Like what are we even doing here? Why are IF Comp and $109 Adventure Game Challenge allowing AI slop in their competitions? Doesn’t that defeat the whole point? I don’t think any game jam or competition should allow AI art. I have a billion other reasons why I’m against using that stuff to make games but it especially seems to go against the spirit of making something for a jam where things can be messier and more personal. If I’m following along with a jam and see a game that clearly uses it, I’m going to give it the lowest possible rating because it’s boring shit. Bruno has a much more elegant take on this and the use of AI in IF Comp but I mostly wanted to vent because….fucking why use it? The sooner this bubble bursts, the better. Every jam allowing it should be embarrassed.
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Here, Have a Moose
September is Library Card Sign-up Month!
I already made a post like this on my birthday but it’s Library Card Sign-up Month! If you haven’t already, here’s another reminder to sign up for a library card if you don’t have one. They aren’t just for books! Mine offers movies, cds, comics, board games, video games, and more. Plus it’s a space where you can study and do work and have meetups.
Your local library may also have free digital services you can get through your card. Mine has Kanopy, Hoopla, and Libby (and probably others). Kanopy is a great streaming service for movie and tv that offers things to watch similar to what you would see on the Criterion Channel. Hoopla offers movies, ebooks, and audiobooks. Libby is focused purely on ebooks and audio books. Anyway, libraries are great. They’re a third place that would never be allowed to be created today.
I Am Never Doing This Again
Well, that’s Blaugust all wrapped up and my take from this has been that while it was a lot of fun as a reader to get a lot more posts in my RSS feed. I’m not going to do the daily posts again. It’s just too much work, which is not what having this site should be for me. I know there’s a lot of effort put forth by the Blaugust organizers that you do not need to do this so I don’t blame them, but that’s the initial goal I saw and what I ended up sticking with. Anyway, glad I tried it but I’m not sure if I’ll officially participate next year.
Internet Mysteries: CompUSA Corporate and Borders Books and Music’s YouTube Channel
Because I have no life, I am thinking about two internet mysteries I do not have the answer to.
Mystery 1: How is the CompUSA Corporate page still up? The company went under like 15 years ago and yeah, the name has been passed around a few times by companies trying to bring it back, but it never stuck. Someone has to be paying for this though. Who? I’m currently seeing very small gambling ads at the top but that’s a new addition. Does that mean it was kept alive by someone else and then sold to a gambling company, who is assuming that people are looking up the corporate site for a long dead company and will click on the ads?
Mystery 2: Who is uploading new videos to the Borders Books and Music YouTube account long after that company has closed down? Is there an employee that still has the login and uploads videos when they stumble across them on an old hard drive? The most recently upload is an interview with Jimmy Carter where the first comment is “I thought both of you died how did this get posted?”
Some Summer Reads I Enjoyed
Recently I came across this article about how reading for fun has dropped a ton in the US over the last 20 years. I don’t actually know if this is accurate or the way they studied this, but it did prompt me to post about some books I enjoyed reading on Bluesky so I may as well post an expanded list here. The trick to reading a lot over the summer is simple. Just develop an extreme love with your library’s summer reading program. Anyway, here’s some things I’ve read with each title linking to the Bookshop.org page, but I read a lot of these through my local library. Many of them have audiobooks too.
Some recent Sci-Fi/Fantasy reads include:
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite
Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
A Necessary Chaos by Brent Lambert
Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston by Esme Symes-Smith
Comics also count as reading and here’s some I read:
Dungeon Club: Roll Call by Molly Knox Ostertag/Xanthe Bouma
Girl Town by Casey Nowak
Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
Eerie Tales from the School of Screams by Graham Annable
The non-fiction I’ve read this year is sorta all over the place, but some of the things I liked were:
Collected Game Writing Articles by Steve Ince
Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything by Colette Shade
All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks
Good Game, No Rematch: A Life Made of Video Games by Mike Drucker
How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones
I’ve also read a billion The Baby-sitters Club and Baby-sitters Little Sister books because that’s what my two girls love and know a lot of the lore AND can recommend the graphic novel adaptations
Forums Are Still Great
Once in a while I’ll see a post on social media lamenting that the Internet isn’t as good as it used to be and pine for certain things like forums, personal sites, IRC, etc but you can still do old internet stuff! There’s still plenty of active forums, and you probably already know this if you’re reading this site, but you can still make websites and webrings. IRC chat rooms are still going too. It’s still fun! Go do it if you miss it that much.
I really like papercult.club for tabletop rpg discussion. It’s a nice smaller community and it feels like there’s very little drama in the indie ttrpg scene when people can actually discuss stuff in smaller communities. This applies to the various ttrpg discords I’m in too.
DOS Game Club is another favorite of mine. It’s a DOS game discussion group where each month they pick a different DOS game to play and discuss. There is an IRC channel built into the web page too if you prefer real time chat and I think it’s a nice place to hang out.
Sometimes I poke my head into the IntFiction.org forums to see what is happening with the interactive fiction community too.
I’m sure I’ve talked on here about making personal sites. Personal sites are fun too and you can get one going pretty quickly with bearblog.dev or neocities.org. Both support RSS feeds as well, which is still neat and very useful.
Anyway, this stuff all still exists and it’s fun!
Here, Have a Moose
Just got back from my vacation so I’m catching up on things and will maybe talk about it more later. But in the meantime, have a moose. This one is a print/serigraph called Communication by Carl Ray that I saw at the Dennos Museum Center in Traverse City.
It’s My Birthday!
If you want to do something nice for my birthday, go get a library card! Already have one? Then go check something out either in person or virtually if your library has streaming services.
RetroAchievements
After seeing this post about it, I’m hooked! I’m probably the last person to know about it but RetroAchievements is basically a service that hooks into a specific set of emulators to let you get little achivements for retro games. Achievements are kinda goofy and maybe a net negative for games, but I like doing this with old games I’ve played a bunch of times before. It’s just fun and goofy to get them for something like Super Mario Bros. My only real complaint is that it’s basically only for console games, when this would be much more exciting to me if it supported DOS and the Amiga. It apparently supports the Apple II but I haven’t been able to get it to work. Which is a shame, because the idea of earning achievements in something like Gabriel Knight 2 is very funny to me and I wish I could do that.