And Another Little Thing...

 

Towards the end of yesterday's post I mentioned there was another example of a small joy in the picture of the clutter under my monitor. In that image it's at the upper-right of the lower section, beneath the screen. Hard to make out what it is, especially if you haven't seen anything like it before.

It's a wooden crate filled with albums. Specifically, Lana del Rey albums. Each of them only about two and a half centimeters on a side. An inch if you prefer but let's not go through all that again. I've included the Vaillant Bunny for scale but here's another picture with a 50p piece, a standard visual clue in cases like this, at least if you live where I do. 

In this one, the crate is standing on a box file. Everyone knows how big a box file is. Maybe that'll help.

Mrs Bhagpuss gave me this little collection for Christmas last year. Or maybe it was my birthday. And maybe it was the year before. It wasn't that long ago, I know that much.

Hang on... I ought to be able to date it by the albums because at the time she commissioned it, the guy who made it put in every official album Lana had made, plus a couple she hadn't. There's the Lizzie Grant one and another that was only ever released in Germany. 

He was nothing if not thorough and I really ought to include his name and contact details in case anyone wants to get him to do their favorite artist, only I don't know what they are. Maybe I'll ask Mrs Bhagpuss and edit them in later.

She's very fond of miniaturized objects like this and she'd had all of David Bowie's albums done by the same guy a few years ago. That one's down in the kitchen on a shelf. 

We used to play a game where she'd swap them around and ask me what was at the front and I'd guess. I used to get it right a disturbingly high percentage of the time. We haven't played that game for a while.

The level of detail is astonishing. Not only are the covers correct, front and back, but every tiny sleeve contains a tiny vinyl album, complete with an even tinier label in the center. About the only thing that's missing is the hole in the middle.

Looking at the albums now, I see they're completely up to date, thanks to Lana's latest still not having appeared yet. Her most recent is Did You Know That There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, which came out in March 2023 and that's there, so it looks like I must have gotten this as a present either the same year or the year after. 

I'd guess I've had it for nearer two years than one but you know what my memory's like. And anyway,  it's so much a part of my daily life now, it feels like I've had it forever. I look at it often and it does, as per Krikket's suggestion, always make me smile.  

I wonder if the guy who made it has a service where he sends out updates whenever a new album comes out? If he doesn't, he should think about it.

[Edit: I was talking to Mrs. Bhagpuss about this post and she pointed out the lovely, white wooden crate was made by her, not the guy who makes the albums. He supplies them in a perfectly functional but nowhere near as aesthetically pleasing plastic crate. I'm not sure she told me that when she gave them to me but I thought I'd better mention it.]

Trending Now...

For various unexpected reasons, I had to spend much of yesterday driving Mrs Bhagpuss around the Cotswolds (Not exactly a hardship on a beautiful summer's day but time-consuming all the same.) and much of today putting together a self-assembly chest of drawers (Chest finished, drawers still a work in progress.) Consequently, I no longer have time to write the post I was planning for today.

Luckily, I have a couple of game-related musical items that shouldn't take too long to stitch together into some kind of a patchwork. Plus I expect I might find something else to bulk things out a bit.

First up, Death Stranding 2, sequel to a critical darling I have never played. I could, though. The Director's Cut of the original game is currently available for free to Prime subscribers on Amazon's cloud gaming platform, Luna. I probably ought to try it. Everyone says it's a must-play.

That's not why I'm writing about it, although one of the two posts I was thinking about doing today was going to be about the Prime Gaming games I picked up earlier in the week. No, this is about the London leg of Kojima Productions "World Strand Tour",  a twelve-stop affair in which Hideo Kojima trucks around the globe promoting the new game with live events featuring various special guests.

For the London event the guests were Caroline Polachek and Chvrches, which is some double-bill alright. Caroline performed her song "On The Beach" from the new game and Chvrches did the title track to the first game, which they wrote. There is some shaky phone footage of both, which you can see at this link if you really want to, but I think we'd better have something a bit tidier, one of which is from a different event entirely...

I ought to say, I don't really much like either of those. The Chvrches one is a decent song but not really my kind of thing and other has very little in it of what I usually enjoy in Caroline Polachek's work, namely dance rhythms and beats. This is my problem with most game music in a nutshell, really. It exists for a very specific purpose and without that context it rarely makes much sense. Or not to me, anyway.

That problem doesn't really affect this next one because what Pickle Darling has done is take the music they've made and turned it into game music for a game they've also made. The result is good music, a good game and some game music that frankly I didn't really pay much attention to, although it was fine in the background while I was playing. I'm not a big 8-bit fan though.

Here's one of the songs in its original context.

Massive Everything - Pickle Darling

And here's a screenshot from the game, which you can play at itch.io here. No download required.

It's a pretty good game, too. It only takes about fifteen minutes to play and I laughed several times so that's a good ratio. Also the controls are comfortable, even though J seems like a really odd choice for Interact.

Let's have one more from Pickle before we go.

Human Bean Instruction Manual 

And finally, just because it seems to be badly-filmed, hard-to-listen-to video day, here's an absolute dream of a guest artist/cover that you can barely hear. Lana del Rey is on a stadium tour just now, which sounds like a fan-fic fantasy until you realise it's actually happening.

Last night she played Wembley Stadium and she brought out Addison Rae for couple of songs. They dueted on Lana's as-yet unreleased 57.5 and on Addison's brealthrough hit from last year, Diet Pepsi. 

There's really so much to say about that. As many of them have gone on to acknowledge, Lana changed the rules for female singers in pop music and her influence is absolutely everywhere now. When I fell in love with her songwriting, pretty much no-one sounded like her; now almost everyone does. 

Addison Rae certainly owes her a debt, which may have something to do with both the way her debut album Addison is stirring up a chorus of "Well, I wasn't expecting much but... it's really kinda good...?" reviews and with how big-sisterly Lana is with her. Not to mention why Lana rates Diet Pepsi so highly.

My favorite version of the song is still Blondshell's by a mile but I'd love to hear a studio take from Lana. Or a properly recorded and sound-balanced live version. Do people even do live albums any more?

Of course, bringing out your idols and/or accolytes to duet with you seems to be a big trend just now. It has to be a very special combination to get much attention any more.

Just Like Heaven 

 Olivia Rodrigo and Robert Smith

That'd do it. 

I'd just like to point out that Robert Smith is barely six months younger than me...

Friday's (Fail To) Grab Bag

  No nonsense. Just get on with it. Mostly games this time. A little music at the end.

Hope You Like Our New Lack Of Direction

I'm about ready to call the Nightingale: Realms Rebuilt revamp a bust. I have more than a hundred and sixty hours in the game since it went into Early Access, thirty-five hours since the new version arrived, benched my old character and mandated a re-start. 

It's the same game.

I suspected as much almost from the start but last night I beat the fourth boss to win access to the fifth "storied" realm and found myself back on the exact same path I was traveling months ago. There's Nellie Bly, standing on top of a spur of rock next to a decommissioned portal, explaining you'll never get to Nightingale so you might as well help her fix the machine so you can go to somewhere else, a place she's found called The Watch.

I was honestly hoping never to see The Watch again. It's where the old game ran into the buffers of a half-assed, unfinished "end game", in which a solo rpg morphed clumsily into a lobby MMO with no point or purpose. I was dearly hoping that would be the part of the game they'd fixed because it really, really needed it, whereas most of the parts they have changed didn't need it anything like as much but it looks like all the effort has gone into the crafting tidy-up. That and those so-called "stories", absolutely none of which I noticed as I followed a series of repetitive tasks and battled a series of tedious bosses.

All of which makes it sound like I don't like the game, which isn't the case. My feeling is quite the opposite. I like Nightingale a lot, which is why I've played it for all those hours. I liked the original and I like the new version well enough, too. 

It was nice to come back for a second run and enjoy a slight variation over the first few sessions but much though I enjoyed the hunt for parts to fix Nellie's portal and all the side-quests that spring up along the way when I did them earlier this year, I don't particularly want to do them all again just now. I think I may have to give Nightingale a rest for a while. 

I'd still recommend the game to anyone who likes base-building rpgs with light survival trappings and who hasn't already tried it. It looks good, plays quite smoothly and the crafting and building are more than decent. It's very much an Early Access title in the sense that it isn't finished yet but what's there is sound and solid. 

If you're waiting until it is finished before jumping in, though, I wouldn't advise it. It's far from clear the whether the developers have any clear vision of what they want the finished game to look like and it seems less likely all the time that they'd have the resources to get there even if they did. Might as well play it now if you're going to play it at all. It might not be there later.

 

You've Lost Me Now

Off the back of that, I'd like to talk about something I've mentioned before: Steam Achievements. They can be quite instructive on the health of a game, especially taken in combination with Steam charts. 

Before Realms Rebuilt, Nightingale had just a few hundred players by Steam's count. That jumped to six thousand on the update but after a couple of weeks peak concurrency is down by a third and slowly falling. Still, it's a clear and definite improvement. 

The achievements tell a different tale. I have four post-revamp achievements. Each of them is for beating a boss and gaining access to the next Realm. The percentage of players who've managed any of them is tiny but that's because it's calculated against all the players who have the game in their Steam Library, not against those playing right now. 

Most people who ever played Nightingale no longer play, so the low numbers are to be expected. What's telling is the relative numbers that have completed each of those four Achievements. Since they were only added with the update and since they each represent completion of a mandatory step to progress through the storyline, the achievements record the degree to which that much-hyped new narrative approach has persuaded people.

The result is not encouraging. At time of writing, just over 9% of players completed all the tutorial
quests in the Abeyance realm but only half of those managed to get to the end of the Realm that followed, Sylvan's Cradle. By the end of the third realm, Welkin's Reach, the numbers had almost halved again and less than two percent have made it past the fourth realm, Magwytch Marshes. 

That is a serious problem for the new direction. If the story was compelling, it wouldn't be shedding almost half of its audience at the end of every chapter. Perhaps if there actually was a story, that would help. Maybe they should think about adding one. 

 

Meet New People. Then Kill Them.

For all its narrative shortcomings, Nightingale is doing a very much better job of holding my attention than Throne and Liberty. When I was posting about the new game yesterday, I was quite keen to get back to it and play some more. When I did, though, I found myself losing interest much sooner than I expected.

I did some more quests. They were okay, no more than that. Still, I was having a reasonably amusing time, running about doing things for people I didn't know or care about, which they could have been doing for themselves. 

The place was very busy and the server was struggling a little. I remember thinking a couple of times that I'd probably be having more fun if I waited until the crowds had moved on. Then I got disconnected and dumped to desktop, which I have to admit did break the flow and temper my enthusiasm a little.

Still, I came back to try again. A quest took me to the edge of the area I'd opened and on a whim I carried on to see what might be over the next hill. A lot fewer people, as it turned out, which felt better, so I kept going. 

I did some enjoyable exploring. The game sure is pretty to look at. I started searching for teleport stones to add to my map, it always being handy to have them opened before you need them for questing. That took me through a number of dangerous areas but nothing seemed to run as fast as my wolf travel form and aggro drops fast so I just kept running and everything was fine.

Until I ran past a player and they killed me, that is.

They were doing one of the many open-world events designed for guilds. These are everywhere and they seem to be highly competitive. A guild ranking of some sort gets broadcast when they end. 

The events also turn the area where they take place into a non-consensual PvP zone. I was well aware of that - it's clearly flagged - but I figured anyone doing the events would be too busy with their own stuff to bother with someone just passing through. 

Yeah, nope.

Being ganked as I ran past a guy looting a wagon marked my first and so far only death in Throne and Liberty. I stopped being bothered by being ganked sometime around 2002, so I just respawned and got on with it but once again it put a dent in my momentum. I decided to avoid the conflict zones and go around the coast but there wasn't to much to see down on the beach and when Beryl came bounding in looking for attention I was very happy to stop and give her some.

At the moment I don't feel especially motivated to log back in. It all seems a bit pointless when there are so many other games I'd rather play. Still, it is the new hotness, until the next new hotness comes along, so I imagine I'll give it another go. I don't think it'll be staying in the rotation for long, though. 

 

Alien Invasions 

What might take its place is X-Com. Or X-Com 2. I've been moaning on about wanting a good, turn-based, tactical RPG with a focus on team combat since I finished Solasta and decided I was too mean to stump up for Baldur's Gate 3. 

I've read so much about how good the X-Com series is that when I saw these two were on offer on Steam for 90% and 95% off it seemed silly not to buy them, so I did. I had a momentary feeling of dread that I might already have them in my Amazon Prime collection but no, I don't. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they turned up there in a month or two but that's a risk you have to take when you buy anything.

My question now is whether I should play them chronologically or whether the second is a significant improvement on the first, in which case maybe I should start there. I think there's some narrative continuity but I have no idea if the story is actually important. I mostly just want to do the fights. 

And now for the audio-visual section of our presentation... 

In A Dream, All In A Dream

That's Dreamworld. I read about it on MMOBomb and was surprised I hadn't heard about it before. It describes itself as "a groundbreaking Sandbox MMO, where all players create together in a single infinite world " but the part that interests me is the AI integration, which "allows players to generate their own 3D models in-game using a text prompt".

The game is running a "public test" next week and all you need to do is ask for access through Steam, which I have done. I'm very curious to see how those AI tools work. I did try another game in development that purported to use something similar and it did not impress but this one looks a lot more sophisticated. It'll be interesting to see how it works - or doesn't. 

Cue Outro

Can't have a grab bag with no music. And what sort of music do we like around here? Well, let's see. Among other things, we like smart, intelligent indie bands, we like cover versions, we like Lana del Rey. Put them all together and what have you got?

Say Yes To Heaven - Fontaines D.C.
(Original Lana del Rey)

Not the most obvious choice, is it? I see they're not dressing like EMF any more, either. Maybe Liam got to them. He does that. It's his gift.

Past, Present and Future

Thinking of Lana, which I pretty much always am, I watched a couple of old interviews recently, from back when she was Lizzie Grant. They're like music all in themselves. I thought I'd share just one really short clip...

"I just wanna do something I can be the best at."

Mission accomplished, then.

The Live Stream's Almost On...

No plan survives contact with the livestream, as the saying goes. I sat down at my PC this morning with all kinds of good intentions. Then I clicked a link to what I thought was a clip from Lana del Rey's headlining set at Coachella last night and it turned out to be the livestream of her on stage right now. So that was my morning gone.

Well, an hour of it. Lana was midway through her set when I arrived, or thereabouts. I knew it was being livestreamed but by my calculations yesterday she was due on around four in the morning my time and since I'm not (Faron) young enough for wolf hours any more, I abandoned any idea of watching her play live, live. 

Either I can't read a time conversion or she went on stage really late. I mean, she always starts late but that would have been about three hours, which is a bit much even for Lana. Looking at it now I think it was a bit of both. I was a couple of hours out and she was an hour late. Sounds about right. (Yeah, it's not, though. A news report I saw confirmed she actually went on early, for once. Clearly I can't read a clock.)

Reality is fluid. We all know that. Over the course of my time playing MMORPGs there's been a consistent drift away from real-time events towards recyclables. 

When I started playing EverQuest they still had GMs. Actual, live human beings sitting in an office somewhere (San Diego, presumably.) in front of a screen, logged into a game they could change on the fly. Many times I was off somewhere, in Qeynos Hills or South Karana, hunting gnolls or camping aviaks, when the word would go out that something was happening in West Commonlands or Greater Faydark.

Maybe there'd be werewolves. Sometimes undead. Once, I remember, it was three giant Aviak Avocets. Whatever it was, you could guarantee mayhem.

People reacted differently. Some yelled for a wizard to port them to where the fun was happening. Others in the drop zone started heading in the opposite direction, complaining loudly and bitterly about the disruption to their camps. At various times I've been on both sides but mostly I wanted to go where the chaos was.

More meaningful than ad hoc GM events were those set pieces that only happened once. The opening of the Plane of Hate in EverQuest or Greenscale's Blight in Rift. The karka invasion of Lion's Arch in Guild Wars 2. These are things you remember forever if you were there - or wish you had been if you weren't. They carry weight because they only happened once.

Gamers, though, are about the most risk-averse group imagineable. It's not always apparent, given the risks they say they like to take, but really what they almost all crave is a do-over. It's fine to wipe but there has to be a second run. And a third. It's fine to miss out so long as you never miss out. 

Everyone must have a chance at everything, always. God forbid anyone should come late and the bus leave without them. 

Commercially it makes a lot of sense. What business wants to leave their customers behind? You can't sell them stuff if they aren't there to buy it. ArenaNet took a long time learning that lesson but in they end they did, which may be why GW2 feels so stolid, staid and ordinary now, not reckless, strange and weird, like it used to.

It's unfashionable to offer non-repeatable content in games but of course it's the norm in music. We can all buy the records or access the streams whenever we want but if you want the thrill of seeing Lana bring out Billie Eilish to do Video Games you're gonna have to be there.  

Or you could be watching it on the livestream. That's not the same but it's not watching a clip later in the day, either.

Livestreaming is odd. I don't do it often but I totally get it and if I didn't this morning I was given an object lesson in why and how it works. 

When I clicked that link I thought I was going to watch a recording. That wold have been great because I love Lana and I'm always happy to watch her perform but I certainly wasn't feeling any obligation or desire to drop everything else I had planned so I could carry on watching until she stopped. A recording you can watch any time and it's always the same. Kind of the point.

As I started watching, though, I noticed the comments waterfalling down the side of the screen. That didn't seem right. I scratched around a little and yes, this was live.

And everything in that moment changed. I opened the screen to full, sat back and just basked. It felt real. Not like being there but like being somewhere. 

About a dozen times I had that tingling sensation like static crawling over the skin that means something really special is happening. I'm prone to that, which makes me special, apparently.

I read about it once. Like ASMR, not everyone experiences it. It means something. 

"Pleasurable valuation of music is associated with increased functional connectivity in the brain between auditory cortices and mesolimbic reward circuitry" or in other words "People who get the chills have an enhanced ability to experience intense emotions".

Which is all very well but it doesn't factor in the extra thrill that comes from knowing what you're experiencing is a unique, real-time event that can never be repeated. That's a whole other existential ball of string.

Here we chance wandering into the treacherous waters of authenticity, a stretch of rapids I prefer not to navigate just now. My oft-stated position is that subjectivity is all we have and therefore everything is by definition as real as everything else but that doesn't sit well with everyone and anyway it doesn't forward my thesis here that recording is not live performance.

It isn't, though. And livestreaming isn't either. Livestreaming is a peculiar limbic state somewhere between the two. I know it. I can feel the abrasion where the two rub together.

For about twenty-five years one of the most important things in my life was live performance. Specifically, seeing bands play live. At times I went to two or three gigs a week, for months in a row. I rarely went less than once a month in the whole of that quarter century.

And then I stopped. I won't rehash the reasons but for the next twenty-five or thirty years I slowed down to almost never and then to actually never. 

For a good chunk of that time livestreaming didn't exist other than in broadcast transmission and when did TV ever show anything other than sport live? It'd have to be on the scale of Live Aid before they'd clear a schedule for music. And I didn't watch Live Aid. 

I can't say I've watched a lot of livestreams, even now, but I've watched a few and it is different than watching a recording of the same thing. It's not just music or sports or public events, either. Even watching someone play a game on Twitch feels different to watching a "Let's Play" on YouTube. 

The difference isn't even indefinable. Something liminal in the mind knows the possibility of change exists even if you're not consciously thinking about it. Something could go wrong. Something unexpected could happen. Nothing you're seeing or hearing has a predefined outcome. And most importantly, this will only happen once and that one time is now.

Also, by watching when you know others are watching, you feel somehow part of something larger. It's the effect many of us claim for MMOs, where it doesn't matter that you play with others, it matters that they're there. So many intangibles. They pile up. 

There are games in the pipeline that claim they'll provide a personalised service, with gamesmasters on hand to create bespoke events on the fly. If those events turn out to be anything other than rote I predict a clamor for repeats until there's no-one left who hasn't done them all, by which time they might just as well have been scripted anyway. 

One-offs used to signal thrills. Now they smack of elitism and entitlement. We don't like them. We won't stand for them.

From here it would be so easy to fold back into the argument on preservation. If something's worth doing, is it worth doing forever or is there a value in evanescence? 

I vacillate. Some days I say keep it all. Some days I say it's all going to burn anyway so let it and enjoy the heat.

What I am sure of is that being there is better than not being there, even when being there is not being there. The total weight of my life is still heavier for contiguous experiences like this morning's than without, attenuated though they are. 

Everything may be equally real and yet. Some things are realler than others. I can't square it but I can feel it. Can you?

Comings And Goings

It's Friday! I have a bunch of things bookmarked that won't make posts of their own. Guess what that means!

Oh, and when I said "It's Friday!" I meant it was Friday when I wrote this. I imagine it's Saturday now, if you're reading it the day I published it. Or if not, well, it could be any day. Even Friday. Just... a different Friday.

Anyway, now we've gotten that all cleared up...

A Little Bit Country...

Let's start with Lana. And Beyoncé. Always the bridesmaids, never the brides, eh? Well, apparently. I keep reading about how both of them are being perpetually snubbed by the Grammys, although with thirty-two wins out of eighty-eight nominations, you could hardly say Beyoncé has been ignored. She just has never won the Big One, Album of the Year. 

Lana, on the other hand, has only been nominated eleven times, out of which she's won precisely no Grammys. I think we have a clear winner! Or maybe I mean loser.

Anyway, that's not the connection between the two icons, idols and (super)stars I came here to talk about. No, it's something a lot odder than that. According to various sources, they both plan on going Country for their next album. 

Lana, it's definite. She said so herself. The album even has a name: Lasso. You can't get more country than that. And it's not even all that surprising. She's guested with country singers, covered country songs and according to Lana even her breakout hit, Video Games, was "kind of country". 

I think Lana's definition of "country" might just shade over into Americana, though. Lana is definitely Americana in spirit even though rarely if ever in sound.

Beyoncé, however, is not an artist I've ever associated with any stripe of country music - country&western, country rock, alt-country, Americana, whatever. That said, as I have repeatedly apologized, I am nowhere near as familiar with her work as I ought to be. 

It does seem she has more form in the field than I would have guessed; she submitted a song - Daddy Lessons from  Lemonade - for consideration in the "Country" category. It was not accepted but I'm listening to it now and it sure sounds country to me.

The main reason people are saying her next album will be all country, all the way though, seems to be that she wore a cowboy hat to this year's award ceremony. I'm not sure headgear is always a solid indication of musical direction although it does hold true for Tom Waits. And Noddy Holder, for that matter. 

I kinda hope it's true in this case, though. Maybe that'll be my way in.

Going, Going...

Some video-game-sad news that's barely been reported: one of the weirdest, wildest, least-easily-pigeon-holed games of the last few years, Chimeraland, is about to close its few remaining Western servers at the end of March. Apparently there are Chinese servers that will carry on but as far as I can tell, both the Steam version of the game and the earlier SEA version with servers based (I believe.) in Singapore, will go down. They might be one and the same for all I know.

As anyone who's been reading this blog for a while will remember, I was big into Chimeraland for a while. There are more than thirty posts with the Chimeraland tag here but the last time I logged in was six months ago and that was only for a look-see. 

Knowing the game wouldn't be around much longer, I thought I should probably take one last chance to say goodbye to my characters and take a few final photos of my houses for keepsakes. Unfortunately, I'd already left it too late.

Oh, the servers are still up. I was able to log into the SEA version just fine. Only I'd forgotten that my original character there had already been deleted. As I wrote in that post last September, if you stop playing the game for too long, you can wave your characters goodbye: "You get three months' grace. If you don't log in after that, your characters are wiped." 

Or they were. Mine was. The one I played for several months, when the game first went Live. The Level 2 I made at the time of that post five months ago, though, she's still there. I guess there's no point clearing space for people to make new characters any more.

As for my Steam, it wanted to download a 4GB update, which seemed weird under the circumstances. I let it go ahead but the update stalled after a few minutes and rather than fiddle around with it, I uninstalled the game instead.

I found it all very instructive. A few years back, even the thought of certain MMORPGs shutting down literally brought me out in a cold sweat. When Vanguard shuttered I thought I might need therapy, until the emulator project came along to throw out a lifeline. 

Now, though, I'm not sure I care all that much. I really liked Chimeraland but I still hadn't played it for a long time. If finding out the game was about to sunset wasn't even enough to remind me I'd already lost everything on my original account, I think it would be a little ridiculous to pretend I'm heartbroken.

The slightly uncomfortable fact is that I don't play any MMORPG "seriously" any more. There isn't a single one that currently acts as a tent-pole for my entertainment life, much less the rest of my life, the way half a dozen or more games did in the past. Right now, I think maybe the only potential sunset that would affect me emotionally would be EverQuest II and even there I'd have to factor in the ease with which I get distracted from what I'm doing there, the sporadic way I choose to log in to pursue any goals I do have and the knowledge I already have the icon for an emulator client on my desktop. 

The ever-increasing prevalence of emulators and fan projects for what feels like the majority of supposedly obsolete MMORPGs certainly means an official notice of closure doesn't hold the horror it once did. The ironic comments I used to make about certain games probably outliving me seems less like irony and more like a simple statement of fact with every day that passes.

It's a great shame Chimeraland won't be around for much longer but not because it means I won't be able to play it any more. It's a shame because it was a really good MMORPG with a lot more going for it than many that have lasted much longer. It was fun, original and entertaining but none of those things has ever been enough. So much comes down to luck, timing and marketing. In another reality, Chimeraland could easily have been Palworld, a game it resembles in a number of key ways. If only the developers had thought to make their monsters cuter and give them funnier names...

Gone.

While I was attempting to update Chimeraland, I noticed there was also an update pending for the Once Human closed beta. That seemed odd. I thought the test ended back in January.

I really like Once Human. I stopped playing the beta not because I'd had enough of it but because I was sure I'd be buying it at launch and I didn't want to burn out before then. I thought I'd miss it but as it happened, Palworld came along almost immediately to scratch my survival itch, so I barely even noticed I wasn't playing Once Human any more.

I was curious as to why there might still be a humongous patch waiting to download. I thought maybe they might have extended the beta or even started a new one. I hadn't heard anything but then there seems to be very little coverage of the game anyhere. It wouldn't surprise me if any change of plans had gone unreported.

I downloaded the 5GB patch and logged in. My login still worked. The Enter button was there. There just weren't any servers to log in to.

After some checking, I was able to establish a few things for certain. The beta has ended. No new beta has begun. None has been announced. There is still no launch date.

It is unusual for a closed beta client to keep working after the beta has ended but maybe there are plans to re-use it in the future. Or maybe they just forgot to take it down. Either way, I'm leaving mine where it is... just in case.

Also Gone But Not For Long

I also still have the Nightingale Stress Test client installed. I'm hoping it will be re-useable - with an update, of course - for the upcoming Early Access launch in less than two weeks. Anything to avoid another hefty download. I've searched for information on that but so far I haven't been able to find anything. 

I have, however, seen Inflexion Games' debrief on how the stress test went. It raises a couple of concerns.

Firstly, they seem pleased to have had just under fifty thousand players (Or "unique users" as they put it.) in the test. It even seems that was more people than they expected. Given that Palworld sold millions of copies on the first day and currently has more than nineteen million players, fifty thousand seems either incredibly unambitious or incredibly unlikely to provide adequate testing for launch day. 

It's not just Palworld, either. Enshrouded hit a million players in the first four days and reportedly continues to grow. Palworld and Enshrouded are in the exact, same genre as Nightingale and Nightingale has probably enjoyed considerably more press attention and hype than either. It's going to be very interesting to see whether it can match their sales. Not that anyone's expecting another Palworld but if they don't even manage to match Enshrouded's success, questions will be asked.

The other, mildly concerning statistic from the long list provided is the number of traditional fantasy MMORPG wild animals killed by those fifty thousand players. Nearly three hundred thousand boars and more than a quarter of a million wolves. That's six boars and five wolves for every single player!

To that you can add almost half a million "Bound", which I think were the zombie-like creatures I mentioned in my post. I made a snarky comment at the time about how I might as well have been playing WoW. I think these numbers make that point for me.

I'm sure a lot of it is just a side-effect of dumping everyone in the middle of some woodland filled with bears, wolves and zombies. The actual game is going to be waaaay more original than that. Right?

I guess we'll all find out in a week or so. I know I will. Boars or no boars, I'll be there.

Is This Good News?

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is moving to a six-weekly, seasonal testing schedule. According to the report on MassivelyOP, this means new content every six weeks. 

So far, so ho-hum. The big change, though, isn't the cadence of the updates but who gets to test them. Or play them, if we're going to be honest about it. 

Until now, only the very highest-tier backers have had regular access to the testing process, something that meant an investment in the long-overdue game in the order of a thousand dollars. From the next update, which arrives in barely over a week, on February 17, all backers will get a chance to test each season. Big investors get to play the full six weeks, middling backers get two weeks and bottom-feeders with just a fifty dollar stake get a single week.

I did say, a long time ago, that if they ever started selling access to the game for $50, I'd be in. That, though, was years ago, when Pantheon looked like the most exciting prospect among a clutch of would-be retro-MMORPGs. It was also when Brad McQuaid was still alive to dictate the direction of travel.

I am still interested and fifty dollars for what would, if they stick to their word, be at least two months Pantheon-time per year, doesn't seem like a terrible deal. I would certainly want to be sure there was no NDA because if I can't blog about it I'm not interested. Given that, though...

I still probably won't go for it... yet. Pantheon is interesting, yes, but as this post makes clear, there's a lot going on in the field right now. I'm already going to have to juggle Palworld and Nightingale from the middle of this month and  Once Human and Tarisland are both likely to arrive sooner rather than later. I'm already having trouble fitting the games I have into anything like a schedule. Having to drop everything for a week of Pantheon every other month could be more of an imposition than an opportunity, right now.

Pantheon is, however, quite possibly the only new game Mrs Bhagpuss might want to play. She does occasionally express a mild interest in playing another MMORPG and she has always been curious about this one. Maybe I'll talk to her about it...

And Finally...

It's traditional to end these posts with a song, although we did have one earlier.

Oh, hell. Who am I to break with tradition?

You may remember the last music post ended with me having to choose between Blu DeTiger and Bratty and I chose Blu DeTiger. 

Bratty - you're up!

La Última Vez - Bratty

Merry Christmas!

'Tis The Season

Wow! Has it been two weeks already? Seems like a lot less than that since I last posted about what I'd been listening to lately. Oh, wait... that's because I keep shoehorning songs I like into posts that have nothing to do with music! It's almost like what I listen to is part of some kind of organic whole or something. Crazy, right?

Anyhoo...

Stuff's been piling up. Better release the pressure before something blows.

Oh, before I begin, I'm sure you'll all be glad to know I've been working on my musical Advent Calendar and this year I've got help. AI help. 

I asked Bard first but that didn't go well. All Bard does is make stuff up. Then I went to ask Bing but apparently you have to go through Microsoft Edge for that now (There are workarounds but they're too fiddly-diddly to be bothered with.) Edge is like fricken' ivy. If you let it get a toehold you're scraping it out of the cracks for a week so screw that. 

CHATGPT4, though. That one works. It was a lot of help, came up with some great suggestions. Give it a snappier name, it'd make a great imaginary friend. Oh... there's an idea...

I'd love to do a post about the methodology involved (Hah! Like there is one...) including all of Bard's funny little ideas, but it would be spoilerific so I'm going to save it for a postscript when Advent's over. Meanwhile, that's what I'm working on. 

Obviously, I'll be getting the AIs to help me with the pictures this year, too. That'll be loads more fun than trawling through endless pages of crappy royalty-free Christmas "art", searching for the 0.01% that doesn't make me ill just looking at it. Also, the results will be orders of magnitude better. Oh, brave new world...

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. But first, before we deck those halls, let's clear these decks!

Suburban House - Holly Macve (Feat. Lana del Rey)

Since we're in a seasonal mood, let's start with this gorgeous slice of wintery despair. I was previously unaware of the existence, let alone the work, of Holly Macve. I try not to think about how many bands and singers I've never heard or even heard of. It terrifies me.

Holly worked with Colin Dupuis, who worked with Lana on Ultraviolence. Lana said in an interview Holly would be her pick to play Lana in a biopic. Pop music is like this now. I imagine it always was. Actually, when I think about it, I know it always was. Nothing much changes, does it?

Alma Mater - Bleachers

Well, some things do. For example, Bleachers made a song I can listen to twice. I never thought it would happen. For all Jack Antonoff's close involvement with some of my favorite music of all time, I've never heard anything by his band I didn't find bland and uninteresting - until this. 

Granted, it sounds like an American Analog Set demo, except for the parts where Lana chips in, but that's what I like about it. Co-writing credit for the two of them, too.

Satellite of Love - Snail Mail and Thurston Moore

For my birthday I got Ezra Furman's extended essay on Lou Reed's Transformer, the 1972 album from which Satellite of Love comes. I haven't read it yet but the chapter on Satellite (Each track gets its own chapter.) is called "Lou and Pop".

I'm not sure it's exactly "pop" but it's certainly one of the most commercial tunes he ever wrote. Given that Transformer represents one of the peaks of his commercial success as well as housing both of his Big Pop Hits (Walk On The Wild Side and Perfect Day but you didn't need me to tell you that.) it's always puzzled me this one didn't chart too.

There have been many covers and most of them are better than this one but I love how ragged it is, especially since it exists primarily as a promo for Fender guitars. Snail Mail (I'm guessing we aren't supposed to call her Snail, like it's her first name...) is wildly off-key at times and Thurston doesn't seem to wake up until close to the end and yet the sum of the thing is so much greater than those shaky parts. 

It's sloppy genius. As Furman says right at the start of the chapter on this song, "Lou Reed is a control freak". He'd have hated it. But then he hated everything. It was part of his charm.

How Could You Let Me Go - Vashti Bunyan & Devendra Banhart

Okay, I can see where this is going. This is what you get for opening with bleak, bleached-out, winter chill full of despair and loss, then follow it up with ennui, regret and more despair. It sets a mood and that mood sure ain't Christmas. I suppose we're going to have to get it all out of our systems before we can move on to the fun stuff.

There will be fun stuff... won't there?

070 Shake - Natural Habitat ft. Ken Carson

Yes, Virginia, there will be fun stuff. But first you have to eat your greens.

When he says "Kerosene. Kerosene. Kerosene", doesn't it make you think of this? 

Now that was a band that really knew how not to have fun.

String Machine - Gales of Worry

Ah, that's better. I think we're easing out of it now. This is what they like to call "bittersweet" isn't it? I guess all Americana is kind of like that. Filled with nostalgia and tinged with regret but still looking to tomorrow with a glimmer of hope.

It's a bit weird, the way he looks a little like Andy out of Parks and Rec and sounds a little like Craig Dermody from Scott and Charlene's Wedding but I'll take it.

Chanel Pit - Tierra Whack

Do you think she means "Charnel Pit"? I mean, the lyrics would support it. But no. She means Chanel. Oh, she's the smart one. I love Tierra Whack. Never heard one bad track by her.

Also, now I come to listen closely, this might only be fun until you listen closely.

<Listens closely>

Nah, it's still fun.

Rodeo Tragic - Partner Look

I'm tempted to put this one in the "Too clever for its own good" bin but I'm giving it a pass for the horsey.

Highways - Pony Girl

Oh god, we're just going backwards now but I typed "horsey" and thought "pony" and here we are. 

Is this the same Pony Girl that did Candy that I posted back in August? It is! Score another for Canadian Art-Rock. 

Billy - Horsegirl

Why fight the inevitable? This has one of those long noise intros that I'm not over-fond of but stick with it. Once the actual song arrives it's magnificent. Which is more than you can say about the sound quality but it's Jarrett with his iPhone again. 

Okay, I don't know he has an iPhone. 

I bet he does, though.

Tanto - Cassie Marin

Ok, time to bring it home. Always leave 'em laughing. Or at least not curled in a corner in the fetal position.

Of course, I have no idea what she's singing about. Could be pure nihilism for all I know, not that that's necessarily a bad thing. 

The title means "So much" if that helps. (Unless it's the Japanese dagger but I doubt that. I had one of those in EverQuest, I think. I always wondered what it was. It was tiny.)

Rodney - Birthmark

The Talking Heads is strong in this one, which falls into the category of making lemonade. Also the best of it. And laughing at yourself to stop from crying. All of that.

It would work just fine on daytime radio with no-one really listening to the lyrics and the video is funny enough to cover. Then again, no-one's going to be programming a song called "Rodney" on daytime radio.

Nothing Lasts Forever feat. Grimes - Svedaliza

So true. Including this post. Not actually what I was planning to go out on but everything else I have is a downer so... 

 

A Note on the AI used in this post.

Not much. Just the header image, which is by RealCartoon XL v4, a model based on SDXL 1.0 It's the third iteration from the prompt "Lana del Rey and Tierra Whack sharing hot chocolate in a snowy winter scene. Cartoon." Weights are 50/20/50. Yes, there are three weights now.

When's It Gonna Be My Turn?

A couple of years ago I surprised myself by writing a post about the Grammy Awards. The opening line set the tone: "Despite having been a huge music fan almost all my life I've never paid even the smallest passing attention to the Grammys." The gist of my argument was that things had changed just a little, to the point where I could find something of interest in the coverage of the event, albeit mostly to argue about the decisions involved.

I was more surprised than anything to find I owned two of the eventual winners: Best Album of the Year (Taylor Swift's Folklore) and Best Alternative Music Album (Fiona Apple's Fetch The Bolt Cutters). I thought at the time it might indicate some cultural shift, that being my preferred explanation, although the worrying possibility also existed that it might mean my tastes were moving further towards the mainstream, with worrying implications for my carefully curated self-image and much-valued hipster cred.

Reassuringly, the next year, when I came to look into the possibility of a follow-up post, I couldn't find anything in the 2022 Nominations list worth writing about. The Best Album list did once again contain some recordings I owned - Olivia Rodrigo's first album, SOUR, Billie Eilish's Happier Than Ever and, inevitably, Taylor Swift's evermore, as well as Halsey's If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power, oddly relegated to the Best Alternative Music Album category - but in the event none of them won and to talk about their inclusion would really only have been to repeat what I'd said the year before.

As for the 2023 nominations and winners, the less said the better. There's nothing on there I own and precious little I've heard and although there are some performers I respect on that list, I very much doubt there are many I'll be listening to any time soon.

This week, when the nominations for the 2024 Grammys were revealed, I felt the dial had swung back some. Enough to make another post viable, at least. As Pitchfork put it in their assessment of the slate, "The Recording Academy are a predictable lot. We’re reminded of this every autumn when a similar cross-section of ultra-popular and comfortably respectable musical artists are anointed as Grammy nominees." And yet, as the article went on to suggest, we may need to redefine our concept of "ultra-popular and comfortably respectable" if this is what it looks like now.

Of the eight "takeaways" listed in the linked Pitchfork piece, the one that most interests me is the second, headed "Welcome To The Indie/Pop Prestige Zone". It's undeniably a fact today that artists and performers who would have been considered niche or genre acts in the past or, at best, what used from the mid '60s through the '90s to be known as "Album Artists", now take their seats, albeit sometimes uncomfortably, at Pop's top table.

This can sometimes be hard to parse. In my head canon, Lana del Rey is filed right next to Lou Reed.  I see them both as driven, solipsistic songwriters, gifted with an immense abilty to communicate their complex and disturbing inner lives through imagistic language and elegaic melody. Neither necessarily comes across as a natural performer and neither has a great vocal range but both phrase a lyric as subtly as Sinatra, while displaying a peerless ability to convey meaning with an inflection. Still, you wouldn't call them "Pop". Except now we do. Well, Lana anyway.

Lou Reed was rarely successful commercially and certainly no-one ever thought of him as a pop star. He had a couple of freakish hits but anyone can do that. As for recognition by the Grammys, in a career lasting half a century he was nominated twice and won once - for an episode of the American Masters TV show about him, not for anything he actually recorded or performed. 

Lana, by contrast, after not much more than a decade as a recording artist, has already been nominated eleven times, although she has yet to win anything, so I guess Lou would say he was ahead. Yeah, he'd definitely say that.

Lana is also commercially successful in a way Lou rarely, if ever, was. Her eighth album (Officially.) Do You Know There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard, currently nominated for Best Album at the Grammys, is just clinging on in the official UK Top 40 Albums of the Year by Sales list, at number 37. In my opinion, it's a difficult and challenging album but apparently I'm wrong and it's pure Pop.

And that's the point, or one of them, at least. In 2023, after a lifetime of listening to popular music, what passes for pure pop these days seems to me to be at least as nuanced and demanding as at just about any time I can recall. There have always been spiky, subtle, awkward presences in an and around the charts, alongside subtle, tricky, indefinable pranksters, performance artists, slumming intellectuals and bar-room philosophers but the swell of the mainstream has rarely felt as dangerously deep and swirling as it does today.

Lana's A&W just snagged a nomination for Best Song of the Year. Wouldn't you just love to be able to go back a few decades and play it to an earlier awards panel? With its devestating tonal and musical shifts and ever-present dark subtext, it's surely about as far from a traditional pop song as you can get without moving into another subgenre entirely. 

Contextually, the song is novelistic and bleak. The title, reduced from its full version as a sop to radio programmers everywhere, is shorthand for "American Whore". Wikipedia summarises the lyrical content, drily, thus:  "Del Rey addresses the "experience of being an American whore". The singer tells a story of a woman who has been relegated to "sidepiece" meeting a man at a hotel for sex. But she also touches on themes of loss of innocence, rape culture, and drug use."

It won't win, of course, but something I like almost as much almost certainly will. The Best Song nominations this year are breathtakingly good, including what could easily be among my own list of favorites from the last twelve months. Competing with A&W are Olivia Rodrigo's Vampire, Taylor Swift's Anti-Hero, Miley Cyrus's Flowers and Billie Eilish's What Was I Made For, all of which have either featured in music posts on this blog or were at least considered by me for inclusion. 

The other nominees are all of high quality and with two of the remaining three also being by women (SZA and Dua Lipa), seven out of eight of the artists in consideration this time are female. Pop music has always had a huge female demographic in its audience but now it seems that's finally being reflected in performance and, most crucially, in creation.

It would be simplistic and quite possibly some kind of inverted patriarchal appropriation to suggest the deepening and stretching of the range and boundaries of what we currently call Pop is solely down to women speaking to women but something's going on and whatever it is, I like it. Whether it signifies a long-lasting cultural change or just something for TV presenters to look back on in twenty years time with confused, indulgent smirks, like Britpop or 1980s hairstyles, remains to be seen. Never underestimate the ability of the established order to re-assert its privelige. Or the priveliged to re-assert the established order,  Either one.

I hope it's permanent. I certainly believe the degree to which all popular media - music, movies, television, comics, books, you name it - have been smartened up rather than, as has frequently and utterly inaccurately been claimed, dumbed down, is an irreversible process (For a given value of  reversability, of course.) Once you trade up it's hard to go back, as anyone who's moved out of a shared house into a place of their own will fervently attest.

As for Lana's chances this year, which is obviously the aspect of all of this I'm most personally concerned about because yes, I am still twelve years old, as the popular snappy comeback has it, I won't be placing any bets but they look promising. While she certainly won't walk away with the gongs for either Album or Song of the Year,  "Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd" is double-nominated in Best Alternative Album, where she has a great shot, and A&W is also in contention for the oddly-named Best Alternative Music Performance.

Add to that a nomination in the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance category alongside featured artist Jon Batiste for the magnificent Candy Necklace, and it could be Lana's year. I mean, it probably won't be but we can hope, right?

Let's convene back here in February after the ceremony, which takes place in the highly disturbingly-named Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, either to congratulate or commiserate. Or maybe if it goes badly I won't mention it at all and just go back to believing the Grammys don't matter. 

Which, I hope it goes without saying, they don't. 

Just keep telling yourself that...

 

A note on the AI used in this post.

The header image was generated at NightCafe using DreamShaper XL alpha2 at the default settings (Resolution: Medium, Runtime: Short, Weights 50/50.) The prompt was "Lou Reed giving Lana del Rey an Award at the Grammys. Norman Rockwell style".

(I tried DALL-E 2 only to discover likenesses of celebrities are not permited there. They did at least give me my credits back.)

The second image was generated using the same model and settings from the prompt "A young Lou Reed and Lana del Rey drinking champagne at the after-party Polaroid snapshot 1970s. Out of focus."I spent a lot of credits trying to get this one the way I wanted it, without a great deal of success. Believe me, that is a young Lou in comparison to all the ones where I didn't specify his age. It's also dangerously authentic-looking. I can see why the more powerful AIs are wary of replicating famous faces.

The images I really wanted, I wasn't able to persude any of the AIs to produce. I was hoping for a magazine cover, specifically the mid-70s Punk, which famously used cartoon versions of its cover stars, drawn by the magazine's creator, John Holmstrom, showing the two stars celebrating their award triumph, but I couldn't get any of the models to go anywhere near it. I'm seriously thinking of paying for one of the more powerful versions now.

Finally, it took me a while to notice but just about all of the images use Lou and Lana's likenesses for most of the background characters. Both the pictures in the post have a central figure that's an amalgam of the two stars. It's disturbiing, to say the least.

It's All You, You, You, Isn't It?

Straight-up Friday Grab Bag. No Messin'.

Okay, let's open the bag and and grab something. What've we got?

You Call That An Offer?

Prime free games for the month, here we go... Remember when this used to be a post of its own? Ah, the heady days of May '23. Now it's relegated to and in other news.... 

There was even a moment, about a week ago, when it looked as though Prime Gaming would get a second post all to itself for May. I got an alert telling me "Prime Gaming Adds Eight Games, Bringing May Line-Up Total to 23 Free Titles" but when I read it, the extra games turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of stuff they'd brought back from previous offers, so that was the end of that.

This month brings a baker's unlucky dozen of thirteen. The pick, from my perspective, would be Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition and SteamWorld Dig 2 but even those aren't the draw you might think they'd be. 

I already have two versions of Neverwinter Nights - the original box and the "Diamond" edition on Good Old Games. Granted, it would be a lot more convenient for me to play NWN as an Amazon app but the chances of me playing it at all are vanishingly slim. As for Steamworld Dig 2... I have  Steamworld Dig on Steam and I haven't played that yet so do I really need the sequel?

Of the other eleven games, the only one that looks remotely interesting is Once Upon A Jester. I'll claim that one but the rest I wouldn't waste hard drive space on. If you want to check them out for yourself, here they are.

I hate to have to align myself with the cavilling crowd but it is getting harder and harder to pretend that anyone who matters at Amazon gives a damn about the Prime Gaming App any more. I get the strong feeling that whatever plan they had for the platform they inherited from Twitch has either failed outright or already fulfilled its purpose and been shunted into the promotional equivalent of maintenance mode. Oh well. It was good while it lasted.

You Do Know They Can't Hear You?

A couple of people asked questions or raised points in the comments that I either answered there or said I'd post about. Since I doubt many people go back and read the comments to posts they've already seen, comment threads are a particularly poor place to make pertinent points so maybe I thought maybe I should highlight them here.

Angry Onions left a comment on the "Covered in Confusion" post to the effect that AIs "don't know and can't think", which is demonstrably and absolutely true. You wouldn't think it was even in dispute if it wasn't for the claims that keep being made about them, although not on this blog, I hope. Everyone does realize I'm treating them like toys, right?

I really ought to do a proper post, laying out my motivations and interests and explaining why I feel the need or desire to keep posting about the AI trend. I'm mulling one over. Maybe I'll even write it myself. Until then, the tl;dr version is that I grew up reading Philip K Dick and I've been waiting all my life for this, so I'm quite excited and when I get excited about something I want to share, whether anyone wants to hear about it or not.

I do realize that we won't get to the autonomous, cranky, personable AIs of science fiction in my lifetime or possibly ever, but for a long, long while it seemed like no-one was even trying. At least now they are and I'm very happy about that. Yes, it could all go horribly wrong but then doesn't everything? Is that a reason not to try?

On a a much less emotional, more practical level, I'm experimenting with and posting about the current generation of AI apps because I can see a lot of potential uses for them that would either solve problems I have or make my life easier. 

One thing I'd really like is an automated research assistant, something I could set parameters for and send out to find, collate and precis information that I could use in posts I'm writing without having to start from scratch. I've been trying to find out if Bard or ChatGPT could fill that role and so far it's clear they can't, mostly because of that endearing but infuriating tendency they have to make things up if they can't find the answer.

I'm sure plenty of older readers (Heh! That's all of you, isn't it?) will remember Ask Jeeves, the search engine that you could talk to in full sentences. It wasn't very good, was it? I learned something from it all the same and that was to treat all search engines as if they could understand normal English. I generally don't just type keywords into Google; I ask it questions. I also cut and paste whole sentences into the search bar and let Google sort out what I want to know. It works very well.

It seems to me that it wouldn't be too far-fetched to imagine a version of regular Google Search that can parse sentences and paragraphs and return results that have been sorted and summarised in good English, rather than just pulling up a page of links you have to go read for yourself. That's what I've been hoping the AIs would be able to do. That they can't is frustrating but their failures are hilarious. 

That's basically what I'm up to with these posts, just in case it hasn't been obvious - pushing the AIs to do what I want and then laughing at them when they can't. Probably going to come back and bite me in the ass when AIs get full autonomy and non-human rights but I reckon I'll be long gone by then. 

You'd Look Pretty In That Dress

On yesterday's post, Redbeard asked if I'd say fashion was one of the primary parts of Noah's Heart. I gave him some sort of reply in the thread but it's not such an easy question to answer because, if I'm honest, I have no clue what the point of the game is or even what it's supposed to be. One thing I can say with some confidence is that I'm sure you're not meant to play it the way I do.

When I began playing Noah's Heart I treated it like any other mmorpg. I explored the world, levelled my character and followed the storyline, all of which were fun things to do. After a few months I found myself doing very little in the open world, beautiful though it is, because I'd opened all the teleport locations and kind of felt that was enough.

From then on I concentrated mainly on the monthly story Seasons, which were complete in themselves and had somewhat intriguing plotlines, if you could pick them out from the execrable translation. Those have a time-gating mechanic based on tokens you get from doing dailies so I got into the habit of making sure I hit my daily max of two hundred points.

As the months went on and the game lost players, as evidenced by the multiple server merges, the new content drops dried up, to be replaced with not much more than a rotating sequence of quasi-holiday events and cash-shop driven minigames. No more story seasons have arrived since the one I'm supposedly doing, which is handy in a way because I got fed up with that one half way through, when it became obvious it was padded out with stupid boss fights, and stopped. 

Despite no longer needing tokens for the season unlocks, I've carried on doing dailies because I actually like doing dailies now. Guild Wars 2 gave me Daily Stockholm Syndrome and I've never recovered. 

Apart from enjoying them, the two practical reasons I do dailies are a) to fulfill my Guild responsibilities and b) to get mats and sundries to progress my Phantoms. My guild is a lot quieter than it used to be but I still like being in it and I don't want to get kicked out for not meeting the minimum activity requirements. 

As for my Phantoms, while I don't do much fighting these days, I do still like to see how far I can get in the Fantasy Arena, where Phantoms are pitted against one another in a form of quasi-PvP. If I'm ever going to get past Diamond 3 I need my team to get stronger, so that's a motivator.

Dailies in Noah's Heart are also very quick and easy now. I won't bore everyone with the mechanics of how it works but suffice to say that a while back the devs added some automation to the daily mechanics that allows me to get things done in a matter of seconds that used to take me half an hour or more. I've also built my home up to the point where it provides me with a hefty supply of crafting materials every day just for the few seconds it takes me to set some switches.

That's meant I have a large supply of materials for crafting gifts to give my Phantoms so they'll like me more, which is how I persuade them to give me the patterns I need to copy their clothes. I also get a fair amount of a number of currencies I can spend on items needed for both upgrades and crafting. If I had to go out and harvest or fight for those myself, the way I used to, I don't think I'd have become as invested in getting the different appearances as I have done. I'd probably have given up quite a while back.

Since my playstyle is so truncated and limited, I find it impossible to say whether fashion is intended to be one of the endgames but I'd have to say it is for me, not least because I have no clear idea what the alternatives even are. There are several ladders for PvP and PvE that I guess competitive people work to rise to the top of and there are a few of those endless progression dungeon things that seem to have become mystifyingly popular in a number of games of late but other than that, your guess is as good as mine as to how people spend their time in Noah's Heart.

A lot of people do wander around all dressed up, though, so it looks like I'm not the only one working on their wardrobe. For a game with a lot of looks to collect and a payment model that relies on cash shop sales, I'd have to say there don't seem to bthat many clothes or accessories you can flat-out buy for real money. Most things seem to come either from the kind of in-game activity I've been doing or from unspecified "Events" that I never seem to be able to find.

It's a strange game in so many ways. I like it a lot but I can't see it lasting much longer.

You Can Be My Daddy

I love the way Lana del Rey's father, Rob Grant, is playing with the odious concept of "Nepo Babies". That's the concept 'm calling odious, by the way, not the babies. 

Seriously, at what point of human history has it ever been about what you know rather than who you know? And what are children supposed to do? Actively reject the experience and advice of their parents? 

Are we going to accuse someone of nepotism because they've decided to train as a doctor or a teacher, following in the footsteps of a parent or grandparent? Are we going to ban offspring from carrying on the family business? If not, why should it be different just because the family business involves singing or playing the guitar?

It's even more stupid considering the result is right there in front of us to make up our own minds about. Aren't we capable of judging value by the quality of the work any more? Is it all about the connections, now?

Pah! And pfooey! Anyway, having the dad ride in on the coat-tails of the daughter is hilarious, especially when you consider the lyrics of any number of Lana's early recordings - and when it comes out sounding like this, it's glorious too. I'm gonna buy the album, which I certainly wouldn't if Lana wasn't on it. Nepotism works! 

You've Got To Laugh

If you remember the post I wrote about whether cover versions can be considered free of the stain of their corrupt originals, you might also remember me mentioning a book called Monsters by Claire Dederer. At the time I hadn't read it. Now I'm about half-way through.

As I said then, the copy I have is an uncorrected proof so I can't quote from it. It says so, right there on the cover: "Sceptre uncorrected proof. Not for resale or quotation". I'd post a picture of the cover to show you but I imagine that's not allowed, either.

It's a shame, because there are plenty of lines I'd like to share, not so much for the political or critical or socio-politico-critical points they make but because they're damn funny. If there was one thing I wasn't expecting from a semi-academic treatise on the moral conundrum of what to do about art we admire when it's also created by men we revile, it's that it would have me laughing out loud. 

But it has and it does. I've laughed a bunch of times now and inwardly chuckled a whole lot more. A hundred pages in I'm not at all sure what case is being made or whether I agree with it but I'm certain I want to read more by this author.

At one point she describes herself, somewhat uncomfortably, as a memoirist, something that would be hard to deny, given she's published two memoirs, one with the highly unappealing title "Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses", which apparently has a recommendation by Elizabeth Gilbert on the cover, enough to warn anyone off, I'd have thought. The other's called "Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning", which isn't a whole lot more enticing.

I read some of the Amazon reviews and wishlisted both books. I mean, who wouldn't, when people are saying such amazing things about them, like "The book had quite a few stains on the front which I wasn't expecting" and "It is mildly interesting, but to my mind the contents would've been best left in the author's diary". I mean, it's better than a nod from the author of Eat, Pray, Love, that's for sure.

And that, I think, is just about enough. Working the weekend so that's all until Monday.