Hi, Fidelity

~ mellopanther

Otaku are sometimes overly-prone to stricture; things must be a certain way or else that thing is invalid. This often shows itself in vitriolic fandom debates and other dark cervices on the Internet, and while some concepts should be universal (like you should never affix -gate to something perceived as “scandalous”, because 1) making it a -gate is not how that etymology works 2) most scandals of import don’t have -gate on the end and 3) you’re just an asshole trying to harass other people over nothing) there should be room to play.

I had dinner with someone recently and there was a discussion about fidelity to the source material in game shows and it was brought up about how I was a stickler for things. I can’t personally recall anything I specifically did or commented in the past, but I am certainly not that way now. Between my Name That Tune not really resembling any NTT from the past, my Wheel of Fortune subtly changing forms almost every go-round, and variants of Press Your Luck and Pass The Buck that don’t even share the true names of the source, I think I’m more than willing to stray from the source every now and again.

To be honest, my view is that strict adherence to the source material is not a mandate to me, but a conscious choice. If I choose to do something to the letter of the law, it’s because I wanted to do it. Stylistic choices, rules, and rituals are only to be used if they make sense to me and help create a better product. Otherwise, I’m going to do what I can to ape the game show experience, even if it’s not a singular game show experience. For example, my newest passion project involves celebrities, trivia, and bluffing. Now there are several easy options (and one not-so-easy) but instead of resorting to some other format wholesale, I’m trying to take things from other shows and incorporate it into the original format to make it work because a) it’s more fun for me and b) the audience isn’t going to care about the small stuff if the product is entertaining.

Too bad I won’t be doing anything like this for Anime Weekend Atlanta, but there’s always more shows around the bend.

The London Spitfire & the Near-Uselessness of Having A Regular Season

~ mellopanther

Many things can matter in sports, but few matter more than championships, and what matters to the Overwatch League’s London Spitfire is that they won the inaugural championship, beating the Philadelphia Fusion in what looked like a walkover. The story of the Spitfire’s season seems straightforward: after winning the first of OWL’s four stages and finishing strong in the second, London went a pedestrian 9-11, finishing tied for fifth in a league where only 6 teams make the playoffs. However, once the regular season ended they demolished their opponents, dropping only 5 of the 24 maps they competed in, and finished playing literally their best Overwatch of the season.

Continue reading “The London Spitfire & the Near-Uselessness of Having A Regular Season” →

The Shanghai Dragons Are Bad But May Not Be *That* Bad?

~ mellopanther

I love math. I regularly post stories from FiveThirtyEight on my Facebook page, and Bill Barnwell was a frequent read back in the days of Grantland. Games and statistics are passions of mine. That’s why even though I find video game culture to be lacking, I get excited for things like e-sports, because it means a wider population can enjoy the fun and thrill of sport while being disassociated from the various stigma surrounding traditional athletics. It’s even more fun to see the concept evolve and embrace old cliches like they’re new.

So when I see stuff like the Shanghai Dragons of Overwatch League be so horribly bad, the wheels get turning. I had lamented that I no longer have a platform to be analytical on otaku culture, but then I realized: this is my site. I can do whatever I want. So let’s get dangerous and do the math.

Continue reading “The Shanghai Dragons Are Bad But May Not Be *That* Bad?” →

MCU: MelloPanther Convention Universe?

~ mellopanther

Long continuity seems to be the fad of the day, and after a dozen years, I’ve seemed to reach my own Phase Three not too long ago. Now that I’m starting to consistently do heavier workloads for bigger conventions, it’s time to reassess the state of some of my programming. My recommendation panels are likely evergreen as new things come and go across my radar, but some of my how-to’s need to evolve if they are to stay in rotation. I wouldn’t necessarily call them reboots or sequels and they’re a little of both. But for sake of brevity, I really should consider them separate works. The problem is there’s only so much space to put things on this site while keeping things clean. That’s why any future panel spin-offs will be included on the page for the original panel, simply listed below with an updated description. Anime Midwest is going to be the first to get the full MCU experience with new variants of I Can Japan and The “How To Make A Panel” Workshop. In addition to those updates, I updated my resume to display my work history in a much nicer-looking tabular format. More updates and changes to come, as always. Excelsior!

A Thought While Browsing A Shop About To Go Out Of Business

~ mellopanther

One of my pie in the sky goals for MP is to have the ultimate portable system to run my programs on. This would include a computer, mini displays, peripherals, all the bells and whistles I would need to put on a presentation or a game show. I already know that what I would need would be able to fit inside a suitcase, but now I see that not only are PC towers smaller that ever, but there are now hard suitcases that fit under an airplane seat.

And that got me to thinking…

Anyway, Setsucon is in the books. I wheel into Zipcon this Saturday at 3PM.

Fandom Feuders On The Rampage…2!

~ mellopanther

It’s been a whirlwind weekend if you haven’t noticed, but time marches on and I have a couple of conventions coming up, and at least one of them is including Fandom Feud. Last year it was a success at Anime Midwest in more ways than one, and I want to keep up the momentum with another survey. This time, I’ve streamlined the process so that it’s one survey of 40 questions divided again into nerdy and nerdy, but those who don’t feel comfortable with their otaku knowledge will be able to opt out and go straight to the end of the survey. Remember, if you tell 10 friends and they tell 10 friends, then you’re probably going to get an overlap, but it also means that I’ll have plenty of responses to do as many as four more games!

As always, thank you for your support. You can take the survey here: https://goo.gl/forms/dlg2HlHrd5yfRqAg1

Hello world! Again!

~ mellopanther

So this is a major step. This is my first post published from the brand new mellopanther.com! Not “dot wordpress dot com,” just “dot com.” This allows me to evolve a little bit as I adjust my business and marketing models (and yes, I do have them, stop laughing). All the old posts have been migrated, and I’m still trying to re-jigger a few things (particularly the sidebar) but all the new stuff will be posted here.

Speaking of which, watch this space, because I’ll have something new to share this very weekend!

Doge Gone?

~ mellopanther

As much as it makes sense to reference Japanese money at Japanese culture conventions, I’ve stuck to dogecoin for most of my game shows that deal with dollar values. The one I prominently use it with is Wheel of Fortune, but I’ve also used it for Millionaire and my variant of Press Your Luck. My original reasons for using dogecoin were twofold: the inherent goofiness of the cryptocurrency allows me to stand out from anyone who uses the yen, plus when I started using it in 2014, a million dogecoin was around $100-200, which meant I could throw out ridiculously large numbers but stay within my budgetary needs.

That may need to change soon. While the strength of dogecoin has been on the rise for about four weeks, this weekend the price has skyrocketed. From mid-2014 to early this year, 1 dogecoin had been worth about 0.01 or 0.02 cents. (Yes, we are talking about 1-2% of one penny.) Over the past 24 hours, that same dogecoin has been trading as high as 0.78 cents. Just to put that in perspective, the weakest the yen has been during that same time frame is 0.80, although it’s currently trading around 0.89.

doge graph
Source: CoinGecko

With my next game show still a month away, I’ve made some adjustments to my games in the hope that there is a regression to the mean, but what happens if there isn’t a regression? What happens if dogecoin overtakes the yen in terms of purchasing power? To be honest, I’m not sure. Wheel is probably my favorite game to do at conventions within driving distance, and that will be the most adversely affected game. Do I go back into the archives and pull out Wheel values that haven’t been around since before most attendees were born? (This is a friendly reminder that Wheel has not been a daytime network show since 1991.) Do I start transitioning back to lecture panels and comedy? I don’t know, and hopefully I won’t have to.