I Am Not the Demographic

The recent announcement about the impending changes to the Marvel Universe has served to drive home something I've known for a while, but haven't truly unpacked and considered until now. For those not following the state of Marvel comics, it was announced last week that the primary Marvel continuity (the 616, as it's commonly referred to) will be destroyed at the beginning of the upcoming Secret Wars event, and a 'Battleworld' will be stitched together from chunks of that Marvel Earth and dozens of alternate Earths. Supposedly this change is intended to be permanent and will be the setting for Marvel comics going forward.

It's possible, of course, that this will end up going the way of Heroes Reborn and the changes will be walked back. I fully believe, however, that Marvel really is intending to try and make this the new status quo especially after DC's linewide reboot a few years ago. Either way, come May neither of the main super-hero universes I grew up with will exist any longer. Both will have been replaced with newer, 'fresher' versions.

This serves to really drive home the message that I am no longer the target demographic they're after, and I haven't been for a while now. At 37, I no longer qualify as a young adult, and my habits aren't what's driving the decisions big media companies are making. You see the same thing with movies, where properties like Transformers and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been re-imagined in ways that are utterly unappealing to me. Why should I expect them to appeal to me? They're not for me; they're for the teenagers and young adults of today.

This isn't to say that no one is making media for me. Certainly nostalgia has been big in recent years, and there are plenty of cool Kickstarters and indie projects aimed squarely at us children of the 80s. But the big companies, the Disneys and Warner Brothers, the EAs and Sonys, they've moved on. Any interest of mine in their products is now a happy bonus for them, not the goal.

It would be easy to become bitter and rail against the perceived injustice of this abandonment, but that would hardly do me any good, and it certainly wouldn't be healthy. Thanks to the internet, niche products can survive and thrive, so there will always be new things for me to read and watch and play, I'll just have to look a little harder to find them. And I'll have to learn to let go of the things that are no longer for me. I'm going to continue reading Marvel's books at least until Secret Wars, and then I'll have a decision to make. It's possible I'll decide that this new direction is something I enjoy and want to follow, but I don't find that likely. If it's not, I'll have to close the book on Marvel and move on. It's good to know when to let things go.

On San Antonio

As you may or may not be aware, I spent this past weekend at PAX South, with Belghast and Rae. I had a really fun time, and it was my first time seeing both of them in person, despite talking to them over the internet for years. They’re both awesome, and it made for a really fun day to wander around with them on Saturday.

This was the first annual PAX South, so my only point of comparison is PAX East in previous years. Compared to that, this show was a little smaller, and quite a bit more relaxed. Very few of the bigger publishers came at all, and Nintendo was the only representative of the Big 3 (And even then, they were only there to show off their New 3DS). As a result, the biggest booths belonged to Twitch and a pair of companies I’d never heard of before: Motiga and Greybox. Sadly, Greybox’s booth was incredibly crowded the entire time and so I didn’t get to see much of their games (Grey Goo and Dreadnought). Here are my highlights from the show:

A Gigantic Success

Gigantic is my game of the show, despite having to overcome some major obstacles: I knew nothing about it going in, I generally don’t like competitive shooters (I did have a small bit of enjoyment with Tribes a while back), and I’m already invested in a particular MOBA (League of Legends). Knowing nothing about it other than it controlled with WASD, I was seated in a group where 8 people had played before, and only Rae and I had not. After someone else on our team picked the minotaur-looking thing I was initially going to play, I opted for the dragon, and this turned out to be a great choice. Playing was a lot of fun, and it wasn’t until after we finished that I learned that it was Angry Joe on the other side of the table.

It turns out Gigantic isn’t entirely a shooter or a MOBA, but it does take elements from both.I think I have a lot more to say about this one than I’m willing to put in a PAX blurb, so look for that in the near future.

Charnok

This Feels Familiar

I’m not going to say Brawlhalla is Smash Brothers without Nintendo characters, but it would be hard to complete this paragraph without that statement. It’s a 2D Brawler in the Smash Bros. style with a few differences. For starters, the game revolves around the weapon system, where each character has a small selection of possible weapon pickups that they can get from picking up glowing swords scattered around the battlefield. Gnash, for example, can get either a hammer or a spear. Some characters have shared weapons, but they have a few unique moves with each. Another thing is that all of the characters have three jumps and Mega Man X-style wall sliding/jumping, so recovery is less emphasized and most KOs are going to be via a direct ejection. The primary thing it seems to have over Smash Bros is that it’s on the PC, so we’ll have to see if that’s enough.

Brawlhalla 1

More Strategic Than Pokémon

Moonrise is a game I find interesting, not only for the claims I heard from Jeff Strain at PAX, from whose words I took this section title. In all honestly Moonrise reminds me more of Jade Cocoon than Pokémon, given the limited set of elements and ability for your player character to actually fight. It departs from most creature battling games by being pseudo-real-time, with actions that take certain amounts of time to perform, ATB-style. This does open up the possibility of things like interrupts and forces you to make decisions faster, so we’ll see how it shakes out. It’s already out if you’re in Canada, Sweden, or Denmark and own an iPad. Hopefully it’ll come out elsewhere soon.

moonrise

Mark of Shame Award

I just feel the need to say that as the closest major Dev, Gearbox should have shown up with something awesome, and they barely came at all. Everything they had to say was part of a mini-panel, and since the panels were in their specific rooms and not on the schedule it was hard to plan around them. Other than the panel, they didn’t have anything really on display. When I even asked about Battleborn, they just told me to look at the website.

The runner-up for this one is Riot Games. I can see why they wouldn’t bring their big booth, but their panel left a lot to be desired. They originally had a pair of panels scheduled for Saturday, one in the afternoon and one in the late evening, with no indication of what they were going to show. By Saturday, the afternoon panel was announced as one on Champion Design, and the late panel was cancelled. The afternoon panel consisted of Ghostcrawler asking four other Riot employees champion design questions, followed by a Q&A. The minimalism of this panel (especially compared to other things Riot’s done in the past) makes me wonder if whatever they had planned on showing just wasn’t ready. I guess we’ll never know.

And the Rest

Hive Jump was on display, and it looks like it’s shaping up to be awesome. I backed it when it was on kickstarter, so that’s always nice to see. Faded is running a kickstarter right now, and looks like it might be cool if they can get a few things worked out. I also played a game called Pixel with some interesting ideas, although I’m not sure if it’s my sort of game.

Overall I found far more good than bad at the show, so I hope that future incarnations of it are successful. With there being 3 options for PAX in this country now, it’s my hope that more people get a chance to experience it. I’m off to go play more Citizens of Earth, so until next time.

Source: Ash\\’s Adventures
On San Antonio

Doing Well By Doing Good

Ever since I've had a for-real grown-up job I've made a point of donating to Heifer International each year.  Not only is it a local charity in my case, it's model is one which I whole-heartedly approve of; providing people with knowledge and assistance that is useful long-term and ultimately asking them to pay forward in the future when they are able.  I also like the idea of giving someone the gift of baby ducks.  I haven't always been able to give a lot, but I always at least give someone ducks.

Quack

Patrick Rothfuss agrees with me enough to have started a yearly geek-centered charity drive called Worldbuilders.  Every year around the holidays, Worldbuilders solicits donations to Heifer with various nerdy things occurring once certain totals have been raised.  This year, as an example,  Neil Gaiman recorded a video of himself reading Jabberwocky once $600,000 had been raised.  In addition, every $10 donated is an entry in a massive lottery of all sorts of geeky goodness.  Books, board games, and so forth.  Since Worldbuilders began, I've made my yearly donation to Heifer through it; I figure a chance at something neat is a nice little added benefit, so why not?  If anything it encourages me to give a little more to up my chances.

I've never actually won anything in the lottery.  Until this year, that is.  Saturday I found a package from Worldbuilders at the door, and inside was a copy of the board game Amazonas!

Ohmanigotaparrot!

It's a pretty interesting looking game, with a short enough playtime and straightforward enough rules that I might be able to get my wife to play it (She hates complicated fiddly games with lots of different actions to choose from and hours-long play times.  Sadly this includes most of the board games I own).  Perhaps this weekend I'll shanghai a friend or two and play a couple games.  If so, I'll try and write a review once I've seen how it plays.