
We had an interview with Hellboy/MPH comics artist Duncan Fegredo - a fan of both video games and Digitiser - a review of The Order 1886 that went off on a rant about cinematic games, a look at some classic games mags that you might've forgotten about... and... and... much more.
Here's our weekly update of everything that may have scraped beyond the limits of your feeble attention-spans over the past week.
- 6 BIZARRE JAPANESE ARCADE GAMES Live lobsters? In an arcade game? Oh yes.
- TOP 5 VIDEO GAME HITLERS For all your Adolf needs.
- 10 FAILED CONSOLES The Parade of the Crapstons.
- 5 FORGOTTEN GAMES MAGS From the "Golden Age" of games journalism.
- 10 INTERESTING CONSOLE MODS Stuff stuck on games machines, basically.
- REVIEW: The Order 1886 (PS4) Gorgeous steampunk visuals, but...
- IT'S TIME TO PLAY 'DON'T SHIT YOUR PANTS' A fun new graphical adventure game.
- NEWS: THE ORDER 1886 TOPS THE CHARTS But why??
- INTERVIEW: DUNCAN FEGREDO The comics legend talks video games... and more.
- NEWS: SONIC X-TREME RETURNS With comments from Insincere Dave.
- NEWS: EX-SEGA BOSS SLAGS OFF SEGA With comments from Insincere Dave.
- NEWS: £250,000 DYLING LIGHT SPECIAL EDITION With comments from Zombie Dave.
- NEWS: TOEJAM AND EARL RETURN To Kickstarter!
- GAMING SPEEDNEWS News round-up with comments from Baz Feed.
- MAN DIARY The Man becomes Madonna's newest dancer.
- TETRIS REVIEWED BY COMPUTERMAN Guest post by Jesse Ross.
- THE PREVIOUS WEEK'S STUFF Molyneux et al.
AND MORE FROM THE ARCHIVES
- CHIPS & TEATS WITH MR NUDE A visit to 'Nude Village'.
- HOW BIG IS TOO BIG? Mr Biffo looks at gaming girth.
- THE NEXT GENERATION GAME Biffo moans about next-gen machines.
- ARE YOU DATING A HARDCORE GAMER? Try our quiz to find out.
- 10 THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH THE HOLOLENS It's VR gone wild!
To date we've been just about able to balance Digi and other stuff, but - as Biffo's work for the year continues to pick up - that is going to be increasingly difficult to do in the coming months without something giving on one side or the other.
We want to be able to keep offering Digi at the current level (ideally, we'd love to be able to expand its remit even further, and make it something really spectacular), but realistically it's hard to justify the amount of time and effort unless it's helping pay the bills.
We've been so, so, so lucky and blessed thus far - so many people have been insanely generous and kind, and we cannot express our gratitude enough. We love that so many people have such fondness for the original Digitiser that they want it back in some sort of regular form.
Originally, we didn't envision Digi coming back as a daily thing - and we only went down the crowd funding route, to make this a daily project, as so many people asked us to do so. We've been fumbling around in the dark a bit thus far - none of this was planned - and if Digi 2000 isn't sustainable with the current model... we may have to scale back the amount of time we dedicate to it.
Obviously, should it come to that - and we're hoping it doesn't - we'll give our sponsors plenty of notice, and it'll be done in a spirit of openness and transparency.
CHUNK
We totally appreciate that we've got a decent chunk of money coming in through our donors, and don't want to appear grabby - but once Patreon/Paypal have taken their cut, and we've paid tax on it, and you consider that there are two of us working on the site... it isn't as much as you might think. Especially as we're also paying some of it towards promotion, competition prizes, sponsor rewards etc.
We really hate having to be this blunt, as it does look a bit like we're holding you to ransom, or calling your bluff - "Give us money, or we'll have to stop". We won't stop completely - we love doing this far, far too much, we love the sense of community, the comments, the feedback - but while our readership seems to be growing week by week (almost 15,000 unique readers in February alone) our donations have dropped off quite dramatically since the initial excitement of our return.
Unfortunately, unless that changes, there's a real chance we might - at some point in the near future - have to reduce the time we spend on Digi, especially as we're already offering more content each week than we'd promised in the first Patreon Milestone goal.
BEYOND
We are bey ond appreciative of everyone who has contributed so far, or signed on as a monthly donor. And we also can't thank enough everyone who might not be able to afford to sponsor us, but has taken the time to plug us, or spread the word, or just said something nice about us being back. All of that helps keep us motivated too.
So, we just wanted to say - again - if you love this site, and you've been on the fence about becoming one of our supporters, now's the time to commit. We're already offering digital portraits, Man's Daddy e-books, and exclusive videos - but we're also thinking about other exciting sponsor benefits (such as an exclusive invite to some sort of Digitiser live event this summer).
If you don't want to support us... that's more than fine too, and we completely understand. Having you reading - seeing those hits going up week after week - is pushing us ever closer to what we hope might be some sort of tipping point.
But if you are interested... click on the links below to find out more. Thank you for taking the time to read this far. WOZNIAK!