The 40 Year-Old Content Creation Virgin

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age, content creation, content creator, creative, creativity, gaming, holy shit i'm doing this, online gaming, random thoughts, stream, streaming, twitch, twitch stream

As I write this blog post I’m at the cusp of another livestream for Massively Overpowered. I promise that’s not a plug for the channel or for my stream (though perhaps it should be), but it’s basically a marker in the sand of where I’m at right now in my professional career as a writer for the site.

Let me provide a little context: MJ, the site’s primary livestreamer, suffered a pretty spectacular lightning strike at her house. Mercifully everyone is fine, but she’s been mostly knocked out of streaming, which she used to do every day. By comparison, I did streams for the site barely once a month, if that much, mostly because I wasn’t confident in a lot of things about my ability to be a streamer or a content creator. However, since the weather incident, I’ve done my part to keep the MOP Twitch channel alive by doing weekly streams every Sunday and Wednesday. And I’m having a lot of fun dong it.

All this despite the fact that I’m 40 years old. Which, at least in the grander scheme of Twitch things, is ancient.

Early Access Games That Aren’t Trash

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craftopia, early access, fps, hardspace shipbreaker, multiplayer, online gaming, online multiplayer, sandbox, steam early access, survival sandbox

With all of the itchy, uncomfortable, and downright exploitative ways game dev studios are trying to monetize their game, it’s easy to pass off anything other than “gold product” as nothing more than a scam. And for the most part, you’re right. Even I can admit that crowdfunding a game is a whole lot riskier and possibly more scam-adjacent than not, when previously I had foolishly hoped that it would open up a lot more doors and ideas.

One of the most recent and proliferous forms of “alternative” game monetization schemes is the early access launch, which asks folks to buy an incomplete game, provide feedback, and watch it evolve into a fully-launched product. It’s, at the brass tacks level (and grossly oversimplified), spending money to be a tester instead of letting professionals do that and get paid for it. However, as vile as that sounds, there are a few games that I’ve come across that actually are worth the buy-in cost in my opinion, and so I wanted to take a moment to highlight them with today’s post.