The Queue: A question for you, Queue

One of the key parts of Blizzard Watch is our Patreon support. Over the years it’s gone up and down, but has settled to a level where we’re pretty stable and no one is really terribly concerned for the future. Of course we have to keep generating good content, attracting new visitors, and generally delivering something valuable enough that people want to pay for — but to be honest I think we’ve mostly got that down. Well — don’t get me wrong, we could do better, but we’ve passed our three year mark and I don’t have any significant doubts about seeing year four.

One thing that we need to do is continue to provide unique content on Patreon though, and something that isn’t seen elsewhere. My thought: what if Blizzard Watch started publishing short stories?

Initially I’m going to restrict it to just editors, so once a month you’d get something from Matt Rossi most likely, but I could see opening it up to others on our staff easily enough. This is something Matt and I have already briefly spoken about, however nothing is set in stone yet. Assuming it generates revenue for the site in a way that is beyond the “background noise” (ie: the steady gain / loss of Patreon money that happens regularly throughout the month), I’d consider opening it up to submissions from non-staff as well.

A negative about this is that we can’t publish WoW-based stories, Blizzard doesn’t look kindly on that from a large source, and rightly so. It’s their IP and they deserve to have control and benefit from it. So you’d likely see one-off SciFi/Fantasy stuff (or Dinosaur) from this, although I certainly wouldn’t reject something in another category. But I think that’d be our bread and butter.

I’m curious to hear what you all think about this. They’d have to exist behind the paywall at first, and I’m not really sure about how or when we’d release them for free. Maybe an e-book collection at the end of the year or something. The stories would also be an add-on, just like current Patreon-only content is, none of this would replace existing content.

This isn’t something I’ve spoken with very many people about, so expect some surprised (and hopefully excited) reactions from Blizzard Watch staff themselves. And in the brainstorming mood I’m in, I’d like to hear all your thoughts, too.

Tech QftQ: I’ve been playing D3 on my laptop, and have noticed that it gets really hot, and will occasionally lag out for anywhere from a second to a minute, even though my internet connection is fine. I just ran a hardware monitor app, and found that my CPU (i7 4800MQ) is heating up to an alarming 90C while playing. That’s even keeping it propped up in a way that gives plenty of airflow. I’m running it with High textures, but everything else is on Low, no Anti-Aliasing, and the Low FX box is checked. Is there anything else I could do to run that temp down, and hopefully improve performance. I should also note that this is technically my company’s laptop, and I don’t want to trash it playing games (even though I do have permission to game on it).

Anne posted a twitter question about the earliest memory you have, and I feel like the odd gnome out now. Everyone else was saying anywhere between 2-4 years of age and I’m over here like… “I think this event happened when I was 8, but it’s very vague, so I don’t know, next vague memory is in middle school.”

Q4tAdam: I’m guessing Adam gets Mondays, I’m not the best at paying attention.

Dear Adam, what is your relation to the substance ‘Adam’ in the Bioshock universe? Were you the first patient to successfully make use of Adam? The first one to weaponize it in the form of plasmids? Are the people of Rapture using your name and likeness without permission?