February's Video is up!

This was supposed to go up last weekend. I got sick. You can still kinda hear it in my voice. It sucked.  I remain committed to one video a month this year, so I'm gearing up to speed something out for March so I can get back to focusing 100% on the next Children of Doom. It might be shorter than this, but it'll be something!

I actually kind of liked the way this video turned out - it doesn't say anything particularly deep, but it came together smoothly and was pretty well structured.  But while I was working on it, Liz Ryerson posted this piece ( http://ellaguro.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-california-problem.html ). It's a long but really well written look back at the past decade or two of indie games and the way art and money have intersected along the way.  

And it got me thinking about Card Shark. I genuinely love the game, but it's also a game that managed to get a live orchestra to do a studio recording of music composed for the game, and edit seemingly professionally shot footage of that recording into a promotional video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXz2Bz3yWWY ). It's hard not to imagine the game having a budget in the low seven figures minimum. And I dunno, that's somehow terrifying. Like, I feel like Card Shark is still small enough to fall into the Blips wheelhouse (it's not covered much in the general games press, it only has ~1600 Steam reviews, it is by most metrics a Small Game).  But covering this also means /not/ covering a game that can't afford an orchestra this month.  The rise in mid-budget titles has started to consume the attention of more marginalized, outsider stuff, even on my watch.  But on the other hand, you don't want to engage in an "how indie is truly indie?" pissing contests. I dunno - you can go mad trying to figure out a healthy balance to this sort of stuff.  Maybe March's video should be something smaller.