I popped down to my local Comic book store today, to check out the offerings it had for Free Comic Book day. I spoke to Graham Beadle, proprietor of The Grinning Demon in Maidstone, about the day and how it affects him and his customers.  

Graham opened his shop up an hour earlier to deal with the expected rush of comic fans arriving, and by the time I had arrived the shop was bustling with customers. They had all the official comics on the Free Comic Book day list on offer, as well as their own Grinning Demon selection. The offer included two free comics and all others at 50 pence each. On top of that they had a section with a selection of more recent Dr Who, DC and Marvel comics to buy at a drastically reduced price. Graham also showed me a page drawn by resident artists during Demoncon based on an 8 panel Kurtis Weibe script written on the day which they are giving away today.

Graham had also arranged some discounts on snacks (including some pretty stunning knickerbocker glories) in the local cafés  and shops near the grinning demon, on presentation of one of the free comics. It's a nice idea and is a great way of showing how special the community of a brick and mortar comic seller really is. Also on site were artists, Vic 'Iddstar' Hill, Gison Grey and Andy W. Clift showing off their wares and chatting to the customers as they browsed. 

For the Grinning Demon, free comic book day may not be about profit, but it is certainly about awareness of their product in the local area and for spreading the word about comics to friends and family. Graham is very keen to emphasise that recommendation is the most important point of visiting your local comic store, and he exercises a generous policy of returning comics if the customers didn't like what they read. He was also keen to point out that this very rarely happens.

If you haven't been to your local store in a while, get down and take a look now. Let me know what you found in the comments below.

You can find out more about the Grinning Demon on their facebook page. 

So the latest DLC has been announced for Destiny. Readers of this site can see a breakdown of the content here, but, to summarise, for your twenty English pounds you get three story missions, one new strike, one new raid and a bonus strike if you are on PlayStation. How do we feel about this, especially as our American cousins are getting the same DLC for half the price?

Firstly, we have to look at numbers. A combination of a lower population and a higher VAT rate in the UK will always push the cost up. That is the price we pay for living in a smaller country. It's all about economics. Bungie are a business, who care about money and not people. Let's remember that; it's all about the bottom line, and if you are spending big bucks on a game, your investors are expecting big bucks back. 

Bungie have promised more story-based content in the new DLC, and accept that the six hour story in the 'single player' was ultimately full of holes and confusing. Again when it comes to a buying decision, some players who have pored all over the Grimoire cards, who have researched all the theories and speculation on the Internet, will want to know more and will be desperate to see these theories by confirmed or denied. 

The biggest test for Bungie will be over the next two months. Many players are wholly invested in their characters. They want to see them progress beyond the existing level cap, but also do not want to be locked out of missions and maps just because their friends have them and they do not. Although Bungie are counting on this peer pressure, I expect to see a big tail-off of players who are done with the game and are unable to go any further (The new COD will also contribute towards this). The DLC will be a flag for Bungie to see how big their player base will be over the next year.

Finally there is the lure of promise. Destiny excels in many areas. Bungie have promised a ten year lifespan, and the hope among Destiny fans is that the game will get better, and more complete. The trouble is that for some, it's already too little too late. Some feel that Bungie promised too much and delivered too little. We already know, from a leak from Bungie itself, that a lot of content was cut back and streamlined for the final release. The next two months will be very telling, both in what Bungie has to offer for the DLC, but also the feedback we get from the players. I wonder what is Bungie's real Destiny? 

What are your thoughts? Are you going to buy the Destiny DLC? Let me know in the comments below.

As mentioned in the previous post, I wanted to highlight a few of the games I've backed on Kickstarter. This is not an advert, nor is it a review of each game, just a way to highlight the sort of things out there that you can find on Kickstarter. Watch this space for more updates as the games are released.

Click on each picture to view the project:

OK, let's talk about Kickstarter. There is a recent project that is currently getting a lot of the wrong sort of press. You probably know the story by now. Yogventures is a game that was being developed by Winterkewl based on the 'loveable' characters from the Yogscast. I have to be perfectly honest, being the time-starved saddo that I am, I'd never heard of Yogscast until this week, nevertheless I've learnt a lot about the Yogscast very quickly. 

Most naively, Vale didn't spend much on contract Lawyers. One member of his team, a concept artist who created a lot of the designs featured during the Kickstarter campaign, got a better offer from Lucasarts and left with his $35,000 lump sum payment after two weeks work. Vale hadn't written in a clause outlining how an employee could legally stop working for them. This didn't sit well with the Yogscast crew, who lost faith in Vale's expertise as business manager and demanded all funds to be returned to them. Winterkewl managed to negotiate returning $150,000 back to Yogscast (more on that later) and returned to development without a main programmer. As is obvious, games development is hard enough at the best of times, the team lacking a strong programmer, limped through and eventually petered out and Yogventures was cancelled on July 17th of this year.

Anyway, lets get back to the Yogscast. Where has that $150,000 they negotiated gone? It was meant to be, to quote Kris Vale, used to "exclusively to create and ship all the physical rewards". This as well as help Winterkewl find a new lead programmer. So far the backers have not received any physical rewards and, as we know, no new programmer was found. Backers won't be getting a refund, although they have been promised a game code for a game they never wanted. Hmmm. It's all a bit of a mess. Winterkewl have been very naive, Yogscast have lost a lot of money and a lot of backers have been stung. What lessons can be learnt from this?

1) Look at the scope of the project. How ambitious are they being? For example, in terms of video games, most experienced developers would look at what sort of budget has been set in a Kickstarter and know straight away whether it was not enough (or too much!). If the money backed rockets up, what sort of stretch goals have they set?

2) Look at the milestones they are setting. Are they achievable in the time they have proposed? Do they even have milestones set? A good Kickstarter, whether it is a video game or any other project will have set themselves short term goals. Any goals beyond the original scope of the project would then be the aforementioned stretch goals.

3) If you're coming into a project halfway through, how many updates have there been to the backers? Any Kickstarter that hasn't communicated what they are doing to their backers is either wasting a valuable resource (all feedback, positive or negative is immensely valuable) or they are hiding something.

4) Look at the rewards. If the rewards show no appreciable difference whatever you donate, even up to the $10,000 tier, either the Kickstarter has not made the effort to survey their users about what they want, or they are holding back money and giving you useless crap. This is a very difficult thing to get right and some completely honest Kickstarters are getting it horribly wrong. The rewards can make or break a kickstarter campaign. Nevertheless, look at the maximum you are willing to pay and see if the reward is something you would buy from Amazon or the high street (remember that?) for a similar amount. A good Kickstarter will always offer very good value for money as they are rewarding you for being the first to support them. 

5) Think with your head, not your heart. Some campaigns seem very intoxicating, especially if it is part of a world you love so much. This may have been why Yogscast were so successful; they had a lot of very young and impetuous fans who were keen to see a cool product they really wanted. Seriously, if there was a Kickstarter for Half Life 3 - can you imagine how much it would raise? Jesus. The best thing to do is wait. Give yourself some time to think about it, if the timing works for you, leave until just before payday when you may have a few pennies left in the bank, or go for the smallest, least risky tier. 

6) Look at how much they have already raised. If there is one hour to go, and the project has only got 1% of their goal - how likely is that the project will succeed? This is, of course, low risk, as your money won't be charged if the project is unsuccessful, but seriously, you've got better things to do. On the subject of being charged, remember that you will need to hold funds back to allow for any projects you've backed. This is for two reasons. Firstly, you don't want to find yourself suddenly overdrawn or lacking in funds after backing your oh, so compelling 'Deluxe Pringles Stacker presentation case' project 30 days ago and completely forgetting that money will be zinged out of your account as soon as it hits its target. Secondly, because of the first point, quite a lot of Kickstarters have issues with backers failing to pay. This is extremely frustrating, but also damaging the likelihood of a project being successful and affecting the status of other backers.


I hope this is useful. Kickstarter is still in its infancy and will continue to have problems like this. As the saying goes, 'Caveat Emptor'  - let the buyer beware. Keep an eye out for a future post where I will outline some of the projects I have already backed. 

I had a lovely day this week. Not the day I got stuck for four hours in traffic on the M26, no, that was frankly awful. A day where the rest of the family were away for some reason and I got the chance to do nothing but consume media. A rare day indeed. 

I came home and instantly starting poring through the back catalogue of Captain America comics. The main storyline intrigued me, especially the relationship between Captain and the Winter Soldier. I'm glad I saw the film before the comics, and got the full advantage of the main plot twist that Die-hard Cap fans would already know about. I read them on the Marvel Unlimited App on the iPad, which has an awful discovery system, but is a good deal for someone like me, who has been a DC comics fan in the past. Plenty of un-read material. The comics look great, and the variety of artists through the series is also interesting, as is the parallel story lines. If you have become invested in the films, the comics obviously don't match the story like for like, but I think this is to their advantage. There is plenty of scope for more background detail of the characters, and I started to spot all the in-jokes that were made in the film. Well worth a look. Marvel Media Content ASSEMBLE!!!!

I've been playing Surgeon Simulator Touch on the iPad. First impressions are very good. It is a very polished and fun version of the original PC game and makes good use of the touch controls while maintaining the same level of challenge and hilarity too. I'm working my way through the operations and am really enjoying it, although at times it also seems like I'm torturing myself. It is an acquired taste, and I imagine newcomers to the game may find it very frustrating. I look forward to the comments in the reviews section on iTunes. check out my video below of performing eye surgery. This took many, many attempts before I completed it. Watch the site for a full review later.

Watch in awe as I take command of a tank in the first half hour of free to play Xbox 360 game, World of Tanks. Watch this space for more coverage of the game. 

A first impressions video about the new game on the Vita, TxK. A retro-neon bundle of prettiness. 

Just a quickie. PSN friend, Warm_French_Fry, pointed this out to me last night. Seems quite a glaring mistake in level design, but probably easily fixed. Can you find it?

A little plug to our YouTube page. Watch me as I lark about in Battlefield with C4. Neither informative not helpful, just a bit of fun.