Dear Friends,
A lot has happened since my last post so this is just a quick life update and my thoughts on a couple of things.
Graduation
First thing's first, I graduated last weekend! "Full Sail Masters Alumni" has a nice ring. I could get used to this. I'm glad it's finally over because the journey was not easy, but I'm going to miss Full Sail. It's a great school if you know exactly what you want to do with your life, and their graduation ceremonies are pretty lit.
Full Sail does a great job at teaching students the way the real world is, which is something a lot of college students don't get, especially these days. I learned how to be a leader, which I thought I'd never been able to do because of how shy I am and have always been. But you learn a lot when you step out of your comfort zone.
I'll miss the academic setting, and school in general; I've gotten so used to it by now. It felt like I would be in school forever, but now that it's over, I keep wondering where the time went.
What I won't miss is never having time for myself. I haven't been able to sit down and actually enjoy a video game for months. Now that I've graduated, job searching takes time and requires a lot of sitting around during background checks, so I'm enjoying this time while I have it.
Also, senioritis, I won't be missing that.
My plans moving forward involve a lot of pet projects with day jobs. There aren't a lot of gaming jobs in Orlando, but that's not going to stop me from working on stuff with friends or even freelance. For the next year, I am going to save money until I get a real gaming job and move to wherever that job is located. I know it may not sound reliable but I'm hopeful for the future.
Net Neutrality
Aaaaaaaaand I graduated just in time to lose Net Neutrality.
Great.....
I have no idea how this is going to affect my website or the gaming industry. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says we have nothing to worry about, and the more he says that the more I worry. I predict that my website probably won't have a chance at getting traffic unless I paid something.
As for the game industry, I just don't know. Maybe the big corporations like Square Enix, Sony, and Microsoft won't be affected much, but I'm worried about the small, independent companies. And not just well-known ones like Big Fish or Double Fine, but also the companies run from some guy's garage or companies run entirely remotely by people in different parts of the world.
I'm sure it's not just the game industry, but we really count on the internet for innovation. While I was in school, we used an online cloud with multiple ways of communication that required wi-fi. Tools like Google Drive, DropBox, Slack, Discord, and more are used to communicate and store assets for game development.
So what if we no longer have access to those tools without having to pay a fee? What if I want to work with someone on the other side of the country but we can't have access to the same websites equally? That would dramatically slow down production if it could even get started in the first place. Most indie developers don't have much money to spare and work for free when making these games. So on top of all of their bills, including the internet bill, they will also have to pay more money for certain websites?
I guess we'll just have to see from here once they come up with the new regulations.
Soul Caliber Six Announced
I never thought I'd see the day.
I grew up playing this series and it's my favorite fighting game, hands down. But after Soul Caliber 5, I thought the series was over.
Soul Caliber 5 was bad, and it was bad because it was incomplete. The story was only about Sophitia's children when usually Soul Caliber has a story arc for every character. I didn't mind all of the new characters, but there wasn't even a museum mode where you could read about their history or view artwork from the production team (my favorite feature from SC). You had to go to the Soul Caliber website to read up on them.
The character creation was better than the last ones, and the lip syncing finally matched, but that's about it for the good stuff.
Soul Caliber 4 looked like it had better graphics in my opinion, and Soul Caliber 3 still has the best minigame out of all of them. If only they would remake it in the online store so we can download it or something. I'd pay money for that.
I'm only being critical because I love this series so much and want it to do better. From what little research I did on Soul Caliber 6, it's going to have both old and new characters, stories for everyone, character creation--oh, and it's a reboot of the first Soul Caliber!
I'm not complaining so far. I like what I'm hearing and I'm excited to see more before its release. I don't usually keep up with every single trailer for a game or movie before it's released because I usually want to go in blind, but this is different. This is my childhood we're talking about!
What are your thoughts on Net Neutrality? Where do you think we're going from here in terms of the internet?
Are you excited or skeptical about Soul Caliber 6? Write back and let me know in the comments.
--Tanya