YouTube - First Week Back

It's been fun and easy getting on a regular upload schedule. I'm realizing how much time I have, which I've never been good at.

Want to help? Please subscribe. It helps a ton and puts no burden on you whatsoever.

The channel is starting with lets plays which, for those of you not into the nerd thang, is a lot like chillin' on the couch and playing video games with your homies... Only everyone is on their own respective couch. 

Aside from that I don't have much to say (got an hour of sleep last night), so I'll just point you to the episodes I put up this week...OBSERVE BELOW!

Have the best day you've ever had.

Andrew.

Doing Videos Again

I work too hard sometimes. Lots of times. I try too hard to make a point or change things, specifically the minds of others. Then I'll usually tell others to...not do that. 

TLDR: I'm making videos again. 

LR...DT? I actually don't know what TLDR even means. Clearly. But I know how to use it. Do you have words like that? Anyway... Longer story: I'm getting back on youtube (and other platforms that work for me) and doing mostly let's play videos and variety spots, each about 10-15 minutes in length on average. Here's why...

I plan to make a living off fandom, off celebrating the work of others so in turn I can make my own content. Being stoked on others is a strength of mine, so why not make it a career?

Here's the schedule in my head: two videos a day, all week, most of which will be lets plays and two of which will be a vlog and some kind of live action hoosafudge. There' nothing earth shattering here as everyone and their mother is using this format, but there's a reason for that. It works. It's an easy way to build your library and showcase your personality while leaving plenty of time to work on whatever else during your week.

SIDE NOTE: Here's the channel as it is... Click it! chknfoot TV 

The change - now vs. then - is that I'm open to change. I tried way too hard to force jokes and make a brand and so on and whatever. Now, I'm much more open to just doing the thing and evolving. See, the purpose is to use whatever popularity base to make something they and I want, eventually leading to a studio and business to help others achieve their dreams while I achieve mine. So it's chknfoot TV now, but maybe it's not later. Maybe our color-scheme changes, maybe I get a partner or it becomes a network. I have no idea. But I'm excited.

More on all this later. There will be a video soon all about it. Or at least more. It will be me jibbering, so it may be sorta incoherent, albeit well intentioned. 

I'm happy and driven and stoked to share. More than anything I'm really happy to have something that will teach me how to have a professional schedule. Dreams.

Love ya.

Have the best day you've ever had.

Andrew

I've Forgotten How to Play

I sure hope I'm not dead inside. Okay, that's dramatic. I'm not dead inside, I'm fearful that I've lost something important that I feel partially defines me: my love to play. I've sort of forgotten how, and I think it's been a long while now that I've been this way, and I'm only now able to admit it. First step and all that...


DISCLAIMER: This is a working things out post. It might not make a lot of sense. The sound of keys clicking helps me focus and evaluate my goings on and such.


It's such a strange thing to sit at my computer and strive so hard to find some game, any game, just because I tell myself that I want to play something. I'm forcing it, forcing play, and that's sort of crazy. I can't think of any other facet of my life that I try so hard to do. I either do or do not, I don't try or work so hard to do anything the way that I push having fun; specifically with video games. 

I know I still love them. I love my games. But I find myself skipping cut scenes, missing out on good chunks of lore, hearty bits of story that I could learn from. That worries me.

Maybe I'm unhappy? I'm pretty darn content with most things in my life, though I must admit that I feel out of sorts creatively. I've always been creative, imaginative, yet lately I feel dull. I'm boring to myself. I can't seem to create anything I'm proud of for a couple of years now. I can't seem to enjoy the work. I'm trying too hard.

It's fear. I'm afraid of failure. So why try. It's horse-nuts. Grade A. Can't fail if you never try, though you can define that in of itself a failure to live. 

I wish I never realized my mortality. I sure miss the days when I thought I was immortal, my time unending. Oh well. I'm human these days. Maybe there's something there.

I'm going to learn the piano, my first lesson in little over two weeks. Maybe that will feel good.

I am mostly happy. But this whole forgetting how to play thing has me a bit scared, and when I get scared I get sedentary. My ass hurts from sitting. My stomach hurts from devouring the work of others. I'm tired. I think I'll sleep.

Thanks for sticking with me, Brain. I feel better now. Let's get to work on letting ourselves off the hook and letting life happen. Maybe that's how we'll play again.

Processing piece over.

Have the best night you've ever had.

Andrew

PS. The universe is a hologram. Buy gold.

PPS. Or not. We're all in this together. The universe is pretty cool. And if it's a hologram, then choose to bend light and make it what you will.

A Thing About Play (it rhymes with Klei...)

This company gets it. They understand what it is to have a childlike imagination, a pure obsession with play. Every game they've put out - which includes the crazy successful, fun and brutal Don't Starve - encapsulates a fantasy I had as a kid. 

I'm pretty sure I know their formula. 

• 1 part childhood fancy - Klei has a game called Hot Lava, a platformer where you play as toys traversing a bedroom, a school and so on...Oh! And the goddamned floor is lava! I remember this shit! We all did this as kids and it was amazing! Observe the following rad as hell trailer to the right...

• 1 part socio and/or psychopath - Yeah...so...these are the guys who made Don't Starve and Oxygen Not Included. There's all kinds of brutality and consequence in these two properties. In Don't Starve...well, you can starve. You can also go insane via otherworldly horrors, including but not limited to: Pig Men, shadow born horrors and Elder Gods...of sorts. He might also be Satan, I wasn't entirely sure... Faust? Anyway. Then there's the whole suffocating thing in Oxygen Not Included, as well as your team flat nutting out and doing whatever their stress addled AI decides to do - wreck things, jump into space, eat a poison mushroom, you know how it is.

• Pure, uncut drugs - Okay, that's hoosafudge, but they've got their formula down to a sweet addictive science. They know their systems and they know how to snag you in for the long haul. And that might actually be the one thing I DON'T like about their games: I can't tear myself away from them without damn near a physical intervention! My current obsession is Oxygen Not Included, a god forsaken early access game that feels pretty darn complete, robust even! I don't do early access games, but that's a whole other article. The point I'm trying to make, is Klei laces each and every game with coke. Good. I'm glad we had this conversation.

Making a game isn't hard. Making it good is much tougher, but making me feel like a proper child again? That's an art. Klei is incredible for this more than anything in my eyes. And I'm going to use Oxygen is Not Included as my example. 

This game screams the make-believe crazy-pants that I used to play with my friends, specifically the expand at your own peril expansion and the art style. Man. That art. And that sound! The design as a whole is somehow adorable and then...kind of disturbing. Your colonists - sorry, duplicants (which is brilliant, ps) - are hilariously adorable one minute, hard at work and all smiles, then pissing and stress vomiting until they die the next. Then there's the mush-bar, which is basically a sci-fi mud-pie(side note: sci-fi mud-pie is the name of my electro-country album). I made these damn things when I was but knee-high to a hair! I made them and then...well, I made my cousin eat them. She's fine. 

My point was made above, but I'll threaten being further redundant. Klei understands and can implement a very crucial aspect of play that many devs don't execute as well: reminding us of the imagination most all of us used as kids. Their systems make proper use of your personal creativity and then give you fair consequences, not limitations, with your choices. They damn near make your imagination real. 

Okay. It's late and I'm dead tired. Also, I'm going to go play more Oxygen. Sweet dreams.

Have the best day you've ever had.

Andrew

PS. I googled "electro-country" and the video below came up. I then realized I could have just posted the cotton-eyed joe music video. Eh. For the record I don't hate the song below. I don't like it either. Cool. Back to my game.

Livestream

I really liked how this stream turned out, so here it is. 

That's pretty much all. Oh! Here's some more stuff I wrote a few days later. 

In asking what people want to talk about, among other things, people have mentioned many acceptance, confidence and fear based topics. Those will be covered, rest assured, but I think what would be good is throwing a different kind of event/convention.

No competitions. Jams. No points. Instead focusing on us as people, as artists and athletes having fun. A convention of empowering each of us. Music, food, movement and expression.

I have no money, no venue, no date. I just have an idea I believe in. Maybe it will work. I'll sure try to make it work.

Input is welcome.

Have the best day you've ever had!

Cool. That's about it for now.

Repeating myself: Have the best day you've ever had.

Andrew