Some Small HBA: Live changes

Whew! It was an exciting week. I loved streaming these first two episodes and I wish I had been able to do it sooner! And now that I have even a little experience, I'm going to make some changes .

Firstly, these shows need to be shorter. Two hours is just too long, both for myself and for anyone who might just sit down and want to watch from start to finish. I'm going to scale the shows back to 75 to 90 minutes, tops. If I'm really liking a game and I have more time, I may end to show and continue to stream a little after that, but I'm only going to hold myself to an hour or so.

Secondly, my critical analysis after the fact is going to be of a lower priority should life events cause me to be short on time. I have some stuff going on with work this week and that I need to do, so the Antichamber writeup suffered hard. There were no overt characters, but there was a lot of room for analysis of themes. In short, it would have been difficult and time consuming so I'm skipping it. Sorry, Antichamber. And I'm sorry to future games that may fall to the same fate. I love writing and writing critically, but between the writing and the streaming and the real life things, writing comes out third.

Finally, and this isn't a change so much as just a PSA, I've got a long way to go before I understand all the technical and logistical aspects of streaming. I'm still not sure what my computer and my internet is capable of producing, or even how to coax it to do so. So I'll be continuing to adjust settings here and there to get things to an optimum viewing experience.

Thanks to everyone for the support so far, especially Aubrey and, awesomely, my Mom.

HBA Wrap-up: Antichamber

Antichamber. It's minimalist, confusing, and fantastic. The easiest way to describe it is to imagine that the labyrinth in the movie Labyrinth swallowed the Portal games but left all the muppets and David Bowie behind. The design is sharp and physical laws of matter are completely disregarded for the player's benefit. I would definitely recommend it as both a puzzler and an exploration game.


HBA: Live #1 Antichamber Blind

HBA: Live #2 Antichamber Spoiled

Introducing Humble Bundle Acquisitions: Live!

This weekend my wife and I were talking about The Future. Long story short, I'm going to start a regularly scheduled show on my stream! This show will be Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 8pm to 10pm (Mountain time. That's 7pm to 9pm Pacific). The format of the show will be as follows.

Tuesday: I will pick a game that I received through a Humble Bundle and start playing it on my stream. I will have made an effort to go into it as blind as I can without any prior knowledge or opinions about the game. I'll provide as much charming commentary and observation as possible. Audience participation is greatly encouraged.

Wednesday: I'll do my homework about the game. Who made it? How was it received critically? Did it win any awards? Were there any scandals in production or afterward?

Thursday: We'll dive into the game for another two hours, this time armed with all kinds of context. I will again provide as much charming commentary and observation as possible. Audience participation will again be greatly encouraged.

Friday/Saturday: I'll write up an analysis/review of the game and put it here on the site.

Fun, right!? I'm very excited to get started, and Humble Indie Bundle 11 was released this morning. We're going live with Antichamber tonight! See you then! :D