april/may

hey gamers

semester ends for me in 2 weeks + finals, so after that i'll be home unable to stream or really play multiplayer games until late august.  i put botw on the backburner a bit since practice codes are a huge pain in the ass with dorm wifi (wii u won't connect to any networks, so i have to use wireless hotspot on phone, using data), and i'll be unable to play anything else anyway lol.  i'll be local recording and practicing a bunch, and if i get a good enough run i'm sure i'll figure some way to upload it, just need like 30 mins of decent wifi somewhere and my laptop.  honestly not looking forward to going home (lot of family drama lately, cousin i'm not very fond of will also be spending summer at same house as me because he was in jail for a day for having weed on him, wew), but i'll still be working and making money so that's cool.  still will work on dustforce TASing from time to time, and have a secret project im gonna try to start up again (lost a bit of progress on it due to computer dying a few weeks ago, just required factory reset).  this semester was good, only taking 1 class related to my major though and have a 9 am every day, so it's really starting to burn me out... almost over anyway, and my schedule next semester seems much better.

regarding SGDQ: unfortunately i won't be going this summer.  had 2 people i was interested in seeing cancel, 1 who might have other plans, and money would definitely be an issue if i went.  honestly, registration and such crept up on me a bit and i was never really saving money, and while i had to buy some essentials along the way i still made some pretty big purchases this semester that were luxury (new headset, botw (and eventually a capture card), pizza :^) )   if i were to go, it'd be for 2-3 days at most anyway, and i can't/won't justify asking for any money to take a vacation for a few days especially when my game was put on backup.  even if dustforce was officially accepted, asking for money on stream has just never felt right to me; people deserve that money way more than my dumbass playing video games with a bunch of other nerds.  sorry to anyone that was looking forward to see me, i'll be more actively saving for next SGDQ; might not even be super involved in dustforce by then, but i will never leave the community, yall are sick.

feelings on dustforce being put on "backup" at SGDQ (a lot of asked me): honestly it really didn't surprise me.  any% is definitely a category that you can only have a full appreciation of if you've played the game, ss all is definitely more friendly to an audience that won't likely know a lot about the game.  it is a bit frustrating that i won't get to showcase the work i've put in to the category (im certain the time i've put into dustforce is higher than 95% of the people that got games accepted, and please don't get me started on botw being given the thumbs up), but at the end of the day i just have to accept it.  just an unfortunate part of running a niche game.  i'll probably resubmit for next sgdq, we'll see.

also, i really don't know if i want the exposure a gdq would bring me.  i've always streamed for myself on my own terms, playing whatever i felt like playing regardless if i had viewers or not.  honestly i mostly stream just for archiving silly stuff and for proof of various grinds.  i've seen a lot of people debunking how much exposure gdq actually gives you, but i just wanted to give my 2 cents: i'm perfectly aware that extra viewers die off very quickly after gdq hype ends (especially when they learn i'm an IL monster and grinding one level for 3 hours isn't as interesting as any% all).  i make very little effort to be entertaining.  still, sivade gained well over 400 followers after his run, and has since been the dustforce runner with the most viewers by quite a bit.  i've been streaming for 3 years now and have barely scratched 200 followers, and sivade basically doubled that in the span of 1 hour during his run.  i think it's crazy to overlook that exposure.

just a bunch of messy thoughts.  hope you're doin aight