Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth at AnimeBoston. It was an incredible weekend and we met so many awesome people!

Hope you’ll all stick around, we have some really cool things planned for the coming months. And don’t forget to check us out on Facebook!

I have been awake for about 6 hours and it feels like 12. Its only noonish and thus far the day has been insane. To start the day, I leave my con badge in the room and have an armful of boxes, as Im helping Dave with setup…. return trip #1 (of many to come). We get setup and all goes well. Its soooo busy. As the smallest and fastest Im designated errand runner and thats fine. I go fetch coffee, food, change envelope and get stopped at least once each errand for a photo op. I am after all the bad ass Lightning.

OK so I made it thru a 5 hour workday and made it into Boston unscathed. Next part of the adventure, grabbing our con badges and getting our stuff to the artist alley for setup. Ran into some old friends and got to catch up. Remembered to eat (sometimes I forget and then end up sick… not fun) and now its unwind by finding Game of Thrones online before collapsing into sleep. Stay tuned for tomorrow and Day 1′s adventures of Lightning and Serah.

Anime Boston, a pop-culture convention in Boston, MA, is fast approaching, and Teacup Ninja has a table in the Artist Alley this year. Yay! I want to get a lot done, so I’m refusing to get involved in any time consuming (and distracting) anime and games. A lot of good stuff came out over the past few months. I put Skyrim on hold first. I think I clocked well over 100 hours on Oblivion, and I’m sure I already put several hours into Skyrim. In addition to that, I haven’t touched Tales of Graces F, Tales of the Abyss (3DS version), Mass Effect 3, the new BlazBlue game, and a bunch of other titles I received from X-mas. That was just the game back-log. The un-watched anime is worse. The list is too long to mention.

I still play games and watch a little TV, but I tend to stick with things that don’t suck me in too much. I’ve been watching Game Center CX. This is a Japanese show where a middle aged man, known as Chief Arino, plays retro video games in a plain room. Every episode they feature one game that he plays in this tiny mostly empty room. The room usually contains a single window, desk, chair, wipe board, monitor, the game console, controller, and the game he’s going to play. He also has snacks and a box (sometimes several boxes) of cooling pads for the forehead. It’s entertaining, but episodic enough that you don’t find yourself playing episode after episode in one sitting. The group Something Awful is currently fan-subbing most of the episodes, and the show contains other fun segments like Arino and the crew visiting many Japanese game centers and stores.

As for gaming, when I need a break from work I’ve been playing quick levels of the PSP game Tales of the Heroes: Twin Brave. This an untranslated Japanese game featuring the Tales series characters. The game set-up is similar to Samurai Warriors or Dynasty Warrior Gundam. You play as one Tales character with another Tales character of the same series as a back-up NPC. You fight through hordes of enemies from one end of the map to the other. I may know a little Japanese, but not enough to get involved in the scenarios. I just hack and slash to the goal. Beating up monsters with some of my favorite characters helps me relax without forgetting about my art.

Anime Boston’s going to be a blast! It’s always worth the work I put into my art. Also, after the con there’s zero chance of me getting bored! ^_^ You can always keep up with me and my art by following my Twitter @phoebejtweets, and my Deviant Art page http://phoebej.deviantart.com/.

Since Final Fantasy XI, I have loved MMORPGs. It’s fun living in a world that’s immensely different from real life. I had a hard time with FFXI, so I quit and moved on to Guild Wars. Without a monthly fee, I didn’t feel so bad about the gaps of time I spent offline. That said, I bought that game on launch, (has it really been six years?? O_o), so about 18 months ago I felt I needed something new. That’s when I found Aion. Being a collector, I bought this game on launch as well. When I first started, I didn’t think I would get very far. I mean, a $15 or so monthly fee kept me away from WoW, there was a lot of PvP (which I’m not very good at), and I only had one other person I knew playing it.

This is the best MMO I have ever paid for. I love my character, and there is still a whole lot for me to do in that game. On April 11th, Aion is becoming free to play. This is really exciting to me. Aion is a game I think everyone should try. The PvE and PvP blend really well, and it’s a great way to bond with other players. The graphics are simply gorgeous, and the spell and skill animations are really unique. Aion has a highly detailed character creation system, and the characters have the ability to fly. I heard that they are adding mounts and residences (yup, houses for your character!) soon. Anyway for more info on the game, please visit http://na.aiononline.com..

My character, Caraway, is a level 46 Elyos Spiritmaster on the Israphel server. Right now, my favorite thing to do in Aion is finding and selling items. Auction houses, called Brokers in Aion, are awesome. You can find almost anything, and it’s a great way to make in-game money. Crafting is fun too. Caraway is an expert in tailoring, the creation of cloth and leather armor and accessories, and is working toward mastering the craft.

I consider Caraway an average fighter. Her spells are powerful, and she can summon a spirit that keeps the enemy from targeting her. While this makes solo play easy and enjoyable, she has very little defense and very few hit points, so when she gets targeted she can be pretty much toast. Caraway has many ways to keep an AI enemy from targeting her, but other players can take her down rather easily. When it comes to PvP, I have to rely on other players quite a bit. Fortunately, Caraway can handle PvE situations quite well. The Spiritmaster is probably one of the most balanced spell caster type classes that I have ever played.

I’m thinking of drawing some Aion fan art in the future. The setting is really beautiful, and it would be fun to draw art of people’s characters. Keep checking my twitter, @phoebejtweets, and my Deviant Art, http://phoebej.deviantart.com/ for updates about my artwork! Thanks for reading!

Welcome to Phoebe J.’s random blog. I’m a writer and artist who works from home. I also collect all types of anime and manga related goods. Some days I’ll talk about anime or manga, and others I’ll talk about some thing else, possibly straight out of left field. I also play video, tabletop, and board games. I go to conventions. I cosplay. I cook Asian food all the time, and I’m currently taking a Japanese language course via Skype with a teacher from Japan. Yeah, I can be a bit of a dork. I’m not big into sports, and I don’t keep up with Hollywood news. I like baseball, though. Okay, I think that covers the run-down of the kind of stuff you can expect me to talk about. There are probably other things, we’ll see. Like I said, this blog is going to be a little random.

Feel free to post some comments. I can also be followed on twitter, (@phoebejtweets), and my deviant art handle is PhoebeJ .

An open letter to Markus “Notch” Alexej Persson, the creator of Minecraft, from Joe Perry, on the subject of delays in the release of patch 1.8.

Thank you.

I would say that this part of my journey is a lot like the long car rides I used to take with my dad.  Nothing fun to do or interesting to look at – just long stretches of the same scenery, broken up by the occasional interesting sight (that passes by too fast and happens far too infrequently).

I would say that, except I am not the kid in the back seat who can just take a nap until we arrive at Gamma’s house.  No, I am the adult driving the car, having to stay alert and focused of the road.  Remember that I am still in the nether world – the Ghasts may not be able to get to me, but there are still dangers like lava and fire.

Being set on fire in the nether world is a slow death sentence.  Fire does not go out by its own accord, and there is no water for me to extinguish myself with.  I can’t even bring the stuff into this world with me.  Note the image below:  The floor of this cave is only two blocks below where I was digging.  That lava flow originates at the same height as my tunnel.

And speaking of caves, let’s talk about how I repeatedly kept tunneling into them.  Most of the time this was rather anti-climactic.  A small space, possibly with a fire going, and if I was lucky a mushroom or two.  But sometimes the cave isn’t so much a cave as it is a hole.  A hole going straight down, to the ocean of lava far below.   And let’s be honest: Even if it was an ocean of wool, I still would have died from the fall.

This problem isn’t helped by the fact that I am digging without the help of torches.  The nether never really gets completely dark – there always seems to be at least a little light.  And digging in a straight line is not that hard, as long as I remember to stand a few blocks back from the one I’m presently chopping.  The issue is that everything on screen starts to look all the same after a while.  After some time my eyes began to wander, desperate for something new to focus on.  A lava flow or hole at that point would prove fatal.   So I’ve opted to break down the time spent burrowing into manageable chunks.  I’ll play Minecraft for 45 minutes, then take a break for 15.  This tactic my not save my character’s life, but it just might save my eyes.

One of the more interesting things about Minecraft is the sound.

Every monster has its own sound.  Even if you can’t see the monster, you know if it’s a spider or a zombie just by the noise it makes.  In a game where light is a commodity to be managed, the ability to tell what you are up against by sound is both a valuable tool for the player and provides a further layer of immersion.

That’s something that I think is lacking in a lot of games.  Most people would be upset if the boss of a level used the same model as the trash mobs that they have encountered over and over again, yet few people seem to notice or care it they make the same sounds.  But, whether you notice it or not, it still affects the game.

Minecraft understands this and takes advantage of it.  The player knows if the monster around the corner is going to attack with melee or shoot arrows.  It’s at this point that the player stops thinking like someone playing the game, and starts thinking like someone desperately trying to survive a monster attack.  That is called immersion.   And immersion helps build player attachment to a game, brand, or franchise.  I am not going to pretend that I know if this is all part of Notch’s design scheme or just a happy accident; and I am not going to pretend that there isn’t room for improvement.  But, whatever the source, I wish developers would pay more attention to this sort of thing.

Now, I went ahead with that rant as I have little to blog about today, except for the creepy sound that’s been following me ever since I reached the top bedrock.  The sound seems to come and go, getting louder at times, and then fading off.  I know I have heard it somewhere before, but I just can’t place it.  It reminded me of the sound a skeleton makes when it walks, which only served to unnerve me and had me turning around every couple of steps to make certain that nothing was creeping up on me.

I should tell you at this point that, just prior to leaving for this trip, I had a little problem with skeletons spawning in my underground farm.  There were one or two creepers and the occasional zombie, but mostly it was skeletons.  I was working a couple of levels below the farm and every time one would spawn I could hear it walking around.  At which point I would have to stop working, grab my bow and sword, and dispatch the monster before it started wandering.   Several times I ignored this, only to have my work interrupted by a hail of arrows and death.

The result of this was that I have become rather nervous at the sound of skeletons.   And it’s safe to say that, with that sound going on around me, I was very distracted.  It was at this point that the ground in front of me disappeared, and I walked right over the edge and fell. Thankfully, it was not a long drop, and the only damage was a small dent in my armor… and underwear.

Okay, a quick shower (and a fresh pair of underwear) later and I’m back in business.  I unpaused the game and took a look around the cave I had fallen into.  I see two things: first, OMG, mushrooms!

And second, I found the source of that sound….

(Note that the image above in not the actual screen cap of the fire I saw.  I had forgotten to take a picture of that and had to substitute it with an image I took later.)

Fire.  That’s right,  I soiled myself over fire.  Sigh…

Well, at least I can say that the game is immersive.