Hey y’all, sorry I missed writing something last week. I’ve been kinda busy lately with the day job, the fact that my legs might be deteriorating because of my day job and furiously working on my game in vague hopes that I may escape my day job. I’ve also been playing through Epic Battle Fantasy 5 for this site, which may have been a mistake because oh boy, this is a real big RPG.

Since I haven’t finished playing through that and I didn’t have the grindset to play some more Darkest Dungeon/something else, I figured that it’s best to write about miscellaneous things.

Media Lay-Offs

It wasn’t a good week to write in games media. Much of the team that works on Fanbyte were laid off. Around the same time, there were lay-offs of people that worked for G4 and for some people that worked on various Future outlets (ie like PC Gamer). Then later in the week, Bustle Digital Group shuttered their tech site Input, while also laying off staff from Mic.

It’s easy to say that these lay-offs are happening because things aren’t profitable, but also, there isn’t really an indication of that being true? In fact, Future bought a new outlet a few months ago, they got money to burn. Hell, Fanbyte’s owned by fucking Tencent, they’re making a lot of money, but I guess a whole editorial team’s gotta eat it because they made slightly less profit than usual, I guess.

Actually, let me take a moment to ask: why do people that have a hateboner for game journalists think they hate games? Like, that field is constantly in a precarious position unless you’re at the top of the field or work the games beat for a more general mainstream publication, and most people aren’t paid that well. All that and prospective writers also have to deal with a section of the internet being smug assholes at them for either culture wars reasons or because they got mad at a review somebody made 10+ years ago and haven’t let it go. The position just isn’t attractive at all – unless you like games.

These people love games and love writing about them. Yeah, you’ll probably disagree with some takes, but also, how is that any different from logging on Twitter and see someone with an insane take on a daily basis? Unless they’re actually heinous people or plagiarists, people that write about games don’t deserve to lose their livelihoods. “What if it’s not profitable?” Does it look like I care about profit? I only care about making enough so that I could comfortably live, and that’s what I wish for everyone.

IGMC Rebirth Results

If you somehow weren’t aware, I spent a month going through some of the entries of Indie Game Making Contest Rebirth, a generally RPG Maker themed game jam. I myself participated in the jam and actually got 9th place from the People’s Choice vote, though I didn’t get to be a finalist with the judges. I guess I should have expected that since my game’s kinda ugly, to be honest.

Please check out my game Hand of the Goddess I’m really proud of it

So, what did win?

Well, in 1st place – both in People’s Choice and with the judges, MissingSeven and CrawlingChaox’s Ouroboros: A Dungeon Crawling Adventure, won it out. Honestly? Completely deserved. It was my favorite out of all the entries I managed to check out and it excelled at all aspects that make up an RPG while introducing its own neat twists. Seriously, check it out, it’s quite good.

I’m sincerely happy these devs got a clean sweep. They’ve been at the indie RPG making scene for a while, especially MissingSeven, who I recently found out also made Theia: The Crimson Eclipse under the name LolloRocketDiver from that iceberg article I wrote. I really hope they find more success in the future.

In 2nd place was A Stolen Love and the Forgotten Promise, by Indrah LadyPotato and Fomar0153, which is a game I haven’t checked out yet. A Stolen Love is a story about somebody rescuing their lover from a resurrected demon, who’s trying to make good on a promise made in their past life. It’s a more traditional RPG offering, and for all intents and purposes, it seems to do tradition good.

Now, the game got 44th in the People’s Choice vote, but there’s actually a pretty good reason for that. Indrah did a bunch of streams looking at the games of fellow competitors, and was fairly critical about games she didn’t like. Unfortunately, there’s no safeguards for people giving her game negative ratings out of retaliation; like hey, there’s a good reason why I chose to only write about my highlights (well, besides brevity). I haven’t played the game myself to know if it’s 2nd place worthy, but it probably deserves that way more than 44th place.

Then in 3rd place was another game I played, RE:Calibur by Nowis-337. This stepped out of the RPG mold, being more of an action-adventure experience akin to Zelda. The dev notably has a history of making adventure games in RPG Maker, and this is just the latest instance, sharpened to a fine edge based on past experience.

Now, this is probably mean to say, but… while I liked RE:Calibur, I honestly don’t think it’s 3rd place worthy. In fact, in terms of action adventure RPG Maker experiences, I preferred Remnants of Calandria over it – though, I totally get why that game was comparatively ranked lower given the progression bug in it. Like I dunno. I honestly thought that Melon Kid’s To Be Continued and Ronove’s Life Eternal deserved 3rd place more. They just felt more substantial to me, if that makes sense.

BIGMODE Games

videogamedunkey, local Youtuber funnyman, earlier today announced BIGMODE Games, an indie game publishing side hustle. He believes that with the multiple indie games he’s played for his channel, he’s become a tastemaker as if the indie games he played weren’t already popular on their own. And as if identifying potentially good games is all you need to do to be a good publisher, he’s decided to go in on that.

In regards to more specific claims he made in his video, I’ve seen people defend him saying that it’s a joke. In which case, why the hell should I take this venture seriously if he advertises it in a supposedly non-serious way?

Though, the concept of a Youtuber doing publishing stuff is one I’ll take seriously. It wouldn’t be the first time, actually. In fact, one recently managed to hit it big. The Yogscast, a network of content creators most well-known for World of Warcraft and Minecraft content back in the day, also has their hand in game publishing. Their first published game was Deadpan Games’ Caveblazers in 2017, and while much of their games seem to have been modest successes, they really hit it big with It’s happening’s hit 2022 game, PlateUp! So, it’s possible for Youtubers to enter the field. In fact, until I saw that the BIGGAMES twitter was made back in April, I cynically thought that Dunkey started a company to chase that PlateUp! high.

But here’s the thing. I don’t know if Dunkey’s had any business and management experience, but the Yogscast does. It’s easy to point at the 2012 Yogventures! Kickstarter as a sign of mismanagement, but beyond that, the Yogscast rapidly expanded. It became its own content creator network in 2016 to ditch Maker Studios, they have their own office spaces, they have an influencer agency called Fourth Floor Creative, etc. The Yogscast is more than just a standard big content creator, they’re a whole-ass entertainment company that’s diversified in a lot of things. If the internet wasn’t so good at remembering failures than successes, Yogventures! would probably just be a footnote for them.

In comparison, Dunkey is just a guy. A popular guy, sure, but as far as I know, he does not have the same kinda history as the Yogscast has. So honestly, it’s kinda insane for him to just announce he’s going into game publishing as if that’s an easy thing to do.

Anyway, best of luck, I guess. I think this venture is incredibly stupid, but the thing is, I think his desires in pursuing this venture is admirable. There’s been a bunch of games that I want to see get more success in my time writing about things for this site, and I admit that yeah, I am also guilty at looking things that are already popular. So, if he truly believes in wanting to uplift games that wouldn’t have gotten a chance otherwise, go for it. I dunno if it’ll be successful, but cool if it does work out.

But anyway, people should submit RPGs to him because I think that’d be funny.