Carl Cravens @CarlCravens@mastodon.xyz

We have scheduled a "work team outing" to play Among Us. I pray our good working relationships survive this.

It's that time of year, when the silken fall leaves grow over the front door peephole, so I can't see out. 😆

I think I'm going to start doing Kickstarters for imaginary products I want to exist, and set really high funding goals so the funding fails, and then wait for China to make the imaginary thing a reality.

Woo! I just counted up and with the delivery of _Ray's the Dead_, I have zero still-in-production video game Kickstarters.

I can't count _7 Days to Die_ because I didn't back them on KS. Just early access on Steam. I stopped buying into most early-access games there, too. Can't say I haven't gotten my money's worth out of 7dtd, but man, they've been dragging their feet with reinventing the game over and over. Still in Alpha, I think it's never going to actually release.

Got another fully-released video game from a Kickstarter.
Campaign ended Sep 2014.
Expected to deliver May 2015
Delivered Oct 2020.
This is why I don't back video games on KS anymore. The developers had worked on other games before. They had a _working demo_ in 2014. They estimated 8 months and took nearly 6 years to deliver. I want to help support indie studios making games, but I hate the _years_ of watching a game in development, often to just be disappointed because of the build-up.

hot take: If you have to hover over an emoji and read its name to understand what it means, then the emoji has failed in its basic job.

Convo at work got me thinking of the difference between "soundtrack" (popular music from a film) and OST (instrumental composed for the film). ISTR that it was Keaton's Batman that first released two separate units and confused the heck out of me... because they were calling "OST" the thing that had always been sold as a "soundtrack". Introducing something new, why didn't they give it the new name?

I received day-old poultry by mail once.

I find it odd when someone with an account on a highly topical Masto instance uses it as their primary, general account. I have like three accounts: my general instance, and two topical that I only use for those topics. It's weird to be on an instance about tabletop games and get toots about video games, politics, etc.
It poses an interesting question: Is your instance supposed to be a community, or just a home base?

You know that guy you dread making small-talk with? The one that in every meeting you cringe when he starts to speak, because what he's going to say is only tangentially relevant? Relates long, personal anecdotes when they aren't appropriate.

Do you ever worry that you're that guy.

So here's something weird... the Pet Rock was an incredibly short-lived fad. In six months, its creator sold over a million of them for $4 each, and then sales dropped off after six months.
Yet the pet rock endures in our cultural memory.

When you show your art, especially draft phases, to someone else, remember that Fleetwood Mac weren't impressed with Stevie Nicks' "Dreams" when she first demoed it, and she had to beg the band to work with it... and it became their only Billboard Hot 100 #1 hit.

First impressions aren't everything, and diamonds in the rough aren't always seen for the gems they are. If you believe in your art, don't give up on encouraging others to believe as well.