Back on the horse

At least,

Will be tomorrow. For now though, it feels a bit :

As far as yesterday's post goes, yep, that was my now traditional April Fools post. One year, there's going to be a totally unbelievable but actually true post. Bit like the novel writing post but one that might actually come true and happen.

Yesterday's post was a good one to write. There were only two things in there that weren't true ... There has, sadly, been no job offer from Paradox although I think it would be a very tough choice if there was one. I'm quite entrenched here with great people around me plus when I move posts in the next few months, it should be into one that is actually quite close to that creative engineer thing. Except not so much on the creative new ideas, more on delivering something special instead of indulging the imagination.

However it was a good excuse to write nice things about the Paradox people and the old Warcraft guild people. The Community Manager Susie who I keep mentioning is a special one, she actually engages with the community around the game. Which is Route One for making the community happy and engaged with the product they're pushing. I don't think I'd have pre-ordered Surviving Mars if not for the Susie and Niki streams and I'd have had a warier eye on Battletech ... which I'll probably preorder as well.

Depends on what the prerelease gameplay streams are like. The Surviving Mars ones showed off a well sorted game.

The question is though, why was it not Frontier with what I've written about Elite ? After all, Frontier is not too far away (they're based in the UK). I was actually back in playing Elite yesterday ...

It comes down to that community management thing, plus a lot of what the development group do with the game. It's a very pretty game and gets better looking with each update but .... it's very empty. And the community managers don't engage with their community. (The various links I've sent over to them didn't even get clicks plus I've heard very bad things about their engagement in general - if you're in the circle, you're ok. If you're out of the circle, you don't exist).

And I always do like saying nice things about people who have earned it and deserve it.

I have longer arms than that. Honest.

What else has been going on over the break ? Happily not too much. The break was intended to regenerate me out of burn out and hopefully that has succeeded. There's been :

Lots of music listening (1305 unique tracks according to iTunes);
Huge amounts of video watching;
A certain amount of cricket watching;
Far too much time in game (I'll count that up in a bit);

Resisting buying laptop or lego;
And a couple of films.

Was Tomb Raider on the Friday I went on leave ? Nah. I left work too late and ended up going to the shops while hungry. Don't do that folks. Although that did lead to me acquiring enough supplies to see me through the break.

The mob watched Pacific Rim 2 yesterday. The verdict ? They somehow managed to take the uplifting, fun, epic action of the first Pacific Rim and make it meh. A sequel that made some mad sense in itself but .... really wasn't necessary. John Boyega seems to have been taken to Hollywood's Heart as the next big thing, a flagbearer for inclusion but .... this movie isn't very good and he's playing the character from Attack the Block instead of the son of Pentecost.

There was a bit of reading too, although I'm still somewhat struggling through Revelation Space.

Back to work tomorrow though. It should be a quiet week, although I'm curious as to what was going on last week while I was away.

I better close up, the SpaceX stream just started ! Rokkits soon.

PS The gaming time over the last 2 weeks according to Steam :
9.4 hours of Stellaris - I have a new warrior monk xenophobe race that is already far ahead of the 2 neighbours. Just gotta get the influence to go to war and beat them up.
21.2 hours of Motorsport Manager - my team is now beating all comers so I'm looking to farm achievements. 1.5 seasons to go.
12.2 hours of Skyrim - and the start of a new adventure ...
176.3 hours of Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms - yep. You read that right. (I've been leaving it running when I go to bed and the champions earn lots of money to make the game easier for the next run). It's a daft addiction but one that I can have going while doing other things plus the game systems don't take much effort to learn.
(Which is why hours of Surviving Mars is jut 0.3 !)