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Showing posts with the label Star Trek

Gaming in the Late Stages

So you’ve reached the final level of your game, maybe even the final boss. Or you’ve just hit level 20 in your D&D campaign. Congrats! Those are all fantastic accomplishments. While we do mean the sentiment, that isn’t what we mean by Late Stage Gaming though. So what do we mean by Late Stage Gaming? Like other media before it, it looks like games are starting to push to the subscription only model. A path where you’re not just paying for extras, but paying to maintain access to the game itself. What exactly is happening? What does this mean for us as gamers, both tabletop and digital? When should we really start to worry? Is there anything we can do about it? Won’t somebody please think of the children?!? Sit down with Never Say Dice this week as we try to cover some of those questions in today’s post. - A B : “Late Stage Capitalism” is a term describing the commodification and industrialization of every aspect of life, especially once the profit motive overtakes even elements of ...

NSD's NY2K24

What's that movie line everybody makes fun of again? "Somehow the New Year returned?" Something like that. In any case, as this weary old orb of ours has successfully made another orbital circumlocution of its remote and lawless star system, we thought we'd do as have in previous New Year’s posts , and take stock of how we've grown as gamers (both in the playing and the running) and as storytellers, along with our thinking of where we'd like to go in the next annum. - B A :  The goals I set for 2023 may have been simpler than previous years, but I did indeed accomplish them. That's a key to goal setting:  finding things you can accomplish. They weren’t entirely constructive, but even leisurely and time-consuming activities still require planning and organization when life is messy and complicated . I actually was able to pick up Bully once again alongside Bugsy. This time, while I didn’t 100% everything, I did make a run through the entire game and com...

Pew-Pew Zoom: Star Commander Elite Wing

Forty-five years later, it's easy to take Star Wars (1977) for granted. Sure, as film scholars both armchair and professional love to point out, George Lucas wore his influences on his oversized Tattooine-robe sleeve: 1930s serials, Akira Kurosawa, spaghetti westerns (particularly ones also influenced by Akira Kurosawa), teenage hot rod racing films, WWII fighter pilot movies... but nothing had ever blended it all together like that. And while the joints between the various segments seem obvious now (thankfully, Marcia Lucas is finally getting credit for her part in turning her husband's unfinished mess of a movie into a cultural-defining juggernaut), at the time it was largely seen as a non-stop thrill ride of excitement and energy. Previously, we've talked about the influence (and very lucky timing) Star Wars would have on the nascent video game industry and how, within a year of its release, space games had become the dominant force in arcades as fans could experien...

In the Arcade, Everyone Can Hear You Pew-Pew

You take aim at the enemy vessel and fire, but a huge rock, slowly tumbling through space, comes between you and your target. It splits, breaking into smaller chunks, each moving twice as fast as their predecessor. You swear under your breath as you rotate your ship and push the throttle to its maximum... the last thing you needed was another deadly navigational hazard to contend with. Your irritation turns to panic, however, when a alarm starts screaming at you - one of the small, deadly accurate fighters has entered the region and is coming at you fast, guns blazing. Suddenly, one of the small rocks careens directly into your flight path. By the time you've rotated again and hit the thrust, it will be too late. There's only one option, but it's risky: a quick jump into hyperspace will get you out of the way, but there's a good chance you'll break up on re-materialization or come out right on top of an asteroid. You pray to whatever lowly god is watching over this ...

Our 100th Issue!

This week marks an auspicious occasion for the Never Say Dice blog. Although Bugsy and Andy have been having these sorts of conversations in person, in text, and even in song far longer than they should probably admit, this post marks number 100 for the comic blog. For a monthly comic, that would work out to almost 8 and a half years! While we’re just shy of our 2 year Blogaversery , we’d like to do something special. After all, 100 weeks of content without fail is a pretty nifty accomplishment, we feel. While we don’t have a special crossover event (but if you’re interested in writing for the blog, feel free to reach us by email ), or a character death planned (by Lucifer's beard, Bugsy, please stick around. I can’t edit this thing by myself), we did have a special idea in mind. So dear readers, grab a snack, get in a comfortable spot, and enjoy making fun of our predictions of what gaming might look like over the next 100 years. Assuming any number of pending worldwide disasters...

Star Trek v. Star Trek: The Starship Enterprise's Fifty-Year Confusion

The question "what was your first Star Trek" carries a very different weight today than it did thirty-five years ago. All the classic (i.e., pre- Discovery ) series are instantly available across multiple streaming services, and the films aren't much harder to find - they were some of the first shows to be made available via streaming, in fact. And even before then, there were both broadcast and cable reruns, along with physical copies for sale and rental. For today's viewers, the question usually means "which show or movie is the one that 'clicked' for you, that made you want more?" And, from there, we can deduce what they like about the franchise - stylistically, thematically, and tonally, since Star Trek can be a lot of things for a a lot of people. But it wasn't always this way. For a while, Star Trek was only available sporadically. Even while the movies were doing well at the box office, prospective viewers were at the mercy of whoever mad...