I Considered Stealing Josh Gondelman’s Numbering System For Posts
More important: I'm part of a charity stream for a great cause this month!
But I didn’t! You know why? Because Josh Gondelman deserves better. He’s one of the nicest guys on Earth. In fact, he’s got a brand new special out that I suggest you folks watch his new special right here, right now:
How Are You?
How is everyone holding up? Sure is hot out there. Hoo boy. Hot day. Hot, hot day in which I’ve wisely made plans to get lunch with a friend in a glass-and-cement heavy region of the city. Also, Google needs to learn some colloquial and idiomatic grammar because it puts a fucking blue underline for everything. Either that or I suck at writing, which is very possible!
I’m a bit short on time today, so I’m sorry I didn’t have as much room for jokes about the bonkers campaign against Mamdani. All I’m saying is that if you have to go all the way back to someone’s SAT scores and a rejected college application, you’ve entirely lost the plot on humanity. For the love of God, it’s like the world’s dumbest losers are teaming up to write articles about Mamdani cheating at minigolf. Oh, fuck! He had 61 cards in his Pokémon card deck instead of the mandatory 60??? Throw him in prison. He better not have fucking used LimeWire or Kazaa or he’s through!
Let’s jump into a few things.
Real Question: Should I Move This Thing To Another Site?
Actual, honest question for you folks: If I moved this… blog? Substack? Post Center? Anyway, if I moved whatever this is to another site, would that be a bit better? After talking with a few friends who have recently done it, I’ve been considering shifting this thing over to somewhere else. There are arguments to be made that Substack supports some less than savory characters if you get my drift.
That said, other places might cost me more to post on (versus nothing right now) and require me to put out a tip jar. That also said, I’d be more regular with content to make that worth people’s while.
I’m on the fence a bit, but I wanted to hear from the brave folks who have read this far. I’ll put in a little work and switch over if folks in the comments give me the go ahead. I might just do it anyway at some point.
Friends are doing it, but should I? Please make any decisions for me.
Trans Rights Charity Stream This Month!
The folks at Hard Drive were nice enough to ask me to participate in this year’s charity drive to support trans rights. There'll be a lot of cool people (and also me) streaming and appearing on other streams and even commenting on streams. I might also be donating some collectibles that are worth actual money, so keep an eye on that.
Either way, I’ll be there. And all donations go to Translife.org.
Some people appearing:
Giant Bomb, legendary video game crew
Kat Abughazaleh, Congressional candidate and all-around cool person
Leo Vader, from both MinnMax and also George Lucas’ first draft name book
Kate Bush’s Husband, who isn’t her actual husband but I never bothered to ask a real name
Me, insignificant bug of a human, a wretch deserving of scorn
More, who will be better than me
More info soon, as well as more specific details about times and how to tune-in. In all likelihood, I’ll spend my time playing something like RiffTrax so folks can join in.
Maybe Don’t Use AI to Give Fired Employees Advice
I’m very excited and glad that every industry I’m qualified to work in is falling apart. TV, books, video games! We’re all circling that drain, buddy! If you’ve heard of it, I’ve somehow cursed the entire business model.
As you may have heard, Microsoft just laid off 9,000 employees. Their gaming division is now in tatters after having spent years buying up great developers while developers worried, “Is this going to leave us in tatters?” It turns out it did! Unfortunately, a lot of great people at Microsoft and subsidiary developers were hurt while the people at the top kept their jobs and gave self-sympathetic interviews about how very hard it is to make these changes.
But one executive did something beautiful. No, he did something brilliant. No, he did something Godlike.
He told newly-fired employees in a now-deleted post to ask GPT to, real quote, “help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss.” Jesus fucking Christ. Are you kidding me? You must be. Tell me you kid. You must be a kidder. You fired these people! It wasn’t a natural disaster or a cosmic act of God. And even if you aren’t responsible, you’re really going to tell people to talk to a chatbot after they lose their dream jobs? Why not just post that being fired is good for mental health because you get to have your own bathroom again?
It’s almost cruel to those people who got fired. It’s such a giant “fuck you” to workers who have to scramble to pay for rent now. Especially because those layoffs are literally paying for more of their AI. I want you to imagine firing somebody and then hiring a new person and then telling the shitcanned person, “maybe my new favorite can give you some advice! Also, we’re hoping to use this employee to make other jobs you’re qualified for harder to get in the future.”
Whether you’re pro-generative AI or not (I’m excluding iterative AI here since that baby tends to get thrown out with the bathwater), you have to admit, this is a breathtakingly shitty thing to do. It’s like a masterclass in sociopathy. Some executives think so little of their employees that they genuinely believe salvation is only a prompt away.
Good times.
Amazon Prime Day Deal On My Book
Look, I’ll shut up about this thing soon. Until the holidays. Oh, man, I’m gonna annoy the fuck outta you folks around the holidays!
Good Game, No Rematch is now 28% off for Amazon Prime members. If you haven’t bought the book yet, this is probably the cheapest it’s been outside of a library and/or used bookstore. Which I actually support, so I can’t fight you on going with those.
But, if you’ve been holding out, or are looking for an impulse buy that will hopefully earn me up to a buck or two, give it a shot. Even people who hate video games seem to have enjoyed it. I give context to stuff. It is nice.
Recommendations
My brain has been fucking cooked this week and I’ve been a giant asshole to everyone, so sitting down and focusing on a game has been hard. That said, I recently picked up the remaster of Etrian Odyssey again and God, that game is soothing… once you figure out you need to slow the fuck down.
To keep it simple, Etrian Odyssey is a roleplaying game series where you slowly explore a bunch of floors filled with enemies and map out said locations as you go. I didn’t say “dungeon” because that’s not quite accurate, but if you understand that concept, you got it. The game has a reputation for being insanely difficult, which it is - unless stop trying to power through every floor and let yourself wander. Put on an audio book. Relax. Level up. Get murdered so hard.
If you want ‘em, the remasters of the first three games are on sale on Steam and also individually. Trust me, you will die.
Speaking of which, I also recommend the game You Will Die Here Tonight. It’s a brand new riff on 1990s survival horror games but manages to pull it off far better than most that go for that old Resident Evil vibe. Even the animations are designed to feel slightly clunky and old. It’s a great horror game and I swear I did not see many of the game’s twists coming. I’ve still got a lot to explore, but if you love old horror games, this isn’t super scary but it is incredibly fun. I think it’s also on sale on Steam right now.
That’s All! Got Anything For Me?
That’s all I’ve got for today. You got any recommendations for me? Miss you all.
Mike- I think I have been following you and reading your essays, emails, and once upon a time, tweets, for at least 5-6 years.
Substack has some significant problems. Like writers who promote calling me ni$$er. And there isn’t a way to report someone promoting taking away my civil rights…but everyone uses this platform.
I would pay to read your writing. I am not a video gamer, unless you count Atari pong, I was pretty good at it back around 1980. My favorite game that I played is pokemon snap. And I loved to watch my son play fallout, which is now a great show. Anyway, put out the tip jar.
1. I finished reading your book and I loved it! Congrats on having such a cool career. As a game designer (and former comedy writer), I’ve only ever imagined what it’s like to work at Nintendo of America. Now I have some understanding of the culture, which I really appreciate.
2. I used to be on Substack. I left during a particularly unpleasant winter a year and a half ago where leadership here admitted to monetizing and profiting off fascist creators. A lot of folks are using Buttondown and Beehiiv. (I setup a Wordpress blog with The Newsletter Plugin and Postmark, a crunchy solution that made sense for me personally.) It probably won’t be free. I pay $15/mo for my setup. It’s worth it to me for the peace of mind and flexibility.
3. The last game I finished was Arzette and I had a lot of fun with it! ICYMI - Arzette is a tongue-in-cheek homage to the CD-I Zelda games. I enjoyed the floaty platforming, hand drawn backgrounds, and silly animated cutscenes. The experience was dreamlike, or like playing a memory of a game long forgotten.