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Unread postby icycalm » 22 Nov 2017 07:40

So I got one: https://www.patreon.com/cosmicwar

At first, I chose to try it on a whim, because I wanted to get Tiny Metal but have been spending so much money on games in the past few months that I could just not justify the expense. But after seeing the response, I have decided to post all my reviews there exclusively from now on (though the Videogame Art ones will be reposted on Insomnia a couple years later, to complete the books).

One thing that's giving me trouble is the rewards structure. Currently, I have two levels: $5/month gets you access to the content, and $10 gets you the content plus a "Patron" Discord role. And my question is, what more could I offer that people might want?

I am not so much asking for what you think OTHER people might want, but what you specifically would want to see from me, and willing to spend (more) money for. You can also speculate on what other people might want, but I think your personal preferences will be far more valuable input for me.
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Unread postby icycalm » 08 Sep 2018 11:31

icycalm Patreon breaks top 500 gaming Patreons
https://www.patreon.com/posts/21285066

icycalm wrote:My Patreon broke $700 today and got into the top 500 gaming Patreons (455 out of 8,258, to be exact).
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Unread postby icycalm » 28 Sep 2018 10:23

Help me test Nietzschean psychoanalysis
https://www.patreon.com/posts/21693610

icycalm wrote:So to cut the preamble short and get to the point, I invite those of you who are interested in this and who are pledged at the $25 level or above (the "philosophy level") to message me at icycalm@culture.vg from your Patreon email (the address you used to register here) to request info on the process and/or to sign up.
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Unread postby icycalm » 10 Oct 2018 01:23

New private Discord text channel and role for Sponsors
https://www.patreon.com/posts/21961729

icycalm wrote:There has been some demand for an off-topic text channel on Discord to chat about all the non-videogamey subjects that I post about in my philosophy forum, and I finally decided to create it. It is now a perk of the $25 Sponsor tier. It gives you the "Humans" role in Discord that allows you to see the new channel. Alternatively, I also give this role to people who've subscribed to my philosophy forum via PayPal, but since I have to do this manually, I might occasionally miss someone, so let me know if that's you. To kick things off, I have shared some details on a pretty crazy job I am thinking of taking up, so head on over there and take a look if you have access. There is also a helpful little discussion at the top about when to use the chat versus the forum.
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Unread postby icycalm » 29 Oct 2018 18:41

https://www.patreon.com/posts/22370242

State of icycalm's Projects Oct '18 Edition
Time for a comprehensive update on all my projects. Remember back in the summer when I mentioned a bunch of projects I was working on [ > ]? There were several of them, most of which I'd never mentioned before, and I am sure that to some people the sheer volume of work involved must have sounded excessive, and perhaps even unbelievable. Today, however, I am glad to announce that I've been making heavy progress in pretty much all of those projects, and even in a couple of new ones, or at any rate older ones I've resurrected, and I am ready to show it to you. So here are the details, broken down by project.



• End of Philosophy

After a change of programmer, and a move from Unity to Unreal Engine, which set us back several weeks (though it will be a good development in the long term, because for the sake of our ever more ambitious future games, the faster we learn the best engine available, the better) we finally have a playable build to give to people. It is already available to the $25+ tier Sponsors in the private #cultdev Discord channel, and their responses have been very positive.

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Sergei and I are committed to delivering nothing less than a modern videogame masterpiece with JRPG-levels of playtime content, and we are well on our way there. Look for more advanced, feature-rich builds with longer playtime in the coming weeks and months, and also for a kickass trailer that will demonstrate the game and connect it to my upcoming multi-game multi-genre philosophically-themed videogame universe, Endgame, which I intend to develop over decades and of which End of Philosophy will be the prologue.



• The Best Videogame Player In The World

I am finally ready to launch my revolutionary new contest based on my titular essay from Videogame Culture: Volume I. Three people—me, Sergei, and a video guy I hired—have been working for a week to deliver the trailer that will be available before the end of the month, to go along with the announcement post, and let me assure you it will blow you away with the sheer magnitude of its scope and ambition and eyeball-melting videogame action.

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On the first of November I am launching what will surely become nothing less than a videogame institution, and perhaps, in due time, something far greater than that: a brand-new, sci-fi political system, believe it or not. For the time being, however, forget I said that last bit, and just enjoy the sheer madness of the thing, either as participant or spectator. P.S. The entry fee will be €20, to cover a host of costs I've already incurred and will keep incurring, but will be waived for Uber Sponsors pledged on Patreon at the $50 tier. [Update: Trailer is up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rboJGO_2SpE]



• Endgame: The End of PUA Theory

This is my PUA book that is in no way related to my videogame universe; "Endgame" just happens to be a super-cool title to use with both videogames and pick-up theory, and it also fits perfectly the content of both works, so I'll be using it for both. So I've started publishing this book in my philosophy forum, in its very own brand-new subforum, and everyone with access (i.e. $25 tier Sponsors or PayPal subscribers) who is interested in modern dating and the wider social framework in which it takes place, as well as both female and PUA psychology, should head over there and have a look.

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Updates will be posted on a weekly basis, until the full book has been published, concluding probably a few months from now. After that there will be a print edition, and later still a digital one, both of which will be sent to $50 tier Uber Sponsors at no additional cost. A couple years down the line there may be a website too. A really cool one of course, as should be expected of me by now.



• icyblog

For over a year now I have been posting all kinds of art and literary criticism in my philosophy forum. Reviews of movies and novels, non-fiction and documentaries, extended fitness and nutrition essays, and of course tons of content on politics and various social issues, including dating. Basically everything I am interested in that's not strictly about philosophy or videogames, and therefore doesn't belong on any of my two existing frontpages. However, the way the forum is set up, it's quite laborious for people to read it, because there are dozens of subforums and, on a busy day, whoever wanted to check all of it would have to click back and forth quite a bit, which can get annoying. So I've been working on a blog page that will work exactly like Insomnia's redesigned frontpage, pulling every post from all the subforums and throwing them on a single page, so that by checking that page once a day and scrolling down, the reader will never miss anything, and will be able to further explore any subject he is especially interested in by clicking through to it. In addition, there will be a sidebar with the top 20 or 50 or whatever of all my favorite movies, novels, music pieces and so on, all eventually with linked reviews, pretty much in the manner of Insomnia. Originally, I had intended to make separate websites for all these subjects, but a more elegant—not to mention more efficient—solution would simply be an icycalm blog, with a detailed sidebar serving as a guide to the content, and that's what I'll be launching in November, if all goes according to plan. And to go with it, I will be performing a major revision and expansion of the Reading List, with a brief biography section added for all the major philosophers including me, and at the same time finally publishing my critique of civilization on the frontpage which will be a philosophical triumph of stunning proportions, so look out for that. All in all, it will be a massive expansion of my philosophy site, which needed some love too after all the attention I've been lavishing on Insomnia these past few months, so that will be my main focus for November. (Oh, and there'll also be a Project Gutenberg-attempt to make available online all the great philosophical works NOT featured on Project Gutenberg—i.e. essentially all of them, especially if we are talking quality translations, since Project Gutenberg's tend to suck—and a reading club to go along with that.)



• The Evil One

This is my novel. It's coming along nicely, in the rare times when I am in the right mood to work on it, and I'll be dropping it on the world at some point with no warning. $50 tier Uber Sponsors will get the original print edition right after I have received mine and okayed it, and a little later everyone else will be able to order it from Lulu.



• Insomnia and CULT merchandise

Finally, I've made some progress in this project too, but so far strictly of a research nature. Our FTG player Effay asked for a shirt a while back, to represent the clan in several tournaments he's been entering, but I didn't want to just cook up any old cheap shit and send it to him. I don't want to produce anything that I myself would not be happy wearing on a daily basis, around people I wanted to impress no less, like pretty girls for example. So I've been looking around to see what can be done, until I finally came upon this Razer team jacket shown below that's gorgeous (nerd not included).

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However, I have not the faintest clue of how to go about making such a thing. A few searches I've done on print-on-demand jackets turned up only ugly stuff, so unless one of you has a link for me, I think I will be contacting Razer to find out where they make their jackets. I know it's probably a dead-end, but I'll try it, and I'll keep trying to find where I can make clothing of this calibre. I am sure I will produce some cool shirts too eventually, but I would like to launch the line of merchandise with something super-special, so I will put some more time into this jacket business before I give up and fall back on simpler stuff like shirts etc. Eventually, I'll work my way up to that damn jacket if it takes me a decade of trying. I can be very stubborn with this stuff, and won't give up. And once more, everything produced will be sent to the $50 tier Uber Sponsors at no additional charge (unless it costs something crazy like hundreds of dollars, in which case guys, I might ask you to chip in something, if you want to order it, to avoid bankrupting me as there are quite a few of you now).


And... that's it from me. If it seems to you like a lot, it sure as hell is, and now you know what I'd been working on in the 16 months I took off the internet in 2015-2016. I was in let us say a rather constraining environment, not so much in terms of creativity as of its expression, and so had little else to do all day but create stuff in my head, leading to this explosion of expression when I got out of that environment, whose results you've been seeing in my sites for the past two years, but which I've not yet exhausted, not even close. So back to work for me, and I'll be looking forward to your feedback over the coming weeks and months.


P.S. I recently set up the Discord so that only $1 tier patrons and above can post in the text channels. Everyone can still read the publicly viewable ones, but only my patrons can post. This way, I get rid of trolls entirely, essentially eliminating the need for moderation. So if you are on there and puzzled about why you suddenly can't post, simply go on my Patreon page and click on "Redeem Discord rewards" or whatever it's called to link your two accounts together. A small percentage of people have issues with this process, but I know how to solve them, so message me if you are having trouble (direct messages are allowed even for non-members). For most people it is a smooth process though. Plus it gives you access to the private #cult channel and the voice channels where all the fun happens.
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Unread postby icycalm » 28 Nov 2018 07:04

https://www.patreon.com/posts/22919045

Introduction to Nietzschean Psychoanalysis
So my psychoanalytic efforts that I mentioned recently and invited patrons to participate in [ > ] have been advancing fast, and several people have already signed up to them and made great progress with me over the past few weeks. With their help, I understand a lot more about the theory, now that I have seen it function—and even perform miracles—in practice, and it's a shame I can't share any of these stories with you, because I am really proud of them. My capacity to turn peoples' lives around with but a single email has surprised even me, and I look forward to continue doing that as it is fascinating and extremely rewarding work. To that end, I am ready to share today the introduction to my method (since it really is my method, as it's not contained in any of Nietzsche's writings but merely implied in them) which I have been refining with every new correspondent to a point that I now feel comfortable enough to publish it. Above all, I want to underscore that, though traditional psychoanalysis is targeted at essentially extremely weak and/or severely damaged people, my kind focuses instead on fundamentally normal, healthy ones with the goal of making them even stronger and turbocharging their growth. As such, I do not think of my correspondents as "patients", but rather as protégés, and should have perhaps called it a mentorship program, rather than a psychoanalytic one, to best convey its intention; though of course it is a psychoanalytic too, but employing psychoanalysis not so much to heal wounds, in the sense of a medical doctor, but to turn the person concerned into an athlete, in the sense of a sports coach, so that he'll become so strong that he won't need doctors at all aside of cases of major accidents, and certainly not to cope with daily life, as the typical psychoanalysis patient does. So I would say that what I am doing is developing a method for the point at which psychoanalysis meets mentorship, combining the two disciplines to create a new approach that's destined to dominate the field in future.

So what do you get when you cross this:

Psychoanalysis was founded by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Freud believed that people could be cured by making conscious their unconscious thoughts and motivations, thus gaining insight. The aim of psychoanalysis therapy is to release repressed emotions and experiences, i.e., make the unconscious conscious.


With this?

Mentorship is a relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. The mentor may be older or younger than the person being mentored, but he or she must have a certain area of expertise. It is a learning and development partnership between someone with vast experience and someone who wants to learn.


Write me and find out. But first read the introduction below, to get an idea of what you will be getting yourself into.


Nietzschean psychoanalysis, the way I understand it and have conceptualized it, is very simple. You set a goal, and you go after it. No navel-gazing, no time-wasting, no excuses. And it is only if you fail, and have lost all hope of victory, that you ditch this method and turn to traditional psychoanalysis.

Traditional psychoanalysis, in other words, deals with the mitigation of failure. It teaches the individual to cope with this failure, either because there is simply no hope for victory any more, or, more insidiously, because the psychoanalyst has no idea how to steer the individual towards victory, or even worse does not even realize that victory is the objective. The effect this has on the individual's life is tremendous, and is best explained via an example.

In 2004, my girlfriend of several years left me, and it was not until over a decade later when I met a much better girl that I stopped grieving about it. During this decade, I met a number of girls, but none of them inspired in me the strength of feeling I felt for my old girlfriend, so the pain never went away. If anything, these girls reminded me of what I had lost, and temporarily reawakened those feelings and hence the intensity of the pain, with the result being that I was much happier when alone than when in an inevitably short-lived relationship with a girl I regarded as inferior and constantly negatively compared to my ex-girlfriend.

Of course, at no point during this decade-long process was I proactive about it. I had a vague idea that the way to overcome my loss was to find another girl, but I didn't know how to do that, or even that it was just as possible to increase the number of girls you meet and date every month as you can increase the amount of food you consume or exercise you get. Just as bad was that I didn't even know that better girls than my ex-girlfriend existed. When she left me I was in my early 20s, and had had sex and/or some type of relationship with perhaps 20 girls in total, so my sample size was tiny. Of course at the time I thought it was large, and to most people reading this it will sound like a big number too, but think for example of your best friend. Imagine losing him, and then comparing him to 19 other random friends and acquaintances of yours and trying to replace him with one of them. What are the chances that in that sample of people you have a second person who can compare to your best friend? 20 is a small number when it comes to people. If you get lucky and you land an awesome friend or girlfriend, you could go through hundreds of people and still fail to find someone to replace them with. And that's why, at the very least, you MUST go through hundreds of people when you lose a person of that caliber. And with the right mindset and techniques, doing so is merely a matter of effort that is completely in your power—and not a lot of effort either.

In short, I could have gotten over my girlfriend and moved on with my life very quickly if I had had the right mindset and techniques. Not in ten years, but in ten months (—and quite possibly even in a mere couple of months, if I had gotten lucky). The right mindset is that there are DEFINITELY better girls than her on the planet—much better, even, and MANY of them—and the right technique is aggressive pick-up methods that have you meet hundreds of girls PER MONTH, for as long as it takes for you to land a better than the one you had.

Of course, no psychoanalyst is aware of pick-up methods, so if I had turned to them for help all I would have gotten would have been some (hugely expensive) psychobabble about feelings that would have never ended because this stuff is neurotic and there is no end to neurosis once you go down that rabbit hole, and at most some lame dating advice like "go out and meet people or do yoga or some shit to meet girls" that simply doesn't work in any reasonable time frame when you are trying to replace a goddamn goddess (which is why it took me a decade to do it, but a mere couple of months after I had started pick-up in earnest). If, on the other hand, you do manage to replace your goddess with a better goddess... well, that's victory, and there is no need at all for psychobabble at that point. In an instant—the instant when you realize that your new girl is better than the old one—all the pain is washed away, and turns into joy even, since it was only by going through it that you managed to find the better girl. You even get to the point of feeling grateful to your ex-girlfriend for dumping you, and the idea that you could have ever spent a decade grieving about it starts to seem even comical.

Victory, in short, ennobles and hallows everything, so I don't think that the idea that victory should be the goal of psychoanalysis is exactly rocket science. I would say it's common sense—but that doesn't mean that it's common, or could become so anytime soon.

The problem is that the psychoanalysts simply do not know the METHODS required for success in every field in which their clients might be encountering trouble. If someone has health problems, what can the analyst do other than direct him to a doctor? If someone's financial situation is deteriorating, what can his analyst do but point him towards a financial advisor? But if they send off all their clients to the specialists who can best help them, what would the analysts be left with?—their neurotic psychobabble and endless dredging and sifting of the past that dodges the real issue—which is ACTION—replacing it instead with a perfect passivity that delays action and ultimately entirely avoids it.

To be sure, there are cases where victory is impossible. If your wife and kids leave you at 60, you won't be making a better family to replace your old one with. If you lose a leg, or get terminal cancer, straightforward victory is off the table, and the most that can be hoped for at that point is a redefinition of victory, and a replacement of the original, and now impossible goal—whatever it may have been—with another, far more feasible one. This is what traditional psychoanalysts can do—at least the better ones—and I take no issue with that. This is also beyond my interest and expertise, and if—knock on wood—an issue such as this comes up in our chats, I will assist you in finding a good psychoanalyst to help you deal with it.

For everything else except a terminal situation though, you are better off talking to me than to any psychoanalyst alive today, because 1) I am deeply conscious that this is a WAR we're talking about—that your consciousness is a BATTLEFIELD that is constantly at war with its environment whether you realize it or not, and that its goal should therefore always be nothing less than TOTAL VICTORY, and 2) I am tremendously experienced and capable in ALL aspects of life bar none (which is why I was the one to invent this method) and I am therefore the ultimate person to turn to with any kind of goal or problem. If I don't know how to go about something, I sure as hell know whom to turn to in order to learn—but I usually do know, and in many cases I know even better than the best specialists in the field (as will soon become evidenced by my upcoming fitness and dating books that will dominate their respective fields on publication. I may even put out a business pamphlet at some point.)

I hope the above has given you some idea of my general method, and I am sure that this idea will become far more concrete for you once we've had some actual goals to work towards and you've seen it implemented. Discussions about feelings in the traditional psychoanalytic manner will be useful to us, but always with a view towards 1) Identifying a concrete goal that can be achieved, and 2) Taking action to achieve it. One hour of action will always be more valuable than one hour of discussion—far, far more valuable—unless, once again, all hope of victory has been lost and you have nothing left to do but chat about it, in which case, as aforesaid, since I have not enough experience in failure to be useful on the subject, I will work with you to find people who have and can help you.

For now though, it would be best to forget about the word "psychoanalysis" entirely, and just treat me like a friend with whom you can discuss stuff. Tell me what's going on in your life lately, fill me in on relevant details about yourself that will help me understand these events and issues, and we'll take it from there. If you have some pressing issues on your mind, by all means, tell me and let's focus on them immediately, otherwise let's just start chatting and I am sure we'll figure out which way we should be heading pretty quickly.
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Unread postby icycalm » 05 Dec 2018 21:44

https://www.patreon.com/posts/23139486

icycalm wrote:Stream the latest games for Insomnia for free keys

So I've been in contact with a bunch of developers and publishers, ever since Insomnia's recent redesign, and many of them have been surprisingly open to the idea of sending me keys of their games for streaming, impressions and review purposes. I think that the moment they click on the culture.vg link and see that glorious frontpage they get the impression that the site gets far more traffic than it does lol, and it also helps that in the PLAY/HYPE section games like Fighting EX Layer and HellSign get as much exposure as stuff like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Hitman 2, so they want to show their appreciation for the level of respect and attention that Insomnia shows to everyone. And so in recent weeks I've had a bunch of keys on my hands and have been thinking of the best way to utilize them to improve the site and the readers' experience, while at the same time rewarding the site's most loyal supporters; and I've finally hit on a cool idea.

Every now and then I will be giving out keys for recently-released games to Sponsors who are willing to stream at least a couple of hours of the game, and then share their impressions in the forum (and therefore on the frontpage). To qualify for these offers, you must be a Sponsor or above on Patreon and be on Discord [ > ] with both the Sponsor and Streamer roles on your account, the first of which is given to you by Patreon when you link your Patreon and Discord accounts, and the second of which I manually give to people who talk to me and go through the steps of setting up their computers to stream on the Insomnia Twitch channel [ > ]—a simple procedure that takes maybe ten minutes in all.

If you fulfill these requirements, you can claim your key (on a first-come-first-served basis), which I will then promptly DM to you on Discord. After that, you have 48 hours to:

  • Stream at least a couple hours of the game on the Insomnia Twitch channel. If you find that you are absolutely hating the game, it's okay to only stream half an hour or so.
  • Go in the game's forum thread and post at least a brief paragraph of impressions. You can post more if you have more to say, but it's not required.

These are all your immediate obligations in exchange for the key. Once you take care of those, you are done. However, if in the future you decide to play the game more, you must stream every moment you play on the Insomnia Twitch channel, and once you are done with the game for good, either because you finished it, or because you gave up on it, you are required to make a final impressions post in the forum.

And that's about it. You basically get a key in exchange for covering the game for Insomnia. Don't bullshit anyone in your impressions comments, don't try to pretend you are an expert in things you are not an expert on; it's not your job to be the genre expert here and review the game. Your job is to merely show off the game in our Twitch channel and enrich our forum threads with actual player impressions as opposed to copy-pasted press releases or thinly-veiled PR or fangirl hype, etc. etc. etc. My long-term goal with this policy is to enliven Insomnia's coverage with up-to-the-minute impressions of the latest, most notable games, while our Twitch channel streams the latest releases 24/7. Meanwhile, our reviewing efforts are covered by an entirely different group of people, real experts in their respective genres who have been playing their chosen genres of expertise for decades, and following all the installments of each series since the beginning, and so on. So I repeat that it won't be the Sponsors' job to review these games: if you jump into a series that you are unfamiliar with, simply state this in your forum post, and just share your impressions based on your background as a hardcore player who loves games. ALL the Sponsors are people who have been playing games for decades, so I have no doubt that your streams will be worth watching and your comments will be worth reading. So show us what you can do and enjoy the games!


P.S. Your comments on the frontpage will often be read by the games' developers and publishers, so don't be rude and don't wantonly trash the games. Think "constructive criticism" and you should be okay.

P.P.S. There is no limit to the number of keys one Sponsor can claim, and receive. I am trying to get a job done here, and I don't mind at all if all the keys go to the one or two people who love this idea and want to help me get it done, so don't be shy and just go ahead and claim as many games as you can handle, and the earlier the better. Coverage is much more valuable to the site if it's done within hours of a game's release than within days, so whoever's free to get the job done first takes priority, and the keys.
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Unread postby icycalm » 01 Jan 2019 13:43

https://www.patreon.com/posts/23675019

icycalm wrote:Image

State of Cult Games Jan '19 Edition
So I'd like my first post of the year to be about my development efforts, because they are currently the most exciting to me of all my projects, and they'll be among my top priorities for the year. Let me talk you through my exact plans, so you can see why I am so excited, and hopefully I'll get some of you excited enough too to consider joining me and filling some of the job openings I'll be posting at the end.


  • End of Philosophy [Current status: playable build]
We just released a 75% feature-complete build of this in the #cultdev channel on Discord, that contains about ten or so minutes of playtime. The next build coming within a week or two should be 100% feature-complete and contain at least an hour's worth of content. That will be the build we'll use to put the trailer together, and the trailer in its turn will be used to launch the game's Steam page, so that people can wishlist the game. The only thing left beyond that will be adding the rest of the content to the game, which will be a lot of work for me, but without any technical challenges, so the game is as good as released at the moment, since no challenges remain. Well, apart from delivering a kickass trailer, that is, but I have plenty of experience on that thanks to the trailers I've made for various Insomnia events [ > ], so I am not worried. I plan to make the most bombastic videogame trailer ever (bombastic in the best sense of the word, that is)—which is appropriate, if you think about it, since it won't be just advertising a single game, but an entire universe meant to host dozens of games across dozens of genres over decades. Will any of the wild promises I plan to make actually come true? I've no idea, man, but I sincerely intend to pursue them, and the first game is coming out no matter what, so I'll certainly have something concrete with which to back up my wild claims.

How long will it be before the game goes on sale? Not long at all, actually. It is my number 1 priority now, over all my projects, so it won't be too long.


  • Endgame [Current status: intro video]
If End of Philosophy is the prologue to my universe, connecting the actual universe to my sci-fi vision for it via the medium of my philosophy; then the hardcore text adventure game, Endgame, will be the main title, the one that will be responsible for building up and delivering all the lore that all subsequent games will use as their setting. So the stakes will be high with the second game too; even higher in fact than with the first, since the text adventure genre is certainly a higher genre than the edutainment one, and hence delivering the best ever example of it will be a tougher task. But I believe that I am up to the challenge, and I already have an intro video available (pinned once again to the #cultdev channel, where all WIP material of all our games will be posted), which as far as I am concerned depicts the coolest videogame setting ever, and certainly the coolest text adventure setting ever. The premise of the plot is also set in stone now, and there are really no technical challenges, as far as we can tell at the moment, so as soon as EoP goes on sale, Sergei and I will be switching over to Endgame, with a target release of this summer, or autumn at the latest.


  • Metal Reign [Current status: mock intro video]
And finally, there is Metal Reign, by far the most technically ambitious project of the three, that's being programmed by austere under my direction, long-time Insomnia reader and sometime contributor to the MAME codebase, in particular in the field of scanline filters for 2D emulation, which is quite pertinent to Metal Reign, since it'll be a 2D side-view action game in the vein of the best Contra titles. Also joining us is earthboundtrev in the role of executive producer (mainly on this title, but also in a limited capacity on the other two as well), who's investing a significant chunk of change to ensure we can afford a good pixel artist. We've already produced a mock intro video that gives an idea of the sheer amount of edge I plan to put into the game, so much fucking edge that I'd recommend playing the game with gloves on so that you don't cut yourself. A playable prototype is currently under development, and we plan to have it available within... hopefully not too long at all. Target release is end of 2019, but this is the shakiest one of the lot, so don't hold your breath for it. However, if all goes well there is a decent chance that we'll be able to achieve this target, in which case 2019 could very well see no less than THREE releases from Cult Games, in three distinct genres, and each of them aiming to utterly dominate the genre in question for all time! Does that sound like a stupidly ambitious goal? What can I tell you, man, I like to aim high and see how far I get. Is there anything wrong with that? Sue me, I guess, if I've broken any laws. You are all free to laugh at me if I end up underperforming. But then again, when have you known me to underperform at anything?


  • Job openings
As mentioned in previous posts, I could use any type of vgdev-related skills and talents, so if you have any, get in touch and I am sure we'll find something for you to contribute. Most urgently, however, I could use a graphic designer, a composer, and a sound engineer. Less urgently, I can always use programmers to try out prototypes of ideas I have for future games, just to see which of them are the most fun, and the most feasible. There are currently four people including me, plus danjiro as fifth in a consulting role, contributing to Cult Games projects, arranged in two teams. If you want to join this ambitious and growing group, get in touch!


And that's all I got for now. Look out for more news and stuff soon, and throughout the year.
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Unread postby icycalm » 15 Jan 2019 03:58

https://www.patreon.com/posts/23986006

icycalm wrote:Insomnia hires full-time news editor!

Sup everyone. Here's a quick update to tell you what I've been working on these past couple of weeks.

Though I haven't quite reached the $1,000 per month goal you can see listed in the Goals section of my Patreon, I went ahead and fulfilled the goal's promise anyway because I am very excited to get things moving. First off, the site has now been completely redesigned to rival the major news blogs. It's basically the ultimate news site now, because no other site has such a beautiful and useful and comprehensive release schedule (let alone the review schedule + archive all the way back to Spacewar that I'll be talking about in future updates). Moreover, unlike Gematsu and co., which by their very design are only ran by a couple of people at most, Insomnia's news section is ready to receive contributions from countless users; but unlike NeoGAF's and ResetEra's communities, the contributions of Insomnia's community will slot in a perfectly organized manner along our editorial updates. If you want to see what NeoGAF and ResetEra content looks like in blog format, check these two sites out:

http://neogaf.live/

https://resetera.live/

Useful, to be sure, but nowhere near as beautiful and easy to read and organized as Insomnia's frontpage. So whether you access these sites through their default forum layouts, or the hacked blog layouts that someone put together in those .live frontpages above, you are still getting a far inferior experience to what Insomnia now gives you, let alone what we'll be giving you once we've ramped up our coverage as we plan to in the coming weeks and months.

Now, I originally planned to hire two part-time news editors, but in the end I went with a single full-time one, my friend Brooks aka Masahiro9891, who's been an Insomnia subscriber and CULT member for almost a decade now. He is a fantastic gaming partner with an extremely wide range of tastes like me, competent in all genres from 4X to FPS and everything in between, and he knows a lot about games as you can see by checking out his news posts over the last few days. He basically refreshes the entire frontpage with news every day, and traffic has doubled in three days! On top of the fun inherent in reading his content, I expect subscriptions to the site to increase, which will allow me to pay him more for his time (because really, right now he's getting peanuts), plus I expect the traffic influx to bring in more CULT members, which means more partners for all of us to play games with, in a greater variety of games, and with bigger, fuller teams. Wins all around in other words, which was my plan all along!

As for our news content, we will really be unmatched. Right now, the ultimate console news blog is Gematsu, but 50%+ of their updates are crap no one cares about (visual novel shit, or mobile shit, or stupid "indie" games, or plush toys or some shit). The ultimate PC news blog, meanwhile, is Rock, Paper, Shotgun, but 50%+ of their updates are utter dreck "indie" games (even worse than those featured on Gematsu), plus the entire site is pretty much unreadable due to their insufferably smarmy style that tries to shoehorn bad, forced humor everywhere (not to mention their retarded reviews and social victimhood opinions). Meanwhile, both sites ignore cool niche games like Life is Feudal like the plague, despite it being a freaking 2017 GOTY candidate in any decent hardcore gamer's book, plus a ton of other offbeat games and news items like those found in the Postback forum, or indeed cool stuff I occasionally find on NeoGAF and ResetEra and a bunch of other places. And of course, EVERYONE ignores cutting-edge hardware in the gaming world, with the possible exception of Eurogamer's Digital Foundry section, which is cool, but hosted on a shitty site (and which sometimes shills for companies in exchange for exclusives into the bargain).

So imagine all the best of the above stuff together in a single frontpage, with no fluff, no 50% crap material, and no bad, forced humor or social victimhood bullshit. AND user-created content that will expand the breadth of coverage while providing extra color since it'll be coming from actual hardcore gamers as opposed to professional copy-pasters who lost interest in gaming years ago and are simply going through the motions for a paycheck.

That's what Insomnia's news section will be about, and it will be amazing. So I look forward to seeing you all in the forum and on Discord while Masa and I build all this up, and we all enjoy it together!


P.S. I have a ton of content planned for Patreon this month, but I've delayed it to get Masa acclimatized to his new job. You'll see it going online soon. It's cool stuff, so please look forward to it.
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Unread postby icycalm » 15 Mar 2019 13:10

https://www.patreon.com/posts/25387749

icycalm wrote:The icycalm & recoil Show

What is the icycalm & recoil show? It is—or rather, I would like it to become—the Ebert & Siskel show of videogames. It's no secret that critical video content for videogames sucks balls, and stunts like Jack Black's new YouTube channel, with its absurd popularity for what is essentially zero content, only make things worse. Everyone was already clowning before it, and now that a professional clown has entered the field, things are only going to get even clownier. I mean, I am not against having fun on video, but let's make the fun about PLAYING GAMES, instead of about random shit, no? And if we can add solid expert critical analysis in there, that'd be the ultimate, right? So this is what I'd like to do with my show.

Now this is a massive endeavor, and I don't plan to jump into it straight away. We've been chatting about the format and the work involved with recoil for a couple of weeks now, and—if it's to be done properly—it is definitely out of our technical skills and budget right now. Even if we had those things we'd still not be able to do it right now, because we are in traveling mode and ideally this should be shot in a studio. However, we do have the foundations that are required for the job. For one thing, we have the expertise and insight that no one else has. We certainly have the playing skill, with recoil probably being better than me at some action games, and me probably being better than him in some strategy ones. So, in combination, we kick ass in pretty much everything. I certainly have the vision for the show like no one else has ever had it, and recoil has a $2,500 laptop he just bought specifically to do the editing for the show, and some video editing skills from college. So I have no doubt we can do this thing. We just have to build up to it slowly and it's gonna happen.

So we're gonna start from humble beginnings, and build up from there. Remember those ICYCALM LIVE streams I did on Patreon a while back via Crowdcast? I am paying $45 a month for the privilege of using that service, and I've had a good experience with it so far, as I think the viewers who joined me for those streams also did, so I am going to keep using it. What we are going to do is take the recently released STG Devil Engine [ > ] that looks pretty damn sweet, run it on recoil's new laptop (looking pretty sweet with scanlines, etc.) and take turns playing it on his new arcade stick. We'll just play one credit each, back and forth, probably on the toughest difficulty setting, and get a little contest going to see who can get furthest the fastest for bragging rights while we comment on each other's runs and critique the game too in real-time, all on webcam of course. We might even end up chatting about wider issues, like the genre or videogames in general, and we'll also be keeping an eye on the chat so you'll be able to put questions to us, etc. Ideally, it'll be like the podcast that everyone loves, but you'll be able to both see us and talk to us, and see us play a game at the same time. And a cool new game too, that's interesting material on its own right.

If this goes well—and I don't see why it wouldn't—we'll do it for more games in the upcoming days and weeks. Always the cooler, more interesting ones of course—and the rest recoil can cover on his own on Twitch.

After a few weeks or months of doing this, we'll have accumulated some experience as live hosts, and we'll also have made the streaming of the latest releases a routine in our lives—as recoil has been doing on the frontpage recently, if you've noticed—so that the next step, of putting the actual show together, will come naturally. I mean, if we've already sampled all the new games coming out for the week, and already have the raw footage of us playing them, all we'll have to do is sit in a couple of chairs in front of a camera and chat about them. And then it'll be recoil's job to edit the game footage in, and we'll have the show. We'll still keep doing the live play sessions, but at that point you will also have a let's say 30-minute critical digest of all the past week's notable releases.

So that's the plan, and it begins soon with Devil Engine. If you're pledged at the $10 level or above, you'll receive an email when we're about to go live, but we'll also announce the stream on Discord and on the frontpage. Check it out and let us know what you think.
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Unread postby icycalm » 03 Aug 2019 21:07

https://www.patreon.com/posts/28892197

icycalm wrote:Cult Weekend, Baby!

What is a Cult Weekend? It is a weekend in which I am on Discord every waking moment, taking breaks only to eat, shit, and perhaps sleep, and playing and streaming multiplayer games non-stop with The Cult. And I will be doing this every single weekend from now on, year-round. Yep, it's crazy, but that's what the crazy success of this Patreon is allowing me to do now, so you have yourselves to thank for this. So thank you.

It's all woven together with my upcoming new site, which will essentially be a multiplayer-focused version of Insomnia, and of course with the #ultimategamecontest which starts this month and will be an annual, year-round celebration of the best of what cutting-edge multiplayer gaming has to offer.

And it all starts tonight at 10:30PM UTC with Ymir [ > ], the crazy-complex 100-player battle royale city-builder that's currently a 2019 GOTY contender on Insomnia. Other games possibly featured this weekend include Satisfactory, Dauntless, Blops4, Siege, Far Cry 5, and who knows what else. Check Twitch [ > ] throughout the weekend to find out. And of course you're all invited to drop by Discord and play with me and the rest of the crew at any time.


P.S. To all the new and upgrading patrons, please wait until Monday to receive your Insomnia and Orgy login details, because I'd rather not take time away from gaming to set you up ;)
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Unread postby icycalm » 10 Mar 2020 06:35

https://www.patreon.com/posts/34752250

icycalm wrote:Introducing the Cult Schedule

I set this up at the start of the year, but I only just now began updating it seriously, so I'd like to take a moment to formally introduce it. It's a Google Calendar integrated into the Insomnia frontpage (on the left sidebar, about halfway down), showing all upcoming events I have planned for the clan, as well as the big multiplayer sessions the members themselves have set up. Currently, it looks like this:

Image

Some of the players who were active in multiple teams were having trouble keeping track of the various sessions they had scheduled, so I figured a calendar would solve that, and once I had the idea for the calendar I decided to take it one step further and get a bit more organized in planning for alpha/beta and launch day participation for us, because these can make for some extremely fun times. Not only are these sessions about brand-new or even unreleased games, which in itself is hella exciting, but participation is also often free, which means more people can join in, which is even more exciting, and that's why I've decided to devote considerable focus to these events, and promote them strongly on the frontpage, and on Discord. In the past, I would have been against playing unfinished code, but times have changed, and we had a great time playing and streaming the GTFO beta on a whim with the guys back in December [ > ], a session which, in conjunction with the news that New World [ > ] is being nerfed for release and that therefore the alpha will have been better than the finished game, opened my eyes and changed my thinking on this matter. In New World's case I was a fool to decline to play the alpha, even though I eventually received a key for it. But I thought I may as well wait for the final game, to play it with the whole team, since it is an MMO after all. And I was dead wrong. In GTFO's case, the game was a blast for the four-five hours that we played it, but that's about where the tedium kicked in (more on which you can read in the review), so we were glad to have avoided paying the $140 that our four copies would have cost us. In both cases, free pre-release code was a better experience than waiting, and paying for, the final games, and that's why, from now on, The Cult and I will devote considerable attention to this dimension of gaming, and report on it on the Insomnia frontpage to some depth. Add to that launch day sessions for the coolest multiplayer games coming out throughout the year, games like Starbase, Humankind, Age of Empires IV, and so on, that deserve to be bought and played sight-unseen, and of course regular sessions for the best games of all time like Wildlands, PA, and the like, and I think it's not an exaggeration to say that the resulting schedule will be a cult schedule, or please show me any other group of people on the internet that does anything comparable.

And it all starts officially tomorrow(/today, depending on your time zone) with the much-anticipated 150-player F2P BR Call of Duty: Warzone, of which I've already written extensively on Discord and in the forum [ > ]. If you are into these types of games, you owe it to yourself to be there for this, as it promises to be the apex of the genre.

But even if you're not planning to join us for any of these games, the calendar may still be useful to you if you follow our adventures on Twitch, as it will also double as our Twitch schedule, since we'll be streaming most of these sessions. I am in fact looking into integrating the calendar in the area beneath the Twitch channel, for the benefit of those who find us through Twitch. Most heavy streamers have a schedule of the sort, but they play boring games, and hardly more than a couple of games anyway, so we will definitely have the most exciting schedule on all of Twitch, guaranteed. And note that if you use Google Calendar yourself, you can click on the various events and add them to your own calendars for automated reminders and the like.

So that's what the Cult Schedule is. I believe it will motivate me and all of us to cram even more excitement and fun into the site and the clan, and take our activity to the next level, and I hope the clan members and the readers will feel the same. See you all on Discord, and on Twitch.
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Unread postby icycalm » 25 Sep 2022 16:52

Image

Patreon asked me to update my profile pics to higher res because they're making changes, and I don't have them in higher res, so I decided to replace them.

Image

The ship is the Esperia Prowler, the coolest ship in all of science fiction. It's a dropship that lands like a dragon. And the helmet is the matching helmet from the commercial. In lore, the ship and armor were made by humans but inspired by the Tevarin alien race.

Star Citizen: Esperia Prowler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op0YkiMm8TQ

Image

And since I was updating everything else, I also updated the tier images because the old PA ones I had were also low res (I took them from the game files, and they don't exist anywhere at higher res) and were looking rough especially on desktops.

Image

The new images are taken from Star Citizen Concierge levels and are super-sharp and match everything else.

Concierge Levels and Rewards
https://support.robertsspaceindustries. ... nd-Rewards
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