PixlBit

Once again I don’t have too much to talk about concerning games. I know, I’ve become the worst blogger on pixlbit!Regardless a recent interest mine has been open bor beat em ups and other ’remakes” using the Streets Of Rage engine.

Hey homies! Don't have to much to say so I'll probably be haunting other pixlbit blogs and responding there! Still I was able to crank out more art.

I didn’t expect to be gone so long. (Again!) To me pixlbit will always be “The Shire” in many respects. Aka, my “true home” here on the internet. Sure, I’ve been adventuring elsewhere and branching out but my “true roots” will always be anchored right here!

Regardless, I got distracted. Not just being caught up in #gamer-gate and making new friends on twitter but also delving a lot deeper into my art and starting to look up more “story tellers” on you tube who regularly read creepy pastas. A “creepy pasta” is simply a scary tale shared online. In that respect they’re like those “nostalgic camp-fire yarns” only instead they’re exchanged with friends on forums and places like reddit. As a horror fan these stories scratch that particular itch I have!

Anyway, Tami contacted me out of the blue on FB and Blake talked to me a bit on Steam reminding me I had been gone for a long time. I realized how much I missed “the old gang” and figured I needed to check in!

Gaming wise I’ve been playing Dark-Siders 2 and Blood Lust: Shadow Hunter. I will say I’m enjoying Dark Siders 2 much more than I thought I would and Shadow-Hunter is a wonderful amalgamation of everything I loved about both VTM: Blood lines and Diablo. Still, I got the ’drawing bug” something fierce and haven’t been able to progress in either game as much as I’ve wanted to.

However, at least I have some works to share with you peeps! Click on them to enlarge & enjoy! (Er,sorry if you’ve already seen this on FB! Regina was nice enough to give me a hardy “thumbs up“ when I showed them off there!)

So uh,here's my art blog. Drew a lot of new stuff again which probably means I'll become a hermit again trying to get all of it colored!

I was asked  what my thoughts on #GamerGate are as of right now. I realize I could just “copy-paste” one of my twit-longers but that’s pretty insincere considering most of you are friends. “Friends” deserve actual effort.

Yeah,I haven’t put up a blog in forever! Most of you know I got caught up in gamer-gate and I will not waste time telling everyone where I stand right down to the smallest detail. It’s my “own thing” and silly and inconsequential to all my friends on the side-lines.

I just hope there aren’t any hard feelings. I know lately when I try to talk to old pals from pixlbit I largely get ignored. Don’t worry, I’m not offended! I realize I retweet a lot of spam & lewds so if you all muted me I get it. (Many of you have jobs and some of the material I deal with is very NSFW. lol.) Regardless, I never wanted to step on anyone’s toes.

My art gallery is expanding and I’m having  to write up descriptions for my setting and characters. To see all that madness you can go here! The gallery certainly has become a time-sink of sorts as well.

When it comes to games I recently beat Resident Evil Revelations 2. Beyond for some stuttering frame-rate when transitioning between areas the game is surprisingly good and even genuinely scary sometimes! I ended up enjoying it much more than Evil Within which kind of surprised me. (I’m referring to the 360 disk version…I still have hang-ups buying episodic content.)

I also got Mortal Kombat Unchained for my psp. It’s simply a re-tooled version of Deception. That’s alright as I thought Deception was one of the better MK games overall.

Welp,I’m at the end of my rope! I hope ya’ll have been okay and sorry if I came off as abandoning  the community. Life has simply taken me in some unplanned directions as of late.

So a lot has happened with me being in gamer-gate. Don’t worry, this will not be a piece bagging on Anita or Zoe as I feel like the movement (feels weird calling it that) has evolved so far beyond its’ initial roots it‘s no longer about them. If anything, I wish Gamer-Gate had started on a more positive note other than a hurting ex-boyfriend airing his girlfriend’s sex-life. Don’t get me wrong, overall I’m sure Eron is a nice guy but like the rest of us sometimes do, I think he did something kind of questionable in the heat of his emotions. The only good thing about The Quinnspiracy is it “did” bring up the issues of nepotism and cronyism. Everything else is throw away garbage for me.

Not that was the start of all this for me personally. I remember when Bob Mackey (a game journalist) first wrote “This Month In Misogyny” for 1up. It was the first time the “shame narrative” was in full swing and Bob seemed to take a perverse glee out of hitting gamers where it hurts. I recall him slandering J-rpgs especially, saying games like Hyperdimension Neptunia were just for pedophiles. (At the time I knew several female game friends who “loved” J-rpgs too, including the ones with racier, sexier, and cuter content.)  Rape-culture was used as a catchphrase a few times as well. Many 1uppers were offended or outright furious and I was one of the loudest voices against Mackey.

The feud between Bob and I continued on and off from that point on. Eventually Bob was so pissed at me he got members from the forum Bo News to descend upon my 1up blog. Yes, this was a professional journalist recruiting “mercenary friends” to troll me. Among them was K. Thor and his loathing of gamers seems pretty apparent even to this day.

To the credit of 1up, Jeremy Parish eventually stepped in, apologized, and put Mackey in his place. It’s a rare gesture I don’t see often (As in an editor siding with the readers) and though Jeremy and I had our disagreements as well I still respect him for trying to keep the ethical standards of being non bias and fair to everyone. Has Jeremy clung to those standards? I hope so though after I read Kat Bailey’s article comparing Lords Of Shadow 2 to Rape-lay, I simply could not stomach sticking around on US gamer any longer.

But if you think that’s my only initiation into how these people work you would be a bit wrong. Not too long ago I made a little rpg using rpgmaker VX ace.(With pixlbit's resident blogger Blake contributing some of the music) I’m certainly not endorsing it as anything special. It told the story I wanted it to yet was not that ambitious when it came to bells and whistles. Sure, I made original sprites for each character (Using a sprite editor) and chose a more urban modern setting but  the battle system was right out of the first Dragon-Warrior and once you collected all the soulmorphisis cards the difficulty became way too easy.   

 I released the game too early before changes were added later to make it more user friendly. This got me some very well deserved criticism and helpful feedback that I would later use to revise the project further. But even then the atmosphere was tense. There were complaints about my art being “objectifying to women” and once it was known my game dealt with rape and depression (And yes, I’m bi-polar irl) the sentiment was “Oh, it’s okay to address sexual assault and depression but we know you’re going to botch it up anyway because you’re a white cis shit-lord who has never known hardship in your whole life!’.

With that particular rpgmaker site being filled to them brim with cynicism and nepotism, I decided to give game-jolt a try. The people there were a lot nicer and Gutter-delve seemed to skate by on positive scores for awhile. Then came the whirlwind of negativity that is Gliz-Caldo. Gliz had done a whole series of videos mocking my game on you-tube. Granted, it was the earlier build so a good portion of his grievances were probably legitimate. However, he took his impressions from that early build and scored my updated game based on that. Eventually I convinced Gliz to do another review and get back to me. Had he been a reasonable person he might have complimented the improvements but instead he found new things to bitch about and the list goes as follows.

1. Instead of being happier there were no more random battles Gliz complained the enemies seen on screen did not have aggressive enough AI to seem threatening and that they re-spawned after a few seconds. First of all, the enemy sprites are just there to eliminate the need for random battles. Their point is for gamers to touch them to be whisked into the battle-screen. That’s all, really. Had I made an action game Gliz’s critique would have been more valid but this was an rpg instead. Rpgs are known more for their story and they handle fights very differently from action games. (At least turn based rpgs do) Also, it takes awhile for the enemies to respawn, enough time for the player to move on with no troubles.

Perhaps Gliz’s oddest statement in all this was that he said he felt guilty killing the monsters because they were too easy. Yes, the “too easy” remark is a valid concern but feeling “guilt” over dispatching the enemies? The game is not violent. It has mature content and swearing but the battles are the least offensive thing in Gutterdelve. (Beyond the monsters saying some pretty messed up dialogue but that is meant to keep the player aware they’re fighting a dark force that represents the ills of humanity.)

2. At one point the female characters have a conversation in the kitchen. You would think this would not spark anything negative in the audience but Gliz tried to spin it as “They’re females in the kitchen=sexist symbolism!” And my gawd, it worked too. Soon other complainers mentioned this very scene and accusations were flung I simply cannot write female characters very well. Keep in mind these characters were introducing themselves to a new female character. They were not “making sandwiches” for their boyfriends or anything nonsensical like that.(The game even let’s you know earlier on the male character Liam is the best at cooking) It just so happened they were hanging out in the friggin kitchen!

3. Gliz complained the “new music” put in the game was “too generic”. Keep in mind he was the same guy to harshly get on my case for using copyrighted music when he first played the game so I changed it based on his feedback. Yeah,he made the game worse for himself! Beyond that, I’m happy with the new soundtrack anyway and I’m glad you-tubers doing let’s plays of my game will not get flagged. That’s the beauty of using open source music!

Regardless I was fucked after that. Once one asshole decides to shit on something it encourages other assholes to shit on something. Yet all through this abuse I did not flag comments or even flag Gliz’s videos.