As promised, Weber added a feature that lets you really saturate your food with smoke at the beginning of the cook. It’s called SmokeBoost, and it sets the grill between 165 and 200 degrees for this initial period. The Weber Connect app provides some guidance for times based on the food you’re cooking, but if you really want to enhance the smoke flavor, this is now an option. To me, the SmokeFire grills already imparted a ton of smoke flavor, especially over longer cooks. But I can see the utility here in things like reverse-seared steaks and other things you might cook hot-and-fast, but still want that kiss of smoke flavor. If you’re worried about exact temperatures, Weber says this will vary based on ambient conditions. In my experience on days in the low 80s, SmokeBoost was 175 degrees.

“What we didn’t want to do was to make that temperature visibility a source of concern or drama,” he said. “If anything goes outside of those parameters, we have steps that are automatically taken to react to that.”

Right now, SmokeBoost is independent of the grill presets that give you guided cooking directions and estimated completion times. You run the feature for the recommended time and then you can select the preset for what you’re cooking. Scherzinger said Weber could incorporate SmokeBoost into one of the cook programs and have it activate automatically. “It’s not there today, but I’m drawn to that [idea],” he noted.

Following the recent software update, there was also a major firmware upgrade that went out last week. First, Weber improved the preheat times. Basically, SmokeFire grills reach their target temperature faster. That’s pretty impressive considering they were already on-par with other grills I’ve tested. This tweak should also remedy issues some owners were having with slow heating times. Plus, the new firmware also reduces fluctuations when you’re preheating or grilling. I haven’t clocked the SmokeFire since the updates rolled out, but I have completed three cooks on the grill since installing them. I can tell you the grill keeps a consistent temperature much better, even after I opened the lid for a quick peek or to flip some pork chops. 

Weber was careful to address the temperature fluctuation aspect. More specifically, how SmokeFire reacted to changes — like you opening the lid to inspect, sauce or flip. The company found that the grill was overcorrecting to those events, but that’s not the case anymore. 

“What we’re trying to do now is just soften that curve so that we’re not freaking out the operator of the grill when you’re just making a minor tweak,” Scherzinger explained. He went on to say that the grill will still let you know when things drop 10 degrees or more. Weber did this by adjusting the algorithms that control fan speed and the auger to smooth out how the grill adjusts to changes to temperatures both inside and outside the grill.

Billy Steele/Engadget

And Weber isn’t done. Scherzinger said the company is continuing to work on the regular updates it promised. The challenges of remote working have slowed some aspects of the workflow down — particularly new cooking programs. Weber hasn’t been able to get its culinary and technical teams in the same room to sort out new additions there. But Scherzinger is clear they are coming, and you won’t have to wait long. 

“We were jamming out in the office a few months ago, and so [COVID-19] slowed us down a bit,” he explained. “But there is still a really aggressive stream of additional support or programs coming in.” 

Part of those new cook programs are presets that are based on time rather than a calculation between the grill temperature and the internal temperature of your food. For things like ribs, you can’t really stick a probe far enough away from a bone to get an accurate reading for the entire cook. You’ll still get guidance from the app — push notifications, etc. — but those will be driven by how long you’ve been on a particular step instead of how the food is progressing. 

“The next wave of cook programs will be released on June 15th,” Scherzinger said. Ribs should be in the update after that one, but the chief executive explained that Weber is “trying to launch a new chapter every couple of weeks over the summer.” You know, when people are using their grills the most. 

Having tested the updates myself, I can tell you they make a huge difference. From the handy and informative software tools to the background tech that runs the grill, Weber has taken its work-in-progress and made it a more complete product. I can’t stress enough how much easier SmokeFire is to use with detailed notifications and remote temperature controls. And if the company continues to improve, things should get even better. 

“The key for us is making sure that everyone gets that [ideal] experience every time they grill,” Scherzinger noted. “It’s not good enough to have 90 or 95 percent of cooks going well, so we’ve been trying to make sure everyone’s having that same great experience consistently.”

That’s all fine and well, but doing a video interview (or a live one for that matter) is a skill that requires practice. To that end, LinkedIn has also unveiled AI-powered instant feedback that goes along with its interview preparation tool. Once you’ve practiced your responses to questions, you can record them and get an assessment of your delivery “with feedback on pacing, how many times you’re using filler words, and sensitive phrases to avoid,” according to LinkedIn.

That could help save you from any potential faux pas moments, while giving you valuable practice feedback — at least, as valuable as a machine can be. Interview preparation feedback is now rolling out globally and can be accessed “immediately after you apply for jobs on the LinkedIn jobs home page,” the company said.

This story is just one reason he wanted to get on-stage at SXSW and deliver a speech about finding strength in any body. Across all forms of media, people with disabilities have fewer role models than the able-bodied population, and also fewer tools designed specifically for the ways they interact with their environments.

Video game developers are waking up to this fact, thanks in large part to AbleGamers, YouTube personalities like Shane Burcaw and activists like Alex Dacy. Many studios nowadays are implementing accessibility options like subtitles, colorblind modes, button re-mapping and co-pilot features out-of-the-box. Uncharted 4 shipped with an option that allowed players to hold down a button rather than repeatedly tapping it, for instance, and Microsoft proved the market for customizable, accessible gamepads with the $100 Xbox Adaptive Controller.

It’s a start.

“Xbox might be amazing, but they’re only one organization,” Spohn said. “They need to continue on what they’re doing, but PlayStation needs to jump in, Nintendo needs to jump in. They all have different parts they can play and we can all push different parts of the narrative to have everyone included so everyone can play.”

Spohn has been with AbleGamers for 15 years, and over that time, it’s grown from a small charity bringing in $50,000 a year and begging for spots at trade shows, to an in-demand organization earning close to $1 million each year. That cash will come in handy, because there’s still plenty of work to do, like advocating for better representation in video games and popular culture alike.

“The needle has moved, but it went from zero to one, not zero to 100,” Spohn said. “There are 12 characters on TV that now have a disability, instead of zero amongst 10,000. So is there more? Yes, there is more. Is there enough? No, there’s not.”

Spohn points out that one in five people has a disability, yet that ratio is not represented in TV, movies or video games. It’s not that he wants every other on-screen person to have a disability, but there’s clearly room for improvement — and he’s not talking about giving the villain an eye patch. What he wants is truth.

This applies to everyday, real-world interactions with people with disabilities, too.

“People with disabilities are still largely not represented.”

“Tech is where you would think that most people with disabilities would be, and yet people with disabilities are still largely not represented even there,” Spohn said. “We’re seeing it now with the corona thing going on, these companies that have said for years and years, ‘Oh, you’re so smart, you’re amazing. I’m sorry you use a wheelchair. We just can’t open up this position remotely. There’s too many protocols in the way, you have to come to the office. There’s no way this could ever be remote.’ Now, nine quarters of the industry are working from home remotely, so what changed?”

The coronavirus epidemic has shifted the way the world does business, with entire countries on lockdown and companies urging their employees to work from home. Teleconferencing tools didn’t suddenly appear overnight; they’ve been viable for years, but many corporations have limited their use. This has effectively shut out an entire community of potential employees — people with disabilities that make it hard for them to navigate an office, but otherwise don’t affect their performance.

“Those barriers had to be removed because there was a health crisis and it’s exposed that a lot of these corporations didn’t want to employ people from home,” Spohn said. “Didn’t want to give those opportunities to the disability community. They could have. They chose not to.”

Inclusion is a choice. AbleGamers’ mission is to help companies see where they can do better, how they can catalyze new audiences, and what they can do to bring video games to the people who can use them the most. As the charity’s most prominent advocate, Spohn has discovered the depth of his own power as a positive influence, and it’s as terrifying as it is fantastic.

He was running a Dear-Abby-style column called Ask Steve for a while, and one day he received a message from someone saying, “Hey, I was thinking about committing suicide yesterday and I didn’t because what you said resonated with me. Thank you.”

It threw Spohn for a loop.

“I went, ‘Oh crap. Uh, okay,'” Spohn said. “And I realized all of a sudden how powerful words are. Even somebody who sits up there and talks every day about how powerful we can be to one another, it didn’t really sink in to me that this could have some amazing consequences. So, whether you’re going to the grocery store and getting a Twix bar, or whether you’re talking to your friend and convincing them that living for another Twix is worth it, you’ve got some amazing power if you just realize that you have it.”

Yes, even you.

Images: Engadget (Xbox Adaptive Controller); AbleGamers (abilities expo); AbleGamers (group shot)

In its final form, Geforce Now is a subscription service with a free and a paid tier. The free option allows folks to connect to NVIDIA’s servers and play for one hour at a time. After an hour, these players will need to reconnect, and potentially wait for a spot to open up on the servers. In the paid tier, players will be pushed to the front of the line when logging on, they’ll stay online for up to four hours and they’ll have exclusive access to NVIDIA’s RTX platform. At launch, the upgraded option is called a Founders membership, and it costs $5 a month for the year, with three free months to kick things off.

NVIDIA is clear that the $5-per-month rate is a discount on the full subscription price, but it hasn’t said what the Geforce Now premium tier will cost post-sale.

“It will be higher than that,” an NVIDIA spokesperson told Engadget at CES in January. “We haven’t decided what number it’s going to be yet. But this is kind of the next level for Geforce Now. So this, we’re going to be focused on for the next probably three to six months, and then we’ll worry about what comes after that.”

One of NVIDIA’s big promises with Geforce Now is that players will actually own the games they buy, rather than paying to access a library that disappears if they end their subscription. If a player leaves the service for good, all the games they purchased will still be accessible through Steam, the Epic Games Store or other existing platforms. DRM-free, baby.

DRM-free, baby.

This is in contrast to Google Stadia, which hosts players’ games entirely in the cloud. With Stadia, players have to purchase (and repurchase) every game they want to play via Google’s storefront, and this library isn’t downloadable. If you lose access to Stadia, you lose those games. Microsoft xCloud employs a similar system, though the service is still in preview.

“I think our strategy of the games is quite different,” an NVIDIA representative said. “It’s connecting to your existing accounts in the cloud, so PC games in the cloud. We’re not creating a new game store where you have to re-buy your content and it’s locked to our platform. This is your existing PC games on your Steam that you already own. So if you have a large Steam account, this seems like a natural choice for you really.”

Geforce Now is supported in 30 countries, with nine data centers in North America and six in Western Europe, which NVIDIA says are all capable of delivering 20-millisecond latency. In Korea, Japan, Russia and other locations, NVIDIA has partnered with telecommunications companies to deliver a claimed latency of 10 milliseconds to these players.

Even in the paid tier, NVIDIA limits gaming sessions to four hours, and this feature serves a few purposes. For one, it ensures that the people connected to the cloud are actually using it to play games.

“We just found 99 percent of people aren’t playing longer than that,” a spokesperson said. “One of the things that we try to control is non-gaming use, like people mining and things like that that really aren’t gaming. …And we found that at that point, at four hours, most people need a bio-break or something. So it’s not really interrupting their gameplay.”

NVIDIA developers expect free-tier players will have to wait longer during primetime gaming hours, like at eight or nine o’clock at night, though they hope even then it won’t be a huge delay. However, if this wait time pushes more players to upgrade to the paid tier, all the better for NVIDIA and the service overall.

“Ideally it wouldn’t be a long wait and we’re going to try to manage it that way,” a representative said. “But you know, this revenue stream will help us grow the capacity of the servers. Right? We need the revenue stream to grow the capacity so people don’t have to wait. So it sort of depends on a certain percentage of people becoming new paid members.”

More than 300,000 people have tested Geforce Now over the years, and these existing accounts will automatically be transitioned to the free tier, with the option to upgrade at the discounted rate. Geforce Now offers hundreds of games from more than 50 publishers, with a lineup of more than 30 free-to-play titles — yes, including Fortnite.

Just as the debut LCS tournament was playing out in June 2011, the streaming site Justin.tv launched Twitch, a live-video platform dedicated to gaming. Today, Amazon owns Twitch and streaming is mainstream, with popular personalities regularly commanding multimillion-dollar sponsorship deals. While Twitch has dominated this space for the past half decade, competitors like Mixer and YouTube have recently stepped up and infused the industry with competition, signing exclusivity deals with big streamers and esports leagues, including Overwatch and Call of Duty.

Tyler “Ninja” Blevins ditched Twitch in mid-2019 to stream exclusively on Mixer, Microsoft’s rival streaming service, in a deal reportedly worth up to $30 million. A few months later, Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek made the same move. Before the end of 2019, Jack “CouRage” Dunlop dropped Twitch for YouTube, while Twitch responded by snagging Benjamin “DrLupo” Lupo, Saqib “LIRIK” Zahid and Timothy “TimTheTatman” Betar. Each of these deals are reported to be worth millions of dollars per year.

Every streamer in the previous paragraph is signed with Loaded, a management company that sets up marketing and sponsorship deals between streamers and the companies that want to pay them. Davidson joined Loaded this week as Vice President of Talent, leaving her role as senior esports manager at Riot.

“With social interactions these days becoming more of a digital experience, and people being more interested in new forms of content, it isn’t as much of a surprise to me that streaming has taken off like it has,” Davidson said. “Content creators also have more tools and avenues than ever to attract audiences and brands, while the appetite for content is at an all-time high. It is exciting to be able to help creators develop their careers in this space.”

Loaded isn’t the only thing all of those streamers have in common — they’re also all dudes. Though women compose 46 percent of the US video game market, esports are heavily dominated by men. According to Esports Earnings, the woman who’s won the most prize money in professional gaming is StarCraft II player Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn, who’s earned $357,339 over eight years. Meanwhile, the site says Dota 2 player Johan “N0tail” Sundstein has won $6,890,592 over nine years. There are 329 male players and millions of dollars between N0tail and Scarlett.

“The appetite for content is at an all-time high.”

Of course, professional gaming isn’t the same as streaming. These industries have grown up together, though not all esports players are streamers, and not all streamers are pros. By design, streaming is an open market, where essentially anyone can dive in and start a channel. Still, the most popular names in streaming are men, and women routinely face gender-based discrimination and harassment on live platforms.

Based on hours watched, the top 10 streamers in 2019 were all men, StreamElements reports. Of the nine biggest streamers today by follower count, only one is female, according to The Loadout. Rank streamers by their subscriber numbers — meaning, people who actually pay to watch — and there are no women in the top 10, the site says.

“Why don’t you use voice chat?”
“Why can’t I find a girlfriend who plays video games?”
“Why do you mute people who ask you if you’re a girl?”

Gee, I dunno.

[Warning: extreme language and monumental stupidity] pic.twitter.com/TO4VzU44YF

— Anne Munition (@AnneMunition) May 23, 2018

Loaded represents 36 gaming content creators. Just five are women: Hannah “Bnans” Kennedy, Eefje “Sjokz” Depoortere, Jessica “Jghosty” Blevins, Jodi “QuarterJade,” and AnneMunition (who prefers not to share her legal name).

“Here at Loaded we’re actively seeking to diversify our portfolio of talent, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s also what’s best for the business and industry,” Davidson said. “Those who are in a position to should be thinking about this and doing what they can to more accurately represent diversity within their ranks and content. In order to accelerate this, leaders in our industry need to support women and other minority groups to create a more inviting and supportive landscape for everyone. It’s something Loaded will be intentional about, and I look forward to playing a big role in our strategy there.”

“We live in a diverse world and that should be celebrated.”

Loaded is one management company that deals with one sliver of the gaming industry, but it holds a lot of sway in 2020. It has the biggest and most lucrative names in streaming, it’s signing deals worth tens of millions of dollars, and it has the power to put new, fresh faces in front of a hungry audience. With Davidson in charge of lining up new talent, expect to see more diversity in Loaded’s roster — and on Twitch, Mixer, YouTube and even Facebook Gaming.

“One of my goals at Loaded is to evolve the kind of support we offer to our talent, which includes deepening our understanding of the services that will really help our talent thrive and become successful long-term,” she said. “We know there are different challenges, needs and opportunities for different talent, so we should have a variety of solutions and offerings to support that diversity.”

Davidson reports directly to Loaded co-founder Brandon Freytag, and she said he’s also committed to broadening the company’s — and the industry’s — streaming portfolio.

“We live in a diverse world, and that should be celebrated and reflected back to audiences,” Davidson said.

Dontnod developers didn’t make it a point to infuse Life is Strange 2 with a message about gun violence. Instead, the ever-present threat is a result of their research. The team traveled for two weeks across the United States talking to drifters, hitchhikers and everyday folks, and then rolled those stories into the game. Guns are simply a part of the real world, so they’re also in the game’s reality.

“After just talking with them, hearing some of their stories, we knew that it was important for us to talk about some of the things they told us just because it felt real,” Koch said. “It was important for us to somehow talk about those people that were maybe not represented enough in video games.”

Guns are a staple of the video game industry. Shooting is by far the most popular mechanic around, especially when it comes to multi-million-dollar AAA games. Best-selling franchises like Call of Duty, Battlefield, Counter-Strike, Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption are built around the idea of shooting enemies and customizing an arsenal of high-powered firearms. In any given year, it’s far easier to list the games that don’t feature guns than the ones that do.

“We also don’t want to be the French guy who gives lessons to everyone.”
– Cano

Life is Strange is a narrative-driven series, offering players decisions and dialogue options as the story plays out. The first game focuses on Max and Chloe, two high school girls navigating a complicated friendship while supernatural forces invade their seaside town. This isn’t a pew-pew kind of franchise, but guns are a factor in both games.

“When a gun was involved or even, for example, the death of someone in Life is Strange 1, it’s rare compared to Life is Strange 2,” Koch said. “This is a lot of discussion we had, to not trivialize the presence of guns and violence links to them. And yeah, to show that it has some consequences.”

In Life is Strange 2, guns are a shortcut to high-stakes drama. They’re a known factor, something that developers can add to the story and instantly create tension or force a gut decision out of players.

“It’s about making a game and telling good stories,” Cano said. “But this difficult stuff happened to people in real life, so we really took care to talk about this subject very consciously. We have done a lot of research to be as accurate as possible. We also don’t want to be the French guy who gives lessons to everyone.”

The fifth and final episode of Life is Strange 2 landed in December, and no matter which ending players receive, it tells a sensational, heartbreaking story. Part of its power stems from its foundation in real-world crises, tackling subjects like family separation, police brutality and violent racism. Though the franchise may rely on guns to manufacture tension like other titles, it tells stories often overlooked by the video game industry. Stories about young women coming of age and discovering their power, or that of two young brothers traversing the US on their own, relying only on each other to survive.

Cano, Koch and series co-director Raoul Barbet don’t have any concrete plans for the next installment of Life is Strange, but they’re brainstorming new game ideas now. Whatever they choose, it’ll likely be character-driven, highly emotional and tied to the real world in a tangible way. It might also include guns — but that could apply to basically any game.

Crafting a companion

Samsung is no stranger to trotting out robots at big trade shows — just last year, it revealed a trio of service-oriented Bots at CES designed to help manage people’s health care routines, guide customers through stores and, uh, purify air. Those were among Samsung’s first attempts at truly “personal” robots, and you can see how the company tried to give them personalities through human-like characteristics — they have big, blinking eyes rendered on round screens, and two of them had “heads” that swiveled around to look at people and objects. Think Eve from Wall-E, and you’re on the right track.

Ballie is different. It is no way human-like, and for Samsung, devising a way to make a robot ball look and feel like something you’d want to talk to was no small feat. As I mentioned, the original plan was to use a cloth-covered body; that idea was shelved at least partially because realized it might not hold up to certain members of the family.

“You should train your dog not to bite into it all the time,” Jun said. Still, the scalloped design TTT landed on should “withstand some of those scrapes and bumps.”

Since TTT couldn’t very well squeeze a face onto a ball running around at ground level, it also agonized over what Ballie should sound like. In Samsung’s CES keynote demo video, it can be heard making adorable chirpy sounds as it zips around a magnificently expensive-looking home and interacts with its inhabitants. Jun couldn’t confirm that those were the exact cutesy sounds a final Ballie would make, but the team landed on a philosophy it’s pleased with.

“We were very, very specific not to make it robot-y,” Jun said. “Even the sound UI we designed were from very acoustic, round instruments like a hang drum. We layered that with a little processing and included a little robot-y sound at the end to remind people this is a robot, but not the kind of robot you were expecting.”

It’s decisions like this, rather than practical ones about locomotion or power management, that could have the most impact on how this robot is received. And to some extent, Jun concedes that functionality in a product like this is less important than feel.

“It’s not about the physical object being there to trigger IoT devices. It doesn’t need to be there. It doesn’t even need to turn and make sounds and stuff, but it’s for the user. It’s a very natural interface in front of you, and there’s an important immediacy to that.”

It’s not as if Palmer invented crowdfunding or single-handedly spun Patreon into a billion-dollar business, but she helped shape the digital landscape that made it possible for this model to thrive. Patreon was founded in 2013, and by then, Palmer had already spent years evangelizing the benefits of crowdfunding and direct, digitally driven communication between artists and fans. She’s promoting the same message today.

“Every time I make an artistic decision that the Patreon allows me to make, I feel this vindicated relief that I don’t have to do with the old way,” Palmer said in an interview.

A Roadrunner employee told her, “I’m a guy, Amanda. I understand what people like.”

Palmer gleefully left her label, Roadrunner Records, in 2010. She’d been signed to Roadrunner for seven years, and it oversaw the production, distribution and touring details for three of her albums: The Dresden Dolls, Yes, Virginia, and Who Killed Amanda Palmer. But by 2008, the relationship had become toxic. Palmer had lost creative control over her music and executives were pushing her to be more mainstream — that is, thinner and more feminine. The label attempted to edit one of her videos in 2008 because executives said, essentially, that she looked fat. In that meeting, Palmer says a Roadrunner employee told her, “I’m a guy, Amanda. I understand what people like.”

She also poured $80,000 of her own money into Who Killed Amanda Palmer, in order to release an album she believed in.

“I would often get into these tiffs with my major label, where I would just be like, ‘Fuck it, I will take the hit, I’ll pay for it,'” she said. “And they’d be like, ‘OK, suit yourself. You pay that six grand, but we’re still going to take 99 percent of your income at the end of the day.’ And I would take the hit for the art department so many times that it just felt like such a stupid, abusive relationship.”

In March 2009, Palmer released a song dedicated to Roadrunner called “Please Drop Me,” and on April 6th, 2010, the label did.

Two years later, Palmer became the first musician to raise more than $1 million on Kickstarter. Her story went viral, covered by major news outlets with an air of bewilderment. Online crowdfunding was in its infancy, and Kickstarter was still an idea you had to carefully explain to older relatives at family gatherings, lest they start yelling about the dangers of communism and strangers on the internet.

Kickstarter and Patreon both tap into a specific, long-standing tension between art and commerce, but with a dash of social media anxiety thrown into the mix. It’s the idea of selling out, but publicly, loudly and with a barrage of posts asking friends, family and followers to donate, donate, donate. It’s the thought that art is pure, money is dirty, and mixing the two only cheapens both.

It’s idealistic, and also unrealistic for anyone who wants to create art full-time.

“You guys have no idea how expensive it is to make a music video.”

“No one really wants to have these conversations with the world or with the press, or even with their own audiences,” Palmer said. “And I’m like, fuck it, I’ll have that conversation. You guys have no idea how expensive it is to make a music video, or hire 10 people to come on tour with you, and have a bus driver and hotel rooms for everyone to stay in. Art costs so much money, and it all just appears in front of everyone on stage or in the form of a YouTube clip like magic. And I’m all about reminding people that there is an immense amount of work and energy that goes into doing this stuff.”

Palmer’s Kickstarter sought $100,000, but ended up earning just under $1.2 million. As the crowdfunding campaign succeeded, it also came under scrutiny. Critics took issue with one clause in particular, where Palmer invited local musicians to join her on-stage during the tour for Theatre is Evil, the album funded by Kickstarter. She didn’t offer money to these performers, instead promising to feed them beer and give them hugs.

Online backlash was swift, with folks accusing Palmer of taking advantage of her fans, while ferreting away their cash for herself. In a piece titled, “Amanda Palmer’s Accidental Experiment with Real Communism,” The New Yorker dubbed her the internet’s villain of the month.

Which brings us to the second part of the art-tension equation: social media. Palmer has been blogging, emailing and sharing her artistic journey with the internet since the beginning, and she continues to post about her life daily on Instagram and Twitter. She shares moments that million-follower rock stars often hide: intimate stories of her past and present; relationship trials and triumphs with her husband, author Neil Gaiman; the harsh realities of touring and performing; photos of her young son; ruminations on political injustices; real-time updates on the health and history of a dear friend as he lay on his deathbed. No subject is taboo.

However, Palmer also listens. Over the past 15 years, she’s built a community of loyal fans by responding to their messages, empathizing with their stories and talking about all of it in an authentic way on her own channels. When Roadrunner wanted to edit out images of her stomach in her 2008 music video, Palmer shared the story with her fans in an email blast and ended up rallying an online movement of belly appreciation (dubbed The Rebellyon). More than 300 people shared images of their tummies on a single forum, and outlets including The Guardian covered the tiny, digital phenomenon.

This manic communication style can also be weaponized, especially when Palmer focuses her energy (and her fans) on one subject, outlet or person. Palmer recently published a 16-part Twitter thread bemoaning the lack of mainstream coverage for her latest album and accusing The Guardian specifically of blacklisting it. She focused on one writer who had blocked her during the 2012 hugs-and-beer debacle (we’ll get back to that in a minute). This person, Guardian deputy music editor Lauren Snapes, debunked Palmer’s editorial accusations on Twitter that same day and went on to share a strange story.

In April, Palmer apparently singled out Snapes on a podcast, saying, “I can’t stop thinking about how I want to win her over, and change her mind, and force her to love me, and connect with me and see the light.” A few months back, Snapes received an email from someone claiming to be a journalist, asking for comment on her relationship with Palmer. Snapes looked them up and discovered they were actually employed by Palmer, as the singer’s own traveling historian. Snapes received a random, personal invitation to an event Palmer was playing. Palmer emailed Snapes directly to invite her to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Snapes called the experience “disturbing,” saying, “I have been harassed in this way before by male musicians; I don’t expect it of a woman.”

Both tweet threads are littered with people calling Palmer entitled, narcissistic and blind to her own behavior. Palmer apologized the following day in a string of six tweets, including one re-sharing the link to her own reporter’s story about her tour. Her fans appear at the end of the thread, and they still have her back.

Throughout this entire mess, Palmer’s Patreon subscriber numbers continued to climb.

It’s easy to mock the person posting multiple times a day, sharing their innermost fears and engaging with online communities in such a public manner, but for Palmer, it’s been an effective communication strategy. This personal connection with her fans has helped her break crowdfunding records multiple times over, and it’s granted her the ability to bounce back from missteps in art and social media alike.

“I don’t think of my million Twitter followers as strangers.”

“I don’t think of my 15,000 Patrons as strangers, and I don’t think of my million Twitter followers as strangers,” Palmer said. “I recognize people on the daily; these are people who I have a two-way conversation with. I think the way I have used social media for the last 20 years, since I started the blog, has been all about not just megaphoning my opinions, ideas and product of the week at people, but conversing. It’s a big fucking campfire. I spend a lot of time on social media also reading what people have to say, and talking with them and listening to them.”

This is why it wasn’t weird, in her mind, to ask fans for a couch to crash on while on tour, or invite them to play their own music before her show, with only beer and hugs as compensation. Even though Palmer is the star, and the one collecting the money, she doesn’t separate herself from her community. More importantly, neither do her fans. She’s simply a part of the naked, crying, piano-slamming, ukulele-strumming ecosystem, providing as much as she’s taking.

Back in 2012, Palmer reversed course after a week of Kickstarter drama and paid all of the guest musicians on her Theatre is Evil tour. She also ended up spending the next two years penning The Art of Asking, a book and TED Talk about crowdfunding and human connection in the digital age. The book became a New York Times bestseller.

“My entire life kind of got derailed for a couple of years.”

“I got a lot of backlash in 2012, I think just because the world hadn’t quite adjusted to what crowdfunding was and what it meant, and whether or not it was allowed,” Palmer said. “I faced so much criticism, and also misunderstanding and sometimes downright stupidity around what Kickstarter was and what it meant and how it worked. My entire life kind of got derailed for a couple of years because I felt it was so important to explain to people.”

Patreon launched in 2013, and Palmer joined the service in 2015. She quickly became one of the site’s top earners, with 1,400 Patrons a day after launch. The Guardian covered this feat with the headline, “Amanda Palmer races to $13,000 per release in Patreon crowdfunding.”

Four years later, Palmer has more than 15,000 Patrons, and counting.

“The universe has sort of psychologically caught up with what crowdfunding can make possible in people’s lives,” Palmer said. “Music used to be very direct and transactional, and between small members of small communities. And then we forgot, because MTV, and because Madonna and Michael Jackson and Prince. Everyone all of a sudden thought that there had to be this gigantic chasm between the art maker and the art taker. I think what’s actually happening is we’re getting back to basics in business, in music.”

Images: Amanda Palmer (Rebellyon collage); James Lawler Duggan / Reuters (Palmer with ukulele)

Barr is currently an assistant professor in design and computation arts at Concordia University in Montreal. He’s also on Twitter.

GAME IDEA

THE JUMP SCARES

ARE EMAILS

YOU HAVE NOT ANSWERED

FOR WEEKS

— P░pp░n B░rr (@pippinbarr) September 27, 2019

Barr tweets at least once per day in a clear, repeated format that’s hard to miss in Twitter’s flood of standard text, images and emojis. It’s all caps, with thoughts double-spaced and stacked on top of each other, always starting with, “GAME IDEA.” Barr finishes the thought with phrases like,

RAPIDLY PRESS X

TO PROVE

YOUR PARENT WAS WRONG

ABOUT YOU

And,

THE FINAL BOSS

IS YOUR INABILITY

TO ASK FOR HELP.

The way he composes these tweets, broken up and screaming at the viewer, makes them read like miniature poems about game design and consumption. Many of them are funny, highlighting ironies and inconsistencies about gameplay in general, and poking holes in the industry’s accepted wisdoms.

“I don’t know how I gave myself permission to do that, but I wanted them to come across as separate from the normal flow of Twitter, which is super ostentatious,” Barr said.

The hope is that the GAME IDEA tweets feel like “these weird, out of context missives from a strange idea-generation machine, rather than a human person that you could get any real sense of,” Barr told Engadget. “Which is naive, because of course you can get some sort of sense about what kind of person I am by the kinds of things that I write. Even what kind of mood I’m in. They get pretty dark sometimes, although often that means I’m in a good mood.”

Barr has a tweet routine. Around 10 each morning, he opens Twitter and writes, “GAME IDEA.” Then he waits for inspiration to strike. He sits and thinks about holding a controller, looking down at the buttons, twiddling the thumbsticks, and what it all means. Or, what it doesn’t mean. Eventually, he hits “Tweet.”

GAME IDEA

USE THE RIGHT THUMBSTICK

JUST FOR THE SAKE OF IT

DOESN’T IT FEEL NICE

JUST TO KIND OF MOVE IT AROUND?

— P░pp░n B░rr (@pippinbarr) October 9, 2019

“It’s definitely not meant to be a big message about how games are or how they should be, but more that the whole thing of games and the ideas that we have for games are super, super limited,” Barr said. “I like trying to make fun of that, including my own limitations.”

Take Red Dead Redemption 2, for example. Video game fans extol the massive, open-world map, lauding all of the tasks they can accomplish with their digital avatar, praising the sense of scope and choice that the game provides. But of course, Red Dead Redemption 2 is naturally restricted by its input methods, utilizing a set number of buttons with specific actions attached to them. Rather than allowing individual interpretation, the game forces players to act in certain ways. It simply provides a large map for them to repeat those options in an endless, positive feedback loop.

“That’s a very specific kind of person that only does those things.”

“You see Red Dead Redemption and it seems incredibly liberating, like there’s so much you can do and it’s so beautiful,” Barr said. “But if you look at just the buttons that you’ve got, it’s like, move around the world and shoot your gun, and that’s about it. That’s a very specific kind of person that only does those things.”

For video game fans, it feels blasphemous and ungrateful to claim Red Dead Redemption 2 doesn’t offer enough choice, but this lack of digital agency is obvious to people who don’t regularly play. The limitations of video games — even huge, AAA experiences — are often what turn new players off when they pick up a controller. This isn’t exactly scientifically proven, but anecdotal evidence abounds.

The clearest example comes from YouTube gamer Razbuten, who published a video in September titled, “What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn’t Play Games.” In it, his wife, who has no experience with video games, plays through a handful of prominent titles while he silently watches and analyzes her reactions. It’s hilarious, but also informative.

Here’s how Razbuten breaks it down near the end of the video:

“Throughout the various games, a pretty common question she asked was, ‘Why can’t I do it this way?’ And my response was, ‘Because.’ The deeper answer is that limitations exist in games because there are only so many potential inputs a title can have, meaning there are a finite number of ways a player can interact with things.”

The lack of choice frustrated his wife, while Razbuten himself expected the limitations and even found the design choices made around those restrictions beautiful.

Barr had a similar experience with his wife, who tried to play Grand Theft Auto V, but gave up after crashing a car into a wall. She was unable to get out of the car or back away from the wall, the only two options in that scenario. She wanted to try something else, but the software wouldn’t let her, so she stopped playing.

GAME IDEA

YOU WILL NEVER BE FULFILLED

BUT PRESS START TO BEGIN ANYWAY

— P░pp░n B░rr (@pippinbarr) September 19, 2019

Barr also showed his parents Red Dead Redemption 2, and they all marveled at the graphics and animations, and how gorgeous the environments were. And then, the gameplay started.

“My parents were just stunned by the limitations on what the game was really interested in me doing, which was the usual, get told what to do and shoot somebody or punch them,” Barr said. “They were mesmerized by that because they don’t come from that world at all.”

Barr’s tweets are a pause button for the video game industry. They’re an invitation to stop and think, just for a moment, about what video games actually are, why we enjoy them, and how they could be different than the shoot, loot, win cycle dominating the industry. His GAME IDEAs are lighthearted and witty, but the best ones are also poignant. People chime in with weird games that fit into the oddly shaped boxes Barr has built, like Undertale, Untitled Goose Game and Noita. The tweets start conversations. For a philosopher, few outcomes could be better.

Between classes, Barr is building The Artist is Present 2, a sequel that puts players in the iconic red dress of Marina Abramović. It’s the same scenario as the first game, but this time around, you’re the artist herself, and it’s your duty to stare into the eyes of every person who sits in front of you, for as long as they wish. The game starts in her apartment and has players walk through the steps of preparing for the day, putting on the dress, walking to the museum, and then sitting for hours on end. Barr actually told Abramović about this idea, briefly, when he met her.

GAME IDEA

USE THE LEFT ANALOG STICK

TO WALK AWAY

USE THE RIGHT ANALOG STICK

TO LOOK BACK OVER YOUR SHOULDER

TO SEE IF THEY’RE WATCHING

— P░pp░n B░rr (@pippinbarr) September 25, 2019

“She said it sounded really boring, which I thought was pretty funny,” Barr said.

It’s a ridiculous idea for a game, but much like the tweets, there’s a larger point hiding behind the cheek. Eventually, that stillness and staring turns into human connection, even with characters that look like they spawned directly out of MS Paint.

“You’re subsuming your needs and any selfish desires you have for these little computer-generated people, who aren’t real, but they need you to see them,” Barr said. “That’s kind of the feeling that I’m interested in trying to generate, that you feel this responsibility towards these fake people who desperately want you to look at them, and look into their eyes and make them feel seen.”

On October 10th, Barr tweeted the following:

GAME IDEA

YOU ARE IN A STARING CONTEST

WITH THE GOD OF STARING

AND IT’S NOT LOOKING GOOD

It reads like a sly plug for The Artist is Present 2, snuck in between hundreds of authentic philosophical musings. However, its true nature is much less conniving.

“I didn’t even think of it,” Barr said. “The point that I’m at, working on the game right now, I’m not thinking about staring. It wasn’t on my mind at all. I was thinking actually that I’ve done one a while ago about the classic line about gazing into the abyss and how it also looks into you. …I was trying to come up with a different spin on that.”

In the end, it’s just a game idea.

Curious Creations starred a menagerie of creepy-cute Jim Henson puppets, including an undead raccoon named Rose, who helped McConnell create intricate, spooky sweets and complete impressive home-improvement projects. It catered to viewers desperate for a show blending the sensibilities of Martha Stewart with the morals of Morticia Addams. It was witty, clever, informative and visually delicious. And then, with one phone call, it was over.

“It was a bummer,” McConnell said. “I’ve never actually spoken with anyone at Netflix. They didn’t email me, and I never heard what the reasoning was, so I’m in the dark about what that was about.”

McConnell said the folks at Netflix were always kind, when they actually interacted with her, and she’d jump at the chance to work with the company again. But, for now, she doesn’t need Netflix.

On July 17th, McConnell launched her own monthly YouTube series called From the Mind of Christine McConnell, alongside a Patreon account where fans can donate to fuel her twisted ambitions. In each episode, McConnell walks viewers through a ridiculously detailed goth-tinged project, all with the patience and chicness of a 1950s homecoming queen. So far, she’s transformed a $100 pull-out sofa into an expensive Victorian masterpiece, baked a 500-pound gingerbread version of the Winchester Mystery House, and created light-up fall decorations that would likely cost hundreds of dollars at any Spirit store.

On-screen, McConnell is soothing and stunning as she rips apart fabric, drills into wood and solders wires. She’s 38, though she appears ageless and wise, even when making jokes about keeping her cameraman — who happens to be her real-life husband — locked in a cage under the floorboards. This dichotomy between femininity and force is an important part of McConnell’s brand.

“I usually like looking terrible while I work,” she said. “Getting made up is such a chore, and I literally look like a corpse when I’m not made up. Having to paint on a human face every day that you want to work on something is not very fun.”

“I usually like looking terrible while I work.”

But, it’s worthwhile. Working with power tools and creating terrifying tableaus while embodying an idealized version of feminine beauty, McConnell is a living (undead, even) example of woman-driven strength. Think Rosie the Riveter, but in a hand-stitched floral sweater and high-rise skinny jeans. This message of empowerment is an unspoken, visual thread running through all of her work, and it comes completely naturally to McConnell.

“That all just comes from my mom,” she said. “She was a general contractor, and she was always doing really insane grunt-work type stuff but had blush on and lipstick and lacy blouses on…. I don’t mean to say anything not nice about men, but my mom told me from a very early age, ‘Just because they’re men doesn’t mean they know everything. You can know everything they know too.'”

McConnell is a self-described sponge, soaking up knowledge and mechanical skills at every stage of her life. On the Netflix show, for instance, she learned a lot about puppet-making and creature design simply by watching folks from the Jim Henson Company, who provided her furry, decomposing co-stars. All of this knowledge is piped into From the Mind of Christine McConnell, where McConnell herself is a one-woman construction crew, patisserie and host. She’s used to creating art on her own, photographing herself with her projects, editing the shots and sharing them online. She’s done a lot of branded work this way, baking a cake in the shape of a Xenomorph head for the launch of Alien: Covenant, and one for Mortal Kombat 11 that looked like an arcade cabinet with Raiden busting through the glass.

It’s simply not possible to do everything on her own for From the Mind of Christine McConnell. She already stars in, writes and edits the program, alongside fulfilling Patreon promises, a step that takes up a ton of time. Still, the show requires music and a cameraman, and that’s where her husband comes in. He helps with filming and editing, and he composes all of the music from scratch.

As McConnell has built up an online presence over the years, she’s kept her marriage on the down-low. The YouTube series is the first time many fans are learning about her relationship status.

“People like mystery, which I could maintain for a while,” she said. “But then I realized like, OK, he’s actually going to be contributing to this. It wouldn’t really be fair if I kept him completely shackled to the basement at all times.”

McConnell is unshackled, too. Without the demands of a studio like Netflix influencing her creativity, she’s free to tackle any project she wants to, in any way she wishes. And with Patreon, she has a stream of reliable income for the first time in her artistic career. Every month, more than 3,000 fans contribute to her page in $3 to $100 increments.

McConnell said she’s never had this kind of financial security before, even with the Netflix deal.

“I’m sure there are so many people that are successful social media stars, YouTube people, and they think having a show on Netflix is the answer to everything,” McConnell said. “They don’t know that they’re actually in such a better position to completely own their brands and have this totally new kind of income that didn’t exist 10 years ago. It’s just so much better.”

On top of Patreon support, the YouTube channel for From the Mind of Christine McConnell already has nearly 90,000 subscribers. With financial security and creative freedom at her fingertips, McConnell has big plans for her YouTube show. She’s going to make shoes from scratch and even jewelry — and we’re not talking about hobbyist bangles and necklaces. McConnell plans on melting metal to craft high-quality, bespoke pieces, most likely with a deliciously spooky twist.

That’s part of McConnell’s charm. She’ll start with an idea, like reupholstering a couch, and push its details to their absolute limits, ending up with a completely rebuilt, shaved down, re-covered and lovingly embellished piece of art that happens to double as furniture. She’ll soothingly talk you through the steps and make it seem easy. She’ll look fantastic while she does it. Just don’t pay attention to the quiet screaming emanating from under the stairwell — that’s only the cameraman.