January 2019 - Page 5 of 6 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Pay for Placement Scam

January 9, 2019 by Belghast

I am breaking my review of the games coming out in 2019 to talk briefly about a weird experience I am having with a website. In my travels the other day I stumbled across one of those “Top 100 Gaming Blogs” lists, and I clicked through to see if there were any blogs on it that I recognized. Generally speaking this is not the case because in my experience these lists tend to include a ton of corporate blogs managed by the game companies themselves. The sites listed largely fit this bill, but as you got towards the bottom of the list I saw a bunch of smaller sites… none that I actually recognized but still smaller than MassivelyOp that was also on the list. Looking around the site it seemed to be a mishmash of two things happening… firstly it was some sort of a RSS reader tool that seemed to suggest that you could subscribe to a bunch of sites and get their content delivered to your mailbox.

Secondly it seemed to be selling access to the blog information to marketers, since when you register a site you are providing a contact name, the URL and an email associated with the blog. Claiming to be able to provide relevant bloggers in a given subject area. There was a form that allows you to submit your blog and on a whim I decided to do just this. At this point things start getting really weird and shady. You notice I have not mentioned the site yet or linked to them… it is largely because of the behavior that followed and my not wanting to give them any eyeballs as a result. Within minutes of signing up for the website I got the following email in my inbox.

feedspot-payforplacement

So essentially on top of selling to marketers, they are also double dipping on the back end and running a pay for placement scam. This email arrived so rapidly that it has to have been scripted, and that they did not actually take any time to review my website. Additionally it isn’t really a “top 100 gaming blogs” list if you are letting people pay money to get onto it. As a curiosity I clicked through to see how much it cost for this gold service, and things get even stranger. For reference its roughly $24 a year, to essentially place your website on one of their lists, which is a thing I was not interested in. However two hours after clicking on the link to view the pricing… I got this email.

feedspot-goldoffer

Of note… I am blanking out the guys name because he keeps email from his personal account on the site in question and in general I don’t think it is terribly cool to spread someones actual name around. I am not trying to Dox the person after all. Things keep getting weirder from here. Roughly eight hours pass and I get an email from the site telling me that I need to verify my email address. My working theory is that since I had not been responding to this guy at all… he is assuming at this point that I must have given him a bogus address. At this point I am finding this whole process interesting… so I validate the address and upon landing on the site it tells me that my account is in violation and that I have signed up for too many websites. That in order to keep using the service I will have to upgrade to Gold.

feedspot-furtherpush

This morning I got the above email which is honestly what prompted me to take time and write about this scam. Notice how that it has switched from being listed on a top 100 list to being listed on a top 200 list. Additionally they are pushing a bunch of information about the site trying to sell you on how many eyeballs your $24 a year is going to be buying you. Back in High School there was something referred to as the “Top Scholars” scam, and there were a few perpetrators out there. They would request mailing lists for all of the graduating seniors and send out a message targeted at the parents touting that their child had been selected as some sort of an elite scholar and that they had earned the rights to be listed in some book. They go on at length about how much this book is going to improve their chances of getting into a good college, and that the only catch is that they needed to purchase one of these deluxe edition gold leaf adorned $150 tomes to go ahead with the listing. Thankfully our gifted and talented coordinator warned all of the parents about this scam and as a result my parents did not fall for it… but I know others who did.

What we are seeing with Feedspot is a confusion amalgamation of product offerings… including something that is very much the digital version of that scam. They seem to be targeting the bloggers themselves and promising fame and more traffic and targeting the marketers promising a verified list of contacts to get them in touch with people who could influence their customers. For everyone else… you have a RSS feed site that offers an email digest service. There is nothing necessarily “wrong” with a capital W about anything they are doing, but it is nonetheless somewhat shady. The thing is… this isn’t the only site offering a somewhat questionable top 100 list and likely not the only site that is going to offer to place your site on said list for a small fee. This is more or less a public service announcement that when you see something like this… it is likely going to be a scam.

I’ve still not responded to any emails from the site, because at this point I find it sort of entertaining. Hell if they actually do read my blog they might make a response here, but I have been pretty careful not to actually include links to any of their content. Posts like this one are likely why no one will ever take this blog seriously… however I do have an interesting product review in the works. I’ve always said that I was willing to review products if they actually were something somewhat related to my interests… and if there were no strings attached… and someone actually finally nibbled on my conditions. So we will see how well that works out once the product actually arrives.

2019 Looking Forward: Games with Release Dates

January 8, 2019 by Belghast

Over the weekend I talked a bit on the podcast about the various games that were coming out this year that I happened to be interested in. This morning I thought I would start a series where I talk about some of them here on the blog. It is a really big list so as a result I felt like I needed to break it up a bit. This morning we are starting off with the games that actually have fixed release dates… so I would say these are the MOST likely to release during the 2019 calendar year. I’m going to be talking about them in chronological order of release dates. I’m also listing the platform I am currently targeting at playing the game on.

New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – Switch – January 11th

There is so much wrong with the name of this game and it represents all of Nintendo’s jacked up naming conventions colliding at once. That said I am really looking forward to playing this on a console that I actually enjoy playing. Sure this is another repackage of a WiiU game for the Switch… but I am in support of this practice because I have no interest in actually playing my WiiU. It was not a great console… but it happened to have more than a handful of really interesting titles on it. I hope they all get the re-release treatment, because the switch is just a more versatile platform. This comes out in three days so it represents the first of the titles on the list that I am interested in.

Onimusha: Warlords – Switch – January 15th

I loved the Onimusha series on the PS2 and am super amped about this game getting a re-release. It is coming out on PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Switch… and quite honestly I am not really certain which platform I intend to pick it up on. Given that it appears to be a remaster and not a remake… I figure it is going to control like a PS2 era game which leads me down the path of favoring playing this on a console as opposed to the PC. I figure even on PC it will mostly be required to hook up a controller to be able to experience the title, so I might as well just start out on a console for the native controller experience. At this very moment I am leaning towards Switch as it gives me a wider breadth of play options.

Metro Exodus – PC – February 15th

This list is going to include a bunch of games that I am excited about… but likely won’t play at release. Metro Exodus is the first of these, largely because it is releasing in a time with a pretty packed number of releases… and a game that I way more interested is releasing a week later. I’ve come to peace with the fact that the Metro series is not in fact Russian Fallout as it originally appeared. I can live with it being a mostly on rails shooter experience, because the world is so rich and interesting. This game however supposedly opens the world up a bit giving you more freedom to roam around in the maps a bit. There is also supposedly part of the game that takes place on the literal rails… and I loved Snowpiercer. It looks really interesting so it goes on the list.

Far Cry New Dawn – PC – February 15th

This appears to be the year of neon color palette post apocalyptic games. I talked briefly about this game yesterday when I spoke of Far Cry 5, and I am still really interested to see how that setting turns into this one. This is also likely to get played way after the release date because once again it butts up against a game I am looking forward to more fervently. I feel like I might be in a kick of playing single player titles, and this is another on that fits into that list. However I still have a pretty hefty backlog of titles I have started but never finished… like Assassin’s Creed Origins and God of War… so it seriously might be a while before I try it.

Anthem – PC – February 22nd

Now for the title that is holding the last two hostage. I am super limited in what I can say about this game because NDA… but I have an awful lot of hopes riding on it. I also want to give Bioware a shot at making this work, because I feel like this might be the last chance EA gives that studio before shuttering them. I am not being hyperbolic here… EA has a proven track record of closing studios when it deems they are no longer profitable. As a new IP… it looks really interesting and I think there is going to be enough meat on these bones to satisfy the fans that cut their teeth on the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series. I also think this game is angling for splitting the difference between Destiny and Warframe and creating a game that probably appeals to both tribes of players. All of those things seem really good… it just depends on how the game launches. I will be playing on PC, so if you are also planning on playing let me know. I have no clue what the Guild/Clan systems are going to be like but it would be nice to gather up a decent amount of folks for launch.

The Division 2 – PC – March 15th

Now for the first of two titles that I am really not certain about. I liked The Division for about the first twenty levels of gameplay… and then it became a slog as things started to get more serious and the mobs became more bullet-spongey and I seemed to be wearing paper thin armor. I finally reached the level cap back in October… but that was a really long ride of me bouncing out pretty regularly before I finally got there. I have not pre-ordered this game, because in truth I really want to see more of it before that happens. I was hoping I would get into an Alpha or Beta so it could win me over, but a combination of the bleak setting mixed with the third person shooter game play… it may not be the game I am looking for. That said I know a lot of people will be playing it. Ultimately whether I give this a shot depends largely on how engaged in Anthem I am just shy of a month after its launch.

Rage 2 – PC – May 14th

I feel like I am one of the few people who hold a serious candle for the original Rage. I loved everything about it… except for the fact that it felt like it simply was not finished. As you near the end of the game… I legitimately thought that we were working on a world two scenario with the game about to open up in a big way and let me explore new areas. Instead I got a credits roll… and the game was over. I THINK that the intent was to keep releasing DLC content but the poor sales of the game and the technical problems on literally all platforms… especially console… lead that plan to get scrapped. Now we get a new game and it appears to be part of the ushering in of the neon apocalypse. I am not sure if I will like this game… because I am not sure if enough of the original still lives to make me interested in it. If this ends up just being a neon mad max sim shooter… I am not entirely sure how interested I will be. I am still interested enough however for it to make the list.

What are some of the games you are looking forward to in 2019… specifically with set launch dates? Tomorrow I am likely going to talk about some of the things that are going to release… we just don’t have launch windows yet.

Far Cry 5 Thoughts so Far

January 7, 2019 by Belghast

Today is a bit of a struggle as it is the first day in a week that I am actually having to get up and around on a schedule. Traditionally I take the full two weeks off surrounding Christmas and New Years, but this year since I am now the low manager in seniority… I wound up having to work the weird and horrible partial week following Christmas. However that meant I was going to take all of my time off for the holidays in the first week of the year. I allowed myself to get way out of practice in the whole getting up at 5:30 in the morning thing… most of those days I wound up rolling out of between somewhere closer to 7 or 8. So as a result I am paying for it this morning.

Note I am going to be talking about Far Cry 5 this morning and there might be some minor spoilers. Going to try and stay away from a lot of the specifics, but I have to say some things to explain the shape of the narrative.

The Video Game Awards produced a shocking number of announcements that made me greatly interested in some of the games coming out. One of those was Far Cry: New Dawn which is a post apocalyptic game set in the same setting as Far Cry 5. This intrigued me greatly given that as far as I am aware… the Far Cry series has never actually made a direct sequel to any of their games. They’ve had several cases of the same game using the engine from the previous title… aka Far Cry 3 and Far Cry Blood Dragon and Far Cry 4 and Far Cry Primal. Far Cry 5 had been on the list of games that I wanted to play since I saw the initial trailers, but I never picked it up because I always had other things to play. Over the break I caught a sale and wound up grabbing it and have been playing a silly amount of the game. It’s weird that the thought of a sequel was what ultimately pushed me into gear to get going with playing it.

The elevator pitch for Far Cry 5 is that it is set in Hope County Montana, and draws heavily on the history of various religious cults that we have had here in the United States. The game centers around one such Cult that has a home base of operations in the Montana country side called Project Edens Gate. Instead of worshiping the Bible, they worship something they call the Book of Joseph… which was written by Joseph Seed the man the cultists refer to as The Father. He has predicted a collapse of society, and when you are called upon to serve a warrant to arrest him on Kidnapping charges that signals the opening events of his prophecy. You barely escape the compound and are now a hunted man… as the Project Edens Gate… or Peggies as the locals call them… swarm out capturing everything in the Valley.

You have the set up for a game that works pretty much like so many other games where you are the opposition to a larger force… your job is now to destroy the foothold the cult has on the area and save as many locals as you can in the process. The game is divided up into a bunch of sections, as each one of the “children” of Joseph Seed act as lieutenants over a different region of the valley. I wound up going after John Seed, in part because it felt like the game was directing me there… and the person he was holding was the one I was most interested in saving. As you take actions against the regional “boss” you raise a resistance meter, and every third of that bar there is a stopping point that triggers a specific event that plays out. By the time I reached the conclusion of this “zone” of the game I had successfully worked up quite the hatred for John Seed, and wanted to see him die.

Which admittedly plays in really nicely to the narrative of the game. My sin is that of Wrath, and as you tear through wave after wave of brain washed cultists… you start to think about that specifically. I love killing baddies in games, but in truth… I am the embodiment of Wrath each time that occurs. The final fight unfortunately is one of the most frustrating I have ever encountered in a game, largely because it centers around a dog fight. While I enjoy flying planes in Far Cry 5… the controls themselves do not lend themselves to aerial combat. There are a couple of options here… you can hire one of the townsfolk to be your wing man and let them get the killing shot. If you are far enough in the game you can buy a heat seeking rocket launcher and take him out that way… or you can go the route I did and purchase the attack helicopter which is way the hell more maneuverable in the air for fighting. Thankfully at that point in the game I had a lot of cash and had unlocked the Helicopter shop.

The best part about the game however is that you get to run around… if you choose… with Boomer that dog. He is so much better than any of the human options when it comes to your partners… because firstly he alerts you to any trouble that might be ahead. Secondly he retrieves stuff from the bodies that you kill along the way, meaning that other than cash you don’t have to be quite so concerned about making sure you loot every single body that drops. You are going to be killing a lot of people in this game and as a result producing copious amounts of bodies that you have to painstakingly loot. The dog short cuts a lot of that, and unlike some of the other companions he rarely gets in the way of what you are actually trying to accomplish. The game has a photo mode and I used it in the above shot to focus in on the good boy that I am regularly running around with.

I think the most interesting thing about the game so far is how familiar it feels to me. I grew up in very humble and very rural roots. I came from a town of 2000 and graduated in a class of 60… while that was Oklahoma and this is Montana… there is a shocking bit of detail that stays exactly the same no matter what rural environment you are traversing. The people remind me so much of people that I knew growing up, so I have to give massive credit to Ubisoft for getting that feel completely dead on. Even the cultist thing feels a little familiar as we had a local Want-To-Be-Megachurch Preacher that paid kids to attend church service in the form of scholarships. The amount you got was a formula based upon how many services you attended and how many other kids you recruited to the fold. So sure it wasn’t a dooms day cult, but it felt no less creepy. Essentially I relate to this game and setting way more than I ever have in the Far Cry settings, and I am looking forward to getting home tonight and starting another area.

Great game so far, but unfortunately given the release window for Anthem of February 22nd… I doubt I will be playing New Dawn the sequel when it releases on February 15th. Tomorrow I am probably going to talk some about the games that are coming out in 2019 that I am looking forward to… but if you want a preview we talked about it at length during the podcast this weekend.

Cleansing Twitter

January 4, 2019 by Belghast

seriously shocked at how much more rational my feed is already just with this first step >.> I should have done this years ago

— Belghast 🆚 Hoping for Good Year (@belghast) January 2, 2019

On Wednesday I talked about some of my hopes for the new year, and one of them… I have already made significant strides towards. Unfortunately it is not the exercise and losing weight one… because in truth I am largely waiting until I am no longer on vacation to try that. We also have a bunch of sweets and stuff that we need to remove from the house before that can properly begin. That said, once I return to the swing of things I will begin that one in earnest. Another stupid one that came up this morning is that we are going to try our best to triage the mail every single day instead of letting it stack up for a week before looking at any of it.

The one however that I already made a big dent in is taming twitter. As of posting on Wednesday I followed just shy of 1200 people and as a result my main timeline was impossible to keep up with. In the past I had made an attempt at creating a “Timeline 2.0” list that contained the people that I did not want to miss posts from… but I was phenomenally bad at keeping it updated. Additionally there were a few cases where I unfollowed someone for a reason… and then kept seeing their post not realizing that I had them in that timeline as well. Basically it was not a great solution.

Twitter unfollows are always a fraught experience, because I am certain that I have a few mutuals that would be hurt if I unfollowed them. So instead of entering the difficult territory I decided to start with a simple change. Essentially I went through my follow list and added any “Brands” to a new list that I could assign to a column and immediately unfollowed the account. This also included anyone that I interacted with as though they were a brand or at least a brand ambassador like Deej for example from Bungie. Now this did not include anyone that I have what I would consider a personal relationship with that has been built up through interaction over the years.

I also created a “Cute Stuff” feed that has most of the various animal accounts that I follow and a few other things that I find funny… essentially to give me a concentrated column of pure enjoyment. The end result however is that I removed 166 accounts from my main feed… and it is shocking just how much of what I would consider spam to be coming from those accounts. I did not realize just how much Funko for example tweeted until I punted them off the island. Sure this means that I will no longer be eligible for the various “follow and retweet” contests… but seeing as I have been using twitter ten years and never actually won one of those… I think I will be fine without them.

Now even after this… there are a bunch of people that I enjoy as human beings but don’t necessarily want to see the constant feed of mostly political based retweets. So in those cases I have been going one step further because something I did not realize was that twitter allows you to now block retweets on a user by user basis. We will use my account that I use to get screenshots off of my PS4 and Switch as an example in the above screenshot. You have to click through to an individual users account page on Twitter and then if you expand the menu on the right side you can see the option of Turn Off Retweets. This will be specific to this one user and still let you see retweets as a whole for pretty much everyone else. After a few days of further pruning by turning off retweets for some of the highest volume accounts… my twitter is once again a happy place.

Now the only negative here is… this will not stop quote retweets. This is one of those times where I really like the fact that Mastodon and MMORPG.social for example does not have a quote retoot option. Now please don’t take my trying to make Twitter a happier place a sign that I am detaching from the Fediverse again, because that could not be further from the truth. The instance that Gazimoff is running for the community has turned out to be a hopping place, especially for those who are into FFXIV. I think this might be the year that I start giving up on some platforms… for example I cannot be arsed to care about Instagram at all so I might just stop trying. Facebook is just a place that I re-syndicate my content but no one actually reads it. I have this overwhelming desire to complete reboot this blog, but I am not sure if that will actually happen.

All of that aside… Twitter is a much better environment for me personally after making these tweaks and I thought I would post this morning talking a bit about it in case someone wants to steal some of my ideas. It is funny that Scopique was doing this exact same thing the same morning I was… so great minds think alike?