I was saying that I hoped to somehow manage to write two non-personal posts this week, but I was obviously right to doubt that I could do it. In fact, with the previous post being nothing more than an action alert, it could even be said that I wrote no proper posts this week and only did the bare minimum necessary to keep the “buffer” at two. And that certainly wasn’t because I was busy doing anything else, since the only noticeable thing I did this week was update Mario Wibisono’s section in my little fantasy art gallery after he added some new works on his deviantART page and also modified several older ones, quite a few of which were already among the ones I had selected for the gallery. Otherwise, I didn’t go anywhere, I’m still not playing any games and I’m ashamed to say that I still didn’t start reading any of those books either…
At least I keep adding to my story and did manage to get somewhere for a moment, after five or six more or less pointless chapters, but it certainly seems like it won’t last and I’ll get stuck again very quickly, since I’m still in that portion that requires things that I simply can’t wrap my mind around. But the simple fact that I manage to keep adding something to it every day, as little and as crappy as it is, certainly explains a good part of the reason why I simply can’t handle the blog almost at all anymore, since I just calculated that the number of words that I now add to my story per week is pretty much equal to two serious blog posts of average size. As a result, after struggling for the past year to improve my pace there, perhaps from extremely embarrassing to “just” very embarrassing, I’m now hitting my limit for serious and at least reasonably calculated writing from it alone, leaving absolutely nothing for the blog.
I’ve been following up on the story of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society‘s captain Paul Watson‘s recent arrest in Germany, hoping to be able to write a brief post about his release. Unfortunately, the situation developed in the opposite direction and a preliminary extradition warrant has been requested instead, which turns this post into a call to action. We’re talking about a man being arrested essentially for doing the right thing, about an iconic leader of the environmental and animal rights movements risking being handed over to those who care nothing for other species and readily trade the long-term good of the world in general and even that of humanity in particular for selfish short-term economic benefits and about a very important organization wasting precious time and resources with a legal battle instead of going out there and saving the lives that need saving! Admittedly, perhaps those aren’t human lives, but why should that make any difference?
If you want to help, and I’ll come out here and kindly as you to do so, you can at the very least respectfully contact the German Federal Minister of Justice, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Guido Westerwelle, since they appear to be the ones who can intervene at the moment, even the public prosecutor stating during the hearing that they have the power to stop the extradition procedure if they consider that the charges are politically motivated. On top of that, you could and likely should also spread the word about this, especially if you know anyone from Germany or even anyone who at least knows German well enough to write the messages in it, as that may well increase the impact. And last but not least, if you can afford it and are willing to do so, you can of course also donate to Sea Shepherd’s legal defense and education fund in order to help cover their legal expenses.
Oddly enough, if last week it was hard not to immediately start reading the books I got, this week I hardly even thought of it, so they’re still sitting there on the shelf. And it’s not like I did much of anything else, to say that I had to focus or had some other use for the time. Sure, I somehow managed to stick to my writing plan in spite of being almost certain that I’ll fail every single day, but I didn’t spend as much as a single minute playing any games, didn’t do any more work on the site… I did go through that other little book I mentioned in that post, but didn’t even manage to “compress” a part of it into a list and turn that into a post, as the original plan was.
Admittedly, for a good part of the week, on top of the usual issues, my mind was stuck on the fact that I had a dentist’s appointment on Friday to sort out that filling that fell out some two months or so ago. Thankfully, that went very well, though oddly enough it apparently hadn’t fallen from where I thought it had, but instead from above that place, simply lodging itself in between those teeth then. Or at least that’s what I was told, because I still find it rather hard to believe, but at the same time it would explain some things, so I guess it may be true.
The first order of business for next week is to submit some more things on MobyGames, because I’m still quite a lot behind “schedule” this year due to the fact that I did next to nothing until the end of February and have so far made up for only about half of that. Otherwise, I obviously need to at least maintain the current pace, as crappy as it is, with my story and should also find some way to write two non-personal posts here and therefore finally get that “buffer” back to four at least, though I still find it hard to believe that I actually will manage to do so, so don’t hold your breath. Past this, I don’t even plan to try anything else, hoping to at least manage to recover a little energy and perhaps be able to do slightly more later, though of course that hardly ever works out.
But now I just managed to find a moment when the kitchen was clear and went there to grab a little to eat and today’s newspapers, so that’s about it with this post and let’s hope that I’ll somehow manage to hold it together well enough for the next one to not be personal as well. And let’s also hope that I’ll actually get around to starting to read those books very soon, because this is starting to be pretty embarrassing, if not necessarily unexpected, considering my usual state of mind and how long it’s been since I last had new books to read.
No, the two aren’t connected, but I didn’t have enough to say to write separate posts for each. Or, more exactly, all I can say about Antichrisis at the moment fits in a couple of paragraphs while, on the other hand, writing a separate post for Omnia out of the blue would feel rather weird since they’re hardly a new find but I had little reason to pay attention before, which explains why I only now noticed their last two albums, the first of which having been released back in 2010.
To start with Antichrisis, I’m happy to announce that, although the band itself essentially disbanded over three years ago, Sid and Ayuma, with a small amount of help from a few former band members, have recently released the first Antichrisis album that actually contains new material in over a decade. It’s called Not Fade Away and it’s available for purchase through Bandcamp, which obviously also means that you can legally listen to all of it on that site if you are so inclined. Then again, almost all the songs had already been available on the band’s site, though they had stopped also being available for download some months ago.
As far as the music itself goes, this album sticks to their regular rule of being noticeably different from those before it while at the same time having a sound that I’m not particularly keen on. But that’s entirely a matter of taste and you may enjoy it far more than I do, just like you may also relate to the lyrics far more than I do, because most reflect the recent events in Sid’s life and his current outlook, which may have seemed to match mine incredibly well in many aspects back when the other albums were recorded but has apparently moved away from it since. As such, at this point the recommendation may largely be for old times’ sake, but I’ll still make it, especially since I did find myself enjoying Restless Years, which is a track that hadn’t previously been available on their site, a fair bit from the beginning. Who knows, the rest may grow on me in time as well…
Moving on to Omnia, I have to start by saying that I first heard of them when somebody who had been pointed to them by someone else pointed me to them, most likely around the start of 2009. At the time, I certainly recognized the value of what they were doing, certainly realized what they were all about, but other than a couple of poems recited on music, namely The Raven and Fairy Tale, nothing really caught my eye (or ear). In fact, there were only a few other songs that I could see myself listening to more than once or twice, the issues I had with the rest ranging from the one I always have with songs with lyrics in languages that I don’t know to the fact that certain sounds simply rubbed me the wrong way, many sounded too happy, there were too many instrumentals and so on. As a result, I rather quickly put them largely out of mind, though I did find myself looking for those two poems on YouTube a few more times since.
However, I just stumbled into I Don’t Speak Human completely randomly Sunday night, around 1 AM, and it, or more exactly the lyrics and the resulting message, perhaps aided by a certain picture added at exactly the right moment in that little slideshow, made me burst into tears. Now I’m not keen on the instrumental line heard on the chorus and bridge, but the text had me glued to it from the start and at the “fuck you” I found myself giving a round of applause while sitting here in front of the screen and then had to take my glasses off and collapse… And seeing as it’s next to impossible for me to cry while alone, that was quite something, especially since it happened completely out of the blue like that.
The immediate reaction, once I recovered, was obviously to start looking for what they released since 2009, which led me to quickly discover Wolf Love and Musick and Poëtree, being very pleasantly surprised by a good part of what I heard once I listened to them. Of course, their old fans tend to be up in arms because of this new direction the band has taken, and I can certainly understand them since I often find myself in their shoes when something I like changes drastically, but this time we’re talking about a change that steered the band in a direction that I very much approve of. I mean, just listen to Wolf Song, Cornwall and Sing for Love, which are the last three songs on Wolf Love and stunning pieces, every single one of them. And when you also add their claim that the entire Poëtree part of the latest album, made up of traditional songs and covers, has been recorded in a single take, it’s really quite mind-blowing!
I’ve been looking through the games listed on Kickstarter lately and find myself rather surprised at the rewards listed for the pledgers. Some of them, in fact many of them, imply expenses of up to a significant portion of the amount pledged, meaning that the actual amount raised for the game itself is significantly lower than what’s listed. The impact of this may be lower for the few games that raised very large amounts, particularly if they did so with the help of a very large number of people pledging small amounts, but it can be staggering in case of those that aimed low, barely reached the goal and/or have received large amounts from a relatively small number of pledgers instead.
Of course, this most likely affects the other categories of projects that use Kickstarter just as much, and likely even more so in case of those that focus strictly on creating or manipulating physical objects and therefore have significantly fewer realistic options for offering digital rewards, but I haven’t looked at those and at the moment I don’t find myself being interested in them, so I can only write about what I know.
If you’ll pick a game and look through the rewards listed on the right, you may see that they start tamely and fairly enough, possibly from as little as a few desktop wallpapers or a digital copy of an early portion of the game, somewhat similar to what used to be made available for free in the days when the shareware model was popular. Then you may see the full digital version of the game being made available for those who pledge a certain, slightly higher, amount, followed by digital bundles that also include additional content such as the game’s soundtrack, artwork and so on, essentially turning such pledges into preorders. That’s still perfectly fine, as is offering those who pledge a certain amount access to the closed beta and likely even equating the pledges past some other amount with preorders of a physical copy of the game, with or without additional content, and therefore offering that as a reward, whether instead of or in addition to the digital copy. However, once you get past this point, I’m starting to raise my eyebrows more and more.
What you’ll see if you keep going through the list of rewards is that some developers are choosing to send additional items to the pledgers, such as t-shirts, art prints, badges or even actual replicas of items that can be found in the game. And let’s not even mention the top tiers, which may well include meeting with the developers, with them paying for the plane tickets, possibly luxury hotel room, food and so on. The more costly of these rewards are obviously meant for those who pledge hundreds or even thousands of dollars, but they may end up costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars as well, and when you add this to the fact that the less expensive ones may even be obtained for $50, and sometimes perhaps even less, you’ll easily see that all of these rewards may well end up costing a significant portion of the pledged amount and therefore have a notable negative impact on the amount of money left for actually developing the game. As such, all of this hardly seems like a good deal for someone who’s trying to fund a project!
Of course, the developers may factor in these expenses on top of the 5% fee charged by Kickstarter and the other fees charged by Amazon Payments, which is currently the only acceptable payment method, when they determine the funding goal, but many will certainly be tempted to pick the lowest possible goal instead, hoping to at least obtain some money instead of risking not to obtain anything at all, which is what happens if the goal is not reached. In addition, they have no way of knowing how many people will pledge a specific amount and the current way of setting how many rewards are available on each of the tiers is insufficient to mitigate this issue, and in fact some don’t even make use of the option to set such limits for the less expensive physical rewards, despite the fact that even those can generate significant expenses if they’ll need to be sent to a large number of pledgers.
When you put all of it together and also add the fact that the pledged amount is only taken from a pledger’s credit card at the end of the funding drive, which may add some more to the losses in case people won’t actually have that amount available and won’t solve the problem within the seven days that Kickstarter is willing to grant them to do so, you’ll see that those who have barely managed to reach the stated goal, and particularly those who aimed low in the first place, probably actually fell short of it. If the goal represents the actual minimum amount needed by the developer in order to complete the project, then getting anything less than around 150% of it probably means that they’ll still need to cut corners, if they’ll even be able to complete it at all.
Then again, such specific rewards that have no impact on the game are potentially far less harmful for the project itself than those that allow the pledgers to have a say in the actual development process. Even the simple “vanity” rewards, such as allowing those who pledge at least a certain amount to name an NPC or to have a character designed to look like them, may cause problems when the name or the look simply won’t fit with the rest of the game. Of course, as a person who has a terrible time coming up with names for anything, I can also see how offering such rewards may actually help the developers, but it’s a pretty big chance to take. And yet some even go beyond that and allow those who pledge large amounts, usually in the thousands of dollars, to have an even greater influence, such as writing quests, helping design areas and so on, all of which may easily break the game. Admittedly, they may also improve it significantly, as in some cases the players may well have much better ideas than the developers, but I have this suspicion that the amount of money usually required to obtain this privilege just about rules out anyone who has the time and the willingness to carefully analyze the game and come up with the idea that’s likely to do the most good.
