We have been talking about this for years but just last week we actually launched a major expansion to the Child’s Play program. Over the last year, it's been in a pilot form but as of Friday, Child’s Play is now in a position to support domestic violence shelters as well as Children’s Hospitals. Jamie has been working on this program for a while now and so I’m just going to share with you here the post she made over on the Child’s Play site:
People have been asking me, and then asking me again, when the tickets for PAX Prime would be going on sale. I was happy to tell them I didn't know, in the same way that there are things which each agent does not know when sent on a dangerous mission. When I came in this morning, though, I learned. They were launching now.
My iPad is essentially a digital card game playing device. Between SolForge, Hearthstone and Order and Chaos Duels I don't really use it for much else. O&C Duels actually just got a really big update that adds a bunch of new single player content. They have expanded the campaign mode significantly which is rad for me because that's my favorite way to play that game. They also added a Tower mode similar (identical?) to Hearthstone's Arena battles. Choose a hero then build a deck by choosing one of three cards offered until you have 40 cards. Then throw your new deck into battle with other humans and see how far you can go before you lose three times. Depending on how far you get you're rewarded with in game currency or rare cards. O&C Duels is a great game, closer to SolForge than Hearthstone in terms of gameplay. It's lane based but adds its own twist to some of the mechanics you expect. For me it's sort of a nice break after getting my ass handed to me again and again in Hearthstone. I can jump over and play the single player campaign in O&C for a bit without feeling the shame of loosing to human beings.
I am perched on the eave of his life like a gargoyle. One day I will be That Uncle, and I'll do for him the same thing I did for his father. There are rules of the road, but the rules aren't the road itself.
A while back I was asking about laptop advice and I got a lot of it. My needs are a little different because I wasn’t really looking for a portable computer in the sense that I needed a machine to haul around with me everywhere I go. The Surface Pro fills that role for me. I wanted a machine primarily for playing video games, that I could put out on my kitchen table when I wanted to play and then tuck away in a drawer when I wasn't using it. I don’t really have a dedicated space for a desktop computer anymore even though I know I could get more bang for my buck going that route.
The Surface Pro 3 does a lot of stuff right. The device is ridiculously light and thin. It still manages to feel sturdy and well built though. The new screen is absolutely beautiful and the extra couple of inches makes a big difference when using it. There will be plenty of great reviews of this machine from all different perspectives, but today I’m just going to talk about how the Surface Pro 3 works for artists.
It's all true, except for the reaction obviously. There is probably some weird thing they're going to do that we aren't prepared for, but having been tamped down so thoroughly by our own parents a lot of this stuff just doesn't seem like a big deal. I guess we'll see who was right.
Well this is terrifying. And exciting. And weird. I mean hi! I'm Jamie, and you'll notice I am not Mike, nor am I Jerry. I am a different person, known around these parts as the protocol droid.
The last time I posted about a Kickstarter expressly to mourn it - Republique, which I described explicitly as a "Kick-Stopper" - I was so glad to be wrong. I thought it would never come out, and that the young people with smart coats engaged dutifully in the act of its creation had done so for naught. Except now the second episode is out, and it's even better than the first one.
He did have a real Art Night, but I assume that the second panel did not actually occur, which would make the third panel a lie heaped upon a lie. He drew boys and girls, he drew boys with their cats and girls with their dogs, he drew them playing basketball and soccer, he drew them as fey folk, occupied with dreams of every sort. He drew a single Gabriel, also, for a dad who must have been very surprised to see him there.
I really did try to avoid playing in the Wildstar beta. I knew any character I made would just get wiped when the game launches in a couple weeks. I figured it was smarter to just wait until it’s actually out and then dive in.
I don't think it's entirely the fault of developers or the genre or any of those things. But we have been so rigorously trained in how to play Massively Multiplayer Games, in precisely the way we train rats, that you fall into that groove. Except it's not a groove, groove. The funk has long since fled. It's more like a rut. I have to break some of this stuff down to enjoy it again, I think. I have Optimization Sickness.
The Child’s Play Invitational 2014 is coming up on June 22nd and we have some stuff going on this time that might appeal to you even if you’re not into Golf.
I'm trying to get back en Twittre (Francais), and it's slow going. Presumably there is a bike metaphor we can leverage. Even though the whole thing is opt-in, people have to specifically choose to listen to me, I still feel like I'm being rude by using it! It makes no sense. So whatever I put in there has to be enough by some mystic standard, and it invariably isn't. As usual, Jane Austen nailed it two hundred years ago:
Card Kingdom has put together "corporate giving and volunteerism" program, read: a Being Rad program, and just like that famous truck it have started to move. They're holding a tournament called The Gauntlet this Sunday to kick the whole thing off. Myself and a few other stalwarts from Penny Arcade have joined in the fight, I don't know about our chances, because I suspect that Card Kingdom is going to draw in some truly savage brutes. But you can sponsor our team from the donation widget - just put PA in the text field, and we will do our best to earn your coin.
The thing you have to remember about Microsoft rumors is that all Microsoft rumors are true.