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This weekend we did something that I was not expecting to do. But first… let me back up a bit. If you have read this blog for awhile now, you will know some months back that we lost our elderly cat Allie. It had been something we were expecting for awhile, but it is nonetheless extremely hard because she was absolutely my baby. She regularly lay across my chest while playing video games and snuggled into my beard. After her passing I was absolutely not ready to contemplate another cat, nor did I think we really needed more than the two we already had. However after having three for so long there was just something that felt off about the balance of our home.

Kenzie however around the same timeline was diagnosed with Diabetes and we were going through the process of trying to get her to a sustainable dose of insulin. It involved trips to the vet for glucose curves to the point where if she even hears the cat carrier door now she runs and hides. Luckily she has reached a point where she is now going back every three months instead of every two weeks. We have reached a state of equilibrium in our home and it is in this that I realize that we need a third cat in the mix. Kenzie and Mollie have never really bonded. Mollie had been friends with Allie and there are times when it seems like Mollie understands the absence and misses her. My futile hope is that by adding another baby into the mix, that once again it might cause Mollie to bond with them.

So for the last week or so I had been watching various sites like Pet FInder just to see who all was available in the area. In my travels I found my way out to the city pound, and among the various cat pictures there was one that really spoke to me. Ultimately that is what I had been looking for… that animal that I had an instant connection with. According to the paperwork her name is Jillian but it is highly unlikely that we keep that. We are in the process of trying out a bunch of other names to find one that suits her more. She is a sweetheart and we’ve not been to visit twice and put in all of the adoption paperwork on Saturday, so that she is “ours”. Unfortunately we have to wait until next Friday before we can take her home, but it has given us time to set up an isolation suite for her to live in for the first week or so as she gets used to us and the smells of the other two animals.

I fully expect to shut off my office for example and take her in there with me so she can roam and explore while I do other things. I already love her so much with only having had two extended visits. Yesterday I didn’t take any photos, but she came to us pretty much as soon as we opened the cage door. I wish we could have taken her home on Saturday, but I understand them wanting to make sure that every animal is spayed or neutered before leaving their custody. We would have happily taken her to our vet, but I am not sure if they would spay at her age. They say she is only three months old, but she seems older than that. The workers didn’t have all of the information but she came from a foster home because she arrived as a baby kitten. You can tell however that she has had attention because she is pretty sociable. My hope is that we are still getting her young enough that she will bond extremely strongly with us. I am not sure if we will be going out today to visit, but I am low key planning on popping by either on my way home from work or at lunch over the next few days. The staff says that they really appreciate it when someone comes to visit during this awkward period of waiting for the adoption to finalize. There is a chance that we may get her before Thursday, so I am holding out hope for that. I know next weekend is going to be extremely busy but we need to spend as much time as possible with her. As such I am hoping to maybe spend the week nights taking care of as much as we can so we have just large blocks to time to spend with her on the weekend. If you follow me on twitter you have already seen most of these photos, but since it is technically a holiday for me I figured I would just knock out a quick post about the adorable kitty baby for anyone who was not watching.

Last night I recorded the very first new Bel Folks Stuff episode, and my hope is before the end of the week to record another. It was so much fun last night getting back into the swing of things, and I am not sure if I could have picked a better first guest to sort things out with. We had a charming conversation that once edited down a bit wound up right around the hour mark, so pretty much exactly what I was targeting. It seems like the whole sending the questions out ahead of time bit works as well because it allowed Grace some time to think about the answers she wanted to give. I am still super shocked that as many people have said yes as they have. Right now we have 22 who said yes, 2 that said no and 1 who is still a maybe… and then some folks that I have yet to get in contact with. The real challenge however was “HOW” to actually go about recording all of these people. For AggroChat we use a privately hosted TeamSpeak that more or less just has access by the members of the show. Tam has a massive preference towards teamspeak over anything else, and as such it is what we continue to use. There are two problems with that, the first being that very few people have the Teamspeak client and that it is always a pain in the butt to have to ask someone to install it. The second big hurdle is the fact that since it is a fairly private venue with a very specific purpose, I am not sure if I want to invite 22 new people to it. Discord seems to be the most ubiquitous chat option but it doesn’t have a native option to record chat in a channel. This however is where Craig.Chat comes in and last night was my first time using it. Essentially Craig is a bot that you invite to your discord server and then can issue commands to. So when you issue from a text channel:

 :craig:, join general 

Craig will join a chat channel named general and begin recording everything that is broadcast to that channel. When you are finished recording you issue the other important command:

 :craig:, leave 

Craig will then stop recording, leave the chat channel and send you a private message with links to download and delete your recording.

This for example is the page that loaded when I clicked on the recording from last night. I could download as a ready to go Audacity Project that comes with Ogg files that are already aligned perfectly with one track per speaker. If it floats your boat you can download several FLAC or Wav files that represent each user track and merge them together yourself later when you import into your audio editing software of choice. Of if you are lazy you can just download one track premixed and roll with it. I personally went with the Audacity Project as I knew I would need to do some volume adjusting given that Grace tends to come through a little quiet. There was some weirdness at the beginning with some awkward pops that I am not sure if they were just plosives or if it was something with the recording. However after the first few minutes everything seemed to be perfect cromulent. I plan on doing some more testing with this method but I think it is a completely viable option moving forward with this nonsense. When it comes time to record with each person I will invite them to the discord that more or less exists only for the purpose of recording shows, and one that I don’t really plan on trying to make a thing out of. I am however considering inviting Craig to the Blaugust Discord for example so people could try and record impromptu shows off of it if they so decided. All in all I am really happy with having some option that works for recording Discord.

Yesterday I got caught up in a twitter thread and I thought this morning it might be worth exploring it further. First however I need to take a step back and talk a bit about an issue that has been happening. Escape from Tarkov is apparently the new hotness with the streamers and has gone from a game that I knew existed to being something that is properly cemented into the zeitgeist. Recently it has reached the number one spot on twitch as far as games go for viewership. From what I can tell it seems to be a good game if you like that sort of game, but it has one frustrating omission for a lot of people. It completely lacks any form of female playable characters and at least in some part seems to be focused on building a character with gear and such.

But there will be no playable female characters because of game lore and more importantly – the huge amount of work needed with animations, gear fitting etc#EscapefromTarkov

— Battlestate Games (@bstategames) January 6, 2020

This has been a thing recently in the gaming press because when questioned about this Battle State Games gave a rather hamfisted response. If you want to know more about this you can check out one of the many articles on the subject like this one over on the Verge. Essentially they are presented with another scenario like Ubisoft was with Assassin’s Creed and they made up some lore reason why women shouldn’t exist in the setting. The thing is… this morning I am not even really going to talk about this decision because while it was the prompt for this discussion it isn’t the purpose. I just felt it was a bit of a primer needed to explain why this topic this morning.

Seems like a lot of people are upset with @bstategames for their stance on adding female models…has anyone asked what that would take work wise/cost wise/time wise? Would you as a gamer rather them focus on the game features or focus on adding a female player model?

— Lance PAXSouth (@Myll_Erik) January 9, 2020

So one of my friends posed a question. Would you rather have female character models if it meant cutting some other feature from the game. My answer was essentially “Yes” because representation is super important in a video game where you are given the choice of playing an avatar. On some level I can understand that if I am playing Horizon Zero Dawn I am playing Aloy and not myself or if I am playing Uncharted I am going to be playing the character of Nathan Drake. However if it is a game that features any sort of customization it is super important that you are able to create a character you are happy to be playing. Gender is one of those super important elements that make up the puzzle of what represents you as a character in a game. The above image is something that I had Ammo draw for me on the seventh anniversary of this blog. It is an amalgam of a bunch of my characters from different games. Left to right you have World of Warcraft, Secret World, Destiny, Rift, Elder Scrolls Online and Final Fantasy XIV. You should notice that there is a pretty strong theme between them minus the Exo but I will get into that character in a few. There is a character that I keep creating over and over which is effectively “Belghast” and if I am going to spend much time in a game I wind up creating a version of that character. If a game has the tools to let me assemble a reasonable facsimile of that appearance then I am super happy and chances are I am excited to be playing it. However if a game for some reason lacks the specific features I apparently want I am going to bounce super hard off of it.

There have been games that I absolutely did not play because they had shitty beard options. There are other games that I refused to play because every character was too much of a “bishounen” pretty boy. Hell there have been times that I could not get into a game because I didn’t like the armor or the weapons. In Destiny I wound up rolling a robot because of the complete and total lack of beards and even then I chose an exo that had a little chin stripe that I could at least pretend was a robobeard. If I am willing to stop playing games for stupid cosmetic reasons like this… or the fact that I couldn’t get my over the eye scar that I end up choosing each time… then damned well I get not playing a game because you can’t play a gender that you feel represents you.

I will always be on the side of all games needing gender choices. We recently reviewed Jedi Fallen Order on a few different podcasts and each time we wound up with the most frustrating part of the experience is that you are locked into playing a male character. There is nothing about the character of Cal Kestis, including the name I might add… that actually matters that it is a character of a specific gender. The game would have been infinitely better and more inclusive had they just let players choose who they wanted to play as. If I had my druthers pretty much every game experience would feature some sort of an option that allows you to tailor to at least the right gender if not being able to do full cosmetic customization. For me and many other players that I know… cosmetic options are pretty much the most important system in a game.

So we get back to the thing that spawned this discussion. Yet another game developer claims that it is too costly to add Female character models, and at least on some level I get that statement. Coming up with lore reasons to justify your position however is bullshit. The problem I have is that it shouldn’t even be a thing we are having to discuss and justify. Games should default to having multiple character options and not instead default to just having “Men”. If they support customization at all they should be designed from day one with the thought of having multiple character models to fit gear to. Sure I can see a period of time when you have one or the other but by the time you reach late stages of the game both should be expected.

So I would personally rather be missing features and playing a character that I feel good about playing than having a bunch of features and being unable to get into the experience at all because I am playing a character I don't feel represents me

— Belghast Warden of Freshtovia (@belghast) January 9, 2020

So we get back to the original question however. Would I want female character models in video games if it meant I would be giving up some other features? Unequivocally yes. The thing is… I am not going to likely play a female character because I am going to be trying to create “Belghast” in every single game. However I know how important having an avatar that feels like it represents you in a game is, and because of that I will always come down on the side of inclusion for character options. Feeling a since of connection and ownership to the character you are playing is extremely important and I want everyone out there to be able to play characters that feel like a little piece of them walking around in the gamespace. I’m not mad and have no bluster to rage against one developer or another… but I am disappointed that we are still treading this path over and over. Games are better when they support all of their players, not just a handful.

Since this is my first week back for the New Year when I am not in “holiday mode” I am starting to think about all of the assorted topics that one does at the beginning of a new year. I’ve never been very big into making New Years Resolutions, but from time to time the construct seems interesting to me. Given this is also the beginning of a new decade it seems as though it maybe has some greater importance. What I do this year may or may not set the tone for what the rest of the decade is going to look like. As such this morning I am going to share some tweaks that I would like to make in my life for the coming year.

Give Up the Chase

In the year 2000, I got indoctrinated by one of my friends into a little game called Everquest. From that point it feels like I have been chasing the one game to rule them all, or at least the one true game to devote all of my love and attention to. This has been Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, Horizon, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Rift, Star Wars the Old Republic and countless other titles that I have placed upon the burden of being my prime source of entertainment. For the last two decades, the majority of my gaming time has been spent pouring resources and hours into a seemingly endless game hoping it would capture my attentions and hold them in perpetuity. The problem here is that it never really works out and I have had a lot of amazing “honeymoon periods” with new games, in which I will pour my heart and soul for three months before wandering off disillusioned and jaded. In the Post-MMORPG world these have been games like Destiny or Anthem or even Monster Hunter World where I kept trying to make them into something that they were not necessarily intended to be. So in this coming year and decade I hope to stop looking for this magical thing that doesn’t exist. I want to allow myself to enjoy the games while they are enjoyable and fade away without guilt when they stop being that.

Stop Leading the Masses

I have this natural instinct and desire to collect awesome people and drag them along with me in whatever I happen to be doing. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it has been the source of my “gaming community” for the last two decades. However going hand in hand with the first statement, I need to stop trying to make magic happen again. Everquest and World of Warcraft were moments in history that may not ever be able to be repeated. I need to stop trying to enter each new online gaming experience and try and make it into something more than it actually is. I have this bad habit of trying to “unite the clans” and get them rallied under a single banner, and then feeling super distraught and guilty when this amalgam of all of these people that I think are awesome never quite mesh together into a larger resilient community. When we launched House Stalwart in Elder Scrolls Online we had something silly like 150 people on opening day and this was absolutely unsustainable in both just the case of human interaction or trying to make that many people exist in the same space. Then when a month later that it is down to 50 people… which is still a reasonable sized group I end up getting disappointed and frustrated that I could not somehow make everyone stick around. The binge and purge nature of new games and the guilds/clans I have built around them ends up leading to a spiral of depression and guilt that I just don’t need in my life. As a result my hope is that I can somehow stop myself from picking up that mantle of leadership in the future, because it only ends up leading to heartbreak when I can’t live up to the standards I have built up in my brain.

Play More Single Player Games

It was extremely evident when I was pulling together the list of my top games of the decade… that there are a ton of critically acclaimed games that I have never touched. Last of Us for example is by all accounts a phenomenal and game changing experience, and I have never actually played it. The reasons are many but at the end of the day I wind up getting caught up in chasing the forever game and spend all of my time in those sort of experiences rather than knocking out anything single player. I really want to somehow reverse that trend and start playing more of the games that are sitting collecting dust in my backlog that I picked up on sale at some point but never really gave the time of day. Similarly I would also like to start finishing some of the things that I started but bounced for some reason or another. Jedi Fallen Order for example is a phenomenal game experience and I have no clue at all why I stopped playing it. I need to get back in and figure out where I left off and continue the adventure. In no particular order here are some of the games that I would like to play and or finish this calendar year.

• Last of Us
• Jedi Fallen Order
• Wolfenstein II: New Colossus
• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
• Darksiders
• God of War
• Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
• Cyberpunk
• Dragon Age Inquisition
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Sleeping Dogs
• Uncharted (collection)

I realize that is a lot of things on that list and it doesn’t account for my whims but it is a goal. These are some things that I would love to spend more time playing.

Read More Books

Over the last two decades I have allowed myself to get out of the habit of reading for personal enjoyment. There are series that I am well hooked on that I will snatch up a new title for and read when it comes out like the Dresden novels, but the total volume of my reading is pretty limited. It is a weird sequence of circumstances and as I have moved away from consuming physical content as a whole… I never quite transitioned books in this direction. For awhile it was because I lacked what I considered a comfortable tablet to read on, and then when I did get that thing I wound up just playing mobile games on it before bed. With my recent obsession about the Witcher universe and trying to consume those novels I am almost rediscovering how enjoyable and relaxing knocking out a few chapters before sleep can be. My wife is a voracious reader and over the Christmas break she consumed over twenty novels. I am nowhere near as quick or consistent as I will always prefer game time to time with a book. That is not to say that I don’t also enjoy time with a book, and it is my goal this coming year to just keep something queued and progressing. I realize I have a lot of Witcher novels in front of me, but I would also really like to read some Brandon Sanderson because it is something I have never done. I feel like I have a hefty backlog of things I know I “should” read but never got around to. I may actually start using Good Reads as a way of tracking this, just for the sake of having something easily attached to the blog.

Take Better Care of Myself

I am a fat man and will likely always be a fat man. This is just who I am as a person and I lack the desire to change that. However I need to do something because I am currently the largest I have ever been. In many ways it is keeping me from living the sort of life that I want to live. I am not entirely sure what this is going to entail but I want to make some effort to change this. I need to sit down with my wife and make some lifestyle changes in order to support this, and as a result I am being vague for the moment because I am not entirely certain what that is going to look like. I always skimp on exercise in part because I keep trying to play forever games and keep trying to make myself available to lots of different time zones worth of friends when they are available. I need to stop this and spend more time on improving me.

Go To BlizzCon

I am not sure if this is realistic this year or not, but I would like to go to a BlizzCon. I would like to experience it in person and meet up with my various long time friends who are Blizzard devotees. This coming year seems like it is going to factor heavily into Diablo 4… the Blizzard franchise that I care the most about and as a result I think I would really like to be there. Factoring into the previous statement, I need to get to a size where air travel will not be horrible for me in order to make this even a viable option. Anaheim is a really far distance away and as a result there is no reasonable option that sees me taking a road trip to get there. So contingent on the previous statement, I would love to figure out a way to make this work in November or whenever it happens to be occurring this year.

Revive Bel Folks Stuff

Several years back I had a monthly podcast where I sat down with various friends and had a dialog about things and stuff. I greatly enjoyed this process but found the scheduling to be madness and the fact that it felt like no one was actually listening ultimately caused me to stop doing this. It never really seemed to gain any sort of traction, I guess in part because it was super niche and you either new these people I cared about or you didn’t. So one of the things I have been kicking around for awhile is trying to figure out a way to revive this. Maybe record an entire season of episodes before releasing them, making it less of a stretch of trying to figure out how to schedule them. I also think I might want to shift the format to where I ask a fixed set of questions that are of course open ended enough to allow for random discussions to happen. I am not even sure this is going to happen but I figure it is worth trying to make happen. For those curious the original run can still be found on the AggroChat site, and there are seven total episodes.