Playing God and the future of VS

Today we took the kids to the Ontario Science Centre, and had a ball as Gdaygirl and Gdayboy discovered all sorts of scientiffic stuff, ranging from manipulation of sound waves to genetic determination of skin tone to how a hover chair thingie moves (I got to steer…). 

While Gdaygirl was playing God and designing new creatures, the state of our beloved VS System rolled through my head, along with ponderings on what future we have, if any, considering the continued silence from UDE.

Naturally, this also brought to mind the future of Lost Hemisphere.

I think it’s hard not to look at the state of VS and be hopeful for any good word out of UDE at this stage. For a year now we’ve been butting heads against walls and striving to be upbeat and positive in the face of continued withdrawals of support and information about the future of the game from UDE.

Spade a spade, it’s bloody bleak.

We’ve for the promise of MEQ, but we have no word whatsoever about future expansions, nothing in UDE emails, nothing on UDE’s website, no responses to anything at all really, from the powers that be.

Add to that the collapse of VSRealms, that has STILL not been restored to full functionality (I’m sorry, but it simply doesn’t take two months to instal a forum software patch), and the community is in pain. The loss of PM’s is dramatically interfering with the trading community, and the loss of email notifications to thread replies? I can’t tell you how much less I find myself on VSRealms without these reminders.

Now, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy our game still, it certainly doesn’t mean we should curl up and die. No, rather, we can play God, so to speak, and breathe life into VS ourselves.

With projects like DCU out there, we have the potential within us to keep VS alive indefinitely. To that end, I’m hardly surprised that we’re seeing the more creative souls among us looking at developing their own expansions and essential collections.

This is pretty much what I’ve been doing in my spare time with WarmaVS, after all.

I want to encourage those of us who love the game to support endeavours like this, to help playtest, to be open minded about new card concepts while also being mindful of not breaking the bloody game out of sheer fanboyism for whatever Manga series is tickling your fancy.

All that said, I confess to feeling my own enthusiasm for VS drained by the constant doomsayers (and yes, I recognise that I’ve spouted doom above). It’s hard to remain chipper and upbeat after an entire freakin’ year of second-guessing and wishful thinking… and no, I don’t blame that entirely on Aaron for not having Sunday’s article ready (*shakes fist*)

To that end, in order to keep the Lost Hemisphere alive and active and hopefully somewhat vibrant, there’ll be a little shuffling. VS will still be the core of the blog, but you can expect to see other gaming references and posts more frequently, notably  Warmachine/Hordes, since as a gaming enterprise it’s captured Spud’s and my attention at the moment.

This will include stuff like painting updates, battle reports, and there’s plans for a series of articles that will probably go up once a week for several months as a crew of us tackle new armies, new painting projects, and expand bit by bit together in an effort to actually get to 1000 pts of fully painted armies.

I know many of our readership couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss about Warmachine/Hordes, but I hope that you’ll stick with us regardless, that you’ll continue to enjoy our ramblings and hang out for the VS articles at least. Spud and TheDerangedBear have at least two more podcasts for you, in the very least, before they’re done with their MEV review.

One way or another, we appreciate your continued patronage – well, I do, Spud’s only in it for the skittles – and look forward to riding out this next stage of life in the Lost Hemisphere.