September Interim Update

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September 22, 2020

Update time. Interim update time. Just some minor schedule changes, an announcement or two, a response to some feedback, and a request for more. Just the normal sort of s$%& real content creators and companies do from time to time. Let’s get cracking.

September Schedule Changes

Due to what I’ll call ‘excessive feedback,’ I changed the release schedule last week. I replaced the scheduled Ask Angry article with one about the Insight skill. I’m making another change too. The next AngryCraft article is getting bumped forward. It needs more work. Actually, I need to reevaluate where that project should go next and how best to move it to completion. Meanwhile, I’m putting as much of my time and energy as possible into the Learn to Play adventure module so I can definitely get it out in October.

Point is, this week’s article – and when I say this week, I mean this Friday for Patreon supporters and next Wednesday for everyone else – this week’s article is going to be something a little lighter. Actually, it’ll be at least three lighter things. And no, it won’t be the bumped Ask Angry. That’ll have to wait until next month.

No Article on October 2

In addition to the above schedule change, I also won’t be releasing an article on Patreon on the following Friday, October 2. And that same article won’t be released to the world on Wednesday, October 7. October is one of those wonderful months with an extra Friday in it. It’s got five instead of four. So, I’m taking that first week off to pour even more crunch time into both the Learn to Play adventure module and the next part of AngryCraft. Especially the module. Because I refuse to find myself saying “no, really, it’s coming in November, I promise.” There will be an article released to Patreon on each of the other four Fridays in October and then publicly released on the following Wednesdays.

Bonus Live Chat

Since I’m using the next two weeks – and the next three months, as you’ll see below – to clear my desk, I’m going to have an extra Live Chat tomorrow on Discord. As I sort of promised. On Wednesday, September 23 at 8:00 PM EDT, join me on Discord along with a special guest as I try to get through as many topics that I’ve ignored in previous chats as I can. There won’t be a question and answer portion this time around – you don’t need to submit questions – because I’ll have all the Qs I need to A thanks to my guest.

Let’s Play Obra Dinn Live!

Speaking of some fun extra live content, I’m going to start that live-streamed playthrough of Return of the Obra Dinn I discussed in my last monthly Live Chat. If you’re interested in seeing a full playthrough of the game, with all of the deductions carefully worked out, all of the details called out, and some discussion of the game’s mystery design and information management, come check it out. When I mentioned the possibility, some of you were particularly excited to see the game but don’t think it’s the sort of game you can play. If you haven’t played the game yet and think you might want to, I highly recommend you do so before watching me play it. Spoilers ruin the game.

The playthrough will be broken into a series of three, two-hour Livestreams starting Friday, October 2 at 8:00 PM EDT and continuing on the following Friday evenings thereafter. You will be able to watch live on my sadly neglected Twitch.tv channel at Twitch.tv/angrygamesinc or watch the archived recordings thereafter.

My Combative Tone

I’ve been called out by a few folks for my overly combative tone in the last few articles – especially the ones about social interaction – and my repeated use of the phrase “I’m right, you’re wrong, shut up.” After serious consideration, I’ve concluded that the folks that called it me out for it were right. It crossed the line from humorous schtick to rudeness and disrespect for my readers. I will adjust my tone in future articles.

But I hope that some of my readers will take the opportunity to consider their own tones in private messages, e-mails, and comments before they hit the ‘Send’ button. While I absolutely cannot respond to it all, I do read every comment, e-mail, Patreon message, and Discord message I receive. And some of my readers – especially when certain topics arise – are very passionate when they speak to me. And by that, I mean that if they said to my face what they typed to me, I’d passionately punch them unconscious and walk away.

While that doesn’t give me the right to talk to all of my readers the way I have done in the past couple of articles, it does frankly make it difficult to want to talk to anyone at all. I’m dealing with enough crap in my real life to really want to deal with this bulls$%& from a bunch of strangers over a game about pretend elves.

I’m frequently complimented on the quality of my comment section. Some people have told me that mine is the only site where they even read the comments. That doesn’t happen by itself. It takes a lot of curation and moderation. I’m careful to not let comments that stray too far off what I consider to be the point of the article. And I stop cold any thread that wanders too far off the point for too long. But I do purposely allow most critical comments through unless they cross certain lines of decency so as to make it clear that I don’t use moderation to avoid disagreement or criticism. Just to avoid rudeness and off-topic rambling.

Every so often, an article inflames so much ‘passion’ and the comment section requires so much curation and moderation that I feel like my only choice is to shut down that comment section. I hate doing that, but I hate wasting more time moderating comments than I do creating content. And if there ever comes a day when moderating comments across the site becomes too much work, I will shut them off completely.

Some people have told me that if I do that, I’ll lose all of my readers. That I’ll be crippling my business. That I will be hypocritically stripping the same God-give free speech rights from my readers that I claim to cherish unconditionally. And frankly, I’m unmoved by those arguments. Those people can freely find other places to fling feces at each other like chimps at a zoo.

I would prefer to have a good, reasonable, mature comment section readers find almost as useful as the articles they pertain to. And yes, I realize the irony of saying that given the character of my writing. I just don’t care about it.

But if I can’t have that good comment section, I would rather have no comment section at all than host the sort of crap that happens in other places where gamers gather to chat about pretend elves online. And that’s my final say on the subject. The matter is closed to discussion.

Edit: Comments Have Been Closed

It only took six hours for people responding to the above point to convince me I needed to close the comments on this post and on all future posts pending a review of my comment policies. I cannot say when or if the comment sections on my website posts will be opened again.

Speaking of Discussion…

Do you have some opinions? Because I’d sure love your feedback.

Seriously. I really do appreciate feedback. I love hearing from my readers. I know it doesn’t always seem like it, but the comments and messages and e-mails I receive are usually pretty helpful. And I do really listen to my readers. I give feedback fair consideration. I just don’t always end up persuaded. Sometimes I do. That’s why I removed that awful Special Olympics joke from my last post and why I’m going to watch my tone in future articles. Because of polite, reasonable feedback.

Anyway, we’re going into the last quarter of this s$&%y, s$&%y year. But I’m trying to end 2020 on a positive note. That’s why I want to finish the Learn to Play adventure module. And I’d like to finish up a few other projects in that time as well. I’d like to start 2021 with a much cleaner slate.

But the feedback I’ve been receiving is all over the place. Everyone wants me to do something different. And for every person heaping praise on a particular project, there’s another who wants me to dump it altogether. I seem to have a lot of vocal minorities. And yes, that’s partly my fault for spreading myself so thin across so many different topics. That’s why I have to figure out the best way to set my priorities and clear off my desk.

And I’m sorry Megadungeon fans, but you’re actually the vocalest of my minorities. You’re really loud, but there don’t seem to be as many of you as I thought. So I’m not going to revisit the question of what to do with the Megadungeon project until January. I have limited resources and limited time and I have to focus on the stuff that has the most support.
Here’s the deal: I have a pile of topics, ideas, and series spread out all over my desk and I need to decide which ones get the most resources first, which ones can sit until later, and which ones should just get thrown out. Each of these topics requires substantial work. And interspersed with lighter and less demanding fare, I think it’s about three months’ worth of content if I really push it. But maybe not. It might be too much. And some stuff might not get done in that time.

I’ve prepared a little poll – below – to see what you – collective you – think I should give the most attention to first and to see if any of these topics should be flushed. I’m going to use the poll results to help me allocate my time and energy between now and the end of December to clear my desk. And to decide how much detail to put into each topic. The poll isn’t the only thing I’m going to use. I also have to manage my time and resources effectively, juggling high-resource projects with low-resource ones, but it’d help to know what people want most and what they want first.

Thanks for your help.

The Survey Is Over; Thanks for the Feedback


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10 thoughts on “September Interim Update

    • I will definitely share the results. Unfortunately, the survey app isn’t playing nicely with the custom changes I’ve made to my theming and style sheets and stuff, so I had to turn off the results display. If I can sort that out, I will.

  1. I didn’t select anything to be flushed, because I know that while there are things you’re working your way through that I’m completely uninterested in, you have lots of readers who strongly want those things. I hope nothing gets permanently flushed, though I suspect something/s will end up getting so de-prioritized that it makes no functional difference.

  2. I’m sorry to hear that Megadungeon fans are such a minority. If it helps to add one more voice to the pile, I’m still interested in it and haven’t commented before. It’s the series that brought me to your site in the first place, and while I love the rest of your articles too, I keep waiting for Megadungeon to come back. Maybe if I chimed in earlier you’d see there’s more support for it than you thought. I hope you reconsider it in January!

    • I agree completely! Would have loved a “Do you want the Megadungeon to be a priority?” in this poll (I would have been an enthusiastic yes!). Maybe it’s a possibility in a future article so Angry can gauge just how large/small this vocal/silent group really is!

    • I want to see the learn to play module first, but I did buy CC3 to follow along with your megadungeon series.
      And it’s not like I have a bunch of players for the megadungeon already anyways so I can be patient. But you know, still interested.

    • I’m in exactly the same boat- vacate a patreon primarily because if mega dungeon. I think it’s likely there’s less support for it because it hasn’t been addressed in years, but that’s only supposition.
      You’ve said before why it’s fallen by the wayside, and I understand. Perhaps if there were a way to do it system agnostically, it might be tightened up and be more applicable to your own publishing project.
      In any case, I’m day enough along my own mega dungeon I’d probably be pretty annoyed by all the good ideas I should have included from the beginning that would be difficult to shoehorn in at this point.
      And thanks for your transparency and willingness to listen.

    • Same, the megadungeon is definitely interesting enough to continue, it’s just we have to choose between so many topics and only a few get to have priority.

  3. For what it’s worth, the megadungeon is also my own favorite incomplete project, by quite a lot. The only one that compares in utility and general level of interest for me is the monster creation stuff, and that’s doneish, pending some additional changes to the action economy, as I understand it. Given how much I enjoyed the megadungeon project and how much I’ve seen other people talk about it in comments, I’m pretty surprised to learn I’m in a minority. I really don’t mind waiting, though.

    I’m pretty interested in all of the options. They’re all useful.

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