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Monday, September 2, 2019

KoopaTV's August 2019 Review Newsletter

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - “Back to school” shouldn't affect anyone, right?

Personally, I'd rather be in school than using my time writing this newsletter. ...Only if the school in question is Garreg Mach Monastery. I've spent my weekend starting and playing a lot of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. You might've spent your weekend agonising going to a real (non-videogame) school or college.

But if you spent your weekend reading KoopaTV articles or something, hey, that's the best way to spend your free time. (Writing them is several hundred times more difficult than reading them, believe me.) And if you're now going to school, let that not impact your KoopaTV consumption. (We have an article on time management as it relates to that.)

Regardless of your consumption and/or schooling habits, this newsletter has a bunch of NEW information to share. But let's start with the look-back:

KoopaTV's Top Four Experiences of August 2019


...Hm, something about the number here doesn't look consistent. Well, if you noticed that, keep reading to a later section. Anyway, here are the top four most recommended experiences from KoopaTV, presented in chronological order:
  1. Reggie Fils-Aime Gets POLITICAL About GUNS and GAMES! — With increased media coverage of gun violence, and some political leaders tying videogames into it, former Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime tweets about the ill-informed. ...Reggie himself, however, is ill-informed.
  2. Cadence of Hyrule Free Demo Available! Impressions Inside... — Ludwig writes fairly comprehensive impressions on the free Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda demo on the Nintendo eShop. He insists the key to enjoying it is the fixed-beat mode.
  3. Tips, Tricks, and Insider Information to the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open August 2019 — Ludwig explains the latest Nintendo-sponsored official tournament for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, though the tournament already happened by now. It was a good article for its time!
  4. Class President Bowser Versus Recess — Bowser is running for class president on a CANCEL RECESS platform, and Ludwig explains why this is beneficial for him and others. 

All of KoopaTV's content is worth experiencing, even if it's not on this list—and you'll never know if an article will get prominently referenced later on in a future work. Case in point:

KoopaTV's Corporate Social Responsibility Report


We wish to draw special attention to what's the most important experience of the whole August 2019: KoopaTV's Corporate Social Responsibility Report. (CSR report.) This is an amazing document that will remain amazing for the rest of time. It's why the above section, usually a Top Five, was a Top Four. Because one of the five would be this, but having a top six is sort of cheating.

This report will be continually updated as we think of more things to include in it, and more articles will be written that may merit a mention in the report. You can say because this report now exists, we may be more... civically-minded from now on, just for the honour of being in the report. That's a net-positive, right? 

KoopaTV New Hiring Criteria


One of the reasons we developed a CSR report to begin with is to help attract talent—especially younger, conscious talent—to KoopaTV. However, not too young. We've made changes to our hiring page's requirements. For one, we no longer ban Europeans. However, we do ban those under the age of 18. Not because I'm especially concerned about child labour—and that position might undermine the whole CSR thing—but because I think members of that generation are insufferable and lack attention spans, and therefore wouldn't be a good fit for our staff or this website anyway.

Of course, if you're an exception to this heuristic, by all means, you're welcome. We love exceptional people!

That said, I've also written that we're more likely to accept your application if you aren't a total stranger. Coming in and immediately trying to get hired on the first day you've heard of KoopaTV is a dreadful idea and you shouldn't do it, because it's never worked in the history of this site. 

Best Three Comments and One Worst Comment of August 2019


That's enough about us. Now for some information on you. In these newsletters, I highlight the best three comments from the readers from the month... and the worst comment. The best ones get bonus points on the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program, and the worst one gets...nothing, really. Infamy.
  1. “Wait so, am I reading this wrong or is the enemy villain group (which is always prefixed by "Team") just some notable trainer's fanclub? And is it just me or is that REALLY lame? However, they could salvage this by including a much more sinister (and competent) second villain group, just like last time. Sun and Moon had the incompetent and unambitious Team Skull (though admittedly Guzma himself was a legitimately powerful trainer) contrasted with the Aether Foundation with much more sinister designs but disguised with good PR.

    So I hope we do get something along the Aether Foundation's lines this time as well, not necessarily the whole "villain with good publicity" thing but an organization with more ambitious evil designs that doesn't fall under the "Team" naming convention.” — Lheticus Videre
  2. “Smashers 100% do not give a crap about these events, be they casual or competitive. First off, it was on the same weekend as Smash Con, which is one of the biggest tourneys of the year and greatly overshadowed this event. If even your most hardcore players don't care at all about your event, then it's a total flop. You're right that the lack of real sides and consequences is the biggest problem with these events, with the second being that Smash has long had a divided community that predates the online era, and that makes it harder to have a unified event that appeals to both casual and competitive players. Splatoon and ARMS both have events based around game modes considered to be more "casual"(Turf War and Party Lobby, respectively) but those are still considered acceptable enough for hardcore competitive players to care about and participate in those events. A "For Glory" styled ruleset would probably be the closest Smash could get, or even just 1v1s with Smash Balls on low or something, but this ruleset goes full casual random bullshit as opposed to being a less hardcore but still nonrandom and competitive format like Turf War or a mixture of a variety of game modes like Party Crash. I could probably write a full essay about all the things that went right and wrong with ARMS Party Crashes, as it's something that has more of a mixed record than the hugely successful Splatfest or the abysmally irrelevant Smash events, and there's a number of things that ought to be tweaked assuming they're brought back in a potential ARMS 2.” — ArdanianRight
  3. “Seems the target audience for I Heart Guts includes medical students going through studying specific organs for their specialty, specialists who unironically have these plushies in their office, relative of patients who buy these for patients who just went though a surgery for the real organ counterpart they just got operated on, probably mostly women buy the penis plushies if they have a huge collection of sex toys and women probably are the ones who buy the uterus and vulva plushies to show people a simplified depiction of these body parts to people who can never seem to get the anatomy for these parts and are laughed at on r/badwomensanatomy.

    I am sure you probably deal with nonshelled species who do not understand a shell is not merely clothes but part of your spine and need a plush to educate them.” — ShinyGirafarig 
I'd welcome any essay as a KoopaTV guest article trashing ARMS. I might even welcome one that portrays it as a mixed record instead of 100% bad stuff. Just use line breaks. Meanwhile, ShinyGirafarig picked up on exactly the tangent that I wanted someone to comment on for that article. Now some very interesting words that you don't normally read on KoopaTV are in the newsletter! (Don't worry, the kids are in school. Or something.)

As for the worst comment... a tragic one:
  1. *dies* — Samantha Lienhard
Hm, that's the worst comment because it's the worst news a site owner can receive. I think I'm supposed to report these things to some authority, but... I didn't. That might also be a strike against corporate social responsibility.

Corrections Corner; August 2019


Unfortunately, I wrote THREE mistakes in August 2019. All grammar/spelling-related, mind you. The first was writing the incorrect Splatfest team as the winner in the July newsletter, which I swear is a spelling mistake and not a fact-based one. (Too bad there won't be any more Splatfest-based errors in the newsletters for years.) Then I wrote a bizarre phrase in the article about the previous Democratic presidential primary debate. Lastly, I used incorrect conjugation when writing about disaffected youths.

Sorry.

KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program Round 27 Results!


This time, the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program featured a $10 Nintendo eShop gift card code for first place... and nothing for the other places. There were significantly greater points being moved around than the mid-round leaderboard, but the standings are looking suspiciously similar to how Round 26 ended. Take a look at the final results:
  1. ShinyGirafarig — 77 points
  2. Samantha Lienhard — 52 points
  3. Lheticus Videre — 38 points
  4. summoner sky — 15 points
  5. Mr Mystery — 10 points
Congratulations, again, to ShinyGirafarig for winning first place. You'll get a code e-mailed to you sometime very soon. As soon as I find my scratch-off coin. ...Actually, a little later, because I just saw it in the process of writing that sentence. Turns out I keep it next to where I keep the cards. Smart.

Announcing the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program Round 28!


The prize this time in the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program is... Well, it shouldn't be a surprise. A one-year membership to the Nintendo Switch Online KoopaTV Family Group, starting November 1, 2019! $20 value if you went to buy it yourself. You can have it for yourself... for FREE... if you just get more points than anyone else participating with KoopaTV. If ShinyGirafarig can do it, you can. Kody B. is the current guy who has it, but he'll lose it if he doesn't win again.

New Point Method in the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program


Let's say you're attentive. You might've noticed that over the past, I dunno, several months, I've been trying to promote KoopaTV subscription.

Relax, it's a free e-mail subscription to KoopaTV articles, not a Patreon or something. This website is still in the 1990s, and e-mail subscription is cutting-edge technology in the 1990s. There's no exclusive content or anything, but I think it's a very good way to make sure you don't miss an article. Since just going on our home page and scrolling is difficult for some folks.


Here's the point method: Click that link or put your e-mail address in the text bar above all the KoopaTV articles that says to enter your e-mail address. Verify it on your e-mail client. Now you're subscribed! Once you start receiving yesterday's KoopaTV articles to your e-mail, forward one of them to the newly-made “subscription (at) koopatv dot org” e-mail alias. (Since you're not a robot, I'm sure you know how to convert that to a mailable address.) In your e-mail body, write in what your name is that you'd like to get points under for the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program.

You will then get points attributed to the start of the next month's KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program. That means if you do this now (or, say, September 28 or something), you'll get points for October 1—still in KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program Round 28. If you do it October 13, you'll get points for November 1...which will be KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program Round 29. Then do it in November, and you'll get points December 1, still in KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program Round 29. As time progresses, the idea is that you'll get the point gain twice per round (assuming two-month rounds), but in the next calendar month that you forward the e-mail. That's to encourage long-term loyalty, of course.

Right now the point gain is 4 points. You only need to do it once per calendar month to get the points. In terms of game theory, doing this won't give you an advantage over the competition, but it will prevent you from starting off with a disadvantage.

The reason you need to forward the e-mail (every month) instead of me just checking a list of people subscribed is because of privacy policy reasons. I'm not building up a customer relationship database here. Plus, this way it's not totally passive, which should make point attribution easier to manage than having a bunch of zombies.

KoopaTV Quiz Part XXI and KoopaTV Feedback Form Part XXI Now Available!


Those Roman numerals give me anxiety. However, they should represent things that will give you fun if you try them out: The KoopaTV Quiz and KoopaTV Feedback Form! And they give generous KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program points.

The Feedback Form is actually much shorter than usual this time. I guess I don't have much to ask. 


Ludwig has more opportunities to share (or, if you're cynical, “advertise”) KoopaTV out to people than he did a month ago, but he'd still greatly appreciate if you all contributed to KoopaTV's popularity and shared it yourself. The newsletters are a particularly fancy thing to provide to folks.


Last month's July newsletter is available to enjoy here.
Next month's September newsletter is available to chomp on here.
Last year's August 2018 newsletter is over here. It has food pictures in it.
Next year's August 2020 newsletter can be savoured this way.

10 comments :

  1. Yesssss, got another best comment! Maybe I didn't comment that much this month so I'm really glad one of them at least was really good.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ..."Maybe"? :p

      Well, wotcha gonna try for this month?

      Delete
    2. Welll, I already have a really good deal for Switch Online through Amazon Prime, so...yeah someone else can have it this time.

      Delete
    3. Amazon is thwarting what would otherwise be a rare and elusive prize. >.>

      Delete
  2. I can be very casual when it comes to talking about the biology of sex and its organs.

    I probably won't really try so hard this round. I have the Amazon Prime Twitch Nintendo Switch Online Offer to take advantage of for now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well... I'll try to avoid pushing your... intimately casual knowledge of that too far or I'll get uncomfortable.

      Delete
  3. "Kody B. is the current guy who has it, but he'll lose it if he doesn't win again."
    Rest assured, I shall retain my membership. I have been letting others win these past few rounds, but this time I am going all in.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I like the contrast with ShinyGirafarig's comment above.

      Have fun!

      Delete

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