New games bring new fears.

First off, I really want to write about Norland. However, because of the way I try to format these posts, I'll instead talk about the effect of Norland on my channel. I don't often cover new releases, almost to the detriment of my own career. This is a habit I have, and it's both good and bad. Habits can provide dedication and allow you to focus on a practice or way of living. They can also be negative and cause stress when you break away from them. For me, it's easy to set my stream up in the Dwarf Fortress category and press the "go live" button. But when I do that with any other game, my brain tells me that this is risky and new and scary. This fear actually causes me to push back on suggestions for other games, even though playing other games is directly beneficial to me in two ways. When peers in my industry see me trying something new, they are more likely to raid, and that helps a lot. But it's also a way to cycle folks who have maybe grown tired of the flow of the channel and want something different. That happened a lot this week with Norland. While it's not directly everyone's cup of tea, it sure brought eyes to the cast and raids from folks I have not seen since I streamed Cities: Skylines II. I did expect this to a degree, but that stress and fear remain.

Where I am now, I can say I should be playing more new games. It's healthy for me, my audience, and the channels I run. This just brings up the issue that a lot of the "new" releases I'm interested in are not games that will be of interest to a huge portion of both the wider internet and even my own audience. Norland is a perfect storm of a game that both I have enjoyed learning and folks seem to enjoy watching, making it a collaborative experience that I want more of. But this brings the new issue of how much should I play it? What's the limit, and what percentage of people will be upset with me if I stray too far away from the normalcy that I'm used to? Then again, there are other games that will release that I can spend time with. I should build a list of games I'm keeping an eye on, sorted by release date. Maybe I could find a way to build interest in a smaller and stranger game before I dive in. Who knows what that'll look like, but perhaps it could be fun.

Last week I decided to change the rule I had about back seating on the live streams. Here is a small portion of last weeks post explaining the rule.

"Simply put, it's a rule that did not allow members of chat to tell the streamer what to do or how to play. This rule makes sense for a lot of different kinds of games. However, with the recent change to my recording style for longer format videos, I think it's become a hindrance rather than a benefit. Because I'm focusing on the stories and trying to collaborate with the audience, it does not make sense to disallow tips or spoilers. Unlike something akin to Elden Ring where exploring is a crucial part of the gameplay, I have already removed the tag from my channel and I am going to go out of my way to make it clear it's not a rule on the channel anymore."

I still feel this way and I intend to stick with this new direction. The effect it's had so far is that when someone is bothering me with suggestions, I simply try to explain why I don't want to follow them or just ignore them entirely. It became a small issue during my last stream this week when I was playing Adventure mode on Friday. I don't think my reaction was ideal, but I did say that I had no interest in going the route of a murder-hobo cannibal. Then, the chatter seemed to respect the request, and everything was fine going forward. This is likely a far better way to deal with things in the current era of Twitch, and will hopefully have less of a negative outcome when I do feel the need to ask someone to stop pestering me with ideas. If anyone reading this has any feedback on this subject, I'd love to hear from you in the comments.

The main takeaway here is that I played a lot of hours. I really like the format of the game. I think the comparison with Settlers, Anno, and Crusader Kings is fitting. It does a good job of conveying the feeling of running a town with a simple economy and trading. It's also quite easy to pick up despite the issues it does have. However, let's start with the good.

It's a really complex, compelling narrative generator. This is something that is really strong in Norland. It builds up characters that feel real enough that you can relate to them. This makes their interactions and lives much more compelling to watch as they unfold. The art is clean and clear and draws a lot from Prison Architect and Rimworld. I do think that draws a lot of unfair expectations, but that is the way of Early Access and the social state of games. The game feels quite polished for what's there — lots of interesting things to work towards and explore. I really like the style of research they are going for. The lords learning tasks then rewriting them as trade goods is really neat, and I want to see that system expanded. The combat leaves something to be desired for me, at least in the early game, but the look of it is awesome. The world map structure is kind of refreshing. While I do like proc-gen maps and the variety they bring, Norland taking a more classic approach to the "campaign map" is refreshing, to say the least.

Let's talk about the negatives. It's really, really punishing. It gives off the feeling of a game that has been in development for quite some time with a rather small group of testers and developers who have gotten really good at it. This is both good and bad. What's there feels really tuned for the difficulty they are aiming for. The issue arises when players try to learn the game, as it expects a level of knowledge that is impossible for many players just starting out. I also take issue with a few of their UI choices. I wish there was more text in some places. Yeah, the little icons look nice, but it's not always easy for me to instantly know what I'm trading. The research screen, while I like the system, is needlessly complex and requires a scroll bar that I don't think should be there. All the information could fit on one screen but it does not for some reason. The automation is bizarrely simple. I presume it's so that you can focus on the needs of your lords, but this detracts from the game because it can be so simple that often I find myself forgetting to interact with it or check the needs of my citizens because, well, we have plenty of beer and flour.

The bright side is the game's developer, Long Jaunt, has been patching the game just about daily since launch. They have already made early game balance changes that have had a positive effect and have also patched in some quality-of-life stuff like not having to click 100 times to trade 100 rutabagas.

It says it up there, but I'm taking this Friday off stream next week. Fridays have been quite sleepy the last few weeks, and I think that means if I'm going to take a day to try and catch up, in a sense, that would be the day to do it. I have a few project plates spinning right now that I'm working on when ideas strike. I've still got that iceberg video in the hopper, and I'm working on the VOD from last Friday's adventure as I type this. The death embark is slowly forming into a project as well. I have 23 hours of footage recorded and saved, and I have an idea of how to present it. I just need to get to work and start making a video out of it! This is a really different style of video making than I'm used to, and creativity is not always something that comes when you need it. I hope folks understand and look forward to the new stuff I'm working on.

Streams this week will be Tuesday through Thursday, and Friday will be a big editing day. Currently, I spend most Sundays editing for a good few hours and writing these posts. Monday is a heavier editing day, and the rest of the week is streaming. In fact, I realized that in the last 30 days, I've streamed 172 hours alone, and I wonder why I don't have a social life... ha!

Games on the docket for this week are Dwarf Fortress and Norland. Norland still has its hooks in me, and I want to play more of that death embark. I got an idea of where to take it now, and hopefully, it'll be incredible.

Stats for the week! Average viewers are still up but lower than last week, sitting at 170. Unfortunately, the stream on Friday really brought the average down, sitting at 127 for the adventure mode one-shot stream, while the three days before averaged 185. Fridays are just a time when people get off work early and get distracted by the impending weekend. Hopefully, when I mock it up into a video, people can enjoy it that way. YouTube did slightly better than last week with 82,253 views in the last 7 days. The video on Norland, and thanks to TheSuitedGiraffe for helping edit this short.