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

Cthulhu Fluxx

I know it's not strictly a video game but I played this a few weeks ago and fucking loved it so I'm taking a moment to talk about it.  Plus Cthulhu is one of those things that people love to go on and on about when talking about shit like Eternal Darkness and games like that so it's sort of related.

Fluxx itself is a sort of series of card games where the rules and the conditions for winning (or losing) change pretty rapidly during play.  I'm only just discovering that Fluxx is actually a huge thing I've been unaware of as I googled the above image.  Turns out there are tons of versions of this thing including Batman, Zombies, Cartoon Network and Monty Python just to name a couple outside of the original "Fluxx"

Anyway the game is simple, you draw a couple of cards at the start and then you have to draw 1 and play 1 each turn.  The deck consists of a number of types of cards including goals (how you win) keepers (stuff you want) and rules (self explanatory).  In Cthulhu Fluxx there are also Ungoals which make everyone lose and Creepers which prevent you from winning unless you end up with a fucked up goal on the table.  The game gets really interesting once players start throwing down rule cards such as Play All which means that whatever you have in your hand you have to throw it down right away.  When this shit starts happening players can go from really strong positions to really weak ones in an instant and seeing someone get fucked over is pretty satisfying

Another thing that makes this game so appealing is that you can play it very quickly.  Each game can take only a few minutes and won't really extend over about 20 at a stretch.  It's easy to understand so you can easily bring all your friends into the game quickly and it's surprisingly compelling to play.  We started the evening with my friend saying "I'll just show you this game real quick" and ended about 2 hours later like "Think we have time for one more?". 

You can pick it up at any sort of hobby shop I imagine or you can get it on Amazon for about £12.  Get some people together and give it a spin, it's fun as fuck.

Attack on Moe

It's times like this I start to question my own tastes in games. 

So a few days ago I was drunk in a bar and at one point in the evening I took to looking at one of my social media applications.  An advert popped up for a game called "Attack on Moe" which depicted a dude fighting giant anime girls that lost their clothes when you beat them in combat.

So OF COURSE I fucking downloaded it

What I found was a fan service clicking game similar to that of cookie clicker but instead of cookies its monsters and anime girls.  The game is very simple, you tap the thing until it dies and you do this until you get a boss.  Then you have to tap the boss until it dies but you're on a time limit for that and if you kill it then you progress to the next stage.  Every 5 stages you get to fight a "Moetan" which is a big anime girl which when defeated, goes into a "Moepedia" (seeing a theme here?) and then you can sort of rub them down for bonuses and images of them slowly losing more and more items of clothing.

As you do all this you earn money which you can use to buy upgrades for you guy as well as hero characters that will support you and farm you more money while you're offline.  There's also a "PVP" feature where you and a friend see who can mash this fastest and you earn points which earn you various rewards as you do this every handful of hours.  There's also premium currency which you can buy/earn by playing which allows you to buy items that increase stats or unlock more anime girls for you to fight in later stages.

There's not much to say about it other than it's just a fucking clicking game.  It's the kind of thing you fiddle with for about 30 seconds to a minute at a time when you're taking a shit or REALLY bored on a train or something.  I'd say it's worth checking out because if I'm going to waste my time monotonously tapping things the experience is so much better with some anime titties to go with it.

What Happened To Silent Hill?

If you were following the stream schedule you may have noticed that April was supposed to be the month where I was doing Silent Hill 2 "speed" runs.  If you were following the stream then you may have been disappointed because not a lot of Silent Hill 2 actually happened in the end.

Well there was a number of reasons for this.  First, I'm playing on original hardware and my knowledge of doing this is basically zero so setting it up again after months of not doing it turned out to be a lot harder than I expected.  Plus April was a pretty crazy month with Hanami (drinking in a park while looking at Sakura trees), work stress just generally tiring me out and an old friend coming to visit which has been the focus of my last few weekends. 

However these are just excuses and I feel bad about not delivering on a decent amount of SH2 attempts so instead of boring you with details, I'll just make up for it.  May was supposed to be a month of Ys1 however I know not many people know what the game is and a lot of people kind of don't like watching it.  I'm not going to cancel Ys month on the stream but I will be trying to alternate between a Ys run and an SH2 run each evening to make up for the lack of SH2 in April.

The remainder of April will be spent hammering out Final Fantasy 9 because I've been playing that shit for ages and I'm only on Disc 3.  So the next few days will be focused on that and then it'll be back to nightly runs!

Of course, I won't be able to stream every day of the month but I'll try my very best to cram in as much as I possibly can.  If I'm not streaming and you want to know why, Twitter is a good place to find out how I'm wasting my time doing things that are not streaming, so follow there for updates (@Taurinensis)

Thanks for the understanding and continued support!