As I step inside the room of Jessica Tulipe—a towering Viera with mahogany hair and flopsy ears—I’m surprised how unassuming it is. It’s decorated beautifully, with a bar and red plush seating, but it’s not the room I expected from a pro dominatrix. Then secret bookcase doors swing open, revealing hidden furniture—lanterns sunk inside an ottoman, their handles poking up to look like restraints. Wooden slats form a smaller room in the corner.
“Oh, this is a cage,” Jessica confirms. She sometimes leaves her clients there tied up. “You want them to think about you and you leave them with something at the end.”
Jessica is the head of entertainment at Phoenix Nights, a casino/club in Final Fantasy XIV that offers companionship and NSFW packages with its entertainers, known as Kings and Queens. When Phoenix Nights owner Masha opened the casino in 2021, its goal was an RP experience with gambling games. It’s grown into three storeys of activities: Eorzea’s own diet Vegas.
WHAT HAPPENS IN EORZEA
The top floor is an RP nightclub, with DJs on Twitch and creative drinks that mixologists make with emotes. The bottom floor is Phoenix Night’s moneymaker, with casino fixture Blackjack and original creations like Apple Crash and Phoenixmon (a play on Pokémon). The High Roller Casino Classic is broadcast to every patron, creating an exciting atmosphere. As I lurk around the tables I slowly witness one player lose millions of gil.
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Special Report- Stacked Deck - Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big.
Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big. Four years later, its successor Inkbound’s launch from Early Access was looking more like Sandwich Big.I’m not just saying that because of the mountain of lamb and eggplants I ate while meeting with developer Shiny Shoe over lunch, to feel out what the aftermath of releasing a game looks like in 2024. I mean, have I thought about that sandwich every day since? Yes. But also, the indie team talked frankly about the struggle of luring Monster Train’s audience on board for its next game.
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