Jack Blair's games newsletter - Issue #3

Welcome to the end of yet another week! It's October now, also! Happy Halloween!

First things first, have you met my (mum's) new puppy yet? Her name is Wookie. I'll link the thread of photos below :D

Second, you may have noticed (or not noticed) that the character introductions have started coming out for Crip Hit! We'll be recording our first full cast session this upcoming week, which I'm personally super excited for. My introduction is below, and I recommend watching all the ones that are out so far!

Player Intro: Jack Blair — www.youtube.com Jack Blair is our first player introduction. He's playing Arc, and we do a vignette from Arc's recent past, where they meet another Created they've never see...

It's been a tired, quiet week for me. I've done some baking a couple of days, but a lot of this week has seen me zoning out, watching Revolutionary Girl Utena or CSI on one monitor and playing powerwash simulator, or another game of similar intellectual engagement on the other. For once I don't think I played even one ttrpg this week... no wait. on monday I recorded the thing I literally linked above. Phew!

Anyway because I've been tired and unwell, I haven't been putting my streams on youtube in a normal timeframe. As of right now though, they're here!

ToYourStations — www.youtube.com I use this channel to host my archive of streams from twitch! You can find me there, or anywhere on the internet under the username ToYourStations

The other thing I did this week was pick up Genshin Impact again on my main PC account. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. This game has a shockingly good story. Terrible in so many other ways, but whenever I play a quest and I'm reading the dialogue and history and such I'm always going "huh, that's actually interesting". My favourite example of this was when they took a little mascot character - Guoba, a three foot tall teddy bear who breathes fire - and used him to explore the roles of gods in a world that is full of humans who need them less and less. In that arc, they told the story of the god who created stoves and showed humans how to cook food, and gave up his power so that humans could live. By giving up that power he reverted into this teddy bear creature until he was found by a young girl who went looking for rare ingredients and almost died. But also, crucially, this genuine emotional story was effectively a three hour advertisement intended to lead people to gamble their real money on Genshin's gacha mechanics.

Anyway, because I've been picking up Genshin again, and as I am always playing Gardenscapes and Lily's Garden and Homescapes and Beat Star, I've been thinking a lot about the mechanical design of games that are intended not to only be good games that people want to play, but also traps designed to convince people to spend real actual money on things that are worth nothing outside of the game. None of those games are paid up front. You don't pay to download them. You (maybe) pay later when you want oooh just one more move to beat that level. Or you want a new sword for your character, or you want to play through a Backstreet Boys song. And I was like "ha, imagine if ttrpgs did that". but they do. the biggest games tend to have quickstart guides available for free. Even more games have community copies, which basically amount to free access to the game. And you just sit around and hope that when people are done with the quickstart, or they have a little more money, they subscribe to your patreon or leave you a tip, or buy another game of yours.

So I guess all my games are Free To Play... I don't think I can quite sell loot boxes yet though...

You can always subscribe to my patreon if you do want to get the Battlepass though ;p