Penny Arcade

Now, more than ever, extroverts need our help.

Social interactions have never come especially easily to me. I've always had the sense that I was separated from people by some invisible field that selectively apportioned the band of interpersonal data, truncated it, crushed the waveform down so far that I was always missing something fundamental. I don't like talking about it, because it only emphasizes this gulf. I feel observed, now, just typing about it; it's like an itch. I run a human-compatible persona in a Virtual Machine to interface with society because it is required. There are all these performances, all these gesticulations. All these little plays and all these hidden laws. All these traps and pits and tests.  I'm at v44.5 of this shit and I'm still patching.

I essentially had to reverse engineer the tools I use to maneuver in social space. Most of this is a process you've been privy to, because I've spent about half my life in public. I can barely imagine what it must feel like to have the medium of society closed off to you when it is your natural habitat. It probably feels as bad as living in it feels to me and a lot of the people I know.

Last week, our Friday afternoon was invested in an entirely different kind of drama than we typically manifest: the last morsel of iRacing's Mazda Cup. But savvy viewers know that even the iRacing excursions take place firmly within the broader IP. Today, we return to Motorsports Manager for another chapter of that story - aided by savvy guidance from the Pit Crew, Gabir Motorsports finally saw P1. A proud member of Dragon Race Team China's global family of products, they struggled to reach the podium until the end of their first season, and now Bao Tang - a Gentleman Driver with a dangerous temper, one whose best days were thought to be behind him - is still wringing champagne out of his fire suit. Word around the paddock is Hong feels he wasn't given the best equipment, wasn't given the best opportunities to prove himself. How will all this shake out in the next race? It all starts today at 2pm PDT, only on Twitch.

(CW)TB out.

Our son's counselor called up Brenna a couple days ago to ask how things were going here at home with school out. I think maybe it's supposed to be bad; certainly, we've made those jokes too. There's a lot of horseshit involved with their online platform, something we've been struggling with for years because there's no universal doctrine regarding its use internally. In truth, I have three different websites I have to log into in order to understand what's happening at school. And once I gain access to these haunted-ass Precursor Mausolea, I gotta teach a bunch of complicated shit I forgot twenty years ago. But: Brenna's response was, "Uh, I think this might actually be better for him."

And it is. It's not even close. There's a lot about how school is set up that's rad if you think being around people is great. But if you don't, or you're somewhere on the spectrum that makes some of these constant interactions unintelligible or "merely" Herculean psychic investments, all these things are being drawn from the same power bar you're using to learn. I have a lot of opinions on this but the only thing that matters to me is the extent to which I can wring success from it.

We had to come up with our own system that works for us. It doesn't look like school in some ways. Maybe it, you know, occasionally involves a Magic Shrimp.

If you don't spend a lot of time around young people, they're changing essentially all the time. A lot of it depends on your sample rate. A baby's head isn't, like… finished, and so you might go to work and come back and now your baby has a different head. Being home all the time means my sample rate has gone through the roof during a period marked by incredible change. Hair, hair unchecked, has begun to amass in key areas on his face that evokes a kind of twenties - nineteen twenties, I should say - ragamuffin aesthetic. I have offered my services in this regard but these hairs, lus'trous and few, are precious to him and they will not be mown.

(CW)TB out.

I liked Control a lot - it's the last game before Doom Eternal that I just straight burrowed through essentially every moment I could spare. The only thing that fucked me up about it was that there's a very significant defensive ability that isn't required to complete the story, it looked sorta like a sidequest thing, and I found the whole thing so fascinating that I only stopped and did things like that later on (as sometimes happened) if I got too curious about them from a story perspective.

There are references to The Bright Falls Incident in Control, which would be enough for the Alan Wake fan to feel recognized or even, as it was in my case, passionately loved, but the news that the AWE DLC will go into greater detail on this is the sort of sunbeam a cat might laze in all afternoon. Gabe isn't down for any of this stuff. More Alan Wake is not a plus. I, on the other hand, am overjoyed that we've gotten a "triple A" SCP Foundation game from one of my favorite developers.

Gabir, in his Mike Krahulik guise, will be approaching today's Mazda Cup in iRacing on the fascinating Summit Point Circuit we've contended with before. It has a malevolent first turn which on the diagram is called merely "The Loop" but we know by its true name, der Fleischwolf. I'm gonna try to make my way in there to spot for him also, but the Pit opens up at 1:30 for practice toward a 2pm PDT race. We hope to see you there.

(CW)TB out.

I only picked up this Sim Racing hobby back in March but I’ve already poured a lot of time and money into it. The last time I fell this hard for a new hobby, it was D&D and that was more than a decade ago. My enthusiasm also appears to be contagious because our racing streams are always packed. If you’ve been wondering what’s going on with all this sim racing and how to get involved, I’ve got you covered. 

Motorsport Manager

Jerry and I stream this game every Friday at 2:00pmPST. This has quickly become one of our most popular shows. It’s two hours of Jerry and I drinking in the afternoon and managing a racing team called Gabir Motors. This game is ridiculously entertaining and I don’t just mean the racing. The off the track antics and story lines that develop over the course of a season are surprisingly engaging. I expected to manage tire temperatures and gas levels. I didn’t think I’d have to deal with a driver discovering a personal relationship with Jesus Christ mid season or how that would affect his racing! 

iRacing

These streams are not on any regular schedule but they tend to happen in the evenings around 10pmPST. The best way to catch a live one is to get an alert from the channel or keep an eye on my Tweeter. 

Usually these races are in public lobbies but the matches tend to be pretty even if a little chaotic. I have earned a class D license which is not great but still gives me access to a wide selection of styles to race. If you tune in for one of these late night streams it will probably be oval or road racing. Regardless of the series, Jerry is in my ear whenever possible as my spotter. He is also logged into the game but his position as spotter gives him access to a variety of cameras to watch the action from. His job is to keep me apprised of race conditions, cars ahead and behind me, wrecks and anything else he thinks might help me get around the track faster. 

We even got invited to an iRacing Pro-Am event that put Jerry and I on the track with a bunch of honest to God professional drivers. The Subaru IRX invitational was last Friday but you can catch the official VOD here:

Or see it from my point of view here:

Watch Subaru IRX ALL-Star Invitational! from PennyArcade on www.twitch.tv

I will also be streaming Penny Arcade league events occasionally. We’ve got about 50 people in the league now and we’re developing a schedule for group practices and tournaments. If you’d like to join, just look us up in the iRacing League directory and send a request. I am accepting all comers regardless of skill level. We have lots of rookies and lots of pros who are willing to teach. 

Anytime we are out there streaming Motorsports of any kind we have been supported by a surprisingly enthusiastic streaming audience. We have dubbed them the Pit Crew and I have to be honest I am shocked at how their numbers continue to grow. I didn’t think Jerry would follow me into this obsession, much less the hundreds of you guys who have been tuning in at night! We’ve got real racing knowledge in the Pit Crew and they have given me lots of tips. We also have people like myself who are just getting into the hobby. It’s been a great mix and I love to see all the new people telling me they broke down and bought a wheel. 

The way I see it, my job is to share my enthusiasm about games. The fact that so many of you are coming along for the ride tells me I’m doing a good job. The excitement of live races on the hour, full of people who (for the most part) are trying to race as fast and as clean as they can to progress their license while improving their safety rating, is unlike anything I’ve ever played before.  I am having a great time and I think that must be coming through in these streams. Thanks to the Pit Crew for joining us on this trip!

-Gabe out

Unfortunately, or… I mean, I guess we'll see how it turns out, Mike Krahulik was invited to an iRacing Pro Am event. You have to take that opportunity when it comes to you. That being said, it's in Rallycross, which we don't have supreme experience in, and it is on a track called Hell.

The track is actually called Lankebanen as far as I know, but the Hell portion does get played up, even in the official branding:

But we're ready to give it our best, to approach a match played with and against people who race for a living, professionals, people I literally saw driving in the "Best Of Rallycross" compilations I was watching so I could understand how to spot.  We will require deep magic.  No doubt Gavin Greco's custom livery will defend and comfort us like a sacred aegis.  Also, obviously, shoutout to Carl, our lollipop man.

And so that's what we'll be doing today on the stream from 2pm until the event is over or we're knocked unconscious by the fear and pressure steadily building in our skulls. The race starts at 3 or so, practice/qualification and then several heats to break up the pack. If you aren't familiar with Rallycross, and you're arriving as we have from the gaming side of this sport, you'll be startled by an incredibly interesting piece of "game design" called the Joker Lap - essentially there is an alternate route built into the course itself, typically a substantial variation on one of the turns, and one of the laps you take during the race needs to be on that other route and you choose when to take it. It's a novel strategic consideration in a form of racing that is already weirdly intimate and terrifying. They're also doing an "inverse grid," for this race, where the slower drivers start at the front of the pack. This essentially transforms our car into something between "prey" and "terrain" for these ravenous predators, which… I hope will be fun for somebody.

(CW)TB out.