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Now That's What I Call February! SU&SD Newsletter #51
🕑 Added 2022-06-22 18:03:02 +0000 UTC
Matt: Whoosh bang pow: what a February! As we’re settling into the groove of another strange year, we’re gently optimistic - for the time being? The biggest issue currently is our nationwide lockdown, which for most of us makes playing board games PHYSICALLY ILLEGAL. Thankfully we’ve stuff we played last year that we’re able to revisit digitally, squidging together impressions of both “Real Life” and “Board Game Arena” board gaming to create cyborg opinions that will Hopefully Do.
One thing I will tell you - as a behind-the-scenes secret - is that for the last month I’ve been covertly bunking off from work on Tuesday afternoons to do industrial-scale baking. Inspired by Quinns’ proactivity last year (who spent a decent chunk of time ensuring elderly residents within his building block had food deliveries throughout the worst parts of lockdown) I’ve started 2021 off by trying to Do Something rather than simply bunkering inside my cave and waiting until things blow over.
A couple of NHS workers on our road mentioned that during the first spike of Covid hospitals were inundated with gifts and treats to keep the spirits of frontline workers up: a tradition that hasn’t returned for Wave 2. Perhaps everyone’s just knackered, perhaps it’s part of a national guilt that we’d rather not directly face, but as fascinated as I am by the phenomenon - the fact of the matter is that People Need Cake. So I hope you’ll all be happy to know that a small % of your donations from the last month have been spent on large quantities of flour and butter, and indirectly cheering up some deeply stressed strangers!
Above: A Very Tasty LeesCake
As you’ll have hopefully come to expect by now, the rest of my behind-the-scenes tinkering is desperately boring: this month I’ve been toying around with viewing online games as a spectator and using CSS to strip individual elements from Board Game Arena’s website code as a means of better presenting it on our weekly streams. So far results have been “mixed”, but anything that means spending less time in TTS at this point is an incredible blessing. I’m hoping that soon I’ll be able to bike over to my mate’s house to play a real board game - but we’ll see! Safety first!
Ava: So this is supposed to be a behind the scenes glimpse, right? Well January was about as January as can be expected. The beginning of the month featured all of us forgetting how to do our jobs, and having to relearn from first principles, our practice and muscle-memory drawing back into focus ever so slowly, with more than a few stumbles along the way. On the plus side, I didn’t have quite the same problem (in this job anyway). The bulk of my work for SUSD was the Games News, and we put a cap on it and called it done. This freed me to start learning other, entirely new things! Exciting! Terrifying!
I’ve been getting my hand in at podcast editing, and it’s been a fascinating challenge. Picking and scooping little fragments of waveforms and shuffling, slicing and destroying them until you get something approaching the idealised version of our silly words and sharp insights. It’s a surprisingly funny job, trying to lock stings and voices into perfect comic timing, while making everyone sound as clear and wonderful as they already are.
It’s fun. It’s weird. It’s taking me way longer than it should, but it’s great to be feeling like I’m learning a new super-power. I’m learning from the best people, and they’re helping smooth out any rough edges I’ve left behind, but I can’t wait to keep learning. I am however, faintly worried that I’ll never hear a podcast the same way again. Learning is strange. It changes you. I love it.
POV: Tom is teaching you how to Podcast (Send help)
Tom: Hello! I’ve forgotten how to do my job! Matt and Quinns both warned me that all video-making knowledge would gently slip out of my olive-smooth brain over the christmas period, and I was a fool not to listen - instead working on my longest video so far. Oopsies! That being said, positive reception to the Button Shy vid has given me a chunky confidence boost - it’s good to know that the hours spent staring at the edit converted into sheer minutes of enjoyment from the people in the computer.
BUT I WANT TO CLEAR SOMETHING UP AND VENT!!!! Loads of comments talked about how it was frustrating having the camera so close throughout the video - I KNOW! I have but one space to film, and I have rendered it expertly in MS Paint so you can understand my struggles. Welcome to the TomZone...
Matt: HIGGGGHHHHWAY TOOOOO THE, THOMAS-ZONNNNEEE
Tom: AaAh! My filming space doubles as my editing space which triples as my sleeping space! LET ME OUT OF THIS ROOM! Not pictured is the fact that I can only get about three angles with that camera without revealing the gaudy pink elephant curtains in the background, hung just before the pandemic as my old room at my parents’ place was mid-conversion into a room for a 10-year-old. No-one can know about the elephant curtains. The information cannot leave this room.
What else? I’ve realised that I’m sick to death of TTS, having now clocked around 200 hours sat in that god-forsaken program. Any opinions gathered purely inside that shonky digital prison have my critical eye not skewed, but skewered, like an eye kebab. Or an opinion kebab. Or something. On the other hand, I’m adoring BGA - recent games of the absolutely fabulous Carnegie with Matt and Ava have proven that it’s the far superior site if you’re puzzling, instead of playing? In fact, I’d thoroughly recommend checking Carnegie out on BGA - we’re chatting about it on a recent podcast, but it’s so excellent you should get a look at it beforehand. Like a big nerdy boardgame book club. Lovely stuff.
Quinns: Ooh, are we complaining about camera angles? In that case, allow me to play the Scrooge McDuck to my impoverished duck nephew.
Last year dweeb table manufacturer GeekNSon were kind enough to give me one of their tables in exchange for the exposure it would get in our videos. I was chuffed to the very nips! For years I’ve wanted one of these tables that features a recessed, felt-lined board game chamber.
However, we’ve had some comments asking why, since receiving the table, I almost always film my reviews on top of it, ignoring it’s unique selling point. WELL. It turns out that these geek tables are brilliant to play games on, but worse to film on. I did a comparison shot below.
Those 4 inches of extra depth between the presenter’s head and the game don’t look like much, but they just make everything about filming a teeny bit harder. It’s harder to get everything into the frame, you shrink the width and length of “available table” you can lay the game on, and you create little walls around the table, so the camera always has to be shooting over the side of the table and down into the well.
The thing is, if you were to ask me what the single most unexpectedly hard part of our job is, the answer would be “filming board games”. Don’t get me wrong, games can be marvellous fun to film when it comes to close-ups, but trying to capture the entirety of a game and the presenter sitting at the table is, at times, like trying to fit a ruler into a balloon. Except we also like to change our camera angles throughout the review, so it’s like trying to put a ruler into a balloon multiple times. While losing daylight.
Tom: Are you seriously comparing your challenges of filming on a £3000 table to me filming on a second hand set of drawers?
Matt Lees, free of table envy
What are we video games! 🎮
Tom: I’ve got three hot games on rotation right now, and each of them is just sublime. Welcome to Tom’s videogame tent; the canvas has been waxed with the finest lyrical money can buy.
First off, if you’ve got 3 pals lying around and some cash to spare, I think the first 10 missions of Deep Rock Galactic are worth the price of entry alone. Each one builds into this perfectly pitched on-ramp into every mission type and system that exists in this absolute gem of a multiplayer experience - so much so that I’m reluctant to spoil any of the key features. ‘The One With The Pipes’ was utterly delightful, that’s all I’ll say. But beyond that, sinking your teeth into the lategame, playing around with each of the different classes, chuckling as everything goes horribly wrong and wondering what the next update will bring… it’s glorious.Two pieces of advice, though, bump it up one hazard level if you’re into it being ‘moderately challenging’, and turn the voice acting down, but not off. It gets grating quickly, but is also charming in its own little way.
I’ve also been utterly devouring Hitman 3, in awe of how IOI continues to up their game (hah!) with every little iteration in the franchise, whilst each still maintaining a great starting pace for new players? The first three levels form this wonderful triptych - a perfect introduction followed by a richer, deeper challenge that’s then immediately subverted by an absolute departure that livens up your understanding of the previous levels? It’s a game design masterclass, and if anyone gives me the opportunity I will gush about it for too long - so I shall try my best not to bore you and summarise: it’s an utter snack of a game. I’m this positive about it and there’s two levels that I haven’t even touched yet. What a joy.
I’d be remiss not to mention that I’m still playing Spelunky 2, though I’ve simmered my obsession down to just doing the daily challenge. Thing is, I’m nearly a cool hundred hours in, and I’m still discovering new things and finding little tricks to make my chances of survival just a tiny bit higher. For those interested, I just managed to get to 7-8, and I will get to the end (that is, if it even has an end).
Matt: I’ve been really enjoying Astroneer multiplayer this month - a delightfully relaxed survival game about finding resources and building things, with a UI and aesthetic that is chunky and satisfying from every single angle.
What are we reading? 📺
Ava: I found the time to slide into the first of Ursula K LeGuin’s Earthsea books, after getting bafflingly trapped on the third page over several previous reads. It landed this time and it was an absolute delight. I love that LeGuin’s concept of magic and balance is so clearly inspired by her translation of the Tao Te Ching, or possibly they both originate from the same kind and generous ethos. It’s a solid kid’s adventure book, with a beautiful beating heart, and I’m excited to keep travelling in that world.
Quinns: Those Earthsea books are so good. They’re *so* good. I also read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi over Christmas, and while A Memory Called Empire and A Long Way to a Small, Angry, Planet are both exactly as good as everyone said they were, the book I actually want to talk about is Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid.
The book starts in a grocery store with an African American woman being accused of abducting the white kid she’s babysitting, and the plot only picks up speed from there. I’ve done a lot of reading during lockdown, but I’m not sure whether anything gripped me like this book. I’ll one-hundo percent be buying whatever Reid does next.
What are we music! 🎵
Tom: I’ve been digging through some lovely new stuff recently - Felbm’s quartet of easy going instrumental records alongside the soundtrack to Mutazione have been excellent supplements to long edits and writing sessions, whilst Sam Prekop’s ‘Comma’ has been a wheezing, bubbling companion in the limited exercise I’ve been trying my best at in the new year. I’ve also been obsessively listening to Home’s ‘Falling Into Place’, a record I definitely skipped on in favour of ‘that track’ from 2014’s ‘Odyssey’, but am now growing a fondness for - it’s impossible not to boogie just a little under those squeaky, sparkling synths.
As well as this, a big loss happened. I vividly remember listening to SOPHIE’s brand of rubbery hyperpop in my last year of sixth form, and feeling like something special was happening in that space - Pop untethered from any kind of expectation or restraint; music and identity as malleable, free. And seeing that energy, joy and creativity get gradually stirred into some of the most popular ‘mainstream’ artists recording today? It was joyful, and spoke to a more inclusive, diverse and good music community. I truly believe that her influence has not just found its way into the brains of all kinds of artists and creators, but also gently folded through the pop landscape of the past 5, and next 50 years. A visionary, and a shattering loss.
Ava: So we lost SOPHIE at the end of January, and I’ve been blasting Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-insides since I found out. Sophie was an incredible artist, and an absolute inspiration. That record is not just a pounding assault of the most incredible electronic noise, pop and emotion you’ll ever hear, but also a radically bold story of acceptance, fragility and power. It’s so unabashedly trans and inspiring and joyful and hard. It’s heartbreaking to lose a prominent member of the trans community, but Sophie left behind some of the most deeply powerful art about transness I’ve ever heard. For me, as a (non-binary) trans woman, it speaks to a deep and true part of myself, sometimes wordlessly, sometimes with words I never knew I needed to hear. The music is so rich with an overwhelming acceptance of trans pride and power. If you aren’t trans, it’s still going to be a powerful experience, affirming and moving, and I recommend it from the depths of my heart. It’s an important record, and you’ll not have heard anything like it. There’s a new star in the sky now, even if you can’t see it. It’s okay to cry.
