I need to get this out of the way,

Okay, no fancy images, no anything else. I'll be using this blog for less professional one-offs. Before I continue any further on my blog posts about one of my two big game projects, Hymn of the Hallux I wanted to address something that came to me of importance.

Commonly, I talk about many reasons why I'm doing something, whether it be from a financial point of view, or my plan for marketing the game, or something else. I'm thinking a bout the viability of this all.

I never really talk about the artistic side, and why it matters to me.

Video Games touched my life in a way that no other medium has (not to say that other medium's haven't touched me) - When I was a young lad, video games gave me something to relate to people to talk about. The first three big Super Nintendo RPG's (Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, and Super Mario RPG). Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door got me to want to make games.

If it wasn't for games, I wouldn't have any of my current best friends. (granted I've got a lot of cool peeps in my life, but still), I wouldn't have the partner I have (whether or not it stays that way, que sera sera), and frankly, I'd be empty.

I'm creating games on the level of storytelling as my favorites because I want to inspire kids who were in the same shoes as I was. I'm not in this just to tell an artist side to express myself, or to hopefully be able to give all of the people I work with (and will soon work with) the money they all deserve: I'm doing it because I have the need to speak for that. This is my one true career goal.

There is another part to why I'm writing this, though, now that I've explained some of my history. My ambition commonly gets the best of me. I have idealistic expectations - I'm not unrealistic, however. As of recently with growing up, paying more attention to politics and what's going on around our country, I realize how much I've been wrapped in fiction.

It's that I want an ending like fiction.

I commonly get unnerved when I don't know what's going to happen. Last night was a sense of a relief in a discussion. The conversation I had with someone was me not catching this person up to the page I was on, which is fine. I tend to forget if I've said something or not. All ended up being well, but I did realize post conversation.

I need to get better at handling things day by day. Nothing is going to go 100% perfectly ever, especially in the world of having a software development team *and* a group of people I hope to make music with (or rather, I write, we record it at least). It's the equivalent of having another family - to me, it is my second family.

I just have to live day by day, instead of wanting an ending like fiction. There are no ends; the universe will go on for years and years and years.

I don't have to give up my ambition. My actual patient nature will start to show itself off more without needing that "end goal" looming me.

I will make everything happen. With patience. This is what I'm passionate about... and if not, I'll look back and know I tried and don't regret it. Even if HotH and Infusion don't prove themselves fruitful, I still plan on trying... Though, I'll be budgeting down my ambitions if those don't prove well

Now that I've got that out of the way, I'll be returning to updates on lucascomposerblog.wordpress.com. They'll be much less personal and more "here's how I do thing" or "here's the game's progress".

thank you all for reading. have a good night.

Mighty No 9's Phenominal Crowdfunding Failure: 10 things we can learn for the future of crowdfunded video games

Hi all,

if this article is too long, please ctrl+f/search 'tl;dr'

It's been a while since I've written for this blog. I turned out to gain *some* followers out of nowhere for various posts on here even though I never continue an idea on here, so here's a one-shot that I felt like writing before Today's grind.
What better topic to talk about than

oh

oh

this is going to quickly be a regret, isn't it.

So for those who aren't as informed of gaming news, simple version put, four million dollars of investment money was thrown into a game and the game turned out to be abysmal as compared to what was expected. People have tackled every single other aspect of this, but I want to take on the topic of why crowdfunding can still be useful, and how to avoid donating to something like this in the future. I love analyzing game budgeting failure's... but this one is different.

This article is mainly kept in mind for people who are considering throwing a lot of money at a project in the future based on a similar hype - Here's a red flag raiser. Keep in mind, the worst apples are the most noticeable - We still got Shovel Knight, The Banner Saga, Shadowrun: Returns, Broken Age, Darkest Dungeon, Hyper Light Drifter, and Undertale thanks to Kickstarter (and other crowdfunding websites) and we've also got Bloodstained, We Happy Few, Indivisible (which has a demo!), Night in the Woods (which also has a demo!), Pauldron, Yooka Laylee, and Shiness just to name a few,  I'd say that's a pretty good track record. Most of them didn't ask for nearly as much either!

Another thing about this article; there's going to be other games that don't follow everything listed on this here. Is it A-OK to invest into them? Well, it's your money, but I'm not saying that all these bullet points will be seen. In-fact, plenty of projects looking to be great or have already been released have totally off-handed these bullet points.

Here we go. Ten things we can learn. In which I'll try to keep these down to just one example,

1. Kickstarter (and every other crowdfunding company), in the end, is a company. Compare it to a retail company

Okay for the sake of my sanity: Whenever I say Kickstarter, assume I'm talking about all crowdfunding websites. Also, here's a fun drinking game for those at home: whenever I say Kickstarter, take a shot.

The game's industry generally works with this with say, your local gamestop (easiest retail for me to compare Kickstarter to):
A game is put out for sale. Said game generates, oh I don't know, a million or so in profits? Based on those profits, the company decides to make another game in the same suit.
Now, Kickstarter is a little bit different in this. The people behind it are more at step 2 without having step 1 - Basically asking for a sequel for something.  Instead of the argument being appealing as "The first game sold profits, here's what we got!" or "Games like this sold before!" it's appealing to a base of "Here's what we've got so far!" instead of running through the original "man"

So Kickstarter is a lot more comparable to say, a local game retailer than you would think. This makes a few topics easier to cover later in this article. That's what it is by the end of the day - Nothing more, nothing less. While there are some things that can be fixed about the crowdfunding module, make no mistake, this has nothing to do with them. Remember this when throwing money at a project.

Continuing forward.

2. How far along are they?

This game here got to first playable. FIRST PLAYABLE. Before they asked for money. (the sequencing order is basically several prototypes -> First playable -> Alpha -> Beta -> Gold).  Heck, by the looks, it had some looking Alpha. Meaning, not only did they ask for money when they needed to, they waited quite a bit longer than argued to be needed to. They made sure they had stuff to show. That's awesome.

...The problem with Mighty No. 9 (and this is where I can start to talk about it), on the other extreme, is that Mighty No. 9 was in conceptual stage. Conceptual stage. Meaning everything they showed could be subjective to change. How people threw more money at that than twenty other projects I can point out combined is a scary thought.

Regardless, point being, the more a project has to show for it, the more you know what the final product will be like. It's much less likely for something to change art style in this case rather than something that is conceptual, and you have much more of an idea of how it plays like.

3. Old dog doesn't know all the tricks.

shovels

Shovel Knight is a game about Shovel's that is also, in sorts, a game similar to the Mega Man games. Difference being, it got high review scores across the board, loved, and wielded unexpected results even for Yacht Club Games (the company that made Shovel Knight).

"But, Mighty No. 9 has all the original people involved that made Mega Man! Why wasn't it better than this?!"

The old dog doesn't know all the tricks. It knows the old tricks, and even that can't be reaffirmed. Here's a quick bullet point list:

• What have they worked on recently?
• What is their track record for delivering without the control of a publisher?
• How much do they still understand about why the previous one was successful?
• And remember, the old dog doesn't know more than the new dog, it's just done the tricks before. Just because it's done a trick doesn't mean it'll remember it.

I'll cover this more later but moving forward.

4. Spread your resources; don't concentrate your resources

Okay, so at least four of you comedians donated how much money again? ten thousand dollars to Mighty No. 9? You know what you could have done?

you could have funded faster than light in it's entirety with all that money

No really, I'm not even joking. FTL (Faster than Light) had a Kickstarter that had a goal of 10,000. Why concentrate your resources? Cash is limited. Is dinner with whatever developer really worth not funding, say, 10 other games instead Or even 100? Dare I say it, a thousand?

Okay, maybe that's a bit ridiculous, but regardless, so many more of those projects can get funded. What if you're worried that say, a project won't be able to get funded?

If you spread the word of good projects instead to friends, it'll mean so much more than just throwing money at it (okay maybe not from a tax standpoint but that's a rabbit hole). Let's just say, I have 150 dollars. I could throw it at one Crowdfunding campaign, or I could spread my resources to ten and get other people invested in the ones I'm really excited about.

Let's just say about all of those achieve 50 bucks and some word of mouth along with those 15 bucks I'm throwing at each one. That's a better bet than concentrating resources: Why? Well, if I'm smart about it, more of those (if not all) will turn out to be good and I'll get a better bang for my buck.

From a person doing a Kickstarter's point of view, # of Backers is also a thing to get very pleased with. What if a game had a million backers? The best part of that is, companies don't even have to get focused with the stress of achieving backer rewards.

I'm being a bit hopeful, but you get the idea. I list this one because this is the main way to prevent having to take damage control.

5. Read everything. Just read everything. You're throwing money at it.

this didn't even get the money it took for a dinner with the mighty no 9 guy

Pauldron was a good Kickstarter textbook example of "Doing Video/Text right" because everything was clear and concise in terms of video content and text content. Everything is clear, not flashy, and not distracting at all. Which, I've noticed people tend to ignore text content from hype, but, while we're at that, watch video - If you just watch video, Mighty No. 9 raises all the red flags. There was only concept art shown that even had the "COULD BE CHANGED IN FINAL GAME".

Continuing from that,
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mightyno9/mighty-no-9/description
Just try reading the text yourself. It's a mess. One example (which I could be wrong on) about promising the artstyle they did, well,

If you zoom in,
"Note: All images on this page are concept art and not actual in-game screens."
r-e-d
f-l-a-g

6.  How much involvement people have/people have had?

this blog just dives further into the rabbit hole

I can't speak for the rest of the talent, but I can speak for the name everyone fell for: Keiji Inafune. If you look at what he's done, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiji_Inafune - Now I don't mean to bash producers, nor do I know enough "History of Mega Man", but generally producers are focused on getting something out the door. It's basically equivalent to the two people that owned Rare: being deadline hitlers.

Meanwhile this game right over here, well, the talent is definitely different from looking at it and where it's spread. For starters, no producers (as aforementioned) on it. That certainly takes something.

Now I'm not saying a producer can't be a great project lead; quite the opposite. What I'm saying is "From the mind that brought you Mega Man" is kind of the equivalent of Donald Trump saying "From the orange hair that innovated politics".

This one hurts my brain a lot, but point is, doing homework can help. Maybe if you're donating just pocket change, sure, but 150? I'd do homework.

7. What are they focused on? Also syndrome of 'focused project'

This game had a sequel already. Let's start there.

Here's what bothers me: When a kickstarter is clearly more focused on being flashy (Having stuff  to show ASAP), stretch goals, and rewards, it should be a problem.. I'll hit on these step by step (that banner saga promptly avoids, among many other kickstarters)

-Stretch Goals

Yes, you need stretch goals, but how much of them will come at the sacrifice of the project? Every game is going to have stuff they can't complete. Cut losses early. Backer beware if the scope isn't focused.

-'Community Involvement'/Backer Rewards

I get hesitant when I see an absurd amount of 'You help us make the game!' - Are you telling me you didn't come to the table already pretty clear on what you want to do with ideas? Backer Rewards are another rabbit hole too because a focus can turn more invested on delivering those than actually delivering us what we're paying for - A wonderful game off of Kickstarter.

-This obsessive need to show.

I have this a bit in my system too. I was going to take time out of my schedule to do a monthly blog series. You know why I don't? It's a time killer. A significant time killer.

If you see these on projects, be speculative. Don't just accept whatever they're giving you as an answer, especially if, once again, you're throwing more money than you expected at it.

8. Soonest they're offering a demo?

this crowdfunding campaign literally offered it out of gate without the need to even back it

Moment of silence and agreeing that that's awesome? In the end, there's other qualities that we can use to evaluate, but when's the soonest they're offering a demo? Heck, when's the soonest they're offering to show a playable build? This is an important question in crowdfunding. I don't feel I need to do much of a service to the word, but if you ctrl+f "Demo" on Mighty No. 9 you find nothing and if you search "Beta" (which is pretty damn late for a crowdfunded project to be showing anything.), you have to pay 80 dollars.

Let's just say these two crowdfunding campaigns launched at the same time and I only wanted to donate 80 dollars to one of them.

Indivisible is presenting a good argument - I can try it for free, and even if I don't like it, I could throw that at Mighty No. 9. There and simple. It already has an objective upper hand without knowing.

Continuing forth,

9.  How much are they asking/why?

the pitch for why they needed money asides from rent is literally "we need to pay unity licenses"

Okay, so my memory is a bit fuzzy and if they see this they can correct me, but (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynw4DYg_w48) was my source to attribute for that. That's an awesome and perfectly noble reason, and also clear with no hidden agenda's. Being clear means that these questions don't have to be pointed out later and go "Wait, why did we back that?" Correlating this in the point of Mighty No. 9, let's compare it to Tim Schafer's Broken Age:

At least with Broken Age, Tim actually got rejected from publishers already upon presenting the idea so Kickstarter was his only option. Keiji was clearly not in that same boat - Red Ash got full forwarded funding even when it's kickstarter failed (the failed kickstarter after Mighty No 9 wasn't even finished yet). Another disappointing thing was they talked about needing a lot of money, but unlike say, Night in the Woods, where that money exactly was going? Who knows. I mean most of it goes for paying a living I figure, but then there's so many other factors to tie in for that it clearly shows they didn't run estimates enough.

So how much are they asking for?

I'm not saying 10 million is unrealistic. I have an idea on my shoulders that's my magnum opus that I could see myself coming to the table in a distant future talking about that type of money. I'm just saying, the more money is generally proportional to how speculative you should be. Sometimes same with too little, but it's less on the figure and more on this end:

Why?

Many of these projects I've mentioned, among others, have clear evaluation of WHY they are needing to go on crowdfunding - Maybe it's not their only option? In many cases still, it's sure their last.

10. An investment is an investment.

I hate ramming this point into the ground again but it is what it is (I ran it over with 1 and 4).

here's a run in I had at a gamestop in November:

My partner in crime/creative partner/etc and I (we haven't committed any crimes yet) ended up going to a GameStop. There was a deal going on on old games. Simply put, we walked out of the store with about 12-14~ games for less of the price than a person walked out with three Amiibo. Said Amiibo ended up going on sale for significant portions of that later.

I'm not trying to inherently compare the two - It's just an interesting run-in, I have plenty of collectibles myself. I'm just saying that sometimes patience and thinking of how to get the most with your buck can go a long way. I've even been shot in many cases of this.

conclusion

The position that changes from the perspective isn't much: In the cutthroat entertainment industry, whether you're buying a game or buying a game that has yet to release, you're still speaking with numbers and your wallet. I'm not here to berate on the people that donated to Mighty No. 9 - The damage is done. I'm here to see us use Mighty No. 9 as a learning tool to avoid more cases of Mighty No. 9 for both Backers and Creators (myself included) and benefit as many people as possible.

I don't claim to be the source of truth either. There's a lot we have yet to learn about crowdfunding too, but I hope you all gained some reflection out of it and maybe some laughs.

tl;dr:

• There are many games that don't follow every bullet point. Be cautious of Red Flags more.
• Kickstarter, at the end of the day, is closer to retail than you would think
• How far along is the project? How much are they showing?
• Just because it's an old name on it doesn't mean they know all
• Don't put all your eggs in one basket with crowdfunding but be sure to spread knowledge of eggs.
• Read everything. Watch everything. The KS page is there for a reason.
• How much involvement did they have with previous projects? What was their role?
• What is the campaign focused on? Where are resources going?
• When are they offering you a demo? Or even footage?
• How much are they asking for? Why?
• An investment is an investment. Patience can rule all.
• At the end of the day, let's use Mighty No. 9 as a learning tool for what to do/what not to do when running/backing a crowdfunding campaign. I don't claim to be the end all, know all: I'm just trying to learn like all of you.
• Thanks for at least reading this.

"Top five things I learned from procrastinating work and instead reading articles"

Hi guys,

So I know I've failed with just about every monthly series that I'm doing. All you need to know is things are going well and I will be having more of a professional blog soon. Given that I will, I'm going to use this as more of a twitlonger. That cool?

So, here's the top five things I've learned about myself as a musician while reading a ton of articles, or some other stuff. I don't know how else to write these

1. I view my band stuff less as a gig and more as each project of it's own

I think the only way I'll be sad with Demo Disease is if nothing ever gets done. I do a lot of media composition lately, so I'm use to a project dying. That's A-OK with me. I view it less as an entity. The CD's will be there - The only thing that won't is live shows itself, and I think that's okay.

2. Triple AAA is something I might shy away from

I didn't know this one for certain, but apparently in a lot of triple A, you don't own the rights to the music you write. This bothers me for several reasons as an artist. I think the main thing is CD's - You know how much more game soundtracks should be physical copies? I mean hey, CD's will probably be cool again in 20 years. That way, I can hoard a bunch of them and sell them!

Though seriously, gotta love that convention selling. And royalties. Royalties are never bad.

Though,
2.5B.
I should do more research on how publishing soundtracks on Steam goes. Billy and I dug up a bunch of homework about publishing on Steam before, and I've dug up crowdfunding (which may be relevant soon), so those are already two things.

3. Freemium can work but needs to be more of a personal thing

There's a lot of interesting articles about free prices, but the one piece I took away from it is that it needs to be a personal thing to some degree - When I see stuff online, my thought is generally "How can I get that as cheap as possible?" - Why? As much as I love companies like BandCamp and want to support the work they do every now and then, I want to support the artists as much as I can directly.

Don't get me started on iTunes. Just don't. If you like music instead of the concept of having everything on one device though, please buy on not iTunes.

The stuff I was reading about open mic nights and whatnot? It felt like it works more in the way of a setting where you can make this work, but when you've at least given the listener something (not just music - something they can latch to emotionally)

...also it's harder to hoard CD's than to hoard .mp3's on hard-drives.

4. Merch actually isn't so bad if you know where to look. Same thing I found out with CD prices a few months ago.

...this may or may not have relevance on may 7th.

5. Don't be a Wal-Mart composer. Ever. Just please don't.

Yes, we can start trying to offer low prices, but eventually "No" is going to need to be an answer. I use to do stuff fore basically as free as possible (recording samples for people, taking requests, etc) but recently I've had to say no to someone else and I doing a project that we started with composition and I've also said "no without pay" to another thing. My prices are still pretty low (I don't discuss my rates publicly until a project is finished, and in cases, I will opt out of directly saying).

Even if you don't want to make this a living, if you're doing music, selling yourself short can be good. Too short? Not worth your time. Ever.

birth

HEY EVERYONE FOR THOSE COMING ON THE PROMISE OF PROJECTS CHECK THE ENDING OF THIS POST

I'm honestly not going to write a blog post on as much as I did last time, but I want to say Courtney Svatek (@Altermentality on Twitter) inspired this one.

Before I turned 21, I use to think a lot on where a lot of my time was allocated and how much of it was wasted. I always try to either do one of the following things

A. Justify it (Ex. "If I didn't do this, maybe THIS wouldn't have happened and that sucks")
B. Mope over it (Ex. "If I took this opportunity instead of sitting around maybe I would be where I want")

But now, I see no use in that. I don't see a need to justify the past. We all waste time, don't we? Sometimes letting go is the best way to move forward (i am letting all you horses go). Sometimes letting loose is good. Sometimes days dedicated to nothing in particular are wonderful. Those are the best feelings. Usually, if it frustrates it's because you're forced to do it, so why not cure that with the opposite?

Thanks to everyone who's been on my journey of 22. It's been really difficult, and I've got a lot I've had to cope with while moving. Anyone who knows me has seen how selfless (not to brag, for sure) I've been and how much I've had to deal with. The scary part? Even I don't feel like I know my full story of being here.

I didn't thank specific people last time, but I think I more than owe it with all the moves I've had to do and all. Shout-outs to Billy/Ray (even though it's been him and I on a lot of this journey), DragonLX/Zinfogel/David/Whatever he changes his avatar to in 24 hours, Mack (who's now a teacher), Ash, Divy, Ridleywolf, Lamarthefrog, Altermentality, Red Ryu, KumaOso, "Basically anyone doing narration on WIA", Othin, Destiny Smasher, Axelayer, Jordaan Mason / CarboHydroM (so special that they deserve a duo mention), FireFlinger, Zeldaru, Rallex, TBG, Deadly... this post makes me realize i have a lot of friends and this is not a bad thing

so thanks even if you've been there whether you've known me for years and years like many of you have or just met me. my promise to myself is wasting more time on myself because i am worth wasting time on to me

---

So, I'm not going to make any huge promises but

-This blog will at least be used soon to talk about the Sound Design on Infusion. Yes, we're quiet, but with two out of five of us out of commission and the rest of us swamped with work, we're on a bit of a hiatus. Yes, Infusion is on schedule. Yes, it's a game project I'm in. Yes, you will hear more than this.
-Demo Disease has a lot of stuff coming up. Billy and I now have two other musicians that are a bit honorary that we use sometimes for live shows. If you're in WA, keep on the lookout! We're looking to do 3-5~ shows this year? There's a lot more under the belt in the works. Prepare to hear awesome Folk/Jazz nerdy and/or empowering songs.
-I've got a huge YT collaboration with two musicians that will be out by the end of the year.
-I've got a few other things in the works. There's one announcement I've been itching to make on what I would consider to be "My wannabe but will probably never happen" Magnum Opus.

so that's what's going on with me that isn't work stuff. using the game of mystery here but i may have been a bit too mysterious
Keep in touch and I hope the next few months will be as interesting for you as they are for me!

Some general thoughts, Backlog update, and a mini-rant on Localizations?

Hi, article split into three tonight for my own blog. I've got a bit of a headache tonight. It's actually not from hangover; I've just had bad eating habits for the past few days. Okay, maybe it is a little bit of something weird.

Anyways...

My backlog update and my general updates are down there. I want to get this rant on-board first.

This is only a mini-rant established for now just to get this thought out, but lately I'm really sick of this idea that we have to limited run printed copies of localization. I'm fine with limited print, but don't be against restocking them.

The entire point (and what Iwata, among many other Industry vets, some now dead and some still standing) of localizing a game is for everyone to play them. Frankly, every game should be available to every player everywhere - I'm a firm believer of this. Of course, that only works in a perfect world, so getting as close as possible is also acceptable

But, when this stuff is basically cash fishing only at the hardcore fans, that to me screams of a business strategy of "Let's go just for the niche fans with no expectations of sales" aka, "No pain, short term gain."

If you go with the short term pain option to try for a long term gain, a bigger fanbase, the results can be highly rewarding. Just look at Atlus! Actually, wait, maybe being bought by SEGA isn't a wonderful fate for translation companies. Never mind.

Want to know some ridiculous prices still? Ar Nosurge on Vita. 70. SolaToRobo on DS with box. 120. Localized games should be cherished, not for scalpers to play the resell game.

So for any that love localization of games, before we see this inevitably become a bigger and bigger problem, I think it's good to voice to localization companies now. I'm not telling you to boycott, but just a nice email is always good. It sure won't kill them and can only make things better. Even if you don't entirely agree, think about the long term, people.

---

So a lot of general doubt has passed through my head lately. I don't know what it was that hit so hard. Heck, I kind of don't know what I'm doing anymore. I have a lot of doubt placed into myself lately. I mean, okay, maybe I don't, and I don't know where I'm going with this

But then I remember Iwata, and the stuff I checked on him to remind myself of some of his many great accomplishments.

You know, about 20 years ago, he was in a rock and a hard place. HAL unwilling to budge to stop working on Alcahest, and Square unwilling to allow them to localize it. Not being paid that much, even as the president of a company (and more like backbone president, up until some events that transpired) - It seriously makes you wonder. Yet, even in that positions, at an age significantly older than I am, (I'm in my early 20's, he was in his early 30's), he still fought for a localization. There was probably some doubt in his mind, but with that came confidence.

I guess probably the number one start to my composition is not browsing forum posts too much. Hearing the stuff like "I went for a degree in composition... and now I'm homeless" or the negativity of Game Audio can be humorous sometimes (there's more context than you would think) but... it just eventually hurts.

I can't surround myself with oblivious positive thoughts 24/7 though. I'm already use to telling a dozen people to whip back to reality. If there's one thing Iwata fought for in his mid-career, it was not playing by the regular rulebook

And that's what I need to do.

So, expect a lot of updates on my projects soon. I fixed the mac, so I'm doing something right.

---

So I finished Tales of Hearts R but I'll do my episodic "The hell was this?" later. I also finished Mario Sports Mix (loosest form of "Finished") and I'm starting to knock down the Backlog through bits and pieces. The "This only takes a few hours at most!" section is harder than I thought. I need to really set aside a day but I think I can knock down a good 20-30~

As I said before, I pretty much have to play through at least one RPG. I'm right now sticking on Code Name S.T.E.A.M. and The Walking Dead Season 2. I'm pretty confident I'll beat Code Name S.T.E.A.M. before the end of the month... or close to.

I also plan on starting back up everyone's favorite PS2 RPG's. Shadow Hearts, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, and Nocturne. One of these things is not like the other.

---

Lot's to do lately, little time, and I keep running every day into overtime. I'll manage, though. This week feels like things are finally cooling down to a somewhat realistic schedule. Sort-of. Maybe. At least some of you read this column, right? Or blog? It's something.

Changing the Backlog: Unexplored Series (Reason 1)

So what is a good reason to scavenge through the backlog?

To those that didn't read, go here,
http://thirdkoopa.blogspot.com/
I'm also lazy, so that's your link. Sorry. Zelda isn't included either. I also will be structuring these differently, so I hope people like the new structure?

You can find gems everywhere. Gems galore. People say when they scavenge through their backlogs, they find garbage, but frankly? I disagree. Scavenging the backlog has been the number #1 way I've found series that I've been missing out. I literally kid you not.

"But how can that be?!" one might ask. It's ten times easier to binge buy all of the Ty games and Half-Life games than actually *playing* them all. How else will I get around to series like this and discover them? Waiting for people to recommend me it? Not going to happen. Waiting to play them at a friend's house? There's so many multiplayer games that that doesn't happen. Wait to meet a fanatic? Yeah, maybe I am better off purchasing.

It brings me to my first victim of the backlog. Tales of Hearts R.

Tales of Hearts R was recent, but the Tales Of games have existed in my backlog and my to-buy list for an atrocious amount of time. What's my excuse every time? "Well, I'll play them with others!" - It's a valid point for someone like me, I mean, they're lengthy games. Tales of Vesperia still (which I did do co-op tho, but wasn't there for all of), Tales of Xillia 2, Tales of Hearts R. It keeps going.

Really, one of the reasons that sold me on doing this whole idea* was the prospect of actually getting around to series I've been missing out on. I won't cheat and list directors, but just to name a few big offenders: Mass Effect, Ty, Half-Life, Devil May Cry, Uncharted, Dead Space, Fable, Prince of Persia, the Department. of Heaven series, Phoenix Wright.

* = and making terrible blog posts at 1 AM

Okay, wow, that's a lot. For a disclaimer, I've played through most of these, just never finished. Some I don't even have data anymore for! That's tragic.

I have a few series that are strange to handle as well. Horror games such as Silent Hill and Fatal Frame have been a big miss on my plays of game series (in-which I've finished most prominent stuff out there. *most*. Keyword on that is still finished.) and Gears of War I've been planning on playing it with my best friend that "I don't need to mention because he'll be mentioned later in this not witty blog".

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Backlog Actual Progress:

Tales of Hearts R.

Literally the only game I touched all this week. I mean, yeah, I grinded in Dust some, but Dust has just demotivated me. So Tales of Hearts R...

I jumped from like, level 15ish range to the level 40ish range. What the heck is going on? Bus time and other various sources of time has given me time to actually play through this, but that's all I had.

Portable is definitely great still, and it'll be pleasant to get a 40 hour game off. It's honestly really enjoyable, and to some degree, I'm taking my time with it.

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I did think a little bit more of how to tackle it, though

I think the summer is meant to get all of the short games out and clean up the trash along with cleaning out what I've really wanted to play. I'm going to clean out the Vita and 3DS library still along with a few others that leave themselves open. I only need to finish one SNES and Wii U game, 4 GBC games, and 8 GBA games to complete all I currently own, so that's actually cool.

To be honest, it's actually not that bad. The only one that circulates triple digits of uncompleted is PS2 (Technically, not even my Steam Library does, but I'm sure I'll have a blog post counting that later). Many beyond that land closer to single digits, or at least on a more manageable scale. I was even shocked to see that the GCN only hit to 43. What? I have 118 games for that thing!

Yeah, that's what I'll do. After that, I'll hope that the long games get me through this year. I am going to make it through even if it kills me.

NEXT WEEK: Depending on what happens with the backlog, next posts could get highly entertaining. Stick around! I'll be talking about Reason #2 as well, "The Game within a Game", or something.

It's time to change the Backlog

warning note: i am still not use to blogging so i hope i have kept attention span and not made this too long

I'm going to attempt the impossible.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to cure cancer.

...

Okay, maybe not as important, but I'm going to cure my cancer, which is apparently this [url=this thing called a backlog]thing called a backlog[/url] and I also seem to have some sloppy seconds over here. Some guy that I totally don't know told me I should write more as well. Or something. So here it is.

This whole backlog has been kind-of crazy and kind-of on it's own level. I mean, how did this happen? As someone who directs games (the plural may be a bit too kind) and works on music for games, I always expected to have some sizable backlog. Ever since the release of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door I always expected backlog to play a part in my life.

But... Somewhere down the line it just got not manageable at all. I have an entire FILE just for all of my games split up into separate categories. These categories are kind-of absurd to, ranging with...

-Soon to Beat (haha... haha... haha), Not Even Time Needed, Co-Op with a friend of mine/other possible people, Sub 5 hours, Sub 10 hours, 10-15, 16-20 (seriously, why is this section a thing), 21-25, 26-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60, 61-100, and one game that ranks 100+ hours (what am I doing with my life)

And... it gets worse. I've been ignoring digital games or something in that which is a shame because of the amount of titles I've missed. Seriously, what? My two top games at least of last year were both Digital releases (Child of Light and Transistor). It gets worse still. Steam just piled up. The deepest irony? Of my backlogs, it probably takes the least time. What the heck is happening.

But, why is this whole backlog thing so important? I mean, it's obvious I'm never going to be back up at my old speed given all my commitments, and that's probably for the better. Honestly? I don't have a good answer for that. What I do have a good answer for, is other things that have seemed to disinterest me in the process of this.

This is Child of Light. AKA: I stop making excuses to myself and play a video game. I've seriously come up with so many excuses at this point. "But I'll play it with my best friend" "I'll wait for a Steam Sale" "I'll get it when I'm closer on my backlog" "I'll get it when I feel like playing" etc.

I did it though. I went out and got it along with a few other Vita games because I was tired of making these excuses. Guess what? I loved it. It motivated me to write about Video Games.

The excuses have seemed to generally roll in into other responsibilities of my life and I don't like that tenancy it's creating. I have writing projects I "owe" sites and not just a petty explanation (I've definitely been writing, I've just been bad about posting, for any site administrators reading on this). It's actually kind-of amusing to me that Racketboy, a site I was excited to be a part of (and still am) took me six months to go through.

Again, priorities take place. It's good that I have them, but before I stumble into rant mode, my reason to stop putting excuses for at least 30 minutes to an hour a day into it is because exploring new things is good for new inspiration so I stop making these excuses. Letting excuses roll into the rest of my life isn't good, or something.

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So this whole thing is kind-of incoherent but I have red eyes at the moment. Basically, I'm going to begin posts on tackling the backlog on here.

But "Why blogspot" to those wondering? Well, I'll still definitely have pieces for other sites in the works until I inevitably get bused so hard that no one even notices. Here is just a good place to write whatever. It's similar to my soundcloud - I can put whatever the hell I want and chances are nobody will complain about it.

Up on next week: Complaints about how lazy I am with Half-Life, Devil May Cry, and other series. Stay tuned for more entertainment with no wit!