Hi, I'm Robin.

Recently I got the chance to interview Jae Yoo of Studio Sai, the creators behind the upcoming indie game "Eternights." This hack-and-slash, Persona-inspired game recently had the honor of being featured in Sony's State of Play livestream event, and in my opinion it was certainly a stand-out in that crowd! I first saw in-progress clips of this game back in 2020 and have followed the game on and off since then. I'm impressed with the progress mad so far and after seeing them featured on State of Play, I just had to interview the creator! Do to a busy schedule, this will be done similarly to my interview with 2LeftThumbs where I sent him batches of questions. So without further ado, let's get on to the interview!

(Eternights Promotional Art.)

Robin.: "Where did the name 'Eternights' come from?"

Jae.: "It will be a spoiler!"

Robin.: "Is this your first game or have you made other games before?"

Jae.: "Before Eternights, I worked on Sky as an engineer and on Legend of Runeterra as an artist."

Robin.: "Was it scary quitting your job to start working on Eternights?"

Jae.: "I would be a lie if it was not scary. However, I really believed in the game I wanted to make."

Robin.: "Do you have a team helping you or is this all a one-man job?"

Jae.: "There is a team helping me on this project."

Robin.: "What does the team help you with when it comes to making the game?"

Jae.: "The biggest help that I am getting outside of what I can do are dialogue writing and environment art in the game at the moment!"

Robin.: "How did you get featured in State of Play?"

Jae.: "It’s a long story, but we got a chance to show off our demo to the team at Sony and they liked the demo. Since then, we started developing a relationship with them."

Robin.: "Did you expect the 'hold R2 to hold hands' clip in the trailer to become as popular as it did?"

(Hold R2 to hold hands.)

Jae.: "I did not, but R2 and holding hands indeed will have a very important role in the game. I am glad it became memorable, because if they found that memorable, then maybe they’ll find the entire game memorable."

Robin.: "How do you feel about the reception to the game so far?"

Jae.: "It is definitely better than what I expected."

Robin.: "How would you say the story and gameplay are different from that which inspired it?"

Jae.: "If we are talking about Persona here, then the easy thing that we can point to is our hack-and-slash combat system and how the game’s story revolves more around romance and the apocalypse. We’d like to share more things that make our game unique, but that would be spoilers!"

Robin.: "With the hack-and-slash gameplay, do you think someone who's a fan of Devil May Cry, Hades or other similar games will like Eternights?"

Jae.: "I believe everyone has a different reason to like D.M.C. or Hades when it comes to the combat. I am excited to see player's reaction once they play it!"

Robin.: "Aside from the Persona series, what else inspired Eternights?"

Jae.: "Beside the gameplay, most of the inspiration actually comes from anime. Shinkai Makoto is one of my biggest inspirations when it comes to the core of the story that I wanted to tell to the player."

Robin.: "What about Shinkai Makoto's works would you say you like the most?"

Jae.: "I love how he works. You can see it if you watch his documentary on making his own film. It inspires me in how to create visual storytelling."

Robin.: "Was the game's art style inspired by anything in particular, or just anime in general?"

Jae.: "In terms of color, I am not sure where the colors are coming from at the moment but I felt the color fits the atmosphere that we’re trying to create in the story."

Robin.: "You advertise the game as a dating action game, what other games in those genres do you enjoy?"

Jae.: "I am not sure if this would be a “dating action” genre game but I really enjoyed Yakuza: Like a Dragon recently."

Robin.: "Are there any particular artists that inspire you? This doesn't have to be limited to just the gaming sphere."

Jae.: "Miaki Sugaru. I adore their work."

Robin.: "What advice do you have for someone wanting to follow in your footsteps?"

Jae.: "If I could give any advice, jumping in and just staring doing it would be a good starting point. Sometimes, stuff might look complicated or like lots of stuff to do from a certain point of view, but once you jump in and just start trying, that view can change."

(A shot from the Eternights trailer.)

I'd like to once again give a big thanks to Jae Yoo for agreeing to this interview! It's awesome to see the attention this project has gotten over the years, and I can't wait to play it once it launches in 2023! If you guys want to keep up-to-date with this game's development, follow Studio Sai on YouTube and Twitter. I know I took kind of extended break, that wasn't on purpose! I'll hopefully get back to putting out more interviews soon. Thank you all for the support!

And with that, thank you all for reading. I'll see you all later.

-Robin.

(If you like what I do and you want to see more, consider making a one time or monthly donation on my Ko-Fi. Every little bit helps! My commissions are now open as well for those of you that are interested.)

Hi, I’m Andrew Allanson.

To celebrate the feast day of Saint Dodolinus of Vienne I interviewed Robin Maker of Things. Together we explored complex topics of theology, meta-physics, and his general theory of everything. Thank you Robin for agreeing to the interview.

(A selfie of Robin. he took minutes after emerging from a car crash on 1/26/2020 with his hand and face censored, because it's the only photo of him we have on hand.)

Andrew: "Hey Robin, thank you for agreeing to allow me to interview you. I have a few questions prepared and have been looking forward to your responses."

Robin.: "No problem! Let's hear them."

Andrew: "Please describe the room in which you played your first Video Game."

Robin.: "Oh, that's tough actually... I think it was my grandparent's old living room. We lived with them alongside my aunt and uncle for a while. One of them had a GameCube and they liked to play some snowboarding game or Mario Kart: Double Dash. I think they had a Nintendo 64 as well because I vaguely remember the screen where you can pull on Mario's face, but I don't think I ever played it. I know my mom played Dr. Mario on something at some point when I was very little as well. So, I can't really recall my first game I played, but it was definitely something Nintendo since my first goldfish were named "Mario" and "Luigi." This has been a weird tangent, so let me go back to that living room. There was a couch, an ottoman, and a rug. In the left corner there was an entertainment center with a CRT and one of those players that played VHS and DVD, as well as those consoles I mentioned earlier. In the right corner was this screen door that led to a patio with a huge backyard where we had apple trees growing and a scrap heap of a car in the very back by a shed dad wanted to fix up. I don't think he ever finished it, don't know what happened to it. Behind the couch was this bar that had an open window section that you could see the kitchen in. There was an answering machine next to the wall. There was a computer set up where I'd sometimes play around in MS Paint. Then were those rooms on the side that led to my grandma's office and the laundry room, those were on the left side of the room. I think that about sums it all up."

Andrew: "Have you ever imagined a world without video games?"

Robin.: "I have, honestly. I think if video games didn't exist I'd be more into books like when I was a kid, or maybe I'd be way more into movies. Maybe I'd try being a film director or a writer in Hollywood before realizing how awful that industry is and sticking to indie filmmaking for the rest of my life or something. I wanted to be a horror writer for a while, but I had this issue where I needed to over explain things to get across the details of how horrifying something is. That kind of writing can work, but as someone who's read Steven King novels plenty of times, that kind of writing can be frustrating or even boring for the reader. Maybe it's my generation's attention span diminishing or something, I honestly couldn't tell ya."

(This is what Stephen King looks like.)

Andrew: " 'An unexamined life is not worth living.' I agree. Do you identify more with your Grandfather or your Grandmother?"

Robin.: "That's a bit difficult to answer since I'm sure they'll both read this, but I'll try my best haha. I guess if I really had to choose, it would be my grandma solely because she's more of an artistic person and I've always been able to relate to that. I remember seeing all these sketches she used to make, and even to this day she still does some sewing stuff. She actually helped me make my Halloween costumes for a few years. She didn't know who Gladion from Pokémon Sun and Moon was or what a Reaper from The World Ends With You did, but she was excited to help construct their costumes all the same. That doesn't mean I don't love my grandpa as well, though. He helped me get my job at Grocery Outlet and it was fun working with him those two and half-or-so years. He's always been just as supportive of me and I love them both."

Andrew: "That's a really wonderful memory! I used to make my own Halloween costumes with my Aunt Regina and my sister Christina. Similar situation with them not knowing the characters I wanted to dress up as. Would you have the body of a Hippopotamus or exist abstractly as a hypotenuse?"

Robin.: "A hypotenuse. Hippos are kinda gross to me and while I don't like math, I think living as something abstract would be a unique experience. Maybe it's a hellish existence of constant never ending suffering with literally no upside at all, but at least I'm not some giant-jawed beast swimming in dirty water all day."

Andrew: "Did you ever consider a career as an archeologist?"

Robin.: "Funnily enough, yes! I loved dinosaurs a lot growing up. We went to the Children's Museum a few times when I was younger and I'd always beg my parents for the dinosaur bone dusting kits. They were essentially these little packs of dirt with tiny picks and brushes and you had to dig through it to get the plastic, glow-in-the-dark dinosaur skeleton. My favorite dinosaur of all time was the Stegosaurus and when I saw the dusting kit for it, I just had to have it. Plus, I was a pretty big Indiana Jones fan for a while around the time Crystal Skull came out. Sometimes I look back at Temple of Doom and Raiders of the Lost Ark and wonder how the hell I was allowed to watch those movies with some of the violence in them, haha."

(An example of a dinosaur dusting kit, as shown by this you can find on the Walmart website. We'd like to extend a formal apology for this image's inclusion to Robin.'s dad, who is deathly afraid of dinosaurs.)

Andrew: "Seriously? That's great. Me too! I had a dino bone dusting kit and read a bunch of books about archeology as a kid. I used to always tell people I wanted to be an archeologist. I have a distinct memory of my Mom's hairdresser asking me. He was so let down by my answer. Said I had boring taste. And I said don't you like Indiana Jones? And he said he preferred the theater. What made you choose to make things, rather than destroy them?"

Robin.: " 'I prefer the theater.' Ok, Mr. I-Peaked-in-Highschool-Drama-Class.

I think it was comics. I loved superheroes and wanted to make my own. I just got ideas for wacky Spiderman stories that made no sense. Plus, I just liked drawing. I've always been drawn to it, pun not intended, though oddly enough even as a kid it frustrated me immensely sometimes. I'd draw something and it wouldn't feel right and I'd have no idea why until I looked at it two years later, compared it to something I had drawn that day and been like 'Oh, it's bad.' That being said, I was a lot less critical of my work back then. I took pride in all these mediocre Ben 10 and Pokémon drawings I was making and would tape them to my walls and my door. Eventually, we moved to Ft. Knox for a bit and times were tough. I stopped doing that but I still liked to draw. When we got back, I went through this stupid phase where was like 'ugh, drawing is for kids, I don't need to do that.' That lasted for like a year, maybe? But then I got it stuck in my head that I'll never be able to draw well again and everything I make is objectively horrible. Then in 2016, I stumbled across my drawings from when we lived on Ft. Knox and was like 'holy shit, this is all fucking garbage, why did I think this was good?' That kinda motivated me to continue drawing for a good while. I'm still pretty self-critical over my drawings, but now I know that I draw better than I did when I was 12 lmao"

Andrew: " 'drawing is for kids' made me laugh out loud. Okay I have one last question.

Robin.: "Shoot!"

Andrew: "Many years from now you die and meet God. Strangely enough he has the face of Shigeru Miyamoto and the body of 'The David' of Michelangelo. He’s thirty three feet and three inches tall. You look away from God, alarmed by his existence. From heaven you see all the hell and suffering of reality below you. You decide to turn back to look at God. He gets down on one knee and looks deeply into your eyes with a wide grin and asks: 'Dō deshita ka?' How do you reply?"

Robin.: "Honestly, I'd probably look him dead in the eyes and say, 'I'm sorry, what the fuck? Can you please tell me what the fuck is going on? I don't understand any of this.' Then just see where the conversation goes from there, honestly."

Andrew: "Thank you. These were all wonderful answers."

(Now picture him with the body of Michelangelo's famous depiction of King David.)

I hope all of you are now enlightened. It's remarkable that everyone who reads this will be blessed with effusions of divine grace. Until next time, I’ll see you all later.

-Andrew Allanson.

(If you like what I do and would like to see more, consider checking out the Ackk Studios official website as well as our Twitter and yiikrpg.com.)

(Editor's note: April Fools! -Robin.)

Hi, I'm Robin.

Recently, I got the chance to interview YouTuber and indie game publisher Graeme of TwoLeftThumbs. Known as Noodle here on NewGrounds, Graeme has done quite a lot. From making flash games to giving you the history of them in his series Flashlight, Graeme has been around the block in the world of web-based gaming. On top of this, he's also published several games recently, such as Dead Estate and the upcoming Alice Is Dead: Hearts and Diamonds, the later of which I have interviewed the creator of here. Due to his busy schedule, I wasn't able to sit down in one afternoon and sent batches of questions instead. However, it was good to talk with Graeme and hear him talk about the old and modern times of NewGrounds regardless. So without further ado, here's our conversation!

(Artwork from Dead Estate from the TwoLeftThumbs Website.)

Robin.: "What made you want to make videos?"

Graeme: "Honestly, I got into it for the wrong reasons. I started making let's plays after watching a bunch of Game Grumps, and thinking, 'ppht! I could do that. I'll even make animations out of my own content like they do to help spread the channel around.' That never really caught on the way I thought it would, and the time required for even 'quick' let's play videos is still more than many people would probably expect. By the time you've recorded, edited, made a thumbnail, uploaded, put in the tags, and written up everything you need for a single video- it's a lot of work! Especially when you want to upload daily! I stopped making let's plays after a few months when work got busy, but I found my way back to it because I realized it scratched the same creative itch- and urge to share new things- that I got as a teenager uploading to NewGrounds! But now I could create and share something in the span of a day, rather then spending weeks animating! Ironically, I drifted into making video essays, which now easily take as much- and often more- work than many of those old animations did. I still makes let's plays on occasion though, because I like the quicker turnaround. I enjoy sharing indie games, and it's often a good excuse to play something new and different with friends."

Robin.: "Back in the day, you made a couple of flash games. What was it like making flash games back in the day and even being sponsored by companies to make them?"

Graeme: "I imagine that every teenager on NewGrounds experienced the same thing. You are suddenly tossed in the mix of 1000's of creative people, all trying to impress one another, while also improving for your own sake! I loved the feeling of uploading something new, and refreshing the score a hundred times to see how people have rated and reviewed it. I think things stay in the Under Judgement segment a lot longer than they used to, so you don't get that near instantaneous feedback anymore, and I think the NewGrounds Review section has drifted to something closer to a comments section, which is too bad. That feedback and encouragement used to be invaluable! The Flash sponsor market was a wonderful thing. It was a way for teenagers to make anywhere from a couple $100 to a couple $1000 for their hard work! That was a big motivator to try and improve, and make your games as unique and memorable as possible.

The funny thing is that it also encouraged people to make nine sequels and spin-offs to their hit game- and I think may have encouraged creators to imitate the styles and genres of other successful games out there. So there would be these waves, like everyone creating Launcher games. Then everyone creating Tower Defenses, and so on. Without the market, there is this untethered creativity, where developers are simply making games for the sake of experimenting and challenging themselves. I wish these devs still had the option to easily monetize their work, and get paid for these free creations they're sharing! But I am impressed every single day, because web-games are now dominated by a new generation who are doing it without a monetary incentive, and I think they're creating some of the best web-games we've ever seen!"

Robin.: "What artists and creators in general have inspired you throughout the years? "

Graeme: "That's a big question, haha! I always laugh when friends tell me they like my drawing style because to me, all I see is the 20 different Flash artists I borrowed from and slowly amalgamated into my own work. My earliest work is likely the most true to myself. I started with stick figures, which had no real stylistic influences, then movies like Microsoft Sam's Life and Link's Theme Song also had no real influences. It probably wasn't until I started doing collabs that I began to borrow from others more heavily. Each person I worked with would show me something new that inspired me to test things out on my next attempt! But there are some very specific early influences.

LegendaryFrog and The Super Flash Bros were the gold standard of how to make engaging, funny cartoons based on characters talking. Yotam Perel also made these character-based animations, but did it with frame-by-frame animation instead of tweening. His continuous growth over the years has been a massive inspiration! He was making Adventure Time-like stuff years before that show aired. David Firth presented these oddball animations that were equally gross and artistic, and really pushing boundaries. The Demented Cartoon Movie taught me that random could be funny, without being totally stupid. Egoraptor had this hyper-active energy that nobody else has ever really captured. The Vad Flaaten twins took this simplistic, amateur-like character design and presentation, and somehow made it feel polished in a way I'm sure every young creator wished they could achieve. Edible Castle was operating on a level of creativity that belonged on television. And that's not even game design influences, that's just art and animation! The list in either case is far longer than what I've shared. It's really hard to capture it all, haha."

(Salad Fingers, David Firth's horrifying creation.)

Robin.: "I remember in your Riddle School video, you mentioned your old character Goatman actually cameoed in one of the games. How did this come to happen? Do you and JonBro still talk?"

Graeme: "It's genuinely hard to remember how the heck that started off! I looked through old DM's and other posts. I had known about Riddle School for a while at that point and had kept up with his work. But I did reach out in about February 2010 to ask if he wanted to take part in 'Did You Hear That? vol 2.' I hand picked the participants for that collab and was eager to have him on board! He has 'Goat 51' on his favorites list, and it's unclear if he discovered Goat 51 because of that message or if I messaged him after he became aware of my work, but Goat 51 and Did You Hear That were major in connecting us. We even made a full game together! I did the character work, and he did the backgrounds and music! It was a part of a game jam. We missed the deadline unfortunately, Jon actually dropped out after that. The subject matter was pretty dark, and he didn't feel comfortable having his name attached to something more than a game jam if we were going to continue on with such an oddball game. This actually relates back to an earlier question. I re-did all his backgrounds after that and never did quite get the tone he achieved right. That process taught me a lot, and definitely majorly influenced my style! We talked quite a lot around the time I made Return to Riddle School and he informed me he was making Riddle Transfer 2 in secret. That felt really cool, to have an 'insider' secret like that! We've kept in touch here and there. I know he's not the internet's favorite person these days... I can't really speak to any of that, as we never really discussed personal lives. But I sincerely hope he's doing well, and is taking care of himself."

Robin.: "You’ve been on NewGrounds since late 2007, correct? How has the site changed since then? Do you think things were better back in the day or do you like how things are now?"

Graeme: "2006! I joined on August 15th, Clock Day. I uploaded my first animations, and thought I was the best animator of all time because my stuff scored like 4.44/5! But that's just what Clock Day was all about: Voting 5 on literally anything, haha. But my old account is long defunct. I really wish I didn't delete everything off of it. I only uploaded a few things from that time onto the new 2007 account, so a few small animations are lost to the ages. Generally, I think the community felt more engaged. Nothing stayed Under Judgement longer than a couple hours. Now it can often take days and feedback on even a stupid little animation would be a full-on essay! Now people barely leave two words. So I do miss that. We were all in it together, working to help each other learn and improve! NewGrounds has always been filled with spam, that's nothing new, but it seems like recently things have taken some weird shifts. People now upload these 3 second work-in-progress animations that they seem to genuinely think will be accepted or there are 50 things a day called 'test.' I wish people would share that stuff in the forums for feedback. The entire site has also taken a pretty large shift into being driven by recognizable characters and names. Truly excellent works still gets noticed! But the good or great stuff can easily be drowned out by a low effort throwaway that features Pico or Tricky. I love Madness too! But I miss when the all-time Top 50 was a more diverse selection, and represented the best of the best rather than 50 percent of it being everything Krinkels has ever done. Those creators have no control over that, but I wish the community would shift back to putting greater stock in originality when it comes to dolling out their ratings."

Robin.: "Oftentimes I’ve noticed some recent games on NewGrounds have a 100% completion medal that references you. How do you feel about your reputation amongst the NewGrounds community?"

Graeme: "Really? This is a phenomenon I was totally unaware of and I've love to be shown a few examples of it haha. Back in the day, there was a strong feeling of wanting to inspire others and hopefully be one of the names that was in people's mouths when they talked about their favorite creators on the site. I was never good enough for that and it bums me out that I was never in a position to attend any of the meetups or anything. But I've never fully let go of NewGrounds and have made it a personal mission to upload at least 1 thing to that site every year since joining! Even if I'm light years away from the most talented person on the site, it's an absolute honor to know that I may have incidentally achieved that goal of being a name people associate with the site "

Robin.: "What inspired the Flashlight video series?"

Graeme: "And I spent a LOT of time on NewGrounds, but I also grew up with only a PC and GameBoy. No consoles! So a large majority of the games I grew up playing were actually Flash games. I tried my own hand at it, and loved the process! Making my own Flash games also shifted my perspective to wanting to play more and more to see what others were doing, admiring them, and trying to learn from them. Once I started making things on YouTube, I noticed how popular certain lets plays of the all-time best Flash games would be. Henry Stickmin, Alice is Dead, :the game:, The Last Stand, and so many more! I noticed a gap in people talking about the history of Flash games and series and realized I was in a perfect position to discuss that side of things! I grew up playing those games, knew what goes into making them, and have lots of the history baked into my brain, allowing me to pull in loads of other random examples for any given Flash subject, and simply felt confident I could do that subject justice when nobody else was. By the time I started the 2 Left Thumbs channel, I had refined the format into something more like a mini-documentary. I covered things more comprehensively and leaned on existing contacts (like JonBro) to do some of those earliest interviews. For example, my remade SoulGame video went from about 11 minutes to 40 and my eventual Madness Flashlight remake will leap from about 12 minutes to well over an hour. The more I did, the easier it seemed to be to get in touch with developers as I had a portfolio to prove I was taking this seriously! I've come to really enjoy seeking out the corners of the history that feel forgotten, things I never knew or that were buried in some old forum post that even the developer forgot about. I want to be the Sean Evans of Flash game interviews, haha. Tracking down Brian Kendall was tough, but so damn rewarding! It's great to remind these developers their games mattered to so many people!"

(An edit I made of Sean Evans.)

Robin.: "What video didn’t take off that you wish more people would watch?"

Graeme: "It's tough, because at this point there are so many that I wish would find their audience! I have a few video essays that I think touched on some cool trends I've seen in recent years, like my video 'Is TV the future of video game adaptations?' I still hold strong on my opinion that, Mortal Kombat (1995) is the best video game movie adaptation, and I would love if that video could break out and convince the masses that I'm right about that! But more broadly, I would love if the Flashlight videos had more of a guaranteed audience. I've had success timing some of those alongside series reboots as- many of the series I've covered were made to coincide with major new releases and announcements- and I've had the strongest views when talking about Friday Night Funkin'-related series. Now I just need to find a way to convince the viewers who are watching a Pico or Tankmen video that a video on a game that might literally be older than them is also worth watching! And secondary to that, my comic book movie reviews. That's just something I really enjoy talking about, but it's a difficult space to break into. I'm hoping that if I keep making them, and stay true to myself and my own style, people will find value in watching those in addition to whatever other comic book movie creators they already watch!"

Robin.: "Recently, you’ve produced some indie games like Dead Estate and Alice is Dead: Hearts and Diamonds. What made you want to start producing indie games?"

Graeme: "I've wanted to make games for as long as I can remember! I kind of wish I never heard the advice, 'never turn your hobby into a job,' because it deterred me from putting more time into Flash and trying to make something out of that. Maybe I'd never have made it to where I am now if I did take that path, but it always lingered in my mind. I wanted to be making games! As things got busier with school, then work, then school and work and YouTube, there was just never time to get back into that. I instead had to shift my focus to lifting up and supporting indie games through let's play's YouTube videos, and whatever else I could manage! The longer I spent in that space, the more I wondered why I had never seen a YouTuber make the leap to publishing. I know games. I know the market. I know YouTube. I had connections! It was seemingly all there! I had a bit of money set aside, looking for the perfect project to put some money behind. I think the talks for Dead Estate started at a time when I really didn't have that much to spare. It was a gamble for sure, but a small-ish, measured one! After a few good months on YouTube- funnily enough, through videos like my Pico and Tankmen history videos, Binding of Isaac lore, and Among Us and FNF Easter egg videos, all NewGrounds related stuff- I sought opportunities to continue expanding that catalog! I still hope to someday produce a few games where I am more involved as a developer or designer, rather than just publisher. But for the time being, it feels like a dream come true to be in a position to lift up these fellow Flash creators and to keep that NewGrounds torch burning bright!"

Robin.: "Why do you keep re-launching your gaming channel?"

Graeme: "Hahaha, yes this is well deserved! Here's the quick and dirty on it. 2LeftThumbs was started as a let's play channel for me and my friends playing games together GameGrumps style. Pretty quickly, that became tough to coordinate, so I added in Graeme Games for any solo content. I had to start leaning on solo content more and more as everyone became busier, both to be early to new games, but also because multiple people weren't often available at once. I love my friends who joined me for those silly little videos that never got any views! I eventually had some success with a random throw together video on Easter eggs within Deltarune. I made three more of those, all performing incredibly well! I jumped from about 3k to 15k subscribers in about a week! I thought, 'this is it!' Then everything sort of slumped off and nobody cared about the let's plays anymore and anything more than that just got buried in the daily lets plays. I decided to reboot, creating a second channel: Two Left Thumbs. This was where all my video essay and more heavily edited content would live. It was a risk to start over, but obviously paid off! Although doing variety content does mean very few subscribers are actually interested in everything I do, hence the spikey viewership! Hopefully someday I'll convince a large enough core audience to watch anything I put out. 2 Left Thumbs and Two Left Thumbs got incredibly confusing. I thought it was a big-brain move, but it was just a headache for everyone looking to watch more of the stuff they knew they liked. Two Left Thumbs was obviously performing better and I knew that if I were to ever get that 100k plaque, I wanted it to read 2 Left Thumbs! So the second channel adopted the original name, and the original channel became Graeme Games. It had drifted more and more to being a solo-gaming channel anyways, especially true with lockdowns that followed shortly after this name swap.

It didn't take long for me to accept that that channel was circling the drain, and I decided to follow suit with a plan that had already worked once: relaunch and reboot!! I'm certain it was massively confusing for everyone. But I now have 3 channels that serve specific purposes. 2 Left Thumbs- the second channel, but also my 'main' with all my researched, edited, and scripted variety content, Full Graemeplays- the original channel, with an archive of lightly edited lets plays, and a handful of other experimental things- although a lot of that was moved, or remade and moved to 2LT, and Graeme Games- the newest channel, that is exclusively highlight-style lets plays. Someone pointed out that unedited lets plays have largely been replaced by streaming, and my hope is that if I instead cut those gameplay videos to be more personality-driven, viewers will be more likely to stick around and watch any video, independent of the actual game. Fingers crossed this pans out, and I can use it to promote and share indie games that aren't getting enough love elsewhere!"

Robin.: "Are you really done making Gaster videos? "

Graeme: "Heck no! When I have the time, I need to make a Pieces of Gaster vol. 3, exploring all the new hints and connections introduced through Chapter 2 of Deltarune. The Gaster Eggs series will need to be picked back up from the Waterfall onward for Undertale, and as soon as the full Deltarune drops, I'll have like 20 more hours of stuff to talk about there as well! Not to mention other Undertale and Deltarune related videos I have brewing mixed in with all of that. To answer a different question entirely, I am trying to move away from Easter egg content. I like putting them together, and feel that I do it in a way nobody else does and I'm super proud of that! But really, I'm recognizing some similar patterns to when that original channel blew up, and crashed back down. The more Easter Eggs stuff I do, the less interest anyone has in anything else I do. I want to stick it through for games like Deltarune and FNF, since I'd rather not leave those incomplete, but it'll be very rare for me to do that type of video on other games and series. I'd rather focus on more analytical content, retrospectives, or big lore-based deep dives like I did with Isaac! Easter egg videos are more niche than I expected, and the people who watch them usually aren't interested in much else."

Robin.: "What are some videos and projects you have planned for the future?"

Graeme: "I know this is going to feel boring to so many people, but right now I am building up a full Infinity Saga rewatch and reviewing all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies as I go. The Iron Man trilogy review is out now, and the Captain America trilogy review will be out right away! There are a thousand comic book movie channels on YouTube, but I find their reviews often lacking. They are often released the same day as the movie, with no context and bending over backwards to be spoiler free. I grew up with these movies and superhero media in general! So I really love talking about it. It's a space I'm trying to branch out into, and hope that my excessively long looks at these movies become the sort of thing that people love to come back to over the years. It seems only right to make videos on these topics I love to discuss, rather than forcing my friends to hear it for the 20th time over! But that will be balanced out with more Flashlight installments, video game theories and lore, videos essays, and whatever else I want to talk about. I always want the channel to be variety based, rather than focused on any singular thing!"

Robin.: "Is there any advice you have for upcoming content creators?"

Graeme: "It's funny, because I think that term could apply to game devs or YouTubers. What you're creating in either space is very different and are going to require different mindsets, but there are a lot of constants that apply to both. It also depends what you want out of it. Is this a passing hobby, or something you want to build into a career? Either way, I would say don't stick with it if you aren't enjoying it. You'll know quickly. Creating games or videos takes a lot of effort. It'll never be a quick buck, so don't go into it thinking that's the case. You'll have to give up many evenings and weekends without ever seeing a dollar in return. I made games for years, but was always casual about it, and never made much. I worked on my YouTube channel like it was a full-time job- on top of my actual job- and wasn't able to make a living off of it until something like five full years, and it was a full year after that before I felt it was stable enough to attempt to make it my actual job. With that workload in mind, only do it if you love it. It's too demanding a job to force yourself into just because it seems like an appealing lifestyle. You will burnout and even if you do love it, you need to find time for yourself. Things you watch, play and do that are disconnected from it, and not intended to be farmed for content.

And small tips, specific to each: For games, start small. Be bold! Experiment. Take part in some game jams. Don't be afraid to throw something out that isn't working. Apply what you learned to the next project. Seek out others to work with! The appeal of the solo developer is great, but odds are someone out there is better than you at whatever your weak point is and understands the game you're trying to make. Your game will be better for that collaboration. For YouTube, there's no small amount of luck involved. Understand that you will put 50 hours into something that nobody will see, but you can counterbalance that luck! I've never had my finger on the pulse of the algorithm the way some creators do and I often make choices that go against that, only because I'm in a comfortable place with it all right now. It took me years of being miserably bad at picking topics, creating titles, thumbnails, making use of SEO and improving my scripting and editing to get where I am now and I still think I'm bad at most of that! But if you aren't doing research, trying new things, and doing some heavy lifting to get your videos noticed you're doomed to fail. If you want it to be a job, treat it like one. There's no coasting in this field and something again that applies to both: Please, don't put your eggs in one basket. Once success doesn't mean you're set for life. Keep your regular job for as long as possible. Be responsible with your money if you start making some. Don't treat it as full time until you have enough saved up to live close to 1 full year without making any money. Both game making and YouTube are incredibly unstable, and you have to be prepared for that bubble to burst. If you don't think you can handle the strain of living with that much instability, neither is likely the right career path for you."

Robin.: "What do you consider to be the overall best thing about NewGrounds in the modern era?"

Graeme: "The best thing NewGrounds has going for it is it's front page! Tom has curated that with the top movies and games since the earliest days of the site and now it's better than it's ever been! It really feels like animations, games, art and music are all given equal weight. You can even play music tracks directly from that front page! Layer that together with regular updates from Tom, a calendar of upcoming events, an automated list of the Daily top 5 submissions, a large splash image to promote something cool happening on the site and you have hours of entertainment available to you every single day. If you open Facebook, it'll be clogged up with ads and other garbage. On YouTube, they'll be pushing Jimmy Fallon clips and things the algorithm wants you to see, rather than anything you're subscribed to. Not only does NewGrounds still care about sharing quality, they've also made 'following' users more and more relevant. It used to just be a way to add an artist to your 'favorites' list, which wasn't all that functional. Now when you log in, the front page adds a feed of new creations coming specifically from those you follow, being presented to you above everything else! It encourages you to visit the site often, gamble on checking out new things, and attempt to build up a list that will be catered to your specific likes. There's nowhere else on the internet doing it in such a user-friendly way! But I think there's a major drawback, that such an enticing front page has steered people away from taking part in the Under Judgement voting. Why gamble on a lot of spammy, low quality submissions, when you have like 50 new and certified things to check out first? I honestly don't see a real solution to that problem. But each visit to NewGrounds feels like it has more to offer than ever before!"

Robin.: "Do you think NewGrounds will ever reach the popularity it once had?"

Graeme: "Sadly, I don't think so. There was a time on the internet where there were like a thousand popular sites, all getting reasonable traffic. It came down to people recommending sites to one another and us selecting where we wanted to spend our time. Nowadays, the internet is basically like five websites. Everything else has been pushed into a fringe territory. I think NewGrounds can remain viable on those outskirts indefinitely- especially if people continue to support it through their in-house Patreon-like crowdfunding- but it sure did zap away a lot of that previous stability. I think how people use the internet would have to completely change for it to return to that peak popularity. Maybe as Facebook becomes more nefarious, and more sites like Tumblr drive away their core audience, NewGrounds will find new and stronger footholds. Large tracts of the YouTube animator crowd have come to realize how little google values them, so it's been great to see some of them returning or coming for the first time to NewGrounds. Even Ruffle making web-based mobile gaming viable for the first time could make a difference! So it's not hopeless, but it's hard to imagine people setting aside their comfort shows on YouTube, binge-able TikTok, and light mobile gaming for long enough to see what NewGrounds really has to offer. I get the appeal of those other platforms and options because I use them too, but I grew up before any them existed, so it's sometimes hard for me to understand why someone would want to put their 5000th hour into an idle clicker when they could watch a Happy Harry cartoon, play the Alice is Dead series, listen to the new ConnorGrail tune, or peruse the front page for something completely new and different."

Robin.: "From one guy who interviews people to another, who are some people you'd like to see me interview in the future?"

Graeme: "Yikes! That'd be a long list haha. I mostly just start thinking of the people I hope to interview someday for Flashlight. Maybe if I sick you on them first, you'll come up with questions I wouldn't and shake loose some answers I otherwise wouldn't have! I saw you just did Hyptosis, so that's great! Creators like Philljc, MindChamber, toge-games, James Lee, or the creators behind Kongregate. It's a long list. NewGrounds is also old enough now that there are so many influential creators who have seemingly moved on and we don't hear from anymore. I'd love to know what they got up to post-Newgrounds, but I'm also curious to hear from some awesome new creators like Stepford, plumfot, Tombdude, LeviRamirez, larrynachos, and like a hundred others. They are crushing it out there and are doing so much to keep the spirit of NewGrounds alive and well! My brain is filled with my own old-timer perspective on the site and culture of it. I'd love to know what this new generation thinks of it all!"

(Two Left Thumbs Channel Icon.)

I'd like to once again give a big thanks to Graeme for agreeing to this interview! It was awesome getting the chance to talk to someone I've followed for a good year now about this site and it's history. A good deal of creators got mentioned in this interview, and I might just take Graeme's advice and reach out to some of them! If you're interested in watching some of Graeme's videos, try watching some of his videos on YouTube. Thank you all for reading and until next time, I'll see you all later.

-Robin.

(If you like what I do and you want to see more, consider making a one time or monthly donation on my Ko-Fi. Every little bit helps!)

Hi, I'm Robin.

Recently, I was given the chance to talk to Mike Jaret of RunningWithScissors, the creators of the infamous Postal franchise. I was definitely really nervous going into this interview, since Mike is probably the biggest name I've interviewed to date, but once the interview started I quickly realized I had nothing to worry about. I'd like to thank Mike for agreeing to this interview and without further ado, here's our conversation!

(Screenshot from Postal 2 courtesy of RWS' official website.)

Robin.: "Thank you for agreeing to the interview! My first question of the day for you is this: What made you interested in becoming a game developer and why?"

Mike: "Well, I'd love to say I played video games throughout my childhood and always strived to be in the industry but that's just not true. I actually met Vince by chance during high school because I was in a class with his son. Years later in 2001, my brother was working for Vince's fiance and he said to send me in to say hi, so I went to the office and had a good laugh with Vince and he asked me to work there.... the rest is history."

Robin.: "And that company was RunningWithScissors?"

Mike: "Correct, Vince is Vince Desi, the man that started this madness."

Robin.: "Right. So, you joined after the first Postal game had released then? Had you played the first Postal by that point?"

Mike: "oh ya, i went in to visit Vince with his son sometime around 97-98, and he gave me the game and had the whole team sign it, of course I had played it quite a bit before I started working there, funny story tho, when they released the addon to POSTAL 1 I had emailed Vince for a hookup, and he said come on in and ill hook you up, so I drove to the office and he gave me like $5 off LOL" (Editor's note: I didn't bother to clean up this one because this sentence is art.)

Robin.: "That's really funny, haha. So by that point the first Postal had gotten a lot of coverage. What do you think of the reception of the first game? More specifically, what did you first think when you learned the United States Postal Service had sued RWS over the name?"

Mike: "That is something I, of course, learned immediately when I met Vince, because they had it printed it and blown it up at the office right at the entrance. It is beyond silly to think that the USPS was suing a company in a total different industry for trademarking a word, and of course they lost the lawsuit with prejudice... LOL" (Editor's note: I'm not removing anymore of his "LOL's.")

Robin.: "And did Joe Lieberman give you guys some trouble as well?"

Mike: "Well in a perfect world, his grandstanding about Postal would have helped us sell millions- and in a sick way it may have over time- but instead it scared the publisher silly and they ended up pulling the game off store shelves and basically burying the game."

(Joe Lieberman in the 1993 Video Game Violence Senate Committee Hearings.)

Robin.: "Ah, no wonder you guys put a jab at him in the voting section of Postal 2 then! Actually, speaking of Postal 2, that game was much more comedic than the first game. What motivated this shift in tone?"

Mike: "Can't say specifically as I wasn't there for the early design of P2, I just know the team wanted to laugh more, so they made a game they could laugh at quite a bit more."

Robin.: "That makes sense. Postal 2 has been criticized by some outlets in the past for being immature, crass and offensive. What do you make of that?"

Mike: "It is immature and crass, we just make games we want to laugh at. If our humor isn't for a particular person they shouldn't play our game, pretty simple."

Robin.: "That makes sense to me. Do you know where some of the more outlandish 'weapons' in the game came from, such as the ability to use cats as a silencer on guns or the ability to pee on people?"

Mike: "The original designer was a huge cat lover, using cats on the gun was just his way of showing love for his furry friends, and mostly just to make everyone laugh. Peeing...well we all just thought it was time for a game to have first person urination......"

Robin.: "Honestly, I'm surprised more games haven't implemented 'FPU' gameplay."

Mike: "Agreed, pussies."

Robin.: "Why did you guys decide to put RunningWithScissors as an actual company in Postal 2?"

Mike: "Because we wanted everyone to be able to kill and pee on us. It's important to show that you're not just being crude to others, you're even being crude to yourself. I love when I get messages from fans telling me how often they piss on me."

(Screenshot from this video by Juggerbyte on YouTube.)

Robin.: "Right, you actually are a boss battle in Apocalypse Weekend. Where did the idea to turn you into a giant demon cow man come from?"

Mike: "Josh, our current art director and former 3d artist, came to us one day with a cool mutated giant cow monster he created. He said he wanted to put my head on it and since we were working on a zombie addon for Postal 2, it was the perfect final boss. Not sure how I won the lottery and became the final boss, but it was truly a humbling moment for me. Didn't even really think I'd ever make video games and within 3 years I was a final boss in a game. LOL"

Robin.: "Ok, I can see that happening, that makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense to me is you guys somehow got Gary Coleman in the game! How'd you do that?"

Mike: "Just a random idea in the office that we should get the 'Watchu Talkin' 'Bout' guy to sign autographs in the mall, so we called his agent expecting a huge 'FUCK NO' and instead we got a 'HELL YA!' He was always such a fun guy to be around and did a great job at trade shows with us."

Robin.: "You really never know who's gonna be down for what until you ask, do you? I was expecting a 'no' from you when I asked for the interview, and here we are!"

Mike: "Haha, we're shameless. So if your rag was literally on a piece of toilet paper we would do the interview."

Robin.: "Fair enough! Speaking of toilet paper, I heard you're not a big fan of it these days. Where'd your recent fixation on bidets come from?"

Mike: "Welp, I still use toilet paper. After you spray for a while, you need to still check for any danglers, and then after that a wet wipe to get a little deeper. But 10 years ago my roommate got one for our house and it converted me instantly. I have never looked back....."

(Editor's note: This is literally his description under the "Our Team" section of their official website, you are not allowed to tell me this was a weird question to ask.)

Robin.: "Well, while we're talking about shit, let's just not talk about the thing people probably want me to ask you about and instead talk about Paradise Lost! I don't think I've ever seen another company go back and release such a big expansion to an old game after it's sequel's failure. What motivated you guys to add a whole second week to Postal 2? Was it as a way of getting back at Akella, and apology to the fans, both, or something else entirely?"

Mike: "Well the real reason for PL had nothing to do with P3, we had gotten P2 and P1 onto Steam and were selling tons and tons of copies so it was just a natural desire to give the new owners some actual new content for the game they just found. We had a small team of P2 devs and we just sent them on a mission to make a worthy sequel."

Robin.: "And it was a big hit! Were you surprised at how well it did?"

Mike: "Yeah, we definitely didn't know how well it would do and were pleasantly surprised with how well it sold and the reception it got!"

Robin.: "And Postal 4: No Regerts started off as a remake of Postal 2 from what I understand. What made you guys decide to make it a new entry instead?"

Mike: "We just spent months working on a remake of P2 to realize how much work it was versus making an entirely new game, so we shifted gears and changed it to P4. We will remake P2 with the P4 assets eventually, this was just the project that needed to happen first."

Robin.: "Do you think Jon St. John makes a good Postal Dude in place of Rick Hunter?"

Mike: "I do, and it does take a little time for it to settle. It's jarring at first to hear Jon's voice, but over time most people realize that it sounds just right. We love Rick and his deep radio voice, we even love Corey and his similar voice, but this time around Jon got the call and he killed it."

Robin.: "It is kind of fitting to have the voice of Duke Nukem also voice Postal Dude, I will admit."

Mike: "exaclty" (Editor's note: I burst out laughing when he sent that, I don't have the heart to correct it.)

Robin.: "But I think we're forgetting someone in this mix. What do you think of Zack Ward's portrayal?"

Mike: "He did a great job. The films faults lay in its editing, everyone in the film did a great job. I just wish it actually came out, instead it was released after Uwe's In The Name of the King and it was buried."

(Poster for POSTAL by director Uwe Boll.)

Robin.: "What was it like working with Uwe Boll? That man certainly seems... interesting, to say the least."

Mike: "He is a good man, eccentric and wild, but a good man! He went a little batshit with POSTAL and the rest of his catalogue, but we stand by his film. Just needed to be a little shorter and tighter AND ALSO COME OUT!"

Robin.: "Would you ever try and make another movie some day? And presumably have it come out?"

Mike: "We'd love to. We've had a lot of talks over the years about a movie or streaming series. One day it will happen."

Robin.: "I look forward to it! Now here's a question from a friend of mine: Do you see video games as a form of art?"

Mike: "Absolutely. Every piece of game development is art, from the design, to the code, to the actual 3d and 2d art, to the animations and especially the sound and music."

Robin.: "I couldn't have said it better myself. Alright, just one last question for you: Do you have any regrets?"

Mike: "Hah! Naw, gotta look forward. Can't think about the stupid mistakes made in the past."

Robin.: "Well said. Thank you for the interview!"

(A shirt with Postal Dude's famous quote sold on the RWS website.)

I gave the man the perfect opportunity to to end the interview with "I regret nothing" and he didn't say the line. I'm a little disappointed, but the answer he gave essentially that with more words, so it works. In all seriousness, I'd like to once again thank Mike for the chance to interview him! This was definitely one of the most difficult interviews for me, but I think it turned out alright in the end. I hope you all enjoyed it, and if you have any feed please leave it in the replies. Will all that said, I'll see you all later.

-Robin.

(If you like what I do and you and want to see more, please consider a one-time or monthly donation to my Ko-Fi. Every little bit helps!)

Hi, I'm Robin.

I was recently given the opportunity to interview NewGrounds OG and Alice is Dead creator, Hyptosis. This has been an exciting moment for me an honor to talk to one of the original creators of a game I first played after seeing it gain popularity on YouTube in the mid-2010's. In light of the recent announcement of Alice is Dead: Hearts and Diamonds, a full HD remake of the original series complete with new art made from the ground up, I thought now more than ever was the best time to reach out for this interview. So without further ado, here's here our conversation!

(Art from Hyptosis, taken from this blogpost.)

Robin.: "Thank you for me joining me for this interview today! How are you doing?"

Hyptosis: "I am well! Been working like crazy though, but it's all good."

Robin.: "Good to hear! I'll start off with a question I think is important- What is the biggest inspiration for you as an artist?"

Hyptosis: "That is a good question and should be easy to answer. When I was younger it was just art, comics, cartoons, story-telling. Lodoss War was HUGE in inspiring me to pursue art, and really it still does. Nothing got in my head like that anime. It got me into D&D, it’s the reason I started drawing characters for roleplaying, and it spiraled from there. Anymore of it may be burdensome to try to explain. I still enjoy art, it became a job for a long time and that changed how I felt and feel about it. I guess anymore I mostly just go look for niche concept artists and they inspire me, and playing games still inspires me. It seemed a lot easier when I was 18 to have the drive to create without an agenda or product in mind."

Robin.: "Lodoss War? I haven't heard of that. What's it about?"

(Promotional art for Record of Lodoss War.)

Hyptosis: "Record of Lodoss War is an anime just about the creator’s D&D games, the story isn’t particularly ground-breaking but the art was. I didn’t know art could look like that, every frame is like a finished illustration. There is a series of novels that the anime was based on."

Robin.: "Oh I see, I'll be sure to look into that then in my free time, it sounds cool. So, if I recall correctly, you both draw and write, correct? Which do you prefer to do more?"

Hyptosis: "I really don’t have a preference, they go hand-in-hand for sure. Sometimes I will get another artist or two to help me on a project. A lot of writers might knee-jerk at this but I’m not afraid to say it, writing is a lot easier than illustrating. A sentence takes 20 seconds to type and can tell you 10 things, now try to draw that and see how long it takes and hope you illustrate the information clearly enough when you’re done that it reads to the audience. I worked in comics for a few years and banged heads with writers all the time. They had no idea how hard the art side of making comics was and how difficult it was to clearly convey 10 things on a single page. I like doing both, but one is for sure a bigger time sink and just flat more difficult."

Robin.: "Yeah, as both a writer and person who likes to draw myself, I definitely do agree with you on that. I guess we're gonna be in the trenches on that together, haha. You said you worked in comics? Are there any specific comics you've worked on that people might know about?"

Hyptosis: "I worked on a lot of comics, but probably nothing anyone has heard about. I did some Civil War comics I can’t remember the names of, I colored a comic about an HIV-positive superhero in a mechanical ninja suit... um, worked on a western comic that I can’t remember the name of. I was always a worker drone on these projects, colorist mostly. Nothing big. I did TV commercials and roleplaying handbooks after college, then card games for a bit, then comics, then worked in movies a bit, then got into making flash games. Took a few years off to get into a wildly different field rebuilding reactors for plants. Came back and am now back into working on games. I’ve also got a small side hustle designing and working on one-off concept cars but Covid has put the brakes on that. I for sure think it’s smart to be a writer and artist, or an artist and programmer, all which I try to do. It makes you respect your co-workers and team more."

Robin.: "Well, it sounds like you've definitely been busy, that's a lot! What changes in your art have you noticed throughout this time? How do you think you've improved overall?"

Hyptosis: "I for sure think I’m a better artist now. Like, even if I’m not a great painter technically, I know how to get things done more quickly and efficiently. My strength is in getting projects done and not in being the best artist ever. There are way too many amazing artists to compete with now."

Robin.: "And what artists would these be, if you don't mind me asking? Are there any artists out there in particular that you hold a great respect for?"

Hyptosis: "Oh man now I’m gonna get all excited. Okay, so right now my favorite artists are Jung Gi Kim, his work can be adult in nature but if you look him up, you will see why he’s so amazing. His work reminds me a little of my own too, only a million times better, so that also makes me like him a lot. I have every artbook he’s ever printed, he has his own shelf in my office. Next up is Alessandro Barbucci. HUGE inspiration of mine. Essentially single-handedly taught me how to draw girls. Old school influences were Brian Froud, he taught me to draw creatively and got me into high fantasy, pixies and stuff. Nobuteru Yūki (Lodoss War and Weathering Continent) taught me to draw fantasy and adventure. Hiroaki Samura (Blade of the Immortal) taught me to draw knees and hands and feet. Joe Madureira taught me about line weight. Adam Warren taught me about speedlines and motion! There are so many, but nowadays, just go to Artstation and look at the front page, there are 200 people that just post every single day that are leagues beyond my meager level."

Robin.: "Wow, that's a lot influences! All sound like really great and talented artists, but I think we should turn our focus back to your art, namely your famous NewGrounds point and click adventure series, Alice is Dead. With the upcoming HD remaster, I've got to ask- where did the original idea for Alice is Dead come from? Did you grow up watching the Disney animated Alice in Wonderland and have you ever read the original stories by Lewis Caroll?"

Hyptosis: "I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen the Disney Alice in Wonderland, I’ve seen parts but I can’t recall anything specific. I remember there being a music video on YouTube made from bits of sound from it, I saw that a bunch. I was mostly drawing fantasy and crime art at the time, and Mike, Impendingriot, it was his idea to make an Alice in Wonderland themed game. I loved Sierra graphical adventure type games from when I was a kid, so we kind of went that direction with it. He’d say something, I’d draw some stuff, show it to him, we’d bounce it back and forth and suddenly we had the first game. And the entire process was just a few days too. We never expected anyone to like it, we just kind of jammed stuff we liked into it. Mike and I always watched heist movies. Reservoir Dogs, Heat, etc. Rabbit is legitimately inspired by Harvey Keitel and Danny Trejo. We even called him Rabbit Trejo in our notes and chats while we worked. Obviously we strived to make him into our own thing, but that is where he started. A fluffy gangster type character. We later reinforced this with the Hatter’s design, it was no accident he looked like a little mobster. But yeah, after the first game was well received, I read the book for ideas on Aid 2 and 3, I avoided the Disney cartoon because I was afraid of creative contamination."

Robin.: "Oh I see, yeah that's totally fair then, wanting to avoid some unintentional creative overlap I mean. So Alice is Dead is obviously a darker take on the Alice in Wonderland world and ideas, what with all the crime and as you said, direct inspiration from old heist movies and such. How would you say your series compares and contrasts to other 'dark' takes on the franchise, such as the Tim Burton movies or the American McGee's Alice game?"

Hyptosis: "I did watch Burton’s! But I can’t remember much from it either except Depp’s face, haha. I don’t remember anything else at all from it. McGee I wasn’t familiar with until later when we started getting compared to it a lot. I think it’s maybe a little more similar than any of the others? But even so, it seems it’s about being insane and in an asylum or something? Forgive me if I’m wrong, and we don’t have much of that. I think his Alice used a butcher's knife, and our Alice was seen fighting once with a knife too (like any good hitman). So that came up a few times. I think our product is still pretty different from those others, I’m not super familiar with them though. Movies in general and the original stories are the biggest influence, and Mike has a great sense of timing for story and filmmaking that he brought to the project and really gave it life. I feel really good about Aid standing on its own even today."

Robin.: "Yeah to be honest, I don’t remember anything about those movies aside from how Johnny Depp looked as the Mad Hatter, haha. I am a little surprised that you hadn’t hear of American McGee’s Alice beforehand though given some odd coincidences between the game and your game, namely the knife similarity, but it makes sense given your inspirations. So, what made you want to come back and remake the series as a collection with new art and everything all these years later?"

Hyptosis: "Yeah on McGee, maybe hadn’t heard of it wasn’t right, I wasn’t familiar with it I guess. But the only similarities anyone has ever mentioned was the knife and that the Cheshire cat were both creepy. Which, it’s not hard to see why he’d be creepy considering his behavior in the story. We wanted him to be this teleporting mutant chimera living between worlds and using electronics to communicate. He could still, in a sense, turn invisible and appear in locations he shouldn’t. In the original story he could make his head appear to have no body, which is something we never got to explore but I hope to this time. Sorry, got a bit off topic, haha, mostly I want to remake the game first, because I want it preserved. I want a ‘complete’ edition to be updated for newer computers. The old game was 10 megs, now a single image for a single screen is bigger than that. NewGrounds has done a great job of saving the games though, it means a lot to me, and also, has made working on the new HD version way easier. We can go test the old games on NG and make sure we’re staying true! NewGrounds cares about preserving all that old content. That means something."

Robin.: "I greatly admire NewGrounds for doing their utmost to save and document old games and media that’s been on their platform for years, and I’m glad to hear that them doing so has helped you along in your development of this new collection. Speaking of documenting NewGrounds history, if I recall correctly, YouTuber TwoLeftThumbs, also known as Noodle on NewGrounds, has stepped in to help publish your game alongside a bunch of other games recently. What’s it like working with him? In what ways does he offer you support?"

Hyptosis: "Yeah, NewGrounds is the best. Tom Fulp has always treated me with a ton of respect and displayed a cautious optimism about my projects. TwoLeftThumbs/Noodle has been helping me with the face of Alice is Dead. I’m not the best PR person. I’m a pretty focused worker, I’d even say a hard worker. But I would rather chop some extra wood, than to take time to tell people that I chopped a little wood. If that makes any sense. He’s helping tell people about Alice is Dead, helping with porting, and just a whole slew of stuff I dislike doing. I’d rather use my time to flesh out the stories and add new content, haha. Working with him so far has been great, he’s chill and lets you do your thing. I appreciate that."

Robin.: "That’s good to hear, I’m glad that both Tom and TwoLeftThumbs have been supportive of you. Do you have any plans for the future after you’re done with Alice is Dead, or is that too far down the pipeline?"

Hyptosis: "I think I might take some time off after Alice is Dead HD is done. I mean, it will also depend on how well it is received. If people are totally stoked and it does really well I probably won't be able to contain myself and will start working on the next game immediately, haha, be it a prequel or sequel we're not sure. We have notes for both. But if it is kinda just ’meh’ or worse, people hate it. I’ll probably go build a cabin in the woods or something for a few years, haha, who knows. I do have a Peter Pan idea I’ve been kicking around for years, and also there was Red OZ which never really clicked, but it’s rattling around in there too so who knows."

Robin.: "Well I hope Alice is Dead is successful then so you don’t have to hide out in the woods for a few years, haha. I am definitely interested in seeing what you make in the future, but for now, that’s all I had to ask! Thank you again for agreeing to this interview, and I hope you have a great rest of your day!"

Hyptosis: "Didn’t want to sound like I’m running off into the woods haha, I just haven't had a vacation… ever. I’ll probably take one. You bet, I really appreciate it! Thanks!"

(Art of Rabbit from Alice is Dead: Hearts and Diamonds by Hyptosis.)

I'd like to once again give a thank you to Hyptosis for agreeing to do this interview! If you'd like to show him some support, consider wishlisting Alice is Dead: Hearts and Diamonds on Steam. At risk of sounding like TwoLeftThumbs himself, it's a good way of supporting the devs by showing them how many people are interested in their product. While we're on the subject, if you like what I do here and you want to see more, please consider making a one-time or signing up for monthly donations over on my Ko-Fi page. Thanks for reading, and until next time, I'll see you all later.

-Robin.

Hi, I'm Robin.

Yesterday I sat down with Dallen Larson of Team Rumble, the game director of the team behind the upcoming indie platform fighting game, Indie Rumble. The game features a bunch of indie game characters as playable fighters such as Boyfriend from Friday Night Funkin', Welltaro from Downwell, Alex Eagleston/Eggleston from YIIK: A Postmodern RPG and The Kid from I Wanna Be The Guy! as well as stages from SUPERHOT, Tough Love Arena and Mission in Snowdriftland. With out further ado, here's our chat!

(Art by Barddro.)

Robin.: "Thank you for agreeing to this interview! You're the director of the game Indie Rumble, do you wanna tell everyone what it's about for those out of the loop?"

Dallen: "Absolutely, glad to be here! Indie Rumble is a platform fighting game akin to the Smash Bros. Series featuring indie gaming's biggest icons."

Robin.: "Would you consider your game to be an homage to the Super Smash Bros. series then?"

Dallen: "Absolutely. I'm a massive fan of Smash Melee, and I've gone to tons and tons of locals and online tournaments for Ultimate."

Robin.: "What would you say makes this game different from other platform fighters, like Brawlhalla for example, aside from the fighter roster?"

Dallen: "I think the key difference is mechanically we treat Indie Rumble as a more traditional fighter. We use stamina-based gameplay and meters which are usually only found in more standard fighting games. We also feature air shielding, Rollback Netcode, a maximum of 8 players in the standard mode. Most of those features aren't really standard yet, but we think as time goes on other fighting games will adapt a similar approach."

Robin.: "Rollback Netcode is a term I see thrown around a lot when it comes to these kinds of games, but no one's ever really explained what that is to me. Would you mind being the first to do so? And while you're at it, could you explain why you think it's an important part of the game?"

Dallen: "Absolutely! As the ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic continues, great netcode becomes more and more of a must have. Nobody likes having connection issues or laggy matches, so Rollback is a great way to lessen that. Rollback, essentially learns your playstyle as the game goes on and predicts exactly what you're going to do in very specific scenarios, based off of what you have done previously. It then sends that to the other screen locally. Essentially, players with poor connection are able to play what the netcode thinks you're going to do, making the game run butter smooth-but then the issue comes up. What if the netcode is wrong? Of course a big part of competitive play is mix ups. As soon as the next frame is rendered, the Rollback checks if it was correct. On the low chance it was wrong, it rolls back to the previous frame's input and corrects itself.

This allows for insanely smooth matches. Some even feeling like a local match. This is opposed to the standard 'Delay-Based Netcode,' which essentially pauses the game while waiting to read each players input."

Robin.: "I see, that makes a lot of sense, thank you! With all the work you're putting into this, I've gotta ask: what's your work schedule like? Is this your full time job or something you're making on the side?"

Dallen: "Of course. I'm a college student, and do my studies online asynchronously- so my college schedule and work schedule for Indie Rumble kind of go hand in hand. I spend almost all day, 7 days a week I work on the game. I don't really need a paying job for revenue, since I get money from my previous games."

Robin.: "Speaking of previous games, how did you learn to develop games? Did you take a class or are you self-taught?"

Dallen: "When I was younger, I thought looking up tutorials was a negative thing and didn't make me a 'real coder.' But in around 2018, I followed a Brackeys Unity tutorial step by step. I really learned that way. After finishing that, I really understood the engine, and THEN took the time to understand the language. I'm completely self-taught."

Robin.: "Amazing! That's good to hear. What was it about tutorials that made you think following them didn't make you a 'real coder' as you put it?"

Dallen: "I believe it's just a social norm, sadly. There's actually a lot of stuff that I feel most devs believe don't make you a "real developer". A big one is using assets. Asset flips are bad, but there's nothing wrong with a solo dev who can't do art using free assets and giving credit in my opinion."

Robin.: "I think that's something we can both agree on, I've been making a short little project in RPGMakerMV these past few weeks using the pre-made assets and I think it's a good way to get yourself started if your not familiar with pixel art or the software. Getting back to Indie Rumble, what characters and franchises are you most excited to be working with?"

Dallen: "That's awesome to hear! I hope that goes well, and if you need help I'm always here! As far as character I'm most excited to work with, that's a really tough one. For me personally, Alex from YIIK comes to mind. There's a ton of character we've been able to work with so it's really hard to narrow it down. The developers who actively continue to follow this project and support it such as Nitrome, ChairGTables, and AckkStudios (among others), make me incredibly excited to work with those IP's."

Robin.: "That's great to hear! Is there any character or IP you wish you had in the game that you as of yet haven't been able to get the rights for?"

Dallen: "I want to clarify, this is only my behalf. Of course when deciding who gets in, a lot of that comes to our development team. Only speaking for myself, Among Us, Five Nights at Freddy's, and Smiling Friends all have characters I really want to explore. Perhaps in the future."

Robin.: "Smiling Friends is an interesting one, because that's a TV show as opposed to a game. Do you think this is kind of a 'Goku in Smash' situation or do you think that characters from a show like that could hypothetically have a chance? This is assuming the rest of the team were on board, of course."

Dallen: "Our current rule is '...as long as the studio developing the media is not AAA were willing to consider. Doesn't even need to be a video game...' The rest of the team has shared a similar sentiment. If we could get into contact with the IP holder(s) for Smiling Friends, we would definitely reach out, as posted to the 'Smash Goku' thing, in my opinion comes down to Nintendo simply not wanting that to happen. Could be wrong there though, haha."

Robin.: "Ah I see, that makes sense. You know something that actually just occurred to me is you have The Kid from I Want To Be The Guy in your game. How tricky is it to adapt his character when it's so heavily attached to copyrighted materials from the old NES era? Stages from that game use music from MegaMan 2, for example, and you fight against Mike Tyson from Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! at one point."

Dallen: "It is slightly more difficult, yeah haha. Pulling off source material that is original from the game rather than stuff the game takes is no easy task. The song on the stage, composed by Exclaim!, is an original compositing using soundfonts and leitmotifs from other games. It kind of fits into a sort of 'parody' category, which fits the character in my opinion."

Robin.: "Right, parody is a fine line but it seems like you guys are doing a good job staying in that lane. Well before we wrap up here, is there anything else you'd like to add? Any final statements or maybe even a hint at what's to come?"

Dallen: "Just that I appreciate the opportunity! I hope your game development goes well! And to keep your eyes peeled for the end of February!" (He put a looking emoji and a winking emoji after that but I can't paste them for some reason so here's me telling you they were there instead.)

Robin.: "Awesome! Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview and I hope you have a fantastic day!"

Dallen: "Sounds good! You too!"

(Art by MCVinnyq.)

Thanks again to Dallen Larson for agreeing to this interview! I'd like to give a shoutout to Andrew Allanson, who I also interviewed here, for helping me come up with questions to ask during this interview. I hope you guys liked this interview and until next time, I'll see you all alter.

-Robin.

(If you like my posts and want to support me, please consider buying me a coffee on my Ko-fi page.)

Hi, I'm Robin.

Last night, my dad and I finished watching all of Cowboy Bebop, the original anime series to be exact. We watched the English dub since it came highly recommended to me by my friends and my dad hates reading subtitles. I've gotta say, I really do understand why it's been considered a classic now. I don't think I can really talk about this show without diving into spoilers, so I recommend you wait to read this until watching the show itself if you haven't already. Seriously, I wish I'd watched this years ago after seeing it all. Needless to say, I greatly enjoyed the show. So without further ado, why don't we start off with that iconic killer opening theme?

(Watch the opening here.)

"I think it's time we blow this scene, get everyone and the stuff together... OK, 3, 2, 1, let's jam!"

These are the only words spoken in the song "Tank!" by The Seatbelts. The only thing prior to and after those words being spoken is pure jazz with a fast paced rhythm that works oh-so well with the visuals. Spike Spiegel smoking his cigarette as the manifesto of the series' intended purpose flies behind him is the perfect start to the series after a brief flash of the title card that lasts just seconds. You only catch glimpses of it. It's there for a bit, but not too long for you to really think about it in the moment. You see him running before stopping to turn to the camera, and then a space ship flies by, specifically, the Swordfish II. You're slowly introduced to each character in the series. The legs and brief look at the face of some femme fatale character and another ship, the Red Tail. The ships fly past each other, and then the silhouette a guy holding a cigarette shows up. The same guys is shown running with some kind of metal under his eye as we see another ship, the Hammer Head.

In less than a minute, we have seen three of the main characters and the ships they'll be piloting throughout the show. That's three out of five of the main characters that appear as the Bebop crew, and they're all just as mysterious as they are in the show itself. Radical Edward does show up at the end, but since they have a smaller role in the show they don't get much focus. Ein doesn't show up at all, but he has an even smaller role in the series than Ed does. What I'm trying to say is that this opening is really effective at making you wonder who all of these people are and what they're like. Spike, Faye and Jet are presented with little context as to who they are, more often being seen from a distance or surrounded in shadows, much like how their history isn't known to us for the majority of the show's runtime. The spaceships tell you not only does each character have their own that they pilot, but that the show will largely consist of space battles, but you know it won't only be space battles, because we get a shot of all three of them firing their own gun. As far as anime openings go, I think this is certainly one of the best in terms, of visuals, music, and conveying the show's themes and characters.

World Building and Setting

(A modified N.A.S.A. Space Shuttle Columbia taking in flight in Session #19: Wild Horses)

Set in the year 2071, Cowboy Bebop follows a crew of broke bounty hunters journeying through space. This show does a really good job of establishing the world it's set in. We start the show with a character who wants to go to Mars, an episode where a former soldier thinks back to a war he participated in that took place on one of Jupiter's moons, Titan, and passing references other places in the solar system, such as Ganymede, another one of Jupiter's moons and the largest moon in the entire solar system. What little we see of planet earth makes it clear that it's kind-of... well... a wasteland. Meteors are constantly striking the planet, permanently changing it's landscape. There are several ruins of civilization, the world has been flooded and seems to be lacking in ice caps. We can infer that perhaps the world flooded and societies were destroyed due to the melting of the ice caps and in a desperate attempt to survive, most people left for other planets such as the nearby Mars, leaving behind only those who were too poor to afford a ship off the planet. Mars has a criminal organization called The Red Dragon Syndicate that is so powerful, it's influence extends to other regions of the solar system and the police can't control them.

Another way the show does a good job of establishing it's setting is through technology. VHS and Beta tapes are an old, severely dated form of technology that only one man in the series is shown to have a lot of, that being a one-off character obsessed with 20th century technology who runs a store dedicated to it. The character of Faye Valentine being a fish out of water character helps show how much technology has advanced as well. She wakes up after being cryogenically frozen for 54 years and mistakes a washing machine, a face cleaner and a bio thermometer for a monitor, hot water pot and cellular phone respectively due to their visual similarities. The fact that guns and swords still exist as they did in the 90's shows that aside from the laser canon on the Swordfish II, there isn't much futuristic weaponry. What I'm trying to say is the show does a good job of conveying it's setting in a believable manner.

I think my favorite thing they do to show off the time frame is in the 19th episode, "Session #19: Wild Horses." In this episode, the Bebop crew are pursuing a group of space pirates that launches virus bullets from their ship, which infect any ship they hit with a virus that stops the ship from functioning properly. Spike leaves to get the Swordfish II fixed up by a the ship's creator, a man named Doohan alongside his assistant, a baseball fan named Miles. In this episode we learn for the first time that Spike's ship is an older model that requires expensive older parts to keep well maintained and he's constantly pushing it to it's limits. Faye and Jet fail to capture the pirates and call upon Spike for assistance. To avoid getting picked up on the pirate's radar, they use old radio waves to communicate, interrupting the radio broadcast of Miles' baseball game, which is what alerts him and Doohan that they're in trouble. So to rescue Spike, they take off in a ship described as "an old piece of junk." This ship is shown to be none other than the Columbia Space Shuttle, something that both my dad and I were surprised to see. It's shown almost immediately by the fact both Doohan and Miles are needed to pilot this insanely complex set of switches and dials that the space shuttle- a symbol of space travel in today's age- is far, far outclassed when compared to every other ship we see in the show.

The Characters

(The Bebop Crew.)

Despite not knowing much about the actual history of the characters in the show, I think the Bebop crew is one of the strongest I've seen in a show. Spike has this air of mystery around him. Where'd he learn judo? Did he join the Syndicate or was he born into it? How did he meet Jet? We never get proper answers to any of these questions. All we know is he and Vicious were like brothers, he fell in love with Julia, then Spike decided to leave the Syndicate and Vicious saw this as betrayal, which led to him threatening Julia to kill Spike and Spike assuming she'd left him. What I like about all of this is that Spike doesn't spend the whole show moping around about Julia. That's not to say it doesn't bother him, when the possibility of her entering his life again pops up, he always drops everything to pursue that lead, but it's not always on his mind. In others shows with this kind of lost love angle, the character is often constantly wondering what could've been and being sad and mopey for half the series. Spike gets like that sometimes, but only three or four times, and he when he does get like that it comes with a piece of his backstory we didn't know prior.

Jet Black is an ex-cop who lost his arm on a mission and got it replaced with a cybernetic one. In his time, he was known as "the black dog who bites down and never lets go" because of how effective he was at getting criminals. After that, he left the force and became a bounty hunter and at some point met up with Spike. Aside from that, we don't know much about him. It's revealed later on that his old partner was a corrupt cop and was the one responsible for him losing his arm in the first place by leading him into a set-up. I think Jet is my favorite character in this show because he feels like the straight man of the group. He's not some ex-criminal who can do Judo moves and cheat twice when fighting his former brother. He's not someone from 2014 who got into an accident while on a spacecraft flight and became a bounty hunter with a gambling problem. He's not even an eccentric hacker nor does he have some kind of supersonic hearing like Ein. He's just an ex-cop who felt it was time to leave the force and ended up becoming a bounty hunter. Actually, in a way he kind of shared Spike's lost love angle, but that got resolved the same episode it was introduced in and he learned to let go of the past, something Spike never did.

Faye Valentine was introduced into a world she knew nothing about. She'd forgotten everything, even her last name. The name "Valentine" comes from the song "My Funny Valentine." She was unfrozen as part of an insurance scam and occurred a great debt. We don't really learn a whole lot about Faye's past besides the explosion, though what little we do know actually comes from one of my favorite episodes. She gets sent a package from someone that had apparently been in shipping for a long while and she runs off thinking someone had come to collect on her debts. The crew finds out that what's inside it is a Beta tape, something none of them have ever heard of given the fact by the time the show is set, beta tapes would've long since fallen out of use. Eventually they find out they need a beta players to use it, so Spike and Jet go deep under the earth through abandoned structures to find an old technology museum, only to come back with a VHS player and not a beta player. Faye happens to come back shortly after they get a beta player delivered to her as well, and when they play the tape they find out it's a time capsule essentially. A video of a younger Faye delivering a message to her future self and quite literally cheering herself on. As Faye watches, it's clear she doesn't remember it, and something about that kind of hit me hard. Even when she does get her memories back at the end of the show, she has no one from her past life left to go to.

Radical Edward is perhaps the most mysterious out of all the Bebop crew. We don't know much about their family life, we don't know how they heard of the Bebop crew, we don't know where Ed even came from. Hell, no one even knows if Ed is a boy or a girl, even their father. What we do know is Ed is incredibly smart, always speaks in third person and no one was joking when they said he just stays on the ship the whole show. Seriously, I thought that was a joke, I didn't think everyone was serious. That being said, Ed definitely had their moments, like when they battled Chess Master Hex in a game of chess, or how they dressed up as Jet's daughter to sneak into the hospital and find the cult leader. While I can definitely see some people finding Ed annoying, they're my dad's favorite character and he was super disapointed when I told him Ed wasn't in the recent Netflix live action adaptation as far as I'm aware. Ein had a small part in the series as well, but I like that he and Ed got along well and made perfect sense to that Ein chose to leave alongside Ed.

Final Thoughts

"Look at my eyes, Faye. One of them is fake, I lost it in an accident. Since then I've been seeing the past in one eye and the present in the other."

Cowboy Bebop is a show that left me with a million questions. Did Faye stick around with Jet? Did Jet's leg ever recover? Did Ed and Ein ever hear about Spike's death? Did the Syndicate fall out of power? What about Doohan and Miles, what ever happened to them? Did that guy ever get compensated for the VCR Spike kicked the shit out of? How did Spike know that fortune teller? So many questions. And you know what? I honestly kind of hope I never get an answer to any of these questions. I like the open ended nature of the series because it fits so well. With characters as mysterious as these, of course we don't get any closure. Spike and Vicious killed each other, just like they seemed to always be on the verge of doing. It's a rather fitting and tragic end and like the end card said, I'm gonna carry that weight. There are so many elements I'd like to explore in this show's universe, so many character I want to come back to, but I really don't know that you can come back to any of these stories. Even ones with loose ends, I think without Spike, Jet, Faye and Ed it wouldn't be the same.

I think this is a show I'm going to be thinking about for a long time, just like how FLCL made me think. Maybe I'll paint a Bebop character next, just like how I painted Haruko. My dad insists we watch the new live action Netflix series and before you tell me it's bad, I've heard, he's heard, we're still watching it. Don't worry, one day I'll make him watch every episode of Chargeman Ken or some other horrible anime I've never heard of until I searched "worst anime" just now like whatever "Vampire Holmes" is as payback. (I know you're reading this, dad. This is a threat.) But even if the live action show ends up not being good, I'll still have the original show to go back to, and that's good enough for me. see you all later, space cowboy.

-Robin.

SEE YOU, SPACE COWBOY...

Hi, I'm Robin.

Let me use some words to a paint a picture for you. It's late at night, you're browsing videos on YouTube, just watching whatever seems interesting. You are tired, the glow of the screen in front of your eyes just barely keeping you awake. In the corner of your eye, right on the recommended side bar, you see a video titled "Toto- Africa (playing in an empty shopping centre)" and you think to yourself, "Ok, this is ridiculous. I need to watch this." So you click on the video, and it's exactly what it says it is. A still image of an empty mall of some kind that looks to be from around the 1980's with the song "Africa" by Toto playing with an echo and slight static, as if it were playing on the intercom. For some odd reason, you feel a relaxed, calming sensation. The music, the location, it's so oddly familiar to you, as if you had been there and heard that song being played.

In that moment, you are experiencing false nostalgia. At least, that's what everyone is calling it. The only place I could find a solid definition for the term was on Urban Dictionary, a place that houses definitions for slang terms and phrases like "dumbphone," "touch some grass" or "conflirtation"- needless to say, not the best resource for "official" definitions, but it gets the job done. the definition they give for false nostalgia is as follows:

"false nostalgia- The longing for or reminiscence of an era which you did not actually grow up in, having only experienced the era through it's movies, TV shows, music, etc; not based on actual life experiences."

This weird phenomenon is something I myself have felt watching and listening to videos like this. This odd sensation that I've been to the place in the picture when I was a kid, combined with the odd, uneasy feeling of seeing the location empty. You're so used to seeing a mall with a lot of people in it, it feels wrong in a way seeing it so desolate. I feel the same way way listening to and seeing art from an online genre known as "vaporwave," a genre that people like to say is dead because of some dumb memes a few years back. If you're interested in learning more about vaporwave, I highly recommend you watch Fredrik Knudsen's Down the Rabbit Hole episode on the topic. I find it interesting how much I enjoy these types of songs and videos. A lot of those mall videos are easy to make- just grab an image and make a song sound echo-y and boom, 100,000 views. I was born in 2000, 25 days after Y2K to be exact. I have no real nostalgic attachment to these locations or even a lot of these songs. Yet I feel an odd sense of familiarity. Like I've heard them and been to the places far away in the distnat past, when I was a young boy.

In an article from Psychology Today called "The Two Faces of Nostalgia," Hal McDonald talks about the two types of nostalgia- the good and not so good nostalgia, as it were. More specifically, restorative and reflective nostalgia. Restorative is the desire to relive past moments whereas reflective is more about accepting the past for what it is and wishing to savor the emotions it brings us. In my experience, false nostalgia has covered both types of nostalgia. Watching a mall video often triggers the restorative nostalgia as I desire to be a kid in a shopping mall once again, walking around with my family and looking at the comic book store and Build-a-Bear Workshop while begging my parents for one of those huge and ridiculous candy apples covered in chocolate sauce and Oreo cookie crumbles but settling with the Baskin Robbins ice cream in the food court. Something like a vaporwave remix of old Pokemon songs or a painting of a boy surrounded by old electronics and piles and piles of board and video games I find tend to trigger a more reflective nostalgia in me. I remember the first time I ever played Pokemon Platinum Version on my Nintendo DS Lite, picking Turtwig, naming her BUDDY and journeying with her across the Sinnoh region- slowly coming to terms with the fact that I'll never be able to experience that ever again.

YouTuber J.J. McCullough in his video "Middle Class Millennial Nostalgia Art" deep dives into this weird art scene, looking at how it portrays consumer culture as opposed to art of the past. In his video, J.J. shows off various artists, notably highlighting Rachid Lotf in the beginning of his video. This man's art has become so well known, he has been commissioned to make art for PlayStation Magazine, Universal and CAPCOM- all of whom own the intellectual properties often depicted in his works and he proudly displays this on his official website. I find a similar feeling of nostalgia in Lotf's artwork, particularly in the piece shown below titled simply "Otaku Room." As J.J. says in his video, it is a bit of a "spot the franchise" game in a way, but I feel like that adds to it rather than takes away. I spot the poster for Spirited Away and fondly remember the first time I watched the movie. I see shoes and jeans of the person in the picture and fondly remember wearing similar shoes and jeans when I was in middle school. I recognize one of the figurines as being from the anime Neon Genesis Evangellion and that makes me think about how I still need to watch that show. Stuff like that. Looking at Rachid's art is more like a fun trip down memory lane.

("Otaku Room" by Rachid Lotf)

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and I understand that. False nostalgia isn't really a good thing in my opinion as it's a seemingly unnatural extension of regular nostalgia. I'm sure I'm not the first person to tell you that it's dangerous to constantly be walking down memory lane, never looking towards the future and barely acknowledging the present. Allowing your fond and/or bittersweet memories of days gone by to consume you can be incredibly detrimental, and in my opinion that's even more so the case if those fond and bittersweet memories never even existed in the first place. Hell, one of my friends made a game where the main character is often going on nostalgia trips rather than noticing the breaks in reality before him. I completely understand that allowing nostalgia to consume you is a bad thing.

That being said, I don't think that nostalgia- even false nostalgia- is bad every now and then. The entire time I've been writing this, I've been listening to more of those mall videos I mentioned earlier. The soft echo of the music in the background occasionally skipping or getting stuck on a loop is oddly nice and comforting to me as I type down my thoughts. I like Loft's art because in a way, it reminds me of the I Spy books I used to look at in elementary school. I love seeing the interesting artistic renditions of these old architectures and intellectual properties and seeing them distorted into something wholly unique. I welcome the occasional feelings of nostalgia even when I know they could be fake because just for the moment, it feels nice. And to me, that's all nostalgia should be- a fleeting moment. Art likes captures that fleeting moment in a way I can't really find the words to describe. I'm sure many are cynical about this art that invokes a sense of false nostalgia and I can't really blame them. It is kind of concerning to me, but at the same time I don't really think it's the end of the world.

The feeling I get when playing Minecraft and hearing the song Sweden kick in after a few minutes of playing is comparable to the feeling I get when watching Big Iron in an Abandoned Mall. I won't deny that. Yet they're not the same feeling. Somehow, I understand that. I recognize how one is a real memory and the other isn't, but I know for others it's not the same. The human brain is an interesting thing in how messy it can be storing memories, but that's a subject for another day.

What do you think of these mall videos? What about this nostalgia art scene? I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Until next time, I'll see you all later.

-Robin.

(If you like my posts and want to support me, please consider buying me a coffee on my Ko-fi page.)

Hi, I'm Robin.

Recently I've been giving Halo Infinite's free multiplayer a shot with some friends of mine and to my surprise, I'm actually enjoying it. I'm not really into first-person or hell even third-person shooter games all that much. I've always been much more into JRPG's and RPG's in general, or open world exploration games. However, there has always been one massive exception- the Halo franchise. My biggest problem with shooter games is they've always felt kind of the same to me. I never really notice much of a difference in the weapons besides "this gun is a handgun" or "this one is a rocket launcher." Maybe that's just because of my relative unfamiliarity with the genre in general, but still. With Halo, it always felt different, like I could feel that the guns and weapons had actual weight and recoil and when you combine that with the fact most games prevented me from running, it felt like I really was a soldier in a giant, heavy suit of armor holding these differently weighted weapons.

All of that changed when I played Halo 4. Suddenly, every gun started feel the same again. On top of that, the story just didn't grab me like the original story of the first three games did. I've never had an Xbox one, but when I played Halo 5 at my friend's house just to give it a shot I was convinced that either the game had changed or I had changed. Maybe I had just grown out of Halo, and this was the sign I was just done with the series. Over the years I realized others had the same feelings I did about both the new story seeming less interesting and the gameplay changing for the worse, but whether or not that was a vocal minority is something I still don't fully understand. So when my friend Max told me Halo Infinite was free to play on steam, I was a bit skeptical. After playing it a little bit, digging out my old Xbox 360 controller in order to do so, I started to think to myself, "this is kind of how I remember Halo feeling."

When I sat down with my friends the other day to play Halo Infinite as a full team of 4, I knew for sure that I was havong fun. Slayer, Capture the Flag, Ball Control, Zone Control, it didn't matter. I was having fun in a brand new Halo game for the first time in years. It reminded me of when we'd play our legitimate copies of Combat evolved on the school computers during lunch in my senior year of high school. So, here I am now. Wondering to myself if this a sign that Halo is "back," as it were. It never really left, but it never really felt the same. So, does this mean that the campaign is gonna be good? Am I going to finally be invested in the story once again? I have no idea, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at the very least excited for what's to come down the line. What are your thoughts on the Halo Infinite multiplayer? Do you have the same feelings I did about the franchise? Do you think Infinite's multiplayer is a sign of good things to come or ado you outright hate the multiplayer? I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.

Let me know what you think in the comments section below. Thanks for reading and I'll see you all later.

-Robin.

(If you like what I make and would like to see more, consider buying me a coffee on my ko-fi page. All the support is really appreciated.)

Hi, I'm Robin.

And I'm not going to lie, I'm a little bit pissed off.

YouTube has made the decision recently to effectively remove the dislike button from their platform. While it is still there and you can still see it and click on it, you can not see the dislike count on a video. The news came on November 10th, 2020 after months of testing this feature for some users. Normally, I wouldn't care about this decision.. They're private company, they can do what they like with their platform whether I like it or not. But this time, it really just feels so different. I've been thinking about why that is, and I've come to these reasons.

First of all, nobody in the YouTube community asked for this. In fact, many prominent figures have said this is a bad idea. People like SomeOrdinaryGamers, Coffeezilla, LinusTechTips and Marques Brownlee are just a few people who have said they do not like this decision. Even PewDiePie has come out to say he doesn't like the decision and while two corporations- T-Series and CocoMelon- have surpassed him in recent years, he is still the most subscribed to channel run by a single personality, not counting his editors and social media team running his Facebook page. All of these creators and more have stated that they do not like this decision and find YouTube's reasoning to be nonsensical- and I agree. It's not just creators either, it's the whole community as well. I personally haven't seen anyone say this is a good idea.

So, okay, let's backtrack a little. What are these reasons YouTube has presented? Well, in a video they posted to their YouTube Creators channel simple titled titled "Update to YouTube's Dislike Count," Matt Koval, a "Creator Liaison," gives the reasons as to why. The first reason they give is that bad faith actors are dislike bombing videos on channels they don't like, usually because they don't like the creator themselves or their viewpoints. I will not say that this does not happen because I know for a fact it absolutely does. In fact, I've seen it happen myself and I have to say- this is often a good thing. Why? Because a lot of creators who get these dislike bombs are because they were exposed for partaking in awful behavior. Take, for example, cartoon reviewer Cosmodore or gaming let's player MiniLad. Both of these YouTubers have been exposed for having relationships with their underage fans, both of whom planned to or actually did meet them in person at one point. Both creators have made multiple apology videos, disappeared from the internet for a while, only to come back and act like nothing happened at all. If you didn't know any of this, the only way you can tell something happened at a glance is the massive amount of dislikes visible on every new upload to their channel.

Okay, but those are bigger channels right? Koval stated this was to protect smaller channels. Well, when it comes to smaller channels, it's usually the same case- they got exposed for something, be it plagiarism of other's content like in the case of Filip Muicin, a game reviewer who used to work for gaming website IGN that was found plagiarizing other people's game reviews on both his own channel and in articles he made for IGN. In other cases that I've seen where small channels get dislike bombed it's because they were scamming with fake gift card giveaways or they used a recent death or tragedy as clickbait. I'm not going to say that creators don't dislike bombed for no reason, because I'm aware that does indeed happen. What I'm saying is it's not as a big of a problem as YouTube has made out to be, at least in my own experiences.

The other and seemingly bigger reason YouTube gives is the mental health of the creators on their platform. Many YouTubers have in recent years taken extended breaks from their channels due to massive burnout, have expressed immense stress doing it as a full time job due to the unpredictability of the platform and so on. Koval says change is done to ease up creators' worries and anxieties over videos that get a lot of dislikes. I'm gonna be honest, in my opinion, this is complete bullshit. Why? because you can still view dislikes on your creator dashboard. Hiding it from the public changes nothing when you yourself can still see a video you made is hated on immensely. Sure, not seeing the dislike count can disincentivize people from bothering to hit the dislike button, as Koval said their studies seemed to find. But dislikes are the least of YouTube's problems with creators' anxieties. If YouTube actually cares about their creators' well beings, why is it that if you don't upload a video a day your channel is actively hurt in recommendations? Why hasn't YouTube removed the ranking system from the dashboard? It's a system that shows your most recent ten videos and pits them against each other. Is your most recent video that you spent a lot of time on at the bottom of the list? Well that sucks, doesn't it? That's the biggest problem that I've been hearing people talk about for months. It's not something you can hide. It's not optional, it's right there, ever present and always there.

To me, this is just another sign that YouTube's original slogan, "Broadcast Yourself," is as in effect as their parent company Google's abandoned slogan "Don't Be Evil." To me and many others, this decision only serves to benefit corporations. Now Nintendo doesn't have to remove and reupload a video on the lackluster benefits of their mediocre online service because everyone showed they didn't like it. Now Activision and Electronic Arts don't have to disable ratings on their videos that show their awful, egregious monetization schemes. This doesn't help the common creator- and with how YouTube has been in recent years, I'm honestly not surprised at all.

That's all I really have to say. I'm not surprised, and yet I'm somehow still disappointed. Thanks for reading.

-Robin.

(If you enjoy my content, feel free to buy me a coffee on my Ko-fi page. I appreciate all your donations.)