Assassin's Creed: Mirage comes with support for something called an OWO, which is a haptic vest. I had seen it mentioned here and there, this specific vest, but I wasn't super paying attention because I had a sense I already understood it. I do think they're cool - even the haptics possible on an iPhone are way more detailed than I expected, and the stuff that comes through a PS5 controller is startlingly detailed, but these are all novel motors wiggling something. This fuckin' vest apparently has "high conductivity electrodes that use electrical impulses" to wirelessly communicate a range of sensations from the prickles of insects to the entry and exit wounds of a bullet. It delivers these things to games via direct support (more rare currently, mostly indie) or mods (for higher profile games like Fortnite or Valorant).

So, it turns out that Dave the Diver is really fucking good. I didn't really understand what I was in for, but I'd just wrapped up Dredge and my heart still longed for the sea. Between Gabe freaking out over it, a relatively rare occurrence, and the Overwhelmingly Positive it's maintained on Steam I grabbed it and streamed it for a few hours on Friday if you want to see. You know? Kinda hang out asynchronously. I should warn you that you're probably gonna end up buying it. Just, you know… stick that in your SD slot.

Here's the last morsel of WHEEL SAINT. I'm very pleased with the whole thing. Hollywood is currently being ground to a halt because it doesn't want to pay people what they're worth, and it wants to obscure or even simulate their labor, but if somebody from that haunted pit doesn't call me about my motherfuckin' angel cars it's because they're concussed.

Wheel Saint is done for now but Sam will be back! I’ve got a few more goodies from the making of this series to share in the meantime. 

A band of wicked men from Greater Than Games is coming into the studio to show off Defenders of the Realm, the kind of co-op boardgame that is their specialty.  It'll be coming to BackerKit soon, and you can sign up here for updates, but if you want to check it out with us this afternoon Josh will be spinning up the studio at 3pm PST.

I'm told...  I'm told it has mintatures.    

(CW)TB

WHEEL SAINT continues.

We are keeping our foot on the gas with another page of  Wheel Saint and I’m here with more details and art. 

Something that annoys my friends is when I try to figure out something that everyone already knows and takes for granted. It's rude, in a way. "Settled fact," that is to say, "received wisdom," is a method for reducing cognitive load - thus minimizing the energy demands of consciousness. And, look: I'm not trying to say that absolutely everything you've heard from the gleeful commissars on your favorite podcast is a lie. But I do, on occasion, like to try and build the case for something from the ground up. Just to see.

Page 4 of Wheel Saint has arrived and I’m back with another peak behind the scenes. 

In an effort to show our appreciation to Club PA we’re spending the day on Twitch playing games with special participation from the Club!

Wheel Saint rolls on and I thought I’d share some more “behind the scenes” goodies.

I can't figure out this washlet thing. 

There might be such a thing as a "bidet person." It's like poly, frankly, and I don't want to hear about that either. Don't talk to me about it. I have a lot of friends who really want to talk about them and they do. If I ever encounter a polycule with a washlet, I'll have to fake my own death.

Wheel Saint starts today with a comic that picks up right where our one page pitch left off. Obviously I love making Penny Arcade but doing these side projects is always especially fun.

Hey!  It's me.  Here is a link to the strip, which is about the ways in which devices designed to help us can also not, or even un-help us.  It just occurred to me that I've been linking the strip as I've always done, for the last twenty-five years or so, but my friends who made this website have made it so I never actually have to do that.  I mean, after this section, clearly delineated in the backend you cannot see, it will create a very large, unmistakable path to the strip.  Like so:

I feel like it would not be a lot of fun to take over a role from someone who is generally considered to the be best part of a show. We have made strips that might indicate that we have a particular opinion on Liams in general, but I'm sure he's… fine.

The dynamics of talking with an insurance adjuster are quite complex. This is a person you are paying to protect the profits of the company that you pay to give you money. You can read that sentence as many times as you need to. In Mike's case, he has been paying Allstate his entire life - and the one time he's needed help they're out here trying to pig-wrestle him like he's trying to get one over on them, when what he's actually trying to do is keep water from getting inside his house. Sometimes if you are receiving a lot of contradictory data you have to look directly at the thing in question, without engaging your cognition or attempting to slot it into a narrative framework. Just observe it mechanically. Once you do, in this case and in others, you will ascertain the truth of it: the purpose of the company is to retain money not give you money. It's not complicated! I'm always looking at things like this and saying to myself, "This can't possibly be how it works!" but it works in exactly that way.