Guilty Gear Xrd - "Who Should I Play?"

A video guide I made to introduce people to the fighting game Guilty Gear Xrd, which has 25 unique playable characters. Guilty Gear has a reputation as a game series for hardcore maniacs, so I wanted to describe each character in one minute to make things simple and highlight all the cool stuff they can do.

I worked with community members who had a lot of experience in each character who helped me cut to the chase and not waste time on jokes or redundancy. This video's success was a bolt of lightning, achieving over 210K views. At the time I published it, I had basically zero traction.

My only regret is the low quality microphone I was using at the time. Rest assured that my audio sounds much better now.

Guilty Gear Xrd - Raven's Dash

A follow-up to my video about the balance patch history of Raven in Guilty Gear Xrd. Raven's ability to dash forward at his opponent while invisible and invincible has never been changed in any balance patches, which you may find surprising considering how strong it is.

I'm really proud of this video: it gets to the point immediately, my voice sounds clear and sharp, and the editing is very snappy and keeps pace with the VO. I wouldn't change anything about it.

The topic of Raven and his ability to run forward was inspired by a conversation I heard while watching a tournament:

Commentator 1: "So he can run across the entire screeen, and he's invincible, and he's invisible, and he can attack while doing it."

Commentator 2: "Yep."

Commentator 1: "That is crazy. Have you ever seen anything like that in any other fighting game?"

Commentator 2: "Yeah, it's . . . it's like . . . um . . ."

Nage's Comeback Round at MikaTen 2017

An analysis of a single round of Guilty Gear Xrd from one of the first-to-10 matches during the Japanese MikaTen arcade league in 2017-2018, played by Tomo and Nage. Tomo plays the hyper-aggressive Leo Whitefang and Nage plays the more defensive Faust.

The round is probably the single best comeback I've ever seen, combining long stretches of patience with just the right amount of aggression - and a particularly smart play where one player did an attack just so he could build a resource that let him cancel out of the attack into nothing. This round really represents the beauty of fighting games and personal competition. This is Guilty Gear at its best.

The Ground Beneath Our Feet

A feature article I wrote for the environmental magazine Alternatives Journal - the authorial voice was more sentimental than my usual tone due to the editorial process at AJ.

My city is in a perpetual state of road construction, often simply to fix potholes that have endured for many years. I wondered why they were so hard to fix, and that question led me to research the creation of asphalt concrete and common problems with its manufacturing.

The bonding agent, bitumen, is diluted with used motor oil. This naturally makes the asphalt weaker, but Southern Ontario's common freeze-thaw cycles make it very easy for water to seep into the asphalt, then freeze and expand. This literally removes decades from the life expectancy of any given road.

The article is no longer available online due to AJ restructuring their website, but you can read it here by clicking the link/image, or find a snapshot on the Internet Archive