Rex Ready Player One, Part Five

Through his company Asmadi Games, Chris Cieslik - however you might choose to pronounce it - has either published or designed some of my favorite games. A lot of people might be familiar with We Didn't Playtest This At All, but between Innovation, Red7, and especially One Deck Dungeon he's just associated with a lot of all timers. His next one, which will be at Gen Con, has the potential to be another Uno in my opinion. If you see him there, ask him for The New Shit.

Why Games Need to be Unfair

by Chris Cieslik, 

Owner & Lead Designer, 

Asmadi Games

I really wanted somebody to tell me what videocard to upgrade to, and when I saw that GamersNexus was following me on the Tweetzorz I shuddered with delight. Steve got back to me "weirdly fast" and since then we bother each other on occasion. He starts shit when shit needs to get started, which I appreciate. I asked him if he had anything he wanted to discuss, and luckily a bee was already firmly lodged in his bonnet. Thanks, dude.

The Block Market, or

Bail Me Out: I've Committed a Felony

Every block looks the same to the people voting on video game laws.

I decided I wanted to try and get back to doing some more traditional artwork rather than just digital. It’s been decades since I took drawing with pencil and ink seriously and so I am pretty rusty. I still find myself reaching for the undo button and trying to zoom in constantly. I’m having a lot of fun though and I have given myself the challenge of eventually drawing one of the monthly bonus Club PA comics traditionally. I’m not ready for that yet but I’ve been posting some of my practice/learning drawings over on my Bluesky and I wanted to share them here as well.

Rex Ready continues to unravel a global conspiracy. Will this time-travelling secret agent dinosaur be able to dismantle this dark machinery in time?

I'm going somewhere for a little while, so we looked at our list of quote unquote treasured, underutilized characters from our ancient past and decided to take Rex Ready for a spin. It seems like it ended up being topical.

There is a very famous video during the console war of 2013 where Microsoft said a bunch of weird shit about DRM and watermarking games to your console and controlling software purchases after the fact. This video referenced above may be the most malevolent assault since Sega did what Nintendidn't. Just… blood everywhere. Gandalf suggested that a wizard is never late, nor are they early - they arrive precisely when they mean to. Microsoft's doom is that they are perpetually late, except when they're so early people don't even understand what the fuck they're talking about.

Potent wisdom, delivered weekly - that's what #Fridabe is all about. Join us for another SponStream™️ with Once Upon A Galaxy!

(CW)TB

Gabriel misunderstanding things is one of our most profound genres; I should make up a keyword based on this propensity and begin utilizing its subtle power.

Tim Sweeney fascinates me; he is an endless source of activity and interest. He is always whipping out a tendril of some kind at this or that - he doesn't like that Steam identifies works made with AI, referring to it as a Scarlet Letter, which it is. It's whatever the opposite of an Organic sticker is. And it makes sense why he wouldn't like it - I've heard our designers talking about how AI tools are enmeshed now through their industry standard software, and now Gmail literally tries to write my emails for me. I saw a video for the newest Unreal technology that involved typing prompts into it so it would draw over the work you did, and then you'd have to draw over that work and fix it. So, yes. If using Unreal is synonymous with AI, a big sticker that says so isn't gonna be super welcome. Luckily, they just remembered that they have their own store recently and are gonna work on it.

Tim Sweeney fascinates me; he is an endless source of activity and interest. He is always whipping out a tendril of some kind at this or that - he doesn't like that Steam identifies works made with AI, referring to it as a Scarlet Letter, which it is. It's whatever the opposite of an Organic sticker is. And it makes sense why he wouldn't like it - I've heard our designers talking about how AI tools are enmeshed now through their industry standard software, and now Gmail literally tries to write my emails for me. I saw a video for the newest Unreal technology that involved typing prompts into it so it would draw over the work you did, and then you'd have to draw over that work and fix it. So, yes. If using Unreal is synonymous with AI, a big sticker that says so isn't gonna be super welcome. Luckily, they just remembered that they have their own store recently and are gonna work on it.

The primary way I interact with Warhammer these days is through fiction and videogames - which I'm sure works just fine for them. New versions of the flagship game, Warhammer 40,000, come out fairly frequently I would say - and with them comes a host of rule changes, changes for how armies are constructed, and changes to what your models do - up to and including exile. 11th Edition just came out, and I've looked at it and looked at it; you can look at it too. I wonder who outgrew who; the conservative rule shifts and terror of their own fanbase makes the game feel inert. And it's gotten so expensive that I'm considering going elsewhere for rules and printing my own models out of poison.

Gabe is losing his shit over Adventures of Elliot, which was not a sure thing, because there are two versions of the demo and only one of them lets you continue from where you left off in the retail version. I'll leave it to you to guess which one he had, and the theft of several hours would ordinarily be a dealbreaker but it charmed the pants off him. Technically his pants sublimated, moving directly to a gaseous form without first passing through a liquid state.

I try to be as much of a moving target for social media algos as I can, battering it with strange data; the best guess TikTok could possibly make is that I'm an ancient moth with zymurgical inclinations who works part-time as a welder. At least, that's what I thought. Somewhere in that hostile nonsense it managed to constellate a route from point A to point B and put my whole deal into stark relief. I am someone who likes robots that turn into shit, and vice-versa. I was under the impression that Transformers ruled the roost - by and large a metaphorical roost, but I assume Swoop has a literal aerie in addition to the rhetorical one. But there's a whole industry now around making things not as they were, but as you remember them. Sorcerous.

Apple TV is fascinating. It doesn't have a super deep roster, but it has a weirdly high ratio of absolutely must watch shit. I got some free Apple TV when I got an iPad a few Christmases ago, and ended up hooked on For All Mankind - then let it lapse, and now my three favorite shows are all from there. It goes Severance, Pluribus, and now Widow's Bay. They don't seem to be able to produce on any kind of schedule, but then, I don't think they're even trying to. This is exactly what a modern leviathan should be doing with its bulging coffers. As a young man, I was told that Campbell's Chunky Soup was said to eat like a meal. These are shows that watch like books, that benefit very clearly from study.

It's very textbook stuff; now that the game festivals are over, now that the charm offensive has been executed more or less flawlessly and there's no more juice to squeeze from it, it's time to produce an incredibly large cartoon knife from nowhere and move to the next phase.

We had an opportunity to dip back into the List of the Forgotten, as we had already detailed the perfidy of Niantic Spatial in full. The current list is constantly being added to, and so release from this obligation may never truly arrive. Currently it stands as follows, if you would like a sort of preview:

Fruit Fucker
The food court dragon
Rex Ready
L. H. Franzibald
CTS
Twisp & Catsby
Jim
K-Reazy

"Tag urself," etc.