The Only Social Life I Need is in My Head

Hello,

 It’s a good thing I don’t get paid for this. I’m sure any employer would have fired my ass by now for my inconsistent posting habits. Luckily, I’m self employed right now and get paid in imagination dollars (which my landlord doesn’t take as currency, apparently.) But even though I run my own company, Christ it feels like I’ve got a boss. Several actually, because not a day goes by that someone doesn’t say “Hey, Taylor! You know you haven’t posted anything recently?” Yes, I’m aware. But it isn’t my fault. I have a legitimate medical condition that prevents me from doing anything productive during my free time, and it’s called Skyrim. But we aren’t going to talk about that, at least not yet. There is some…uhh…professional business to take care of first.

Apparently, there was some sort of TFG giveaway that happened a few weekends back. I wasn’t there, but I heard it was a huge success again. Once again, the viewers bestowed gifts of all kinds, and I have a list of givers! This list may be incomplete due to the overwhelming amount of people who give, and I sincerely apologize to anyone who was left out. If you must point your burning sword of blame at someone, do so at Jason (he made the list after all.) So here is our list of donators for the November 5th Giveaway in no particular order!:

Spoor, Poopy, Ace (Idraco), Kal-El, Vis87, Assassin, Jaybe, EpicSuperAwesome, Colwyn.Myself, NRG l Wolfears, RandomTask 83, Snooby, Charmander, White, Copps, -=AWOL=- Spiffy.PDF, Crazy, Reddit_Johnny, Xzibit, Mcpower, DeadlyBearHugs, Musicman, Darth Meanie, Raxshi, and Dex.

Seriously guys and girls, thank you for your contributions. Much like how a captain is useless without a crew, we are useless without you. We are planning another giveaway for the holiday season. We’re going to be aiming for mid-December, and I’ll be sure to give you plenty of notice once we nail an exact date. Be sure to keep an eye out. 

Oh and before I get too far ahead of myself, I thought I’d give you guys a little taste of what we gave to the public during our last giveaway. This is in no way being used to sway you guys to come to our next event…not officially anyway. Our big give outs came in 3 packs. Here’s what was inside:

1.) Strange syringe gun, strange medi-gun, strange bonesaw, Meet the Medic taunt, The Einstein, Dr. Googlestache, and emerald jarate.

2.) Bonk helm, strange scattergun, strange pistol, strange Mr. Sandman, and cakeface,

3.) Crate #20 (turned out to be a strange pain train), Sergeants drill hat, rocket jumper, schadenfreude, vintage direct hit, vintage gunboats, and a full copy of the game Bastion (a very fun game).

Of course there was plenty of other items given out, but those were the big ones. Who knows what will be coming next month? I probably know, but it’s a secret for you guys to find out. Don’t worry, it will be equally if not more awesome than before, and will definitely warrant all the accolades you’ve thrown at us (Accolades!: “Awesome bunch of guys” “Great guys. I’m enjoying the stream nicely.” “ZOMG TFG!!! I LOVE YOU GUYS!” “TFG Is The Best!!!” “I will give them all my upvotes!” “nice guys you are” “nice stream! Enjoying it a lot” “upvoted, joining, this looks like fun, watching!” “great raffle!” “This is a really cool thing for the tf2 community.” “Thanks for this, you’re good people ^_^” “Thanks from the whole community!”)

Thanks a super ton for all the warm support. Your generosity and your support is what keeps us running like the well oiled machine we are. 

So about that condition I mentioned earlier. I’ve been dreading this time of the year for a while now because I knew my life would be sucked into the rich and deep vortex that is Skyrim. I took all the necessary precautions too. I told my girlfriend that my love would no longer be for her, but shared. I requested off work for an entire weekend to get the initial ”OMG A NEW RELEASE” out of the way. I managed to save at least 8 of my original 14 cans of Spaghetti-O’s. I was ready, and as time marched towards 12:00AM Friday, anticipation rose. 

Time is a mystical thing. The wait for 12:00AM Friday morning was long, but very bearable. The ~5 GB download that both Jesse and I had to get before we could play was a god damn eternity. I’m very certain I developed grey hairs waiting for the patch to download. For clarity sake, both Jesse and I had pre-downloaded the game to our desktops so that at 12, we could launch it and kick dragon ass. But reality doesn’t much care for our hopes and dreams, and we were forced to download extra material for about 2 hours before any real game time could be had. What’s worse was this: My download was smaller, thus went faster than Jesse’s. I laughed at Jesse’s inferior downloading capabilities and fired up my game 20 minutes before him. I chuckled as the opening sequence played out, grinned as back-story was set up, and then pissed my pants out of frustration when a scripted sequence didn’t initiate. Thinking it a small error, I retried. Same failure, same place. Why have you forsaken me, Skyrim? I quit out of the game and was immediately greeted with a second 600MB download, just as Jesse’s game finished his download. His worked fine, and I was now 20 minutes behind. Great.

Flash forward some unknown hours. My hero, a mix between archer and sword swinging badass stands in open fields admiring the beauty of the fictional world. Amongst the mountains shrouded in mist and the vast fields roamed by giants and mammoths alike, I learned several lessons. 

Lesson 1.) I am a murderous bastard. I saw beautiful butterflies floating gently on minute air currents, and my instinct was to catch them. My original plan was to gather thousands of them and release them upon an unsuspecting citizen, thus giving them the best eye rape ever. But my plans melted away as I clicked on the butterflies and the message “Gathered butterfly wings” popped up. I…I ripped off their wings? Who am I!?

Lesson 2.) No one likes me. I’m not sure if it was “butterfly murder” related or not, but every small outpost I ventured to greeted me with a fist full of arrows to the thorax. The first few hours of my gaming experience were mostly a combination of ripping butterflies apart, being shot at, and running away in the most stupid manner possible (see also: Straight line for 30 feet, behind tree until enemy catches up). I began to wonder if anyone would accept me, and then I found a giant. He was just walking casually along a path, and I thought “Yes, this beast will be my friend. He and I are the same, outcast by society. I shall talk with him.” He greeted me with a club to the face. Maybe I’m better on my own. 

Lesson 3.) Being a vampire SUCKS (ha ha). I remember being a vampire in Oblivion, the game before Skyrim. It was terrible. If you went in the sun, your health meter dropped until you died, and the only cure was talking a woman who told you to pick flowers. It isn’t much better in Skyrim. In this game, a vampire’s worst enemy is fire, be it the giant flaming ball of gas in space, or a Harry Potter wanna be launching fireballs at you Mario style. And once you become a vampire, EVERYONE throws fire at you. It’s like a memo was sent out to everyone saying I was a vampire. The very first dragon I met that wasn’t scripted showed up to fight me while I was a vampire. Are you kidding me? A fire breathing lizard who has a shit ton of health decides to fight me after I become incredibly weak to its only attack? During the day?! This game is trying to upset me.

Lesson 4.) Being a vampire will always SUCK. There are 4 levels of vampirism in this game, each one making your strengths and weakness more extreme. At its final level, people are scared of you. Entering a town will result in everyone chasing you down like the pariah you are. The only way to get people to remotely like you again is to drink someone’s blood, and since just about everyone lives in towns, this is hard to do. I was full blown vampire and wanted to be hated solely for butterfly murder, so I came up with a plan to feed. I would use my vampire power to turn invisible, sneak into a bar, and get me a bloody Mary. It was going amazingly well, but as I said before, reality doesn’t play games. A courier comes trotting up to my invisible ass and strikes up a conversation with me. Seriously, to everyone else, this dude was talking to a very uninterested wall. But he blabbed on, and gave me a letter. The act of him giving me that letter disabled my invisibility, and suddenly that uninterested wall became a very embarrassed vampire. Everyone whipped out their swords like it was the last scene of The Return of the Kings and came charging. My running away tactics had gotten better, so I scurried off. My exit was so close, but instead of freedom, there was a god damn dragon. A DRAGON. He swooped down with his vampire frying breath and commenced attack. Typically, citizens and soldiers will fight the dragon, which would give me time to slip away, but somehow the townsfolk saw a lowly vampire as a bigger threat than the GIANT MONSTROSITY circling above their matchbox houses. They attacked ME. ME! What. The. Fuddruckers. I still won…just to relieve the suspense. Killed them with a thunder storm. Killed everyone. They deserved it…jerks.

Lesson 5.) I won’t see much social action for a while. This game is so deep, I need a SCUBA suit, or at least a snorkel and flippers. There is so much left for me to do, but I’ve already done so much. The few examples I just talked about took up maybe 3 of my almost 30 hours of playing, and there is no drought when it comes to stories to share. Trust me, I could go on and on. But since this post is nearing 2,000 words, I’ll stop here. If you’ve got the means, play this game, but be sure to write a goodbye letter to your loved ones. I’ll try to rip myself away from this game long enough to play something different so I’ll have new stuff to talk about next time, but honestly it’ll be hard to do. Don’t be mad if I don’t post for a while, I’ve got this medical condition…

Anyway, sorry for the massive post. (Pretend it’s in honor of this massive game?) I’ll hopefully have TFG related news for you next time. Until then, stay safe and avoid vampires.

Cheers,

Taylor

6 months ago  /  0 notes

A Tale of Two Genders

Hello,

It’s no secret that we here at TFG are interested in indie-games. Of the 3 posts I’ve made so far, 2 of them have been about indie-games (Minecraft and that demon baby I Wanna Be the Guy). According to my math, that’s over 50% of our game related conversations directly dealing with indie-games. There are a two reasons why that is: First is because there are only 3 post here, so the number is inflated. Second is because we love indie-games. As a matter of fact, I’m going to talk about one right now!

The game in question is called The Binding of Issac, a game that can be bought on Steam or from the Humble Bundle (here’s a link: http://www.humblebundle.com/). I’d suggest the Humble Bundle because you also get two other games, Blocks That Matter and Voxatron. You’ll have to let me know how those ones are…I haven’t played them yet. 

So what is the Binding of Issac? It’s a game about a kid in a basement who fights monsters with tears because his mom is trying to kill him. The levels and items are randomly generated so every play through is slightly different. Sometimes, these different experiences give rise to strange stories. I like to call this one “The Heroic Story of Cross Dresser Issac and Sister Maggy.” 

In this story, Issac is a tri-clops followed by what I can only assume is a fetus named Maggy. Maggy is technically called “Sister Maggy” by the game, so she’s either Issac’s dead sister or a nun. I’ll assume she’s not the nun option. Together, these two fight hordes of baddies ranging from flies spat out by lumpy dudes who run away from you and cry (social anxiety, perhaps?) to guys that turn into goo puddles when shot and then (disgustingly) turn back into guys again. I’m not sure how they do that, it just doesn’t make sense. 

As Issac and Maggy progressed, they started finding and automatically equipping various…uhh… accessories. First Issac donned something called “Mother’s underwear,” which brings up disturbing images of a young boy digging through his mom’s dirty hamper and putting on her lingerie. But whatever, it gave Issac a speed bonus. I mean, what else would wearing someone else’s underwear do? Further into the depths the newly dressed Issac went, and in these depths he found his next item: Mom’s lipstick. Okay wait, hold on. Why is Issac taking all of his mom’s junk? When I watched Jason play this game, he got manly things like belts and more tears (men can cry!) But when I play, Issac turns into a cross dresser? Sure, whatever. Maggy smiles unjudgingly at her brother, so I too shall be nonjudgmental. 

After completely decking out in the latest sexy lady wear, Issac…err…Irene(?) sets out further into the hostile world. But the closer I got to the end of the game, the worst the enemies became. There are weird headless bodies that open up skin flaps and launch a hadouken like beam of red death out, worms that charge into Irene like she insulted them or something, but these horrors did not kill me. No, what killed Irene and Maggy one level from the very end were those lumpy socially awkward dudes from earlier. One of them coughed out a fly that managed to buzz in Irene’s ear too long and killed him. What. The. Hell. 

I sat around mourning the loss of my favorite cross dressing hero and fetus sidekick for a few minutes. Naturally, I began to think about what their downfall was. Was it the sultry pink underwear? The lack of mascara? Maggy’s insistent smile? No, I blame the pills. Pills were everywhere in my play through. It’s like a pharmacy was looted by a robber with a chronic case of wearing pants with holes in the pockets. Every time a pill was picked up, the game told me to press Q to eat it. The game tricked me. It put me under the impression that popping random pills found in a basement was a good idea. While it is true that some of the pills found in game give useful advantages, most of the time they are there to mess you up. 

The pill in the above picture is an example. See, at this point in the game, Issac wasn’t a cross dresser. Nor was he very attractive. His face looked pretty screwed up. I thought maybe, just maybe, that pill would fix his dumb face. Instead, it decreased my firing range, making it so I had to basically stand on top of my enemies to cry on them. Damn you pill! Damn you gambling! Now Issac is ugly and useless! Maggy just smiled…

That’s pretty much the game in a nut shell. It’s a game full of crying, cross dressing, and weird ass monsters. Oh, and poop. In one of the pictures above, there’s a weird brown smiley face on the ground. That use to be a mound of turds. I don’t know why this game has them scattered everywhere. Maybe there’s a leak in the plumbing or something. Also, keep in mind that these events are totally random, so you may not get a cross dresser. You may get a dude who shoots blood from his nipples or something, I don’t know. Regardless, I suggest you play this game. You’ll like it (maybe). 

Oh, last thing. Tomorrow at 3PM EST is the TFG Gunpowder Giveaway. We’ll be playing TF2 and giving out all sorts of goodies so be sure to tune in to win! See you there.

Cheers, 

Taylor

6 months ago  /  0 notes

The Past, the Present, And the Glorious Future

Hello,

It has been a very long time since the last update mostly due to my complete lack of motivation and poor time management skills. But have no fear my children, there will be a more consistent update schedule to come. 

So apparently there was some sort of big TFG giveaway thing a few weekends back. No big deal, it only BLEW OUR FREAKING MINDS! Seriously, all of you are amazing. For those who weren’t there, I’ll try to give a breakdown of the events:

Noon, October 22nd: Jason is playing SuperMeat Boy, trying to ace levels and get bandages. There are maybe 6 people watching. 

12:30: We start streaming TF2, starting off our giveaway. A few of our regulars are there enjoying the show and playing along. Jason suggest making a Reddit post on r/TF2

12:45: Reddit post made. We have about 15 people watching.

1:00: A sudden, small wave of people flood in, asking for ‘swag.’ We give away our first item. 

1:30: More people. We’ve hit about 30 viewers, and we are excited. We give out 3 items to celebrate our 30 people.

2:00: We cap 50 viewers. We have officially exceeded our highest concurrent viewer count. We collectively dance in our pants. People receive items.

3:00-7:00: The donation attack begins. Here’s the thing: I thought WE were the ones giving out items. No, I was wrong. At around 3 pm EST, we started to get request from people wanting to give us THEIR items. Everything from crates to strange weapons were given to us. The rate at which we received these items was so high at one point, all three of us were unable to keep up with it all. It got so bad (and by bad, I mean outstandingly amazing), Jesse was having a hard time streaming any actual gameplay. Oh, and we hit a peak of 140 viewers. We had 140 people in our stream watching a trading simulator. Somehow, that makes no sense, but it was great.

7:00-8:00: Jesse takes a break from trading to give our viewers something to watch. All trading responsibilities were given to Jason and I. Our backpacks fill up fast. 

8:00-11:00: Things are going well. There is still some big donations going on, but Jesse is mostly able to entertain the people watching. Our Reddit post currently sits at #9 on the TF2 page, and the x-post in r/gaming sits at about 14. We are temporary internet stars. Around 11 we receive massive donations including vintage items. Jason talks about a grand finale that Jesse and I are unaware of. 

11:30: The night is winding down. Several items are given out. Vintages and hats and crates. Jason leaks to me what the big finale is. It’s a Sims 3 game key. Holy wow. 

12:00: The end hits, and we give out the Sims game key, several hats, and turn off the stream. We sigh with delight. A job well done.

That’s pretty much how it went down. 12 solid hours of great fun with a lot of people. But just how big was this for us? I’ll let the numbers do the talking.

Total number of views on our channel on October 21st: 5490. On October 23rd: 8331. That’s almost 3000 views in one day. 

Total number of followers on our channel on October 21st: 149. On October 23rd: 255. To help you visualize that leap, here’s a graph for you

Total number of items given out by us: ~60. Total number of items we RECEIVED from YOU: ~200. Re-read that last number. ~200 is how many items were given to us by you, the viewer. These weren’t just crates either. They were hats, strange weapons, regular weapons, paint, tags, keys (People paid money for these things…real money!), Sims 3 game key (See previous statement), vintage items, Pip-boys, and the list surely continues. It was truly amazing, and we were truly unprepared. 

But here’s the thing. We were so pleased and excited about this, we’ve decided to have another giveaway event on November 5th. We call it the “Gunpowder Giveaway” in honor of the gunpowder plot that was foiled back in the 1600’s. Feel free to wear your Guy Fawkes mask. If you’re interested in learning more about this event, go here: http://bit.ly/tw51LS . It starts at about 3PM EST (later than our last start, but have no fear, it will be just as awesome) and will last until about midnight again. Items range from hats to stranges to crates, same as last time. 

Just to be clear, the only reason we are able to have this second giveaway is because of you. Everything being given away has been donated to us by you. Well, that’s not 100% true. We’ve been collecting items ourselves over the past 2 weeks. But yeah, a majority is because of you. Thank you. A lot. No seriously, THANK YOU. Your generosity feeds us so that we may feed you in return. Does that make sense? You bet your ass it does. 

Also, there are going to be a few updates coming to the actual channel. These things include a few visual updates as well as Steam profile updates (so you can get a better feel for who we are). No telling when exactly these updates will be officially implemented, but you will definitely notice when they are. 

Some quick news related to TFG: We have been expanding! Not physically expanding as in getting fatter or anything, but expanding our game list. Jason has been playing a lot of StarCraft recently (in light of the new HoTS information) and has pulled back the veil for you to watch. He’s a Gold level Protoss (ew) and often times gets distracted by the stream chat, but he does fine. If you’re a StarCraft fan, be sure to stop by sometime and watch him play (You may even catch a glimpse of a 2-3 player team match with Jesse and me!) 

Oh, and apparently Halloween came by during my absence. If any of you readers have any good pictures of your costume, feel free to send them my way at TFGamingtv@gmail.com. In exchange, here’s a picture of me and my girlfriend Candace dressed up as a box (me) and Taylor Swift (Candace)! 

I’d put of a picture of Jesse and Jennifer, but they were sick and didn’t dress up. Jason dressed up as a stereotypical douche bag complete with popped collar and obnoxiously gel’d hair, but he managed to avoid any camera shots. But here’s a drawn representation: 

So that’s it! I’ll be back very soon with new adventures in gaming for your reading pleasure. Until then, be good.

Cheers!

Taylor

6 months ago  /  0 notes

Why Mining is Better With Friends

Hello,

Just a quick self-promo here. Tomorrow (October 22nd) is the day TFG has its big item give away for Team Fortress 2. We will be playing that game (among others) all day and broadcasting it for your pleasure. We will also have a system set up to where every viewer has an opportunity to win an unopened crate of their choosing (we’ll supply the keys) and any item that may come out of it. There can also be trading for other items and hats and all sorts of other fun stuff. So, if you’re interested, stop by http://www.twitch.tv/tfgamingtv sometime tomorrow and join in!

IWBTG has left a bad taste in my mouth. I played a little bit more of it last night and I managed to get absolutely no where. But before I melted my computer down to a smoldering pile of regret and frustration, an idea came to mind. What if instead of playing IWBTG today, I took a break and played something a little more relaxed?This resulted in resurrecting MineCraft from the unused programs bin. 

In order to stave off any feelings of boredom that would otherwise rush in and ruin this game, I played with fellow TFG’ers Jason and Jesse. Playing with these two presented a few very strange and interesting moments. For instance, this bridge was already built when I joined in, and I have no idea how it was made.

Jesse has a custom skin of a creeper head and a business suit. Other than looking swanky as hell, he also plays great tricks on us by accident. Like in this dramatic recreation picture, Jason spots what he thinks is Jesse standing AFK outside a door near the rear of our mountain palace. Being the nice guy Jason is, he opens the door, only to be greeted with a non business suit wearing creeper. Since our palace is for swanky suited creepers only, Jason tried to boot the intruder out. Sadly, the creeper was able to ‘Sssss’ his way into the place, and blow up the doorway, along with some of the adjacent room. Funny, except we had to rebuild things. 

Along with his business suit, Jesse also carries the musk of a new MineCrafter. He is still giddy over simple things like natural rock formations and sign making while being unaware of other things. For example: our teleporter to the Nether. We crafted this Netherporter (trademarking that word) at the end of a wooden extension near our mountain palace, with no backing behind it. Jason and I decided to let Jesse be the first to experience the Nether, and told him that in order to go through it, all he had to do was sprint into the Netherporter. Jesse charges headlong off a cliff and falls several meters to the water below. We all laugh like we heard our first fart as a child. 

These two instances high light why games like MineCraft and Garry’s Mod are better with friends. Sure it is nice to be alone sometimes and just build something, but after a while it becomes bland. There needs to be some spice in your applesauce (so to speak)! That spice comes in the form of random fun moments with your pals that would otherwise be impossible to experience. So grab a buddy and grab a beer and fight the unswanky creepers together.

Now before I go, I wanted to leave you with a jazz/acoustic piano playlist that I used to relieve stress after IWBTG. Grab a mug of warm apple cider (with or without rum) and play these tunes if you want to forget that you’ve wasted hours trying to beat a room full of god damn lasers. http://8tracks.com/sabinewe/opening-my-mind

Cheers,

Taylor

6 months ago  /  0 notes

Entering the Blogosphere

Hello,

It has taken some time, but we finally moved to the world of blogging. Funny how we went from video streaming to blogging. We prefer to do things ass-backwards. Anyway, to get things cleared out of the way for anyone who doesn’t know, TFG stands for Table Flip Gaming: an online streaming channel dedicated to playing video games and creating a community out of those who like to watch (and participate.) There are a total of four people who do the commentary/playing: Poptart_Revolt, aScarymonster, Prof_Chaos, and TC9610 (Or Jason, Jesse, Jordan, and Taylor respectively. Our actual names are used way more than our “gamer identification.”) If you’re ever interested in watching a session, the link is http://www.twitch.tv/tfgamingtv 

And that should wrap up the self-promotion.

So today, I tried out an indie game called I Wanna Be The Guy, a game developed by a fellow named Michael “Kayin” O’Reilly. And before I get too far into this, I want to say to Kayin that I have no problem with you. You made a game with the intent for it to be hard and you did your job (very) well. Just know that if I were to ever meet you in public, I would be constantly resisting the urge to punch you and anything in your immediate vicinity. 

Anyway, this game is about a cape wearing boy, named The Kid, who sets out on some journey to do something. Not real clear on the story, but it is really unimportant because the game manages to kill you so much, you would forget the story if it had one. The game would literally wipe your brain clean of any plot that tried to sprout itself. As a matter of fact, the game wiped my brain clean of the past 4 years of college. The game was so unbelievably frustrating at one point, I almost passed out from holding my breath (I forgot how to breathe, as if not breathing gave some mystical good luck power instead of cyanosis.) 

But what makes this game so difficult? I’ll give you an example. There is a zone where The Kid has to double jump through a small gap, avoid a laser directly above him, sprint to a ledge and drop below before a second laser reaches him, then run on a set of floating blocks that either sink or rise into a laser, and THEN fall down a hole to the next section. On paper, it does not sound difficult to do. As a matter of fact, if you told me that is all I had to do I would laugh and bet my imaginary surplus of money I could probably do it. But once you gave me the controller, I would quickly learn how imaginarly broke I would soon be. 

Here’s a screenshot to illustrate things:  

The black line represents what I should be doing, while the Red X’s represent what I wasn’t suppose to be doing. Those red X’s also illustrate all the spots I died more than 20 times at (at least 140 deaths total…in one room!), and that X with the circle…that’s where I died the most because of a certain douche bag laser. 

7 months ago  /  0 notes