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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 months

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Molly McGhee’s “Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind”

Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is Molly McGhee's debut novel: a dreamlike tale of a public-private partnership that hires the terminally endebted to invade the dreams of white-collar professionals and harvest the anxieties that prevent them from being fully productive members of the American corporate workforce:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734829/jonathan-abernathy-you-are-kind-by-molly-mcghee/

Though this is McGhee's first novel, she's already well known in literary circles. Her career has included stints at McSweeney's, where she worked on my book Information Doesn't Want To Be Free:

https://store.mcsweeneys.net/products/information-doesn-t-want-to-be-free

And then at Tor Books, where she worked on my book Attack Surface:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531/attacksurface

But though McGhee is a shrewd and skilled editor, I think of her first and foremost as a writer, thanks to stunning essays like "America's Dead Souls," a 2021 Paris Review piece that described the experience of multigenerational debt in America in incandescent, pitiless prose:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/05/17/americas-dead-souls/

McGhee's piece struck at the heart of something profoundly wrong in American society – the dual nature of debt, which represents a source of freedom for the wealthy, and bondage for workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation

When billionaire mass-murderers like the Sacklers amass tens of billions of liabilities stemming from their role in deliberately starting the opioid crisis, the courts step in to relieve them of their obligations, allowing them to keep their blood-money:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed

And when Silicon Valley Bank collapses due to mismanagement by ultra-wealthy financiers, the public purse yawns open and billions flow out to ensure that the wealthiest investors in the country stay whole:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/18/2-billion-here-2-billion-there/#socialism-for-the-rich

When predatory payday lenders target working people and force them into bankruptcy with four-digit APRs, the government intervenes…to save the lenders and keep workers on the hook:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/29/planned-obsolescence/#academic-fraud

"Debtor vs creditor" is the oldest class division we have. The Bronze Age custom of jubilee – the periodic cancellation of all debts – wasn't some weird peccadillo. It was essential public policy, and without jubilee, the hereditary creditor class became the arbiter of all social priorities, destabilizing great nations and even empires by directing production to suit their parochial needs. Societies that didn't practice jubilee (or halted it) collapsed:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/08/jubilant/#construire-des-passerelles

Today's workers are debt burdened at scales and in ways that defy comprehension, the numbers are so brain-breakingly large. Students who take out modest loans and pay them off several times over remain indebted decades later, with outstanding balances that vastly outstrip the principle:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#strike-debt

Workers who quit dead-end jobs are billed for five-figure "training repayment" bills that haunt them to the end of days:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

Hospitals sue indigent patients at scale, siccing debt-collectors on people who can't pay – and were entitled to free care to begin with:

https://armandalegshow.com/episode/when-hospitals-sue-patients-part-2/

And debt collectors are drawn from the same social ranks as the debtors, barely trained and unsupervised, engaging in lawless, constant harassment of the debtor class:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/12/do-not-pay/#fair-debt-collection-practices-act

McGhee's "American Dead Souls" crystallized all of this vast injustice into a single, beautiful essay – and then McGhee crystallized things further by posting a public resignation letter enumerating the poor pay and working conditions in New York publishing, triggering mass, industry-wide resignations by similarly situated junior editorial staff:

https://electricliterature.com/molly-mcghee-jonathan-abernathy-you-are-kind-interview-debut-novel-book-debt/

Thus we arrive at McGhee's debut: a novel written by someone with a track record for gorgeous, brutally insightful prose; incisive analysis of the class war raging in the embers of capitalism's American Dream; and consequential labor organizing against the precarity and exploitation of young workers. As you might expect, it's fantastic.

Jonathan Abernathy is a 25 year old, debt haunted, desperately lonely man. An orphan with a mountain of college debt, Abernathy lives in a terrible basement apartment whose rent is just beyond his means. The only thing that propels him out of bed and into the world are his affirmations:

Jonathan Abernathy you are kind

You are well respected and valued by your community

People, including your family, love you

That these are all easily discerned lies is beside the point. Whatever gets you through the night.

We meet Jonathan as he is applying for a job that he was recruited for in a dream. As instructed in his dream, he presents himself at a shabby strip-mall office where an acerbic functionary behind scratched plexiglass takes his application and informs him that he is up for a gig run jointly by the US State Department and a consortium of large corporate employers. If he is accepted, all of his student debt repayments will be paused and he will no longer face wage garnishment. What's more, he'll be doing the job in his sleep, which means he'll be able to get a day job and pull a double income – what's not to like?

Jonathan's job is to enter the dreams of sleeping middle-management types in America's largest firms – but not just any dreams, their nightmares. Once he has entered their nightmare, Jonathan is charged with identifying the source of their anxiety and summoning a more senior operative who will suck up and whisk away that nagging spectre, thus rendering the worker a more productive component of their corporate structure.

But of course, there's more to it. As Jonathan works through his sleeping hours, he is deprived of his own dreams. Then there's the question of where those captive anxieties are ending up, and how they're being processed, and what new products can be made from refined nightmares. While Jonathan himself is pulling ever so slightly out of his economic quagmire, the people around him are still struggling.

McGhee braids together three strands: the palpable misery of being Jonathan (a proxy for all of us), the rising terror of the true nature of his employment, and beautifully turned absurdist touches that are laugh-aloud funny. This could be a mere novel of ennui and misery but it's not – it's a novel of hilarity and fear and misery, all mixed together in a glorious and terrible concoction that is not like anything else you've ever read.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/08/capitalist-surrealism/#productivity-hacks

#pluralistic #books #reviews #science fiction #molly mcghee #debt #graeber #capitalist realism #capitalist surrealism #dreams #gift guide

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stereax · 9 months

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Can you explain the erik-canes drama please 😚

Yeah, no problem, anon! Meet me under the read more for the details :)

So last night we found Haulzy wearing a "Canes Suck" bracelet -

(let the record show I posted this FIRST before the Canes fans found it because I am speedier than them and also much better in every single way 😉)

Now, you may be asking yourself, "why is a grown, 32-year-old hockey player of a man wearing a bracelet that says Canes Suck on it?" That is a WONDERFUL question. First, let's look at Haula's career.

Erik Haula was drafted in the seventh round by Minnesota. He played for the Wild for a few years before, well, the Wild essentially sold him to the Golden Knights in the expansion draft - they basically sent Vegas Alex Tuch (one of their better prospects) for a third and "expansion draft considerations", meaning the Knights would choose Haula in the draft and not a player like Matt Dumba or Marco Scandella, who were more vital to the Wild's core.

Haula plays for the Knights for two years - he's part of the team that wills itself into the Cup finals in 2017-18. In 2018-19, Haula goes down early, getting injured in a game against Toronto that keeps him out the rest of the season.

Vegas trades him to Carolina three days before his wedding. It's a Kelly McCrimmon move - and if you know the Knights, you know what that means (trading fan favorites for better returns). By all accounts, Haula loved Vegas, so he's going into this Carolina thing with some apprehension, especially because this is the last year on his contract. If he puts up good numbers, he's going to get a payday. If not, well, probably not. Remember, he had a career year in 2017-18. He wants to prove he's got what it takes.

Alright. He gets there, gets hurt for a few games with an LBI, comes back, gets hurt again and is out for a few weeks. At the time he gets his second injury, he's got 11 points in 16 games, with 8 goals, one less than team leaders Svechnikov, Aho, and Hamilton (all of whom played more games). So the dude's playing stellar, but then gets banged up. He slots back into the lineup just before Christmas.

And here's where things go south. You see, Haula and his wife, Kristen, were planning to start a family. Kristen got pregnant probably around August, given that when Haula posted the baby announcement on his Instagram he noted a May due date.

The baby is found without a heartbeat 12/30/19.

Erik Haula plays the next day and pots a goal and an assist.

It's a second-trimester miscarriage, which means it's likely Kristen had to deliver a stillborn baby.

He points to the sky after the goal, honoring his lost daughter.

It's around this time that relations between Haula and the Canes begin to take a nosedive.

(Fun fact, contrary to what Canes fans will tell you, Haula's play only suffered significantly after the miscarriage. In the four games in December he played before the miscarriage, he got 2 goals and 2 assists, so in 20 games he had 15 points which is nothing to scoff at for a middle-sixer. Despite being tossed around a bit in the lineup, he was still producing very well.)

Reports of exactly what was going on are incredibly difficult to find and are generally tainted by the biases of whoever writes them. It's stated that Haula was, in some way or another, "forced" to play the day after the miscarriage and never given time to emotionally recover from it. He gets scratched a few times (and again, it's a contract year for him, so ice time is exceedingly valuable). There are rumors of a "shouting match" between Haula and head coach Rod Brind'Amour. Supposedly, he's not participating in after-game workouts that Brind'Amour makes the team do (for recovery) and thus "doesn't fit the culture of the team", "has no respect", and "is a jerk". (Which... we'd prefer him do work on the ice, thanks???) Other rumors say he's "bullying" the rookies on the Canes (which have never been corroborated by a reliable source nor been backed up by similar actions anywhere else). Kristen makes vague posts on Instagram that Canes fans interpret as being derogatory towards the team - Reddit widely quotes one as "Don't allow your loyalty to become slavery. If they aren't appreciating what you bring to the table, let them eat alone."

So Haula gets dealt at the deadline to the Panthers as part of a deal for Vincent Trocheck, after playing only 41 games for the Canes. And he journeys around the NHL for a few years after that before finding his home in New Jersey.

Ever since then, the Canes have absolutely haunted Haula. The "1-14" thing Canes fans put on pictures of him? It's because, since leaving the Canes, he's won once at their home rink (PNC)... and lost 14 times. In three consecutive years, his teams have lost to the Canes each time in the playoffs (Predators, Bruins, then Devils, respectively). He's the first player that happened to, where he played for three different teams and each year lost to the same team.

Canes fans boo him every time he touches the ice - for them, he's a traitor that shit-talked Raleigh and the team and backs it up by playing like a goon when he's against them.

So if there's one person on the whole Devils roster who deserves to wear a Canes Suck bracelet, it's Uncle Haula.

Go off, king.

📿👑

~ [ Addendum 1: Pasta ] ~

David Pastrnak, much like Erik Haula, also lost a child - his son died only six days old. I'm sure, when Pasta accidentally ran into Antti Raanta on the ice during the 2022 playoffs, they didn't go on his socials and make disgusting comments about his child's death...

Oh? They did? Well then.

Canes fans will tell you they only had the utmost of respect for Haula during his miscarriage and never used it against him, both during and after his Canes tenure. Somehow, I doubt that.

But maybe that's just me.

~ [ Addendum 2: Signs ] ~

When Canes fans make signs like this about you, it's understandable why you get upset.

The sign reads "It's me. Haula. I'm the problem. It's me. Hi everybody agrees", with cutouts of Haula's former teams' logos pasted on top.

What's so strange is that no Panthers, Bruins, Knights, Predators, or Wild fans seem to have a problem with Haula. It's only the Canes fans calling him "locker room cancer". Jack Hughes disagrees with this assessment.

Coincidentally, the "locker room cancer" charge was also famously said about Dougie Hamilton...

Oh, hey, look, some Canes fans behind the Devils' bench, just behind Jack, made a sign! I'm sure it's nice and respectful :)

Wait, is that Ellen Weinberg-Hughes next to a man whose face is photoshopped to be Sebastian Aho?

The sign says "Jack Your Mom's A Ho", by the way.

And several Canes players signed it.

"Bunch of jerks" is right.

So if you wonder why Jack Hughes beat the shit out of Sebastian Aho... look no further.

~ [ Addendum 3: Culture ] ~

Once again, I point you to this post by eugeniosuarez -

1 is about Jordan Staal, 2 and 3 are about Tony DeAngelo, if you're unsure.

Yeah, I think I see the culture problem here. Just to be clear, this one, right?

Glad we're on the same page 👍

#stereanswers #stereanalysis #stereducation #not your typical analysis but still #uncle haula #erik haula #nj devils #new jersey devils #carolina hurricanes

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invisiblebadword · 5 months

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My Top 10 Video Games

I've decided to put together a list of what are my favourite video games of all time. Its completely subjective, so you WILL disagree, but I just want this to be somewhere on the internet.

First up though I'm gonna post two things:

The Games that were disqualified

The Games that came to mind, but didn't make it into the consideration for the top 10

The Disqualified Section:

The reasons I didn't put these up for consideration is simply that I have played them too recently for me to be sure about them, or that I haven't played them enough yet.

Core Keeper

Deltarune

Lethal Company

Just Shapes & Beats

Metal Hellsinger

Slime Rancher 2

Wuppo

The ones that didn't make the cut:

Games in this section either have something slimy about them, like some glaring issues (like We Happy Few), scummy monetization (Like GTA V), or I was simply already sure that they wouldn't perform well when I was getting to eliminating games for the top 10 (Like Cookie Clicker)

Barotrauma

Brotato

Cookie Clicker

Dead By Daylight

Devour

Doom

The Escapists

Grand Theft Auto V

Helltaker

Hitman 3

I’m on Observation Duty

Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes

Move Or Die

Phasmophobia

Payday 2

Sea of Thieves

Subnautica: Below Zero

Supraland: Six Inches Under

Turmoil

We Happy Few

We Were Here

These aren't all the other games I've played. Just the ones I do still like very much, that do still deserve to be named somewhere.

That being out of the way, here's my Top 10 games:

Number 10:

Undertale

I don't think I have to say a lot about Undertale. Everyone and their religious leaders has at least heard of it, played it, or has been told the story in some other way. A good rule of thumb was, that if a game made me cry I would have to put it up for consideration. This game made me cry. Back when I was in boarding school my shitty laptop couldn't run most games, so I ended up playing through Undertale at least 20 times (I really wanted to see Gaster). It is also one of the few games, whos soundtrack still makes it into a lot of my playlists.

Number 9:

Plants vs. Zombies

I don't know if the game is just that good, or if the nostalgia carries it, but PvZ will always have a place in my heart. It was my "mom, can I have your phone while we wait" game. And when coming back to it years later it still holds up for me. I can't say I'm a huge fan of the rest of the franchise, even though pvz2 has been a good amount of fun. But at that point the monetization was already so horrendous that I didn't sacrifice a thought to it. PvZ however is a delight to come back to. I think the pacing is great, the characters are all funny, and the minigames are a lot of fun (except pogo party. I hate pogo party). Don't even get me started on the soundtrack either. I adore Graze The Roof with my entire being.

Number 8:

Cult Of The Lamb

I tried this game out not that long ago, and what followed was me falling behind on all of my assignments. I am a huge fan of roguelikes, and cotls spin on it made it an instant source of addiction to me. The OST is amazing and prime dnd background music material, and I love the asthetic of eldritch entities combined with cute widdle animals. I've had so much fun with the game, and it somehow managed to never feel stale, something that happened with pretty much all other games on the list at one point or another throughout my playthroughs. If you're a fan of roguelikes I can highly recommend.

Number 7:

Portal

This should be another one of those games that just speaks for itself. Portal is one of the greatest games ever made and that is not an opinion, but an objective fact. While not being as great as its successor, it already innovated so much, and immediately gave GLaDOS so much character, so efficiently. The way it conveys the story of Aperture is amazing, and the gameplay enhances the experience by magnitudes.

Number 6:

Subnautica

I love Subnautica. I don't know how a game manages to look this stunning. My partner loves bioluminescence, and big mushrooms. If that is your cup of tea, then this game is for you. The way it builds horror is magnificent too. Not many games find their horror so naturally. You genuinly feel scared of whatever could be in the depths. I think Below Zero kinda forgot what made the first game so great by relying on small, narrow corridors too much, instead of giving the player the anxiety of being vulnerable from all angles, but subnautica combines the awe inspiring flora and fauna with a constant feeling of lurking danger. It even manages to build a memorable cast of characters without you ever seeing another face. I'm gonna stop myself from rambling further.

Number 5:

Inscryption

I never thought a card game would sweep me off my feet this hard. I love myself a good strategy game, and the way Inscryption rewards you for learning the mechanics of the game feels incredible. It's super creative mechanics like being able to stand up, or making your own death cards aid the game so much too. Not only in gameplay experience, but also in building the many supporting characters, as well as the world in general. Every time something new is introduced it breaks the roof the game has built so far, and it is a delight every time, like all the arg aspects, or the gameplay changing completely, or characters returning, revealing that there is more and more to people you didn't even think had anything behind them. I am being very vague, but that's just because I don't wanna spoiler anything.

Inscryption would've easily made number 3, but there are passages that felt a bit tideous, especially in the middle, but for how short these are, and how exciting the story conveyed within them still is, it still makes the game worth every penny. Towards the end it also absolutely made me cry, so that's something.

Number 4:

Portal 2

I think this is a good point to say: Any game from this point onwards is a serious contender for first place. They're all just this good, and I could never say I like Portal 2 less then third place, for example.

I think Portal 2 shattered my expectations for what games can be. The humor is still one of it's greatest strength, and I almost feel bad not gushing about how amazing the mechanics of both Portal 1 and 2 still are to this day, but somehow the rest of the game manages to overshadow what would otherwise be the greatest aspect of it. All the characters are amazing. You either love them, or love to hate them. From Cave Johnson to the little ball that would later go on to inspire Elon Musk, every character is memorable. God damnit, I will never look at a potato the same, because I played this game.

Not only is it amazing on its own, it is also amazing as a sequal, expanding the world in ways any story teller would dream of. Every little detail feels like there's so much love put into it, and the way all of the story beats are conveyed via some of the most engaging gameplay is amazing.

And I have to stress again, the humor is S++ tier. I will never not find The Part Where He Kills You funny.

Number 3:

Papers Please

I almost feel bad, putting this game so high on the list, because of how simple it is. But god, it delivers. It builds such an engaging story on top of such a simple gameplay loop. And i think the monotony of said gameplay loop is exactly what end up making the story feel so special. By all means, this game should be boring, but the job of working as border control has the fact going for it, that you will meet so many different people, all at varying levels of desperation. Every time you meet a character it feels like an actual person, and every time they plead for you to let them through it feels heartbreaking when you have to send them back. I really can't say that much about Papers Please, especially because I don't wanna spoil anything. It is one of those games you just have to experience. And I highly recommend it. Glory to Arstotzka.

Number 2:

Terraria

There are few games holding as special of a place in my heart as Terraria. Unlike most of the games on this list Terraria doesn't have an amazing story with highly fleshed out characters. At least you don't get that through mere gameplay alone. I know that there is more to it, don't worry, but I can't get into all of that.

Terraria is the first steam game I've ever owned. In a way, it might even be the first game I've ever actually owned, aside from minecraft maybe. Even before I had a computer I played the mobile version, with Ocram and everything. I must've been in 5th grade back then. I ended up getting the game as the Premium edition in a store. I didn't have the money at the time, so a friend lent me his store gift cards. I must still have the collectors cards and poster that came with the game somewhere. There are many anecdoted I have about this game. So there's undeniably a lot of nostalgia fuelling it's place on the list. But god damnit, Terraria deserves it. With the game still being actively updated today it is clear that I am not the only one that loves it this much. Terraria is just one of these games I will always come back to. It will always be special, and I hope that generations in the future, when I'm long gone there will still be people enjoying this piece of history. But torch luck should've never been in the game lol

Quick Intermission

Im gonna take some time now to talk about the contenders that didn't make it in the top 10. I won't say as much about every game though. There are kinda ordered by how much I like them, but rather than a ranking its more like its ordered into vague groups.

Antichamber

I loved playing it. Just a great overall gameplay experience. Very trippy!

The Binding of Isaac

As I said, I love roguelikes. I never got any of the dlc, because money, so it's kinda sad to know so much of the game is paywalled, but seeing just how much they add I don't see it as a huge problem. Really fun game, really great story, will play again (And I will buy the dlc, just not now).

Factorio

Can recommend if you haven't played it already. It's just a very fun base building game. When things work it feels soo rewarding. I just love how the main problem is how to fit things into spaces. That's what makes minecraft redstone so appealing to me.

Spore

Love it. Funny little creatures. Spore is just an overall silly game with a fun gameplay loop.

Superliminal

Again, very trippy. This time it also has a nice story. I adore the setting, and the gameplay mechanics are on the same level as Portal's to me. (I'm sure Stanley Parable would also be in here, but I have yet to play it)

Mortuary Assistant

If you like horror games, this one I can recommend. The scares are awesome, and it somehow has replayability. The animations could be better, but thats whatever. Nothing I would hold against it.

Raft

Raft is absolutely top 10 material. The gameplay is super fun, and the story telling is decent, though it could be better. Especially if you have some friends to play with, you should give this one a try. Too bad they added other people to the game. That kinda ruined the whole vibe for me. I still wanna see the rest of the update though, but my friends got bored of the game. :(

Supraland

Got this one free on Epic Games, and I gotta say, I would pay money for it. Super fun game, super fun characters, and super fun gameplay. As a completionist this game is just like a giant bowl of food, though I am having trouble finding the final treasures, and no matter how hard I try, I can't figure out how to get them. I can't figure out how to look them up either, so I guess ill lever have the 100% :( (Also, the credit song is really fun).

Minecraft

I mean, it had to be in here somewhere. I'm sure if anybody is actually reading this, they might even suspect that it would be Number 1. But no. I love Minecraft, don't get me wrong. There is a reason for why it's so popular. I even have some anecdotes similar to Terraria, like how after buying it, it was just laying on my PC untouched for a year, because 6th grade me didn't know how to install java. But I feel like minecraft very much relies on modding and servers and whatnot. I could always replay vanilla terraria, but I'm kinda done with vanilla minecraft. Feel free to disagree, by any means. At the end of the day, its just 3D Terraria to me /j.

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion

Silly little turnip guy committing silly little crimes. The game is just a lot of humor and its cute af. Just a very good time :)

Fran Bow

I love the Alice in Wonderland horror this game has. The mechanics aid so hard in telling this awesome story with all of its whacky characters. Just something I can recommend.

Slime Rancher

You get to live on a farm, on another planet, and get to goof around with little slimes all day every day. This game is living the dream. I wanna live in the Far Far Range! The supporting characters are also amazing. Love them all.

Stardew Valley

This and the game after are absolutely contenders for the top 10. In my eyes Stardew Valley made it on that list. We should switch to duodecimal so that a top 12 list is more intuitive, because Stardew Valley Deserves to be on it. If you haven't played it, you should! I'm gonna stop myself from trying to explain what makes it so great, because I could never do it justice though.

Celeste

Once again, Celeste is on the list. It should be. I cried. I cried a lot. Celeste is such a great game. The story makes me cry, the characters make me cry, the music makes be cry. I am too trans, not to cry. Play Celeste, if you haven't already. It's also hard as shit though.

Ok, it's time.

My number one game of all time is:

Number 1:

Hypnospace Outlaw

There is a very very good chance you've never heard of this game. Maybe you have though, its hard for me to really tell just how popular it is, or not. It's popular enough for me to have bought a plushy of it. I don't usually buy merch, so thats a big deal. There is a reason I put this game on number 1. Whatever I tell you about the game will not do it justice though. The game is just so human. The characters are all just so great and fleshed out, and believable.

I wish I could play this game blind again, so that I may experience it all over again. But there is no way that anything will be as great as playing it blind. You are tasked with moderating this late 90s alternate version of the internet called hypnospace, and find out aboiut all of the people using it, and maneuvering it like an actual PC, kinda like Welcome to the game, or whatnot. Again, I could never do it justice. You just have to try it out on your own.

The soundtrack is also one of the greatest pieces of art I've found in a game. There are so many songs by so many artists. The humor too. The humor is top notch. Not only in regards to the characters, but the technology as a whole. The references to the real world are awesome, like conspiracies, and viruses like bonzai buddy, edgelords on the internet, and web comics. It all feels so real and alive. Thus, experiencing the story doesn't feel like reading a book, but like actually being part of it all. The fact that your choices actually have an effect on the ending of the game enhances this even further.

Im repeating myself, but I cant stress enough how much I would love to be able to experience this game all over again.

Alright, that's it then. I doubt anyone will read through this. If anything youll probably scroll through and see if your favourite game is on the list. That's fine. I'd do the same, honestly. I just wanted to put this somewhere, to express my love for these games somewhere. I'm happy if you've made it this far. This isn't much more than me rambling on for hours, but I'm glad I put it somewhere. If you have any other games you think are great, feel free to tell me about them. Cya!

#top 10 #top 10 list #gaming #video games #indie games #videogames #videogame #cult of the lamb #hypnospace outlaw #inscryption #papers please #plants vs zombies #portal #portal 2 #subnautica #terraria #undertale

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itsfree2playmandammit · 1 year

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“You don’t screw with the Dojima Family, Dallas.” I hate source filmmaker

#ryu ga gotoku #payday 2 #source filmmaker #they should add eggs in tumblr

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gladoswantscake · 8 months

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youtube

Only took me a few hours to make

#payday #payday 2 #dallas #source filmmaker #sfm #my creation #Youtube

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e3khatena · 6 months

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so whats the deal with overkills the walking dead?

I'm glad you asked! (approx. 2,300 words)

So our story starts during Payday 2's first anniversary, the Fall of 2014. Players had to attain certain community goals to get new things to play with during their first annual Crimefest event, and the last two prizes were secret. They wound up being John Wick as a playable character, and the trailer for a new game Overkill was working on, based in the world of The Walking Dead comics. The premise was simple: it was set in the same part of the world as Payday 2, Washington DC, and would involve players trying to keep themselves and their camp alive during the zombie apocalypse made popular in Robert Kirkman's graphic novels and the AMC TV show. Given the fact that Payday 2 had proven to be a tremendous cultural hit around this time, getting the likes of Giancarlo Esposito and making cameos in the Wick movies at the height of their popularity, and given how at the moment it is very possible to argue that Payday 2 might have sold more copies than Super Mario Brothers 3, it would seem that OTWD was in good hands.

The problem, though, was their CEO. Bo Andersson used pressure he conjured up in Varvtre AB, a holdings company he was on the board of directors for, to become the CEO of Starbreeze when they acquired Overkill Software, the makers of Payday: The Heist and Payday 2. This also moved Bo from a role within the games industry alongside his brother to being his brother's superior and putting him in a firmly business role. This was good for Bo, because it would allow him to scrape capital from Overkill on their pursuit into superstardom to fund his own dream project: Storm.

Storm was a concept that Bo had been working on since 2008, the idea of bringing virtual reality back from being a curious novelty we played with in the 1990s into a mainstream competitive eSport. Players would wear tactical vests with computers built into them and a 5K resolution HMD that Acer would develop with the aid of Starbreeze in a massive bespoke arena, and using a combination of LIDAR scanning, realtime texture mapping, and the Valhalla game engine Starbreeze paid $8 million for, their physical arena would turn into a sci-fi deathmatch where players would cooperate to eliminate the enemy team and seek victory.

Bo Andersson was paying tens of millions of dollars to invent Laser Tag.

But how does this tie into The Walking Dead? Well, as a proof of concept, the work that Overkill had done in their in-house game engine, Diesel 2.0, would be ported into Valhalla to bring Overkill's The Walking Dead to life. Overkill's employees had long complained that Diesel could not compete visually, and even incorporating proper normal maps and bumping up the texture quality could not shake the appearance of a Source Engine or early Unreal 3 title. Despite releasing in 2013 and with the game now moving into 2016, onto the 8th generation of consoles, Payday 2 was not a looker and Overkill's The Walking Dead faced the same fate.

The problem, though, is that Bo Andersson bought the Valhalla Engine, which was being designed for VR first and foremost, much too early. The engine was literally incomplete, and the programmers had to write tools for the engine before they could write any code for the game itself. After nearly a year of work, they did bring Valhalla into a usable state, and used its VR prowess to power Payday 2's VR version. Bo also proposed a VR demo of Overkill's The Walking Dead to be hosted in Dubai, at VR Park (now titled PlayDXB), to demonstrate the game, the headset, and the VR technology to Middle Eastern investors who could free Bo from the shackles of Scandinavian game development and make him the worldwide name in VR. This delayed their actual non-VR Walking Dead game, which had serious funding from Skybound Entertainment and Robert Kirkman, past its intended 2016 street date. The game was nowhere near finished as Overkill staff were pulled back and forth to so many different projects within the studio. They received an extension to their deadline, Fall 2017, and work continued on the Valhalla Engine and the VR demo.

Fast forward another year. Starbreeze puts out Raid: World War II, a Diesel 2.0 title in which four players steal from the Nazis in almost exactly same manner as in Payday 2, starring John Cleese as the handler for the crew, and some trailers commissioned for their Walking Dead game using virtually zero actual in-game assets, and Skybound makes them an ultimatum: if the game is not out by November 2018, then they lose the rights to the license. They have wasted the rights holder's time and money for too long, and the project is dragging its heels with a CEO seeing it as a low priority to get their contractually-obligated co-op FPS for PCs and consoles out versus his ambitions of filling an entire space in Dubai with his name, his brand. Overkill developers, who had been clamoring for years to use an actual engine that makes sense for FPSes, finally get their wish, and Bo Andersson invests in commercial licenses for Unreal Engine 4. The problem now, though, is that the staff have a year to make the game in Unreal, with the caveat that they have zero experience in the engine. If they had made this move two years ago, they'd have the time to commit to learning the ins and outs, but they don't.

Overkill goes into crunch, with staff sleeping in the offices and working 100-hour weeks to learn Unreal and take what the documentation and tutorials offer them and implement it into their Walking Dead title, reverse-engineering the concepts they had implemented into the Diesel and Valhalla versions of the game and dropping them into Unreal. Bo Andersson, all the while, is going on vacations and not coming in on the regular, spending his time playing zombie games for inspiration and coming to the staff with his own ideas for the game based on them. Glory Kills, Special Infected, robust base maintenance mechanics and the ability to command teams of non-player survivors on missions all wound up in the game with little actual regard for how these pieces fit together. By the time that he realized he should be more actively hands-on, he only had a scant few months to spend with the staff at the final mad dash to make a playable product. The game was playable at E3, with two demo levels, and one of them playtested so poorly that the staff had to pull it from the rotation, but when Bo heard this feedback he would not tell his staff. He told them the game was testing great at E3, that people loved it.

Overkill's The Walking Dead released on the 7th of November, 2018, a week after Payday 2 ended support by letting players kill fallen angels and solve a giant puzzle wheel about the in-game lore in order to turn Bain, the player's main contact, into the US President via a body-swapping artifact used by the ancient kings of Kataru, who were gifted immortality at the same time common man was gifted the knowledge of good and evil at the Garden of Eden. While the clown-themed robbery game ended on a confusing note, Overkill's The Walking Dead was getting started to a whole heap of roughness. The game's combat was frustrating, with hordes of walkers that had to be put down one clumsy charged melee swing at a time and human enemies who fired off AKMs and MP5s with reckless abandon. Their noise would draw hordes, which would need to be contended with via your own noise, as dealing with a few dozen enemies with melee combat was awkward and difficult.

Being grappled by a zombie cost a health bar and a half in a game where your starting character had on average four healthbars to their name, and the underlying gameplay, despite being completely linear missions in level and objective design, were just Payday heists at the end of the day. Hell or High Water involved you raiding a camp owned by The Family, an antagonistic gang your camp is at war with, and stealing their supplies. In turn, they arrive at your camp and you kill five waves of them in Worse Than Walkers, in a move no different than Payday 2's Safe House Raid mission, with no zombies in sight. The camp-building mechanics, which were tied to player level and their ability to tend to the needs of their workers, were a confusing mess of UI elements that did not mesh together, and all weapons were earned in a gachapon-style case system and would degrade over time, requiring the player unjam them, fix them with the supplies they need to keep camp morale up, or watch them fall into disrepair. There was also no tutorial mission, with the game opening with The First Shot, the E3 demo mission that tested so poorly they stopped running it.

Overkill's The Walking Dead performed poorly, both critically and commercially, and Starbreeze went right into damage control. The game's high price tag to low gameplay ratio was combatted with a $30 version that required paying for the missions $60 players got for free. Season 2 went into production very quickly, with fixes to the base game, new weapons, and new survivors being promised within the coming months. Unfortunately, this was too little, too late, as Skybound issued a cease and desist to their business partner after just three months of sale, and by February 2019, Overkill's The Walking Dead was just as much a corpse as the undead shamblers present in the video games.

Perhaps what sealed the fate of the game wasn't its overall quality, as The Walking Dead is home to a large number of subpar games, but its tone and gameplay. Overkill's The Walking Dead is a very staunchly libertarian take on the franchise, pitting the player with the idea that they are to be a colonizing force, destroying an antagonistic camp and treating the other people just trying to survive as cannon fodder not unlike if they were just walkers with guns. This is no surprise given another face at Overkill, executive producer Almir Listo, having a robust fascination with libertarianism and the cult of personality that surrounded fringe Right-wing groups. Almir himself is not a conservative, but he has proven time and time again that he thinks the way Donald Trump talks is funny and has an interest in American conservative viewpoints and conspiracies as an outsider looking in, likely not helped by an unnamed comics writer taking over Payday 2 in its final year to turn the game about robbing banks into one with an ancient conspiracy and Nephilim to mow down with your MG42 or M16.

The Walking Dead is a story about its people and how they're shaped by the conflict, by the apocalypse that surrounds them, and while Kirkman expressed early interest in the sound-based horde gameplay encouraging quiet takedowns and swift, accurate gunplay, it is very possible that the idea of not just a bad Walking Dead game, but a bad Walking Dead game from a popular studio that fundamentally misunderstands the world of The Walking Dead and needs to fall back on generic bandits and raiders to fill its spaces a la Bethesda's open world titles was a bad look. We'll never know for certain, though, as the game has been pulled from sale for ages.

But this brings us to sometime last week. September 21st marked the launch of Starbreeze Studios' (formerly Overkill Software's) Payday 3. The game features a lot of the stuff they had worked on for The Walking Dead (weapon models, a rework to the Shield enemy, armor working exactly like health in OTWD) but also a ton of its own ideas, and in general the gameplay is very solid. The issue, though, is the progression and a number of bugs that hamper the experience, alongside requiring a Starbreeze Nebula account and online connection to play, with no offline mode to speak of, which caused problems when the servers for the game were down for its first three days after launch. Starbreeze promised a patch was coming shortly thereafter, but on October 21st, a month after the game released, someone with ties to Starbreeze, fed up with the Starbreeze Nebula account requirement and persistent Internet connection to play a game with obvious issues and no Patch 1 release date in sight, released the final build of Overkill's The Walking Dead. This featured a proper tutorial, made the original The First Shot into an optional random encounter a player could take on for additional resources, a slew of new weapons, a wandering trader who could sell you blueprints to the DLC's guns, and the rest of Season 2's missions. The leaked build is not playable online but is DRM-free, running just fine completely offline and preserving the game for future generations to point and laugh at, albeit without any help to ease the difficulty for a game that expected four human players at a time.

Perhaps the weirdest part of the leak is that it brought out a handful of fans from the woodwork who view Overkill's The Walking Dead as an underrated gem buried before it could truly shine, individuals who feel the game could be one of the studio's best with enough polish, and as a result Robert Kirkman has been once again inundated with people asking about the now five year-old game, hoping to give it another chance. I, personally, feel that the clumsy pacing, questionable storyline bearing little similarities to the graphic novels it's based on, and the over-reliance on generic bandits voiced by Payday regulars Josh Lenn and Joseph Balderrama prevent the game from being anything but a really weird footnote in a company's confusing, convoluted history.

#overkill #starbreeze #payday #the walking dead #gaming

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