My Drinky Mouse outfit: The slippers look great, but hurt like hell.

If I have learned one thing from years of inconsistent cosplay, it’s this: Don’t forget your feet. I’ve had more fun ruined by crappy footwear. I go to great lengths to get everything right and then an hour into whatever I’m doing, suddenly I’m getting blisters or my feet start cramping or whatever. Sneakers with your Boba Fett armor is something of a cop-out, but I understand why people do it. Still, I have always felt there had to be a way to have quality, comfortable footwear that makes sense with your outfit, no matter what it is.

For Ghostbusters, I’ve had the same pair of military combat boots since 1995 or so. These were somewhat infamously a gift from Capcom. To promote the then-unknown PlayStation game Resident Evil, the PR team sent journalists a single combat boot with instructions to buy a  head-sized melon, draw a zombie face on it, then wear the boot and practice stomping. Cute and clever, but not very functional, of course. A friend at another outlet mentioned he had gotten a boot too, and it turned out, together, we had a matching pair — in my size. So I put in some comfy insoles and, 17 years later, they are perfectly broken in. I wear them every time I get into my GB uniform. Thanks, Capcom!

For everything else, I’ve struggled. I bought some handmade medieval shoes for the faire which are nice, but tough for long days and uneven terrain. I bought some really crappy fake Jedi boots which were an absolute nightmare. I always dreamed of just having one pair of boots that would work with any costume: ren faire, Jedi, Steampunk, Firefly. Surely there had to be one pair of calf-high boots that could pass muster in any of those universes? We’re not talking anything too difficult — simple brown leather. But everywhere I looked, it was a case of stylized or prohibitively expensive stuff that looked too sci-fi or too motorcycle or (especially) too western. I don’t want buckles. I don’t want visible zippers. I don’t need Mal Reynolds replicas. And I don’t want no fancy stitchin’, pardner. I just want brown leather calf boots that I can pull on and tuck pants inside them. C’mon, internet, show me what you got.

It took a long time, but I did find them — the Oak Tree Pale Rider Boot, which had the look and the length I wanted. And then I saw the price…$230. Oh snap. I’m the kind of guy who buys shoes when they are on clearance and I’ve never paid more than $125 for shoes (and those were like fancy overengineered fitness sneakers). But this is when the little voice in my head reminded me: Don’t forget your feet. I not only remembered the shooting pains from the $35 crappy Jedi boots, but I also realized I was buying these things for four different outfits. Spread across genres, $60 for each sounds like a good deal. And hey, didn’t I get those black combat boots free anyway? The universe had already been kind. I went for it.

Wild West Mercantile was a dream to deal with — I called them, asked questions, ordered the wrong size, then easily swapped for the correct one with a minimum of fuss. I wore them to the faire today and had zero problems, and they also look great with my steampunk outfit. They broke in wonderfully after only a few wearings. This is quality stuff and, should anything go wrong, I can have them resoled by a proper cobbler, because they are real shoes and not crappy vinyl Jedi boots from China. (They were donated to Goodwill with extreme prejudice; they probably made someone’s Halloween happier.)

Seriously, costume geeks: Don’t forget your feet! Start your outfit with the footwear and work your way up. You’ll be much happier in the long run.

The IT Crowd
Geek culture on TV is tough to portray. I love The Big Bang Theory and appreciate that they sweat the details; some friends hate it and call it “nerd blackface,” saying it’s more mocking of geekdom than celebrating it. I have not heard such criticisms of The IT Crowd, a BBC sitcom starring Chris O’Dowd, Katherine Parkinson, and the scene-stealing Richard Ayoade as the IT department at a large company, run by a succession of clueless, sexist, and generally bizarre people. O’Dowd’s Roy is an enraged slacker who has no luck with the ladies; Parkinson’s Jen is just trying to hide that she knows nothing about computers; and Ayoade’s Moss is the stereotypical antisocial, obsessive, brilliant, glasses-wearing nerd — but he does it with such grace and commitment that it never comes off as offensive (and Roy always treats him like a human being, which helps the audience empathize and respect him). Matt Berry deserves recognition for his portrayal of the cluelessly offensive, lecherous boss — picture David Brent with an uncontrolled libido to go with the outsized ego. The comedic scenarios are so deliciously awkward in that British way (S2E1 is particularly cringe-worthy) that I am thrilled the US remake fell apart. I’d rather savor the original 24 episodes instead.

You can buy all four seasons on DVD here in the US, or stream them via Netflix. The one benefit to the DVDs: the 8-bit videogame-style menus of each collection are elaborate references to the plots and situations of the episodes themselves, but you won’t appreciate them until after you’ve watched the shows.

Police Squad!
A lot of people don’t realize that The Naked Gun movies starring Leslie Nielsen were actually based on a TV show starring Leslie Nielsen. Right after Airplane! was a hit for the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team, they got a parody of cop shows greenlit by ABC. Despite good reviews and almost the same exact approach to humor as Airplane! had applied to disaster movies — sight gags, groaner puns, brutal skewerings of genre tropes, and callback jokes that rewarded viewers who had been paying attention each episode — the network canceled it after its initial six-episode run. Why? Said ABC president Tony Thomopoulos: “Police Squad! was canceled because the viewer had to watch it in order to appreciate it.” Naturally, it was nominated for two Emmy awards and spawned a massively successful movie franchise, proving that network executives are clueless assholes.

All six episodes are available on one DVD for $15, or you can rent the disc from Netflix, but it’s not available for streaming.

Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace
Imagine a syndicated horror drama created by Stephen King in the 1980s…if Stephen King were a megalomaniac. Imagine Stephen King casting himself in the lead role of a heroic doctor in a haunted hospital who, in addition to saving patients’ lives, also fights the forces of supernatural evil and fancies himself as an action hero. Then imagine that show having no budget whatsoever and its creators having little care for things like continuity, editing, or acting. Now imagine that show being presented as a lost classic by the megalomaniac writer/director/producer/actor, who inserts documentary interviews of himself describing his own underappreciated brilliance in the middle of the terrible episodes. The concept is so high you might have trouble seeing the ground, but Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace is absolutely one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Matthew Holness, who plays the fictional before-the-title megalomaniac in question, may look familiar if you remember Simon the IT guy from the UK Office in season 2, berating Gareth about Bruce Lee film titles. Matt Berry from The IT Crowd plays the overdramatic macho best buddy Rich Sanchez, while a pre-Moss Richard Ayoade plays Garth’s manager and business partner Dean Lerner, who is cast in a major role in the series despite being completely unable to act. There is a beautiful, sick art to seeing an extremely talented actor intentionally fail at his craft, and thereby succeed. The quick jokes and intentionally poor execution makes this show hard to simply describe; you must, must see this for yourself to appreciate it.

Unfortunately, it’s not on Netflix, and the only DVD release is a Region 2 set in the UK; the six episodes aired briefly on US TV and have never been seen on these shores again. But even if you have to get the R2 DVDs and rip them to watch on your iPad, I am telling you…it’s worth it.

My personal hero in life, Tom Lehrer, said those words in regards to religion, but today I realize they apply to something far more important: Star Wars. 

Today it was reported that Zack Snyder is developing a new Star Wars film, a Jedi tale inspired by Seven Samurai (which itself inspired Lucas when creating Star Wars). We will see if these reports turn out to be true, but it doesn’t really matter, because fans have made it clear that this is a terrible thing and should not exist. A totally random comment from someone I do not know (I just searched Twitter for “Zack Snyder”) is totally representative of the chatter I’ve seen all morning: 

Zack Snyder can’t make that Star Wars spinoff film if we don’t let him. There are 500 million+ on here. Someone like, punch him or something

— Hutchinson (@DapperSteve) January 14, 2013

To be fair, others are super excited by the news. Me, I’m just completely baffled by the hypocrisy of the haters.

Remember Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn books? That series of novels picked up right after RotJ. Fans embraced it — a new story!
Remember Dark Empire? It even resurrected Boba Fett. Fans embraced it — a new story!
Remember Dark Forces? Several games in that series. Fans embraced it — a new story!
Remember Knights of the Old Republic? It was praised, and led to an MMO that I am currently enjoying. Fans embraced it — a new story!

So now we are facing a future where we will see new Star Wars stories on the big screen, some part of the main storyline we know and some that will be side stories…and the overwhelming outcry is that that’s bad. Fans rejected it — a new story!

To suggest that we can’t have new Star Wars films by new creative forces — but we can and do have games, comics, novels, and all other forms of consumable media by new creative forces — is completely ridiculous. We have had plenty of new James Bond stories from new creative forces, even though Ian Fleming died in 1964. James Bond has not been destroyed by any one of them.

And yet these “fans” think they have, as Lehrer puts it, The Truth. Their version of Star Wars — the films (and presumably none of the comics, games, or novels) as they have personally experienced Star Wars is the only valid interpretation and all others should be destroyed. Why?

They are clearly afraid of something — what could it be? The idea that this will ruin the franchise? Sweetie, The Star Wars Holiday Special probably should have done the deed, and that couldn’t take it down. People were pissed about Jar Jar Binks, and yet the franchise soldiered on. I personally thought midichlorians and Han shooting second were bad ideas that had the potential to retroactively rewrite the franchise’s fiction — not just introduce new narrative, but actually alter the story and universe that had been established. As a geek, the idea that a character was Force sensitive because of biology instead of spirituality was particularly distressing to me. But here we are, years later, and Star Wars has survived even these “threats.”

So whatever makes you worried about the prospect of a new Jedi side-story, be less worried. And definitely be less dramatic about it. Your personal interpretation of Star Wars may be your personal Truth, but the moment you try to enforce it, you’re headed to Crazytown. When the time comes, vote with your wallet.

That’s assuming the time, in fact, comes. I don’t know if Snyder’s project will get off the ground, and I don’t know if it will be good if it does get made. But I am not going to assume that it will be good or bad until it proves itself one way or the other to me when I see it. And I can’t see it if we all punch him to get him to stop making it.

Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering, yadda yadda Yoda.

UPDATE: Oh hey, so Zack Snyder’s team says it’s a bogus story. All that righteous indignation, all for no reason. Or is he lying to throw us off the scent??!?111?//!?

Back in May I backed FarSight Studios’ project for digitizing the Twilight Zone pinball machine into Pinball Arcade. From the Kickstarter page:

Our latest project is called the Pinball Arcade and is currently available on a wide variety of platforms: the iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tables, the Kindle Fire, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PS Vita, and Macintosh, with versions coming soon for the PC, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Wii U.

I am a longtime pinball enthusiast, and while I do not own a real machine, I do own iPhone, iPad, Xbox 360, PS3, PS Vita, PC, Wii U, and I figured I’d buy the core game for Macintosh and maybe 3DS too before this came out. I pledged the $100 level, which would entitle me to the Twilight Zone table (with a “Pro Mode” bonus operator’s menu and a special texture for the pinball itself, plus entry into a special tournament) on every platform they support instead of paying $10 per platform as a regular customer when it came out. Seemed like an easy blanket solution and, of course, I really wanted to help that table get made, so even though I didn’t own Pinball Arcade on all the platforms listed (I don’t even have an Android device), I was happy to accept the difference in projected cost of finished goods versus my total investment. I also talked it up on social media and generally did my part to spread the word. Before TZ was delivered, FarSight started a second project for Star Trek: The Next Generation, so I backed that at the same $100 level. Both projects were ultimately funded, reaching their respective $50,000 goals.

Prepare for a comedy of errors. Unlike many KS projects, Twilight Zone shipped in November as promised, which is great. The iOS version launched first and…I couldn’t play TZ. The app simply wouldn’t recognize that I owned it. Backers didn’t get redemption codes; you had to login with your email address, and the system was supposed to have you whitelisted. If your FarSight email and Kickstarter email didn’t match, there was trouble. My email did match, but I still couldn’t play. Hundreds of users rushed to Kickstarter to complain, during which FarSight remained largely silent.

To add a little insult to injury, normal players who did not back the KS project were able to buy the table error-free for $5 ($8 for the operator menu “Pro” version) instead of the $10 estimated during the KS campaign. Quoting from the FarSight email newsletter:

We want to acknowledge the amazing support our Kickstarter backers have shown in funding the up-front licensing costs for this table. Thanks to you we’re able to offer this table for only $4.99 (instead of the $9.99 we had planned), despite having to pay a royalty on each sale that is several times higher than most other tables.

“Yes! Thanks to you, everybody who came late to the party gets it for less, and it works great for them. You Kickstarters paid more and the table doesn’t even function. You’re the tops!”

I know Kickstarter is not a traditional shopping experience, so investment vs. final retail price is not really apples to oranges — but this did sting more than a little bit.

It took two days before I was able to get the iOS version of Twilight Zone to operate as advertised. It involved a lot of logging in, a lot of logging out, sometimes with Facebook integration and sometimes without, a few device resets…just everything you can do with an iPad as an end user in a mad scramble for functionality.

FarSight did fix some things on the back end ASAP that eased the problems with TZ for many Kickstarters, but followed up with this distressing message:

If you still cannot access the table, please attempt the following fix: Please try force closing the app, and restarting the app. From the table select screen, do not move the selector from the first table shown and log in, then restore purchases. It may take a few tries to unlock it. Please force close the app between tries.

“It may take a few tries to unlock it” is the part that I find unsettling. If it was fixed on their end, I’m wondering why it wouldn’t work the very next time it was tried. Every time I launch the app now, I honestly am not sure if all my tables will be available.

Then I suddenly realize…oh, wait, I have a claim on the Mac OS X version, and I never bought Pinball Arcade on my Mac. So I bought the game. Unsurprisingly, Twilight Zone is not unlocked when I log in under the same FarSight account and Apple ID that (eventually) worked on iOS. I guess I’m not flagged as a Mac owner, even though it is one of the valid platforms. I dropped a note to customer support on December 5th, asking about it.

I should note at this point that I do not think I am in the wrong for expecting to own the game on all platforms, even if I had not purchased that platform at the time that that the KS tables were awarded. Like, if I buy an Android device tomorrow, I take the wording of the KS campaign to mean there’s a copy waiting for me:

Get a special version of the Twilight Zone pinball table with access to the table operator’s menu on every platform (again, except the Xbox 360). You’ll also get an entry into the Pinball Arcade Supporters Tournament!

(They later clarified that Xbox 360 would be included after all.) So buying the Mac version of Pinball Arcade’s core program for $10 a few days after the KS rewards rolled out was, I thought, no big thing. And besides, I bought yet another version of Pinball Arcade on yet another platform — that’s another $10 FarSight made from me, right?

Customer support got back to me a full week later via email, saying:

We are updating our database to make sure you get Twilight Zone. It may take up to 24 hours for this to take effect. Thank you for your support.

Okay, that makes sense — if they see your email address in the database on their end, you are granted unlocks for any tables on record when you log in. To be safe, I gave it more than 24 hours; I waited three days before trying again. Guess what? No TZ unlock on my work Mac or my home Mac. I wrote back to customer support on the 20th. I have not heard anything yet, but in the meantime, Pinball Arcade was updated to include STTNG as an option. I am happy to report that I have access to that table — but still not TZ.

So, I fire up STTNG on Mac. It plays terribly on my MacBook Pro, crippled by a slow frame rate, even though no extra fancy visual effects are turned on. The only requirement listed at the Mac App Store was OS X 10.7 — that’s it. I am running 10.8.2, which is Mountain Lion, on a mid-2009 laptop with 4GB of RAM and 256MB on the NVIDIA 9400M. It’s barely playable. It is also incapable of running full screen, from what I can tell.  The graphic options in the menu are not explained and it basically looks and feels like a port of the iOS version — to the point of running in an iPad-sized window.

But wait, there’s more. The updated Pinball Arcade apps on both iOS and Mac come with the same new interface, which they intend to use on all platforms to unify things. Okay, even if I dislike the new interface (it looks unprofessionally simplistic rather than elegantly simple, to me) and I think The Who should sue them for their new and terrible soundalike of “Pinball Wizard,” a single UI for all platforms makes sense. However, on iOS, the interface only appears in landscape (for now, they say, so…okay) and it forces you to play the tables in landscape as well. When you tilt the iOS device to portrait — which many pinball players prefer, because you get to see more of the table’s playfield — the image does not rotate.

No, it’s even worse: When I attempt to play in landscape, I cannot play at all, because the machines (somewhat ironically) tilt. I have nudge turned off, and it still tilts within a few seconds of launching the ball, as if I am violently shaking the iPad when I’m holding it dead still. I currently suspect that the app thinks it’s supposed to be running in portrait mode, so tilting the screen 90 degrees to landscape would be interpreted as not so much aggressively nudging as trying to flip the physical machine on its side.

Thankfully, another user suggested a portrait workaround: launch a table, hit the Home button to return to the Apps screen, rotate to portrait, double-tap the Home button to bring up the list of apps currently running, select Pinball Arcade, and it will reappear in portrait. This is not documented anywhere; it is not a menu option; it does not happen automatically like it does with other pinball apps. Were it not for finding that other user’s advice in the iTunes Store reviews, I would simply not be able to play the iOS game at all.

By the way, The Pinball Arcade is X-Play’s 2012 Mobile Game of the Year. I’m guessing they didn’t back the Kickstarter projects and probably awarded this based on the app as it appeared in the first half of the year.

So let’s recap and check the status of my $200 investment so far.

iOS: Twilight Zone and STTNG are released and available to me. However, the landscape/portrait tilt thing is still an issue that makes it unplayable without a user workaround. With new bugs and a clunky interface, the app seems to be devolving.

Mac: STTNG is available to me, TZ is not. The game runs but is not enjoyable due to speed/framerate issues, and due to few and cryptic menu options, I have no idea what I can do to optimize it. Customer support has been slow in responding to my existing query, so I haven’t even posed this question yet.

Xbox 360: This is my main gaming platform, but Pinball Arcade on XBLA hasn’t been updated in months; this week, the email newsletter contained the following update:

We are happy to announce that we’ve selected a new publisher for the Xbox 360 version of the Pinball Arcade! We are in the final stages of contracting, and we will make an announcement when we know when new tables will be released for the Xbox 360.

Naturally, due to this being on hold, TZ and STTNG are unavailable.

PS3: In late December, FarSight said TZ was submitted to Sony for approval. This could take several weeks, especially with the holiday. STTNG is not part of this update, so as of today, TZ and STTNG are unavailable.

PS Vita: FarSight has supported the “buy for one, own on both” system that many Sony game devs are using, so with luck, I will get both tables on both platforms when Sony approves the PS3 version. But as of today, TZ and STTNG are unavailable.

PC: FarSight has not actually released a PC version of Pinball Arcade. When asked during the TZ funding, the team said the following on the Kickstarter page:

We are currently evaluating different options for distributing the PC version of the game, but that should definitely be resolved by the time the Twilight Zone is finished.

Last updated: Wednesday Jun 6, 4:51pm PDT

Six months later, no PC version has appeared, which means I backed and now have a claim to DLC for a software platform that does not exist.

FarSight’s current plan is to go through Steam Greenlight, and let users decide if they want the game. The game was posted to Greenlight in mid-September. Three months later in mid-December, the team sent out this update:

We are at #83 on Steam Greenlight! We need to get to the top 20 to be published. Please tell your friends, family, dentist, podiatrist, grocer etc. to vote for us using the link below! If we keep spreading the word, we will get there!

So for me to obtain the product that I own, I need to tell everyone I know, gamer or non-gamer, to create a Steam account and vote in a software popularity contest; together, we can wish this product into existence, so I can then buy it for an unknown price and, in theory, claim my free tables. I am not filled with confidence.

Wii U: Oh boy, who knows. Pinball Arcade was not available in the Wii U eShop at launch and I haven’t seen it appear yet.

3DS: Never mind. I think we have enough problems.

Backing anything on Kickstarter is a risk, and I respect that. I am not buying things, I am backing projects — and I got my knickers in a twist when Kickstarter tried to clarify the difference and I hastily misinterpreted their clarification. Snarktastic LOLz! But they’re totally right. Also, due to my job, I have a bias toward empathy — I am inclined to cut game companies slack, because running one, let alone self-publishing as a developer, is harder than it looks. When things go wrong — I accept that inevitability as a rational and reasonable adult — I’m rarely the first person to take to the internet with a hateful screed. I’ve seen people do it to my employer and/or take it out on me, so I certainly don’t want to dump on FarSight’s version of me with a bunch of vitriol just because I can’t play with my toys right away. And even outside of my professional life, I try to have patience and consideration and empathy because I am an adult.

That said, I’m baffled. I’m baffled that the iOS launch could go so wrong with so much at stake and still have the whiff of “maybe it’s fixed, keep trying.” I am not sure why the company wasn’t more communicative with its KS backers once things went wrong. I don’t understand why the applications themselves don’t work correctly at this stage in their lifespans; they were fine, now they’re problematic. I don’t know why I can’t get a timely answer from customer support, and I don’t know why my name has only been added to half of the Mac user database. I have no idea when or if I will see these two tables on any of the other platforms to which I am entitled. Even though the interface is the developer’s visual design call, I can’t really tell why that design call was made. I don’t know why the in-game options menus are not more helpful or clear. And I truly cannot comprehend why the existence of the PC version is being left to the whims of the public if the developer has already sold content for it.

So…is this truly a cautionary tale about backing Kickstater projects? Am I really eating my words? Ultimately, I do not feel this is Kickstarter’s fault, but FarSight’s. Still, I can’t see how or why I would use Kickstarter to purchase DLC again. I got less content and communication for my money than I expected, and what I got doesn’t work as advertised.

In hindsight, it would have been vastly cheaper and far less hassle for me to simply wait until the standard release of these tables and buy the content like a normal consumer instead of an investor. I feel like backing this developer in its time of need and risk was actually the wrong thing to do — which is the opposite of the feeling I’ve gotten from most Kickstarter projects I’ve backed. Other projects have made me feel valued and very glad that I supported a scrappy upstart. This debacle makes me feel like I supported a crappy downturn.

It it with no joy or malice that I say this has been a colossal disaster so far. While I believe the team at FarSight truly loves and can replicate pinball, I think they’ve overextended themselves to the point of failure. And with so many unresolved issues, I don’t think the tough times are anywhere near over.

Irony demands that I remind you that the development studio is called FarSight.

UPDATE 1/9/13: I am very happy to report that, as of tonight, I can now play Twilight Zone on Mac OS X. I logged out and logged back into Pinball Arcade before I hit send on another email to FarSight, and I’m glad I double-checked, as someone did update the database with my login as originally promised. So, one month. three customer support emails, and one admittedly long-winded blog later, I am grateful that I now have both tables on two of the platforms. I now wait with the rest of the investors for updates on the other platforms, and I’m still curious to know how “retroactive purchases” (which is what caused my Mac OSX troubles to begin with) will work for other systems. I still believe FarSight is simply overwhelmed, so I am not expecting info to arrive quickly.

No matter what, this experience has been very educational. I keep asking myself new questions about it, and I see crowdsourced funding differently as a result.

UPDATE 1/17: The iOS app has been updated and has addressed two of my concerns — the portrait/landscape issue has been resolved, and the menu has been improved so it is less clunky. It’s not even a dramatic change — pretty subtle, really — but vastly improves the experience. These two things go a long way to making me feel better about the app itself and my fear that it was devolving. This is the nice thing about software — it can always change, and hopefully, for the better. This time, it did.

UPDATE 3/20: This morning I got my STTNG voucher codes for PlayStation 3/PS Vita; the TZ codes came through in early February and I forgot to update the blog. So that’s cool, one more platform down! Here’s hoping there is news by E3 about a new publisher for the Xbox 360 version, and the PC version will hopefully find its way into the market soon as well.

But just so we’re clear: “Gay,” when used in a negative judgmental context, is still something to avoid. Saying something undesirable is “gay” still draws on its use as a homophobic slur in modern society.

“But ‘gay’ also means jovial and carefree,” I hear the collegiate-dictionary crowd cry. “This is a word that has already been transformed by its alternate meaning. ‘Faggot’ used to only mean a bundle of sticks, too.”

Yes, true — do the language historians you hang out with on Xbox Live use them in their original, archaic contexts often? When these words are used today, it’s with the modern homosexual connotation, or directly derived from it. These words have gained immense power through this association, which is what makes them so desirable to the powerless. When you hear a kid calling something ‘gay,’ he is almost certainly unaware of the light-hearted definition from the 14th century; when he uses the word ‘faggot,’ he’s clearly — if only from the pejorative force with which he’s saying it — not talking about a bundle of sticks from 1550. He only knows the modern American English definition of “gay” established in the 1910s, still in use in his society — and he was introduced to it as an insult, so he’s using it now as a cruel shorthand.

“But I just use the word ‘gay’ to mean something is stupid or bad,” I hear you reply. “It doesn’t mean I hate gay people.”

Well, maybe “hate” is too strong a word for trickle-down linguistics, but…it’s definitely negative, by your own admission. And there’s an entire group of people who self-identify as gay, and have engaged in decades of social activism as they try to establish tolerance and acceptance for everything related to that word. Now that same word just happens to be your new way to say something is not up to your standards or worthy of your respect. Do you really expect me to believe that you are unaware of the relationship here? How ignorant should I assume you to be?

We can play “what-if,” though. Think of any other word that a social, ethnic, or religious group uses to identify themselves or their culture and consider using it in casual conversation as a word that means “bad.” You can’t even choose your word without knowing its modern context. Now consider how offensive (or, depending on how far your imagination goes for this assignment, potentially life-threatening) it would be to take that word into a room of strangers and say “and by that, I mean worthless.” Hell, if you did it with the name of any given sports team, you’d piss someone off.

I suggest that the best way to say something is stupid or terrible would be to use words like “stupid” or “terrible.” But if you want to use words like “gay,” I accept your choice to do that — but you then accept the responsibility that comes with using it. You are always accountable to those with whom you speak, so don’t expect that using a slur as a casual expression will go unchallenged, and don’t play dumb when you inevitably are called out for it.

According to a recent blog from the team at Kickstarter, I am wrong.

It’s hard to know how many people feel like they’re shopping at a store when they’re backing projects on Kickstarter, but we want to make sure that it’s no one.

Hmm. That doesn’t sound right at all. 

About every week to ten days, I browse the site for interesting new product ideas, and sometimes search on specific keywords. If I find it of interest, I back it. I have done this with everything from iOS games to documentaries to gadgets to live performances to electric guitars. My steampunk blaster prop came from a talented guy on Kickstarter that I never would have found otherwise. So, a bunch of products being developed that I can preorder? And then my money is taken in exchange for the product itself some months later? Yeah…that’s shopping.

The reason I shop on Kickstarter is that I like supporting the engineers, craftspeople, and innovators who come up with great ideas but wouldn’t normally be able to see those ideas come to fruition. From small bands to garage software developers, I have always supported “the little guy with the big idea.” Kickstarter lets me indulge that desire while also getting awesome stuff in exchange for my support and patience and understanding of the whole process. I will admit that at times, I have backed a fully-funded project late in its cycle because I know it’s a bird in the hand; at that point it truly is as close to a preorder as the site can offer. But I have also backed plenty of projects that did not come to fruition. I don’t regret any of that support; it costs me nothing and it gives the creator more information to head on to the next step. I am never angry when a project I back doesn’t get enough support, though I do feel bad for the creators. As a backer — a customer, a shopper — I know the risks when I click Back This Project.

Ultimately, maybe this is a question of semantics for me and a question of ideology for Kickstarter, but I find it odd when someone tells me that I’m not doing what I think I’m doing, especially in an absolute.

It’s hard to know how many people feel like they’re shopping at a store when they’re backing projects on Kickstarter, but we want to make sure that it’s no one.

Well…a correction for Kickstarter, then: It’s at least one. I am fully aware of what makes KS different and special and risky and awesome, but I am also fully aware that I’m shopping on your site. You should be aware, too.

UPDATE: In retrospect, I think I misinterpreted their blog. I have been using the site for almost a year, so I know the things I am seeing are in various stages of funding and may not ever get made. But newcomers to the site might think that everything they are seeing is real, exists, and is available for sale, like a traditional shopping site. It’s a bad choice of words. May I recommend a rewrite?

We have started to suspect that some people feel like they’re shopping at a traditional store when they’re backing projects on Kickstarter, but we want to make sure everybody understands how backing projects in development is very different from buying finished products from a traditional retail site.

Yes, it’s longer, but it’s a heck of a lot more clear.

Years ago I wrote a story for OXM where I tried to create my own XNA game. I failed — spectacularly! — but I thought the article chronicling that failure was worth writing.

I was simultaneously super proud and totally humbled to find that I was right.

Little known fact… @danamrich is the single biggest reason I’m making games today. A little OXM XNA article of his gave me the spark.

— Dean Dodrill (@NoogyTweet) February 24, 2012

Dean’s long-anticipated game Dust: An Elysian Tail comes out this week on XBLA. I’m gonna buy it.

• Learn to play a song. Doesn’t have to be tricky, doesn’t have to be long — but everybody can play riffs and call themselves a guitarist. Playing songs is what makes you a musician.  
• Learn to play a song your parents know and would like to hear. They will be proud of you. 
• Learn to tune without an electronic tuner. Armed with one reference note and harmonics, most strummers will never need anything else ever again. 
• How you get that one reference note: Buy multiple A440 tuning forks. They are cheap. Keep one in your guitar case, one on your desk/home music area, and if you carry a bag with you every day, keep one there too. 
• Skill and talent mean more than your gear — but don’t buy crap. If it’s cheap, there’s almost always a reason, and that reason often becomes an excuse for not playing. If you do not enjoy interacting with your instrument — it’s not comfortable, it doesn’t stay in tune, it doesn’t reflect who you are — you will not play it. Save more, spend more, buy quality, and get what you really want. Your playing will benefit. 
• Don’t end your practice on a bad experience. If you are trying to learn something and you are sucking, end your session with something you are good at playing. Don’t walk away angry or frustrated or you won’t want to come back. 

LunaTik Touch

What It Is: A clicky pen with a capacitive rubber tip. Click the back and it’s a pen; retract the rollerball and it’s an iPad stylus.
When I Backed It: February 2012
When They Promised It: April 2012
When I Got It: July 2012

I loved the idea right away, and the company, Minimal, had a good track record. The late arrival didn’t bother me, and when it did arrive, that packaging was completely professional. But since ordering and receiving it, I’d seen a lot of other pen/stylus combos, and I’d gotten used to the Wacom Bamboo stylus; this harder tip had a very different feel. The tip also tends to slowly unscrew as I use it. I used it as my main stylus for two weeks, then took it into the office just for use during meetings.

Was It Worth It: Sorta. Having used it now, I feel I could have gotten a cheaper alternative, or even lived without it. But that was the only way to find out. And I am ready to love again.

Recoil Winders

What It Is: A small recoiling winder for headphones and small computer cables
When I Backed It: February 2012
When They Promised It: April 2012
When I Got It: July 2012

I keep a lot of cables with me in my murse messenger bag, and I’d been looking for a way to keep them tangle-free. I got a three-pack (small, medium, and large), but as a bonus, they threw in a fourth small winder — a common thank-you gesture for projects that receive a lot of funding. Kat and I use the small ones for earbuds and I have an iPhone charge cable in the medium one. It’s a little tricky to get the hang of it, but once you remove and rewind the cables two or three times, it’s pretty easy, and the winders work very well.

Was It Worth It: Absolutely. This solved my problem better than I thought it would. In fact, I liked these so much, I went back and bought a few more from their retail site.

Steampunk Blaster

What It Is: Resin prop raygun and holster for steampunk cosplay
When I Backed It: March 2012
When They Promised It: June 2012
When I Got It: July (almost August) 2012

I spotted this at the same time that I was working on my steampunk outfit, and I thought it had a great look. It was also clearly a small creator without the same kind of resources as, say, Minimal. But, like the big guys, it also arrived two months late, though I think the reason is better: the guy got married this summer.

Was It Worth It: Totally. This looks unique as a prop and feels awesome in my hand.

Of the 30 projects I’ve backed, six were not funded, and five are still in the funding stage — which means the other 19 were successful. So…the worst I can say is, yeah, KS projects often ship late. But ripoffs? Not that I can see. I am stoked for the Torch bike helmet and the Brydge iPad keyboard, both of which are backed and in preproduction, and I am really hoping the Retronix guitar gets funded.

To me, Kickstarter is a shopping mall for early adopters. Proceed with caution — like you would for any purchase — but I don’t have any reason to treat Kickstarter with extra suspicion.

UPDATE! Several more projects I’ve backed have come through, so I thought I would continue to offer reports/reviews on those as well. I’ll just keep adding.

Tagtool Stylus

What It Is: Combination fountain pen/capacitive stylus
When I Backed It: July 2012
When They Promised It: July 2012
When I Got It: September 2012

I like fountain pens, but I’ve never had a really nice one, like a Mont Blanc or what have you. I also like iPad stlyii, so I tend to back a lot of those projects anyway. This seemed like the perfect marriage for me — a cool titanium pen I could use at work and switch-hit between old world and new-fangled instantly.

When the pen arrived two months late (because it is a Kickstarter project, after all), I popped the fountain pen cartridge in and it was everything I always thought a fountain pen should be — amazingly smooth, very responsive. Awesome, I thought. I put the cap on.

No, wait, no I didn’t. The cap would not stay on. At all. I tried to keep it in place but it simply didn’t remain where I put it; if I move the pen at all, gravity takes over and the cap (which is plastic, not titanium) slides off. This makes it tricky, at best, to use as a stylus, and equally problematic for the pen part, since the ink dried out in a day without being covered. It went from a $30 double-use item to a zero-use item.

I contacted Tagtool to see if it was an isolated incident, and they were very polite and sent a replacement right away…which led me to believe that it was not. The replacement took three weeks to arrive, and the new pen still doesn’t feel like its cap is an exact fit (the cap sits at a slight angle) but now there’s a new issue: the pen doesn’t work. Ink simply does not flow to the nib. I actually squeezed the cartridge and ink came squirting out of the neck of the nib, but then when I go to write with it, it’s bone dry. So…yeah, fuck that.

Was It Worth It: No. Great idea and pleasant customer support, but two pens that don’t work correctly in two different ways is a huge disappointment.

Jumpshot

What It Is: Easy PC diagnostic tool + cutesy USB flash drive
When I Backed It: September 2012
When They Promised It: November 2012
When I Got It: Early access October 2012

I knew this was a gamble, because I was not really buying what I wanted most. I am interested in the software, but they will at some point charge for access to it. I backed the project to get it started, and I don’t really need another USB stick, but I really want to see if this software is as easy as it claims. I backed the project at a level that gave me early access to Jumpshot (and free usage on multiple machines) before my USB stick arrived…and sure enough, after hearing that USBs were shipping and I’d get mine soon, I received a link to download the software in October. I downloaded it and the service was not available. The client needs to connect to the online host, which has all the latest diagnostic tools — they can keep updating them on their end and I just get the latest goodness whenever I need to run a diagnostic check. I think this is a smart system, but I now see the flaw: What if my computer is so borked I can’t get online? Hmm.

Still, the idea that I can make a bootable USB drive full of one-click solutions and cute cartoon characters and fix, say, my dad’s laptop is a good one. We’ll see where this goes.

In younger days

My Ghostbusters proton pack, however, is on its last legs, and I’ve considered replacing it. Built in 1999 (mostly by the ever-crafty and resourceful Kat) and battered in the years since (the pack, not the wife), it looks every bit of its 13 years of age. I didn’t know what I was doing, I made a lot of mistakes, there were no lights and sounds — it looks neanderthal by today’s standards. The GB prop world has advanced dramatically since I built mine; now there are LED lights and sound effects kits, resin reproductions of specific fictional parts, fiberglass shells, you name it. It’s all very intimidating and expensive and, having walked the path once, I’d rather just pay someone else to build one for me now. Believe me, I respect their talent and effort. 

When Kat, Andy, Jason and I made our packs, they were about $300 to $350 each (most of which came from my pocket, for things like tools and shared materials and whatnot). A few months ago, I asked a local GB how much it would be to have him build a new pack for me. He said if I didn’t want a “hero pack”using the same exact parts used by the folks who built the originals for the movie, I could get one with a shell and reproduction parts for $2500…maybe. Oof. Mine is literally made out of old 35mm film canisters and a cake pan. Even though I love Ghostbusters and love being known as “that guy with the GB outfit,” I couldn’t justify that price, even for a one-time luxury purchase. (And do you have any idea what kind of high-end guitar $2500 will buy? The kind that will go up in value in the exact way a homemade proton pack will not.)

A few months ago, several friends sent me this Etsy link from Viking Props, which was also picked up as a neat thing to see by sites like Geekologie. And only $850? Hmm…what’s the catch? I inquired and found that his upgraded lights and sounds version would be $1500. Still more than I’d hoped to pay for a game of dress-up, but again, I respect the effort and detail, I don’t want to do it myself, and the guy’s got to turn a profit.

The Viking Props pack, as seen on Etsy

I turned to the Ghostbusters fan community (yes, we are legion) to see if this Viking Props guy had posted about his work, and was stunned to see people tearing him a new one. He was an outsider who had built his own plans for the pack, and you’d think this man’s design had harmed a loved one. It’s not only inaccurate; it’s a piece of junk. He left off this and that and this is different and that is wrong. How dare he call it accurate. Why people don’t just build their own is beyond me. Don’t waste your money on this crap. I don’t know why those websites gave him any attention at all. It’s a “fauxton pack.” Dogs and cats living together — mass hysteria! FWIW, if any of his critics was offering a demonstratively better pack for the same price, they would have gotten a big “shut up and take my money” from me right away. But I didn’t see anybody else saying “Buy mine instead” — just bashing his work, praising their own, and extolling the virtues of DIY. They even went out and left nasty comments on the websites that gave his Etsy page extra attention. It all went against the positive, inclusive vibes I’ve always gotten from the GB community. Guess I’ve been away too long.

Upon closer inspection, there definitely were a few details out of place and some visually distinctive parts were missing. (I will leave you to play Spot the Difference.) So I politely spoke to the builder over the last few weeks and discussed those missing bits. He said he was updating his design anyway, based on fan requests for the items he’d overlooked, and would happily add them for me. I think his pack design may still be evolving, which would make sense since he has built it from his own plans and research.

His pack, while not 100% accurate, is significantly better than the one I cobbled together from Paranorman’s plans in 1999. Yet every time I wore it, people would scream “Who ya gonna call!” with a big grin on their face. I have gotten compliments that I did not deserve, solely because seeing the pack made people happy. And it made me happy, too. Nobody noticed all the things that the pack wasn’t — they only saw this real-life thing from the funny movie they remembered fondly and it made their day. For that moment, we both just loved Ghostbusters. Ryan McCaffrey, who for many years drove a DeLorean, reported the same behavior — everywhere he drove, he met smiling strangers.

That’s what it comes down to, for me. My 1999 pack was built as a testament to one of my favorite films, and I think in the meantime, people have started building them as a testament to themselves. Being movie-accurate makes them happy. But being a public fan of Ghostbusters makes me happy.

In the end, Viking Props offered me a discount on a pack with upgraded lights & FX and he even offered to add in the missing parts that concerned me, so…I have one on order. This is my Critical Path reward, and I look forward to geeking out and having fun with it at any opportunity I can find.

The question is…do I want to wear it out in public and be associated with the petty, elitist, and bitchy people who now define themselves by the proton packs they wear?

Yes, I do. Because bustin’ makes me feel good.