Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Gary Whitta Rants About Video Games & Movies - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

We had Gary Whitta join us to talk about whatever he wants, and as always, he does not disappoint. - Start - Housekeeping - Gary Looks Back at the Xcast - Memory Card Memories - Writing for Video Games - Ads - The Akira Movie and More Gary Stories Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time for the annual Kind of Funny membership drive. This year is half over and we've been busy. We've created a membership option that gets you all of the core content at our lowest price ever. We've moved the Kind of Funny Games cast to a daily format and you've gotten more than 130 Gregways in 2024 alone. If you love what we do and haven't gotten a membership or let your membership lapse, we're asking you to support the 11-person independent small business you love, even if it's just for the month. We've even added a limited amount of pledge upgrades on Patreon that would get your A Burger's dozen into Kind of Funny Games Daily.

This month, look out for free Gregways from the vault on the weekends and weekly public happy hours where we take Patreon member calls live for everyone as previews of what a membership gets you each and every month. We couldn't do this without you. So thank you for your support. What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Gamescast live for Tuesday, August 6th, 2020. of course I am your host Tim Gettys and today I am joined by Blessing Adioia Jr. Good day, Tim. Andy Cortez.

Good morning. And the man of the hour, Gary Witta. Hello. Gary, how are you? I'm all right. I think my first ever time doing this particular games cast. It is. I've done obviously other shows here, but this might be like the first time doing this.

It's a fun thing, Gary. Every day after Games Daily, we hang out here, talk about games for about an hour live on YouTube and Twitch. Yeah, and the free form nature of that, Because, you know, even when there is a structure, I don't pay any attention to it. Of course, of course. The fact that this is just like talk about whatever you want to talk about. So is this going to be your most buttoned up show?

Are you going to read a script the entire time? You just got to break the rules, right, Gary? Completely on script. So let's see what happens. Let's see what happens. Anything can happen here because the point of this episode, the topic of this episode, is just letting Gary talk about what he wants to. And I want to make it very clear.

Gary Wooda, ranting doesn't need to be the patented Gary Wooda going off on something he absolutely hates or is upset about. It could just be him. about something you loves. Yeah, that was the only thing I said earlier in a sense of grade, he said, do you want to come in and we'll do a game class as just Gary Rants about games? But like, when you see me

ranting, that's not something that is like, it's usually triggered by something. Like, you'll push a button. But like, you can't, like, put a microphone in a moment and just do it. Like it has to come about organically. So you never know. We'll see what happens. It's like, Nick, it's a stand-up comedian.

You can't just walk up to him and be like, be funny. Right. In fact, you can't ever as expected to be funny. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's not how it works. Barrett gets it. Yeah. But you know what? This is kind of funny games cast where we get together every day to just have fun conversations about video games. If you have any super chats, if you have any questions you want to ask Gary, if you want to give him something to react to, again, it doesn't need to be negative. It could be whatever you want.

If there's any burning questions that you need to know the answer to from Gary Wood. Please super chat them in and we'll get to them throughout the show. And then right after this, the good Gary Times roll on. They're going to be playing hell divers for the stream, which should be a, ton of fun. Gary's Game of the Year so far. My game of the year, yeah. If you're a kind of funny member, you can get an episode of Gregway later. Today we're brought to you by Monster Hunter Now and BetterHelp. Two ads that our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs and Delaney Twining, will not have to hear. We appreciate you and your support so much. But for everyone else,

we'll talk about those later. Let's get into it. The topic of the show. This is all new to me. I've never seen that before. That's wonderful. Well, you were on the rival podcast. You all had a lot of beef. You know. Let's start there, Gary Wooda. You used to be on our shows at least once a week. Over the last couple of years, you've moved around what show that might be. I would do a regular, I was on one day of the week, games daily.

Winter Wednesday. Whenever it would be, it moved around. But Wednesday was the day. And then I obviously did Xcast for a while. And then I just kind of flowed in and out as needed. I mean, you were excast the entire time, right? Yeah, me and Mike were the only, we were the, we were the, just, from the very beginning.

In fact, it started with me, if you remember, complaining about how PlayStation had a podcast and there was no Xbox equivalent. And so Greg said, if we hit a certain number on a particular fundraiser, we'll do an X-cast pilot. And we did it. And it was originally started off with me,

Mike, and Alana, as you recall. And then Alana went off to Sony. Paris stepped in. And we did that for a while. And that was fun too. So now that we're a couple months removed from it because we stopped in May, looking back on the Xcast,

what does that mean to you? I mean, it's funny because I don't particularly align with one platform over another, but like if I had to express a slight preference, I like the Xbox. Historically, that is just what I've liked. And sometimes you can't always put your finger on why you like one platform over another,

but there's definitely a sentimental attachment. I had an Xbox, an OG Xbox. I was actually editor briefly, of the official Xbox magazine back in the day. I was the guy that reviewed the original Halo for the launch issue of the original Halo. I don't think I knew that. I got to see Alan played it.

And I went up there as a PC, I was editor-in-chief of PC gamer at the time, and they asked me to go up there and play it. And I kind of went in with my arms folded, because there's a lot of, there still is to this day, but there certainly was back then, a lot of snobbery about first-person shooters on PC, and console and whether or not, you know, you can ever really be the first-person shooter on

controller when a mouse and keyboard is offers like so much more control and precision. And there's arguments either way. I used to be a big mouse and keyboard game. Now I mostly play shooters on controller and I'm much more agnostic about it. But what turned me on to in the first place was the original halo. I went up there kind of when my arms folded very much as a mouse and keyboard guy going because they had tried it before, right? There had been other first-person shooters prior to.

I think, like, Socom had already been out at that point and maybe Killzone a couple of PlayStation games. And, like, it just never, you didn't have the, it never felt, if you, if you come from mouse and keyboard, this is like, come on, this is a joke. This is like a baby's toy. I'd say it was only like maybe Golden Eye. Yeah, right?

Gold-eye. Yeah, I can't really think, because Halo for me, it was always the one that was like, oh, shit, this doesn't feel like the other experiences I've had. Yeah, and if you definitely were coming to it from that PC, you know, superiority complex that a lot of PC gamers

had and still have, especially about mouse and keyboard. Like, you look, what is it? Like, what is this? This is not, you can't play a shooter like that. And I went in there,

like, needing a fair amount of convincing. And they gave me the controller, which at the time was the big old Duke, as you remember. And within a couple of hours, I was like, something about the way,

you know, I'm sure there's much, much has been written about why it worked and it didn't in the past. but something about the way they calibrated, the controls or whatever. It just finally it worked and it clicked with me. And after about an hour, I remember just playing that first,

remember the first Halo mission when you're fighting your way off the ship. And I'm going, oh, shit, no, they cracked it. Like, this actually works. I can play this. And it's fun. And I understand it. I get it. And that was kind of the gateway drug for me feeling like it was okay to play shooters

with a controller on a console. I said, now that's how I play. any shooter that comes out, even if it's also available on PC with mouse and keyboard controls, I generally prefer to play on controller. What's your controller of choice these days? So going back,

one of the reasons why I just prefer the Xbox controller. It's just, again, it's not, I wouldn't say that the Xbox controller is better. I never say, like, it's better than. I just say I prefer it different for everyone. I think the Jill sense, because I never liked, the thing, I never likes the Jill Shock controller.

The original one, after they added the thumbsticks, the dual shot like two, three, four, whatever. That basic, they never felt like it was really properly contoured to the hand. It never fit in my hand in the way. I always, and this to this day, still true, preferred the offset sticks to the sticks that are in parallel. Oh, man. For a while, what it had was I had a, so I could play on PlayStation, I had, and I still don't know why they should offer this more often. like the new super elite the Sony version of the dual sense version

of the Xbox Elite controller the really expensive one I feel like they should offer this because I had an astro controller for a while where you could swap out the D-pad and the left thumb stick and make them offset so you could if you preferred that offset because my thumbs just go like that right

they're offset they're not here they naturally go here because that's just how I'm used to it and the D-Pads below it not above it and it's just muscle memory it's what you're used to I have very fond nostalgic memories of Xbox Live I personally don't think either console is better than the other. Technologically, it's a push. Watch any digital foundry video.

They're like, it's the same game. Like, neither console ever really has much of an advantage over the other. Software, obviously a different story. I think Sony still has the edge in software. But like, just sentimentally, nostalgically, I grew up with the Xbox Live ecosystem. Xbox 360 is still one of the greatest game consoles of all time. Still very, very fondly remembered.

It's just kind of like where my heart is. I have all the consoles. I play them all legally. If there's a good game on any system, I'll go play it. But, you know, the console wars stuff. I understand why it works, the tribalism. You buy one console over another. You need to feel like you have made the right decision in picking one over the other.

And so you dig in, right? And that's how you get this kind of tribalism. It's been around forever. But I'm just happy to play games wherever they are. But if a game is, you know, you see it all the time in the kind of funny game codes, like who wants a code for this game or another, I'll always ask for the Xbox because I know they're going to be the same game

on each console. I just simply the controller. I just like the Xbox controller. I think the current iteration of the Xbox controller is the best controller ever made. I think the dual sense is more advanced than a lot of the stuff that it does with the better haptic feedback.

And every time I was playing Spider-Man too recently and when like the sound, when you crack up one of the crystals and it comes out of the controller, it's like, oh, that's delightful. And it does so many clever little things. And I really think Xbox has got some stuff to catch up on there. Like the Xbox,

I do hope there is going to be a new iteration of the Xbox controller that adds the better haptics and stuff like that. But like, I've started with Atari 2,600 joystick. I had, I started with this, right? And I've had the paddles. I've had, you know, a Microsoft Sidewinder, which was the precursor to the Xbox control. I remember the Sidewinder?

Yeah. I've played every single, everything. I've tried everything. And there's no, to me, to pick up and just instantly get to grips with than know how it works, the Xbox controller is still the best one ever designed on a basic level. Andy, I've noticed on the game codes thing, the system that we have at kind of funny, you also have been getting a lot of Xbox games. You normally go PC first, but I notice on the console side, you request Xbox. I've just been interested in asking you, like, what is it that

is making you do that? It's kind of exactly with Gary. It's the controller. And also, I know that I'll likely have less issues if it's a multiplayer game that maybe me, and Mike want to stream either here at work or at home or whatever. And Mike always obviously goes Xbox. So that's usually my preference as well. My PlayStation, my PS5 is my like exclusives machine pretty much. My Xbox is like my everything machine that it, you know, obviously I primarily game on PC, but whenever there's a code that maybe the game isn't available on PC or it's a game

coming out where I'm like, we'll see if it runs well on PC at launch. Let me get it on Xbox as well. Because, yeah, when I'm done either playing that game on Xbox, then it's like, all right, let me wind down for the night. I'm uploading my YouTube video. My Xbox is still on. Now I'm going to watch Netflix or HBO Max or whatever. And of course, that's the other big thing. It's just like where your friends are, right?

Historically, that's where it used to be. Most of my friends were on Xbox Live. It killed me. And this is why I've been such a bore about crossplay over the years and why I'm so glad that it's finally starting to become more and more. It's not in any way as mainstream as it needs to be, but it's getting better. right hell divers when I play I'm playing 50% pretty much with PC and PlayStation 5 and hopefully they'll add Xbox to the mix as well at some point

but I remember when the division I used to love the division still one of my favorite games I hope I don't think they ever will but I really wanted to make like another division game division and division so I fucking loved those games god this guy's on it right now and it broke my heart that the player my friends were split right down the middle between Xbox and PlayStation like you guys are all on PlayStation

but I also had a big group of people that I was playing with Xbox and I could never get them together because there's this bullshit arbitrary, invisible barrier between them. And I don't understand all the technical reasons why sometimes it's not easy to do that. Some games seem to have no trouble doing other games. Oh, it's a big problem for us. But like, it's just so, you know, it takes me back to the days of like HD, DVD and Blu-ray and like you've got to have one or the other and they can't, they can't possibly like cross over one another. We should all be, we should, we should just all be able to play together regardless of what system we own. And so seeing cross-play,

and seeing cross progression become more mainstream. And it becoming, you know, I feel like it used to be, you came across as a bit entitled if you wanted a game to be crossplay because it just wasn't very normal and it very rarely happened. It was like a rare thing. Now it's so commonplace. Like, it's, I feel like you're justified in and expect that you have every right to expect crossplay at this point.

And again, there's, I think it's more, basically, would you say that like when it comes to multiplayer, multi-format titles, crossplay is now more. the norm than not. Yes. Yeah. So we've crossed that barrier, right? And it's only going to get better.

And it's good for business, right? If you can play with more people, you're going to sell more copies of the games. I'm sure there are people that have, like, not bought a particular game because they've got friends on PlayStation, they would like to play with them, but they only have an Xbox. So they can't get in.

But if you can sort out the cross play, cross progression, I think, is less important, but still also really, it's so one. The cloud, this is the other thing I love. Let's keep it positive. Fucking cloud save. man. What a wonderful thing that is. Sometimes it gets really annoying

when you get like the conflicts and O'Lea's been playing Horizon Forbidden West on two different playstations and sometimes it won't find the most recent version of the save and you have to remember to like make sure you quit out properly or whatever so it uploads the most recent cloud save. But like look at a system where it really

works well like I have a steam deck and I've been playing Balatro which is my other favorite game of the year going back and forward between playing on my steam deck and playing on my PC and playing on whatever Steamlink device I have in front of me. And it just, you know, you can pick it up and play. It's always the same, the game just follows you around wherever you are. It's almost the most recent version of the game you've been playing.

And that is something, again, I'm old enough to remember when that, but that's like, magic. Like, you, like, memory, remember memory cards? I don't know it's just sound like kind of old man on a porch, but like fucking memory cards and having to, like, take that with you and put you, bring in my save game with me. It's all a thing of the past. When we play Hell Divers today, I'll log into Steam with my QR code on the app. It'll find, you know, it'll find my character.

And I'll be, you know, I'll have all my levels and all my shit on it. And it'll just be ready to go. And it's so easy. We complain all the time about all the shit in video games that's broken. And there is a lot to complain about. But every now and again, I think it's nice to sit back and count your blessings and remember, like, just how far we've come and all the things that even 10 years ago, we would have thought, oh, surely not that that's sorcery.

but we just take it for granted now. Totally. I think about as I've been kind of re-experiencing Jagged Asian Inquisition, people might chat would be like, oh, I just booted it up and my save from Xbox is there

from eight years, nine years ago, whatever. It's like, it's so wild that it just kind of pops up in the Xbox ecosystem. I'm always blown away by that. But going back to the crossway thing real quick. Real quick before you go, just staying on memory cards.

How crazy is it that the PS2 game boxes had like a memory card slot? Like, they had to be. make custom DVD cases. For every game team, it's kind of insane. Every box had the memory card slide. That's wild, bad. It's not necessary. Yeah, there's so much plastic. I never played

on PlayStation, I had a PlayStation 2, but I know, I don't think I have if I ever had a memory card. I did have the, the chunky one that came with the original Xbox. It was more like a, it looked like a little, one of those little travel sticks to roll on deodorant, like you, that you plugged in. But like, let me, a quick bit of a trivia

for you. I think I'm right in remembering this. Do you remember what the capacity was of a PlayStation memory card. 8 megabytes? 8 megabytes. 8 mb. And that's obviously nothing.

Literally nothing. I bought, and this is the other thing that makes me sound old, but honestly, I think I've been around long enough to appreciate just how amazing this shit has gotten. I bought a USB thumb drive the other day, an SSD

flash drive thing, Samsung. I swear this big, and I paid maybe 30 bucks for it, 256 fucking gigabytes. And I'm looking at it going, how the fuck is that even possible? Like, how is that even possible? I love it, man.

I think storage is the one piece of tech that definitely, like, continues to get more and more wacky with the size and things like that. The funny thing about, like, the storage and all that stuff, like, the old things always look like something. It looked like I would store the knock list on it, like, from Mission Impossible One. That's how weird and archaic these little devices were. Or it looked like UMD. Remember the other one? What was, so 8 megabytes. And again, you have to remind me here, because I never played much on PlayStation 2.

Could you max that out? Oh, yeah. Was it like a maximum number of saves you could have on it? Well, it means based on memory, right? So like, if you build up. How much data is there in a say? I imagine that a save file is generally pretty trivial in terms of size, right? It must have been like 15 games worth of saves.

Yeah, some like that. And then there was games like the Tony Hawk series where there's creative parks, creative skaters. And like you can start, those would take up their own slots. and like the big Final Fantasy games would like take up more slots than one like yeah it it filled up when I was first gaming on PS1 I I had the type of family that like would buy the game for me for Christmas but they weren't going to buy me the memory card or like they didn't see that as an as a necessity so I got really good at the intro to the Jurassic Park

Lost World video game where you started off as a little compi cephal the little compi dinners super super super were small ones. And I played that level over and over because I didn't have a memory card. And that was, it was almost like, this is going to be a weird, um, weird analogy, but stay with me. Um, Kyrie Irving basketball player, right? Really, really good underneath the rim because he only his home basketball backboard was like broken in half. So he got really creative at only, like, using certain parts of the backboard or whatever. And that was like me. I got really good at this drastic part loss. I mean, I've often thought that you're the Kyrie of Jurassic Park. It's weird to think about it.

Not that long ago, right? You could buy a console, like a PlayStation, or even a PlayStation 2, because there's only PlayStation 2. They started having, like, you know, in 360s, started on board memory, right? Where it would just save it internally. That you could buy a game console out of the, bring it home with a video game,

but didn't come with a memory card, right? They weren't packed in. Unless you bought that additional thing, you could not save your fucking game. Unless you were willing to sit there and play all through in one session or leave the machine on and God forbid, you accidentally turn it off. You could not do something as basic as saving your game out of the box.

You had to buy additional hardware to do that. Go for it. I also say, well, that was me with the N64 a lot. Like, the Insta4, there were certain games that required. I forget what it was called, because it wasn't the expansion pack. It was a memory card. Was it just the memory pack?

I think that's what it was, because you put it in the controller, right? Yeah, it went in the controller. Yeah, and I never had one of those. And so there are certain games. I remember I played... What went in the front? The expansion pack?

The expansion pack. Do you play D.K. On top of that 64? Yeah. That was for perfect dark Majora's mask. DK.K. Expansion pack went on the, went in the top.

Yeah. But on the front of the GameCube, it was only the four controller. Ben 64, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're talking of GameCube. So I'm thinking of GameCube. Yeah, GameCube underneath had a whole bunch of, like, Ethernet ports and, like, adapter thing.

So the expansion pack was marketed as almost like a pro, like, oh, you can play more advanced games with it. I think in reality, there are certain games that are just bugged. Like, DK 64. I think they had chipped in. We're like, oh shit, you actually can't play this

without the expansion pack because there would just be a bug that we couldn't fix. And so they were like, oh yeah, well, here's the expansion pack to play it with because it's a big game, it's an advanced game,

but really it was like, it just fixed a bug. It had extra RAM in it, essentially. It was just like, we need this. Speaking of like save games, I just,

I have that weird nostalgia, Gary, where I was rarely buying or, I was rarely owning games as a kid, right, but was renting a shitload of games. Like every weekend was let's go to the rental store.

Mom and Dad are going to rent a movie. Me and my brother are going to rent a video game. And to think of that, there was a concept that you would rent a game and it would have somebody else to save on it. Oh, right. You know what I mean? Some of the games that save was on the cartridge, right? So, like, you'd get this random thing.

It's like, oh, they're halfway through the game on this one. This Legend of Zelda is like, you know, they have 16 stars or 16 hearts or whatever. And that was such a weird, archaic thing to think about. That was like the norm. I mean, I'll take that a step further of growing up in San Francisco, which is obviously major metropolitan area. Like our blockbusters were popping off. Like there was a, it was a, the blockbuster near the house I grew up and was very popular and was always the first one in SF to get the new video games and to get all that stuff. So like gamers in SF would flock there.

And I didn't have money to buy the game. So I'm renting these games. And I would play and save and return it and then have to go back and hope I got the cartridge before someone else did. because there was only three save files and the chance of them deleting my... So I literally would... Did you mark it with like a little sharpie? I literally would do things like that to find it.

But even when I remember any time I would rent a game from Blockbuster, I would never use the first save file. I would always choose like file two or file three to save so that if someone else... They're going to overwrite the first one. So I was like, you gotta be safe here. But that's why it's a... In that case, better to have the save on a memory car

that you can just keep at home. Yeah. And when the cartridge comes back, you play your save. days that wasn't even a thing. So back in the day did people have like lots of memory cards with like little labels on them that showed you like this is my saves

for this game and that game? The PS2 literally had a Space Force stickers on the memory card. It was almost like a 3.5 inch floppy disk right? Like a like a cassette or whatever. I just remember like the one rich kid at school who had the PS2 memory card and we're like oh shit that's really cool. I knew a rich kid later found out just

into very family into very illegal things he had a memory card for every PS2 game. And so he would bring his, like, PS2 games to our house, and it'd be, like, 10 games with, like, all the different DVD cartridges. He'd open up each one and have the memory card, which is the least functional thing ever, but there was nothing

cooler. I mean, because you kind of had to get one, right? You needed it. Yeah. They were not cheap. I mean, all the PlayStation accessories during the PS2 era, what, compared to their rivals and compared to just like... With like 40 plus, 50? Yeah, it was like $50. Yeah, it was like $50. For eight megabytes, too. Yeah. That's crazy. That's true as well. I mean, I remember

I could not afford that shit. And, uh, for my PS1, I never got the official PlayStation memory card because it was just way too pricey. I ended up having to get one that was like on some deep, deep sale from the same blockbuster I'm talking about. And it was just this ugly gray

with a big ass basketball on the end of it. So I just had this big ass basketball just popping out of my fucking PlayStation's one. So the PlayStation 3, because I remember buying a 20 gigabyte PlayStation 3 back in the day. Oh no, I think I held out because of 20 and a 60 is what they shipped, right? But the 60 was the one you wanted.

And the Xbox 360, which also had the two different hard drive options. I think you could buy it without the hard drive or with. You could. That was the first generation where that went away, right? And you could just, you knew you could just store games on the console out of the box. When did that change? What was the first Nintendo console that got rid of, like, memory cards and it just had its own storage? Was it the Wii?

Because the Wii? Because the GameCube had had memory cards, right? GameCube you needed memory. And he didn't have any onboard storage. There would have been the Wii. little tiny guys not that long ago where did the GameCube storage go

underneath there was a oh shit yeah it looked just like the PS2 card right it just went in the front yeah those are little tiny guys

like you needed for like Smash Brothers and shit but those things were cheap though like compared to like the PS2 ones like I think the GameCube one was like 15 bucks

or something like that's still this wasn't that long ago like PlayStation 2 GameCube these genres it's not that long I mean the Wii is almost 20 years ago it's

I know you know I harp on about how old I am all the time, but I never feel older when I'm on threads or social media, whatever, and someone will say, like, only true OGs remember this, and it's a fucking PS3 game. Let's get us some superchats here.

We got, speaking of threads, Daniel Alonzo says, I love that we're getting a live action version of Gary's thread profile. Yeah, pretty much. And then CJ Splits on says, Gary, Druckman and Barlock have mentioned changing the way they tell stories in their new games, not mimicking movies, etc. What does that

mean to you? I don't know. It's funny. I've done work in interactive storytelling. As you know, I worked on Walking Dead and I've consulted on other things as well over the years. But it's not a line of work that I act of, I think it's fascinating. I think it's the most interesting emergent area of storytelling, right? Because we're still, there's still so much to discover, right? At this point, film, television, all the kind of the linear storytelling mediums are you can still innovate within it, but it's pretty much solidified

like what a movie or a TV show is in terms of how it tells a story. It's one thing and you watch it. But the agency and the interactivity that video games give you, the ability to kind of tailor it to your own experience and you and I may play the same game

but have a completely different experiences is fascinating. I think we're still scratching the surface of what that means. The problem is, and I find it really interesting as an observer, I don't want to work in that field anymore, though. Like, if you, if somebody came to me and said, do you want to write a video game?

I would, I would say, is it like a Last of Us type thing where there's just a story? Because I'll do that. But if it's the kind of thing where it's like branching, fuck that. I'm not doing that again. I've said this before on the Walking Dead. It's fucking brutal. It's so, so hard. It's by far the hardest form of writing, because not only do you have, just as a baseline, all the same criteria you've got a hit to tell a good story. It's got to be an interesting story, well-plotted, you know, don't rely on tropes, don't fall into, you know, predictable things, like keep the audience guessing, interesting characters that you care about and relate to. And all the, that's everything that you have to do in film and television, right? That's the starting point.

That's not the finish line. That's a starting point. Now on top of that, you've got to add agency. Well, how do you, how does the player make it their own? How do they tailor it to their own ends? How do we make it so that you and I can have completely different but equally valid experiences? Right. That's really fucking hard.

I wrote the first, when I wrote episode four, The Walking Dead season one, typically when you write a screenplay, right? It's the general rule of thumb is one page of screenplay equals one minute of screen time. So a two-hour movie is 120 pages, right? Or a one-hour TV pilot will be anywhere between 45 and 60, okay?

When I wrote The Walking Dead episode four, which takes about roughly two hours to play through, five or six hundred page script. Wow. Because I'm writing not just the version that you see, but every possible version that you can play, like five or six different permutations of every scene, many, many more.

If you ever played Detroit Beyond Human, it shows you, like, how at the end of each level, it shows you the path that it took, and then it shows you all the different ways you could have gone, and you realize just how much it branches and just how much volume of work there is, and then beyond the volume, it gets into just the mind-fuck of, like, understanding, like,

you know how we get confused about, like time travel and multiverse and what is he from this universe or if he did that does that affect the timeline it's like that but like 10 times worse and my god there's i had the worst of it because at the end of episode four there's a see i think we're more than 10 years past it right we can get into spoilers lee gets bitten clementine's gone missing and he's going to go look for her and he there's a there's a critical moment at the end but all the other members of the team are there uh you know the main characters and he asks who is going to go with them and at that you know all the I'm in time we'll remember that or whatever, all the different times of the game's registering a choice that you made and like thinking about the consequence.

At that point, every single choice that you've made with regarding to every character all the way back to the very beginning of the game from episode one, now is being a, and now has to go through this. I remember seeing the flow chart, and I'm getting hives just thinking about it. It's like, so if Ben, I'm going to, I'm not, you remember, you remember like the names of the character. if character A says, I'll go with you because you were nice to me, right? You may have been nice to character B as well, but if character B has a problem with character A, he won't go. If you engineered a story situation where those two were in conflict, said, well, if he's going, I'm not going.

But then it like cascades down into this hellish fucking flowchart of all these different things. And every single, you're not allowed to break it. Every single version, the game can't just seize up and not know what to do. Every, and it turns, it very quickly turns into hundreds of, of permutations. And they all have to work and they all have to be valid, even though the gameplay may only ever see one version of it. A lot of people do go back through and play to see like what happens if I do a different thing. But it was, I just remember sitting

there like my head in my hands going, oh my fucking God, this is so complicated and so convoluting. It becomes almost more like a math problem than a creative problem. And I remember thinking, I'm never fucking doing this again. When you do that, like, let's say that there's 20 different stories that could be told based on the choices. How? How many of those of the 20 would you say, you're like, I stand by these. This is like great work that I'm doing and I believe in this story. And how many of them are like, I'm just needing to get point A to point B. Well, you can't, I mean, one of the things, and again, every, I'm sure if you talk to

buyer or anyone that does, you know, or, um, Larian or any, any of the companies that do these, um, kind of games. I think they all have different philosophies at telltale. And this is when Sean Vanerman and Jake Rodkin were there. And I learned so much from them. their attitude was like you can't have a favorite choice they can't be like what you think of as like the alpha play through or the prime play through every choice has got to be equally valid you can't have a less

satisfying experience because you made certain choices over another they all have to be equally satisfying being maybe one's sad maybe one's happy but they all resonate at the same level um and i've told this story many times before but i found this fascinating um the problem is as soon as you put a live person person in the mix, that person becomes like a rogue element that you can't predict or control, right? It's like as soon as you can test it every which way, like a multiplayer game, you can test it with bots a million different times. But as soon as you throw in a live player, that player

becomes like an agent of chaos who's going to try and, it's going to find ways to break the game that you never even considered, right? And that's why we do beta testing and stuff like that. And that has an impact on story too. And you can't trust what players tell you. Like we would listen to all the feedback and we were doing it as an episodic game so as i was writing episode four we were already having feedback coming back on the first two episodes that had shipped out so you're looking and you're trying not to be like too distra but it is interesting it's interesting what people are saying we had a character called ben and ben was the character in the group it's a bit of a trope you've seen it in every zombie story or every survivor story it's the well-meaning guy that sooner or lady

was going to get everybody fucking killed because he's just clumsy or, you know, going to panic in the moment or whatever. Just like, this is, this guy's the fucking liability. And he had done this several times. He was written to be that character. He had done this several times. And one of the feedback that we got, everybody fucking hated him. God damn it, Ben, like, I just want him out of the group.

He's going to get everybody killed. And they, one of the few things that people genuinely asked us for was, can we please give us the chance to get rid of him or kill him or something? I can't fucking wait to get rid of him. this one. And so episode four came and we were like, okay, let's do it. Let's, let's have that option. And we had a scene where

Lee and Ben are being chased up a clock tower, up this staircase and at the very top. And at some point either the stairway gives way or whatever, and Ben falls and Lee's got him like this. And it's that moment, right? And you have, that's the choice. You can let him go or you can, or you can

try to pull him up. And we did um uh we would do play tests for every episode i don't know if there's like too long-winded no i love it go for it uh we'd like 10 to 12 people would come in and play the episode because we would get you need to see how the choices that every choice had to be Sean and Jake would always say like a well designed choice is one that comes back as close to 50 50 as possible like as many people picked option a as option b if it's if it's 80% picking a over b then the choice is too easy right you want people to go oh what do I do here?

Not like, oh, well, obviously you would do this. That's no fun. You want people to really, like, sit on it for a while. I watched play-throughs because the walking, maybe they changed it later, but in season one,

they didn't have time. Sometimes now you have to make a choice under pressure, the little fuse. On the walking dead, you could just sit there for hours and think about the choice. And I watched Let's plays

where people would sit there for hours going, oh my God, what am I going to do? Because once you click it, you're done. And we had these people, people come in and they got to the point where Ben was there. And all we'd heard, all we had heard from player feedback was, please let me kill this. And when we gave him the choice, I think nine out of ten people saved him.

And I said, well, what the fuck was that? You've been saying all along you wanted to get rid of this guy. We'll let you do it. And what we discovered is, for the most part, people, maybe this is something good about human nature. People generally want to make the right choice in video games. Like what you consider your prime play through, I would always do. Like, Mass Effect, I would always do my good guy play-through.

It's fun to go back and be renegade, but that's never my main playthrough. The renegade playthrus in Mass Effect are hilarious. Because when Shepard is a dick, he's fucking so good at being a dickhead. Like, he's so horrible to everyone. It's hilarious. But, like, that's, like, the bonus play-through. It's not the real, that's not what you consider your, like, canonical version of the character. It's always, Shepherd, we need up.

I didn't ask. It's shit like that. It's so funny. It's hilarious. So what we discovered was you can't, a lot of player feedback that you get, you can't actually rely on because people will say one thing, but they'll do another when you actually put them to the test.

Like you go, they talk a big fight, but then they don't want to follow through. Generally people want to do the right thing. As Lee, people would generally make what they thought was morally the correct choice. And you may disagree on what they is, but they're not trying to be a dick.

They're trying to do it the right way, the quote unquote, morally right way. And morally the right thing to do, of course, is to save Ben, not drop him. So even though,

he was this awful character that everybody would get rid of when the crunch time came they just couldn't do it so suddenly we're in trouble right we have a broken choice

we've got a nine 90% people are picking this one choice that's not great and you can see the stats at the end of very episode right who picked and when the episode it was always considered how well the episode had gone

like how close to the middle those choices were if one was skewed like more than two thirds one way or another we thought oh we fucked that up we didn't balance it right or we didn't give people a difficult enough choice

to think over. So we were screwed, actually at the playtesting point, the game's almost finished at this point. And this choice is broken because people did not do what they told us over and over again they wanted to do, which was drop him. And they didn't. They all pulled him up. They all saved him. How do we fix this, right?

Because how do you change the dynamics of that choice? And so we had to think about it, and we were always very careful about how we used Clementine, because Clementine was a player, it was a character that people came to really love and care about, right? Because you're the protector of her in the game. And when I

my episode, I got a lot of shit because that's the episode where she gets fucking kidnapped and is in the wind and we don't know if she's going to survive. And a lot of people like sending messages going, you better not, you better be okay. And so we were very careful to you because we knew that like a little bit of Clementine would go a long way in terms of changing players' perceptions. But in this point, we needed to do something dramatic quick to make people dislike Ben. So if you go back and go back and play episode four now, there's a, there's a moment in it that wasn't in it before we added it very late kind of like in a re a re a reshoot essentially where they're

boxed in in a little on a street and clementine and ben are somehow wound up together and she's kind of cowering behind ben and ben just abandoned her like we added he just he just fucking left her to to to die and you have to come in and save her and people fucking hated him so much for that that when we went back and did it again they all dropped him that's fucking awesome so and so we kind of we put our thought we had to put our well it wasn't they all dropped him but it was like Suddenly, okay, now it's 50-50 again. Because people were so pissed off him about that. It changed public opinion against him enough that we got back to where we wanted to be.

So we kind of had to put our thumb on the scale. But this is the kind of stuff that's fascinating to think about. But in the moment, it's so much fucking work. And I'm very lazy. I want to be the bare minimum possible. But you have to do just, you think about all the amb – and now they have the whole team's doing it. But think about like all the ambient dialogue and little callbacks and 50 different versions of a scene

and NPCs and side quests, just how much volume there is in a game to write. And then, again, all of the interactivity and making it work across different playthrus and different playstiles and people want to be a good guy or a bad guy or whatever. It's so, I don't think people appreciate just how hard it is to make, get that even just to stand up

and not break, let alone be any good. And so now I do very little game writing work, but the work that I would do is like, is it like Last of Us? Can I just like write a movie? that you chop up into pieces and play it as cut scenes. Because if I have to worry about, like, what ams if the player chooses this or that,

I'm going to get a migraine right away. It's like why writers don't like doing time travel movies. Because right away, you're like, oh, fuck. It's a headache. Yeah. If he did that, doesn't it? And then you get into logic. And logic is not, you know, your left brain, right brain, right?

I'm left-handed, so I'm right-brained. Like, if you're left-handed, you more like to be creative. Because you're right-hand and your right-hand and your right-brain-your-left-brain are connected. It's flipped. Right-brain's more creative. Left-hand, left-side. more analytical. So if you're right-handed, you're more likely to be good at puzzles, um, math, chess, things like that. If you're, if you're, if you're, if you're,

if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, to be good at abstract concepts, imagination, storytelling, artistry, things like that. And you also more likely to be a genius. I don't know why that is, but like most of the great geniuses in the world are predominantly left-handed. Um, and so, um, and so, that shouldn't make me laugh at least, I can't do, but I can't do, I, I can barely do basic arithmetic. I can barely understand like basic mathematical concepts. I can't do logic puzzles to dooku. Crosswords, things like that, things that rely on words, vocabulary. I'm great at. I can't do anything with numbers or analytics or like because I'm just like the left side of my brain is

weak as fuck. But that's the side of the brain that you need to have working when you're doing decision making, branching choices, stuff like that because it becomes a logic puzzle as much as a creative puzzle. So I just, I can't, I tapped out of that a long time ago. So that was a really No, that was awesome. I want to keep asking questions, specifically from people super chatting in. So get your super chats in while we take a quick word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Monster Hunter Now.

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com slash monster hunter now again. Go to kindof funny.com slash monster hunter now to get monster hunter now. This episode is brought to you by better help. Every once in a while, it is important to check in and ask yourself, what are your self-care non-negotiables? When your schedule is packed with kids' activities, big work projects, and more, it's easy to let your priority slip. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's hard to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for your yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever. Some of Tim's best friends use better help and love how helpful it can be for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries.

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Visit BetterHelp.com slash Kind of Funny today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P dot com slash Kind of Funny. We got two super chats I want to get to before Andy came up with a really good idea that I can't wait to see Gary's response to. But Mondagnik 96 asks, will Gundag, the audiobook, ever come to Bandcamp? that's a good question I don't know um I know that it's you can still get it for free on all the normal podcast services and on audible um when I did it my thing was like I wanted to just do an experiment in I don't know how well it worked out I mean it was very successful as a as a podcast like it was like highly ranked charts different podcast places over the all over the world and I was pleased with how that works and it was I just wanted to do something for free like just have something for free and see what happens like I'm like If you don't have any price barrier to entry, does that mean, if you're fascinating to look at the numbers on it,

like does the difference between like uptake on something that costs even as cheap as 99 cents, right, which is a trivial amount of money and nothing. It's huge. Oh, yeah. Right? Like, as soon as you go from nothing to even, to any kind of something, there's a massive drop-up. You're like, I'm not paying anything. Like, free is what it should be.

So we just did it for free. And I didn't, like, if anything, lost money on it because I had to pay for studio time and stuff like that to get it done professionally. Shannon and Troy and everyone, God bless them, like, wouldn't take my money. they just did it because it was fun during the pandemic. But I didn't see any reason why it wouldn't be, why it couldn't be on band camp, but also like why not just listen to it in one of the ten other places? Like, it's the same experience.

Jeffrey Kirby says, what's a note you wish you hadn't taken? Is that for me? Yeah. My problem is, and I had this just recently, I can't go into it, but like I push back,

lot on notes. Because if I don't, there's an artistry to this and becoming a writer and maintaining a career in Hollywood as a writer. Being able to write is ultimately, I think, less than half of it.

Obviously, you have to have that. But like, just being able to write is not good enough because you have to, as a novelist or something like that, sure, fine, because it is just you and the page, right? And you do take notes from an editor, but you don't have to do them. In Hollywood notes are often given to you with the unwritten or the unspoken subtext of either

do these notes or we'll find someone who will. They're writing the checks. They are in charge. It's their money. I always think of it like I'm the guy that's going to come in and refit your kitchen. You want a new kitchen. And if you have a plan for a kitchen, it looks fucking horrible. I personally think it looks horrible. It's not my place to say, that's horrible. Let me give you something better than that. Like I, It's my job to give you what you want. Right? And if I end up giving you what I think is better,

this is not what I asked for. You're going to give people what they ask for. But you also have to be able to be able to believe in the work that you're doing. And oftentimes, it's such a subtle art. And I think it's the thing that as a screenwriter takes the longest amount of experience and training and paying attention. I'm still not as good as I want to be, not even nearly as good.

understanding how to make a note work because they won't come down off of it sometimes. It's just you've got to find a way to make it work. And screenwriters often talk about what they call the note behind the note, which is, what are they really asking for here? Like they might be asking for something that's dumb, but it's because they want to solve this problem. And they're suggesting a fix that doesn't work, but there might be another way to get them what they want,

but that you're all so happy with. So there's a lot, it's a lot of diplomacy. My problem is I still need to learn how to do this. It's like just when I get a note where immediately like the story brain in my head that knows right from wrong and knows what's going to work and what's not immediately goes, that's so far. That's awful. That's not going to work.

But you can't say that in the moment. So you learn to say things like, interesting. Yeah, let's think about that. Yeah, let me think on that. But like don't push back on the note in the, I lost a job recently, a big job that wanted to get because in the meeting, I pushed back hard on the note. And I was like, that's not going to work. And here's why.

And they got the impression that I was like in some way obstinate or like stubborn or encountering difficult to work with. It's like we want someone that's going to do what we want them to do. But you've got to find a happy medium between like giving them what they want, but also being proud, being able to stand behind the work that you do. I'll never like, say they're going, I fucking hate this, but it's what they want. no it's wrong, but it's what they want. I'll never do that. There has to be another way. And I've talked

myself out of all kinds of jobs. I was up for a Flash Gordon remake many years ago. And I fucking love the original the 1980 Flash Gordon movie. As cheesy as it is, I fucking loved it. I racked up so many late fees on the VHS tape of that when I

was a kid. It was probably my favorite movie behind three movies that really, like I grew up on. Mom was the original Star Wars, Time Bandits, and Flash Gordon. I fucking love those movies. They're so much fun. And the original Flash Gordon comics, because I had to go back and read them all, they're really camp, right? You can't take him seriously. They're really silly. And the 1980 movie embraced that. It's a very silly film,

but it's also hugely fun and camp and just a rollercoaster ride. And when I went on, when it went in on the Flash, I don't even know if I'm answering the question, but like, I guess I could have had the job if I had taken the note or not taking a note. Or not taken it, but I remember sitting with the producers and the first thing they said was, this was when the period, well, everything was like it's got to be dark and gritty. Gritty reboots. Everything's going to be dark.

Because it was either Matrix or X-Men or something I'd come out at the time and said, like, oh, that's how it's got to be now. Everyone's got to be, everyone's got to wear black leather, everyone's got to be sad. It's always got to be nighttime and raining, because that's that's what a grown-up version of it is. It's not. It's a juvenile's idea of what grown-up and mature

is. This is why we had I think Snyder runs into problems because he's got a very, I think he's a brilliant visualist. I think he casts very well. But I think he has an immature idea of what maturity looks like in terms of storytelling and thematics. Does that make sense? Oh yeah.

There's no shout of the hedgehog. And so, I remember they said, they said, we don't know what we want yet. We're open to all kinds of approaches, but we know the one thing that we don't want is the 1980 version. And I couldn't help me.

I just said, well look. And I just couldn't help me. I said, sorry, but I fucking love that movie. And I spent the whole meeting telling them why the 1980s movie was fucking great and why they were wrong to not want to, you know, to close themselves off to doing that kind of tone again. And as I'm doing it, I'm like,

I know I'm talking myself out of this job. I'm, you can see him sitting there and he's not getting this job. Like within five minutes, I knew I wasn't getting it. But like, but it's not, that's okay because I don't want a job where I know that creatively we're not aligned because I'm just going to be miserable. You have to be able to get. There are days even on Star Wars when I woke up not wanting to go to work. It doesn't matter how magical it is.

At the end of the day, it's just another job with all the hassles and politics and bullshit that comes with any job. And you've got to go into any job to really believe in what you're doing and to have a full tank of passion and enthusiasm for it. because the creative process working with a lot will drain it really fast. And if you run out halfway through the process, you're in, and you've got nothing left to give and you burn out, you're in big trouble. I have gotten to that point where,

like on Star Wars I was there. I was like, I can't, I'm running on empty at this point. Like, I couldn't figure out exactly, I'm not going to get into the details of it, but I'm fortunate enough in my career,

back in the day, when I was just starting out, like, you'll take any job. Like, you will find ways to, like you'll find ways to talk yourselves into pretending that you like things you don't like just because you want to do the work and you've got to make your bones and you want to come across as

easy to work with and pliable because they really just want people to do what they're told. I'm fortunate enough now that I'm well known enough that I can afford to walk away from something if I don't think it feels right. Like if I'm hearing we want to do this and we want to do that, I will say to them on the call like that's, I'm sure that's going to be great. I'm not the guy for that. I don't have that sensibility or I just, I don't. don't personally agree with that take, wish you the best of luck with it. And I'll just walk

away because I can go get another job instead that I will enjoy doing. But it's a force economy and I know because I've done it, I'm only going to make myself miserable if I get myself into a creative situation where the notes are coming. I had this on Akira. Don't get me fucking started. One of these days. Probably like for the last year of my career. Why not now, Gary? Once I've got enough money to retire, I'm going to do a Comic-Con panel where I fucking read out all the studio notes that I've got over the years that are just absolutely shockingly bad and we'll explain to you why so many movies are bad and I'm not going to there's one in particular I'm not going to say it right now but like on Akira Warner brothers

did not know did not understand the material they just did not know what it was they understood that it was a very successful anime manga and that there was and and and and there was money to be made in doing a live action Western oriented version of it and I knew right away coming into it as a big fan of it that that's obviously fraught with peril right because cultural appropriation and it's a it's a japanese story and it's heart like how do you westernize it and without you know running a foul of all of these things that we see happen all the time when clearly hollywood doesn't get it and i tried really really hard to try and find a way through and came up with something that i thought i was happy with and then we got the notes back and

the notes were just like oh my it was like it was like a i remember reading them going oh my god we're so fucked because these guys just have no way like the their their understanding of what this is is so fucking far removed from what it actually is that there's you sometimes you feel like you can close the gap it was it was a chasm it was like no no matter what I do you're not going to be happy and I remember after I left the project because I got fired off it um I mean I think you you process I have a lot of emotional this is a terrible job for me to do in general because I really really care about the work that I do. Like, you can't be a hack. You have, the only way to be good at this job is to give a

shit about it and to pour your heart and soul into everything that you do. So like, and when that, when that goes sour, I process it in much the same way that I do like a, like a breakup, like a heartbreak. You know, was it, was it me? Did I do something wrong? Can I get a back? How do I, like, how do I, you know, how do I fix this? Like, there's got to be, and you, and I'm, I'm a mess. Like, I've, I've had three times in my career where, like, I was this fucking close to quitting. One of them was actually quite recently. One time when I got fired off Mouse Guard, which was one of the best scripts I ever wrote,

and I got fired off of it because of bullshit politics, I remember Leah came into the room because I fucking threw my phone against the wall, and I was shouting into the phone. And Leah, are you all right? And I was like, they call me out and said, the president of the 20th century Fox wants to talk to you. And I'm like, I'd sort of apologize for what happened.

I said, don't put me on the phone with them, because I'll say something I can't take back. I was so fucking furious at what they did. And it was like Hollywood addict's worst when you get taken off of a project, not because of anything to do with the work that you did, but because of some bullshit political stuff with producers are kind of jockeying for position, and it's my guy versus, oh, don't even get me started.

So I've gone all over the place here. But you have to care. And so you put yourself in a position where you're going to get hurt a lot. Because it's hard to say, well, I can just walk away from that because I never cared in the first place because you did care. and it's and it's really really hard and Akira was a hard one and after I got fired off Akira I remember thinking fuck that's I that was my first really big studio opportunity after Eli I got that job because of Eli and I got Warcraft because Eli I couldn't get those jobs

prior to that because Eli was a big hit suddenly I'm on every list and now like they're throwing all these jobs at me so I got Warcraft and I got Akira a couple of others and I lived on the Warner Brothers lot for six months writing that script desperately trying to get it right and then we got the notes and it's like oh my God what are we going to do what are those work days look like I just want to die

you just you're so trapped between what you strongly believe to be creatively right and the realities of like what you actually have the power to do because it's right or you have no power at all the only power I have as a writer is the power to try and persuade you

that I'm right if I can persuade if I can make an argument and bring you around to my way thinking, that's all I can do. But I'm not in a position to say, well, I'm putting my foot down. We're doing it this way. I have no authority to do that.

That will get you fired immediately. And so you just have to find a way to navigate like 20 different people that all want different things and none of them really understand the material. And I remember on Akira for a while thinking, shit, was it just me? And fast forward now 15 years and they've had like 10 other writers and 10 other directors and they still haven't cracked it. I'm like, you know what, it's not me. They just don't get it.

and they never will. Like that, I don't think that movie will ever be made. Because to do it right, would fly in the face of like 10 different things that Hollywood is willing to, is willing to not do. And so,

and I probably would not take that recently. You learn a lot from every project. Like, I made things like Akira come to me in recent years. I'm just like, I'm not even fucking touching that. Because I know,

I know I'm going to be miserable right away. Either because of the nature of the project or the people that I know are involved or both, Like you just learn to like not get involved in toxic what you know is going to be a creatively toxic situation. In terms of what was the what was the question? This is great. This is all great. The question that got here was what was a note you wish you had it taken?

I don't. I don't. I could probably have a better answer. What was a note that I wish I had taken because there have been times when again in my reactionary way I will fire back on a note. But then have to letting it sit with me for all. I realize actually, you know, hold. And if you think of it, it's not, I get what you're saying. Like, that could work, actually.

So, like, always take the minute. This is one thing I'll try to tell you. Like, never, like, react to a note, like, in the moment. Never do, like, your first reflex reaction. I say this, and I was in one of the most important pitch meetings in my life recently, and I did exactly that. And I went, no, that's wrong. And as soon as I said, I was like, fuck, I'd screwed myself.

Like, because then I did go away. The next day, I was like, oh, no, hold on. There actually is a way to do it. But by that point, it's too late. Yeah. So you've got to learn to kind of hold it in. And even when you're hearing notes that make you think, what the fuck? Like just, hmm, interesting.

I'll tell you a funny story. My friend John August, very well-known screenwriter, who's written like a bunch of movies you know, did some uncredited work on Jurassic Park 3. Yeah, it was three. And so he's getting notes from Spielberg. And those notes you do fucking pay attention. Yeah.

Right? Make the Raptors say, Alan. And he said at one point, And the idea of all these notes and at one point, one of the notes was, I want to see a scene. Because the way that directors often think is, I went through this because I worked on, worked with Brian Singer on Battlestar, Galactica for a short while. And the way that directors, the brightest think about story and character first, right? Directors think about visuals and scenes and moments, like JJ does this, Brian Singer does this,

John Wu does this. They think, I know that I want to see this. I know that I want to see that. I want this to happen. And I want that to happen. and your job is basically to thread that all together into a coherent narrative. Mission Impossible, too.

John Mooh just had five things that he wanted to see and the job was to connect them all together. I remember sitting with Brian Singer and he had a specific thing that he wanted the Galactica to do. It's like, find a way to get that into the story because that's what I want to shoot. They're always thinking about what they want to shoot.

And you see it over and over again with stories. Like JJ has a big thing about spaceships emerging from something. So in Star Trek, to the Enterprise emerges out from under the water, even though it makes no fucking sense that it would be under the water. It's there because he wants it there because he wants it to come out of the water. And the fucking Star Destroyers at the end of Briser Skywalker,

they're under the fucking ground for some reason. That makes no fucking sense. But they're there because he wants them to come out from under the ground. And you have to find a way to, like, sell it. This is the big robot spider in Wild Wild West. That's what this is. It's exactly that. And it's even has the same kicker at the end.

So, you know, the Kevin Smith story is that he wanted a giant spider in Superman. Kevin Smith couldn't. It was like, that's ridiculous. And it shows up in wild, what? Because John Peters just wanted a giant fucking spider. In any movie. In one movie or another, he's going to get it. Yeah, it's incredible.

So on Jurassic Part 3, Spielberg's note was, at some point, I want to see Jeff Goldblum's daughter, who's a gymnast in the movie, as I recall. Oh, this is part two. Lost World. Oh, was it two? Yeah. My mistake. So part two.

At one point, I want to see her... Kick the raptor. I want to see her swinging through the trees like Tarzan. Oh shit. On jungle vines. Oh my God.

Indiana Jones. Right. So John is like, I can't make... I can't make that work. And so he's thinking... With a lot of producers who are doing 10 things at once

and have 50 different notes, sometimes you can just ignore it and hope it goes away and they won't bring it back. I've got an Eli one as well that you're going to read it. And so he would just not do it. He would do every other note and just not do it

and hope that Spielberg just would forget about it. But the problem is Spielberg is fucking razor sharp and he remembers everything. He doesn't mean he does 50 movies at once. He remembers everything. He's a fucking genius. Every time I come back, where's my Tarzan swinging through the vines?

I'll do it on the next pass. He wouldn't do it again. This is all great, John. Where's my Tarzan? In the end, he couldn't do it. And it's not in the movie. But it's in fucking Indiana. Indiana Jones, Shy above.

Because the Crystal Skull. Directors just have, sometimes things, I want this moment to happen. And it's going to, I'm going to find a way to get it into one movie or another. And so a lot of the time it's really about, it's almost like being on a reality show where you're just trying to survive. And a lot of it is like making alliances. So what I do when I work on a movie is I generally try to be as close to and as friendly with the director as possible. partly because they ultimately do have a lot of clout unlike I do and I remember on Rogue One I said to Gareth

I want to tell me the fairer shows me I had with Gareth tell me the version of the movie you're excited about so I can write that for you. I want to write a movie for you that you're excited to go shoot and we talked about it and that's his first thing was I want to do shades of grey like it's not just all good guys on the rebellion and bad guys in the empire we want I want to see that there's a mix

and people in the middle and it's not morality isn't just like black and white like that it's gray and that's where we started. And that's why you have like Saw Guerrera. That's why you have like Mads, you know, building the death star, but actually being a good guy. And that's why you have,

you know, characters on the rebel side who will do... Eagle Luna immediately murking. Right. Killing a guy. And you see him in the moment, losing a piece of his soul when he does it, right? But he has to do it because it's with a greater good. On Eli, I was working with the Hughes Brothers,

and we would look at the notes that we would get from the studio. And Alan would always say, He taught me this. He said, don't go back to the studio with your response to these notes. Talk to me. I will go back. Because if they come from you, they won't pay attention. If they come from me, they will.

It can be the same note, but who it's coming from makes a difference. Right. It has no credibility at all. The director does have credibility. It's just a seniority thing. And we got all the way down the road, and we got rid of all the notes. And Joel Silver was a producer on the movie. But I was thrilled about that initially because, you know,

he produced die hard and he's a weapon and all these movies that I love when I was growing up. he's producing one of mine, it's super exciting. But he had some bad notes. And it really, really, honestly, you've got to align. When you have no power, you have to align yourself with someone who does and be their friend so that they can fight for you. And no one has more power on the movie than the star.

Kevin Smith tells that really great story about when he was shooting a movie with Bruce Willis and Bruce Willis were at the same time negotiating coming back for another diehard movie and he wanted so much money and they wouldn't give it to him. and Kevin heard him on the phone say to the studio, let me ask you something, who's your second choice to play John McClain? This conversation's over, right? Because you have to give him what he wants

because only one person can do it. And they know that, and that's the power that stars have. And Danzel obviously is the whole reason why this movie is getting made. It's not getting made without him. And we were sitting in, the greatest time in my life

was sitting in Denzel's house working on that trip. You're so fucking cool, Gary. His wife would bring in these Jamaican, chicken wings that she made and it was, she was the nicest person. He was funny and, oh my God, I got to tell you this one.

This is turning into like something, this is all wrong. This is not about video games at all, but I love these stories. I really get to tell them. When Alan and Albert and I first met Denzel, we were sitting around fanboying a little bit. And he's used to that.

Like, it has to be a certain amount of it. And we were talking about like our favorite roles of his. And I remember asking, asking what his was. And he mentioned man on which I fucking love. I love that movie.

I said, oh my God, like you and I have the same favorite Denzel movie and you're Denzel. That's so cool. And Alan and Albert's

favorite is Training Day. Right? Because that's another big one as well. And Denzel started thinking, yeah, that was a good one. Yeah, that was a good.

He said, the only thing about that, if I could go back and do it again, that last scene at the end when I'm like really going off and talking about you'll be playing basketball. in Pelican Bay and like, I'm, King Kong ain't got shit on me.

That whole thing is, I would have hit that harder, like much harder. I mean, like, it seemed pretty fucking hard, the version that we saw, because no, no, I wanted to do it like this. And he stood up and he did it again, the whole speech, four feet from us. That's awesome. Like going, going twice as hard as he did in the movie, the whole thing from memory. And Alan and I was sitting there going like, just watching this whole thing. It was fucking amazing.

It was one of those times ago this job is actually worth it. But we had this note. and I would work with Denzel and he had all his notes. I was mostly there to do his notes. And at the end of each day, he'd say, I'm good for the day. Like, do we have anything else? And we had this one note from Joel that kept coming back,

which was, I don't want Eli to be just like a nobody every man. Because the whole point of the movie is that he is a nobody, every man that's been given this gift from God to become someone, you know, extraordinary. Not everyone got that. Maybe we should have hit it harder, I don't know, but like, he's a nobody. That's why when you, when Milar opens his coat, he was a guy that works at fucking Kmart. He was a nobody.

And it's meant to be part of like the great biblical tradition of, you know, people that are like just like Job or whatever, just like plucked from God says, I'm going to pick you. Like, you're a nobody, you're going to go do this job for me. Eli's meant to be in that tradition. But he has to be a nobody for that to work. And so we tried to explain that he wasn't in anybody. And Joel's big note was, what if he was like an ex-exam. Navy seal.

And again, it's one of those ones the second I hear, I say, oh, we're so fucked. Like, this nice one to go away. And I did, I did, I did the John August thing where I just kept not doing it, but it kept coming back. Can't he be like an ex-Navy seal? Like, isn't that why he has these

karate powers? I said, no, he's because, like, he's God's instrument. Like, what I try to explain to him, like, when he goes into that mode and kills everybody, he's not even necessarily aware of what he's doing. Like, it's kind of like a Jesus take the wheel moment, right? just fucking takes over and works through him. Right? He doesn't, in the, in the

prequel show that I worked on, the first time that he does it, he doesn't even understand how it happened, right? It's just like somebody took control on me, basically. And I said, that's the whole point. He has to be, he can't have that training, because then it's going to, like, confuse, like, how we can do these things. Wouldn't go away.

I'm sitting with Denzel. He says, what else we got? I said, it's one note from Joel, it just will not go away. He says, what is it? He thinks that Eli should be like an ex-Navy seal. He says, that's the dumbest motherfucker fucking note I heard in my life. I said, I know. I cannot get rid of it. I've tried every argument with Joel.

It will not go away. He said, give me the phone. Somebody brought him a phone. Called up Joel. Joel, of course, takes the call immediately because it's Denzel. And he said, hey, it's D. This note you keep giving Gary about me being an ex-Navy seal. He said, that's, he said, that's, I can't remember he's saying.

He said, that's fucking whack. I'm not doing that. Like, the whole point of the movie is I'm a nobody. That's why I'm doing the movie. I'm a regular person that's been blessed by. God, if you make me a Navy seal, it's all, I'm not doing it, okay? I don't want to, I don't want Gary to have to hear that note again. Okay, good.

It's funny. You won't hear that note again. Oh, my God. I want, I want that power. Like, how do you, how do I get that? I should have learned to act. Because, like, to have that ability to just, like, cut through it because you do actually have that level of, you know, power over it.

Like, they can't make the movie without it. They can fire me. They did at one point. And you can fire writers all day long. You can fire the fucking star of the movie. movie because the whole thing is hanging on them. And when you know that, you can fucking use it. And what a joy that must be.

Because I've never had that experience. I've never been able to like big time anyone and say, I've won, I've won creative arguments by the persuasion thing. I've sat in and said, it has to be this way because boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And they'll eventually go, yeah, you're right. I go, finally. And that, but that's the only way I can get there. I never get to like bigfoot someone and say, no, it's this way.

Just trust me, I know what I'm doing. And if they don't, you can't persuade them, you're going to lose every time. Should we talk about video games? You know what, Gary? I feel like we've talked a lot. This has been so awesome. We're going to have to get you back because this was way too much fun, way too fascinating. I loved it for every single second.

I hope y'all listening and watching did as well. We're about to switch over to the stream. We'll let you play some helldivers. You like that? That I do like. That I can do. I might go off scripts on that. I'm serious.

I feel like if this went, I know, you don't make me going off the road. This really went off the rails. And we ended up barely talking about games. Gary, we knew what we got. This is great. We talked about memory cards. This is perfect. It was a kind of funny screencast.

It'll be going up on both feeds, the games cast and screencasts feed. Great job in there, Merit. Let us know in the comments below what you thought about all of Gary's stories. If you want to see him come back, I know you do. Thank you so much for sending in all of your super chats. That was a lot of fun. Like I said, if you want to watch Gary and everyone plays some helldivers, if you're watching on Twitch, you can just stay right where you are.

But if you're on YouTube, you're going to watch you're going to want to make the jump over to the other YouTube link. Either way, we love and appreciate you so much. Until next time, goodbye.