The main thing you have to know about streaming platforms is that their dynamics are such that it's too rich for Microsoft's blood. Microsoft. After squeezing to the tune of millions and millions of dollars, they determined that the volume and quality of the juice hadn't been worth it. Which is too bad, because it was… kinda good. The latency was really low; it felt like you could have real conversations with chat almost. It had a built-in studio you could use to manufacture cool interactions for your channel.

You mighta seen the story - maybe you didn't? I don't feel like we've exaggerated the arc really in any way. This is more or less what happened! They definitely activated social; I bet shares were through the roof. I suspect that sometimes, very rarely, there is a such a thing as bad press.

I would say that a weird amount of the games I get truly obsessed with come from Scandinavian countries. Or, Nordic countries. Either the usage changed, or it's regional in nature. In any case, I trust in their intrepid spirit and proven capacity to get my Vacuum Battle Royale game off the ground. Get in touch. And I know you're wondering - Vacuum Battle Royale? How would that work? Here's the secret: the carpets are dirtier than usual.  And the house is very large.

The strip is a response to a tweet from renowned tennis person Naomi Osaka. I don't really follow the sport; I'm more of a ping-pong or pickleball man myself, pickleball being the twisted hybrid of the other two. Anyway, the tweet:

I think we can say with some degree of certainty that Twitter has systematically elevated fringe positions and granted sociopaths - whose feeding grounds have typically been constrained by natural factors - a global remit. This barely constitutes an "observation." It's a fairly simple transform executed on the absolute edges of the signal, what these instruments are painstakingly designed to do, and we get to live in the chasm that has opened between them. Imagine if a sore could have sores. It's a hellscape that gleefully commingles Dante's Inferno and a high school cafeteria.

As I type this, I have a box behind me that is itself filled with smaller boxes. Inside each of these boxes is a tiny plastic person, or some festoon of their war raiment, all of which rest atomized on the sprue as they await their manufacture. I invest my Tuesdays on Gabe's Gunpla stream, where I think it can be reasonably said he is putting our entire streaming operation at risk. Just look at this filth:

Today marks the one year anniversary of the Penny Arcade iRacing league! It’s important to note here at the one year mark that this could not have happened without the hard work of the league admins who have been organizing all the races and managing the league Discord. I honestly just get to show up and have fun because of their hard work. So I’d like to give a big thank you from Mike Racecar, all the drivers and the entire Pit Crew to Skiggity, BeastGP, Draxond and Brainling for making it all happen. We are still accepting new drivers just look us up in the iRacing league directory. I've seen a bunch of new faces on the track and in the Pit Crew recently which is awesome. It's not too late to get in on the action!

Army of the Dead is an eighties homage through and through, and redeploys large portions of Aliens without even filing off the serials. It's exactly what I expected, except in the moments it surprised me, but I think my expectations for (and let's go down the list)

I haven't played Overwatch in years, I don't think; it's been two, maybe. I don't have any particular enmity for it, I'm just profligate and I comport myself in a Caligulan manner. It's never even been installed on the machine I'm typing this on because I would rather engage in 24/7 dalliances with Deckbuilter Roguelites. Gabe still plays this game with his entire family in tow, so I think he was more attuned to the announcement that even in the original Overwatch, they're moving to 5v5.

Attendees have always formed the greatest portion of the show content, and it's no different in our Online Excursions. People have been getting together with friends and colleagues more or less from the jump, and revealing what's important to them about this medium is something we're proud to offer a stage for. Because doing this kind of panel in real time can be kind of a pain, with various challenges above and beyond trying to do cool shit, we encourage pre-recording your panel - which, in my opinion, actually makes it available to more people. As someone who (in the World Before) was routinely thrust on stage, I understand entirely why being live on camera ahhhh is spooky and I invite you to make a play for one of our spots. Here is the panel submission thingy, and as firmly established in a larger font above, the deadline for submissions is this very night.

Twitch doesn't show me Hot Tub streams. It knows that I want to see Kate doing GTA RP and itmeJP or CohhCarnage doing whatever they're doing at the time. The only reason I know that there is such a thing as a Hot Tub Stream is that people are mad about them, and then other people are mad that they're mad, and that's more or less how the Internet works now: as an aggressively monetized - and therefore increasingly puritanical - algorithmically reinforced bed of nails.

Tonight is race night and the Penny Arcade iRacing league is heading to Daytona. We’re going to try some new stuff with the stream tonight and I’m about 75% sure it will all work. First of all we’re starting the stream earlier than usual. The Pit Crew will open up at 7:10 PT tonight and anyone in the Twitch channel will be able to play Stream Racer until the "real" racing starts at 7:30. You don’t need to download anything just show up and type “!boost” in chat to give your car the goose juice! 

We left this one in the writing doc for a couple weeks so that by the time we did it, any sting from the spoiler content would be minimized. The strip also has a perspective on the Sting Itself! It's a robust document.

So I've played a lot more Demeo, enough to see some annoying bugs that get fixed when we rejoin the game, but I'm still bullish on it. Incredibly so. I think the success of the game has been a huge surprise to the team, but their love for old school Dungeons & Dragons horseshit was strong enough to become real. A real thing, you can play with their friends. It's not some obsequious, labored thing - it's not trying to be literal about its inspirations. What it wants do is make you feel like those games did. And they got there. It's startling in its authenticity. Unsettling, even.

VR shit has to be pretty cool in order for Gabriel to endure its extreme effects on his body; the kids have played together more than we have. Medical sacraments prolong his capacity to withstand it, but metaphorically it's like nailing a couple thin boards over a window and it's only a matter of time before whatever is out there gets in. Or, to invert the metaphor, whatever is in there comes out.

I had read about these mars mushrooms in a couple places, places I thought wouldn't be full of shit, but ended up being full of shit. When I told Michael about my incredible new find, lifting the lid on the little cigar box my grandfather had given me to store treasures, a few seconds from him on Google - the same Google I'd used a couple days before to ascertain consensus - revealed not only that they were rocks but that they'd been revealed as as rocks years before.