Category Archives: Thoughts and Opinions

RIP Kongregate

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Hey guys, it’s the end of an era.

Kongregate.com is going into archive mode and no longer accepting new games. A lot of the main staff already left a while ago, but there was still some really good web games being published there, so I’m a bit surprised that it’s no longer working out for them. They were even doing the monthly cash prizes for games up until the end, which I appreciate. I guess now they’re gonna be focusing on publishing mobile games, and on their store, Kartridge.

When I published Epic Battle Fantasy 3 on Kongregate 10 years ago, it got a million plays in the first week, and eventually 11 million in total. I think that was the biggest long-term boost to my reputation and career. The people at Kongregate were a lot of fun to work with, especially Greg the badge guy, and I don’t think any indie game platform today has anywhere near the same influence. I’m glad I published Epic Battle Fantasy 5 on there while I still could – it’ll be one of the last games to ever get badges!

Personally, I’m gonna keep checking the site every once in a while. There’s still lots of fun badges that I’ve missed. Even when the Flashplayer plugin is disabled, there’s still browser extensions to get around that.

A lot of the popular Flash games I’m sure will eventually make their way onto other platforms like Steam, but there’s also preservation projects like BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint to keep these games alive.

Anyway, you should go have a browse through Kongregate’s badge categories. I’m sure you’ll find something fun to play every time you have an hour or two to spare.

Universal Basic Income rant

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With coronavirus causing more talk about Universal Basic Income, here’s a little rant from me about why everyone should get something like £1,000 per month.

UBI is cool because people who don’t want to work can sit at home and play video games and drink beer and still *support the economy by doing so*. They will still buy shit. People who do want to work and start businesses will have more options and the ability to take some risks, since their minimum living needs will be met. Employers will have to offer better jobs to attract workers – no more exploiting people who are struggling to get by.

UBI also need not diminish personal responsibilities. It could be tweaked to encourage certain behaviours. Finished highschool? You get slightly more. Doing some volunteering work to help your community? Here’s some extra UBI money.

I don’t believe at all that it would be bad for the economy if the parameters are tweaked correctly. Poor people spend literally all of their income, while rich people spend a tiny fraction, and invest/hoard the rest. All of that UBI money will still go back to businesses, one way or another – they’ll just have to work a bit harder to get it! Capitalism exists to encourage competition (not to make a small number of individuals very rich), and I think UBI would achieve that very well by giving workers and consumers more options.

As a game developer, I think UBI would be amazing for our industry. We’d probably have many more customers, and niche game developers could make their obscure products without starving to death.

Most successful business people started with something similar to UBI (me included). Their parents paid for everything while they were free to get a good education, try out different hobbies, and take some risks starting a business. Imagine if everyone had those opportunities – if they could take as long as they wanted to figure out what to do with their life, and to build some skills before jumping into the workforce. Imagine if making niche creative products was a viable way to make a living, but you’d still consider stacking shelves at a supermarket, because the pay would be a lot better than it is now.

And from what I understand, UBI doesn’t even cost very much to implement due to how simple it is. There’s not a lot of paperwork, no means-testing. It would be much more efficient than existing welfare plans. Everyone who’s over 18 gets it. Some rich folk may pay more taxes. But who cares? The advantages for the other 99% massively outweigh that.

Edit: I even forgot to mention automation! Robots will take all of our jobs sooner or later, might as well get ready for that too. No, there won’t be new jobs. There will be one guy overseeing 10 robots that replaced 10 workers.

Pokemon ROM Hacking

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Hey guys, I’ve been playing Pokemon Clover a lot lately, and was curious about how difficult it is to edit Pokemon Fire Red. Turns out editing maps is pretty straightforward – there’s some robust tools for that, and the game seems to handle the changes quite well without crashing. It’s a bit more complicated if you want to add your own graphics, but I was happy enough just making my own version of Pallet Town with the existing tiles. The grass is populated with Weedles and Caterpies and Missingnos.

Changing Pokemon graphics was tricky though. You need to learn a bit about how to change pointers and use empty space in the ROM, so that you don’t end up overwriting any essential stuff while adding your new content. It also took me many attempts to get the color pallet right. Some of the tools used are very primitive, and just installing the text editing tool was a huge pain. What you see in the screenshot below took me 3 hours! Meanwhile the whole town took less than an hour.

Anyway, I’m probably done with this stuff now. It’s cool to mess around with for one evening, but no longer than that. I have respect for people who can devote years to this stuff without getting paid.

Nintendo Switch Review

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Hey guys, I’ve had my Nintendo Switch for a few weeks now, so I feel qualified to rant about it for a little while. Since this console is often praised as one of the best things Nintendo has ever made, I felt I’d chip in a contrary opinion.

If you’re a protective Nintendo fan, look away now!

tl;dr: As a home console, the Nintendo Switch is just a WiiU with less features. The portability is not a feature that is useful to me.

Let me begin by saying that it’s still a fun console, and it’s worth the money, for most people. Anyone who didn’t own a WiiU, or wants a handheld, will love it.

But as the only person who bought a WiiU, I feel like I’ve just paid £350+ to keep playing WiiU games. Graphically it’s not even a noticeable improvement – you’d have to compare them side by side to notice a difference. I’m not expecting cutting edge-graphics, but 1080p has been the standard for around 10 years now – you could at least give me that. Half the games are ports or sequels of WiiU games, and the new games look like they could run on WiiU hardware anyway. Nothing is backwards compatible – not the games, and not even the controllers! (I purchased a Mayflash Magic adapter which lets me use my old WiiU Pro controller on the Switch. Very cool life-hack. That should totally be a built in feature of the console.)

Why did I say it has less features? The WiiU and previous Nintendo consoles had fun charts for showing you which games you’ve played every day and for how long. Those are gone. Now you have to play a game for 10 days to see a rough estimate of your playtime (rounded to the nearest 5 hours, wtf?). Very primitive and confusing.

As for online features, they are the same as what the WiiU had – but now you have to pay for them! Talk about cutting out existing features and putting them behind a paywall.

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Anyway, if you want a new handheld to replace your Nintendo 3DS, then it’s a huge improvement. But as a home console for the living room, it doesn’t offer anything new or exciting. I wish Nintendo would make consoles again.

When I was a kid, the Nintendo 64 revolutionized 3D video games. The GameCube took those games and made them look 5x better. The Wii was gimmicky, but offered some unique controls for the time. The WiiU… looked a little bit better than the Wii. And then the Switch… is a WiiU that you can carry around.

It would be nice to see some groundbreaking innovation from Nintendo again. They should be the company working on making VR more accessible. But instead, you’ve got Sony making better Mario games than Nintendo. (see Astro Bot: Rescue Mission) And yes, I’m aware that Nintendo is a company and needs to make money, and that my favourite gaming products seem to be those that don’t make much money. That sucks for me.

Oh well. I just wanted to get that out there.
If you just want a handheld and love your Switch, probably none of this applies to you.