Project Press Ganger: Battlegroups!

It's been a while now but for those who weren't aware, I want to be a Press Ganger. My regular job takes a big time commitment but my spare time is mostly spent on Warmachine/Hordes and I've had some experience running tournaments in the past. I love Warmachine/Hordes and I want to give back to the community and help new people get into the game. I'm already a teacher so it's a natural interest for me and plays to my strengths! I like to think that I'm a good player, know the rules, and am fun to play against (or at least am helpful for those who are looking for advice) so I hope that Privateer Press will agree that I'd be a good candidate to be a Press Ganger. That's all well and good, but there are, of course, some requirements for applying to be a Press Ganger and one of those requirements is making sure that you have fully painted models to demo games with, and that's admittedly been an area of weakness for me. That ends today, however! I finally got two battlegroups fully painted for Hordes!

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So Let'S Talk About This Thing

I'll have to admit that I was pretty disappointed when I saw this post:

My first thought was Dammit, Jim.  You're better than this.  I'll admit to not knowing a ton about this Peterson guy, but he strikes me a uneducated person's idea of a smart guy.  A Newt Gingrich with actual credentials, if you will.  Here are the actual details of Jordan Peterson's career as I know them, please feel free to correct me in the comments.

1. He first came to my attention as a guy who went to war with his university over a change in policy.  Normally, I am all for academics pushing back against administration dictates.  Sometimes I work with faculty on how exactly to do that.  BUT the thing he chose to go to war over was his God-given right to misgender transgender students.  If you've ever been in a classroom with a teacher you don't like, you can maybe understand how the power differential between student and professor feels from the short end of the stick.  Being in charge of impressionable young people first experiencing life out from under the shadows of their parents, even for just a couple of hours a week, is an awesome responsibility with real world repercussions that can last the rest of a student's life.  Anyone who takes a so-called Principled Stand for the right to be mean to their students has festering dogcrap where his soul should be, in my opinion.
2. Peterson regularly rails against postmodernism and postmodernists, including people who don't fit actually those categories.  For example, he regularly goes in hard against Michel Foucault, who wasn't a postmodernist, but a poststructuralist.  Peterson can't tell the difference between the two or likes lumping people together for rhetorical purposes.  Neither of these is a good thing, in my humble opinion.  There's plenty to critique Foucault for, but I always get the impression that Peterson's real objections to him is that he is A) French and B) gay.  I'm pretty sure he's even called Foucault the worst guy that ever lived, or something like that.  Maybe he never heard of Hitler?  Or Stalin?  Leopold II?  Any of these names ringing a bell? 
3. One of the funny-haha/funny-strange things about Peterson's critique of left-wing intellectuals like Jacques Derrida is that he regularly yells at them for being imprecise and playing dodgy rhetorical games to make their points, but his own arguments against them seem to rely on imprecision and rhetorical flourish.  Weird.
4. He apparently believes that because lobsters and humans share a certain chemical in their brains, somehow that proves that human gender relations should be ordered the same way lobsters do it.  I swear to God, if I didn't know he was a real person, I would have thought Charles Dickens or Laurence Sterne invented him to lampoon intellectuals with their heads up their asses.
5. Peterson is one of those right-wing intellectuals who like to go on TV and complain that they are being silenced.  Does that mean all the left-wing academics who have never been on TV are being even more silenced-er?  I dunno.
6. What is up with his suits?  Most public intellectuals dress on the shabby side of middle class respectable.  Think Einstein frumping about in his sweaters or Carl Sagan's infamous turtlenecks.  Peterson dresses like he'd rather be in the aristocracy than do honest work teaching and researching.  Again, weird.
7. He's written at least one self-help book that apparently is being taken up in numbers by the kind of young men who need a Really Smart Dude to tell them to shower regularly and make their bed.  I actually don't have an objection to that.  A couple weeks ago I was waiting for my train home and the student sitting next to me was reading Peterson.  My gut reaction was to tell him to put that trash away and do his homework.  But I didn't, because I know that while self-help books tend to be banal tripe, but they are banal tripe that has an audience.  You can make a nice living writing self-help books because people are dumb and need to be told what to do.  I'm not making judgements on this point.  I am just as often a dumb guy who needs to be told what to do.  So if a smidgeon of advice from Peterson once helped James turn his life around, I say bless Jordan Peterson even though he seems like a dillhonker to me.

Man, "Bless Jordan Peterson for helping James out" sure sounds like one of those things that cishet white dudes say that really sticks it in the back of other folks who didn't win the privilege lotto, though I mean it more in the vein of the backhanded Southern compliment "bless his heart" than in the Jesus sense of "blessed are the peacemakers."  Overall, I think the world would be a better place if Peterson worried less about being a public figure and a little more about being a good person, but that doesn't change the fact that he probably has helped a few people out along the way with the same sort of advice one can find reading nearly any self-help book.  Heck, most of Charles Atlas's pamphlets come down to "exercise and clean living helps you get your life together, son."  It ain't rocket science.

(And really, it just kills me that this guy can't seem to build a credible, evidence-based case against people like Foucault and Derrida.  It's not that hard!  You just have to put in the work to read and try to understand what the hell they are up to.  I'm a farm boy who thinks Thundarr the Barbarian is the pinnacle of human culture, and I can understand at least some of what those cats are doing.)

But let's get back to the James situation.  As much as I respect Kiel Chenier, I think he may have made the wrong call when he announced he was ending his working relationship with LotFP.  This is not a callout post written to harsh on Kiel, though.  If we're going to harsh on anyone in this space, I think it should be, first of all, Peterson (that lobster thing is still making me crazy), and second of all, Raggi, for dropping this turd in the punchbowl.  But I'm not for kicking James to the curb and here's why.

First of all, having a "problematic fave," as the kids on the tumblers say, is in and of itself not a sin.  We live in a world where purity tests will damn us all.  Can we do better?  Should we do better?  Of course.  I think it would be great if James repudiated Peterson completely.  But if, as James suggests, this was the guy whose writings offered him a hand at a time when he was trapped in the Pit of Despair, who I am to now tell him to reject that guy?  If you've ever been down in that pit, you know that whoever helped you out of it is now one of your "ride or die" people.  (I got that from tumblr as well, please correct me if I am mangling it.  I still use "groovy" unironically, so my lingo may be a tad out of touch.)

Second and more importantly, I believe that the material matters.  The material conditions of Lamentations of the Flame Princess as a publishing outfit is that it throws a lot of work to people who Peterson would dislike on spec because they don't fit well into his patriarchal heteronormative magic lobster world.  And, in case you didn't know, James pays freelancers better than pretty much any other outfit I know of.  Compare this to people who proclaim liberal politics but pay starvation wages and otherwise do crappy things (Evil Hat is the poster boy of the moment in this regard.  Great work exploiting then dumping Contessa, Mr. Hicks.  Green Ronin also comes to mind).  I'll take the metal weirdo with the dodgy hero over the perfomatively woke hacks any day of the week.  And I think Kiel would do better sticking with LotFP, taking James' money, and writing an adventure that repudiates everything that Jordan Peterson stands for.  Definitely there should be at least one lobster monster and a wizard who never does any proper magical research because he spends too much time at the tailor.  But hey, if I'm not judging James, then I'm sure as hell not judging Kiel here.

Okay, I'm judging James a little.  Jordan Peterson?  Really?  You couldn't have gone with someone like Steven Pinker, or Stanley Fish, or even Harold Bloom.  I guess I'll have to take cold comfort in the fact that you didn't mention PragerU.

(Seriously. though, Conan with a lightsaber, Chewbacca, and a curvy witch team up to wander Gamma World and pummel mutant cyborg wizards.  WHY IS THIS NOT THE WORLD'S BIGGEST FRANCHISE???)

The Book Ritual

So this is one of the things I've been working on recently! The Book Ritual is a story told using a physical book, in the real world. The player is given writing and drawing tasks that get them to interact with the book in different ways. They write in it, draw maps, and tell it about their thoughts and feelings.

The player also needs to tear out pages, and shred them, to progress.

It's very much more of an interactive art piece than a game in the traditional sense, and talks about ideas of accepting loss and change.

Having worked with physical games and props for so long I've felt that the emotional weight we apply to physical objects is ripe for exploration. People don't want to shred books. Why is that?

I'll admit that showing this work for the first time is scary, so I'm focusing on small trials with small groups of people, before releasing anything into a more public space. When a game is about emotional subject matter, it exposes a side of the creator that games made primarily to entertain don't. So even as I've spent many years extolling the virtues of showing your work in public regardless of its state, I must admit to this being a slightly terrifying prospect!

In spite of the trepidation I'm looking forward to seeing where this project takes me. Even if this particular version of the idea is only a step along the way, I'm keen to see how the lessons I've learned from doing installation games and interactive performance can be used to explore more emotional subject matter.

And don't

SOMA - Two Years Later

It's over two years since we released SOMA, so it's time for another update on how things have been going.

First of all, let's talk about sales. As I've said many times before, sales are not straightforward to count, and the number you come up with is reliant on many different factors. For instance, SOMA was part of the Humble Monthly Bundle, which meant that everybody subscribing to that service was able to download a copy of SOMA. These are not really "sales", so should we count them? It's also worth noting that pricing differs a lot between different sales. A single unit sold at full price means more than one sold when the game is 75% off. I think it's important to think about these things, and remember you can't directly compare the sales of two games.

With all that said, what I'm going to do here is to basically take every single download of the game as a sale. Doing so gives us a total of 650 000 units, a 200 000 units increase since the the same time last year. This is a very good result.

It's interesting to compare how sales have changed across the two years for SOMA. The normal day-to-day income, when there are no discounts or anything, is 33% of what it was the same time last year. However, when the game is at a discount (such as a Steam summer sale), the generated income is about 75% of what similar events generated last year. This means that discount events are extra important this year.

Taken as a whole, the sales that we make from all our games will cover all our expenses every month, and even make us a profit. This is quite amazing. Given that we currently have about 16 people working with us full time, we have a pretty high burn rate, and to still be able to support all that on your ongoing sales is great.

This means that we still have a good buffer from our launch sales. While it will by no means last forever, it gives us peace of mind and lets us take the time we need. While we'll continue to generate income next year too, I'm not so sure it'll be enough to cover all our costs. This is when that initial buffer comes in handy, and will let us continue working on our projects without any monetary worries. To put things in perspective, it is worth noting that most companies start using up their buffer just a few months after release, so we are in no ways in a dire situation right now - quite the opposite!

However, this also makes it very clear that we need to be able to release games at a more regular rate. We were lucky that SOMA was a hit, and that the money is easily able to sustain us for the time we need to complete our next project. Had SOMA been a flop, the situation would have been a lot worse now. That's why we are focusing on becoming a two project studio, and the goal is to be able to release a game every two years. Had we managed to set that up prior to SOMA, we would be in the process of releasing a game right now. Needless to say, it would makes us a lot more financially stable, and able to handle a less successful release. In turn this should allow us to take greater risks, which I think is a key element in being able to create great games.

This leads me to another thing that's been on my mind. A few months back someone asked me: "How do you get people to buy your game?". This is a fairly basic question, but it really made me think. When it comes to sales made during launch, the answer feels quite self-evident. We generate a lot of buzz, there are reviews, let's plays and so on. There are a number of fairly obvious ways that people learn about our game.

But what about the customers that buy our game two years after release - why do they do it? That's a much harder question. I think most of this is via word-of-mouth recommendation. When the right circumstances arise (e.g.: "I feel like playing a game tonight") and when external influence (e.g.: "your friends said they liked our game") is strong enough, that's when a sale happens. I know that Steam and other stores have some forms of discovery tools, but I don't think they play a major factor. What really matters is not a single source, but the slow build-up of good will around a game - eventually this will make a player consider buying it. Discovery tools, such as "you might also like"-adverts, surely help, but they are just part of a much larger process [1].

Because of this, and considering the sheer number of games that are currently being released, I think the best strategy is to focus on unique experiences. You want to create the type of experience that is not only hard to get elsewhere, but also leaves a mark on those who play it. This is now a core philosophy here at Frictional. I guess we sort of always had it unconsciously, but we have now made it official. Our goal is to create games that are more than forgettable escapism. We want people to come out of their experiences feeling changed. A lofty goal? You bet. While it'll be impossible to make sure every single player has this type of experience, it feels like the perfect thing to strive for.

Now I will round of this post with a brief discussion on the status of our current projects.

The first project is in full production, and about 80% of the team is currently working on it. The focus for most of this year has been on creating the first few maps of the game to create a solid vertical slice based on our experiments last year. However, we recently came up with some new avenues that we wanted to explore. The stuff that has come out of this recent detour is feeling really great and I am certain it'll make the game feel very special. All of this came out of what I just discussed: our focus on making games that leaves a mark on the player. I'm not sure we would have gone down this route if we hadn't explicitly stated that goal, which makes me confident it's a really good way of thinking. I'm afraid I can't go into any details on this, other than to say that the project will be horrific in nature. There will be no release this year, but we hope to announce something during the first six months of next year.

As for the other project, that's also going well. We've been a bit delayed due to new tech taking longer than anticipated to develop [2]. The upside of that has been that the game has had  more time in pre-production than any of our previous games. This has been incredibly valuable, as the things we aim to tackle in this game are quite difficult, and allowing it all to brew for a bit has meant many of the basic aspects are clearer for us. This game will be less about direct, visceral horror, and more about the player gaining an understanding of different concepts. This can, as we know from working on SOMA, be quite tricky to get right and requires a slightly different approach than when working on a more direct horror game. Release for this game is quite far off though, so don't expect to hear any concrete details in the near future.

That's it for this update. I'm incredibly excited about the things that we have planned, and I'm very eager to give you all more updates. I also want to thank everybody for the support over the years, and rest assured that while we might not reply to every single mail, tweet, etc. that you send us, we make sure to read every single one!


Notes:
1) For games that are heavily based around online communities, such as a Rocket League, I think things work slightly differently. There is still a word-of-mouth zeitgeist going on, but a lot of it comes from your game become a habit for your players, something that they participate in on a daily basis. This forms a feedback loop that helps drives new buyers, which I think is quite different from how our games work.

2) We are currently working on the fourth iteration of our HPL engine for this game, and due to some of the things we need to be able to do for the game, we've been required to make some major adjustments. These things take time, but luckily we have most of it done now.

Another Take On The Power Rangers

I am sure that most of you have seen the short film of the Power Rangers Bootleg Universe that seemed to get some pretty strong reactions from some people that viewed it.  I definitely dig it and this film is pretty much in line with the tone I would want to see for the Power Rangers.  If you have not seen it yet then check it out.

The New And Probably Coolest Tattoo Trend Ever

Taking the Tattoo World By Storm:

Believe it or not, tattoos and the gaming community go hand in hand. Years ago many thought of gamers as the "nerds" of the century. Now with the growth of the gaming community and the culture of some of today's games, gaming is one of the most trendy and up to speed communities in our culture. Its a world wide community. One of those trends is the growing popularity of tattoos. Once

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