Visiting the Comic Con Stuttgart on Saturday

Here’s some info about my visit of the Comic Con Stuttgart next Saturday for our German readers:

Ich werde diesen Samstag, 1. Juli 2017, der Comic Con in Stuttgart einen Besuch abstatten. Allerdings nur als Besucher, nicht als Aussteller. Sollte es Leute geben, die Lust haben, mich zu treffen, mögen diese hier bitte einen kurzen Kommentar hinterlassen. In dem Fall könnte man einen Treffpunkt ausmachen. Ich werde zum Beispiel meine Kollegin Sarah Burrini beim Stand des Comic-Verlags “Edition Kwimbi” besuchen.


Sandra and Woo game reviewed by Adventure Gamers

Adventure Gamers has published a review of our PC adventure game Sandra and Woo in the Cursed Adventure. It got an overall score of 3.5/5 stars. I think the reviewer Peter Mattsson did a very good job, giving a nuanced overview of the games’ strengths and weaknesses. So check it out if you’re interested in the game. Here is a summary of his pros and cons from the article:

  • (+) Lovely cartoon graphics
  • (+) Faithful to the original comic
  • (+) Quirky characters
  • (+) Interesting story and setting
  • (+) Challenging puzzles
  • (+) Substantial length
  • (-) Some puzzle solutions come out of left field
  • (-) Setting feels underused
  • (-) Minigames more frustrating than fun

Poll results

From 2 July 2016 to 10 June 2017, the following nine polls ran on the Sandra and Woo website. They received over 1,500 votes in average and now it’s time to present the results.

Poll from 2 July 2016:

Poll Nr. 91

I think this was a quite strong roster of story arcs. These results always show that one can’t fully trust the comment section. While I’m not really surprised that the story arc of Larisa sending a nude pic to Landon won the vote, it also featured a few strips that drew some criticism in the comment section. The story arc of Yuna’s botched attempt to get a math scholarship didn’t get a big reaction in the comment section, but it received a really solid 15% in this poll despite the big competition. My personal favorite was the “Under a Killer Balloon II” arc. But it was maybe a little too weird for some people.

Poll from 2 July 2016:

Poll Nr. 92

65% of our readers read 7 other comedy webcomics at most. I think this shows that it’s hard to maintain the quality of a comedy comic over a long time period since if the average quality of comedy webcomics were really good, that number would certainly be lower. I know how it’s a daily struggle to come up with funny or clever strip every week.

Poll from 2 July 2016:

Poll Nr. 93

The amount of people also reading Gaia has gone down a bit from the previous two times this question was asked when 61% and then 59% answered with “Yes.” However, one probably shouldn’t read too much into such small changes. I’m sure that some people answering “Yes.” back then didn’t want to answer the same question again. So I think the number hovers consistently around 60% and no more polls about this issue are needed.

Poll from 2 July 2016:

Poll Nr. 94

I’m a bit surprised that a whopping 71% never went to any comic convention. I thought it would be closer to 50%. But I guess many readers live in areas where there just isn’t one worth going. I personally had a very good time on the Comic Con Stuttgart last year and I’ll be going again this year on Saturday, 1 July 2017.

Poll from 24 December 2016:

Poll Nr. 95

The amount of Leicester City or Chicago Cubs fans among our readers is really low. I too still remember the time when “journalist” was a reputable profession, maybe even one of the most reputable ones! That’s definitely one thing that was better in the past. I’ve stopped reading all the big German online magazines. Apart from some rare nuggets every now and then, they have become complete garbage.

Poll from 24 December 2016:

Poll Nr. 96

While some people who didn’t even know what a visual novel is may not have answered this poll, there’s still a considerable amount of readers who already have played/read a visual novel already. 623 (46%) have even played more than one. That’s more than I expected.

Poll from 24 December 2016:

Poll Nr. 97

This must be one of the least surprising answer distributions of any poll we’ve run on Sandra and Woo.

Poll from 24 December 2016:

Poll Nr. 98

Although the 1990s when you needed a new PC every 3 years or so to stay up-to-date are long gone, the average age of the PCs of our readers is quite low. If you subtract the people without a PC, the number of people having bought one in the last two years is quite high. I personally would be in the “Up to 6 years old” bracket. It was a high-end PC back then so it still has a solid performance.

Poll from 24 December 2016:

Poll Nr. 99

Only 15% of our readers don’t own a laptop. I expected a significantly higher number, at least 25%. And the average age is even lower than that of our readers’ PCs.

There are four new polls that appear randomly in the voting widget in the left sidebar:

  • Which of the following story arcs did you like the most?
  • Cloud is in a lot of strips this year. How do you feel about that?
  • Who is your favorite secondary character (> 40 appearances)?
  • Who is your favorite regular minor character (< 40 appearances)?

Beware of Rice Digital!

Think twice before buying anything from Rice Digital, a store for Japanese video games! I bought the “Steins; Gate 0 Amadeus Edition” from them. The extras are quite neat, however the gaming disc was missing in the box. Something like that can happen, I guess. However, they subsequently ignored all my emails to their support email address. What kind of customer service is that?

I guess I now have to search eBay for used versions of a PlayStation 4 gaming disc of “Steins; Gate 0” since I certainly won’t give this dishonest business any more money! (The publisher PQube was also unhelpful.)

Update [6 June 2017]: All right. Finally, someone from Rice Digital talked to me on Facebook and they’re now sending me a disc.

This is really a common problem in today’s world of business. Many companies offer very good products and services. But better pray to God that nothing goes wrong. Because in that case, it will often be an absolute pain in the ass until the issue gets resolved. Nobody is quite as bad as internet service providers in this regard, of course.


Iraqi refugee gets it right

I found the following opinion piece/sketch by the Iraqi satirist and human-rights activist Faisal Saeed Al Mutar to be exceptionally witty and to the point:

Facebook post by Faisal Saeed Al Mutar