Pardon the title. It’s a reference to my friend Tim’s blog, where he discusses the enjoyment/suffering he’s getting out of the Shadowverse digital card game. I’m the one who suckered him (and a couple of other friends) into it, because I think the game is entertaining and underrated. Its competition includes big names like Blizzard’s Hearthstone and Magic: the Gathering Arena, but I find myself preferring the underdog Shadowverse’s way of handling balance and keeping its players happy. The game is very good about giving you resources to start playing something good, not just a pile of cards to try to not lose with. Useless cards easily become vials, which become cards you need to build something cheap and effective. There’s almost always a cheap deck that’s highly tiered in Rotation (newer cards playable), and in case there isn’t, the game’s Unlimited (all cards playable) format is often even cheaper, though harder to understand because the card pool is so much larger. Getting other people into a deck that’s successful on the ranked ladder has been pretty simple, except for with Tim, who, when I last checked, was playing some weird pile of Fairies.
The reason this card game is relevant to me and my blog at all is twofold:
- It’s been what I’ve largely been doing on my computer instead of blogging, and
- Now that I’ve once again found the desire to create something, I’ve decided to start streaming the game.
I’m not expecting to rake in big numbers or money with a niche card game, but taking the opportunity to get accustomed to live media software like OBS Studio and Streamlabs. Streaming sites like Twitch are big business, and knowing how to navigate the underlying programs seems pretty relevant in the current era of new media. On top of that, it reinforced old lessons from when I was a college DJ; try to keep people interested, and no dead air.
Speaking of creating: this blog. After taking a long, uncreative leave of absence, I’m back at it. It’s been fun reading through the old posts to see where I was a few months back, which appears to be consistently promising stories, then writing about something else entirely in the next post. Sounds like me: full of ideas, but constantly struggling to sit down and actually type them out. I’m much better when directed by someone else, I suppose.
Anyway — no promises on what the next post will be, but I do like the idea of late Friday nights to post still. And in the spirit of using this site like some sort of portfolio, as was originally the plan, I’ll be posting one of my favorite writing samples to start. It’s from a Rhetorical Theory course I took, where the task was to argue for the grade we believe we deserved in any way we wished. Having had the professor for multiple other courses, I decided to bet on a parody of The Encomium of Helen, one of Gorgias’ works that we’d discussed in prior lectures. The paper was well received, and I got the A I was arguing for. I hope someone else finds it worth the read (it’s on the portfolio page).
Next time I post, I’ll have done a week’s worth of streaming and finally put in a resume or two for more writing and editing work. Being a jack of all trades is entertaining, but I feel the most comfortable editing and proofreading.
Until then.