Now That's What I Call February! SU&SD Newsletter #51

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.

View in browser