Indie

AggroChat #120 – Can’t Go Back Home

by

This week Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tam and Thalen address a listener comment regarding our feelings about WoW.

aggrochat120_720

It feels like every week I say “something weird happened” when describing our podcast.  I might simply be that we have no real “normal” state to fall back on, and that everything is essentially new and strange.  That said I feel like this week is on an island of its own.  After last week’s podcast I had a listener pull me aside and comment that it sounded like it physically pained us to talk about Warcraft.  I personally didn’t realize this until I went back and listened a bit, and I can absolutely see how someone could have that take away.  More often than not we just have super confused feelings about the game, and  tonight we delve into this…  and it leads to a whole sequence of topics including the loss of “junk culture” and the businessification of things we love.  For some of us you definitely can’t ever truly go back home.

Topics On The Show:  Listener Comment – Conflicted Feelings About Warcraft – Why Tam Hates WoW – Loss of Junk Culture – Businessification of Comics and Games – Hobbyism and Creative Industries -Metal Gear Solid 5 – Overwatch – Last Bastion Cinematic

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

On Comic Market

by

Blaugust Post #13

Starting today (August 14), the 88th semi-annual Comiket starts in Tokyo. This event, held twice a year in August and December, is one of the major times that Japanese indie games release, and this one looks to be no different. Edelweiss (The developers of Astebreed) put together a trailer of all of the games at this summer’s Comiket; it’s over an hour long. Astebreed itself came out at Comiket 83, about 3 years ago.

Japanese media has a bit of a different relationship with fan works than American media tends to, with games and other media based on preexisting characters existing in a sort of “official unofficial” state. I mention this because the start of that video is about 15 minutes of games using the characters from the Touhou series, itself an example of a Doujin title. The “team” behind the Touhou series, Team Shanghai Alice, is really just one person. The next main game in that series is also coming out at Comiket.

On Comic Market
To go along with this, Steam is having a sale this week on a variety of games out of Comiket in years past. It’s also worth mentioning that Playism tends to pick these up earlier, and is even responsible for bringing some of them to Steam. It’s currently the only place you can pick up an actual Touhou game without importing (it’s still in Japanese). Prior to digital distribution, there was almost no way for most of the games shown to cross the Pacific, as actual physical CDs are sold at Comiket. Mostly this has meant piracy is the only way people get to play, but I’m hoping the modern internet can change that. After all, more people are lazy than cheap.