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Jester’s Festival Results and Free Trial

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Good Morning Folks! This is going to be a bit of a short post because I have to take my father to the hospital this morning. He is undergoing an outpatient surgery so hopefully you all will keep him in your thoughts today. I am not entirely certain what my day is going to look like so I am packing a bag full of nonsense to keep me entertained. I am also not entirely certain what the situation at the hospital is going to look like, but I am thankful that as of yesterday my full “immunity” should have kicked in from my Covid-19 vaccination. I am as prepared as I can be to be around other people… and as such I am apparently going to be giving it a major test by hanging out in a hospital.

Last night was the final evening of the Jester’s Festival buff and I didn’t do nearly as much grinding as I thought I would. Instead I found myself finishing off a few holiday event quests, picking up the unstable morpholith pet which will ultimately be required to get any of the other items from event quests. However I am finding out that each time you upgrade the pet into something else… you lose your original pet and have to purchase it again. I failed to do enough daily quests in order to get the OTHER thing that was available during this event. I am not sure how much I care about player skins in the game because they are all sorta overpowering in appearance.

Even thought I didn’t really participate that much in the event, I feel like I had a pretty great success for the single week that it was open. I largely spent this event catching up my stable of alts, because Elder Scrolls Online is one of those games where I had never really spent time on any other characters. As such I had my Dragon Knight at maxed level and pushing champion levels… but almost everything else was sub level 10 before starting the event. My Warden was a bit higher but all told I leveled it, my Necromancer and managed to get my Nightblade to 31 before running out of juice. I figure the next event which also offers a similar buff… I will focus on the quests and end my night grinding rather than starting it that way.

Here is the thing though… much like leveling the content in a very specific order… grinding up alts to 50 is entirely a “me” thing. For me I like leveling my account as a whole and right now my Champion level is 441 and I want to see that increase. Also my personal jam in this game is running around and questing through zones which I will absolutely do on my level capped alts. I just wanted to be gaining Champion Levels instead of base levels while doing that however because you can burn through CP pretty rapidly while questing. Grinding the Dark Anchors is absolutely NOT the optimal way to play the game if you are doing this for the first time. It is just a thing I am doing to catch my stable of desired alts up to my main so everyone can share in the Champion Leveling experience.

If you have found yourself watching from the wings as I roam around Tamriel and considered getting into the game, now might be the ideal time to do so. Right now in honor of the seventh anniversary of the game they are running an event that allows you to have a free trial of the game until the 13th of April. It is available on PlayStation, Xbox and then the PC cluster of services Steam, Stadia and the Elder Scrolls website/launcher. Seeing as I date back to Alpha I play the game through the official Launcher given that the game started out that way. PlayStation and Xbox are islands and you can only play with other players on those specific networks. PC players get to mix it up and all NA and all EU players are together regardless of the service.

The main difference being if you start on Steam for example, all of your future purchases will have to be through Steam. Same is true with Stadia or going through the official website. Similarly if you start on Stadia, I believe all purchases have to go through Stadia but I am not entirely certain about that one. When I briefly tried Elder Scrolls Online on Stadia I had all of my DLC that I purchased through my main PC account so your mileage may vary. Also of note, PC players can absolutely use a controller if that is your jam or play like I do with Mouse and Keyboard. If you have been curious about the game, then right now might be the time for you to dip your toes in and see if you like it without any risk. Normally speaking the game is “Buy to Play” but I do highly suggest the ESO Plus subscription which gives you a magical endless crafting materials bag and all DLC packs other than whatever the most current expansion is.

Well I am running out of time this morning so it is time for me to wrap this up and pack. Hopefully everything will go smoothly today and Dad will be out of surgery and recuperating by 1 pm. I hope also that he isn’t in a lot of pain and that it doesn’t hamper his mobility much. If you do find yourself trying out Elder Scrolls Online, my in game id is @Belghast so drop me a line and say hi.

Panic at the Discord

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I realize I am extremely late to this party, but for those who have not yet heard the news there is a rumored discussion happening about Microsoft purchasing Discord. This acquisition has a rumored 10 billion dollar price tag associated with it and there are many articles talking about it so I am just going to link this one. This is apparently causing a large amount of discontent among the gamer circles, but I feel like this knee jerk reaction might be a little too fast. There are some things you have to understand before starting this article. My entire working career has been tied to Microsoft products and as such I have seen the ebb and flow of different initiatives. I’ve even been at several Microsoft development conferences over the years and had the benefit of meeting Bill Gates in the flesh during one of those cattle call meet and greet sessions. I feel like I sit comfortably in a camp between the Microsoft fanboys and the Microsoft doomsayers.

Microsoft has been on a bit of an acquisition spree of late snapping up a number of game studios, including the most recent Zenimax acquisition which largely just means Bethesda Softworks to most folks. From what I have seen so far, Microsoft appears to be a good steward of these games properties. For example I have followed Undead Labs pretty closely being a major fan of the State of Decay franchise and from what I can tell… Microsoft money has taken a lot of pressure off the studio to just do the stuff that they do best. Other commentary from folks at Obsidian and Double Fine seem to indicate the same. Not having to worry about how to make the next payroll probably does wonders for creativity in allowing folks to actually just sorta create the games.

However there is a very recent Microsoft failure in the minds of gamers and I think it is coloring their opinions right now. In 2016 Microsoft acquired a plucky little start up streaming platform called Beam and then proceeded to change its name to Mixer and pour copious amounts of resources into trying to make it a viable alternative to Twitch. This was a losing proposition from the moment Microsoft started down this path but it did give folks for awhile an alternative. The problem with this match up however is while you had Mixer backed by Microsoft, you also had Twitch backed by the power of Amazon. Twitch was already the brand leader in streaming, to a degree that not even YouTube has ever really been able to steal much market share away from them.

Having used both as a streamer and as a viewer… I personally believe that Beam/Mixer was the superior product. However I also believe that there was no fighting the purple juggernaut called Twitch. Having streamed on multiple platforms, there are just way more people that interact with Twitch as a whole and it becomes progressively harder and harder to convince your viewers to use anything other than that platform. Much like there will never really be a WoW Killer or a Facebook Killer… it is highly unlikely that anyone will ever top Twitch for streaming. They are just too dug into that niche and while I blame Microsoft for doing a piss poor job of notifying the streamers that they were going to be closing their doors… I don’t blame them for the failure of the platform.

However in the last week I have watched multiple communities attempt a quick migration away from Discord over a fear of something that may never actually come to fruition.  It seems like a number of folks are jumping over to a service called Guilded, but largely it suffers from some of the same questions we have had for awhile.  Like this has been the topic of many discussions among the AggroChat crew trying to glean exactly how Discord or a service like Guilded actually makes their money.  Sure Discord has Nitro and Server boosts, but that cannot pay for anything close to the amount of server processing power, bandwidth and disk space required to keep a service like theirs up and running.  Guilded similarly plans on offering premium access accounts and skins but likewise that cannot come close to paying the infrastructure bills.

In 1973 the artists Richard Serra and Carlota Fay Schoolman produced a short video titled “Television Delivers People” which from what I can tell is the initiation point of the old adage “You’re Not the Customer; You’re the Product”.  I mean we have seen that written a number of different ways over the years but the words largely speak true.  Any time you are not paying for a product, there is something that you are adding to the process that is valuable and are essentially creating the product that is sold.  That product could be usage statistics or in the case of television access to your eyeballs and by reference your wallet and spending habits.  So I have long tried to sort out what exactly is Discord or Guilded for that matter selling about us that makes it worth keeping a service up and running.

In the case of Microsoft reportedly looking at spending 10 Billion dollars to Acquire Discord, that transaction makes a lot of sense.  Discord does a really good job of providing a free alternative to Teamspeak or Ventrilo and also does a pretty solid job of letting folks roll their own communities on the fly.  While I love Teams…  there are without a doubt some aspects of it that could be improved through an infusion of tech resources coming from a company who has likely been trying to keep things running on a relatively slim tech stack.  Additionally Xbox Live chat sucks horrifically and if you could simply gut it and plug discord in its place…  you would have an immediate fix to what feels like a sub par implementation that has not aged well.  Similarly Skype is not a great user experience and could likely be refreshed greatly with an infusion of newer technology as well.

So this one acquisition for Microsoft serves to solve three potential problems in their aging infrastructure.  Those products all make money for the company and it is pretty clear how the benefit works in each of those scenarios.  Truthfully I would feel better about using Discord if I better understood its funding model and also knew that the folks working for the company would benefit from the stability of a massive corporation backing them.  I’ve known several folks that worked at Microsoft over the years and from what I have been able to glean it seems like a relatively good place to work.  It seems like they invest quite a bit of resources in their employees so I can’t see that it would be a bad call for anyone specifically looking to be acquired.  While Mixer is a glaring exception, they do tend to support tech significantly longer than someone like Google that has a large graveyard of promising tech that they have buried.

Essentially to the gamers freaking out about this potentially happening…  I would say to chill the fuck out.  Microsoft has done some pretty cool things.  Xbox Game Pass for example is quite possibly the best value in gaming right now and is extremely pro-consumer.  Similarly they have done a pretty great job as the steward of Minecraft with significant development effort poured into that product and still maintaining both the more open ended Java client and the more locked down and regulated C# based Bedrock client.  Again I get that a lot of this reaction is over Mixer, but that product was never going to claw away significant market share from Twitch no matter how many big name celebrities they convinced monetarily to switch platforms.  The streaming market is too stratified and it will take a major paradigm shift for anything to beat team purple.

The evidence I see in front of me though, would tell me that Discord who is already a market leader in the services they provide would be just fine under the umbrella of Microsoft.  Chances are the funding would allow them to grow and expand product offerings and maybe just maybe utilize some of the streaming tech.  I can see a future where the Xbox client is replaced by a modified version of Discord that offers all of the same functionality.  It seems like a pretty good future to me honestly.

Subculture and Gatekeeping

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This mornings post is going to be a bit of an odd one but please bear with me. First off I feel like I need to start this with a disclaimer. Gatekeeping is awful full stop. Please don’t do it. Gatekeeping leads to toxicity in communities and it just isn’t cool to try and keep someone out because they don’t align to your lofty ideals for what being part of that community means. All of that said… as a fortysomething geek I understand all too well why it continues to persist in spite of all attempts to remove it. So I feel like I have to start with the inspiration behind this… well whatever it ends up being.

This friends is Emma Langevin a name I only know how to pronounce because she did a Q/A video where she started off pronouncing it. She is a 21 year old TikToker and YouTuber and also is funny as hell. In her videos she occasionally wears assorted Nirvana T-Shirts and has apparently caught shit for doing so. There are of course the ever so creative “were you even alive” comments and the answer to that is no. However fandom doesn’t exactly have an expiration date to it and I figure Emma has just as much right to put on Lithium on a bad day as I do. While I don’t condone this behavior, on some level I still get it because I probably would have been one of these assholes were it not for a series of friends who called me out on my shit.

So the positive is that we live in a time when it is much easier to be into weird shit than it used to be. While boomers were ultimately the first to step out of line against the 1950s Nuclear family, they nonetheless created their own social hierarchy of order and conformity. The 1980s were in many ways about figuring out which template you belonged to and then attempting to conform your desires to fit that mold. If you didn’t necessarily fit into one of those predetermined roles, it could be extremely lonely. Diversity was not a thing that was celebrated in any form and least of which was Diversity of thought.

So many of us desperately sought signs of being part of a larger community. So various pieces of apparel, mannerisms, or activities became a sort of social shorthand for finding someone that might be a kindred soul. You saw someone walking through the mall wearing a Vampire the Masquerade T-Shirt and chances are as a Pen and Paper Dork you were going to find some common ground and maybe even strike up a conversation. In a land filled with polo shirts with popped collars… these folks stood out and were magnetically drawn to each other. The jean jacket often times became the cultural currency emblazoned arcane sigils that would let anyone else you encounter know that you were one of them. Mine changed a lot over the years but for at least one period of it I had a giant Powell Peralta Ripper on the back… which I got because I thought was cool even though never actually owned a single Powell Peralta skateboard. I had more from Santa Cruz than pretty much any other single brand.

Another common currency of “belonging” was the concert tee. Growing up we traded crappy recordings of all of these bands that were then underground. I first got clued into Nirvana because they were the backing soundtrack for a skate tape. Truthfully most of the musical was desperately lifted from the credits of a skate video. I’ve talked before about Santa Cruz Skateboards Streets on Fire movie and how important its soundtrack ultimately became to me. The thing is growing up in flyover country you sorta had to import your culture from somewhere else because it most certainly wasn’t happening natively. In truth we were all a bunch of posers… because we had to invent our way of life based on the clippings and footnotes found in smuggled media.

I cannot understate just how damned hard it was to get anything “good” in the small town I grew up in. We had been listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers for years and only knew of them because they played in the background of some movie we watched. Then we sorta went on a crusade to try and find as much of their music as we could. I cannot fully explain how excited I was when I saw this cassette single sitting near the electronics department check out at a Walmart. Something “WE” cared about actually getting noticed and becoming significantly more easily available. That excitement turned to frustration however as this thing that we felt ownership over… because we had to struggle so hard to get it in the first place… became something that the jocks were listening to.

So this rapid succession of being excited because the accessibility and then getting frustrated at the popularity was a cycle that I absolutely remember going through for several things. The thing is that I now recognize the sheer amount of nonsense that was involved in this reaction. That said I remember going through it all the same because RHCP had sorta been one of those arcane signals of belonging that helped us find more members of our tribe. Even though that “tribe” was contorted as fuck because none of us actually had the exact same ideals or believes or even hobbies. There was overlap obviously but everyone sorta had their own thing going on and we couldn’t really understand at the time that it wasn’t necessarily the shared experiences alone that bound us together.

This wanting to belong and trying to self sort yourself into a container that was easily recognizable was so strong that the very first thing I did when I got a laptop for college… is slap a NIN sticker on the back. Still to this day I have to resist the urge to go over and talk to anyone that has a Horde or N7 logo sticker on the back of their vehicle because that desire to find my people still exists somewhere buried deep inside. Where it turns sour and becomes toxic however is when belonging isn’t enough and you feel like you need to exclude others from finding the thing that you thought was special and unique. I am not exactly sure how to combat that instinct because I too understand it. I was annoyed at how easy folks had it when they found out RHCP existed with Blood Sugar Sex Magic or started listening to Nine Inch Nails after Downward Spiral. They didn’t have to find some seedy tape shop in a town 2 hours away to find the latest concert bootleg of the band. All they had to do was walk into Walmart and make a purchase.

I personally have learned the hard fought lesson that more access to good things is infinitely better for everyone involved. You get access to the things I love and in turn I get better access to the things that you love that I maybe also will love as well. So yeah Emma Langevin was born some six years after the death of Kurt Cobain, but that shouldn’t grant her any less access to being a Nirvana fan. I personally “discovered” Led Zeppelin some eight to ten years after the band broke up, and I didn’t feel like not being there when they were initially relevant was any hamper on my enjoyment of the music. I first listened to Rush in 1990 when a friend loaned me their Chronicles double CD set, and have been a diehard fan of the band ever since. Yet I am certain there is someone waiting in the wings to tell me I am a poser for not being able to conform to some artificial litmus test for fandom.

There used to be a part of me that was a little bummed that the age of instant friendship because of some shared ideal was gone. Then I realized that pretty much my entire twitter feed is populated by random strangers that I happened across because of some shared interest and then decided to strike up a friendship as a result. The act of Gatekeeping was not the social structure that allowed you to make life long friendships. In fact it probably limited your horizons to the point to where you could only see a handful of people. I wish I could spread that message to more people, that you don’t need to carefully guard these things that you love because once they spread they end up becoming far cooler as a result. To be honest one of the best experiences ever is watching someone experience something for the first time that you yourself love. I personally experience this almost contact high of reliving those same emotions that I went through when I discovered the thing in the first place.

Ultimately sharing something is how you keep it alive. Each time you can ignite the fire in someone else’s heart, it allows those really good things to transcend generations. I mean sure it is weird that going down the toy isle is a greatest hits collection of the toys that I grew up with… but it also means that things like the newest rendition of Duck Tales exist for a whole new generation. As a grizzled old man I get to experience being a kid once again as I view these favorite things in a new light.

Machinery of Streaming

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Hey Folks! It is a very story morning and I am listening to the rain pouring down around me right now as I sit down to write a post that likely no one is interested in. About a week ago I had an interaction with someone on twitter that was asking a pretty simple question. However my answer veered off in a different direction than I think they were expecting and I have been thinking about my comments for the last week. I guess let’s start with what exactly I said.

No and honestly I am personally tiring of the machinery of streaming. I find it so much more likely that I stick around and watch a stream if it is just a person playing a game with or without a camera, but I might be the exception rather than the rule. Overlays and Alerts and subscription widgets and all of that stuff was really cool when it was brand new, but now that it feels like everyone is obligated to have all of these things going on… it is sorta distorting the experience of hanging out with someone while they play

I realize that I am probably in the minority with this statement, but I have very much found myself tiring of the machinery of streaming. I know that is a strange phrase but I am not sure how else to describe it. Streams as a whole are now these large productions that end up feeling an awful lot like the barker at a carnival sideshow. Logging into a stream these days involves all of these widgets going off competing for your attention. Not only is there the flow of chat that is often incomprehensible but also tickers scrolling indicating who is leading in the donation count and alerts popping up each time some sort of interaction goal is met or follow is achieved. Everything competing for your attention but none of it really garnering it.

Once again I realize I probably use Twitch in a different manner than the most diehard of users. I tune in when I see that one of my friends is streaming and more or less it is for the purpose of hanging out while they play a game. All of the accoutrements feels like it gets in the way of that singular purpose. Twitch has sorta become this nesting doll of mini-games over the years and as a result it feels like the general experience of hanging out with someone while they play a game gets lost in the process. I realize that for some that might not be the core reason why they tune into Twitch or YouTube Gaming, but for me it is very much the case that I am there for that simple core interaction with a streamer while they are playing a game.

I remember dabbling in bots and alerts and running StreamLabs OBS because it sort of took care of everything for me. It was all new and exciting and fun to configure the first time, but after having seen it play out countless times on stream it all wears a little thin. I am significantly more engaged when I just see someone streaming a game and occasionally interacting with chat than I am when someone has a streamer theme package and a whole lot of doodads consuming screen real estate. I get in some ways many of these streams are trying to create a self perpetuating feedback cycle that keeps folks engaged in a constant loop, but for me… I find myself wanting off of that ride quickly.

Weirdly I used to stream quite a bit. In my head that seems like it was only a little bit ago that I did this thing but looking back… my prolific period was roughly seven years ago. Also looking back, the very last time that I went live with any game was roughly two years ago. I am not sure WHY I stopped streaming. I think on some level I just ended up stuck in a very turtle mode rut of not interacting with other human beings while gaming. That has more or less been the case for a few years now of me avoiding multiplayer content and absolutely avoiding anything resembling public exhibition while gaming. I do sorta miss the concept of sharing what I was doing with a very small group of people who tuned in to watch it. I’m a Twitch Affiliate, but then again so is everyone else given that those requirements are pretty low.

There are times that I flirt with the concept of going live again but always stop myself before actually doing it. More recently I have recorded a number of videos of me playing various games starting with Minecraft but more recently Valheim. Those have felt pretty good when I have recorded them, but it is also a very one-sided interaction. It feels safe to treat those much in the same way as I do this blog in that on some level I pretend that I am largely talking to myself and ignoring the fact that someone at some point is going to consume the thing I created. With streaming you don’t really have that luxury because you are effectively on air and live to the world, but then it feels bad if no one shows up to that broadcast to keep you company.

The funny thing about my prolific streaming period… is I guess I did not realize just how much I streamed. Essentially there are videos that were replicated over to YouTube of pretty much my entire play through of Elder Scrolls Online and the main story at launch. I think I added it up and just ESO alone it was some fifty hours of streaming. Included in these are a few gems that I have recently revisited of some of us experiencing dungeons for the very first time. This for example is Banished Cells with general group commentary streaming along with me. Watching these again is almost like seeing a version of me that I barely recognize. I was always grouped and always running group content and now I seem to avoid that like the freaking plague. I am not even certain how I used to put myself out there constantly like that.

While I have wildly veered off topic, it seems like my personal jam is just enough stuff on screen to explain what game you are playing and also maybe hide chat. Like ultimately that is why I started putting shit on the screen as an overlay in the first place. It wasn’t necessarily that I was trying to hide anything, but more that I was trying to protect the privacy of any folks that might be interacting with me over chat. Like there was once a time when I would log in to a bunch of messages from friends and I didn’t want any of those inadvertently broadcast. However my personal preference would always land on the side of just straight broadcasting my screen with some random voice over commentary.

I feel like I have lost a lot of the “Me” that existed a decade ago. Like I said before I barely recognize the person who was so prolifically streaming seven years ago. Truth be told I barely recognize the me that was hanging out and streaming World of Warcraft in lieu of recording AggroChat in the above video. I have become so filled with self doubt and anxiety that just talking to another human being in game is a chore that burns through all of my utensils for the day. The problem being that I am not sure how to get back to the person that I used to be. Things change and you don’t realize they are changing until you have gone so far down a path that you can barely see where you started. Today’s post is proof that I do not stage these topics ahead of time, because I started talking about one thing and then have veered wildly into another.

There is a part of me that sorta wants to go live again. Maybe in doing so it would force me to start dipping my toes into group play again. I doubt I would have anyone watch my nonsense, but just the act of sorta putting myself out there might start to batter down this barrier I have built up around me. I miss the person that I used to be and I am not sure yet how to get back there.