This Dean Takahashi interview with Chris Cocks is a wild ride. The thing about Hasbro that is so confusing is that they're obviously doing what they're supposed to do according to the strange laws that exist at their scale. I don't mean to say that these laws comport with anything we would recognize aesthetically or ethically. I mean that we can see the springs and gears move and understand precisely why they're doing the things they are. Waist deep in muck, it can be hard to remember. But we aren't the audience for this article, and the clientele for kaiju-tier megafauna aren't "people" in the traditional sense, but capital markets.

The latest update to iRacing has got me back behind the virtual wheel. I did a quick test last night to make sure all my equipment worked for streaming and not only did it all work, but I got second place in the race! 

We've talked about iRacing a lot, a fascination that coalesced during "the pando." Mork's obsession with fast car - spurred originally by the release of Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" in 1998 - found new and startling manifestations in 2020. We went so far as to found a pretend motorsports company - technically, a second time.

If you started reading Penny Arcade back in the before times, you might remember I asked my then girlfriend to marry me in comic form. Sometimes it can be strange having what is in many ways my diary online for so long. This is one of the events I’m glad to have immortalized and today Kara and I celebrate our 24th wedding anniversary! 

We messed around with Funcom's Conan Exiles for the "length" of time many did - to see how these twisted Swedes had embroidered a physics operative human phallus. However much space it might have taken up in the budget, their proprietary dongsim must certainly have paid itself back in earned media. I thought it was cool but the style of game it is means I'd have to get a bunch of people to join me, plus it is very scary. But… I don't know. This Dune variant of Funcom's "thing" - a "thing" they've been conceiving and building upon for decades - might bring me around. Especially with that Collector's Edition. Yowza!

Gabe’s Sticker shoppe has been updated and you can now travel back to the 1980’s when stickers ruled!

Steam will allow you to curate certain portions of your library into the ether, either at time of purchase or later. It's also incredibly easy to do: you just right click on a game in your library, choose the Manage item from the dropdown, and choose Mark As Private. You can even do it with a shift-click group select, and do many, many games at once - a fact I mention just off-hand, for absolutely no reason, and not because it has any particular salience to my own intensely pure situation.

The iRacing servers are taking a beating with everyone anxious to try out the new update but I managed to get some laps in and all I can say is “WOW”. Rain or "The great equalizer" has finally come to iRacing and it was worth the wait!

This week will see the next phase of my grand sticker plans unfold. The official Penny Arcade sticker Album will hit the PA store along with some new sticker designs on March 7th!

Gabe hadn't read Shogun, which ordinarily I would use as an opportunity to scourge him from a profound intellectual height. Something more like the opposite has happened - I envy this ignorance of the text. I wish to Gord I could read it anew.  Shogun is almost twelve hundred pages, and our affair was torrid. I couldn't leave it well enough alone. A visual note: it was a borrowed copy from Brenna's dad, before she and I agreed to be married, and because it was a paperback it could barely hold itself together. By the time it fell into my hands, it had essentially split itself into two books of a digestible six hundred pages apiece.

It’s been a minute since I did any iRacing but I was back in the rig yesterday preparing for the new rain update coming tomorrow. 

He's flipping out over those Unicorns and these Overlords and shit, so much so that he's had to turn to rationing. It comes out on the 8th, so he won't have to twist in the wind too long.

Garb is obsessed with Unicorn Overlord, which has a demo currently available on Switch, Playstation, and the Orxborx that you can use to get obsessed as well. It's the best kind of demo: it's the real game, just with a time limit, and your progress carries over. A blessing, in this dark age.

Need for Speed Unbound just got a new update and a roadmap for more content coming this year. This is one of my favorite arcade racing games and I’m happy to see it continue to get love. It’s also free with PS plus right now so if you are a subscriber I suggest checking it out!

I like it when co-op games aren't bullshit. You know? I like it when they don't manufacture little interpersonal caltrops like divvying up collected resources per player just to transform your leisure time into a twisted and darwinian Squid Game. Deep Rock Galactic is the best comparison, philosophically. Everybody wins. Oh, fuck - didn't make it to the ship on time because your cat was shitting in a houseplant in your actual room, IRL? We got you: we'll fire you down from the station in a custom bullet and you can join in progress because why shouldn't you be able to. Arrowhead Studios got the memo.

DRG: Survivor is a dangerously addictive mutation of the survivor genre, newly unleashed upon Early Access. It is a progression beyond the state of the art and is yet another necessary game here in the first few short months of the year.