Author: MrBlueSky

Almost a year later, where does Kickstarter’s blockchain initiative stand?

About a year ago, give or take two months, Kickstarter announced that they would be engaging in some sort of blockchain-based initiative. Reaction was varied, and by varied, I mean people who liked distributed excel sheet blockchain technology saw this as further proof of the the future ascension of that tech.

If you were someone who actually ran Kickstarter campaigns, you may have seen it as a sign that you should look into BackerKit or Gamefound.

When this whole thing was announced, Bitcoin was around $50,000, and Ethereum was about $4300. Anyway, it’s been a little bit. Some things have happened. Bitcoin is now around $19,500,and Ethereum sits at $1300 and it seems like as good a time as any to check in on that whole Kickstarter Blockchain thing.

Before we get any further into this though, there’s one large thing I want to address. In a massive amount of the coverage, there’s an announcement that Kickstarter would be moving onto some form of blockchain technology within the year.

This claim was actually going to be the base of this rant. I’d poke fun at blockchain, and then mock companies who think they can perform a full technical transformation on a project that hasn’t entered the planning phase with a “new” technology in less then a year, and just generally act all smug. Y’know, given that they’d have just under 3 months from today to meet their own deadline.

Unfortunately, I cannot find evidence that Kickstarter ever actually made this claim. The primary source of their 1-year timeline is this Bloomberg article. To make matters more annoying, I can’t find evidence that they didn’t make this claim. The Bloomberg article in question has a published time of 1:45 EST, the Kickstarter article doesn’t have a published timeframe, and the first Wayback Machine capture in the Archives is from 4:41 PM EST.

I’d personally say, “Kickstarter appears to have never said this.” There is a period of time between 9:00 AM EST and that first Wayback Machine capture where Kickstarter could have updated the article. That said, they eventually edited out one sentence about publishing a white paper, and that took them a long time to change. I think it’s unlikely that they published a timeline, and then edited it out within hours.

One brief addendum before I drop this track entirely. I reached out to both the author of the Bloomberg article, and Kickstarter directly to ask for clarity on this point. The Bloomberg writer didn’t respond, and Kickstarter stated the end of 2022 date was referencing a timeline for setting up a organization to investigate the solution.

Regardless, it’s hard to see this whole blockchain thing as a win of any sort for Kickstarter. At the time of the announcement, it drew a fair amount of criticism and scorn from many users of the their platform. Both creators and backers criticized the direction, and many users considered moving to Kickstarers’ competitors. As of right now, crypto has lost a massive amount of value, and continues to be a solution in search of a problem, unless the problem is “How do you make make money off ransomware?”

Kickstarter itself has also been fairly quiet about all of this. There was a recent interview on Dicebreaker with the new Kickstarter CEO.

I’m gonna be honest. I read the interview. I appreciate Chase Carter’s (the interviewer’s) directness with some of the questions. But that doesn’t help the answers.

Everette Taylor doesn’t really take a stand for or against Kickstarter’s blockchain initiative. Instead, he repeatedly states that Kickstarter won’t become a Web3 company. He says that Kickstarter is still focused on their core value add, but also doesn’t say they won’t continue investigating. He frankly doesn’t say much of anything.

Ed Note: This isn’t intended as an insult. If anything it’s a compliment. I understand why he’s not going to say anything, and I admire that he’s able to to do it so effectively. Publicly giving your honest opinion on all the bad decisions of the company that just hired you probably is not a great strategy for long term employment. All that said, I’m enthusiast media. I can both admire the skill and call it somewhat BS that he’s not committing to any actual policy.

The spiciest statement Taylor makes is this: “I believe that a lot of people’s issues with Kickstarter’s exploration of the blockchain are doing so with misinformation.”

It’s a great statement because it looks like it says a lot, but promises and says nothing. Are you pro-blockchain? “Our customers only dislike blockchain because they’re misinformed.” Are you anti-blockchain? “People only dislike it because they don’t understand that we’re just exploring the space, not committing to it.”

You can choose to read it however you want, and even if you take a neutral stance, it’s still hollow. Is the misinformation about blockchain ,or Kickstarter’s exploration of the process, or something else entirely? Who knows!

Regardless, here’s the state of Kickstarter nine months later: There’s been no active forward progress that’s been publicly reported. In both interviews, and requests for comment, Kickstarter hasn’t disavowed itself of involvement with blockchain technology, but they also haven’t committed to any outwardly visible extent. If the whole thing was an attempt to drum up interest and attention, I’d say it pretty visibly backfired. If it was an expression of legitimate interest in the crypto/blockchain sphere, any fruits are extremely slow growing.

Hazelnut Hex Review

Hazelnut Hex is a fantastic shoot-em-up that knows exactly what it’s doing and executes on it perfectly.

Hazelnut Hex is brilliant. The game is a to-the-point shoot em up that knows exactly what it’s doing and executes on it perfectly. Some folks might call the game minimalist; I’m calling it precise.

For anyone who hasn’t heard of Hazelnut Hex, it’s a shoot-em-up/shmup for the Switch. In terms of tone, it feels like a pastel colored version of Touhou. Also like Tohou, the music goes far harder than it has any need to. This is track 4 from the game, Bite After Dark. Do me a favor and listen to that while you read the rest of the review.

But what I want to talk about is the gameplay, because to me this is where the brilliance of the game lies. I wouldn’t ever describe myself as a shmup person. I haven’t even played Touhou.

The core rules of Hazelnut Hex are simple. Shoot the enemies, and don’t get hit with projectiles. Do that, get to the boss, and beat the boss to win. After all, it is a shoot em up. But Hazelnut Hex isn’t random. Instead, each level follows a predictable pattern. And while you can restart if you die, you lose your score. I think this is a nice balance. Even if you’re terrible, you can still play the entire game.

Every subsystem in the game feels perfectly designed. Let’s start with lives. You start with 3 lives (or 5 if you turn the value up because you’re bad like me) and getting hit costs you a life. Get 500,000 points and get another life. This is one of the very few times a game has actually made me care about points. Sure, you can get points for just blasting enemies, but you can get more by waiting for your shots to charge and hitting chains of enemies with more powerful blasts.

In addition to getting more points, charged shots also destroy enemy bullets, and build your special meter. You can use specials to shoot a massive blast that gives you invulnerability frames and clears bullets off the screen. But at the same time, it also gives points based on the number of bullets on the screen. It can function as a panic button if you find yourself trapped, but it’s also a scoring tool.

All of sudden, instead of just blasting non-stop to clear the incoming waves, I found myself actually looking at enemy patterns, and trying to spot moments when they lined up for clean charge shots, so that I had extra lives going into tougher spots. I’d describe it as the difference between button mashing and trying to actually understand what’s going on in a fighting game.

And pretty much every subsystem feels like this. There’s a set of end of level scoring bonuses that include one for having your squirrel Sam with you when you clear the level. It’s 20,000 points which is a fairly large amount. Why is it so high? Because you can only pickup Sam before the boss fight. This isn’t just a bonus for keeping Sam alive, its a bonus for clearing the boss fight without getting hit! Other score bonuses are only applied when you clear a level. This makes it so you can get large payouts, but the level keeps you from getting them too early, and getting easy bonus lives.

Hazelnut Hex can be played through without understanding any of these systems. That’s how I beat it the first time, after all. But if you want to master it, the game also provides the ability to do so. You can start any level with any combination of weapon, weapon power, and health. Want to practice a boss fight without playing the first half of the level? Go right ahead.

Other people might criticize the game for not being very long, since you can play through the whole thing by just continuing after death. I don’t think that’s actually a problem. Hazelnut Hex doesn’t include any bloat. It’s not trying to be anything else other than an expertly crafted shmup. And playing it gave me, terrible as I am, a bit more of an appreciation for the brilliance of the genre.

Hazelnut Hex is $8 for Nintendo Switch. You can buy it here.

Ed Note: Images in the article are taken from the Nintendo Store page.

Omega Strikers

To my mind, soccer is one of the world’s simplest games. Put the ball into the net without using your hands. On the other hand, MOBA’s are one of the most complicated. Sure, the general goal is pretty simple: destroy the Ancient/Nexus. But everything else is a complex mishmash of systems, paved cowpaths, general fuckery, and meta-weirdness.

Omega Strikers is effectively a synthesis of these two systems. Score five points (or two more then your opponent in a tie breaker) to win. Score points by hitting the disc into the goal. A nice simple win condition, with theoretically simple gameplay.

But it Omega Strikers also feels a bit like a MOBA. Instead of being a generic soccer player, you pick a Striker in a pregame draft. There’s a not-quite leveling system based on picking up powerups from around the map, and some of your abilities do “damage” to enemy strikers. You can also temporarily knock out enemy players by depleting their health, and also by hitting them into walls.

There’s not too much else to be said for Omega Strikers. It has the same sort of art style as Eternal Return, with the 3D anime and sorta cel-shaded look. It has a battlepass. You can pay money to unlock characters, but it’s not just real life money, it’s funbucks which can only be purchased in random amounts.

Oh, and it has a “Rune System.” You know, that terrible system from League and Multiversus where you have to spend your in-game currency on passive buffs to put onto your character instead of, I don’t know, unlocking more characters to play.

You want my simple opinion on Omega Strikers? I think it’s fine. I think as a game that seems to run fairly well, it was fun to download and play with some friends for a bit. I don’t fully understand the game’s damage systems. I also don’t have any huge desire to return to it. I do think it’s by far the easiest MOBA style game I’ve ever played, and convincing non-gaming folks to try it would be probably be pretty easy.

Omega Strikers is Free* on Steam.
*If you get into its gonna cost you more than a triple A game, so good luck.

What does Stadia’s shutdown say about the future of Alphabet in gaming?

Stadia’s death might be the most exciting thing about the platform, honestly.

Much like Bruno, we don’t talk about Stadia. Unlike Bruno, Stadia has at no point been secretly living in my house. And with its shutdown, it’s unlikely it ever will be.

MAXIMUM GRAPHIC DESIGN EFFORT.

I know a fair number of folks with gaming PC’s. I know folks with both brands of mainstream VR headsets. I know people who make board games, video games, write for games, do art for games.

I don’t know a single person in real life who actually used or tried Stadia. Not one. So let’s start with a recap of what Stadia was.

The Life and Death of Stadia

Stadia was Google’s attempt at a game streaming platform. It released in 2019 with little fanfare, and as of today, it’s officially dead. It had a fairly decent number of games, including things like Destiny 2, Assassins’ Creed, and Far Cry. It also had quite a few smaller games like Celeste, Enter the Gungeon, Killer Queen Black, and Golf with your Friends.

The statement about Stadia’s shutdown is brief, and you can read it here. I’ll also summarize it it quickly.

Paragraph 1 & 2 – Our technology worked, but we didn’t build a userbase that met our expectations.

Paragraph 3 – We’ll be refunding hardware and games purchased through us. (But notably, not subscription fees).

Paragraph 4 – Our technology was so great, and we can totally use it in other parts of our business. We absolutely did not just burn several hundred million dollars for nothing on this project, and we’ll totally still be invested in gaming. Trust us guys.

Paragraph 5 – We’re not going to fire everyone on the Stadia team. But y’know. We are shutting down Stadia, so uh… we’re not not firing people.

Okay, so I may have taken some artistic license onparagraphs 4 and 5. But in my mind, the most important and interesting paragraph here is number 3.

The Opposite of Graceful Product Failure

Alphabet/Google does not have a good track record of maintaining services or devices that don’t make them money. The biggest example I can think of is Google Glass, a product you had to beg to get, pay $1400 or something for, and that was then shutdown. But the same is true of smaller things, like Hangouts. I would also note that they have “bad” customer service, except even that is giving them too much credit.

“Bad” customer service is 3 hours on hold to try to get something resolved. Google doesn’t have any customer service. If something goes wrong on one of their platforms, and you’re a general consumer, you are hosed. Game over. There is no human, there is no phone number.

And I think that these two things may have come back to bite them with Stadia. Nobody loves Google or Alphabet. They’re just another Microsoft. Folks like me and you use their products because they’re the market leader, but not because we love them, or trust them. So when they launched Stadia, the general opinion of “Why would I ever touch a service run by a company that shuts down projects out of the blue, has no customer service, and isn’t actually a gaming company?” was a pretty common sentiment.

There’s zero reason to be an early adopter of Google projects at the moment as a consumer. And paragraph 3 feels like someone realized that, and went “Hold up.”

So why refund consumers?

I can personally think of at least two reasons for them choosing to refund hardware and game costs. The first is simple. Google’s reputation is actively harming them at this point when it comes to hardware launches, and is a cause for concern when it comes software. They’ve already burnt millions on Stadia, choosing to burn a few million more to try to wind the program down without alienating the few fucking idiots who are early adopters for Google hardware individuals who are willing to engage with their products at early stages is probably worth it.

The other possibility is that their whole spiel about planning to remain in the video game space isn’t complete bullshit, and they actually do intend to try to make a future play on this industry.

Regardless of whether it’s an optics move, or a legitimate business choice, I think it’s probably the right one. Stadia may have failed, but giving consumers the impression that they can safely buy into Google/Alphabet projects without fear of getting the rug pulled and losing everything is a smart idea (but remember, they didn’t refund subscription fees).

Even if it’s the only one that came out of Stadia.

PS. I mean, c’mon. As one of my friends pointed out, they launched this product at a time of forced isolation, graphic cards shortage, and supply chain issues (PS5 where?). Conditions couldn’t have possibly been better for success. It still flopped.

V Rising

V Rising is a solid survival/crafting game with a vampire theme and mechanics. I can’t think of a good vampire pun to put here.

I like V Rising. I don’t think it’s a perfect game. But it cost $20, and I’ve played 60 hours of it. If that’s not an easy recommendation, I don’t know what is.

V Rising is a multiplayer survival/crafting game in the vein Valheim or Rust. Instead of following their lead and being in a first person or over the shoulder camera, V Rising has a top down camera much closer to something like Diablo.

And instead of being a human unlucky enough to wash up on some random island, you’re a vampire.

The vampire thing isn’t just a theme. Sure, there’s a blood meter that replaces your hunger bar. But who you drink blood from also heavily impacts gameplay. Drink blood from a worker, and you’ll harvest more resources. Drink blood from a nun, and you’ll restore health when casting spells. Drink blood from a warrior, and you can parry some incoming attacks.

Also, you burn real hard during the daytime.

The general gameplay loop of V Rising is straight forward. After you get through the game’s equivalent of tutorial, and have a simple base set up, you’ll venture out to farm materials to craft better gear. Once your gear is good enough, you can go fight stronger bosses or “V Blood Carriers.” Defeating a boss and harvesting V Blood unlocks additional spells, powers, and crafting recipes. Then you can craft better gear! But that might require expanding your base, which requires more resources. So you rinse and repeat.

Of course, when I say “harvest resources” I mean less in a “harvest crops” sort of way, and more in a “humans in the Matrix” sort of vibe. V-Rising’s combat is probably closest to Battlerite (not surprisingly, given that Stunlock made both games). If you’re not familiar with Battlerite, I’d say it feels like a slower-paced version of League of Legends. Also, damage, health and “level” is all completely dependent on the level of gear you have equipped.

I never really had that “Power Fantasy” moment that I get from games like Path of Exile. Instead, you’re limited to 3 skills from your weapon, 2 spells, and an ultimate skill. Even when you outlevel an enemy, unless the difference is absolutely massive, you can still get put into the dirt. The combat is at its best in the game’s boss fights against V-Blood Carriers. It’s at its most annoying against packs or random mobs.

I don’t have too much to say on the multiplayer, mostly because I feel like you can play the game however you want. My first 50 hours were with a few friends on a publicly-hosted PVE server. The next 10 where those same friends on a privately hosted PVP server, and now we’re not friends anymore. Jokes aside, the multiplayer works well, and many of the factors like resource scaling are configurable. If you want a comfy base building setup with some friends, you can just join or host a PVE server with 5x resources, and the ability to teleport. And if you’re masochistic, you can join a 0.5 resource PVP server. Changing the pace and flow is pretty much just a server config setting.

I don’t think the game’s perfect. There’s a whole system for binding and turning humans into vampire servants, but their utility is limited outside of equipping them with a bit of gear, and sending them out on timed missions to gather resources. While the weapons are fairly diverse, the clothing options are a completely linear path, with no build diversity other than “big number good.”

Arise reborn, my servant! Now go get me copper.

Still though, there’s a lot more thought than often goes into games like this. It’s not possible to build a base in such a way that blocks off other players from a critical resource. The number of bosses is fairly high, and despite many of them just being random humans, the actual fights feel meaningfully diverse.

I think V Rising’s greatest strength compared to a lot of the other crafting/survival games is how complete the game loop feels. In 60 hours, I think I only looked at a wiki or guide 2-3 times, and I never encountered any jank.

V Rising is $20 on Steam. It’s a pretty good time. If you’re looking for a solid survival game, or a base builder, I feel comfortable recommending it.

Ed Note: Screenshots are blatantly ripped from the Steam Store page, at time of publishing. The game’s UI doesn’t look like this anymore, though. I still think these are decent representations of what V Rising looks like, even if the lighting in the screenshots is a bit nicer.