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In order to attend Gencon both vaccinations (a ‘full course’ whatever that means, especially if people got the J&J or Astrazeneca (Europe’s vax)) and masks are required for attendance, making Gencon the least appealing convention to go to. In contrast, most Conventions require a negative PCR test for either unvaxxed, or the smart ones, for ALL attendees 72 hours before the convention. This is the Way.

Let’s break it down

“They can either be manufactured or homemade and should consist of a solid piece of material without slits, exhalation valves, or punctures.”

Scott Gottleib just dropped what people have known and stated since the beginning of the pandemic (especially in the beginning) that cloth masks do not work at all vs Covid or any airborne virus. So, the masks that are required are? Surgical with the open sides since they are made to stop stuff from dropping into a patient during surgery? N-19? Good luck getting enough for even 1/3rd of the convention staff let alone guests. Respirators? You going to spend 50$ or more on one of these? The last one may be the only one that actually works. None of what they listed above does anything at all for viruses.

Since most people touch, move and never change their mask during the day what you have in reality is a bacteria filled sack hanging off your face all day, breathing that at other people that are breathing in and out the same thing, all the while pulling them down to eat candy bars and drink mountain dew which completely negates the point of someone wearing a mask vs an aerosolized virus in the first place! In 2020 I can see people still thinking these had some effect, but with multiple studies and massive (and I mean massive) real life examples of masks doing absolutely nothing, this is the height of stupidity to require. Shit show.

Vax
These mRNA therapeutics they are calling vaccines have saved many lives in high risk groups, but swing into the negative risk profile under 40 quickly where the vax is more dangerous than covid, especially the milder Omicron. Gencon has many, many people in high risk groups attending, elderly, morbidly obese, people with heart and lung issues, diabetes, on and on. It’s important that these people get the vaccines or better yet, stay home until they have had Covid, but for everyone else, especially people that have had the disease? It’s preposterous.

These vaccines do not and were not designed to prevent spread like our government falsely advertised last Spring with Biden, lying to the entire population of our country, stating “If you get the vaccine, you can’t get Covid” bullshit. So why would they be mandated for anyone for attendance to anything? Zero logical reasons. What’s more, any immunity that might prevent spread (not just protection for yourself) comes only from prior infection since those folks have mucosal, t-cell and if they got it bad enough to have symptoms, antibody levels of their immune system. mRNA Vax people are walking around with only a spike protein part of the virus in comparison and that has proven to not stop infection or spread in the least. Shit Show.

Seasonality
Summer is not the time of Covid and the case counts and illness nearly disappears from late April to early October in our hemisphere. This is known. Why it happens this way is likely a ton of factors, but Gencon being in July or August is during the most safe Covid months of the year. There won’t be any Covid around to get, even for those who have never had it, which by Summer will be a very small number.

Gencon is not doing it’s staff, it’s visitors or it’s future prospects making it’s convention an uncomfortable event with precautions that have been proven to not be effective in the least. It’s not more safe in any way.

What is the answer? As opposed as I am to the plague of testing that is taking place for people that are not sick, the answer to Gencon’s Covid problem is simply the requirement of a negative Covid test 72 hours before the convention for EVERYONE regardless of ‘vaccination status’ whatever that now means to people and there’s no need for the pretend masks unless people choose to wear them, which people will do if they want anyway.

It pains me to see how idiotic this all is in the face of what we know now about this virus, the very short term efficacy of the mRNA vaccines, it’s age stratification and method of spread and the fact that with their current requirements, it is putting their guests at more risk pretending these things work. Sad and, a shit show.

This looks like something my kids would play built in Roblox.

20$? Anyone going to take the plunge into this madness?

Release trailer for a GRAPHICALLY updated Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown for the PS4 coming— in less than a week.

I didn’t see Vanessa (my main) but everyone looks pretty good. Akira’s face is a bit off to me, but really this is all about the gameplay gameplay gameplay. This is the best fighting game there is– one that I still play more than any other fighter. The game combines the ability for new players to pick up and play easily (only 3 buttons!) and yet at the same time is the deepest fighting game there is. I’m pretty pumped.

My son was talking shit this weekend about my Vanessa so we busted out VF5 Final Showdown on the Xbox360 and I stuffed that in his craw (granted he is getting good with Kage). We hadn’t played in almost a year, so he was quite embarrassed by the customized outfits he had made, one being a Santa Clause, “when he was a little kid.”

Rumor has it that there is either an E-sports focused port of VF5 Final Showdown or a VF Ultimate: i.e.: a reskin of the characters and graphics with no (or small) change to the gameplay to update it to modern consoles. While not Virtua Fighter 6, this would be GREAT news either way as the game still looks amazing and needless to say, still blows away everything out since.

The email just came out– Gamehole Con is on for Oct 21-24th! That means the Root Tournament is going to happen in 2021. Because it’s Madison and not a normal area of the state, we will probably have to sit around in masks, but just like not having the insane school closings that neighboring counties had as long as kids “wore” masks, I’ll take it.

Dates:

• Housing Portal Opens – April 1st at noon CDT
• Event Submissions Open – May 1st noon CDT
• VIG Renewals Open – June 15th noon CDT
• Main Registration Opens – July 1st noon CDT
• VIG Event Registration Opens – August 15th noon CDT
• General Event Registration Opens – September 1st noon CDT
• Pre-registration and Event Submission Closes – October 1st
• Gamehole Con! – Oct. 21st – Oct. 24th

PUBG is well… yeah.

‘How to’ on making (and more importantly, maintaining) playtest cards in Figma with Google Sheets:

I use paper note cards at first, but then the changes, ohhhh, the changes start to come in and they are very difficult to manage with pieces of paper after about the 3rd playtest or so. And… tiresome.

This allows you to use google sheets to maintain rules, numbers, text, etc and you can easily export to either print or electronic. Great stuff.

MURAL!

Every couple of years I get the hankering to design a game; games that will be playtested but never finished enough to bother publishing, and that’s just fine: publishing is the shitty part. I use MURAL at work a lot to help product development and used it this time for a brainstorm and to build out the basic game space, card typology, etc.. It worked AWESOME. Highly recommend it when you first start design or ideas for anything (even a novel where you have to thread stuff through from plots to character arcs, etc.). It ain’t free though like Figma.

Also for work, Mural was my absolute best friend last Spring when we were still stuck at home. It still helps now that I’m back in the office, but was absolutely fucking critical last year.

The “Marauder” Expansion kicks out tomorrow. I’ll back it of course, but man, we have not played all that much this year– mostly due to some other very addictive games. Looks interesting for sure.

Based on twitter info from Leder games, this is going to have a two new main factions and a set of minor factions (like say Stellaris when you encounter single planet races). We’ll see if they can continue their run with this one of interesting designs for the factions. Root is hype for good reason, it’s a refreshing game of conflict among a sea of co-ops and design by the numbers point-salad games.

My biggest regret out of this election is not seeing the two populist candidates go at each other. Biden is weak and a waffle on all issues (abortion, crime, gay marriage) and Trump is… getting mad at tweets to drive policy. The debates were high comedy, but nothing serious: just two rich corrupt men tearing into each other about mostly non-issues (including Covid, which is both a global health issue and high political theater). This should have been Bernie Vs Trump. I was almost written in the stars that it should have been so, and yet, we were denied.

So yeah, I blame the DNC for not putting up the populist candidate again this time in the same way I was shocked that the Republican populist, bully pulpit candidate destroyed his field last time.

Let’s see how the day goes. In recompense for a political post on a gaming blog, here are some hotties.