About Me
K_ (Like the Letter)
Hello! If you don't know me, this is the perfect place to find an inkling of a sliver of an idea or some knowledge thereabouts of me and my doings. I go by K_ or Beast2Plate or b2p/beast/beastie/b/2 online and use the pronouns they, he, and she (in order of preference).
I research video games.
Lately, I've been wanting to share that research with the community and so I started "creating content". I tend toward direct opinions and to cite my sources, and can come off as a "Negative Neilson" or a "Know-It-All Karlyle" sometimes, but...
I love other humans. I think we're a really special species and am happy to interact with and get to know all of my many fellow humans. Out in the real world, I am a sushi chef, probably for this reason.
Sometimes I bake or write poetry, and often I game.
I am trying to stream and have a newsletter about gaming I recently started. And I'm working on this little web of pages and sites, which is why I'm online in the first place. :)
Their Raison d'Etre (en Ligne)
Why am I online? Well, I've watched my beloved 'cozy genre' from its beginings in Harvest Moon and Neopets. From looking up ASCII art game guides for Harvest Moon: Back to Nature and learning BCC to decorate my posts on forums to where I am now--consulting with ChatGPT on the HTML for this website: I belong online, and always have. I'm a lurker. One of the few to crossover. The only one that I know of.
I've realized that the people, the kids, who were online when I was a kid and who gushed over updates to the sites and seasonal game releases, are the adults who are online now, and who have kids who are online now, playing games that are like the descendents of the games I played as a kid.
And damn, most of them are fun, but seeing the genre's industry develop bad faith actors and manipulative tactics has been painful. Businesses, nations even, have turend their attention to cozy games and see a quick buck to be made from cheap graphics and a few cute simulated life events.
Bad guys have leaked over from other genres and companies, rife with scandal, and they crack the whip in Southeast Asia to keep cute and cozy games churning out.
The community rallies behind developer ConcernedApe and urges self-care, and some companies see that as a naive community easy to push over when necessary. So they release half-finished games and a steady stream of for-pay DLC, make questionable decisions that alinate their audience and break the community's social contract, and shaft their workers.
The fact that it's under the mask of 'cozy' is what really burns my butter, and is what has led me to developing a slowly growing web of pages to arm the average cozy gamer with knowledge and help us all shift the trajectory of the community and industry back towards 'wholesome'.
I believe that sharing the knowledge I gain from my research with the community, as much as I can, is a way to finally contribute to the circles of friends I drifted in and out of as a kid, after decades of lurking and a low-profile online presence.
Fluffy, Enigma, Les, and all the many, many other online friends whom I lost contact with, and who are likely still cozy gaming to this day: I want to dedicate my efforts to y'all and everyone like y'all still hanging around online.
To the newbs, noobs, n00bs, and the other ones not around the last time the net was wild, and cozy in its wildness: welcome, this is just as much for you.