because of this, a super-precise rating system isn't needed and you should just fling out any number that feels right.

The first game in the legendary Princess Maker series has been localised and released on Steam. This came out of nowhere for me, but I'm always happy to see more sims in the West. Princess Maker 2 had a dodgy localisation though, so that's something to bear in mind along with it's ... elderly-ness. I encourage everyone to play this game and see just how poor a father you will-be/are PS: I really love this old art style :3 http://store.steampowered.com/app/583040/

Thanks Tayleen for this No, that wasn't a typo. Yes, I posted solely to try out a new nickname for the two of you :3

Already halfway to goal. The much-hyped Kickstarter fatigue people keep going on about doesn't seem to be materialising to the extent hoped/expected. Looks like a pretty fun VN :3

It's been my opinion for over a year now that VNs need to get on handheld devices. Pure VNs are often compared to books, you don't play them but rather read them, which means they're often targeted more at readers than gamers. Readers like portability, they don't like to be chained to their PC or their lounge to read their stuff. VNs on mobile and handhelds sell really well. The otome market, for example, has exploded on mobile.

He has an actual personality, unlike most VN protagonists. People may not like that personality, but at least it isn't dull.

http://www.history.com/topics/valentines-day/history-of-valentines-day To be honest ... Lupercalia sounds more entertaining. Just sayin'

I trend away from mainstream opinion here. I'm a big fan of no voices for this exact reason. Less money spent on voice acting means not only the possibility of extra content, but it also means the game doesn't have to sell as well to recoup money. The latter reason means more risks could be taken with the content, whereas as a large budget game will have to try and pander to the largest possible audience group possible.

The Schumann Resonance is a nice bit of world building, that it's an actual scientific theory gives the world some weight, but it isn't really an essential detail.

G’day everyone,I thought I’d see how hard it is to deconstruct the first episode of Lain. Serial Experiments Lain is often seen as one of the weirdest, and most confusing anime but I think it’s blown way out of proportion. One of its strengths is that you don’t understand everything on the first watching, one of its weaknesses is that you don’t understand everything on the first watching, but I don’t remember it being too confusing. So to put that to the test I’m going to rewatch the first episode for the first time in a decade, and quickly write down my thoughts while viewing it. This will be a quick analysis, there’ll be things that are missing like the importance of certain artistic effects, but it should show that getting a general idea of what’s going on isn’t too hard. Obviously spoiler alert. EPISODE 1: Key points in the first episode: - First scene and we see a young girl distressed in an alley. She’s panting, hand on heart, either running or fearful. A group of passers-by stop to point and laugh, uncaringly. Is that not the way of the world? This uncaring disconnect between people? This lack of empathy? Amid the normal everyday actions of Tokyo’s (I assume) nightlife, that same young girl now appears on a rooftop. She strips herself of her glasses, her hair unties, a metaphor showing herself becoming free. She has a smile on her face and she throws herself off the building. That she wasn’t scared or distressed means she wasn’t running away from something, rather she was at peace and happy which means she’s running toward something. What was she running toward? No clue at this stage. Anyway, the silence of her suicide scene and her beautiful smile juxtapose harshly with her loud and violent death. Words appear on the screen - ‘I don’t need to stay in a place like this’. - Next scene Lain appears on a bright morning in school get up. She’s walking down the stairs and is on her way to school. The imagery here is interesting, there’s an electrical hum that permeates strongly and a focus on the power lines. The hum is a metaphor for the wired or ‘internet’ which is everywhere, connecting people and hovering eternally in the background of everyday life. There and yet not there. The powerlines are the same and they also connect everything, but they don’t hover in the background. However, the shadows splotched with what I assume is blood at times are annoying. It was a late decision to insert the metaphor into the anime connecting shadows with the wired, that the wired is everywhere just underneath the surface. A shadow world. I believe they stuffed up here. This was already done with the humming, it was already done with the powerlines, this is just a rather inelegant way of hammering the audience with a concept and I just think it’s ugly and gaudy. It makes things easier for the creators to get some stuff across, but I think it’s unnecessarily whimsical. Anyway what’s done is done, so most every piece of shadow is splotched with stuff. - Lain is on a train travelling to school. Everyone on board is doing their own thing as people in society tend to do. In silence. We are becoming increasingly disconnected with each other, so we have people reading, sleeping, gazing romantically out of windows, but nobody interacting and sharing their lives. However Lain comments on how noisy it is, asking why things can’t quiet down. It confuses the train’s inhabitants because it’s quiet in the real world, but I’m sure that electric hum indicates a greater interactivity and connectivity somewhere else. Also interesting that Lain can hear it. Lain doesn’t notice the commotion she causes those near her. - She arrives at school with herself gazing at her splotchy shadow, then looking up and seeing reality melt away. Obviously not a metaphor at all of something, which isn’t at all related to the metaphor on the train. - In class one of Lain’s classmates is distressed. It appears the young lass who just committed suicide (Yomoda Chisa) has been sending emails to everybody, but how can that be when she’s dead? ‘You shouldn’t be getting mail from a dead girl’ says one of the girls. What truly sage advice. Interesting theme of digital existence is raised here, though. I wonder how they will deal with it. It should be noted here that this show was created in the 90s, well before these themes became mainstream. Words appear on the screen - ‘What’s it like when you die?’ ‘It really hurts :)’ – only if you chuck yourself off a building, crash through some neon signs, and have a vending machine topple onto you after you hit the pavement. In programming class, reality once again begins to melt away from Lain. Sounds fade away, things begin to blur, white smoke from fingers. Lain’s beginning to see things. - Lain is walking again, presumably home from school. In her bedroom she loads up her computer to discover she has mail from Yomoda Chisa. Not just any mail but a very personalised email from Yomoda Chisa resembling a conversation. ‘I walked home with you once, do you remember Lain? I have given up my body, but through this email I want you to know I’m still alive. Rumour has it that this is a prank, but it isn’t. Do you understand? No matter, everyone will understand soon.’ Absent here is the MWAHAHA evil laugh every member of a nefarious organisation uses when plotting something. Pity. When asked why she killed herself, Yomoda responds ‘God is here’. - Lain is at dinner with a very cold, unfeeling family. They are thoroughly disconnected from one another. There's no sharing of lives and feelings here. The sister leaves without finishing dinner to do her own thing. When Lain tells her mother about the email from the dead lady, her mother doesn’t respond. From her facial expression she doesn’t care. - She goes to find her father, who is a huge computer nerd and is so lost in the tech word he also doesn’t take an interest in his family’s life. She asks for a new computer so she can see a friend and he’s obviously happy to oblige saying she’s being left in the dust. ‘People connect with each other, that’s how society’s function’ the father says as he interacts with faceless avatars on the computer/wired (metaphor alert.) Remarkably these futuristic computers look like they’re running Windows 3.1 or something xD - Next scene. Lain’s on a train riding to school when the train suddenly halts due to an accident. And when I say ‘suddenly halts’ I mean it looks as though Lain is violently thrown into the door. She shakes it off like a champ, though. Lain looks out the window and things become white, the electrical hum gets louder, and splotchy shadows tinged with blood drip from the power lines. That’s a pretty strong metaphor about what just occurred, blood melting into the wired, also it shows that reality is melting away taking Lain along for the ride (or is it the other way round?) - Scenes flutter quickly one after another, whether by chance or is Lain searching for something? The middle of a busy crossing, stairs leading out of a subway, an empty school courtyard, an empty room, then white smoke, train tracks and ... the silhouette of a girl? The girl hops the barricade and runs in front of a train, a fanatical look on her face as the train collides with her. Is she laughing? Was this the cause of the accident Lain was just involved in? Why is Lain viewing this? - Lain jerks back to reality in her school classroom drenched with sweat. The teacher admonishes her and walks away. The words on the chalkboard start blurring and reality once again melts away from Lain. New words appear on the blackboard asking Lain to visit the Wired ASAP. - As Lain walks home she’s walking in the splotchy shadow. It surrounds her. Possibly important, because at this moment Yomoda Chisa strolls past. ‘Where are you’ Lain asks. Yomoda smiles, then her normal sad expression returns. Yomoda disappears. So yeah, the anime is confusing but I think it’s blown way out of proportion. If you pay attention and possibly do a bit of research, you should be fine. You might not get everything, but you’ll understand the gist of it. Though I doubt anybody is interested in the brief analysis of an almost 20 year old anime's first episode.

Yes, the crux of the problem, most art doesn't sell. In an ideal world wealth distribution will be a thing but we're far from that stage, and the answer to getting most artists to make a decent living is likely not to be tied to any commercial market. Commercial markets rely on games selling and indie games and art doesn't sell and so you have a vicious cycle. Desura went bankrupt, Steam is commonly seen to be floating with trash (and trash isn't something you label a product you see as having any worth.) Patreon while making things easier is still a market solution and there still isn't enough people willing to dish out for art. That's why you still have the majority of artists in poverty. Am I being miserable or just being realistic? Am I complaining that artists weren't starving anymore? Artists never stopped starving. When I began learning about writing about a decade ago, we were told that if you went into the business for money, we may as well turn around and find something else to do. I have yet to see conditions improve enough where this is no longer the go-to advice. The last few years have seen a boom in Indie gaming. Why? Because Steam just let the doors open and people started flooding in. When indie games just began to enter the market there were a few indie games and a whole shitload of curious buyers. Now there's a whole shitload of indie games and not many interested buyers. Steam, being a market platform, needed to fix this. Not only are indie developers complaining about there being too many indie developers, you have consumers complaining there are too many indies. This is the problem, not my miserableness (although it is considerable) but rather normal market behaviours. It won't be solved by burying your head in the sand or petitioning Steam to change, the problem will continue. You won't get them. Firstly professional artists cost too much for what VN developers are willing to fork out. Secondly working on what may or may not be construed as a porn game may or may not hinder that artist's career. If you can't afford a couple of thousand bucks to register, forget about hiring a professional artist.

And if it doesn’t, time to move platforms. At the end of the day Steam’s goals are different to your goals. They may align at certain points but overall they are different. If the platform no longer meets your requirements, an Indie platform may be better. Indie platforms need more attention and focus on them anyway.

Which results in people following art out of passion instead of people following art to make a quick buck. Which is what indie games were traditionally about as opposed to making a quick buck which is what mainstream games are commonly derided for. If what you’re concerned about is primarily making money, Indie Gaming has traditionally not been a viable career choice. Neither is writing (most writers live in poverty) neither is being a starving artist. This is just the reality of the situation. If you’re primary concern is making money, the traditional advice is to stay away from Indie gaming. If you want to pursue that path than complain that it’s hard to make money, then I honestly don’t know what to say to you. Other than stay away from Indie Gaming, I suppose. Most games pass through Steam Greenlight, and it has failed in what it set out to do. Putting down a couple of thousand bucks shows you aren’t a 15 year old kid chucking a 100 buck game on Steam for shits and giggles. Which gets upvoted on Greenlight by everybody in their grade for, again, shits and giggles. Problems will occur for people in different regions, potentially solved by regional pricing (a nifty invention that I don’t benefit from, even though the Aussie dollar is worth less than the Antartican variety I assume.) I’ve followed Indie developers who have spent over a 100k and a decade of their life crafting their games. 2,000 bucks? Not a significant investment for anyone in the Western world. And regional pricing will solve regional currency differences.

I remember back in the old days when Indie games were created by those with an undying passion and a willingness to sacrifice their time, sacrifice their money, and face vicious curses from angry pagans in a bid to create their game. These days we have the opposite, we have a race to the bottom by countless indies spoilt by the Steam era, spoilt by the ability to digitally publish their game and have it pushed at the faces of countless people for very little. I despair at what the Indie community has become. There have been over 14,000 games greenlit not to mention those in the process either waiting or failed. The idea that a 'couple of moderators' could offer an effective curation process which emphasises quality as well as abiding by Steam's rules is ludicrous. These curators would have to go through a not insignificant number of games every day. Not to mention that Steam will cop the blame from angry developers whenever their game is rejected "why did Developer A get accepted and I didn't? Is it because I didn't grease any palms? I can grease palms too, you guys just never told me I had to do that! This is blatant favourtism, it's bias, tell me where you live so I can light your trashcan on fire and hold up some signs!" Steam has copped a lot of flak from developers over the years, and for what? For publishing developers games on their platform for almost nothing? For exposing their game to the biggest community of gamers for almost nothing? Modern indie developers have little clue how good they've had it. And now it looks like it's coming to an end, as most good things do. Having zero quality control over the process has damaged the Steam brand. A thorough curation process is always the best option, but the bigger Steam gets and the more games there are the harder that becomes. So now we get to a pay wall. A couple of thousand dollars is not a significant amount of money for those serious in creating games, and it will limit the number of cheap, soulless games get developed by people who don't invest much in its creation. And the fee will likely be returned to the developer once the game hits a certain "revenue target". So now your game is rewarded for actually selling. If people don't agree with this, then Indies should band together and make an Indie platform a success. Like Desura.

It's basically just ensuring games put onto the Steam service are serious and/or have at least a little capital behind them. It will curtail (to some extent) the flood of cheap, crappy, RPGMaker games that are appearing on the platform. In the absence of a quality curating service, it's not a bad alternative. I don't mind.

The most compelling reason to get rid of it is because some 'EVNs' aren't English, and it's a tag that typically just means 'an Indie developed VN not originated in Korea or Japan'.

When I first saw that scene in the first episode, my initial reaction was they were paying tribute to Initial D. It made me and some other fans quite happy

Gone Home is an adventure game. Adventure games have 3 characteristics - a narrative, puzzles, and exploration, and Gone Home more than qualifies here. Her Story is a mystery game with the player in charge of the investigation. Both of these examples have a degree of interactivity pure VNs just don't have.

I'm always doing a couple of things at the same time, so always windowed mode for me

I am semi looking forward to this, so I'm going to cross my fingers that the translation wasn't botched

I haven't played it, but from the few screenshots I saw it looked well below the quality I'd expect from an official localisation. There was one screenshot which contained only a single sentence that exhibited filtering in the narration, a redundant (needless) adverb, and an overuse of 'ing' verbs. That's a lot of problems for a single sentence to have. I thought at the time that I hoped it wasn't indicative of the entire translation 0.0

A jaded man would question whether this is the most appropriate place for inserting a character's story ... just sayin :3