What is Boot Camp Gamers?

I have been getting a lot of positive feedback on the Summoner's Guidebook over the years, and I really don't want to disappoint the loyal readers who came by week after week to read my stuff. Also, in the end, I really need to keep writing somehow, even if I'm not writing as a "job."

So a friend of mine, Nick (twitter @Xennith) and I will be producing blog posts and streams related to teaching about games. He's mostly going to be heading up the streams and I'll be doing most of the writing, though I'll be in a lot of the streams. For anyone wondering why I never streamed LoL for Massively, it's mostly due to my laptop not really being up to snuff on video streaming. We had some experiments but the ultimate answer is I can output about 15FPS or so and risk my laptop overheating, neither of which are great things. So Xennith will be handling the streaming stuff with his beast of a desktop.

The Summoner's Guidebook will continue to be posted on Thursdays, but we'll (probably mostly me) will be posting up daily blog posts about gaming. I'm not so sure about the quality of those posts. I'll definitely write at some point about my procedure for feature-level writing, and about how much it takes. The short answer for now though is that a ton of time goes into thinking up the idea and prototyping/outlining, and the actual writing itself is really fast. Still, I really need to write more so this is good for me.

The other reason why you might see a drop in quality is because NO BREE. As you might imagine, no editor means worse work, but Bree is seriously the best editor in the world. I have never worked with a person who is as good at her job as Bree is. She would help with rewording awkward stuff, fix my sometimes bad grammar and generally be a really awesome lady. Before she was hired at MV, my stuff literally never had errors (Shawn and Seraphina never found any), and then she got hired and she picked out every little mistake. It was really awesome, actually. Her grammar nerddom definitely exceeds my own. <3 Bree. Everyone who is mad at AOL over the budget cuts should really still follow MV just to support her (and the other writers of course) because she really is the best editor anyone could have.

As for streams and what's going down with that, mostly that is Xennith's court. I'll probably be helping pick out the games though, and you guys will probably see us play a lot of LoL, Payday 2, Guns of Icarus. The goal is to let you guys know what we're thinking and how to teach at games. The good news is that when we play shooters like PD2 or Borderlands 2 or something, you get to watch his screen and see all the headshots and awesome aiming. I'm way, way worse at shooters than he is. Most of my "skill" in a lot of games comes from team cooperation/leading, and hopefully you guys will enjoy us trying to teach it. Xennith is also pretty vocally talented, so that will probably be a treat for you guys.

I may bleed blog posts into D&D or other PNP games. I really like roleplaying (even though I'm a competitive gamer) and I have a lot of ideas about those sorts of things, just like anyone else.

Lastly, and a disappointment for some, the Art of Wushu will not be continuing. The short answer is that I'm really tired of the game's timesink nature, but the long answer really deserves its own post. I really want to love Age of Wushu, but it's gotten too much for me.

Thanks everyone who continues to support me and all the other former Massively people. I encourage you to share us on Twitter, Reddit, or whatever social media. Everyone let go and everyone left really got shafted when nobody deserved any of it. We're all trying to make the best of it. Thanks again, and hopefully you guys will like what you read here.