A Swiftly Tilting Cameron
A Swiftly Tilting Cameron is Cameron's show on LoadingReadyLive, typically streaming at 6 PM PST/9 PM EST. The show follows Cameron's attempts to play various strategy games on the highest possible difficulty settings, with various results.
The game's title comes from a critically acclaimed young adult science fiction book A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle (the third book in the series that began with A Wrinkle in Time), which Cameron claims to have enjoyed as a child. The word "tilt" refers to "tilting out", a phrase commonly used in gaming to indicate one becoming so angry at their failure with a given game that their performance suffers, causing them to become even angrier, creating an endless downward spiral.
Cameron does not usually have any wingmen. Like Kathleen, he typically plays his own music via the streaming service RDIO instead of listening to the looping in-game music.
Though Cameron is not known to be an especially angry or aggressive person, his rage has already manifested several times on the stream. Instead of yelling or making frustrated gestures, Cameron's anger causes him to become extremely quiet, focused, and intense, with occasional outbursts of extraordinarily creative profanity and black humor. This state has been described as genuinely terrifying by many members of the onlooking chat.
Subscriber bonuses
Many of the crew members offer special incentives to those who undertake a $5/month subscription during their stream, usually a special greeting message in a signature style such as a "Kathleen commercial". Instead, Cameron offers any subscribers (including those who did not subscribe during his show) the ability to submit requests for special cosmetic modifications to game elements in their name, if such options are available; for example, subscribers were able to request specific names and cosmetic traits for soldiers in X-COM. Those subscriber soldiers are usually referred to as "Cameron Fodder", and have their own LRR forum signature bar.
Games
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
On launch night, Cameron played Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a spin-off of the popular Sid Meier's Civilization games involving planetary colonization.
X-COM
Throughout January, Cameron played X-COM: Enemy Within (the expanded edition of X-COM: Enemy Unknown), a tactical strategy game where the player leads a globally funded military organization tasked with warding off an alien invasion. Cameron played at "Impossible" difficulty, with "Ironman Mode" enabled (this created an autosave so that the player could not go back to a saved game from before where he made a poor decision and make a better one). He has racked up over 100 total dead soldiers (nicknamed "Cameron fodder" and "Lambs to the Lauder" by chat), many of which were customized to the specifications of subscribers. "XCAM" came to a close when Cam loaded his home file on stream and completed the final mission, whereupon the game crashed several times (giving new meaning to the phrase "Impossible difficulty").
Thief: The Dark Project
For nostalgia's sake, and with Thief (2014) on the horizon, Cam briefly played the original Thief, a stealth game where a cat burglar named Garrett must outsmart enemies and purloin valuables while armed with a blackjack and a variety of trick arrows.
Master of Orion 2
Civilization V
Beginning in late March, Cam played Civ V: Brave New World, a strategy game in which the player guides a chosen nation to global dominance through diplomacy, science, culture, or military might. His chosen difficulty is Emperor, because he finds the level of AI cheating at Immortal/Deity level to be excessive. His first leader was Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, with whom he aimed for a science victory and accidentally won through diplomacy instead. He also played two games with Wu Zetian of China.
Dark Souls
In late May, Cameron became the third crewmember to stream the relentlessly challenging action RPG Dark Souls. He focused on improving his mobility and dexterity rather than strength, choosing the Wanderer class and using curved swords like the scimitar.
A Swiftly Tilting Cameron Quotes