Some of you have noticed the issues with the site. The weird-colored user backdrops (or in Peter’s case, complete transparency.), the sticky post that blocks people from seeing the new content, and even before Dad died; the lack of updates to WordPress.
There are a lot of issues and reasons here, but I don’t feel confident making decisions on how it’s handled entirely on my own, or at least without talking about it first. So, let’s do that…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Being Transparent”
I was fourteen years old and playing Skyrim for the first time. My poor, ancient computer just barely chugged through it, constantly crashing during loading screens or during important cutscenes; and I was in love.
I had played games I’d loved before (mostly Nintendo classics like Super Mario Sunshine and Ocarina of time) but Skyrim was my first real love in the video game world. There was something special about it, I would put on headphones and just vanish for hours into this little world, like a book I couldn’t put down.
Part of this was likely due to the fact that I played it during a tough part of my growing up. It was 2011, about the time in the Twelve-Year Mistake when we kids got the news; the house we grew up in was being foreclosed on, and there was nothing we could do about it. Being 14, or anyone, that was world-shattering, and Skyrim offered escapism from that whole mess.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Thieves Guild: Because Reasons”
So! It’s my turn to introduce myself. Some of you may have ‘met’ me if you watched the stream of my dad’s funeral. (Which is a hell of a sentence, but we don’t have time to unpack all of that) but for any who missed it, here we go.
My name is Peter T. Parker. The T stands for Telemachus which I’ve pronounced wrong (Tel-ehm-ah-cuss) since I was a child. I don’t plan to stop now and that is, unfortunately, everyone else’s problem. I’ve been mentioned a few times here, but under a different name that doesn’t bear repeating. I’m the middle child, aka the youngest daughter turned oldest son.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Introduction: Guest Star”
As a disabled person, I spend a lot of time calling things difficult. I complain about how hard it is to get out of bed because my knees hurt. I complain about not being able to reach card scanners in stores because I’m too short in my wheelchair. And I complain about stairs an awful lot because wheels aren’t like, super compatible with them.
I also complain about video games. With diminished mobility on my right side, including my hand, video games can be more difficult for me than the average player. But even before arthritis decided to awaken in me like the world’s worst X-Men geneNo no, don’t bring up Rogue here, yes, I know she kills people she touches and all that jazz, but my knees hurt really bad like, often, so…I have it worse, okay? I was complaining about video game difficulty for other reasons.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Disability and Video Games: Easy Mode”
A few days ago was my dad’s birthday and I wrote a post about a part of the dilemma I’ve been facing with this site. A lot of it is emotional slog, ‘what if I’m not enough like Dad’ and ‘what if I’m too much like Dad’. There’s also not wanting to face it yet. Because, while my dad and I did talk sometimes, he was a very online guy. It’s hard to feel properly like he’s gone because I’m not used to seeing him. He spent most of his time in front of a computer screen, making content, playing games to make more content, etc.
It feels weird to have no messages on G-Chat from him He refused to move from Google Chats. He wouldn’t text, Facebook Messenger, or even message on Steam. It was a running joke that for such a nerd, he could really be an old fart about tech., no YouTube links, no new posts here. So, because of that, posting here sort of solidifies it. It forces that god-awful acceptance. He’s gone forever and he’s not going to write more…Ouch.
On a much lighter note: The other issue I talked about was how we had very few games in common. So I, by extension, have very few games in common with his audience… Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Lost in Translation: Console-to-Console Porting”
So, dad would be 51 today. Last year today he said this:
“The running joke is that every year I make a birthday post about how I’m getting old and I’m going to be dead any minute now. I try to find some sort of humorous way to joke about death or aging and then maybe follow it up with a sarcastic remark about Half-Life 3. It’s a funny traditionFunny according to the standards set on this site, anyway. YMMV. but I’m just not feeling it this year. So let’s have a serious conversation about my health. “
Well, he said a lot more than that, but copy-pasting the whole post word-for-word feels like a lot.
Here’s something you’re about to hear from me a lot; grieving for a funny person is hard. It might be why, despite leading the charge for wanting usMy mom, my two brothers and myself. to keep up the site…nothing much has happened so far.Well, nothing from me or my brothers, my mom is absolutely getting shit done Don’t get me wrong, we’ve moved across states, dealt with funeral arrangements, and all those other little things you don’t really consider until someone dies…At the time of writing this, when you Google ‘what happens to your Steam account when you die’ you get hilariously, satirically, wrong information. So this is why my collage profs didn’t want me ‘just Googling it’.
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For those who don’t realize, Shamus passed on Jun 15, 2022 due to Cardiac arrest. You can read about it here. You can view the showing here (skip to 1:47 for actual content).
I know this site and community are important to many of you and we, his family, hope to honor that. The site is complicated to deal with due to Shamus’ preference for hardcoding and bespoke design over using the built in WordPress features but I am working my way through the backend of the site using my own years of experience hosting and designing WordPress sites. It’s slow going as I am also working full time, taking care of financials and other real life aspects of the death of a spouse, and helping the kids. We are very grateful for your patience as we work through all he left behind and prepare the site for future content uploads. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The future of this site and an update:”
A stream-of-gameplay review of Dead Island. This game is a cavalcade of bugs and bad design choices.
Let's ruin everyone's fun by listing all the ways in which zombies can't work, couldn't happen, and don't make sense.
An attempt to make a good looking cityscape with nothing but simple tricks and a few rectangles of light.
Do you like electronic music? Do you like free stuff? Are you okay with amateur music from someone who's learning? Yes? Because that's what this is.
Be careful what you learn with your muscle-memory, because it will be very hard to un-learn it.
Why killing you might be the least scary thing a game can do.
I'm not surprised a fighting game has an absurd story. I just can't figure out why they bothered with the story at all.
I'm a very casual fan of the series, but I gave Civilization VI a look to see what was up with this nuclear war simulator.
This version of Silver Sable is poorly designed, horribly written, and placed in the game for all the wrong reasons.
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
T w e n t y S i d e d
