Esports

Fishing for pre-feedback, and how it hurts your product

Posted by Matt Demers on

Today I’d like to start a series of posts where I examine some of my pet peeves when it comes to content creation. These posts will attempt to deconstruct bad habits and common mistakes I see made, as well as provide decent reasoning for thinking them a problem.

As a disclaimer:

This article is not based off of anyone specific, nor is it meant to be passive-aggressive. This is more to help explain my methodology when it comes to making content, and pass on some of the stuff I’ve had to learn the hard way.

I’ve been guilty of every point I’m about to write about in the past; all I can say is that I’ve come to view them as mistakes.

Part 1: Stop fishing for pre-feedback

Fishing for pre-feedback occurs when you make a post about something you’d like to do in the future with the intention of seeing if “anyone would read/watch it.”

Here’s the thing: asking that question hobbles you in a number of way that outweighs the focus group testing that you think you’re doing.

For starters, it makes you look like you aren’t confident in your own product. No matter what your level of success it, your direction should be your own. You should know whether something is going to be received well or not – if it’s something that won’t be, but you want to do it anyway, response should not dictate whether you take the plunge.

Putting what you do in the hands of random people on Twitter means you are sacrificing your identity to those who can be fickle, misguided or selfish. In short, you need to be doing this for you as much as you’re doing this for them, because the passion you bring to your project bleeds into it. Something created with interest and drive will turn out better than content that isn’t.

It also causes a problem where it creates expectation in the finished product. As many of us know, starting something new is a process of compromise: we have a vision in our heads, but sometimes you need to be able to change things as needed.

For example, if I asked my Twitter following if anyone would like the concept for BetterDota, there’s a good chance that some people would respond positively. However, if I over-promised and wasn’t able to deliver, people would remember.

Originally, BetterDota was going to be a lot more ambitious, and only telling a select few people of my idea allowed me to gauge interest and tweak it when I realized that five videos a week would be a little too much work.

Sometimes, privacy is project planning is liberating, because if you’re going to mess up or drastically alter an idea, doing it without people noticing allows you to lose fear associated with trying new things. It allows you to eventually launch your product with confidence, knowing it’s something that you can handle because you’ve set the terms and experimented.

In short: do something because you want to do it, not because other people are hyped for it. When you eventually do make your idea public, having something tangible to present rather than just an idea creates a much better first impression. I can tell you from experience: having someone ask what happened to a project you hyped up and then abandoned sucks.

Lastly, and perhaps most dangerously, when you fish for pre-feedback you run the risk of satisfying your ego to the point where the work never gets started.

Many writing teachers I’ve had fight over the idea of whether telling an audience about an idea is a good thing or a bad thing: on one hand, you become committed/responsible once that idea is in public, but on the other, your ego can get stroked enough to kill the drive to actually follow through. It’s important to remember that your audience always remembers being lied to: they will likely only stand this a couple times before calling you out on it.

You also owe it to yourself to knuckle down, create, and then release. You owe it to yourself to be consistent, improve yourself, and earn that praise. It builds resilience, habit, and an organic audience.

While your self-worth should never be determined by the amount of views or follows you get, your brand and progress are built with shipped products, not ideas. Ideas count for nothing if they don’t get made.

Part of building a brand and respect as a creator is doing the leg work, having a vision, putting something out there to getting torn apart, and then doing — like DJ Khaled says so eloquently — another one.

Working in eSports is a grind, and as gamers, we know that experience well. There is a lot of work that will never be seen by a larger audience, and you will rarely get a pat on the back for the time spent learning, experimenting and failing.

However, I can assure you that failing fast and failing often allows you to truly get a feel for your identity and what sets you apart from other content creators. It keeps you from becoming a copy of someone whose success you envy, but will never achieve yourself. It keeps you from becoming a meme machine Facebook Page that rips peoples’ stuff off for hits.

It builds a pride and confidence that allows you to stop caring about what other people think, which is more than a high school platitude: it is probably the single most important quality to have in terms of maintaining motivation, drive and mental health.

The grind makes you stronger. Seeing an idea you had take off is one of the best feelings in the world.

However, half-assing it (or let’s be real, not trying at all) means you’re admitting that you don’t deserve that success in the first place.

Get out there, put your head down, and work.

Matt Demers has written about eSports since 2012. You’ll be able to find another instalment in this series soon — and yes, it will get made. Follow him on Twitter.

The Media

Writers, here’s why you should learn Markdown

Posted by Matt Demers on

As a writer, I’ve become painfully aware that we don’t get many “toys.” Artists have stores devoted to different tools of their trade, while we have… keyboards — maybe some fancy notebooks.

Over the past couple years I’ve come to appreciate Markdown as something that makes my writing more efficient and better for the web. Markdown is a language that parses formatting a lot easier, and makes it simpler to type in code.

Why is this important, you might ask?

Let’s put it this way: the less time you have to worry about how a post is going to look on a site when you’re done with it, the more time you have to work on actually relevant things. Markdown lets you write in plain text to avoid all the stupidity that comes from copy/pasting from a Word or Google Docs document, and lets you control exactly what shows up while being easier to type than HTML.

The other thing about Markdown is that if you use Reddit, you’ve already used it: apart from some syntax that Reddit doesn’t like (namely, inline images), Markdown is the main tool for post formatting.

I simply like it because it minimizes the amount of keystrokes you need to do something, and because it allows me to make posts with confidence, instead of needing to worry about what will copy over.

If you want to make text bold in Markdown, you would surround that texts with two asterisks on either side. In HTML, you would need to type out <strong> tags on each side, and remember to close. Four keystrokes for Markdown (all the same key) versus 17 for HTML.

**Bold text**
vs
<strong>Bold text</strong>

Simple, right?

This gets even better when you either work with a CMS (like Anchor, which this blog uses) that supports Markdown; since the syntax is easy to remember, you can craft a whole post in Notepad and then just copy-paste it over. On CMS’ like WordPress, there are tools (like Showdown & Highlight) that will quickly convert your Markdown to crisp, clean HTML, so you can post it to the source.

The above paragraph, in Markdown.

Limitations

Like any other system, there are going to be some drawbacks with Markdown. The main things for me are images and HTML options.

Images, since they aren’t being integrated into your CMS, need to be added in WordPress, or hosted somewhere beforehand. Since Anchor’s image system doesn’t work very well, I host all the images for this blog on Imgur and reference them with Markdown. However, because of the next problem, I need to make sure they’re the exact dimensions to show up properly on the blog.

HTML options like <a href="http://google.com/" target="blank"></a> or <img src="http://i.imgur.com/008NFf8.gif" width="100%"></img> aren’t possible in Markdown, so you need to go in and manually do them. It’s nice, because any HTML you add to a Markdown document will be translated as normal, but if you’re counting on your CMS to do this stuff for you, you may have to do some memorization.

These shortcomings don’t really keep me from writing every post I do in Markdown, because there’s just a good feeling in knowing that what you write down is what’s going to show up. If you press Enter twice to get to a new paragraph, you will know that it will be surrounded by the proper <p> tags, instead of two <br />‘s.

While that last bit sounds ultra nitpicky, it’s something that tends to matter when you want your blog or site to look consistent and work across multiple platforms.

I’m a big fan of Tinyletter for newsletters, and one of the things a friend brought up to me was that the editor was absolutely terrible for inputting text. Every “Enter” press would be a line break, not a new paragraph, and it could break depending on the platform viewed. With Markdown, I never have to worry about how bad a CMS’ editor is, as long as I can paste HTML somewhere.

This kind of freedom helps so much when it comes to knowing I can write anywhere, and have what I format carry over with no questions asked.

If you’re a writer or blogger, I really urge you to learn Markdown. It will speed up your writing, and give you a degree of control that you probably never knew you valued until it’s taken away. Go nuts.

Word editors that support Markdown:

MarkdownPad is a free Windows program that I use and love. The paid version will even upload images to Imgur for you and fetch the link to use automatically.

Byword for OSX ($5.99) does many of the same things as MarkdownPad, but allows for greater syncing with Dropbox.

Markdown support can be added to Sublime Text for people who use that in their day-to-day.

Showdown & Highlight is a simple Javascript port of Markdown, and is amazing for beginners because the right pane can show you a cheat sheet, a preview of what your text looks like, or the HTML code for easy copy/pasting. Great for converting Markdown to HTML for your blog, if nothing else; doesn’t allow saving, though.

Dillinger.io takes elements of Showdown & Highlight and allows you to save/sync with Dropbox, which might be useful for people on the go. A bit more difficult to get the HTML conversion of a post, though, so I don’t really like it.

If you liked this guide, consider following me on Twitch, YouTube and Twitter. Cheers!

Esports

The real winners of The Summit 4: Team OG

Posted by Matt Demers on

Like many Dota fans, I had the chance to watch The Summit 4 this past week. The Summit, produced by studio Beyond the Summit, tends to be a bit of a gift to the community in the sense that it’s a casual environment for pros to compete with eachother while interacting with the audience through commentary. Whether they take that chance, though, depends on them.

I had the chance to go to The Summit 3 back in May of this year, and had a great experience. However, I noticed that there were definitely a couple different types of pros: some were content to hang around the house, while some decided to leave for the hotel immediately after winning or losing their sets.

Even though Evil Geniuses won The Summit 4, and Team Secret won The Summit 3, I believe that the true winners are the ones who take the time to put in the extra hours in a comfortable, inviting setting to increase their presence on camera.

If we go by that metric, I think the real winners of The Summit 4 were Team OG.

A bit of history: Team OG were formerly (monkey) Business, a Western team formed in August 2015 after The International 5. Johan “BigDaddy” Sundstein reunited with former Fnatic teammate Tal “Fly” Aizik, who competed with David “MoonMeander” Tan with compLexity Gaming at TI. Andreas “Cr1t-” Franck Nielsen was picked up after ping-ponging around multiple mid-level European teams, and Amer “Miracle-” al-Barqawi brought the hype and uncertainty that comes with being a ladder star, but having relatively low competitive experience.

Considering the calamity that comes with the post-TI atmosphere, I was ready to see (monkey) Business become another team that tried something new, then broke up when the going got tough. BigDaddy had had a middling time with Cloud9 at TI, and his shift back to the mid lane role that he excelled at in Heroes of Newerth was an uncertainty. Fly and Moon’s TI went better than most people expected, but coL crumbled in the lower bracket. Cr1t- and Miracle- were unknown factors, and could easily be duds.

As with most things in these cases, I was pretty happy to be wrong.

It turns out that in esports it’s standard for the best orgs to own the rights to the players they contract. There’s so little transparency, if any, between the players and the organization. Players are often never consulted on what brands they will be promoting. They’re never included in decision making.

This is why we’re launching OG.

(monkey) Business turned into Team OG at the end of October. They announced that they would be “bankrolled” by Hitbox.tv, a Twitch.tv competitor that I primarily know as where games Twitch doesn’t like go to stream. Games like Hatred (violence porn), Huniepop (porn porn) or Project M (dubious legality) find homes and fans on Hitbox, and while the viewer numbers rarely compare to Twitch, the company seems principled and committed to getting better; hell, they even have 4K streaming now (RIP bandwidth).

Team OG joining Hitbox meant that they would be given a degree of autonomy, but would still be leashed to streaming on the platform. For many people reading this, you know that similar arrangements rarely work out for the teams involved unless they receive a large enough contract amount to offset the lower discovery rate and the “inconvenience” of an audience having to leave Twitch.

Ironically, BigDaddy was involved in a similar agreement when he was part of Fnatic, as he was obligated to stream on Azubu. His once-high stream numbers dwindled without the same exposure, and his partnership with them ended when he left Fnatic; the team have since returned to Twitch. [Disclosure: I worked at Azubu as a contract content writer during the time Fnatic were at the company. I had no interaction with the team during that time.]

Many of us know that the digital consumer can be finicky and lazy; if they can’t consume content in a way they’re used to, it can be difficult to convince them to change venues or put in extra work to find the same content. OG ran a huge risk in going to Hitbox: would their audiences follow them? Would they even have audiences at all?

The Summit 4 banner

This brings us back to The Summit.

Team OG took some initiative at the event, casting multiple games from the couch when they probably could have spent the time preparing for their matches. The matches went so well that many Reddit threads and social media matches praised them, asking for more. Beyond the Summit must have liked the experience, because they actually labelled the games they cast as “OG Casts,” like the video below.

In the casts, the players showed both their expertise and their personality, which is essential for any eSports player wanting to expand their audience. Those two facets of a player are main drivers in follows, engagement, and spending: you either think the player is amazing at the game they play, or you think they’re entertaining as hell.

For Team OG, this is absolutely crucial in their stage of development, because if they want to keep control of their brand, they need to be able to have numbers that bring leverage. I didn’t have the foresight to track numbers from before the event, but I can only imagine how much their personal Twitter numbers shot up during that time.

We all want to have more control over the content we put out. We love streaming and see it as by far one of the most important ways for us to kick back with our fans and soak up the DOTA2 universe. The guys at Hitbox believe in making sure players are on equal footing with the organization; they will continue to guide, sponsor, and help us every step of the way.They’ve been incredible to work with in getting us here. Go check out Hitbox.tv, register and prepare your bodies for our streams.

Looking at the team on Twitter, it’s clear which players have the bigger following: Fly and BigDaddy have momentum from their time on Fnatic, a huge name in eSports in general.

  • BigDaddy – 85.8k
  • Fly – 36.6k
  • Moon – 22.2k
  • Miracle- – 18.3k
  • Cr1t- – 14.2k

However, I can imagine that both Cr1t- and Moon got a big boost from this event, as they spent their fair share of time on the couch. Fly got a lot of positive feedback from being the “straight man” to counteract jokers, which is a great position to be in: like the boy bands of the late 90s, having a social niche helps cater to the individual tastes of fans, but it doesn’t matter at all if you aren’t trying.

OG may have won the Frankfurt Major, but the team stands to lose a lot of momentum if they can’t keep their winning ways up. Even worse, if one member of the team stands out in a specific way, they risk getting picked up by a team with a bigger budget. Team OG’s strength is in their unity for the moment, and being able to give themselves an injection of fan support is crucial to their continued success.

Being able to show initiative in investing in a team’s stability is a good sign for a brand; while I doubt they all had a meeting and said “we’re going to try to be on the couch as much as possible,” it does nothing but good things to put forth the effort.

Speaking a little to other teams, I really hope that more recognize that this kind of interaction should be part of their job. The gameplay is the core foundation, sure, but the fan support is the reinforcement and safety net. If you suddenly get injured, kicked, or your results fade, having a secondary form of support (the entertainment) means that you will be able to try to fix your problems in a more comfortable environment with less pressure.

This isn’t to say that a team should get too comfortable, but knowing that you’ll be able to keep the lights on while you grind your way back to the top definitely removes a lot of stress.

So congrats, OG. I hope you’ll be around for the next Summit, and that your player-led focus works. God knows we could use some new variance in the way organizations are run.

Matt Demers writes about eSports from Toronto, Canada, and catalogues his attempts to improve at Dota at BetterDota.com. Check it out, and subscribe to his newsletter if you like his writing.

Video Games

First impressions: Xenoblade Chronicles X

Posted by Matt Demers on

Note: the gfys in this post are bugged due to something on the end of Gfycat. They should display at the proper crop after a loop or two.

I’m likely going to be doing a video on this later, but I thought I’d write down a couple thoughts on Xenoblade Chronicles X, since I picked it up yesterday.

So far, I’ve played four hours of the game and gotten past the first few story missions. I’ve just unlocked the main “go off and have fun on your own” portion of the game, where it lets you pick the main story back up at your leisure. It’s also just opened up the ability to do co-op missions with friends, so I’m about to dive into the meat of it.

After going through the character select screen, I basically tried to make my guy look un-anime as possible. I was a little disappointed to find out that our protagonist is silent, but I’m starting to enjoy his ugly mug.

If you’ve played the first Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii, you’ll know that a large part of the game is the expansive environments that feel alive. This is the Gaur Plains/Bionis’ Leg intro from that title:

The same thing exists in Xenoblade Chronicles X, but things have been enhanced due to a greater draw distance and detail that the WiiU can provide. To be honest, I’m not going to hide that the WiiU is very underpowered compared to the other consoles in its generation, but at the same time I haven’t experienced any major slowdown when viewing scenes like this:

Xenoblade also boasts a “if you can see it, you can go there” system, which I haven’t quite had a chance to explore yet. This kind of exploration is a huge contributor to my enjoyment of JRPGs, as Dragon Quest VIII has a similar system and I really enjoyed that game.

While I haven’t got any of the Gundams/Skells that the cover of the games boasts, travel has been great in the sense that you can sprint without any repercussions and jump around like Spider-man due to the (presumably) lower gravity of the planet Mira. This makes traversing around the map really fun, and the speed at which you can do it, combined with the awesome vistas, gives me a number of moments where the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

This article seems a little overly-praising so far, but while streaming there were a number of moments I noticed where I was genuinely grinning ear-to-ear. I know that sounds a bit corny, but I need to highlight how absolutely rare that is with AAA titles for me these days.

I feel like I’ve fallen out of a lot of mainstream games because they just do nothing for me. There’s no sense of wonder or catching me unaware: either I know pretty much what the game has to offer, or the premise doesn’t interest me to the point I’m cool about missing out.

However, Xenoblade Chronicles X surprised me because I expected some kind of trashy anime of a JRPG. The writing is surprisingly funny and sharp at times, and the voiced characters have a decent enough cast behind them that they aren’t reduced to blob stereotypes that you’d find in a hastily-translated English offering.

The character of Lin looks like someone I would dislike a lot in a video game. As a 26-year-old dude who isn’t a complete weeb, you’d have to forgive my first negative impression:

However, despite her being a huge ball of sometimes-annoying pep, her lines have been delivered in such a way that she seems to have way more personality than a typical demure little-sister stereotype. When I figured this out I was so happy to be wrong about my impression, because it means I wouldn’t be spending the game wishing she wasn’t there.

When you can immerse yourself in all of the game, it makes it so much better than clawing through parts you hate just to get to a part you actually want to play.

Perhaps what I’m looking forward to most is the massive amount of distractions that the game seems to have set up. Expanding the map requires finding sites to bury probes in, which in turn look to make hunting monsters and mining that much easier. As someone who loves the exploration/climbing sections the Assassin’s Creed franchise has you do to expand the map, I can see this inflating my play time considerably.

It looks like Monolith Software has set up for players to experience a “single player MMO” with a lot of side elements that involve other players in small ways, like contributing to daily rewards or co-op quests. As someone who doesn’t have enough time to dive into an MMO proper, I’m definitely excited to give Xenoblade a ton of my attention.

I’ll likely be doing a video about my thoughts on this game as I get deeper into it, but for now, I’ll be happy to experience more moments like finding this huge-ass monster. I just wonder how long it’ll be before I can take it down.

Matt Demers is a Toronto writer who enjoys eSports, hip-hop and tea. You can follow him on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Twitch.

Broadcasting/Video Games

Tutorial: Free telestrator for Open Broadcaster Software

Posted by Matt Demers on

One system I’ve definitely wanted to use in analysis is the telestrator, or video marker. For those not familiar with the term, it’s what sportscasters will use to take a free-frame of an instant replay and draw own it. We’ve seen it used by Riot Games and other eSports companies as part of a smart TV, but that can be expensive: I wanted to try to find something free and usable in a home/casual environment.

The big problem is usually making sure what you draw is visible to streaming/recording; usually, these type of programs will project a drawable layer on top of whatever you’re annotating, and sometimes, depending on the capture, this can be hidden.

I’ve found ZoomIt, a freeware program, that works with Open Broadcaster Software as long as certain conditions are met. Here’s how I got it working for my Dota analysis on Windows 7:

Step 1: Download ZoomIt

ZoomIt is a freeware program created by Mark Russinovich. You can download it here on its home site, or on the mirror I made on Mega.nz.

After installing it, you should see a window like this.

What you’re looking for is under the Draw tab. I have the hotkey set to Ctrl + 3.

From here, any time you hit Ctrl + 3, the game or window will freeze, and your cursor will turn into a drawing cursor. You can change the colour of the marker by pressing the “O”, “Y”, “R”, “B”, “G” or “P” keys on your keyboard to change to orange, yellow, red, blue, green or pink, respectively.

You can then draw on whatever you want to show off. You can hold down shift while drawing to draw a straight line, and hit ESC to erase what you’ve drawn. Hold down CTRL and scroll up or down on your mousewheel to increase or decrease the width of the brush. Press T and type in order to get text.

ZoomIt essentially lives in your taskbar minimized, like similar screenshotting programs like Puush. I usually close it when it’s not needed, as the hotkeys tend to conflict with others.

Step 2: Set up Open Broadcaster Software

OBS is a software that lets you capture multiple elements and arrange them for streaming or recording. I’m assuming that you know how to use it already, as there are multiple other tutorials for setting it up.

However, the important thing here is that whatever game you are running will need to run and be captured in windowed mode. This includes in OBS, where you will add a source for “Window Capture”, not “Game Capture.” The good thing about this is that if it’s scaled properly, most people won’t know the difference, as it usually captures the Inner Window by default.

This is because when the game is in Fullscreen or Windowed Borderless mode, the game gives priority to the cursor as it behaves inside the game. However, when in Windowed mode, it allows for a greater degree of control by outside forces like ZoomIt; when you trigger your Draw command, the game will freeze and continue in the background. When you hit ESC after drawing, the game will go back to “live.”

This process is likely not to work for console games streamed via capture cards, as those are piped in as separate sources to your PC, not as a window that’s influenced by the Windows OS. This system would likely work on emulators, but for console play you would likely need to have recorded videos.

2017 Update: This method doesn’t seem to work on certain games when it comes to Window Capture; it WILL work on Display Capture, which means you can use it for YouTube/VLC.  Might just be a Windows 10 thing, so it’s kind of up to you to see if it works for you.

Step 3: Workflow for Replay Analysis

In games with replay systems like Dota 2 or Starcraft, or with videos like YouTube or VLC, the standard workflow is to pause the game where you want to annotate. Then you would draw, explain your analysis, clear the drawings with ESC, then unpause the replay/video and continue on.

Note: I generally recommend using VLC as a video player for VOD analysis without a replay system, as you can hit the “E” key on your keyboard to advance the video by one frame to the future. This is an improvement over loading videos up on YouTube, as they tend to lack the fine frame-by-frame control that is often necessary.

By streaming this sequence with OBS, you will be able to provide analysis of moments to your audience in either a live setting or recording for local editing.

Hopefully, this will allow for a more easy jumping-on point for those of us who want to analyze both pro and personal play. By using free tools like OBS and ZoomIt, the barrier to creating broadcasts with value to the viewer should be smaller.

 

If you liked this guide, consider following me on Twitch, YouTube and Twitter. Cheers!

Video Games

On the (possibly grim) future of Overwatch

Posted by Matt Demers on

Blizzard’s FPS title Overwatch is probably one of the most hyped titles this year due to a couple different factors:

  • Vibrant characters give personalities for players to gravitate towards
  • MOBA-like mechanics mean that there are cool things for players to do besides aim and shoot well
  • People saw the success that first movers on Hearthstone were able to get with streaming and eSports

Naturally, this led to a bit of a gold rush and disappointment when Blizzard first handed out closed beta keys. Targeting streamers and YouTubers, the focus on marketing left a bad taste in a lot of peoples’ mouths, but this past weekend Blizzard opened up a stress test to a larger amount of applicants.

While not everyone got in who wanted a key, I did.

Basically I spent five hours with a group of five other players in a Skype channel playing in a fully-stacked group. Here’s what I found:

Learning is easy

Blizzard has learned from the design of Team Fortress 2 in the sense that there are a lot of prompts to do things in order to limit the amount of learning that needs to be done beforehand and the information that needs to be remembered.

Routes to attack and defend are highlighted on the ground before the map starts, giving people a chance to see where enemies might come from. This is great when learning new maps, as you need to be able to move between points of interest at a moment’s notice. I found that playing as a Defender meant that I needed to go through all areas of the map from the initial spawn, giving me a chance to familiarize myself with where I’d eventually be falling back to.

Things like hovering icons on the UI let you know where important objectives are, and a flashing marker on respawn re-contextualizes where your current objective is as a gentle reminder. I liked this because the last thing I wanted to think was “what am I supposed to be doing right now?” when winning or losing the map could be on the line.

A quick hit of the F1 key also gave me a screen that showed me my key bindings and the skills assigned to them. This was great for learning new heroes easily; I also loved how when you died to a hero the game gave you tips on your death screen for beating them next time. Getting mowed down by a hero who could turn into a stationary turret prompted a reminder that that hero can’t turn 360 degrees, meaning he could be flanked.

The game also reminds you when your composition of heroes lacks a certain role, meaning that you (in theory) won’t be completely steamrolled because you won’t have a tank.

All in all this is really important from a design perspective, because Blizzard wants to be able to introduce new and casual players to a traditionally unforgiving gametype in an FPS. The last thing they want to happen is for someone to balk at the amount of learning to do when starting up, or dismissing a good opponent as “cheap” and not booting the game up again.

Teamwork is important

I probably had the best time with Overwatch due to the fact I was playing with five other competent FPS gamers. I cannot imagine the chaos of solo queue, and preferably, I never want to.

Being able to co-ordinate class balance is amazing, because I never ran into the Team Fortress 2 problem of five people wanting to play Sniper and no one claiming Medic. Sure, the opening few games were just people trying out a bunch of classes, but once people found their comfort zones we actually went on a fairly huge streak due to being organized.

Having at least one healer is so essential due to the length of spawn times and the travel time getting back to the main warzone. Tanks soak damage and often have valuable disruption abilities that let damage dealers or assassins to work. Even snipers have a role due to Widowmaker’s completely broken Infra-vision ultimate that lets you see a red outline of all alive opponents for a short time.

I can see this game being similar to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive where communication is essential, but for a different way. You need to be able to adapt to information on the fly and feed it to teammates who may not be in the know. Things like being the only one to notice that someone snuck behind us to capture the point directs the whole ship to success.

Like I said, I did not spend any time in solo queue, and sadly I ran into a friend as an opponent in a match who was doing so. We steamrolled them particularly badly, mostly because we could co-ordinate mass revives, pushes and defenses where they couldn’t.

Depth is needed

The one thing that worries me about Overwatch is that need to balance the new player’s experience with the ability to actually have long-term fun. Despite 21 heroes, I feel like there will be a tier list that develops soon enough, and optimization is a quick way to kill the experimentation that lengthens a game’s life.

I can hear it now: “Why did you pick Reaper when McCree is so much better? We would have won if you had picked Mercy, she’s so OP right now.”

I want to see more game types, more map designs that favor multiple approaches, and strategies that benefit from having a distinct hero composition. That’s the kind of depth you usually see from a MOBA like League of Legends or Dota 2: creative risk is rewarded.

Right now, I can see Overwatch running into a pitfall where as new heroes get released, they will either succumb to the same MOBA power creep problem (where old heroes are not adapted to new playstyles, and fall out of favor) or maps will become painfully exploited as new mechanics are introduced for which they were not originally designed.

In trying to combine a FPS base with MOBA elements, Blizzard may have introduced themselves to a combination of problems inherent to both genres, as well. I hope they have the talent on hand to recognize and fix those problems.

I had fun with Overwatch, but with a $40+ price tag without the promise of free map packs or modding tools, I don’t see myself investing into it as heavily as if it were free-to-play. I do not have faith in Blizzard to not charge high prices for new heroes like Heroes of the Storm, and I honestly don’t feel like grinding for access in order to have the fluid lineup you need for success.

Edit: I’ve been informed that Overwatch devs have said they won’t be pursuing a HotS-esque pricing model, and that they don’t want to restrict people’s access to the 21 heroes. However, the wording is very specific to the “original 21”, so the strategy when it comes to new heroes may change.

Seeing that stationary hero turret from before and realizing that I haven’t unlocked or paid for the hero that is his counter is going to suck. Seeing pubs or casual players being limited to a free hero rotation (invariably leading to very bland lineups) is also going to be a problem.

These are all assumptions, but I wish that there were more information to keep me from making them. As it stands right now, all I have to go on is previous business practices and the tendency for games to try to nickle-and-dime as much as possible for add-ons, even when you invest for the base product.

I hate even calling it a “base” product because I feel like I’m resigning to the fact that multiplayer games can’t just be games anymore; they have to be franchises and money-mills for their parent company. While some monetization methods are okay, they’re accepted because they make a relevant, “fair” trade-off: the game will be free with only cosmetics buyable, or essential stat-boosting elements won’t be accelerated by payment.

However, I’m really nervous Overwatch is going to just say “screw it, people are hyped enough for our game already, we’ll just do all the monetization and the majority won’t complain because we’re Blizzard.” Then people will buy it anyway in order to play with friends, fueling the perception that that kind of model is fine as long as you can weather initial outcry.

Gamers are impatient and their passions are fleeting. They’ll find something else to complain about by another company tomorrow.

Maybe this whole wrap-up has been a bit unfair to all parties involved. I’ll try to keep some optimism for Overwatch, because in the end, I’d like to enjoy it.

Matt Demers writes about eSports, gaming and culture. You can follow him on Twitter, Twitch, Facebook and YouTube. He writes a weekly newsletter about the above topics every Monday.

Video Games

Thoughts on Kero Blaster

Posted by Matt Demers on

One of the most beloved video games of all time is Cave Story, a labor of love by one Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya. Developed over the course of years, it was initially released for free, and eventually ported to consoles like the Nintendo 3DS and WiiU later.

Basically, if someone wants an example of a passion project that turned out amazing, you go to Cave Story. It’s pretty much the best freeware game of all time.

It took a while, but Pixel eventually released Kero Blaster, his next title, to a Western audience through a digital download, and on November 11, it hit Steam. I bought it, and beat it last night.

Fans of Cave Story will be happy to note that Kero Blaster is really similar to it. You jump, shoot and platform to kill enemies, complete stages and defeat bosses. Along the way you get money that can be used for permanent weapon and health upgrades; unlike Cave Story, you unlock four weapons as the game progresses, and each can be upgraded three times.

The game also differs in that it uses a traditional lives/Game Over system, which can be really unforgiving. Each hit you take docks you one heart from your meter, and you start out with two. After all your lives get expended, you start at the beginning of a level with all the money you collected still intact. To an extent, this means the game is grindable.

Unless Game Over-ing, you save your progress each time you enter a new room, and will spawn at the beginning if you die. The game mixes modern mechanics with challenge that I think gamers are looking for these days; Kero Blaster is unforgiving in Boss patterns, but it’s really rewarding when you clear it.

It’s not really the Dark Souls of platformers, nor is it just unfair like I Want To Be The Guy or Kaizo Mario levels.

Like Cave Story, the art style and the music are top notch. There’s a decent amount of exposition by characters that feel like they have personality despite minimal graphical complexity and chances to speak. It’s a fun, silly game that doesn’t have too much of a plot to it, but it doesn’t feel neglected.

Where Kero lacks is its length: you can beat this game in about 3 hours, including the grinding it may take to beat bosses. After finishing the game, you can open up a New Game+ mode with three collectibles to find in already-existing levels and a Boss Rush, but besides that the replay value will likely be taken up by Speedrunners or people looking to break the game.

For $10, this might be something that’s best left on your wishlist to wait for a sale, but supporting it means supporting one of the best philosophies in gaming: make something good, put your heart into what you make, don’t take your audience for granted and don’t be afraid to be weird. I’m cool supporting that in Pixel, because despite Kero Blaster not being revolutionary, the work he put into this and Cave Story (the latter over five years) seems worth rewarding.

Maybe that’s me mythologizing him a bit, but I think in this current age of gaming it’s healthy to examine that builds loyalty and how we respond to it. For me, Pixel’s story is one a lot of people can learn from, and his work ethic puts mine to shame.

Kero Blaster can be found on Steam or Playism. You can play a free demo called Pink Hour on Steam or Playism for a sampling of the mechanics.

Matt Demers writes about video games and eSports from Toronto, Ontario. You can follow him on Twitter and Twitch.

Esports

50 women in esports: a brief list

Posted by Matt Demers on

Sparked by a debate that happened yesterday about female representation and role models in esports/gaming, I decided to compile a list of women in the industry that I enjoy following on Twitter. I’ve included a little blurb about what they do and a follow button beneath all of them. I encourage you to follow them if you’re interested in expanding your horizons to the different voices within our industry.

As a disclaimer, though, I wanted to stress that there isn’t a “right” or “wrong” way to be a woman in gaming; like guys, they should be able to enjoy, work at and participate in whatever they want to. They are not obligated to educate you, be superhuman or deal with you longer than they want to. Some just want to enjoy their hobby, passion or job, and that’s up to them.

This is not meant to be a definitive “valuable women in esports” list. There are definitely people on this list that I am not aware of, and by all means, you should seek them out. If you know of some, share their stuff and encourage more people to check out what they’re involved in; people sharing their stuff is the best way to help them grow.

By getting a better perspective of these people and how they contribute to esports (again, in as big or a little as a way they want to), I hope we can encourage success and help our ecosystem thrive.

If any of the people listed want to be removed from this post, please feel free to get in contact.

Dota 2

Sheever is a personality in Dota 2, and streams playing the game both by herself and with other personalities. She primarily works for the ASUS ROG DreamLeague, and has worked as talent for The International and other events.

Caitlin McGee is a statsperson for The Standard Deviants, a group of people who provide on-screen stats during competitive Dota 2; she is also writes about ergonomics in gaming, and how to avoid the pain that comes with it.

ProveDota works as a freelance caster for Dota 2, and also has a YouTube channel where she makes videos such as her “History of Dota” series. She has also worked as an interviewer during TI5.

Evany Chang manages Team OG, a player-owned Dota 2 team, winners of the 2015 Frankfurt Major and the 2016 Manila Major.

LlamaDownUnder is a play-by-play caster for Dota 2, and she can be found speaking at increasingly high speeds while casting games for BeyondtheSummit and Starladder.

Sajedene plays a heavy role in the operation of DotaCinema (the largest Dota 2 YouTube channel) and Digital Chaos, a professional team. She also streams on her own Twitch channel.

Soe works as an interviewer for ESL, and has worked on camera for a number of different eSports events. She also is a talented artist and streams on Twitch.

Helen Xu is a Chinese-to-English translator in Dota, working with teams at events like The International 5 to provide a bridge between languages. She also has worked to make vlogs for behind-the-scenes looks at The Nanyang Championships in Singapore.

New for 2016

Shannon Larkin works with Valve to put together amazing events for the Dota 2 community, like The International and Majors. She is the architect of the event known as the Midnight Snack, for which players and talent are forever thankful.

AnneDroid casts Dota for online and LAN events at a speed never thought possible by mortal ears. She also tames dragons, so that’s probably where she gets the magic from.

Slotherina (aka Alyssa) manages Digital Chaos, the runners-up for last year’s The International. As any Dota 2 manager can tell you, this is equal parts triumph and herding cats.

Ashnichrist is both a streamer and a leader of the Desoladies, a Dota 2 community for women.

Andra Ciubotaru leads DotaBlast, a site that has both interviews and news for the game. Based in Romania, she also has experience reporting on politics.

League of Legends

sjokz is an on-screen personality for Riot Games’ League Championship Series, leading panel discussions and interviewing the biggest players in the game.

Bridget Davidson is the Head of Esports Player Management for Riot Games, working to co-ordinate and educate the professionals of the LCS. In most cases, if there’s a problem on that front, she’ll know about it.

Froskurinn works as a caster for the Oceanic Pro League, serving as an analyst both on the camera and off. She is also a frequent guest and host on League of Legends talk shows.

Kelsey Moser is a journalist for theScore eSports, writing about the EU LCS and LPL China regions. She writes deeply analytical articles about game and team strategy. Disclosure: I am one of the people who edited her work at theScore.

Rachel Gu is a writer and translator who works for Gamespot and writes content for GoldPer10. She is one of the major Chinese-to-English translators in League of Legends.

Remilia played professional League of Legends for the LA Renegades, and was the first female player in the LCS. She currently streams League of Legends.

Anna B. Baumann is a legal academic in European Law, and advocates for player rights across eSports. She has served as a legal resource for journalists and has volunteered her expertise in community discussions.

Emily Rand is an eSports writer who has contributed to numerous eSports publications, such as LoLeSports, FolloweSports, GoldPer10, and more. She is the foremost English-speaking expert on the Brazilian League scene.

Curly is SK Gaming’s Editor-in-Chief, and has worked to publish numerous articles and interviews with players from around the globe.

Velvet works for Riot Games as a referee for LCS games. You can see her behind teams laying down the law when it’s needed.

Sam Brown has worked as social media and promotions for League of Legends teams and currently works at streaming company Twitch. Beware: she has memes and knows how to use them.

Brittany Brown has worked for companies like OnGamers and Gamespot as an on-screen talent, and has experience with radio as well. She currently works as a Partnerships Associate at Twitch.

Nicola Piggott is a Communications Manager for Riot Games’ eSports operations, and is the main point of contact for everything press-related when it comes to the LCS and beyond. Practitioner of photo stealth.

Becca Roberts works in PR at Riot Games for the eSports operation. Often posts behind-the-scenes photos at some of League of Legends’ biggest events.

Katherine Stull has written about eSports for LoLeSports, the Daily Dot, Team Dignitas. Currently a game design and journalism student.

Erika Tseng worked in Player Relations for Riot Games, and helped lead the Taipei Assassins to a Season 2 World Championship title. After departing from Riot, she now works at Epic Games.

Sigils is the manager for the Chiefs eSports Club, working in Australia to help build the International scene of League of Legends. Her team has attended numerous International Wild Card events.

Jamaica King works in Web Content Operations for Riot Games, and helps them publish videos, articles and infographics about the LCS. She also is a fitness/running blogger in her non-eSports time.

Amanda Stevens is a journalist and hosts The Analyst Desk, a podcast about analyzing League of Legends.

Cassandra is one of the hilarious people behind eSports Express, a satire site about the people and storylines that make eSports colorful.

Grace is a Korean translator for League, contributing to LoLeSports and offering a look into KR media that may otherwise get ignored.

Leah B. Jackson is an eSports Web Content Co-Ordinator for Riot Games, and helps make LoLeSports function. She also writes articles and provides observations through social media.

New for 2016:

Alex is a freelance video producer and editor, working with teams like TSM, Dignitas, Renegades, Team Liquid, and more.

Smash Bros (Melee, 64, 4, etc)

Pidge is a Smash 64 Tournament Organizer and has done a number of things to ensure the survival of that competitive scene. From volunteering to pushing for acceptance of DIY solutions to the shrinking supply of N64 controllers, Pidge is an advocate for a niche community.

Lilian Chen works for Google as a designer for YouTube Gaming. In the past, she has given a Ted Talk about “responding to sexism in gaming with empathy,” and has advocated for a more inclusive gaming community.

Holly Hua works at a major gaming company in public relations; she is also a frequent Smash Melee competitor and streams her gaming on her Twitch channel.

Yink is a Smash Tournament and charity organizer, speedrunner, and committed Nintendo fan.

Narcissa Wright competes in both Smash 4 and Melee, and is a prolific speedrunner. She has held world records in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.

New for 2016:

Alicia is a graphics designer for ShowdownGG, a company that produces weekly game nights, including the ever-popular “Get Smashed at the Foundry” series.

scf3 streams for Splyce and competes in Smash tournaments; besides Smash, she’s primarily affiliated with the Pokemon series, and does graphic design work for other streamers.

Suzy is an artist, clothing designer and organizer at a grassroots level, but is also a core part of the nigh-unstoppable “Pewzy” doubles team with Kevin “PewPewU” Toy.

Other eSports

Lauren Scott is a commentator for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, World of Tanks, Dirty Bomb and Battlefield 4. She works for ESL in both online tournaments and live stadium events.

Sophia Lyon works in marketing and content for Titan, one of the biggest Counter-Strike: Global Offensive brands.

Hafu is a Hearthstone pro gamer, playing it competitively and streaming for her fans. In the past she has played World of Warcraft, Bloodline Champions and Diablo 3 at a high level.

Emily Chow is a Product Manager at ESL, helping to bring some of the biggest eSports events in the world to life. She is also a former FGC competitor, and apparently can beat you (yes, you!) at Soul Calibur.

Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn is a Starcraft II player that is regarded as one of the top foreign talent to play the game.

Rachel Quirico is a veteran host and personality of numerous eSports. She has lent her interviewing talents to numerous shows, agencies and operations, and was a member of the FragDolls.

TL Taylor is the author of Raising The Stakes, an academic look at competitive gaming and the forces at work within the industry. She has also co-authored Ethnography and Virtual Worlds, a guide for those who want to study virtual worlds.

Helena Kristiansson is a photographer for ESL, and produces some of the most iconic looks at players’ happiest (and sometimes lowest) moments.

Anna Rozwandowicz works for ESL as Director of Communications and Boss of PR. Essentially, if there’s information coming out concerning ESL, she is the one overseeing it.

Susie Kim is a commentator, Korean translator, interviewer and resource for creative player selfies. Currently living and working in Korea for Twitch.

Jaycie “Gillyweed” Gluck is a commentator for the burgeoning Heroes of the Storm competitive community, and has casted live LAN tournaments including Blizzcon 2015.

Sue “Smix” Lee is a Partnerships Associate at Twitch, and also works as a host, interviewer and personality for multiple eSports.

GN4Rcandy is a former Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player and manager that has since moved to Dirty Bomb, a team-based shooter. Currently streams and radiates positivity.

Sunset is a writer and personality that writes about Starcraft, League of Legends, Smash 4 and Heroes of the Storm. Has freelanced for Red Bull eSports and LoLeSports’ Oceanic web site.

Tricia Sugita works for Azubu in Talent Management, and is a Tournament Organizer YouTuber, streamer and for multiple games.

As I said above, this is a personal list, and not a definitive one. I do not mean to offend by omission.

Matt Demers writes about eSports on a freelance basis. You can follow him on Twitter, Twitch, YouTube and Facebook, and support his work on Patreon. He writes two newsletters about eSports/work/productivity, and BetterDota.

Esports

Thanks, Marcus – a Dyrus obituary

Posted by Matt Demers on

Some of you know that eSports is something I came into by accident; it was never supposed to be a career, but more a hobby.

Marcus helped pull me in.

I started playing League of Legends casually in 2010, a little bit before Season 1. Garen has just been released, putting my start date around April of that year; I was garbage at it, and to a certain extent, I still am.

Marcus helped me get better.

I picked his stream out of a lineup of the popular players of the time; I started with Chauster, migrated to TreeEskimo, then finally found a chill stream with a monotone guy who wasn’t above the occasional trolling.

Marcus wasn’t (and isn’t) totally emotionless; you just had to grasp the subtleties of his happiness, frustration and triumph. When he did emote, you knew it was something both serious and worth paying attention to.

Like that stoic dad who never needed to raise his voice, it became easy to respect the guy behind the keyboard because a lot of us could empathize with what someone in his position faced.

That’s particularly what draws me to eSports: seeing how young men and women with a very specific skill set deal with a massive amount of attention and expectation. Marcus did as well as anyone could have hoped, but also seemed to hide his struggle behind a barrier that few of us will ever really pass by.

And that’s fine. He’s entitled to.

This weekend we saw Marcus’ tearful goodbye speech at the 2015 League of Legends World Championships, along with an outpouring of gratitude and memories. While his statement was somber — he thought he had let his fans down — it felt like he didn’t need to apologize. He tried his best, stayed true to himself, and that was enough.

While some might argue that he isn’t worthy of the praise that people might heap on him now that he’s done, I think there’s value in someone who’s performed at a consistently high level during his career, represented his generation of players and stayed loyal to his teammates.

When others stepped to criticize TSM, Marcus was one to defend them. When people thought to speak for him, he realized that people could never see the whole picture. Like I said before, he was stoic until he needed to be otherwise, and even if people disagreed, they tended to listen.

Despite never winning a Worlds, Marcus will be remembered by the League community as a unique personality and voice. However, as he retires, a number of his posts seem to point towards a period of rest and reinvention.

After giving so much of his time to this game and seeing competitive League of Legends evolve from fighting about players streaming weekly online cups to competing in a full-year, unified league, I would not blame anyone for wanting that time.

While the Internet tends to reward those who go “all in” on their passions to make a living, there’s a sad problem where it tends to suck the fun out of it. For a little while it’s been more evident that long-time players are tired, burned out, and that can cause negative feelings to seep into something they once loved.

Trust me, that really sucks.

Despite League being such a unique and vibrant phenomenenon, sometimes you just need to step back and find out who you truly are. We might see Marcus step back to the spotlight soon, or we might see him fade away and be more comfortable watching from the outside.

I don’t think anyone should blame him for taking either route.

Thanks, Marcus. You were different, in a good way. I hope you find the peace you deserve with the people who support and love you. You gave me a personality to empathize with and follow as I waded into the shallow end of eSports, and you were still there while I tread water in the deep.

Matt Demers writes about eSports from Toronto. Follow him on Twitch and Twitter.

The Media

Experiences with the Valve/HTC Vive VR

Posted by Matt Demers on

This past week at The International I managed to get some time with the Valve/HTC virtual reality project, the Vive. I’ve never tried VR before, but tales of friends who have Oculus Rift developer kits and the general progress that the industry has made really got me interested.

The Vive is a combination of a headset/visor and earphones that you wear; it has a “tail” of cables that come out of the back of the visor and really gives the vibe of being plugged into The Matrix; keeping in mind where the cables are when you’re moving around the Vive environment is crucial, not only to break from immersion, but because I wanted to keep from possibly breaking the demo model.

After signing into a desk for the demo, I was taken into a room alone with the presenter; the room had four laser projectors on poles, which I was told were to coat the activity area with something for the headset to reference. In essence, it was like the Wii, where an IR emitter (the Wii bar) was used with a sensor (in the remote) to determine where you are, what you’re facing, and what to show you. After some research, it looks like these emitters will be mounted on walls in a consumer usecase, because I’d imagine setting them up in a house might be awkward.

Articles have stated that these emitters will be able to sense where objects are in a room and plan accordingly, so you won’t need to have a specific blank space to interact in. If you do reach a boundary inside the demonstration, a grid of light lines comes up, signalling that you’re hitting a “wall”.

Putting on the visor, I was taken into a test environment that had a lobby of different scenarios. It was kind of like the Wii’s home screen, but closer to an art gallery. I was given two controllers, and tested some buttons: eventually a ballon blew out of my left controller, and I was able to bat it around, watch it float upward, and blow new ones. The left controller also had a wheel to choose balloon colours, which was responsive and gave enough feedback that you felt you were actually there.

A large concern for me coming into this demo (and VR in general) was the immersiveness of it. Things like me wearing glasses caused worries that I would not be able to kind of lose myself in what was being presented; that ended up not being a factor at all (here’s a photo that I snuck of me wearing it).

All in all, I do not hesitate to say it was a life-changing experience.

Numerous demos showed off different things. I explored a sunken ship’s bow where minnows swam away from my “hands”, assembled a sandwich in a kitchen to show off interactivity between objects, painted with light in a 3D space and explored a Secret Shop, straight out of Dota 2.

Despite the environments not looking completely photorealistic, everything just kind of sucked me in. The audio and the resolution of the eyepieces were at such high quality that eventually I kind of forgot what I was doing; I was largely pre-occupied with the demos, but I remember having the biggest grin on my face because one of the most attractive tropes of science fiction was actually here.

The controllers have thumb pads for things like menu selection and fine manipulation, as well as side and bottom triggers for things like grip. There was never any virtualization of arms or legs, but sometimes the implements made a big deal, since menus and options were projected onto them.

With the light painting, I could spin menus on my left implement with my right, dabbing as if I was choosing paint off a palette. In the Secret Shop, I got my own light source, and moving it around the environment cast dynamic shadows and could cause reactions from simulated characters.

These moments just felt… amazing. Discovering new things and fighting the conditioning that you’ve learned from “normal” video games was exhilarating: simple things like reaching into a giant soup pot and realizing that there was no awkward collision mechanics just blew my mind.

In that cooking mini-game, I noticed how much I relied on games to fill in complicated blanks, which I actually had to do here. Reaching deep into a pot instead of waiting for an ingredient to snap to my hand, or just not having a “press A to pick up” prompt just felt alien; this is a good thing, because it signals that this medium will actively change how we approach interaction in a digital space, and from a futurism perspective, it’s crazy to think that it will be available now, instead of twenty years.

I know they were just tech demos, but I couldn’t help but think about the possibilities of using a Google Sketchup open-source marketplace to design and publish models that could be brought into a VR environment and then manipulated, annotated, or studied. I thought about the blue whale I saw on the ship’s deck, and how we could simulate an aquarium without the need to house animals.

I thought about the implications of a virtual reality-influenced existence, where people may get addicted to an ideal, controlled environment.

That last point is obviously a job for more accomplished philosophers than me, and is kind of scary to delve into.

This demo instantly made me a believer that VR could be done right, and has kickstarted a little bit of a fire in me. I want to see where this medium goes, and I want to grow up alongside it, so to speak; depending on the price, I might just be an early adopter, but I can’t wait to see what five or ten years will do for it.

Until then, it’s just a matter of waiting.

I’m Matt Demers, and I write about tech, eSports and more. Follow me on Twitter, Twitch and Instagram for more like the post you just read. Subscribe to Matt dot 808, my weekly newsletter, for recommended reading, streaming schedule and mini-thoughts that don’t make it to my blog.