Awoo Blog

Modern Gaming

In light of what has been a categorically disastrous release for Cities Skylines II, I’m compelled to ask the following: At what point did it become acceptable to ask your customers to pay $60+ to beta test your game.

I know, I know. It’s been a thing for a while now. But, honestly? I’m beyond sick of it. Every game that has come out in the last 5 years has been broken. Doesn’t matter if it is a “early access” scam or the latest AAA project. They all ship with major, game breaking issues. Not simple bugs that are annoying but will get patched with time, but bugs that render the game unplayable.

The new Saint’s Row released on the Epic store back in August of 2022 shipped with a game breaking bug that rendered you unable to shoot. I just want to repeat that last sentence. A game, who’s core gameplay is gunplay, had a bug that rendered you unable to shoot.

PC Building Simulator 2, also released on the Epic store in October of 2022, shipped with a bug that completely stopped all progress early on in the story because you couldn’t complete a job that would’ve let you rank up. Why couldn’t you complete the job? Because the part you needed to complete it didn’t unlock for two more ranks.

When Hitman released the first of it’s most recent World of Assassination trilogy, the split the game into “episodes” that would unlock every month. You could pay full price, but you’d have to wait a month to play the next level in the story. Bonus points to them for also having a bug that would lock you out of your purchased content due to server sync issues.

Which brings me to CS2. It’s a city building sim where the core gameplay doesn’t work. Road networks? Broken. RCI demand? Broken. Parking? Broken. Trash collection? Mail? Public Transportation? Power generation? Default map terrain heights?

Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Fucking broken.

Your core gameplay doesn’t work. But you still charged full price.

These bugs aren’t the typical open world/sandbox bugs that make the game funny. We loved that trying to park cars on the swing sets in GTA IV sent them flying across the map. NFL 15’s tiny player glitch, being able to scream Shaun whenever you wanted in Heavy Rain, the countless silly bugs and glitches in Skyrim — these types of bugs, while annoying at times, aren’t what I’m annoyed with.

It when you can’t shoot in a crime game, can’t get in a car in a driving game, or when can’t making a city in a city building game.

As consumers, we are partially at fault for this. To the tune of 5/95. Why? Because we accept it. The games get bought even after the bugs are disclosed. Despite learning that every game is likely to be completely fucked on release day, we still pre-order. We still buy deluxe editions. We still play along.

Yeah, we might take to the dev’s forums to rant and rage, but does it matter? They’ve already got our money. Now they just gotta placate us long enough for everyone to move on or for the patch(es) to come out to fix enough stuff that the heat dies down.

There is rarely ever any kind of “customer recovery”, but they know when the next game gets announced people will buy it. In the modern gaming era I can only think of a single time that a game release went so poorly that the publisher tried to make it right.

That was Ubisoft back in 2014 when the release of Assassin’s Creed: Unity was so FUBAR’d that they had no choice. If you’d purchased the Season Pass, you got to pick a free game from a list.

Since then, however, most publishers have shrugged their shoulders. Or in the case of WB Games, had an EULA that was so anti-consumer it was called out by the University of Florida’s Journal of Law and Public Policy. In that same article, they also called out Microsoft/343 for the release of the Halo: Master Chief Collection, noting that even 2.5 months after it’s initial release the game set was still horribly broken and unplayable.

Microsoft would further agitate fans of their Flight Simulator. Knowing that Steam had implemented a “no questions asked withing 14 days/2 hours of gametime” refund policy, MSFS designed their game to take nearly 2 full hours of runtime to be able to actually do anything. They accomplished this with a “day one patch” that could only be downloaded while the game was running. The patch file size was huge, leaving even those with gigabit internet connections right at the edge of the 2 hour mark. (They still use this same updating system for routine game updates, by the way. Extremely frustrating when you wanna hop in for a quick flight.)

A lot of this ramped up when publishers realized that, for the most part, consumers had no real protection from them or any real means of obtaining a remedy through the courts. End User License Agreements bar consumers from class action suits and jury trials. Many times, locking them into binding arbitration that they agree to pay for — meaning that if that firm wants to keep the contract they best side with the publisher most of the time.

This got worse when gaming started to go almost completely digital, leaving hard copies in the dust. Though, not that it really mattered at that point because laws had been passed barring consumers from returning opened software, music, or video disks.

But with the all digital era came a new level of ways to fuck over your customers. See, you no longer own your copy of the game. You own a license to that game. A license that can be cancelled at any time, with no refunds.

We see this a lot with server-based games that have been out for a little bit. The publisher decides they no longer want to maintain the server the game is using, so they shut it down. If you’re lucky, you get a patch that makes it so you can still play the game without any online aspects, but that isn’t always the case.

Another problem with this is when a legal dispute between developers, publishers, platforms, etc arise — users who already purchased the game can lost access to it as a result of a settlement or court order. And again, no refunds.

This also holds true for movies, TV shows, and music. Unless you buy a CD or DVD version, you no longer are buying the product. You’re buying a license. Mind you, that license costs the same amount as the CD/DVD. But now they get to lock you out whenever they want; or they get to rake in even more money from you when you have to re-buy the product to use it on a different platform.

Now, this is usually the part of this blog where I wave my hands in the air and say something about getting off topic. But that hasn’t happened here. My point from the start is that modern gaming, and to a larger extent – the entertainment industry as a whole, has became extremely anti-consumer.

And we just kind of let it happen.

Anyway, that’s it for today’s rant.

If you want to check out report mentioned here, click the link below.

Rated “M” for Misleading: How Deceptive, Anti-Consumer Practices in the Videogame Industry Became the New Norm

Twitter: “Post” Mortem?

“Good morning; today’s forecast calls for BlueSky”

Ok, ok – maybe I’m being a bit dramatic.

But hear me out,

I joined twitter back in early 2009. At the time, a tweet could only be 140 characters, there was no app or mobile site (to tweet from your phone you had to text 40404 and good luck with replies and @’s), and if you tried to chain tweets together people got very, very upset.

Fast forward to today. Twitter is, was, a place that despite it’s drawbacks you could typically find some kind of community. Furry, tech, Final Fantasy, horror movies, etc. Everyone had their corner of accounts they’d follow and interact with.

It wasn’t perfect. But it was good; it was ours.

Yeah, I’d grown up with tons of over social media sites. My first ever was MySpace (I was friends with Tom). It was alright for the time. Was a good place for a school kid to feel like a super coder when they figured out what site to copy and paste a code from in order to customize their whole page. You could share music, poorly shot and horrible to see videos, and you could post mystery song lyrics when you wanted attention.

And the along came Facebook. (We don’t talk about LiveJournal or *shudder* MSN “Sites”.)

And again, we flocked from MySpace to Facebook. And again, we shared life updates, chatted with friends, posted videos, pictures of pets, and watched an entire generation that told us don’t believe everything you read online begin to believe everything they read online.

And again, it wasn’t perfect. I wouldn’t even call it good; but we made it work.

So then came Twitter. Just like before, we flocked (pun not intended) to it. It was new, shiny, had cool features. The character limit meant you had to get creative and say the important stuff first. And when things got crazy, you got to see the FailWhale.

Over time, twitter morphed and grew. 180 character limits became 240. Pictures got clearer. Videos got longer. The FailWhale got set free. We got page banners, balloons for birthdays, lists, groups. It became a place we could go and air a grievance against a large company that had a better chance of actually seeing it and taking action in order go avoid the public shame.

It became a pseudo town square. We could connect with each other, businesses, public officials, famous people. You could rub shoulders with just about anyone. You could make your account private and limit yourself only to folks you knew. You could post anything from cat pictures to a video of yourself taking a Flared XL Chance (if you don’t know, don’t google).

Of all the social media sites since my house got it’s first DSL hookup to now; twitter was the one I’ve been on the longest. Was the one I was most active on. Facebook came and went. I kept it for family, maybe post a few things on there. But ultimately, twitter was my main home.

I grew a following. In part because I spent my younger years being angry about everything (incorrectly) and making it everyone else’s problem (also incorrectly – yay therapy!); but also in part because my co-workers at the time had a habit of hijacking my unattended phone or laptop to “ask the furries” or posting “texts from Jess” when she’d say or do completely insane things.

I’ll admit, when Elon purchased it I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t anticipate what he would do to it. I figured he was bored, rich, looking to prove a point and would fuck off after a few weeks.

And then… he didn’t.

Honestly, my first clue this was going to be a cluster fuck should have been when he showed up at twitter HQ carrying a bathroom sink and saying “Let this sink in.”

The changes were small at first, but the impact was wide.

Elon’s policy of allowing extreme right wing racists and nazis back on the site paved the way for advertisers to flee; and flee they did. Twitter wasn’t making a profit to start with, but it could be sustained. But when the major advertisers jumped ship the bills started to pile up; and when combined with Elon’s idea that because he’s Elon he doesn’t have to pay for stuff (I should try this sometime…) the site hit a pothole and didn’t really recover from the wobble.

Some policies got reversed quick because backlash was so wide spread he didn’t have a choice. Other times he just ignored it because it “bothered the right people”.

He tanked the value of the site in pursuit of his own gratification and couldn’t figure out why the user’s weren’t willing to foot his bills.

Make no mistake, Elon did these things for himself. Not for the good of the site or it’s users.

Elon’s purchase of twitter has been nothing more than a man using daddy’s blood money to jerk himself off in the public square while demanding we all pay $8 for a show we didn’t want and never asked for.

Other social media sites smelled the blood in the water and tried their best to capitalize on it. We had cohost then mastodon; both of which I signed up for but cohost didn’t really take off and Mastodon (despite claims to the otherwise) was just too confusing to learn and use quickly.

Facebook, sorry “Meta”, tried with Threads. But they wildly missed the mark and if you were in the UK/EU then you couldn’t even use it due to it’s conflict with their strong privacy laws.

Along came BlueSky. A site created by twitter’s original CEO that, to many of us, felt like twitter in it’s OG days. Yeah, it’s in beta and they’re using invites to scale up and make sure their systems can handle the load; but out of everyone who showed up to this party they seem the most viable.

And so that’s where people are moving to, or at least trying to for now.

Which brings me to my final point — why is this being treated different than any other social media swing?

MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal — they all had something in common.
Folks left of their own accord.

Something newer, better, shiner came along and managed to draw the userbase to it; either to settle on entirely or to add to their social media list.

That didn’t happen here.

There wasn’t a “new twitter” that sprung up and got our attention. Twitter was invaded by a child who’s vanity wouldn’t allow him to make it a better place to be unless he could use it to scratch the prostate of his ego. He purchased it and made it about himself rather than it’s community.

Yeah, the most recent complaint is the change of the name from “Twitter” to “X”. But that’s just the most recent and for many of us: a breaking point. We’ve had many complaints about what Elon has done to this place. We’ve grown tired of being at the impulse of someone who lacks impulse control. We stuck it out a bit longer when he said he would hire on someone as CEO to run the place and he’d be stepping back to being on the board.

But the person he hired is, (un)surprisingly, exactly like him.

They’re allowing and pushing changes nobody asked for; and now they’re talking about adding AI to the site. It’s simply just become too much.

And that is why so many of us are looking for a new home, either to be our primary place or a good back up.

Me, personally, I don’t expect Twitter or “X” to exist beyond the end of this year.

Just so fucking tired…

I need a minute to scream into the void. And since I own this particular black hole of thought, this is where I’m gonna do it.

At what point did routine medical shit get so fucking hard to get done?

It’s a serious question, cause I’m just so over it right now…

Back in April I saw my doctor cause I’d been losing sensation in my left hand for a bit and now my fingertips had given up the ghost. Getting bounced around from PA to Specialist, to Technician for a set of rather painful tests, then back to the PA I finally get an answer: moderate to severe carpal tunnel.

They schedule me for a consult with a surgeon to review options. Surgeon says based on my test we could attempt injections to alleviate the problem, but I would only get short term relief from that. He recommends surgery.

It’s a routine procedure, nothing too invasive. Recovery time would put me out of work for a couple of weeks since the bulk of my job centers around typing fast. But at this point I just want relief. So I agree to the surgery.

Because it would put me out of work for more than 3 consecutive shifts, my office requires FMLA paperwork. Simple enough, I suppose. At least with that filed I’d get agency paid leave for my recovery time, just at my base rate without my usual stuff included so I’d be out $500 or so. But… I’d get to recover and not fuss.

Easy, right?

Nope.

Beginning of May they go to schedule my surgery. They want to book me a week from the day. That doesn’t really work for me though. I know my office will sometimes “slow walk” paperwork, and plus we’ve been short staffed lately. I know we’re due for some new folks on our team towards the end of May so I ask if it’s possible to schedule me around that time.

We settle on June 2nd and I’m told the surgery center will call me with the time. Cool, I can work with that. The doc’s office wants me to get a pre-op clearance since I have pre-hypertensive blood pressure. Had it for years, it’s controlled by low dose meds — nothing to worry about.

They tell me to get it done at least 3 days prior to the procedure. I do them one better, I get it done literally the next morning. I get everything they need done, every exam, every blood draw, everything. It gets submitted to the surgery center and then… nothing.

From May 11th until today it’s been radio silent.

Oh, and I’ve called. And called. And emailed.

“Hey, looking to see what time I’m scheduled for on June 2nd.”
“What type of anesthesia is used? Is it local or am I asleep?”
“Do you guys need any other forms filled out?”

Nothing. Not a single email replied to. I’d been hung up on twice. And the one time they actually talked to me I was rudely told that someone would call me.

I’d emailed the actual doctor’s office directly and the answer to my questions was basically “talk to the center”. Except for the anesthesia one, that one I actually get an answer to: general anesthesia, you’ll be asleep. Cool. Cause I’m not exactly crazy about being awake while someone is digging around in my wrist.

So FINALLY, today at 9AM the pre-op nurse calls. And it’s fucking downhill at an amazing speed from there. We get through all the typical pre-screen bullshit and then she tells me about the procedure.

“So we do a local anesthetic”.

I ask about the possibility of being asleep for the procedure so that I wouldn’t feel nervous. Cause, you know, it’s fucking surgery. Anyone normal is nervous a little.

And suddenly she has to get off the phone and will call me back.

Except she doesn’t. For 6 hours. I tried calling twice and of course no one answers the phone there. Finally, I get a call…… from the office manager from the doctor’s office. Surgery’s off.

“The center raised a concern about anesthesia. They didn’t feel comfortable with putting you under so they’ve declined to let us do the procedure.”

I ask for details — she has none. I ask to talk to my doctor — he’s “with other patients but can call you tomorrow.”

Uh, no. Someone with some actual fucking information needs to call me TODAY. I’ve been waiting for weeks here and with a day to go someone pulled the plug and I want answers. She says she’ll try but he has “five other patients today”.

Well now he has six.

I also ask if there’s anyone at the surgery center who I can talk to. She doesn’t know. I ask her who she talked to. She doesn’t know.

I’m not proud of it, but I was frustrated. “So if you don’t know the answer to any of these questions, who does? Someone has to explain to me why I was good to go for weeks until I asked a question.”

To that, she laughs. I don’t think she was laughing at me. I think she was either feeling super uncomfortable or cracking under how intense I was at that point — but it didn’t help. “These kinds of things happen all the time. We can rebook you though. I think there’s an opening in July.”

No, no, no. I did everything I was supposed to. I got all the paperwork done, I’d been asking all the questions you guys told me to contact y’all and ask. I’d gotten my active cases temporary reassigned, busted ass to get my FMLA approved. On top of that I know y’all are gonna hit my insurance up for fuck-you money for all this. So somebody needs to answer for what’s going on.

By this point, I’m just having a hard time keeping it together. I’d been loud enough to grab the attention of my wife from her home office who came out to see what was happening.

Everything is a little fuzzy at this point because I was just so exhausted and sick of everything that I honestly think I short circuited my short term memory. At some point she ended up with my phone and I ended up face down in the pillows of our bed.

The next thing I know was her coming into the bedroom with my doctor on the phone. I don’t know how she did it, but… damn…

“I think there’s been some kind of miscommunication.”

Long conversation short, the pre-op nurse took me asking about sedation and general nervousness about surgery to be some big alarm that warranted her going to some dude at the top of the anesthesiology department at the center and asking him to review my chart. At some point someone says to him that I had “previously had a bad reaction to local anesthesia”. Don’t know where the fuck that came from but…

Basically that dude, who I had never met, never spoken to, never knew the name of, put the stop to the procedure because they “didn’t feel comfortable”. A mix of my high BMI and sedation didn’t sit will with him. Even though I had pointed out that I was only asking questions and would be fine with the local anesthetic if that was the only option.

But nope, they weren’t interested and told my doc it was off.

Oh, and they refused to speak with me directly.

My doctor can’t figure out what’s going on with them and is just as confused as I am. But if the center declines he can’t do anything about it. Their call to make. I point out all the stuff I’d done to prep for this and how I had followed every requirement, every test, all of it. So after a bit of arm twisting he agrees to book me at a hospital facility on the 6th. It’s a place he “has pull with” so he says there won’t be any problems.

We’ll see…

I’m just so tired y’all. I’ve been building up for this for weeks and for nothing…

Oh yeah, one other thing — the lady from the center said she’d been trying to reach me but the number they had wasn’t working. Interesting, because they had absolutely no problem reaching out to me to tell me how much I would owe the center after insurance. I mean, shit — I had even asked that person for details and they told me someone else would be calling.

It shouldn’t be this fucking hard to get things done. I did everything I was supposed to before the deadlines and with the amount of money about to change hands here, I’m kinda pissed that we had to basically harass folks to get an answer.

The fact that someone thought the office rep calling me and being like “lol cancelled no details byeeeee” was going to be acceptable is just baffling to me.

But yeah… so rescheduled for a few days later. Hopefully nothing fucks this up. I’ll tell you what though, I’m absolutely terrified to ask any more questions about this procedure less it royally fucks something else up.

Artist Review: MrJimmyDaFloof

Artist Name: Jim / Roland / MrJimmaDaFloof
Pronouns: He/Him
Instagram: mrjimmydafloofs
Twitter: @MrJimmyDaFloof
FurAffinity: JamesMiller

Commission by MrJimmyDaFloof

Jimmy was an artist I’d seen around twitter for a while before I finally got an opportunity to commission them. I had instantly fallen in love with their style and textures. I knew they’d be the perfect match to draw this illustration. He got it exactly as I had imagined.

Section 1 – Communication

Jimmy does an excellent job of keeping up with his clients. He maintains a public Trello Queue for customers and potential clients to see his workload. In my experience, the best way to reach out to him is via Telegram or Twitter.

Trello was updated routinely and accurately. Delays, if any, are communicated via public twitter posts as well as Telegram Channels.

Jimmy does maintain a price sheet. At the of this writing I was unable to locate a public one, however. This could be due to him re-working his prices or not currently being open for new work at the time of this entry. I do know that when he lists his openings, the price sheet is included along with a copy of his terms of service. On his FA page he does encourage people to reach out to him at any time for a copy of current prices or to discuss a project for future openings.

Commissions are not on a “first come, first served” basis. When openings are announced, you’ll be directed to a Google Docs Form to submit your request. These are reviewed and those who are selected are contacted. SFW and NSFW openings are handled separately for those of you who wish to keep the more… adult parts of furry of your screens.

In my case, prices and estimates were provided in USD. Payment is accepted via paypal invoice only.

Communication Star Rating: 5/5

Communication 1.5 (Price Availability) Star Rating: 4.5/5

Section 2 – Price/Value

NOTE: As always, I’ll point out that prices are subjective. What may come across as overpriced for one person another may call undervalued. This section is not for saying what I believe the artist should have charged. Prices are subject to change as artist’s are always reevaluating what they charge for their work.

I found Jimmy’s prices to be extremely on par with the quality of his work. When I commissioned him in June 2022, I was quoted and paid $370.00 for the image above; a 2 character, full render with background. Extremely reasonable for the finished product.

Price/Value Rating: 5/5

Section 3 – Time

The only time I have commissioned this artist I did not set a deadline. Jimmy’s TOS allows for deadlines to be negotiated prior to payment being submitted.

Jimmy accepts batches of commissions at a time. Numbers vary based on the complexity of the orders. In my case, my commission was accepted and paid for on June 14th, 2022. On July 5th, 2022 I received a sketch/draft. It had sat in my junk folder for a little bit because I’m dumb. Luckily I noticed the update on his Trello and checked! I received the finished version in early August, the exact date escapes me.

Given the type of commission I requested and the listed workload on the Trello at the time this turnaround time was actually surprising to me. I expected to wait until the end of August, early September.

Time Rating: 5/5

Section 4 – Final Product

My overall experience with commissioning Jimmy has been excellent. From the first time I reached out in April of 2022 to inquire about a price list and a possible ETA as to when he would be open for more work so that I could make sure I got mine submitted in time, to the final product hitting my inbox he was an absolute pleasure to work with.

With his form I submitted a written version of what I was looking for as well as reference sheets for both characters, the style of clothes I wanted them to have on, and a Google Street View screenshot to show the type of background I was looking for. This was one of those rare cases where I actually had a specific idea in mind.

Given that I was introducing a character who would be a demon with powers on-par with a God, I wanted something that would kinda hint that there was more to him than at a glance.

So I asked Jimmy to draw them at the corner of First Street and Amistad Road with Oslo finishing up a cigarette. I wanted a city background complete with the steel metro supports to really drive the feeling home. He seriously knocked it out of the park.

If you can figure out what song I pulled my inspiration from, you get a cookie.

Usually I’d try and post all of that here, but it appears I’ve lost some of that data along the way. I think I may have accidentally dumped the email chain at some point. Derp. So here’s what I’ve been able to recover!

Final Product Rating: 5/5

Section 5 – Final Scores and Summary

From start to finish, working with Jimmy to bring these two characters to life was an absolute pleasure. His submission form was easy to fill out, the TOS was clear and easy to understand. At no time did I not feel like I didn’t know where I was in his queue.

The only knock I can really give him is that I couldn’t locate a current price list for him; and while I didn’t see anything about it being updated, I imagine that may be the case. Extremely minor when you factor in everything else!

He did an excellent job and I’d gladly commission him again!

Communication

Communication 1.5

Price/Value

Time

Final Product

FINAL SCORE

(4.9/5)

Artist Review: Manex57

Artist Name: Manex57
Pronouns: She/Her
Website: https://manex57.com/
Twitter: @57Manex
Patreon: Manex57

My Characters by Manex57
(SFW Only on this Site)

I honestly can’t remember how I came across their FA page; but I’m glad I did. Manex57 has quickly become one of my favorite artists to work with and someone I point to as an example of what I consider a professional artist.

Section 1 – Communication

Manex57 does an awesome job of communicating with her customers. She maintains a public Trello Queue so that customers can find out their commission status at a glance. Commission communications are largely handled by Telegram chat, but you can also reach them via FA Note or Twitter.

I’ve found the Trello to be updated at least daily. Updates are accurate and reflect the current status of your commission. “Delays” are communicated to the customer when they occur. Should know, I put “delays” in quotes here because the only time I’ve run into a delay with this artist, it was based on her personal deadline and not any that I had set. Quite appreciated!

Manex’s price list is readily available on their twitter (pinned post), their FA or their own webpage. Being based in England, prices are listed in British Pounds/Pound Sterling. Base prices are available, with an option to contact the artist for a quote for anything not listed.

WIP sketches were provided every step of the way and each time I was given an opportunity to approve it before moving forward.

This artist also takes on Kigurumi commissions, the prices of which are readily available on their website. I haven’t commissioned one of these myself (yet).

Communication Star Rating: 5/5

Communication 1.5 (Price Availability) Star Rating: 5/5

Section 2 – Price/Value

As always, I’ll point out that prices are subjective. What may come across as overpriced for one person another may call undervalued. This section is not for saying what I believe the artist should have charged. Prices are subject to change as artist’s are always reevaluating what they charge for their work.

I’ve found Manex’s prices to be pretty fair, and even a bit cheaper than I expected. Payments are made via Paypal Invoice. Invoices are clear and easy to read. They list what exactly you ordered and any options you choose.

In my case, I’ve placed a few orders with this artist.

For a 2 character, full body commissions with shading, simple background, and clothing: the total charged was £110.00 ($137.12 USD*). Less than I expected to pay. For a single character, full body, with shading and clothing the total charge was £40.00 ($49.86 USD*). For a pack of Telegram stickers I was charged £20.00 ($24.93*). All extremely good prices.

NOTE: This information is based off paypal invoices. The artist may have changed their prices since that time. Always consul the artist’s most recent pricelist for what you’ll expect to pay.

*does not include paypal exchange rate or paypal fees associated with currency conversion.

Price/Value Rating: 5/5

Section 3 – Time

To date, I haven’t set a deadline for any of the commissions I’ve had from this artist. Turnaround times have been extremely fast and acceptable. The longest amount of time I’ve had to wait for a commission to be completed with a little over 2.5 weeks, and this was during the holidays.

Should note that completion time is always a huge variable and a lot of factors go into just how long you may have to wait. Your milage may vary.

I haven’t ordered a Kigurumi from this artist, so I can’t speak to wait times for those. However, I haven’t seen anyone complain about their wait times. If you plan to commission them for one of these, always factor shipping times into how long you expect to wait. The artist has no control over how long it takes the shipper to lose your package, find it again, then send it to the wrong facility fives times before finally marking it out for delivery.

Time Rating: 5/5

Section 4 – Final Product

In each case, Manex57 has delivered a completed commission that has exceeded my expectations. She was the first artist to draw my character Oslo and she did an amazing job capturing his personality and style.

Character designs and colors have always been excellent, including clothing and accessories. Each time, I had provided the artist with a character reference sheet, a description of what I was looking for, and references for anything clothing or accessories.

(click the arrows to scroll from ref sheet, to order, to finished product)

Each commission since that time, whether being custom work or a YCH, has been completed in excellent fashion.

All commissions were provided to me upon completion via Telegram; and all of them have been as agreed and described. To date, I’ve yet to run into any errors with anything they’ve created for me; though given how professional they are I doubt they would hesitate to fix them providing they were notified in a timely manner.

Final Product Rating: 5/5

Section 5 – Final Scores and Summary

All in all, my experience commission Manex has been absolutely amazing. From the first contact to my most recent order, she’s always delivered and been awesome to work with. I recommend her every chance I get!

With everything factored in I am pleased to give Manex57 a perfect score and the official #WolfApproved seal.

Communication

Communication 1.5

Price/Value

Time

Final Product

FINAL SCORE

Artist Reviews

So I’m going to start doing something I’ve been thinking of doing for a while. I’ve commissioned a fair amount of artists over the years (and still do). Some of them have been great, some of them have been… less so.

These reviews will be strictly based on my own, personal experience. As always, your milage may vary.

Each review will be centered around the following criteria:

Communication
Price/Value
Time
Final Product
Final Score, Summary

Each will be graded on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high), with the final score being averaged out.

1. Communication

Commission is the foundation of every commission process. So of course it reasons that it should be the foundation of a commission review. This section will focus around the following:

Are communications clear and understood?
How often does the artist provide updates? (Direct, via Trello, List, etc)
Are delays communicated clearly?
Are WIPs provided (if applicable)?
Is the artist’s price list easy to find and read?*
How easy is the artist to get ahold of?*

(* These two sections will be graded together, seperate from the overall communications score. This score will appear as “Section 1.5”)

2. Price/Value

This one is kinda hard to grade, but I’ll give it a good college try. Prices are subjective, what one person considers overpriced someone else will call fair value or too cheap. To score this, I’ll weigh the price paid versus the quality of the finished work, if it lines up with other similar works by the same artist, and if the product was delivered as agreed.

This section will not be used to discuss what the artist should have charged.

3. Time

This category is kinda self explanatory, but;

What was the estimated completion date for the commission (if any)?
Was a deadline set for the commission?
If so, was the deadline met? Completed early? Arrived late?
How many days, weeks, months or years did it take to get the commission?

4. Final Product

Of course, the most important of all the categories, the final product.

Was the commission completed?
Was the commission provided to the customer?
Was the commission as agreed/described?
If there was any errors, were they resolved?

5. Final Score and Summary

The final score will be calculated by combining all categories and dividing by 5.
(1 + 1.5 + 2 + 3 + 4 = X / 5 = Final)

On Mental Health

Hey all,

So let me explain the past 36 hours.

Well, first – let me start off by thanking everyone who reached out with kind words. At the moment, I just don’t have the mental energy to get back to every one of you, but I wanted to let you know that I appreciate you all. The messages went a long way in getting me up off the floor and moving forward.

So what happened?

Depression and anxiety are something I’ve been living with for a long time now. Well over ten years by this point. Some days are easier than others. Some days are bad enough that they last longer. Combine all that with ADHD and you’ve got yourself a fun little cocktail set up for a downward spiral.

So on Wednesday night I was scrolling through my messages and came across a handful that were left unread. Some of these are from people I’ve been trying to talk to since September or November of last year. People who I thought I had a decent report with.

So of course, my mind immediately turned to “what did I do?”

A thus the spiral began. Compounded by the fact that a lot of these people have been active in other places. So my typical self loathing just dragged me down a dark rabbit hole of wondering what I did that made these people just outright abandon me. It’s a spiral I’ve been down before, I know how it goes. But stress being cumulative, it all adds up.

I ended up trying again to reach out to a handful of them. Starting off by saying I wasn’t sure what I had done to upset them and that I wanted to apologize. I wanted to learn what it was that caused them to leave without a word. If I couldn’t salvage what I had I at least wanted to be aware of the why.

Of the five I sent messages to that night, only one ever actually answered me. I was told I hadn’t done anything, they’d just been stressed out and closed themselves off to only their closest friends. Which, I admit – I get that.

The reality of it is that I likely didn’t do anything to anyone. That COVID and life have just taken their respective tolls on everyone and they’re all exhausted same as me. I just wish I could get my brain to buy into that explanation as well.

Anyway, I’m slowly working my way back onto social media for now. I’m not going to be at 100% any time soon; and this was a pretty decent setback on progress I’ve been making lately, but for now I’m just gonna work on getting my head down and pushing forward.

Thanks for reading, if you made it this far know that you’re appreciated.

Paypal Invoice Scam

Haven’t had one of these before.

So I’m sitting at my desk doing some adulting, because what else do you do at your desk in the middle of the day, when I got this really weird, absolutely legitimate looking email.

Have a look,

Some of the info is blacked out intentionally (i.e. my personal email). Go ahead and take a look at the full thing, then we’ll break it down.

Looks pretty legit doesn’t it? That’s because it is. What we have here is a scammer making use of paypal’s invoice system to send a fake invoice. But there’s some key changes here to help this scam along.

So first thing’s first — the main thing we always look at to see if an email is legit or not. Typically, your spam filter will catch this and you’ll never see it. But that isn’t the case here.

Because the scammers are using Paypal’s legitimate invoice service, the name and email server match up and are legitimate.

Though the big clue here that this email was nonsense? The email address it was sent to has never been used for a paypal account or a paypal invoice service.

So let’s scroll down a bit. Again, perfectly legitimate looking invoice email because it is a legitimate invoice email from paypal. But here is where we start to notice a few things.

Notice how in the subject line it says “you have paid an invoice”? That is a subject lane created by the scammer. In the actual body of the email, you’ll see it has changed to “Please pay your invoice”.
Invoice number is perfectly legitimate. Nothing to see here. I’ve blacked it out so that no one tries to be dumb.
The company name is “Binance”. A company I’ve never done business with. A quick google search shows they’re a cryptocurrency company.
Hovering over the “view and pay invoice” link shows a valid link to a paypal invoice payment page. Typically, if a scammer is spoofing an email, hovering over these links will show their destination to be anything other than the legitimate website.

Alright, next line down.

Here, the scammer uses the “note to customer” section of the invoice template to write up a paragraph that looks as though it came from Paypal. At a glance, this looks legit. However, let’s cover a few things.

“Seller note to customer” is always from the seller and never from paypal.
Legitimate Paypal emails always contain your full name or alias. They are never addressed to “Dear Customer” or “Customer”.
“You sent a payment of-” First of all, Paypal doesn’t auto-debit any invoice from your account without authorization. (Especially when the email address attached doesn’t even have a paypal account). Secondly, the email already established earlier that this is a request for payment. It hasn’t been sent, despite what the scammer says.
The scammer mistyped the amount and added a space between the decimal point and the cents. Scammer emails always have bad or incorrect grammar. This one is no exception. Take note of the dual space on the comma between “transaction” and “please”.
The number listed is not a paypal number at all. This is key to the scam. If someone reads the email and panics, they see the customer service number conveniently provided in the email. They call that number and end up talking to the scammer who is able to bilk money from them. Scams are a numbers game. In this case, the scammer has created two separate chances to scam you. The first being someone who just clicks “pay” and pays, the second being someone who panics and calls the “customer service” line.
Bonus Note: Scammers always like to attach a timeline to their scams. The less time someone has to think about why what they’re seeing or hearing is bullshit, the more likely they are to fork over their cash. We see this all the time in IRS or Arrest Warrant scams. The scammer will say you have one or two hours to complete the transaction or you’ll be in serious trouble. This is the same as the Injured/Arrested Family Member scam. They goal is to make you forgo talking to anyone else who might clue you in that you’re being scammed.

Now we’re back the legitimate part of the invoice email. This section is actually from paypal. As stated before, paypal never auto-debits invoice payments. So when you get a fake invoice, you are safe to just delete it and move on.

There is a “contact us” link on this section as well. I know in this case we’re looking at a legit email, but never – ever click links in unexpected emails. Even if it is from, or appears to be from, a legitimate site. If you really want to get in touch with paypal: open your web browser and manually head to the site. Don’t use any email links to do so.

And there we have it. This invoice scam isn’t really new. People have been sending out fake invoices for a while. But this is the first time I’ve ever received one and since it looks legitimate I figured it was worth covering.