The Queue: It’s that day again!

Uh and that day is certainly a day of the week. Probably. Pandemic time is a whole new thing y’all.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and we answer, as long as we remember it’s our day to write The Queue, which I definitely did.

I know y’all are all about the fruck, but I saw the baby unicorn and that was that. JUST LOOK AT IT!

Eloping. Having the big party is nice, but the whole thing is such a whirlwind you won’t remember very much of it. I remember more about every wedding I’ve ever attended other than my own, even the ones when I was little. Even a lot of the stuff I’d planned well in advance is a blur… every time I hear Cantata 140, “Sleepers, Awake,” I’m struck by how gorgeous it is, and the great modulation to a minor key really colors the whole piece, making the shift back to major almost heartbreakingly beautiful (though the horns don’t quite sing in this particular version), and I do like Bach quite a bit, but why is this so familiar? Then I remember “you chose it as your wedding processional, you idiot.”

Even if you do want to do the whole big party to celebrate thing, it’s a lot less pressure to separate the two. You’re not going through what’s both a momentous life change and trying to manage the logistics of a huge event at the same time. Plus, you’re not quite as constrained by traditions. Have an ice cream bar instead of a dreadfully expensive dry cake covered in chewy fondant! Forego the kind of embarrassing garter toss! Plus, if you say you’re just having a party, venues and caterers tend to suddenly get less expensive, just saying.

Assuming I’m playing on my own and not streaming, in which case my options are incredibly limited due to DMCA, I’m usually watching something on my second monitor or listening to the in game fan-run radio stations.

The community for American Truck Simulator is a lot bigger and more die-hard than you might realize. The same way WoW players have guilds, ATS players will join something called a VTC, and their parameters for participation can be very similar. There are the more casual companies, but most demand a baseline level of participation every week (or even day!) and there are metrics to maintain, similar to ilevel. You can go on multiplayer trucking hauls, and VTCs will hold big events, somewhat similar to the Gnome Run in WoW. The thing is, unlike WoW, there’s zero material benefit to doing so. They’re just in it for the camaraderie.

Anyway, the community is so big and so diehard that there are several radio stations in several countries that are always-on, inside the game itself. It’s really wild to think about. Can you imagine Blizzard giving a small subset of completely vetted, squeaky-clean influencers access approaching that?

Those hamsters gotta eat sometime!

Really, I suspect a bunch of infrastructure stuff we probably won’t notice as front end users. It’s boring, but probably the case.

Nope!

One of the crappy parts about covering games for a living is that sometimes it’s hard to shut off my ‘work brain’ when I’m trying to relax with games. Even driving around aimlessly in American Truck Simulator — is there an angle to cover here? Should I write a review? Maybe we could do a roundup of real-life locations in games, since I’ve been playing Fallout 4 a bit recently too…

My one true respite is books. I have a super old kindle that doesn’t even light up, plus a whole lot of print books. It’s tough right now because the libraries are closed and I love reading forgettable pulpy thrillers in the summer, but I have tons of old books to read through. My one line in the sand is, I don’t read books about video games. Even if they’re really good, like Shadows Rising is supposed to be. This is the one tiny vacation my brain is allowed, and I want to keep it that way.