Month: Apr 2023

First live stream

Picture of Old Geezer's Xbox controller
Old Geezer's nifty looking controller

Monday night was my first live stream. FacelessJim set us up for a game in Grounded. Much to mastervara77‘s chagrin, a new home base had to be built separate from the one they had set up in their previous game. However, the fourth participant, gymleadrbryan happily spent much of the game constructing a home base, stopping occasionally to fight spiders and ants and things. He did disappear for a while when a monster spider attacked him – apparently he’s not very fond of spiders. In a masterstroke of subtle humour FacelessJim named the home base “The dog park,” in reference to our mission of “teaching an old dog new tricks.” mastervara77 was much amused by that, as evidenced by her laughter about 25 seconds in to the recording, which can be seen on FacelssJim’s channel embedded below. Unfortunately, Twitch doesn’t have a nice embed interface, so it’s just an url to click on instead of a pretty picture.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1802830673

First up was to select a character – I chose Pete, because he looked like the nerdiest of the options. A short explanatory video gave the backstory – the town’s teens were all going missing, turns out they were being shrunk in a “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” type of scenario. FacelessJim had me learn the controls. Once explained they seemed fairly easy, and will get easier with practice. I finally figured out (with FacelessJim’s assistance) how to move around the world we found ourselves in. After a while, he showed me how to pick up objects and how to zip into the inventory to get things. Lots of fun.

I was online with them for a couple of hours, before marital duties called me away (my wife and I watch television together starting around 10 pm for a couple of hours). Even though I got killed by giant spiders and things a few times, it was quite enjoyable. Probably the best part was when I finally got an axe and a spear and was practicing. The one button on the controller swings the spear or axe, and the one underneath it throws it. Once I figured that out by accidentally throwing instead of swinging I had a great time throwing it, because FacelessJim, who was shepherding me throughout the experience, would retrieve it from wherever it ended up and bring it back to me, just like a pet dog would. Lotsa fun!

Looking forward to joining them for another game soon!

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Ready to Start

Getting to the point where we’re ready to start the gaming process has taken longer than expected. First there was the delay when we realized my laptop wasn’t going to be able to handle Grounded, even though the system check said it could. FacelessJim then had to order the parts and build it, as detailed in the post “New Computer Build” from March 27. After the build, Faceless loaded Windows & some essential stuff, then I had to pick it up, and buy a couple more things that I thought Faceless was getting, and he thought I was getting. I had no controller, mouse or keyboard. I swear he told me to get a PS2 controller, but when I called him from the store to say I couldn’t find any he insisted he’d said an X-Box controller for Windows 11. I could hear his thought process – “Oh, no, this is going to be disastrous!”

I decided to make a separate profile for gaming, as I have grandkiddliewids that also use this computer when they’re here, and I don’t want them getting into the OldGeezer3 account. By the time I was ready with the profiles and downloading other software and applications that I use, it was time for me to fly off to the American Southwest to present a paper, and attend other presentations, at a conference. I got back in the early hours of this morning. One of the bonuses was that I saw a bird there that I had never seen before, so one more for the life list (I’m also a birdwatching twitcher). It was a yellow-crowned night-heron.

A few things that I had noticed when I got back. Faceless’ followers had risen to 273, up from less than 100 when we started this project. The fundraiser for Hemi, Faceless & Vara’s son dog’s operation had exceeded both the original target and a supplemental one, thus allowing them to go ahead and book it, which is going to happen in May. I’d mentioned earlier that Faceless and Vara are living on a shoestring budget as neither has a job, so we are hoping that gaming will help in that regards. Many, many heartfelt thanks to those that donated, and for those who joined in the games they played and participated in the rewards and sent them the various effects that they get a percentage of the price of them. At some point I’ll get the lingo down – that is, after all, the point of me starting to game with them, to teach and old doggie new tricks, even though trix are for kids.

I’d mentioned to a couple of gamers at the conference what I was doing with Faceless and Vara, and they expressed interest in hearing about the journey at the next conference, at which point the light went on. What I am in fact doing by documenting this journey is an autoethnography, and yes, I could present a paper on this at next year’s conference. Interesting idea, that I’ll have to run past Faceless and Vara.

Anyway, I feel primed and ready to go!