New Repeating Donation Incentive: Speed Marathons

So of course I'm always looking for new donation incentives to put on the blog to help aid the charity and here's an idea I'm surprised I've not come up with sooner.

So at time of writing I can sort of semi-competently speedrun about 10 or 11 games so the obvious outcome of this donation incentive is that I'd play them all back to back.  Only I'll do you one a little better which would be that I'd do 3 runs of each game before switching to the next title.  That will add a decent amount of length to the event and make it worth the donation money I feel.

However usually when I run an event once the event is done it gets deleted from the incentive list.  The only repeating incentive that has been featured on the blog before this was Euro Truck Simulator 24 hours and the only reason that repeated is because I failed to make the 24 hour mark on the first attempt.

This is the first donation incentive on the blog that won't disappear after it's been met and instead it'll just reset back to 0.  That means if you wanted to see 10 (or more in the future) games get run back to back, you could keep donating for it and making me do these marathons as often as possible.  There will also be a sort of stretch goal during each marathon to make me play one extra game that I don't usually run one time and that will be decided at the start of each marathon, I'll pull it from a hat or something.

Let's do some speedruns for charity!

The Sushi Game

So I went to a place called Kurazushi and they had this game that you could play every time you slide 5 plates into the machine. The prize you get was a little gatcha thing that had either fancy sushi sticky tape or a little key chain.

Tau and Friends Play Gauntlet Part 10

Tau and Friends Play Advance Wars Part 6

I miss Instruction Manuals

A lot has changed in the gaming scene since I was a wee lad, some for the better and some for the worse.  However the one thing I miss more than fucking anything is proper instruction manuals.

Back in the day, when you'd buy a game I always thought the manual was something to look forward to.  A lot of the manuals for games I bought had things like backstory or character profiles in them as well as instructions on how to play the game.  When I was a kid, I had to take a bus into the city center to go to my closest game store to pick up a title and after my purchase I'd read that shit on the way home.  There was something really satisfying about opening a new game case and flicking through that nice glossy manual.  Even the smell of the damn thing as incredible as weird as that sounds.

Hell, I've even bought games based on the quality of their manual.  I remember discovering The Elder Scrolls for the first time at a friends house.  Yeah, the game looked cool as fuck and all but the manual was just full of all sorts of information that really drew me into the idea of playing the game and then on top of that it came with a sick as fuck glossy map of the world.  I had that Morrowind map on the wall next to my computer pretty much up to the day I moved out of that house.  Neverwinter Nights was another example of a game I purchased purely based on the manual.  I was at the same friends house when he got it as a gift from his dad. He opened that box and there was a fucking thick tome that you could kill someone with inside there with instructions on how to play.  I didn't even have to read the fucking thing to know that I wanted that damn game.

Nowadays, getting a new game is a bit of a disappointing experience.  A lot of my purchases, especially for PC are digital so there's no way in fuck I'm getting a nice manual there.  Even if I purchase of Good Old Games or something where they have the manuals, it's just not the same when it's in PDF, I wanna hold the fucking thing.  For other systems it's probably even worse than nothing at all.  Usually when I open a box there's usually just some legal information, an insert for the controls and a card advertising some DLC or some shit.  Even if the game is amazing, opening the box upon purchase brings nothing but sadness.

I wish they'd bring back proper manuals but I guess that's a practice that's long dead and will never return.  If a company put a big proper manual in a game now I'd probably buy it regardless of what the game was just to support the practice.

Affilates and Ad Revenue

So if you've been looking at the YouTube content, reading this blog or as of yesterday, watching the Twitch stream, you may have noticed that a lot of it is registered under various affiliate programs and has adverts and stuff on them.  Considering that this is first and foremost a charity site, I can see why some people might raise an eyebrow at the idea of me putting ads on things and making some money.

Well initially with the blog page and YouTube the logic was that these will generate some revenue without actually costing the viewer anything.  You click an article or watch a YouTube video and the less than a cent value of what it's worth just gets shoved into some account somewhere that will build up over time.  I then thought that I'd use that passive money to do things like upgrade the website, make the quality of the stream better, do more events, offer more charity raffle prizes to the readers/viewers etc etc.

However the reason I'm doing this post is because last night I found out I was eligible for the Twitch version of all this, thinking it would be a similar deal, only to find out that it works via something that's known as "Twitch bits".  This involves buying "bits" from twitch and then using those bits to "cheer" for a streamer when you are in their chat and I think 1 bit is equal to one cent and once you accrue $100 you can pay out to your bank or PayPal or whatever.

Let me make something very clear.  When I set up this website I set it up with the intention of raising money for the Alzheimer's Society and of course that is still the main goal.  My problem with the Twitch affiliate service is that it's not passive like a YouTube ad and incurs a cost to you, the viewer.  So what I want to stress is that if you have a choice between buying twitch bits or throwing a few dollars/pounds into the charity, please please PLEASE for the love of everything holy pick the charity.

As far as improving the site/stream and stuff like that is concerned, I will be doing that ANYWAY from my job money, ad revenue or none.  Please do NOT spend any of your own money to support me directly fucking EVER.  Always prioritize the charity, no matter what.  Do however keep supporting the various content and spreading the word so that there can maybe be more people who would be up for donating to the society.

Thank you for your understanding and continued support

Tau and Friends Play Advance Wars Part 5

Tau and Friends Play Gauntlet Part 9

RPG Difficulty Spikes

Before anyone asks where the top picture is, I'm currently on a road trip with my in laws so I'm posting from my phone.  The blogger app crashes so I'm stuck using fucking Safari and this thing just hates the idea of pulling images from from my photo roll.

Anyway, difficulty spikes aren't exactly a new concept to anyone that's been gaming a while.  There are plenty of games in all genres that have but I feel like it's the most annoying in RPGs because of the greater sense of security before the spike.

Now the main reason people have trouble with RPGs is because they are either underlevelled from running away from enemies.  Of course RPGs can pose all sorts of challenges but when people are complain that's usually the reason. However there are times where everything will seem completely fine but then you reach a boss and you just get your shit kicked in.

For example I was just playing pervy vita dungeon crawl Dungeon Travellers and the dungeon I was currently in was a complete breeze.  Enemies aren't really doing shit to me of any concern and and I'm killing enemies with ease.  Hell, my magic user was one shotting stuff for fucks sake.  So I get to the end of the dungeon and BAM the boss just shits all over my face.  Eventually I won but it required some extra grinding for skill points to get it done.  Other examples of this could be the wall boss in FF7 or Matador in SMT: Nocturne

It's annoying because the game makes you believe that everything is fine with easy as fuck trash mobs and then slams the breaks on your progress with a bullshit boss battle that makes you fuck off and rethink everything.  In other genres it's either easier to deal with or faster to change up what you gotta do to progress.  In RPGs all the management and preparation you have to do means that dealing with a spike could potentially take hours of tedium just to get on with the game.

Being challenged is good and all but any developer who puts these sudden spikes in their games need something sharp through their cheeks.  Fair challenge please guys