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Questions allegedly asked with some frequency. Feel free to annoy me over on Bluesky or whatever if something isn't covered here.

I have a Question about IWBTG

My IWBTG FAQ is extensive and legendary.

When's Brave Earth / Is Brave Earth canceled?

Brave Earth will never be canceled. Even if I die, someone will leak the unfinished version. The unfinished game is gameplay-complete(bugs/tweaks aside) which should make you even madder that the game isn't out yet.

As for when? That's between me and my burnout.

What do you use for your Pixel Art?

Despite all it's problems, I still find Photoshop(Currently a version that fell 'off the back of a van') more pleasant to make pixel art in than anything else I've tried. I occasionally mess with Aseprite, but it has some miserable UX issues and I don't mean the skin like many complain about(I like the skin!).

I honestly have never found a pixel art program I completely like but I need to have photoshop anyways so it works. People have made great art everything, so as long as you have something that supports stuff like layers and you like it, you're good.

What other software do you use?

I use CSP and Krita (I swear, CSP feels so bloated, sometimes Krita just feels nicer) when drawing with a tablet. I use Davinci Resolve for video, which is the only answer you probably will need if you're asking "what should I use to edit video?"

I do 3d work mostly in Blender(... And weird 3d Japanese porn games). I code I mostly just settle for VSCode, though I use Sublime Text for lighter tasks and general note taking. For browsers, I've been avoiding chromium. I've been using Zen, which is a firefox based fork. Very much Beta software but perfectly useable if you don't mind hiccups.

IWBTG was made in Multimedia Fusion 2, and Brave Earth is made in Construct Classic. Do not use either of these.

How do your comments work?

I wrote a script to pull them from Bluesky. You can find it over on github.

What do your websites run on? How do you have such a nice blog?

A Debian server running Apache and hosting Grav. Good ol' PHP lives on. My neocities site uses 11ty. Grav is great if you're trying not to use wordpress anymore but you still wanna self host something non-static. Also its Flat File, which I love.

That said, this entire site could be made in 11ty so if you're asking, you should probably do that (Though my experiences with grav are all very positive). 11ty is a Static Site Generator so can host it for basically free in a lot of places, including on github.

I strongly recommend these types of blogs because having all your writing as markdown files and not hidden in a SQL database somewhere is nice. SQL is cool, but you don't need it for the vast majority of websites, so don't prematurely optimize. Make your site pleasant and cool, then you'll actually want to put stuff on there. Blogging is like scrap booking. I get to write all my posts just in a text editor instead of some cumbersome web based post creator and I can back everything up just by copying a folder. Writing in Markdown means I can read my stuff even without going to the website.

Also Wordpress sucks and Matt Mullenweg can go get his rancid ass buried in hammers. The cool trans girls on tumblr somehow didn't bully him enough. Wordpress was so miserable to maintain for a solo poster that it made me not want to post.

As for how its nice? Hours of tweaking CSS.

I like how think about and talk about games! Do you have any books or articles on game design or game history you recommend?

There hasn't been a game design book I have ever liked and felt like I could recommend. People like to hold up books as some First Tier Highest-Prestige level of information, but a book has to fit it's form just as much as a youtube video does. Books need to be comprehensive in a way I feel doesn't actually suit the realities of game design and finding a voice as an artist. They can't just tell you about all their tools, they need a thesis. I'm not saying they're bad, but if you like my vibe, they're not going to get you there.

In general I don't take in a lot of game design content. There are good youtube videos and stuff for that, but most of it is focusing on an intro level. I'm also inherently distrustful of any advice from channels who have pressure to release regularly. If you're new, just go through Masahiro Sakurai's Channel. Its very entry level but will introduce you to tons of concepts without being prescriptive.

I mostly get stuff piece meal. If I watch stuff, its usually post-mortems, stuff that deal with the realities of a project. I get a lot of game design thoughts by following weird creators and playing their weird games. Following people like Sylvie, or Bennett Foddy, whose designs challenge accepted orthodoxy, can help you look at and approach games differently. Game design is more like cooking than anything, where rules are a rough guideline and goals are based more on taste than any objective criteria.

I also recommend listening to creators for other fields and hobbies. I listen to woodworkers, film critics, prop builders, gardeners, chefs, and honestly anyone I find even slightly interesting talk about their craft. There is so much overlap between all creative work, and a frequent issue with games/game devs is our influences are often so internal rather than external. Being a more well rounded person will make you better at all forms of art. People joke about "Miyamoto is gardening now so he's going to make a game about gardening" but that's so healthy.

... But if you want some game focused youtube stuff:

• AnyAustin has such a beautiful approach to thinking about the illusion of videogames, finding as much beauty in where immersion breaks down as anywhere else. What people see as flaws, Austin sees as a prove of art.
• Jimmy McGee is hard to pitch. He's just extremely thoughtful and sincere. He's not stuck to any schedule, and he doesn't worry about what topics are popular. He just makes nice, thoughtful, genuine stuff.
• Noah Caldwell-Gervais rules, doing the long form videogame essay through the lens of old road trip travel logs. Noah has this great blend of a thoughtful, informed, studied mind, but a real down to earth life and upbringing. Games, through the lens of someone who knows what its like to be a normal person, but is too well read and weird to actually be normal.

For some kinda post-mortem-y stuff...

• GDC Talk on XRD's art style which is about having art with a GOAL and how to achieve those goals.
• Mick Gordon's GDC talk on the Doom Sountrack is an incredible talk about how sometimes you have to destroy your comfortable processes to get the end product you want. Also justice for Mick.

For some non game stuff...

• Dime Store Adventures is a dude who just finds weird news articles or folk stories and walks around in the wood, finding old landmarks and... talks about them. Stories that aren't super flashy, but are long lost to popular history.d
• Adam Savage’s Tested seems too popular to even bother mentioning but its hard to stress how much of a gift this man is. Don't watch the cool videos where he makes a prop, or gets invited somewhere. Find a video where he talks about re-arranging his shop for an hour. Find him talking about storage. Even the fluff pieces are okay, but I find the more boring a video sounds like its going to be, the better it is.

What happened to (Insert Old Article)? Why did you delete it?

I cleaned up my blog after switching from wordpress. As I had to manually port each post, it was a good time to remove a lot of old stuff that just didn't feel good, useful, or appropriate anymore. All the missing stuff is still easily available on the wayback machine.

If you think I'm missing something important, email me and I'll see about putting something back up. I kept a lot of stupid articles, just because they got passed around a lot. Even the one about C. Viper's boobs. A piece of writing might have gotten around more than I thought it did.

Are you Trans???

I dunno you can read this and make your own judgement. I don't use the term for myself (it feels like stolen valor), but I don't mind when others say it. I guess kinda.

Wait so you don't want to be the Guy?

I never did. The Kid did. 😌 I wanted the bow.

Why should I take your opinion seriously? Because you made a bad game an eternity ago?

I have no credibility outside the words I put in front of you. If you don't find them compelling, credible, or enjoyable... that's fine.

Making a game doesn't make you intrinsically better at writing about games. Similarly, writing about games doesn't make you a great game designer. I think I'm only okay at both, but I'd like to think I pick my shots pretty well. You don't need to be amazing to make things people enjoy, you just need to make the right things.

Honestly I don't think most of the people who read my stuff even realize I made IWBTG. So if you're worried I have some over inflated ego because of an old game I made, don't. I'm proud of my work and the success it had, but one lucky release only goes so far.

Do you have a Discord or anything?

My official point of contact is email and social media. If you wanna chat me up, that's what bluesky is for. Check the side bar.

What about that Fighting Game one with the lizard???

Warmrock is closed invitations, but if you wanna try and get in, show up to streams on Monday and Wednesday, ready either to just hang out in chat or to ask to get in on some Super Turbo, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev2, or Street Fighter 6. If you're cool and keep showing up, you'll get an invite.

Are you any good?

Depending on who you are/how good you are, I'm either incredibly good, or I suck. The perfect model of an intermediate level gate keeper.

What about your other hobbies or whatever? Do you talk about them anywhere else?

Follow me on Bluesky or check my Neocities.

Can I give you Money?

There is a link to my paypal on the IWBTG Donation Page or you can symbolically purchase IWBTG on itch.io

(But then play The Remaster)

Wait, don't you hate Remasters?

I Wanna be the Guy: Remastered has dipswitches that get it pretty darn close to perfect, down to well known crashes (and even random ones). The original will always be available for preservation reasons, but as a gameplay experience, the remastered takes very few liberties. Team Cherry Treehouse took my feedback extremely seriously, ending with a version of the game that provide and authentic experience, while providing new content and settings for people who want something that feels more like a modern IWBTG fangame.

Will you do an Interview/Podcast/Whatever?

I don't honestly get asked this that often anymore, but the answer is almost certainly yes.

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