It's hard for me to get time off work, so we went for just a day. We saw the Adventure Time panel. If you haven't seen Adventure Time, it's a fifteen-minute cartoon about a boy and his dog who go around having adventures, saving princesses, and generally being awesome in a world that doesn't make much sense.
It was nice to see the faces behind the voices and the people who make it happen. They talked a bit about what was going to happen next, usually in terms vague enough not to violate a non-disclosure agreement, and about the process. The main thing we took away is that Fionna and Cake will show up in another episode, most likely teaming up with Finn and Jake. Fionna and Cake are fictional (within the series - they're double-fictional) female versions of Finn and Jake. It's the kind of series where being fictional isn't enough to stop them from having awesome adventures together.
Part 2 soon. In the meantime, poll results:
Do you read comic books (on paper)?
| Yes. | 172 (66%) |
| Only trades. | 22 (8%) |
| Only digitally. | 43 (16%) |
| No. | 25 (10%) |
2011 wasn't a horrible year, but we've had better. For the last few months, we've had intermittant power outages and a greater-than-usual amount of errands to do. It was boring. It, to paraphrase either Gian Vincenzo Gravina or Oscar Wilde, deprived us of free time without providing us with interesting anecdotes.
The comics are now larger at 850 pixels wide, and the sites got redesigned to reflect that. We added polls (which reminds me; I need to write more polls and post more poll results). NamirDeiter.net got a proper archive. NamirDeiter.net's commentary system also got proper archives for each comic and storyline navigation.
The code got improved, but should function identically. You can now search for multiple terms. NamirDeiter.net has an automatic account creator, for when you want at the bonus content NOW. And an automatic password reset system.
Favorite You Say it First story (Year 2, Division B)
| Guy Talk | 12 (14%) |
| Valentine's Day Plans | 28 (32%) |
| Me and my TV | 16 (18%) |
| Baked Goods | 21 (24%) |
| Back at work | 10 (11%) |
Votes so far: 87
Do you read comic books (on paper)?
| Yes. | 172 (66%) |
| Only trades. | 22 (8%) |
| Only digitally. | 43 (16%) |
| No. | 25 (10%) |
Votes so far: 262
Happy 2012 everyone! There's three new wallpapers over at namirdeiter.net, I hope you all like them and thank you as always for your support throughout 2011! I hope 2012 will be a good one for each and everyone of you!
As you may've noticed, we've taken the donation bar down. There are a few reasons for that. First of all, we're not sure that we could deliver fourteen comics a week right now. We'd really like it if everyone rallied around us and we raised the money, but I don't want to offer something we maybe can't deliver.
That brings us to the second point. It's been a while since we made our donation goal. There are a number of reasons for that, but it doesn't look like that's going to change in the near future. And back when we were making the goal with regularity, it was usually down to the wire and we'd spend the night of the 31st adjusting comics for three, five, or seven a week.
So we're not going to do the monthly donation drive any more. If you donate, you still get wallpapers, a namirdeiter.net subscription, and/or art. So we'll be removing the bar because we can't offer larger rewards like daily comics right now.
What does that mean for us? If you enjoy the comic and want to help support the work we put into it, we appreciate it as always. NamirDeiter.net will continue updating with sketches and commentary. We'll be lowering the monthly subscription to $5 per month to reflect these changes. Thank you very much and happy new year!
Secondly, Namir Deiter is all decked out for the holidays, as I'm sure you've seen. We've got a new poll. You Say it First has double comics to make up for one of the ones we missed last week.
Thirdly, if you've been following me on Twitter, you'll see that we had a day-long power outage followed by a day-long Internet outage. Our weekend was pretty much shot. But we've got comics up today! If you haven't been following me on twitter, transcript below.
TerrenceMarks - Last week's power outage was cancelled due to high winds. I was disappointed because I had a bunch of good material to live-tweet.
TerrenceMarks - So SCE decided to surprise us this morning with the gift of no electricity.
TerrenceMarks - To make things worse, all the jokes I wrote last week for this? On my hard drive. Should've printed them. #ironic
TerrenceMarks - Not going to make Amish jokes. 1: too easy 2: not really funny 3: they'd have a propane generator ready to go.
TerrenceMarks - Power outage livetweeting cancelled because my phone's battery is dying. #irony
TerrenceMarks - Found some spare electricity. Apparently we keep it in a closet behind the towels. Must remember to put some back when power returns.
TerrenceMarks - Passing the time by playing with my PS3 games. Not playing them. Holding the discs and watching sunlight form patterns on the wall #nopower
TerrenceMarks - Power still out. My worst fears realized - I ran out of jokes before they turned it back on.
TerrenceMarks - Power outage expected to last another 3 hours. I grow increasingly worried about my priceless collection of ice cream
TerrenceMarks - We need to get electricity somehow. This is why I wanted to get a pikachu but @isabelmarks wouldn't let me.
TerrenceMarks - @isabelmarks says there's a 10 year old with a pikachu. Sounds easy. We'll take along one of the cats & steal that pikachu #HowHardCanItBe
TerrenceMarks - Our first plan to steal the pikachu didn't quite work out. Maybe if we built a giant combat mech out.of spare parts....
TerrenceMarks - Our combat mech was blown up when we tried to catch that pikachu. Must've been a freak thunderstorm. Sky looked so clear, though.
TerrenceMarks - New plan: get disguises, start a small business, gain the boy's trust and steal that pikachu - Wait, @isabelmarks says the power is back on.
TerrenceMarks - Good news: we have power. Bad news: no internet access. What pokemon do we need to steal for that? Does Rotom have a cable modem form?
TerrenceMarks - To get internet access back we need a LOLMew. Recognizable by its distinct captions and thought to.be extinct. Darn.
TerrenceMarks - Time Warner plugged in a cable that they maybe unplugged and forgot about yesterday. We're back online. No pokemon required. This time.
If it were easy to make the equivalent of a part-time job's pay playing video games, more people would do it, increasing competition, and lowering the amount of money you could make. That's how you can tell the difference between a job and a game, usually.
I've mentioned the problems of a game economy before, but I've been thinking about it further. As with most MMORPGs, there are fun parts and there are repetitive parts. I don't care to spend an hour standing around pressing a button just to level up my harvesting skills or suchlike. Now, I could easily pay a few dollars to skip the boring parts and get on with the fun parts. From a purely economic perspective, it makes sense. From an aesthetic perspective, I don't like the idea of paying other people to play video games for me, though. Why not pay someone to play the entire game for me and save me even more time?
When I pay real money for this, I think about the people who get rich - video game rich, not real life rich - from working these markets and I feel like a sucker. I'm the guy who's making them richer a few dollars at a time. On the other hand, there aren't going to be enough exploitable inefficiencies in the market for everybody. I might be able to buy low and sell high and, with patience, make a few dollars. But at that point I'm making even less per hour than I would by playing the game as well as having less fun.
Also that's the difference between Brisbane and Kimberly. And the difference between Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck. And I don't have a solution. Right now, none of the options look especially good and each option makes the others look worse. And it's more fun to write about someone making a lot of money that way than it is to actually do it.
And two polls, submitted without comment.
Favorite You Say it First story (Year 2, Division A)
| Working Girl | 7 (8%) |
| Brisbane's Story | 29 (33%) |
| Old Photographs | 8 (9%) |
| Lola's Storm Troopers | 26 (30%) |
| Casual Warfare | 6 (7%) |
| Date-night in | 12 (14%) |
Favorite You Say it First story (Year 2, Division B)
| Guy Talk | 12 (14%) |
| Valentine's Day Plans | 28 (32%) |
| Me and my TV | 16 (18%) |
| Baked Goods | 21 (24%) |
| Back at work | 10 (11%) |