Club PA is back! It’s not exactly like it used to be a decade ago though and so I wanted to break down for you exactly how this is gonna work and what Club PA members can look forward to.

You can still go and rate the game however you want to, but the way that Dungeon Keeper pretends to gate reviews is funny. It's funny! I don't know how bad it actually is in toto, but it absolutely one hundred percent looks fucking bad. Everyone, indeed, every organism would do this if they thought they could.

Anyone who has been around the site for awhile knows that we aren't shy about trying new things business-wise. They don't always work, but I want this to be a place where we make bets on things. Funding the site via a Kickstarter campaign was just such a thing; in addition to being experimental, it was one of the first steps we took toward moving backward in time. It reminded us of when we ran the site essentially on donations, which was something I really liked doing. It was only two of us back then, so it was a very different proposition financially. Still. Going that route was incredibly instructive personally and professionally. Here's what I mean by that.

I mentioned the stream earlier and I wanted to talk a little bit more about it. Originally we thought it would be something we do a couple times a month but we’ve been having so much fun playing games and chatting with everyone that we’re doing it almost every day now. Even if it’s just for an hour everyone here at the office really looks forward to the streams. People bring their laptops out to the lobby and we all hang out on the couches. You’ve probably seen Jamie in the streams acting as a moderator and answering questions. Her Handle in there is JamiePA and she’s not just doing that kind of stuff on Twitch.

Tycho and I will be trying out a new game on the PS4 this afternoon and streaming the experience. I wasn’t too keen on Outlast for a couple reasons. The big one is I tend to avoid scary shit. I don’t handle scares well at all just ask my wife who has entered a room on more than one occasion and seen me scream and collapse on the floor. I don’t watch scary movies and I avoid games like Silent Hill for the same reasons. I’ve been told Outlast is crazy scary so it wasn’t exactly on the top of my list. Also a game where all you can do is run and hide isn’t really my style. It might be Tycho’s style though so he’ll take the controller for this one and I’ll be riding shotgun.

Yesterday was my birthday. I don't make it an altar of self-worship like some people. I actually had to look at my wiki page to find out how old I was. It wasn't the number I expected, but whatever. Who gives a shit™.

AC IV is happening today at 2:00 pm Pacific. Come hang out and chat with us. We're happy to answer questions about PA and games while we're playing. I've had a few people ask what game we will stream next after AC. The new Strider hits the PS4 in a couple weeks and I'm pretty excited for that. The new Thief will also drop around the end of February. My guess is you'll see us streaming both of those. I'm gonna see if I can score early copies of either of them as I think a stream before a game launches could be cool.

Robert Khoo is not a person who sends rousing links via email. It's not part of his persona. But he did send us this one; given my unique malady, it more or less demanded a strip. It's a real thing you can seek out on your own time, after class. My position on anything like that - up to and including prayer, meditation, what have you - is that living in an intentional way is more likely to result in your goals being achieved. That said, I'm not sure that crystalline formations affect the upward face of a thrown die.

It sounds like hundreds of you were able to complete the Killer Instinct Pin challenge last month and earn yourselves the Combo Breaker pin.

If you have ever savored our podcast, either via the Security Level ULTRAVIOLET official link that backers enjoy or directly via the front door, our creative process resolves to a point eventually but is a distribution for most of it that could become any number of things. "Creative process" may be too ennobling a phrase. It's certainly the process by which something is created, I guess. Webster would give us the thumbs up. Generally speaking it feels like pissing into a sieve, and retaining the stones.

We've been streaming from the office semi-regularly, as in, like, most weekdays for some reason. I genuinely don't know how it came to be this way, other than going out in the lobby and pushing the Share button I guess. I understand how the fait gets "accompli'd" in a purely physical sense, but how it became a habit I don't have super dialed in. I'm not even the one streaming! I'm just there while he streams. I answer questions and sing the occasional shanty. I only need the barest hint of an opportunity to sing a shanty, but since we're playing Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, I feel like I can get away with it free and clear.

We talked about Google Glass back when those were a thing, specifically about how the technology challenge is one aspect but the social shit is another thing altogether that you might not really be able to solve for completely. Independent of any technical sorcelomancy or geekward fetishism, a machine that reads your hot blood is weird even when it is cool.

I was looking at the video again for Shadow of Mordor, trying to cook up another comic because... I don't know, I spend a lot of time thinking about it, and I saw that Talion and/or his friendly ghost are indeed walking across a bracketed, three-strand cable! This means two things. One, I need to be watching things in crisp, full-screen HD. Second, ALL IS FORGIVEN.

The Valentine's Day pin is now available!

Kiko heard me watching the Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor trailer, and he looked in my door to nod vigorously re: his approval. Gabriel says yes as well. I liked it also, not least of which because it is every game I like at once. As a father and entrepreneur, the time savings would be incredible.

The Pinny Arcade Valentine’s Day pin will go on sale Monday at 2:00pm Pacific. Previous limited edition pins come with the number of pins in the run stamped on each pin. We will not be producing those designs again so they are limited in the sense that if we make 1500, those are the only 1500 that will ever exist. The Valentine’s Day pin is a bit different.