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Let's see if I can post the whole newsletter in here...Oof. It doesn't paste in with the carriage returns. Well, I'll leave it below as an experiment and so you can look at the picture.

Summary: Gotten lots done, solved an onboarding problem that was hanging me up, making too much art. I expect the games to ship this summer.

New news: I might have to try a different printer.

If you want the deluxe version of the newsletter WITH hoity-toity return-button presses you can sign up here: https://thousandyearoldvampire.com/pages/newsletter-sign-up

Last news: I'll be at GDC this Friday as part of the Warped Inputs event. Come say hello, should you be so inclined.

Unreturned newsletter follows sign off.

High fives,
Tim H




ITEM 1: UPDATERYAll is well. All is really good, actually. I mean, not all-all. There are all sorts of horrible things happening in the world–Kansas, religious end-times hysteria being ginned up in the US military, all sorts of terribleness that is all the more terrible because it is unnecessary. That falls outside the scope of my ‘all’. You can measure the ‘all’ I’m referring to above as whatever is within arm’s reach of me, or that I can wrap my arms around. It is a small, incredibly selfish allness I speak of, and it is doomed to failure because I shall eventually sicken in increments and die. “I am good” will become greasier, sliding from “I am pleased with my productivity and am somewhat happy” to “Today I am not experiencing as much pain as usual” and onward.Fuck. I started out to share good news and just look at me. I just wrote “Okay, okay, okay” which in itself rattled my personal sense of wellness. It was what I used to say to the class when we were on an interesting topic that had diverged too far from where we needed to be. It used to be how I signaled that we needed to refocus our thinking and now it just reminds me that I miss teaching.So let’s not talk about allness and wellness but just focus on the business we really care about.

Here’s the opening page spread of So You’ve Met A Thousand Year Old Vampire. It ain't finished but it is finished enough to share. You might consider it a “proof of life” showing that the book is underway but it could just as easily be an ear sent in the mail–no indication at all that anything is alive but just that I had the body at some point. (Holy shit, I’m really in a mood.)I’m proud of the opening page spread. The opening “drop cap” was a real problem. As you can see I am following TYOV’s look because, duh, that makes sense in a sister book. TYOV’s intro paragraph started with an awesome bleeding letter T. Behind the T is a child being harassed by a vulture. Perfect. Too perfect–I couldn’t figure out how to make anything that measured up to it. I couldn’t even figure out what sources I cobbled that handsome T out of it. Stupid shit like this sticks with me and the solution, like with shit, is to let it heap up and slowly turn to rich dirt. That takes time, though. There have been a hundred little composting-style hang-ups slowing up this book and I’ve been blazing my way through them over the past month or so. It’s been great and allowed me the attempt at the “All is well” up above. But yeah, I’m super happy with the floral letter C drop cap. Here’s an early version so you can see what I started with:

(That is a big letter C graphic. Shopify changed the layout tools and I can't figure out how to make it smaller without going all the way back to my desktop.)Anyways, I dug this C out of a book or some old magazine. Can't remember. The mouse came from a fancy title calligraphy thing I did for a Chinese translation of TYOV, I dunno if they are going to use it or not but I am using the mouse here, too. It's my shrike-impaled mouse, I can do what I like with it.From there the drop cap grew organically. I had no plan but followed the logic of what was offered. The mouse's tail grew into a parallel set of floral decorations. The mouse-flowers pour blood in a manner that echoes the bleeding drop cap in TYOV. Perfect. Then I was all like "Oh hey, let's have the vines wander all the way over the page" and then I was reducing and modifying the introductory text to fit around the dropcap noise and this is exactly not how you efficiently make a book. Nonetheless, I was enjoying the making.This is not an efficient process. I bet I spent eight hours total on drop cap fuckery. And I'm sure I'll go back to it. There's room for more floralness in there. I'll both reward myself with making-vine-time and put it on my 'wheel spinning and do not know what to do' list.

An old student of mine wrote me with a question about defining 'art games' and, in my response, I couldn't help but talk about my own game making in relation to the definitions I was offering.After offering up an over-wide definition of art games as "A game that uses or addresses critical tools/methodologies/goals usually associated with more traditional art forms or modes of inquiry" I reflected:This is where I live, I think. I produce idiosyncratic systems that are (ideally) inextricably tied to their subject–this is a late modernist/minimalist art thing. Fold in a little "self-awareness of the artwork and its maker" and we can argue that my games come from a maker whose practice (and self) has been pickled in the "general high culture" brine. Add in some additional stuff like the romantic "solo producer beholden to no one, making what they make uncaring of commercial success" and "experimentation and novelty over refinement of existing methods" and the art game label gets labelier.The above is extracted from a personal email so forgive its lack of rigor and cohesiveness.I'm sharing this because of the "solo producer beholden to no one" line. Because of the SYMA Kickstarter that isn't true. I'm working for all of you folks. None of you are giving me specific instructions on how to do my work but I owe you a thing that meets certain criteria. The "idiosyncratic systems" line refers both to what I've made and to how I make it, and my stupid "I will spend eight hours on the drop cap and will allow myself more time on it as a treat" is part of that. Idiosyncratic methods don't align well with deadlines.There's not really a solution to this that doesn't detract from the outcomes for everyone involved. Going forward I'm not going to do a Kickstarter until I have files ready for the printer. It is an easy, obvious solution that's good for everyone. In the meantime I will be idiosyncraticing away at highest possible speed and avoiding the miseries that will distract me from my appointed tasks.I'm expecting you'll get the SYMA books this summer.ITEM 2: ON COMPLICITYThe illustrations in the spread above originally had the captions "You can fuck it..." on the left one and on the right "...or dissolve it with carbolic acid. It's up to you."I was advised against using the captions not because of their flip crassness but because they were redundant when paired with the images.To talk about the "idiosyncratic" thing some more, SYMA is going slower because I'm trying to make a game that is more accessible to more people. Often when I make a game it is just for me and a couple of friends, like I'm putting on a little party–the vampire games have a wider audience and I'm no longer allowed that sort of laxness.A year or two ago a Reddit comment said something like "TYOV's character creation told me to just think up a guy and I couldn't do that so I put it away" and was I pleased because the collages are in SYMA to fix address issue with a bazillion visual prompts.The collages are a great overlap between "serving the needs of the many" and "I get to spend way too much time on my previously mentioned idiosyncracynessing."Complicity and the nature of evil also slowed down the book as I tried to wrap my head around the lightning fast evolution of cruelty and selfishness over the past year or two. How dare I make games when things are this awful? How dare I make games that make you feel bad at a time when we need to be practicing revolutionary joy and preparing to defend our neighbors when their doors are kicked in?ITEM 3: CARBOLIC ACIDI was rereading the TYOV rules the other day, admiring text that felt like it was written by someone else. Anyways, I was surprised to see that "carboys of acid" was an example Resource and up above one of the illustrations is of someone pouring carboys of what is presumably acid into a pit.A Lovecraft story ended that way, now that I think about it.

ITEM 4: ONBOARDINGSYMA's rules are simple but they are hard to explain. I've been struggling with balancing too much and too little rules explaining. I took the character making "Begin Play" section and added step-by-step instructions on how to play your first few rounds, then moved it all up to the front of the book. It was a good move.This fixed the onboarding problem because the problem wasn't teaching people how to play, it was separating out the people who wanted thorough instructions from the people who could jump right in. The detailed rules are there for the people that want to read them all and can be easily referenced by the jump-right-in-ers who need to know how to Check the Coffin or whatever.ITEM 5: DO I GDC?I put the most practical and time-sensitive thing at the end, of course, because no self-sabotage is too good for me.I've been offered a free 'showcase' time slot at one of the GDC side tents and I'm thinking I'm going to take it. It'll cost me travel money and time and the misery of sitting in a busy con space being ignored, but I'll probably never get to GDC again so...What actually happens when someone is presenting a game at GDC? I'm almost clueless. What does one do in the wider con aside from go to talks and look at things? I went to PAX West and was so disinterested that left early.I also don't really know what I should be showing, or how.If I go I will probably be there Thursday and Friday. I'm interested in the Lost Levels unconference–is there anything else I should see?If you have advice you can reply to this email. If I get too swamped I might not give a good (or any) reply so apologies in advance.OTHER BUSINESS1. As a bad scary-game business guy I failed to write a newsletter for Friday the 13th last month and, because I'm sending this one now, I won't write one for the 13th this month.2. The cold weather has made the stain transfer art things (see below) impractical to make. Too cold to get my hands and clothes all wet. When it got into the 50s a couple of weeks ago I tried making some and the cold weather, I think, prevents the stain transfer process from happening as expected. Slows it way down or maybe inhibits it altogether.3. I still haven't gotten the NOTE notebooks back from the new printer. I'm running out of TYOVs and placed an order with the same new printer, maybe a dumb move but I had little choice.4. Did I share this link in which someone talks about how writing TYOV Experiences helped them figure out how to real-life journal better?: https://alexanderbjoy.com/two-sentence-journal/5. We have a small Portland, Oregon game design group that meets up once a week. Reply to this email if you want to be put on the invite list.6. I played the online game REPO with some friends last weekend. I'd never really played a 'friendslop' type game before and it was great fun.Okay, that's all! Thank you for reading this!Tim H