Outtakes in Blogging - New Years Stats Edition

Sometimes, trying to write a blog post ends up with hilariously poor results.  As an outtake, these are amusing to witness from the outside, of course, but there's a lot of frustration involved, as you might imagine.  Still, it's something that -I- can laugh at when presented with it, so it's not something I'm adverse to sharing and that's exactly what I'm going to do tonight.  You see, I -was- trying to figure out a very, very basic thing for an opening stat and, well, it kind of broke me.  I was essentially just trying to work with something without having enough data for it, which I realize now (and honestly realized at a few points, but damnit, I was going to try) and it just did not end well, as you can imagine.  But I'm welcoming you to enjoy my hilarious missteps in the process of trying to provide content because it in itself is content of sorts.  I'm inserting a page break, however, because it's a chatlog, which means it's quite long by nature without being -full-, as paragraphs are.  So, yes, hopefully you will enjoy it in lieu of actual numbers tonight.

good lord, did I wobble this one spectacularly

Sort of a Stop-Gap Post

I usually like to start off the new year with a big ol' numbers post or something along those lines, but I'm just really not into it at the moment.  In fact, I'm not really into a whole -lot- right now really.  As I've said before, I'm still getting over being sick and I've gone and re-aggravated my back with a particularly intense fit of coughing, and it's just very unpleasant.  It was worse yesterday, of course, which is the primary reason why no post made it up - it wasn't as if I was off being busy or anything.  After all, where would I be on New Year's Eve?  Nowhere but home, and while that might sound just a bit bitter, I honestly wouldn't prefer to be anywhere else - it's just the circumstances at home that I wish I could change.  Enough of that, though.

I'm going to avoid saying a lot here because I want to save a bunch of it for my proper New Year's post, but I also wanted to post something here because part of my goals for this year is to be less of a damn embarrassment to myself in terms of managing to make posts.  Now don't worry - I make it sound like I'm taking it a little harder than I am, but that's purposefully so because it is something that bugs me.  I didn't even break 300 posts in 2013 which is something that I'm highly annoyed with.  Even though I tell myself the initial goal was always 'Every Other Day' (which means 183 posts, which I did about 100 more than) I -like- that I can produce something called content on the daily and I really want to get back into that.  Really, I want to focus on writing again this year, since it oddly seemed to slip my mind last year.

Regardless, as stated there's just not a whole lot I can get into tonight.  My back is making it hard to write just about anything, as it's really hard to get comfortable in my chair and I've had to take a lot of breaks even writing this, which makes it hard to keep focus.  I'm still plugging along at Terraria's Hard Mode and grumbling loudly because I can't find any goddamn Adamantite now that I have a Mythril Drill and I keep fucking dying to the multitudes of fucking enemies and I've started The Last of Us.  However, the less said about that for now, the better, because goddamn Clickers are the worst.  All in all, I'm more than a little grumbly, and I think that's clearly obvious.  So, you know.

Business as usual.

nice to see 2014 starting out so differently

Hey, I Didn't Forget

I am 1 for 2 in terms of New Year's Resolutions.  This is a thing that is official that I've been meaning to bring up, just forgot about it until now.  Seeing as there's something of a weekend lull, and I only made it about ten minutes into Assassin's Creed 3:  Liberation after beating Persona 4 Golden, then this is a perfect time to discuss it, for it is a thing that is to be discussed.  Some of you might have been around last January when I set my second ever New Year's Resolution of making my own game that would be a board game, styled something after Metal Gear Ac!d because goddamn if I don't love those two games and cards.  Cocky off my recent resolution win of doing this blog, I aimed to shoot for the stars and, well, life kind of caught up to me.  So, at this point in time, I'm disappointed to say that I don't have anything close to a prototype of the game to play with, meaning I failed that one.

As a side thing, I always kind of figured that it might not have gotten quite finished, but I expected, at least, to be a little bit into the actual card-making process which is currently still a point off on the horizon.  I have characters and factions drawn up (so to speak) and I have some base mechanics considered, but that's about the bulk of it honestly which is not really indicative of a years-worth of work.  Of course, it's not technically a years-worth of work, since there were entire months where I just couldn't even consider working on it because of the stuff that has cropped up, but I don't aim to excuse it, really.  Not like I have to, really - I wanted to do something and then I didn't.  Big deal.  A good part of the excitement really came from being able to have something to share and that's not gone, so there's not too much of an issue.

In all reality, the only reason I bring it up at all is because I'm just going to be renewing that resolution for this year.  It's a bit lazy and a bit counter to the entire idea, but really, it's just a formality.  Things that people want to do, we do regardless of reason or anything like that - the whole concept of being a Resolution is just an attempt at galvanization towards a certain goal that is generally considered a larger thing than we might ordinarily contest.  So what all this means is that I -still- want to make my game, and that I -hope- to make strides toward that goal through this upcoming year.  With the knowledge gathered last year at just what kind of a task this is that I have at hand, I hope to make some better strides this year, since I -know- which way I'm going, it's just the getting there that's the problem.

The issue with actually sharing this project, I'm realizing, is foresight.  Both in whether I might want to sell this thing in the future and whether I could, were I of a mind to attempt to.  There's not a whole lot of protection in just posting things up on the internet and hoping nobody takes them, after all.  But that's a bridge I'll cross at some later point - I'm sure if I keep -some- of the information back, I'll still have something I can build on, so I'm not too fussed about it.  Whenever I can update it, I promise that I will, but that might be a while in the future here - I'm working on other things and dealing with life as it comes, after all.  I've got the whole of this year to mess around with, though, so I am anticipating -some- progress.  In fact, I'd say it's a little impossible that there won't be any.  So that's a thing!

Starting on a Positive Note

Well, I am in a better mood tonight.  I was actually going to do a stats post and started it (I now have three posts that are just drafts and I feel -so lazy- now) but I am going to save that for tomorrow.  Hopefully.  Tonight, I'm just busy being overwhelmed by Persona 4 Golden that I literally spent the better part of like two hours if not more gushing over it with my buddy Haplo.  He's only experienced Persona 4 vanilla, but the experience is universal regardless, so long as I don't speak of the many many improvements Golden has made, thus tempting him further towards a Vita purchase.  (Because it honestly seems like there were a -lot- of things added and they're all fantastic.)  Regardless of whether it's Golden or Vanilla, it's a rather fantastic experience nonetheless.

Last night really wasn't so bad, in perspective, it's just that I let a years worth of negativity come crashing down on me over a catalyst that, really, wasn't so bad.  It was a little bad, sure, but things are what you make of them, and I've made it positive now.  Hopefully soon, I'll be making it more positive with someone.  That....was meant to sound nice...not weird.  I'm keeping it, though.  I don't mind coming off a little silly because I'm in a good mood.  A persistent one, which is strange considering the recent trend.  I'm hoping that keeps going - keeps on a straight line because I've been miserable when I'm down and only tepidly happy when I've been up.  It's been a real problem.

It's a new year, though.  A new start.  I've got a real chance at something good, something overwhelmingly positive and it's growing more and more as I look at it and think about it.  With it comes a confidence, a decisiveness I didn't know I had that makes my mood rise more and more.  I talk with excitement, with happiness and passion a lot I like to think, and while that's real, this feels like something on a whole other level.  There's really not a whole lot I can say about it here, because it's not something I can fully elucidate, that I can form coherently into words that can fully appreciate this, but I'm sure the gist makes it clear to you.  It's certainly something to celebrate, however, and something to make the start of a New Year seem like a very bright thing.

Is it silly to attribute some of this to Persona 4 Golden, though?  I'm not quite sure.  It certainly compliments my mood well, adds a little bit of extra goodness to it, if you will.  Like a fine wine next to the best meal you've ever eaten - it's a supplement to the experience and only makes it sweeter, but it is lovely without it anyways.  The game is certainly wonderful enough - I can understand how and why some people claim it as one of their favorite games of all time; why others consider it a paragon of RPGs, because all that praise is certainly not misplaced.  Thankfully, I'm not done with it just yet, but I imagine even when I do beat it, I'm just going to jump back into it once more, doing a NG+ run that I will actually finish, unlike P3P.  I just enjoy it that much.

Happy New Year, folks.  For real this time.

Don't Let the Door Hit You, 2012

2012 sucked.

Yeah.  There were good things.  Great things, even.  But the majority of them were in gaming, which in of itself is not a bad thing, I suppose.  The Vita came out which might be the single most high point of the year in terms of gaming (for me), and I guess if it's your thing, the Wii U came out too just recently.  Beyond that, the year saw the release of such wonderful titles as Sleeping Dogs, Lollipop Chainsaw, the surprisingly fun Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale, Gravity Rush, Persona 4 Golden and a handful of other great titles.  Playstation Plus hit its stride, coming out as the bonafide best deal in gaming, with the implementation of the Instant Game Collection not only for the Playstation 3, but the Vita as well.  And did I mention Persona 4 Golden?  Because Persona 4 Golden.

Everything else, though, pretty much sucked for me this year.  Between suddenly becoming single (officially), health issues for myself and my family and a bunch of other stuff, it's been a stressful year.  One that I'm not too happy with and one that I'm certainly not going to miss.  I could always hope that 2013 will be better, but considering that I'll be spending New Year's Eve by myself with only my Vita and some carbonated beverages to keep me company, combined with the fact that I am positive I'll be getting some bad news fairly soon after midnight, I'm certainly not looking forward to it, either.  But it's just something I've got to soldier through, I suppose.  Or at least something I just can't let bowl me over whilst I drag myself through it, is more appropriate.  Since I'm not too optimistic.

As such, I'm not going to do a big stats post tonight.  I could - I have the time, but the desire just isn't there tonight and I don't want to force it.  I can say that I'll probably do one tomorrow, but I don't know the truth in that statement.  And I really do need to finish the series of 999 posts - had I realized that it was literally this close to New Years (I don't know why I didn't think about it) I would've started it after the new year.  Live and learn, I suppose.  Apologies for kind of wobbling that one, folks.

And with that, I have some social links to build up, and terrible soft drinks to consume.  For Auld Lang Syne indeed.

Resolution Time!

Some of you who read this blog might actually not know that a New Year's Resolution is what really spawned this whole thing.  Last year In 2010, at the end of December, I decided to actually make a resolution that year rather than just being dismissive about the whole thing.  So, I had been The Games of Chance pretty heavily and decided "Hey, writing is a thing I want to do and I quite enjoy reading his blog, so maybe I could do something like that of my own!" and after getting a few pieces of advice from him, I started it up.  The mission statement of at least a post every other day, the commitment to delivering actual content beyond a paragraph or two or just a link to something, it all spawned from me resolving to really jump into this whole writing thing head-first, so I'd say being 1/1 is a pretty good record.

So, of course, this year I just have to one-up myself because that can't end poorly, right?  In all actuality, I've set two resolutions for myself, but I'm only going to be talking about the first one as the second is....well, a little more personal.  They're both a little ambitious, but likely the former (i.e. the one I'm talking about) is the more ambitious of the two.  I wanted something challenging, but something not cliche', so no weight-loss, quitting a 'vice' or anything like that for me, since I am mostly terrible about 'quitting' things.  But I've obviously found something I'm fairly good at, so I'm going to go with that.  So, much like my last resolution, this year's resolution is going to be all about creation.

I've done quite a few posts here about what I'd do if I was making a game, whether it's the series of posts I did about my 'dream game' or the posts I've made about mimicking a Metal Gear Ac!d game with another game as a base, I have very much been vocal about what I'd do if I was going to make a game.  So, hey, put up or shut up time, right?  I haven't talked about all the different ideas I've had in mind here even, and I'm not planning on making a -video game- since it is far, far beyond my capability at this time, but I've been tossing around ideas for either a Table-top RPG style game (Like D&D) or actually making up a card game in the theme of Metal Gear Ac!d (but not exactly like it, of course) so I think it's time to actually get one of them done.  I'm obviously not talking professional-level stuff here; by January of next year (If we make it that far, hurr hurr Mayan Calendar) I'm not expecting to have something I can pitch to someone to be an actual 'buy this at a store' game, but at least something I can pull up with some friends, do a quick explanation of it, and get a game going.

I don't know which I'm going to go with officially, but I've got an idea, so once I have a few things firmly in place, I'll be liable to share them here I'm sure.  And this won't be like "I'm going to make levels on LittleBigPlanet, for serious, and post pictures and stuff about the creation process, I promise" because we all know how that turned out (I'm officially waiting for LBP Vita for that now.  >.> ) since this is my resolution.  This is a -thing- and it's going to -happen-.  'Where making this happen' for reals, and I think it'll be a pretty interesting thing to actually talk about every now and then.  The lucky thing is that, in either case, I already have a few ideas made up, so if nothing else, the first couple of posts about whatever I pick will be easy enough.  And with that, that should prompt me to continue on!

We'll see how it goes, but I hope you guys are interested in seeing what I've got going on!

New Year's Eve - A Year In Review

On Wednesday, January 5th, I posted my first post of this blog which more or less presented the mission statement to any who decided to read this as well as to myself to have something that I really wanted to accomplish.  I also sort of have one on the sidebar to the right, but the first post basically says "I want to write, and I want to write consistently, so I'm going to make it a 'thing'" and I would say that Kupowered is officially 'a thing'.  Though not without its hiccups in activity thanks to poor weather and computer issues, I have pretty much stuck to that goal of consistency to the best of my ability and for that I'm pretty proud of myself.  I really wrestled with whether or not I'd be able to do it, more because I worried it would become a 'chore' over time, but (mostly to my surprise) every day has been as exciting as the last, if not more, when I sit down here and actually really get into hammering out one of these posts.

I love doing this blog, doing this writing, and that's why it's going to be so easy to continue doing it into the new year.  While I don't always know what I'm going to write about until I actually start doing it (sometimes halfway through a post, I'll notice it's dramatically shifted gears and make a few changes to the title or the earlier body of it to reflect that) I always -want- to write which is likely the most important point.  That want, the desire, is more or less why this has kept going and why it's improved over time (at least, I like to think it has) as I've more or less fallen into a way about things or a style even.  With any luck, my ability will eventually match my ambition for it and I'll be able to make this a lot better than it is currently; if just by delivering on  few promises I've made throughout the year.  (Like actually explaining the Romance of the Three Kingdoms period in my own way and getting an actual logo going.)  But even if I don't, I bet if I keep at what I've been doing, it'll work out all the same.

Since this is a year in review and I really like statistics, let's have a go at the blog by the numbers.  Not including this post, I made 348 posts this year - 17 posts fewer than a full year's worth (365).  Since the stated goal was 'every other day', which would have been 183 posts (rounded up), I beat my goal by 165 posts which is quite a wide margin.  My most viewed post (according to my stats page) was my "Really Tired" post in which I was silly and decided to talk about Dragons in a fairly casual way (even by my standards) as an attempt to make myself (and hopefully others) laugh with the way it went.  At 4,069 pageviews, I'd almost wager it did....if I weren't convinced that 89% or so of those pageviews are actually links to one of the dragon pictures used in the post.  My search keyword section constantly has about four or five different entries for 'dragons' or 'cool black dragons' which more or less leads me to believe this which is a little disappointing, but hey, views are views.  This is all reinforced by the second most viewed post, "Guilty Pleasures - Yakuza 4's Hostess Maker", which came in at only 290 views All Time.

I'm almost loathe to actually use Blogger's All Time graph for pageviews per month since it's not actually by month (seems to skip every other month and some months have two entires when hovered over), but it's kind of all I can think of to use right now.  January 2011 is listed as 538 pageviews between that point (wherever it was in January, perhaps at the end?) and December of 2009 (which, of course, the blog did not exist then).  After a little dip in March('s second entry) of 338 pageviews, there was steady growth from that point on to December('s first entry) of 2,297 pageviews which is my all-time high.  The second entry for December, which I imagine isn't the solid end-point of it, is currently at 2,217.  I honestly don't know how I'm getting all these pageviews, but hell, I'll take 'em.  As long as people are reading it's all good, I guess.  The part next to the graph that says "Pageviews all time history" has a total of 16,829 currently, which is a number that I can't even figure on.  (This is all with the 'Don't track own pageviews' unticked, however I doubt my own views are skewing things that dramatically and considering I've typed all this up, I'm not going to chance turning it off and making myself look silly.)

Moving on to the Audience tab, my top-most country of viewership is, possibly unsurprisingly, the United States with 7,987 pageviews.  I don't really link-whore my blog around (which, honestly, I probably should?), but if I do, the majority of the people I link to are in the US.  Up next is Canada (thank you Chance!) with 1,123 posts.  Australia brings up fourth with 881 views (that are likely not all made by Haplo, but I'm just guessing) and the country with the least pageviews is Denmark with 113.  Beats me how Denmark is even on the list, but hey whatevs.  (For those interested, the full list is such (Country - Pageviews):  United States - 7,987, Canada - 1,123, United Kingdom - 892, Australia - 881, Russia - 485, Germany - 464, Indonesia - 139, Brazil - 136, Ukraine - 134, and Denmark - 113.  Which only adds up to 12,354 so I guess the other views are a mish-mash of a smattering of views here and there.)  The bulk of these viewings was on Firefox apparently, as it accounts for 7,461 (or 45%) of my views.  Next is Internet Explorer with 4,081 (or 24%) and coming in third is Chrome with 3,461 (or 21%).  And of those total views, 84% (14,071 views) were done on computers running Windows OS, with the remaining 16% comprising of a mishmash of different OS's.  Linux and Mac get 5 and 4 percent respectively (901 and 826, again respectively) and Playstation 3 and PSP are both in the <1% category with 165 and 123 respectively.  Something completely surprising to me was that my site was apparently viewed on iPads 124 times, iPhones 111 times and iPods 61 times.

That all might not be interesting to you and I apologize if it's not, but it's absolutely fascinating to me even though with most cases it's just "Hey, these are big numbers that involve your blog".  I just think it's a neat little look into the back-end of things, into the mechanics of it rather, and that there might be a few people out there as interested in it as I am.  And what better time to cement these numbers than tonight, the end of the year?  Though I have to admit those are probably a little dry, so I do have a few more fun numbers to go over.

Since starting this blog, I've made about 26 different 'types' of posts, including "A Look Back", "Giant Robot On", "Weekly Wrap-up in Gaming", "Why Won't They Make These", "LittleBigThings", and "Misadventures in Bargain-Shopping".  I quantify these as 'types' in that they're...well, titles for very specialized types of posts.  While most of the time my posts have been bringing up something news-worthy and offering my opinion and thoughts on it, these posts are more or less based on my personal experiences and opinions on things, like presenting a specific game or type of game, describing it, and wondering aloud about how difficult it would be to make more of them, wherein the answer is usually 'Not very, but it won't sell well either'.  (Why Won't They Make These)  Or like talking about anything and everything involving LittleBigPlanet regarding news, my own personal excitement, or my adventures in the wonderful world of LittleBigPlanet.  (LittleBigThings)  There might be a few others I could include and likewise a few included that might not need to be in there, which is why I said 'about', since it's just a rough gauging.

One of those types of posts was the 'Review', which my first one was made on Monday, July 25th for Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective.  The game was so galvanizing that I couldn't help but be inspired to do with it what I hadn't done before and what I indeed told myself I wouldn't do in actually presenting something that was not just my opinions, but my overall judgment of the game (which are two very slightly different things).  Since then, I've only reviewed two other games (Yakuza 4 and Star Ocean: First Departure) because they've both struck similar chords as Ghost Trick, albeit in widely different ways.  It's probably a safe bet to make that I'll review more games in 2012, but that my focus will remain on relating my opinions on the games I play rather than rendering my judgments.  Again, they are different things, albeit barely, and I think they're both important enough to have a place here.

While I don't think I could ever pick 'favorite' posts of the year, I will point out a couple of my more memorable ones.  In recent memory, my series of two (spoiler warning!) Character Spotlight posts about Caim from the Drakengard series (again, spoilers up ins them) were probably a couple of the posts that I've got most excited about doing.  I've said it many times before, but Drakengard is a series close to my heart and Caim and his presentation are a couple of the bigger reasons as to why that is.  So getting to really elaborate on that is something that I really wanted to do and that I'm glad I got to do it.  Also memorable was (again, spoiler warning!) my two-part What Went Wrong - Chrono Trigger DS series in which I got to elaborate on how bothered I was that Squeenix took one of my favorite games (if not my absolute favorite) from my childhood and, well, really did all they could to try and screw it up.  Because they honestly did and thank god there likely won't be a third Chrono game (well, fourth) since all attempts aside from the first have been pretty abysmal.

That's about it, really.  It's been a great year and I wanted to be able to really express my achievements with this blog in both personal reasonings and raw numbers and I believe I've adequately done that.  I'm sure there's quite a few other things I could've elaborated on and pointed out here, but I covered the major points, I think.  I hope everyone who's read this far has enjoyed it and will continue to do so well into the new year while this just grows and grows.  Here's hoping for great things in 2012!