H.Bomberguy’s Transgender Charity Stream

Last year I wrote a small piece about how Drake showed up on Ninja’s stream and how it was going to propel Fortnite and video games into the mainstream. This, of course, was shortly before Fortnite started taking over everywhere. It was one of those blink-and-you-miss-it events that was big in the gaming world but led to something bigger outside of it.

Today I was planning on writing about something else, but this past weekend something similar happened and I wanted to talk a little bit about it.

This weekend H.Bomberguy, a known YouTuber who does gaming and political videos, did a stream that lasted 50+ hours of him playing Donkey Kong 64. He did it as a charity stream to support Mermaids, a British transgender activist group that had recently made the news because Graham Linehan (creater of IT crowd and other shows) put together a petition to deny them lottery funding because reasons. Because of his petition, their funding is now under review, and so as a fellow Brit H.Bomberguy decided to put together a charity event to get them some funding anyway.

dk64

He decided to play Donkey Kong 64 because it was a game from his childhood that he’d never beaten because he had a lot of difficulty with it as a child, and so he pledged to 101% the game from start to finish and take donations for Mermaids the entire time he played the game – this took somewhere around 58 hours for him to do (with naps, from what I understand) so the stream started on the 18th and finished in the wee hours of the morning on the 21st.

H.Bomberguy managed to raise $344,000 and counting for Mermaids (as while he has finished his DK64 runthrough, he and his moderators have left his stream running for the purposes of allowing as many people to donate as well – here’s a link to it if you also wish to donate.

What was surprising about this stream was how it started to take off with more mainstream political advocates. Adam Conover (from Adam Ruins Everything) and some of the casters from Chapo Trap House were on (and apparently debated the merits of a banana-based economy while H.Bomberguy played, although I haven’t watched that part myself yet). Jim Sterling (another YouTuber from Britain) was on for a little while. Chelsea Manning showed up to lend her support. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also dropped by to talk and advocate for transgender rights, almost as a “screw you” to Aaron Sorkin’s recent comment about how young Democrats need to “grow up.”

It was a very surreal and fun stream event – at one point H.Bomberguy got stuck on a mini-game for an hour, so he ended up joining a DK64 speedrunning Discord and got tips from speedrunners to help him get through and move on towards the 101% finish. While I didn’t get to watch a majority of it, I’m sure fairly soon there will be highlights of some of the big guest moments as well as the more entertaining bits during the 58 hour stream.

I’m hoping this spearheads a greater movement in gaming towards supporting people of all races, genders, and orientations. I’m personally tired of the “asshole gamer” narrative that seems to permeate everywhere due to things like #Gamergate and high profile YouTubers being Anti-Semitic. Gaming can be a wonderful, inclusive place and also isn’t just a toy for kids – H.Bomberguy’s stream proved it, especially with the outpouring of support for him by all these other people.

That’s all I have for today – on today, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and every other day please be good to each other and treat others the way you yourself would want to be treated. It takes very little to show decency and respect to your fellow humans.

I’ll end with links to H.Bomberguy’s stream and to the Mermaids website directly, in case anyone wants to show their support.

H.Bomberguy’s stream

Mermaids website

Movie Theory: The 2018 Movie Manatees!

So last year I wrote up the 2017 T-Man Movie Awards and talked about some of my favorite movies of the year in a wide variety of categories. This year I ended up naming my gaming superlatives the Manatees (see here and here, with special thanks to my good friend HarveyZ) and it seemed a shame to not also do awards for 2018 movies as well. Since I was struggling with a name for them last year, I might as well adopt my gaming name for movies as well. I will mostly be using the same categories as last year, with a few changes here and there. Some categories will have runners-up if I felt like there were multiple movies that were worth mentioning – others will only have one if they were particular standouts or if nothing else really impressed me enough to be mentioned.

Without further ado, I present to you TMan’s Movie Manatees for 2018!

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4X: Excite, Excel, Exhaust, Exclude?

Yesterday my friends and I had a snowy day to contend with and we passed the time by playing a board game. It’s a game called Scythe that I got as a gift from my girlfriend for Christmas. Scythe is described as a 4X board game – and just in case you didn’t listen to last week’s podcast, 4X stands for Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate. You explore a map, expand your empire, exploit the land for resources, and exterminate your rival empires.

These types of strategy games are found in both the spheres of both board and video games. Classic examples of 4X video games include the Civilization series, the Masters of Orion series, Endless Space, and Stellaris. Examples of 4X board games include the aforementioned Scythe, Civilization: The Board Game, Twilight Imperium, and Clash of Cultures.

4X games often take a very long time to play – I’ve personally spent a whole day playing Civilization 5 on the computer and not finished the game, and it took two long gaming sessions to finish one game of a board game version. This is because there are often a lot of intersecting mechanics and choices you have to make and since it is a strategy game there are lots of considerations to make every time it is your turn. Also because there is a lot of information to cover, the first time you play such a game it will take a lot longer to set up and understand.

I really enjoyed playing Scythe with my friends and am already eager to try it again. However, when I’m faced with a 4X video games I often shy away from them aside from the Civilization series. So why is 4X more palatable to me in board game form over video games? That’s what I’m going to explore and expand upon (get it?) in this article.

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Overwatch & LGBT+ Representation

Soldier 76 is gay. Blizzard has now revealed both of what would be considered the “primary” Overwatch characters to be LGBT+. The first reveal was Tracer being in a lesbian relationship in a comic, and now Soldier 76 through the short story Bastet. Tracer is the face of Overwatch – she’s on the box when you buy it and was the primary good guy of the very first Overwatch short. And Soldier 76 is the grizzled veteran who is who you control when you boot up the tutorial in Overwatch and is considered to be one of the easiest and most basic characters to introduce you to the game.

Blizzard has been very inclusive with Overwatch with characters of all different races hailing from all different countries. Aside from the continued controversy over a lack of a playable black female character, the representation has been wide enough to include most everyone. So it’s no surprise that some of the characters are LGBT+.

But the question I pose with this article is: is Overwatch gay enough? Is Blizzard taking the right approach to sexual representation in their game, or is this more of an appeal to the masses for good press?

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After The Hype: The Witcher 3

So this past weekend I started playing Witcher 3 for the first time. I read The Last Wish (the first chronological book in the Witcher series, although it is a collection of short stories and not a full novel) for a book club my friends and I participate in. The characters and world building were enough to intrigue me and finally got enough of my attention to actually start the Witcher 3. I’d bought the complete edition for PS4 during a sale who knows how long ago and it’s been sitting on my shelf as a “to play” game for a long time.

Despite it getting rave reviews and it winning a ton of Game of the Year awards back in 2015, I was never super jazzed about the game. I’d played the Witcher 2 on the XBox 360 and finished the first chapter, but I didn’t end up completing the game. I don’t remember a lot about the story (other than Triss was there and Geralt was in a town doing witcher things) and I ended up dropping it in favor of other games. It always struck me as generic fantasy – well done and in an interesting world – but generic fantasy nonetheless.

I watched everyone rave about how good it was and how the sidequests and stories were very well developed and meaningful. But I was hesitant to jump in since I knew I’d already given up on Witcher 2 and I have a low tolerance for generic high fantasy worlds. But nonetheless I ended up with a copy of it since it’s reputation was so strong and it just laid in wait until I was inspired enough to play it.

Which is apparently now. So for today’s article I’m going to talk a little bit about my first few hours of Witcher 3…just three and a half years later than everybody else did.

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Choice Paralysis: Video Game Edition

For 2019 I’ve made several resolutions – many of which are directly related to my writing. One of them is just quantity. I started off 2018 with the goal of 3 blog posts a week, which I kept to for about a month and change. By the end of the year I was getting two to three a month done which is still good (because I was still writing!) but not an output amount I felt good about.

Part of my writing problem is I feel everything article I write on here has to have a definitive point. It has to either be a review or an in-depth analysis or a summary of games I’ve been playing. Sometimes I have a lot of topics I really want to write about but can’t decide on one, or I wait for that “moment of inspiration” that drives me to choose one out of a hat. And because of these factors sometimes I never write at all.

This leads into the topic that I’m writing about today that applies to my writing, video games, and life in general: choice paralysis AKA analysis paralysis.

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The 2018 Manatees – Writing Edition!

Last Friday on a bonus episode of the Make Me A Gamer Podcast, I doled out the first-ever Manatees (T-Man, manatee, get it?) to some of the games I really enjoyed this year. But I also wanted to write up a companion article to expand a little bit on all the games I talked about and a few I didn’t get to on the podcast.

In the podcast I go over a lot of the technical and mechanical details as to why I enjoyed the game, but in this piece I wanted to go a little more into the feelings and emotional side of the games. I’ve gotten into a habit of writing about and reviewing games from a detached, matter-of-fact standpoint instead of really exploring how games make me feel. Sometimes a game just has that je ne sais quoi and grabs you from the beginning and never lets go.

So here are TMan’s 2018 Manatees in article format. Hope you enjoy, and happy new year!

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What I’ve Been Playing – October 2018

Well it’s November now, and that means it’s time for a recap of what I played in October. Much like September was spent primarily playing Spider-Man, I spent the majority of October playing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. I posted my review of it last week and you can find it here. Since I already talked in-depth about it, I won’t be including it on my “games I played in October” list since I’d just be retracing my footsteps over topics I already discussed.

However, despite me putting 80 hours into Assassin’s Creed, I still managed to find time to play a few other games. I played a few levels of Mega Man 11 on the Switch, and that wasn’t the only side-scroller I got into. I also played Castlevania Requiem, which is the rerelease of Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. I also spent a little bit of time in Dark Souls Remastered. Finally, I played a really interesting game called Return of the Obra Dinn and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Toby Fox’s fantastic (and free!) follow-up to Undertale – Deltarune.

So let’s dive in and talk about some games!

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My Top 100 Favorite Video Games

So at the beginning of this year, I started an ambitious project to list my top 100 video games of all-time. I intended to write a blurb about every game on the list and count down from 100 to 1, but unfortunately I fizzled out and only got through 100-61. You can find links to all those posts below in the list.

I didn’t want to have the year end without posting the whole list though, so under the cut is going to be a simple list of all 100 games. These are my favorites, not necessarily the “best” games I’ve ever played but the ones that have a special place in my heart or are just too fun not to share.

I may eventually get to writing up the rest, and if so I’ll update this post with links to each write-up. Unfortunately with November coming up and me probably attempting NaNoWriMo again, it’s unlikely I’ll have the time for the in-depth write-ups I’d like to do for these games, especially once we get into the top 20 or so. Anyway, without further ado, here are my 100 favorite games of all-time, starting with #100:

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The Lawful Good Gamer

I’m Lawful Good. In the grand spectrum of the Dungeons & Dragons alignment chart, I’m the alignment that some people find the most boring, or the most annoying, and sometimes the most frustrating. Lawful Good is often attributed to the annoying paladin who insists on taking the bad guy in alive despite the rest of the party really, really wanting to kill him. One particularly frustrating Lawful Good character (to me) was Galad from the Wheel of Time series – a white knight in all senses of the phrase. But Lawful Good is also attributed to popular characters like Luke Skywalker and Superman – characters who uphold the law and believe in the good in people.

A Lawful Good person is not always strictly following every law. Luke, of course, joined the Rebellion and fought against The Empire – despite the Empire being the ones enforcing most of the laws in the galaxy. Here’s an excerpt from a handy-dandy reference website: “Lawful good beings will not want to lie or cheat anyone, good or evil. They will not stand for treachery and will not let obviously dishonorable people use their own honor against them, if they can help it. They will obey the laws and customs of the area that they are in, but will attempt to find legal loopholes to disobey a law which is clearly evil or unjust.”

It took a while for me to accept myself as a Lawful Good person. I, of course, would rather fancy myself as Chaotic Good with roguish charm like Mal Reynolds, or maybe the True Neutral genius of Gregory House. But I’ve never gotten a speeding ticket because I always follow the speed limit of the roads. I have an obsessive-compulsive problem of checking to make sure my car is parked within lines or close enough to the curb, and I will get back in my car to fix it. I get pits in my stomach when I have to lie for board games (like Avalon or Secret Hitler) and don’t ever consider cheating on anything. I find myself following the structure of the law to the best of my ability at all times – however when things like the recent possible government action regarding transgender people are brought up I want to make sure those laws don’t come to pass because I view them as evil.

I’m confident I’m a Lawful Good person and could probably list many more ways why I believe that. But because this is a gaming focused blog, I’d like to take a little time to talk about how being Lawful Good affects how I play video games.

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