My First Award: 7x7 Link Award

Tuis Haziran 04, 2022

Thanks to Michele, the Girl Who Loves Horror, for this. ^_^

So apparently this award requires you to fulfill a few tasks (or that's what Michele did, anyway, so I figure I'll follow her example):

1. Tell everyone something that no one else knows about you.

Here's two, one a bit funny and one more pensive:

Once, while writing a paper in college (on Moll Flanders, I believe), I managed to effectively debate myself over the course of the paper and convince myself, by the time I was writing the conclusion, of the opposite of the point I was trying to make. I had a perfectly good paper there, but it was arguing my old opinion, not my new opinion, so I scrapped the thing and rewrote it entirely.
I believe rather strongly in the existence of alien civilizations. God is not wasteful, and I don't believe for a moment that all that space out there is empty. I'd say that most likely they're at similar levels of development to us, and thus, just as we don't have the capacity to send excursions far out into space, neither do they...and just as we don't have any real means of swift communication across the vastness of the cosmos, neither do they. So, obviously, I don't put any trust in the various alien abduction stories floating about, but I don't see anything ridiculous about the idea that there is someone else out there.

2. Link to the post you think best fits the following categories:

Most Beautiful Piece: Hrm. I'm not sure any posts qualify strictly as beautiful, honestly. Maybe "meaningful?" In that case, I'd say On Reviewing, in which a comment I'd received from an actor in one of the films I reviewed sent me on a bit of consideration about what it is that I'm doing here.
Most Helpful Piece: Well, that depends on who the audience is! Personally, I'm hopeful that my "System Decisions" series, particularly System Decisions: How Much System Do You Need? is helpful to any GMs out there looking into systems for their games.
Most Popular Piece: Technically, based on hits, Character Creation Review: Soul Calibur V...but I suspect that one's been mucked up a bit by people actually hoping to find character creation guides for the game, so I'd have to go with the runner-up, Project Terrible: Ninja's Creed. I'm not sure if it's just because it has "ninja" in the title or if it's because so many people are trying to figure that one out!
Most Controversial Piece: I'm not sure I have any that qualify. :-P I've had a few interesting and encouraging discussions in the comments for Project Terrible: A Haunting in Salem and On Reviewing, but nothing's really inspired any big controversies yet. (If I ever get around to doing a post on my feelings on MMOs and why I'm unlikely to review their character creation programs here, though, that might do it.)
Most Surprisingly Successful Piece: A number of my news articles have had a surprising amount of views, particularly Creation News: iClone5 Combines With Kinect for Exciting Possibilities, which has more hits than almost all of my movie reviews (normally my more successful pieces since they're directly linked to by several other blogs). More amusing to me, though, is when I found that my post about the Dragon's Dogma official website was actually listed ahead of the official website itself in search results from Google depending on what terms you used. (Yours truly is also the only reason the English Dragon's Dogma website is even listed on the Wikipedia page for it...shouldn't Capcom have someone doing that?)
Most Underrated Piece: I don't exactly have a lot of readers here yet anyway (in no small part due to the fact that the most publicizing I've ever done is being part of Project Terrible), so I can't say there's a post that's surprised me with low views. As far as those I'd like to call attention to, I'm fond of my "Great Ideas" series, in which I spotlight one element of a game or game system that I found to be interesting or noteworthy.
Most Pride-Worthy Piece: I'm rather proud of Co-Op Modes: Getting Beyond Hordes and Campaigns, in which I analyze ways that I think game developers could make co-op modes that keep gamers coming back as long as competitive modes often do, and end up basically proposing a few game designs. (Of note: I've since played the excellent Dark Souls and found it to be much less about "trial and error" than most reviews had said...it really is a "proceed carefully and you'll make it" sort of game, for the most part.)

3. Give the award to seven other bloggers:

Obviously Maynard, Michele, and Craig from past and future Project Terrible rounds are great fun and deserve your attention, but they've already received this and I assume we aren't supposed to just make this a big circle. So, here we go (okay, the last two aren't necessarily blogs, per se, but they have feeds of some sort so that works for me!):