Uncategorized

There are times when you want to make a blog post, but you don’t exactly know how to get started at the actual writing of it. This is one of these mornings because I am not exactly sure what I want to say… but I do know the general message. It is always hard when we come to gather to mourn the loss of someone from the gaming community, and over the last few weeks, we have lost a couple of big voices in Epic Insanity and yesterday Rades. In both cases I know the impact they left on this community largely by the way that their passing has impacted the mutual friends that we shared. In truth I knew neither of them, and there is a bit regret there because they both seem like extremely great people to be around.

That isn’t to say that I didn’t know “of” them both. I recognized the “Epic Insanity” logo from a few discussions I have been involved with and I absolutely remember Rades from Wildstar and the “Rainbeer Road Raceway” that he created. I was talking with my friend Grace about her memories and how she donated so many of these signs to the cause. He seemed like a chaotic force of joy in the world and based on the lives he touched, folks will be talking about his antics for a whole generation of players.

The blood elf with the fire festival sunglasses is probably the image that I will always have in my head when I think of Rades. The challenge however is that for whatever reason, in spite of how many people in common that we both seemingly cared about deeply… our paths never really crossed. I’ve thought a bit trying to figure out how that happened, given that we both got our starts in the WoW Blogging community and I have to figure both interacted with the Blog Azeroth crowd. The only thing I keep landing on is that he was a Horde player and that for most of my WoW Career until Warlords… I was a dedicated Alliance player. I never really read Orcish Army Knife, I think in part because I mentally thought of it as a “Horde” blog. Based on a few of Grace’s favorite articles that they linked me yesterday, I really wish I had because they were absolutely hilarious and poignant. What this has made me think about is just how fleeting our connections are when we are potentially hundreds or thousands of miles apart and can’t physically lay hands on one another. While I didn’t know Rades or Epic Insanity, I have my own list of people that touched my life that we lost way too soon and that I end up thinking about at least once a week. My friend lists on various games and Twitter follows are littered with emotional landmines of folks who are no longer with us, but that I cannot bring myself to unfollow. Slurms, TenTen, Zann, Stropp, and Psychochild all come to mind as people that I miss talking to greatly. I finally did unfollow River, because his account got hacked and it was trying to distribute Malware, but I wish I still had it there preserved. The thing is… I can’t say that I was super close to any of them… but at the same time they made up key building blocks of this community that I have come to call family. I am super bad at expressing how much I care about the folks that I spend my free time with. Like in the list of names that I just rattled off, I don’t think I ever said to them specifically how much they meant to me and how much I enjoyed whatever time we had interacted with each other. The connections we have online are so ephemeral and often not rooted in the day-to-day reality of our lives. I go into minor panic attacks every now and then when I have the sudden realization that I have gone several days without seeing anything from a specific person, and then spend the next hour trying to figure out what might have happened. Thanks if you have ever helped me on one of these panicked jaunts because I have this overarching fear that someone will slip from memory without me realizing it. The thing is now that I have sat down to talk about this today, I am absolutely certain there are other people that we have lost that I am not thinking of right now. I’ve kicked around the idea of hosting a sort of gamer memorial page but wasn’t sure if that was creepy or morbid. The thing is… we know parts of each other, but rarely do we know the totality. You know what I choose to share with you, which is a fraction of the total picture of what makes up my life. So for example I got a window into the lives of Slurms or TenTen, that was curated for me to see but I can’t really say that I knew the totality of the person they were. I worry sometimes about what people will remember me for when I am gone. Above all else I want you to take away from this post that I care. I might be bad at putting it into words sometimes, but if we have ever interacted for any length of time you have made an impact on me. I maybe care more about “digital ” friends that a lot of people do, because I cut my teeth on IRC. I met my wife on IRC and was introduced by a mutual friend from Belgium, so people have always been far more than the pixels dancing across my screen. Be it introversion or distance… there are very few of you that I will ever actually get to know “for real”, but I think it is important that you understand that it doesn’t mean you have not already impacted me greatly. The times we find ourselves living through right now, seems to conspire to rob us of the people we care about in the blink of an eye. I just want to make sure you understand that if you are reading these words and interacting with me… that you matter to me. The post Know That I Care appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Good Morning Friends! This morning’s topic is going to go some places, and hopefully, you are along with me on this ride. I am very much a PC-focused gamer, but that does not mean that I don’t also spend a significant amount of time playing consoles like the Switch. Essentially PC will probably always be my platform of choice, but over the last few year when my wife determines it is time for sleep I have gone along with her. This means most of the time I am piddling around on either a phone, tablet, or my switch if it has sufficient charge until I reach the point where I am actually ready for sleep. This means I am always on the lookout for a novel use for one of these devices, especially if it allows me to continue having an experience similar to my gaming PC in a portable form factor.

This week the Ayn Odin went up on Indie GoGo and it is a device that I have been watching for some time as it went through R&D and development. The idea is to create an android based device with a comfortable form factor similar to the Nintendo Switch. The “Pro” version of the device is $265 and honestly seems like quite a deal, at least compared to the recent pricing of the Steam Deck. The thing is… I already have a way more competent android device that I use on a daily basis… my Razor Phone 2. For a few years now I have been chasing the concept of turning that into a more proper gaming device that includes some physical controls. The thing that really is the thing holding me back from completely embracing mobile gaming… is touch screen controls just feel like shit. I have giant fumbling fingers and they never offer the level of precision that I am seeing in a touch screen interface. Since I have a Razor Phone, my first step on this journey was to pick up the Razor Kishi when it first landed on the market. Razor makes decent enough peripherals, and I have to admit the thumb sticks and buttons on the device feel solid. The first strike against the device however… is that it doesn’t fit their own phone. There are some rubber inserts on the sides of the device that are designed to create a firm grip when you dock your phone into it. However with the Razor Phone 2, it will not fit into the device unless I yank these two rubber bumpers out of the way. Without them in place however there are other problems that arise.

This image comes from Razor’s own marketing slides, and shows the back of the device. Essentially your phone is suspended between the two chonky sides of the device by an elastic band. Without the rubber bumpers in place that grip your device, the entire thing feels floppy in the hand. Given that I have nonsensically large hands that I have already discussed in the past, I am constantly causing the device to flex in unnatural ways given that it isn’t making great contact in the first place. While I have spent some time gaming in this manner, namely playing XCloud… it isn’t exactly an award winning experience.

Now we zoom forward to last week, as I was following news about the Ayn Odin device… I saw someone mentioning that it was just cheaper to get a burner phone and the device shown above and end up with the same results. The device in question is known as the Gamesir X2 and it comes in both a Type-C connection variant that I own and a Bluetooth connected version. I specifically went for the Type C model because it is powered by connecting to your phone, and allows for pass through charging of the device. There are a few things that I feel warrants discussion here. Firstly you notice that the sides of the device are completely flat, and not curved like that of the Kishi… which allows for you to support a fairly wide array of devices with this design.

The second bit which is significantly more important for me personally is the way that the device actually telescopes to fit the device. Instead of an elastic band, there is a sliding plastic bit that extends for most of the length of the device. The end result is that the majority of your device is supported and not just floating out there without a rigid structure. The extended portion is not flush, but in my personal experience with the controller it does not feel flexible like the Kishi did. Instead it feels more like I am holding a solid body handheld, which is ultimately the experience that I wanted. The negative of the Gamesir is the pricetag… which was originally $100 but has more recently fallen down to $60.

This is awesome if the games you want to play on Android natively support a controller. The challenge here is that most of them do not… which means you now have a rather expensive bauble that can’t really do what you want it to do. Genshin Impact for example fully supports a controller in the iOS platform but that feature has yet to trickle over to Android. Gamepad mappers have existed for quite some time but generally require you to root your device in order to get them to work… which triggers protection schemes that various mobile games have to stop cheating. Those that don’t have traditionally done something called Screen Cloning, which also shows up as “cheating” to various software scanning for such activity. For example if you try and use a popular app like Octopus while running Genshin, you are forced to log out .

Now is where things start to get super fiddly and Rube Goldberg device like. There is a piece of software called Mantis Gamepad that functions in a completely different manner. Essentially the only way to run a piece of software at a system level is either to root your device or to flip your device into developer mode. While in developer mode you can essentially debug software with low level permissions, which requires you to have some other device “Activate” it. This is done through something called the Android Debug Bridge or ADB, and if you are really curious you can see a description of how that works here. The above video explains how to get it up and running more specifically for Mantis Gamepad. The reality is that you have to either have access to a PC or access to another Android device in order to activate the Mantis app before it functions.

Once activated however you have a floating widget that now appears over games you launch from within the Mantis app. The buttons in the above screenshot shifted when I tried to pull up my screenshot app, but essentially you get a menu full of widgets that you can place over top of the controls on the screen. You also have the ability to assign “phases” and toggle between them so you could have one set of controls for action mode, and another set of controls for when you are in a dialog box for example. The final result was that for the first time ever, I could comfortably do my Genshin Impact dailies while sitting in bed using a controller with my phone. I tried a few different control schemes but ultimately felt more comfortable using face buttons for combat than I did triggers. This is probably just a me thing, given that the majority of my console years were spent playing Super Nintendo era games and not more modern titles where everything focuses on the triggers and bumpers. I’ve tried a few other titles like Dragalia Lost and Tales of Wind and they worked perfectly fine as well. Now that I have a viable way to play android games, I am going to start branching out into emulation with this set up. Mostly I am making this post, just in case there is someone one there trying to do this same thing. I am going to start experimenting with Moonlight and Steamlink as well, and maybe even try some PlayStation Remote Play. I can already say however that using Microsoft XCloud feels awesome with this set up as well. I highly recommend the Gamesir, because so far it has come the close to giving me that Android Switch experience that I was looking for. The post Chasing the Android Switch appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

I’ve felt like I needed to talk about this point for a few days now, but honestly was uncertain exactly what I would say about the matter. If you remain blissfully unaware of the situation happening with Blizzard entertainment, I would like to have some of whatever you are smoking because apparently, it works extremely well. The short rundown is the State of California has filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard for hostile working conditions, specifically targeting women and in EEO language “protected classes”. Since this point, a cavalcade of horrible stories of Blizzard employees behaving badly has been loosed upon our community. I am in no way trying to diminish these stories but there are way too many of them to ever realistically cover in a blog post. If you have remained oblivious then I highly suggest educating yourself and PC Gamer has a fairly good rundown of the timeline of events.

As part of this discussion, I feel like it is important to at least talk about the employee walkout at the Blizzard campus. The first image in this blog post is a picture of Blizzard staff walking out on July 28th to protest the situation. Corresponding to this action there were calls across social media, many of which coming from Blizzard staff to boycott all of the studio’s games on that day and to create a virtual picket line. This specific call to boycott was targeting a specific time and date and not a larger drive to boycott the games as a whole. The thing is… once this ball started rolling it was difficult to stop and now there are a number of individuals that are maintaining the boycott as a way of showing support. It is all a double-edged sword because, in order to make the “corporate overlords” take notice, the company has to be losing money. However, in order for the company to lose money, you have to take actions that will actively harm the folks that are still working there.

In fact, there are folks in the community trying to say “hold up a minute” and stop the boycott. Alanah Pearce is a trusted voice in the gaming community, and I generally speaking appreciate her opinion on things. Yesterday she released a heartfelt video talking about how a boycott might do more harm than it does good. I’ve seen this echoed in the comments on Twitter of my own friends who work at Blizzard. Now that the initial employee action is over, there seems to be a general fear that the fans won’t be coming back. I mean and honestly, that fear is warranted given that I myself cannot stomach the thought of playing any of the games right now. Diablo 3 Season 24 is happening currently and the start of a new Diablo season is generally my happy place, but I cannot bring myself to touch the game.

If you have reached this spot in the blog post, you might be wondering… “Bel why are we even talking about this right now?” On Tuesday just ahead of the investor earnings call, J. Allen Brack the president of Blizzard Studios left the company to “pursue other opportunities”. Replacing him is a team of “co-leaders” made up of Jen Oneal that came from Vicarious Visions, and Mike Ybarra previously from Microsoft and the Xbox platform. Firstly let me be clear, that I absolutely believe that JAB needed to go to begin the process of change. Secondly, I don’t necessarily see anything specifically wrong with the choices that were made other than they seem to reflect Activision more than they reflect BLizzard as a studio. They are choices that point at corporate control and stability with Jen Oneal being a pretty familiar surrogate for Activision and Mike being looked at as a rainmaker from Microsoft. I think my ultimate fear with all of this is that these were simply performative actions in order to show the stockholders that Kotick and crew were seizing control just ahead of the earnings call. Additionally, the head of Human Resources left the company, which makes sense given that every single tale that I have heard involved either that department being apathetic or openly hostile towards those coming forward to report incidents. The timing of this all synchronizing with the earnings call, however, makes this all seem like a calculated series of steps in order to smooth out investor sentiments. I wouldn’t exactly classify the stock prices as being in freefall, but there has absolutely been a downward trend since the announcement of the lawsuit and the other information coming to light. There is even a lawsuit coming from the investor community alleging that the company misleads shareholders.

Tuesday, August 3rd was the Activision Blizzard earnings call. If you are so inclined you can check out the webcast recording of this call here or view the slide deck from which the above image is pulled. Some of the core takeaways are that Blizzard as a whole continues the downward slide of MAU’s reported, losing another 1 million players and down roughly $50 Million in revenue compared to the first quarter. Additionally, Diablo Immortal the oft-maligned mobile port of Diablo 3 has been pushed out to a 2022 release and there are still no firm dates for either Overwatch 2 or Diablo IV. Diablo II Resurrected appears to still be on track for a September launch which is largely the big positive. In 2015, Blizzard stopped reporting subscription numbers in favor of a more ambiguous engagement figure of MAU’s or Monthly Active Users. However in the above image pulled from MassivelyOp, shows that since 2018 Blizzard has lost 32% of its Monthly Active Users. In other terms, it is now sitting at 26 Million MAUs for Q2, which means it is down 12 Million users for the company as a whole in that timeframe. I think what is scarier is the fact that this quarter doesn’t even take into account the current exodus of players from World of Warcraft. That all more or less started during the Month of July. My own World of Warcraft account was canceled and laying dormant, but still on the books until the first part of July for example. When it comes time for the investor call in Q3, it is likely going to be pretty bleak.

So I guess we wind up back at the first question of the post. Should you boycott Blizzard games? Ultimately I don’t have a clue. I don’t know what actions are going to lead to a significant change in that company. I do know that it is a more complicated issue than just seeing some performative actions taken to convince the investors that change is coming. Change actually needs to happen. The other side of the coin that we have not even begun to discuss is the fact that not only are the allegations of sexual assault horrific, but the fact that World of Warcraft has not been in great shape for the last four years. I didn’t quit World of Warcraft because of the allegations, I was already long gone when I bounced hard off the Shadowlands content. While my six-month sub timed out corresponding with the great exodus that is happening, it is not part of it. I simply input didn’t want to play this game anymore. Going back to the changes that are happening with the company, the Employees that were protesting made a list of pretty straightforward demands. To the best of my knowledge, none of these demands have actually been met or even publicly discussed by those in power at Activision Blizzard. Until these demands are taken seriously I am hesitant to ease up on the pressure. So if you did in fact quit World of Warcraft or any other Blizzard titles over this recent situation, then it isn’t exactly time to take your eye off the ball because no tangible action has actually been taken to improve the situation other than a changing of the guard. If you were boycotting for this specific reason then it is a pretty fraught decision to determine if you should go back to playing like normal or not. It is very easy to look at any corporate action taken as being “good enough”. The thing is gamers have very short attention spans when it comes to boycotting the things that they love. There are deep structural issues at work in the gaming industry as a whole, and that doesn’t align itself with rapid change but instead, a slow and prodding ship that takes decades to turn. I’ve been guilty of being angry with a company and then forgiving them quickly because it means that I can return to doing the things I want to do guilt-free. Nostalgia is a powerful drug and we all want to return to the places that give us those happy feelings. I would love to be able to return to playing Diablo 3 for example with a clean conscience.

The thing is… I can’t, at least not yet. I can’t tell you what you should do or the actions that you should take. Your situation is different than mine and in the eyes of one of my friends “the money is already spent”. That is a perfectly cromulent way of viewing the situation if it works for you. For me, it does not, because I know that regardless of what I happen to be doing… I am also broadcasting that action to the world. I can’t in good faith keep publicly supporting Blizzard or its games. That is not to say that this will always be the case. It is entirely possible that next week I buckle and return to the fold, but for the time being, I am holding my ground. It is not so much a boycott but instead me doing what feels right. You need to look deep inside yourself and determine what feels right to you. The post Boycott or Not appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.