It's been a long time since I actually stuck with an MMO, but whatever Wildstar is doing seems to be working on me. Succeeding in these requires, to my mind, some kind of obsession. Played in an ordinary way, the genre's tropes veritably ensure that it won't satisfy. Wildstar has more immediacy than most, in my opinion, but you gotta commit to this genre. I have discovered a level of obsession that is compatible with the rest of my life.

The comic is for raids in general, but raiding in that game specifically has a kind of bullet-hell, arcade complexity that requires a lot from players - luckily, we have it to give. Often. Most of the time, we do. Or, others have it to give, and I pay them back when a friend of mine pays me back next Tuesday hopefully he's going through some shit right now.

We do an afterparty for Enforcers after each PAX, which actually finishes the show in my mind. The day after is as important as any other day, it's just not one that attendees know about. Last time around, a dude I've talked to for years and years at these things told me about his game, and he had it, and did I want to play it.

This is a highly complex situation for me, and the person asking it, and every person within a fixed radius of the event. I was in a band for awhile, a couple different bands, and when you ask somebody if they want to hear your shit, they can't actually say no. There's no social space to do that. Even if that's the last thing they want, even if they hate music. "Please don't, your dreams are uninteresting to me" can't really be said even if it is the only true thing. So, I try not to do that, for their sake. What it means when someone brings their thing to me is that I understand how hard it is for them to say, "Hey, I made a scale model of my psyche. Please appraise this molecule of my secret self" and I want to honor it. But I can't lie to them, either. The best I can hope to do is to hurt them temporarily, toward a purpose, like you might "hurt" a bonsai.

Except I didn't have to engage in any kind of diplomacy - what he came up with was fucking sweet. It's a CCG type game where you play cards to a tactical field that abstracts concept like Range, and these cards move like wargame units. I loved it, and they're trying to make a digital version of the game I played through Kickstarter. He wanted to know if he could use Penny Arcade characters for some bonus content, and that was a very easy call.

(CW)TB out.