Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Mitch Dyer (Special Guest) - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 65

Episode Date: April 15, 2016

Mitch Dyer just left IGN to go make games -- so how does he feel about his time in the gaming press, where does he think it's going, and how did he find love? Let's find out! (Released to Patreon Supporters on 04.07.16) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Holy crap, Kind of Funny is going to be at Pax East in a major way. Friday morning at 1130 will be the Kind of Funny panel with the whole podcast crew. And Saturday will be the Kind of Funny slash Hitman party at Coppersmith at 8 p.m. We'll also be part of six other panels throughout the weekend like Paxomania and DeaSX. So check Kindof Funny.com slash Pax East for all the details. What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Gamescast episode 65. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside my Canadian Maple Leaf, Mitch Dyer.

We did it. We're back together. said we never get back together, but here we are on a very, very special first ever episode 65, the kind of funny games cast. Tim and Nick, I said, get out of here. Colin, hit the bricks. Yeah, I was there.

Mitch Dyer's coming through, and I want to talk to Mitch Dyer all to my lonesome. I have a special, I'll tell you, I'll steal one of Tim's lines. If you're, if you're, if you're supporting us on Patreon, this one's worth of the dollar. This is a good one.

You're going to get a good show here. I love Mitch, one of my most fascinating people in the industry. You're hyping this up a lot. I know you're going to deliver. about your dollar. I know you're going to deliver. I don't know why he says that either, because it's always more than a dollar. If you're getting early access to the show, you're 10 dollars. It's five or 10 dollars, but he always says it's worth the dollar. But I think he's going back to when we used to make you pay on a band camp. It's a grandfathered intern,

a colloquialism. You ever heard of that? You have those up in Canada? From colloquial times. From colloquial times. That's right. That's right. It's been a great show. I'll talk to you next If you didn't know, ladies and gentlemen, this is the kind of funny gamescast. Each and every week, we come to you, sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes four. Best friends who gather around this table. Each bring a random video game discussion topic. I'm using the game over, Greg Ean's show. I don't host this show.

I'm here once every 65 weeks. I like that a lot, too. Mental note. Write down that joke. 130. He's got to come back. One 30, I just got to come back. Is that math? Yeah, I think so.

If you know, this is the video game show. We get it together. we talk about topics pertaining to the video game industry and things. If you like that, you can go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games where you can support us and get each and every episode early along with a bunch of exclusive perks and bonuses. If you have no money or buck to toss us, like you? Do you point yourself on that one? I'm super broke.

I'm unemployed. I'm literally not a job right now. You can head over to YouTube.com slash kind of funny games where we put up the show topic by topic day by day until we post the entire thing is one big video on MP3 the following Friday. You've got that spieling. on lockdown. And that's why I fucked up the first part because I'm doing the game over Greggie part, but it's hard to insert. GameOreggy is dead now.

It's all about the games cast. It is all about the games cast. Probably what will be our best episode ever. Suck it, Colin. He doesn't care. Colin's happy to be in his room playing Rashing Clank. He's getting ready to go to a home front event right now, which the let's play will already be live by the time you see this.

YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. So go there and watch watch it unless something horrible went wrong. That's always the problem. What if it's a really bad let's play? Then don't go watch it. No, still go watch it. I don't care. Just give me the view. Give me the money. I don't care about any of the content. But making a nice comment,

even if it's a bad video. Exactly. You tried, Colin. Exactly. Colin tried really hard at that game. And it turns out his thumbs just aren't what they used to be. And he can't keep up. He's so used to play in the Vita now that when he tries to play with the dual shock,

just doesn't work. Colin's hands are just perpetually like this. Yeah. For a number of reasons. Not just the controller. Mitch Dyer, how the hell are you? All right, man.

I'm unemployed. Yes. That's the big thing. I'm between jobs. If you don't know who Mitch Dyer is, worked at IGN for how long? Almost five years. And you just quit?

Yes. Okay. So you're coming to work for kind of funny like everybody else? Yeah, of course. Great. Oh, good.

I'm glad we could say, no, you haven't announced where you're going. I've not. I have a new thing lined up. I'm currently unemployed, so I'm hanging out here. Just, you know,

doing whatever I want to do on my unemployed days. It's great. What does the public know about what you're doing next? Nothing. Okay. They know that I have a job

line up and that's it. Okay. I can't say a whole lot. Okay. But soon, I will be able to share more. But what I can say is I'm leaving games press, which is what I've done for

the better part of a decade. And I'm going to go make a game. Well, thank you. Congratulations. That's very exciting. Yeah. Of course, your Twitter's been promoted. That's what people should follow to keep up with when you announce things

and when you. Does our timelines sync up? Friday, this episode goes live. Very soon. Okay, okay. Very soon. Very soon. Very soon.

I want to talk a little bit about that whole thing. Games journalists and whatnot. But when we have a guest on what I like to do, what Tim likes to do and I'm just ripping them off. That's one. It starts with who is blank, the guest. Who is Mitch Dyer? Big questions.

I want to know more about you, Mitch. I know you're Canadian. Yeah. I know you were nipping at my heels for a long time. Is that true? I don't know about that. But I remember yours is a name when I started at IGN and was getting my sea legs or whatever. I remember when your name started getting kicked around more and more.

I'd see you in there, Mitchie D., Mitchie D on the Twitter. They were talking about it. And I remember you wrote an article one day that I always bring up to you and you always forget about. But it was the top gaming personalities is to follow on Twitter. Oh yeah, of course. And you put me on there. Did I? Yeah, and you said...

I didn't put Alex Navarra on it. Fuck you, the wolf. What a piece of garbage, that guy is. The worst Pax wrestling champion we've ever had. You put me on there and you said, what I knew, I respected about you is that you knew who you're writing about because you put on there, like, you know, there's many people and he talks about PlayStation, but the coolest thing about Greg is that if you tweet at him, he's likely

to tweet back. And I was like, oh, somebody noticed that I go out of my way. That was actually just my ploy to get attention. It worked. Look at there. And I reached over and I said, Pear Schneider. hire this man. And then it was. And three years later.

Katie hired Casey. No. So I want to know, dial me all the way back. Where I see a glacier in Canada. And that's where you were born. Yeah, a little baby igloo on top of a glacier. No, I'm from a small town in Alberta, Canada, rural farmland place.

And I had like the most uneventful, usual high school life of all time. But in the middle of that, I was like, oh, it's cool. Do you get to play like Diallo 2 at the computer lab after hours? And the vice principal installed it on all the machines. In hindsight, they were probably all pirated copies. Sure, yeah, of course. He definitely didn't buy like,

30 copies of Blitzer. I'm such a fan, here you all go. Yeah, and then that was sort of like, like, I'd played games on entire life, which is the most boring thing in the world to say on a video game podcast. Yeah, but I mean, it speaks to your credibility and where you, where you came from. My street credit. Yeah, so, and I, because of that, like, I grew up on EGM and OPM and Nintendo Power

and all these magazines, and it clicked one day, like, I want to do this. Was it hard, I mean, to be in such a rural part of town in a rural yeah yeah because i was in a small town where like there wasn't opportunities of the kind of thing that i thought about like i don't know it's weird like i'm trying to think of like what anybody else grew up to do farm farm yeah like it was a lot of stuff like that are there a lot of pro wrestlers coming out of there yeah there was a lot of amateur wrestling in town yeah because you know lance storm he was from calgary alberta canada um so is bret hart yeah but lance storm said it all the time i don't know i like brett hart

I was a bigger own heart fan recipe. But, you know, I don't remember. I understand what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah, like, I just, and this is not to speak ill of anybody there. I just literally don't remember. And I'm sure lots of people want on to do big grand things. Like a friend of mine I went to high school with was he worked on Deadpool.

Oh, nice. Another friend of mine, like, went to work on Warcraft. Okay. So people are doing things. Of course. But, like, everybody, you know, I feel like when you're in a small town, like, your biggest goal in life is get out. But I still love that town.

Like, part of me still feels like, I'll end up there someday. Do you get back a lot? Not as often as I would like, but like once a year now. Like ever since moving to California for IGN after like working freelance in Alberta for... Don't spoil their story. Don't spoil your story. However long. I go back about once a year.

Okay. Where are we on the timeline? You're still there in high school Diablo. You started reading EGMs and all these magazines. You're like, this is... Because that was me too. But see, for me it was that I started... I have that moment of when a game pro clicked and I was like, this is what I want to do.

But I was a bigger EGM fan and finally looked at like, EGM's two suburbs away from me in Chicago. Oh, that's cool. You know what I mean? Like, that suddenly became such a real dream. Yeah, and in like rural Canada, never mind if I lived in a major city or in like the East Coast where a lot of game dev stuff exists. Like it just never crossed my mind that this was even possible. Yeah.

So I was like, oh, this is cool. Like I'd like work for my high school newspaper and there was like a startup magazine in town that I was like, cool. I'll write the Spider-Man movie review for this thing when I'm 16 years old and have literally no idea how to write. Yeah. And I just did that because it was like I'm pretty good at English. I'm pretty terrible at everything else. I guess I should harness this in some way. to make an English degree worthwhile.

So I just started writing about video games. And I started my own blog after working on like one-up blogs for however long. Like starting my own thing and just been doing that for a while and going, well, I kind of know what I'm doing, right? I think I do. I'm going to just start a website with a friend and we did that for a while. And did that until I just randomly got the attention of an editor at OXM,

Dan Amrick, who's now at Ubisoft. Yeah. I interviewed him for our little startup website. Just be like, how the games journalism secretly employed just to get all the secrets Sure. And hot tips. I'll just, I'll just duplicate his strategy.

Yeah. Well, and then after that interview, I just didn't stop bugging him. Like, I just stayed in touch in, like, the least annoying possible way I could think of. Postcards. Yeah, yeah. Handwritten letters that were 30 pages long.

Hey, Dan, just thinking about you. Uh, and eventually, I, it's funny, like, I got a straight email from him that was clearly meant to be addressed to somebody else talking about getting me on his freelance. Mm. And I was like,

I don't know if I should reply to this. Because it's perfectly not meant for me. he must have just slipped him and like thinking cool Mitch typed my name right right right and I waited and then like three weeks later the editor he meant to email got in touch me like oh man hey like sorry we told him to get in touch do you want a job doing some stuff for us for money and I like I literally didn't know what that meant I didn't know what how old are you at this time maybe 20 maybe what are you doing it for a day job then I was working at a styrofoam factory that is awesome yeah doing it the most like the laziest easiest easiest easiest job in a manual labor factory that you could possibly do. Like, I literally put a vacuum in a box full of, like, millions of little beads that become the stuff that's in, like, beanbag chairs. And, like, they manufactured that and pressed it and, like, you use it for siding and really boring stuff that you put, like, under the roads to get the roads warm in Canada during

the winter. Sure. And it was, like, the most awful boring factory job of all time. And I would, like, write while I was there because I had a really easy job. So I bring my laptop and just write while I did my super easy job. And are you writing fiction or are you writing stories? No. This was all, like, I'm writing about video.

video games. I'm playing games in my spare time. I'm trying to build up PR contacts. I'm trying to figure out how to be a better writer and do all of this. I gave up on creative writing pretty early out of high school. Like I wrote a lot in high school. It was all terrible. And I was like, well, this is all terrible and I don't know how to get better. So I quit. You know, like you do when you're ambitious. Let your dreams go. So I took this job. I was like, well, I should get this job. I'm not ready for college. Maybe I'll save for college and go to a couple of years. I got my first freelance job. did that for a while decided like,

okay, I'm going to, I'm trying to remember the order of things. I think I went to college for a couple of years and got the, the IGN job opportunity

presented itself after like years and years of freelancing. Yeah, I was going to say, it wasn't, because you were freelancing it seemed like forever.

Yeah, and I was doing magazine stuff. Like I did stuff for GamePro, Atgamer OXM, P-Tom. A bunch of different all-night,

the games of radar and different all-9 outlets that, like, whoever would have me, I would just pitch everybody. And the minute, it was weird because the minute I had my name on OXM, it was suddenly like gates opened everywhere where it's like,

oh, you're, you write for someone legitimate. You're approved in some fashion. Yeah, and like, OXM hooked me up big time. Like I got a dev kit from them. Or a debug unit. The test. Yeah. So, no, Xbox 360.

Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. Come on Greg. I was got you. I was hung up on PISA. I'm like, I know that magazine. The better one. What up, Scott?

So I got my debug unit to like review pre-release. games. And I reviewed a bunch of trash and, you know, as you gave a lot of... As every freelancer does. Yeah, you give a lot of fours to sevens, best case. And the minute I had that debug kit, I was like, hey, OXM, like, you gave me this. Can I use this? Like, yeah, we don't care. Like, do our work? But yeah, do whatever you want? And I was like, oh, cool. So I went to GameSpot right away. I was like, hey, do you guys need people and immediately start a freelancer for a game spot? So you have a debug kit? No

freelancer has a debug kit. It was like a hyper rare thing. Like, three freelancers I've no one ever had a debug kit. Which is crazy because why would Microsoft never send me a debug kit in rural Alberta? This kid in the middle of nowhere will send one of these $15,000 machines. So it was like my entire career, like the running theme throughout everything is that people literally just hand me dreams every time. Like with this freelancing thing, it was like, here's everything you need to become a very successful freelancer.

Yeah. So I like quit my job, freelance full time, went to school. So I want to know that. How long did it take before you were quitting the styrofoam factory to go out there in freelance? Years. still because I was still like well I make decent money freelancing and it's like good extra money to have but I still like

I was so insecure about like what if I don't have a full time job how do I live my life without a job yeah like still not thinking that freelancing was the job right and if I quit the factory I could do double the work if I could do more freelance I can make more money but the factory paid really well so I sure it sounds like a sweet gig yeah

and it was it was perfect I made a lot of money and I made a lot of bad decisions as a young person with my money and you know like you do yeah of course So I quit. I freelance full time for a little bit before I was like, okay, I'm gonna actually go to school now. Went to college for a couple years, freelance the whole time,

missed classes because I was like, well, I'm on deadline, so I'll skip religious studies this week. Sure. Which, don't ever do that. Just go to your fucking classes. Go to religious studies, everybody. It's a good class. Religion is really cool.

There's a lot of interesting things about religion and theology. Let us tell you about them. We immediately detour. The Mayans. The Mayans. The Mayans. Where are we in the timeline? You're in college.

You're skipping classes. So I hit this point and that's when IGN sort of approached me. Like Casey Lynch, who was the EIC at IGN at the time. And I'd worked with maybe for Casey a couple times in the past because he had flipped up between editorial and PR. And he went to IGN was the editor-in-chief and was like, hey, do you want a job?

And I was like, this is funny. You're in the United States. It's funny. And he's like, no, literally like, fill this paperwork out. This will begin the visa process. We want you to come work for us. Nice.

And I was like, this is, crazy. I don't want to be in the middle of a semester next year and have this visa get approved and have to go to the States. I'm going to drop out of college for a semester, give IG on the semester to figure out if we can do this. And if I get it, I go, if I don't to go back to school. And it was like down to the wire. It was like, I had to either, like, I packed all my stuff and assumed that I was moving just in case. But it was packed to either go to the States or go back to school. And it was like the week before I had to actually finish like reapplying for all my classes. That they were like, hey, uh, this thing got

approved you're going to move to the fucking United States. I was like, uh, okay, so I packed everything I could fit in my car. I drove down and I got an apartment with a friend. I wired him $3,000 to pay for the apartment because California is really fucking cool. Rent here is wonderful. Got the place and drove down on a Friday morning, arrived Saturday night, went to work Monday morning. Damn.

What did your parents think when you quit your job to freelance for video games? They, my mom for a long time, like my dad was like, oh, cool. Cool, video games are cool. You're writing my being of school. My mom knew. that like I grew up reading these magazines, but she was still very hesitant because my mom is very, she's not protective, but she's very like, hey, make sure everything's okay. Yeah. And if it's not okay, fucking figure it out. Like she's, I had a job when I was 12

because she was like, hey, you should get a job. You're 12. You're like, I don't think labor laws allowed that, mom. So I did like hockey refereeing, which was cool. That is a kickad, and that's a very Canadian job. My dad drives a Zamboni in the winters. Like, that's his second job. How much does you know about hockey when you became? came a hockey referee. Oh, all of it. I've been playing for years. Okay, cool. Um, we, everybody at IG and I was just assumed was just like me and has no sports acumen at all. I had a lot more than I do now for sure. Like now I sort of pretend to follow baseball. Oh, sure. Like I got, because of my family is like very deep in Detroit Tigers. Okay. So I'm like,

oh yeah, like I like the tigers. I love watching baseball. I love going to baseball, but I don't keep up with baseball. Sure. And it's like this, I can already see the trajectory of like, I started the care and now I don't. And that was exactly my hockey career was like, I really care about hockey. I follow hockey. I don't go. You know what? I don't need this. No. Now all I care about is Dota 2. That's my favorite sport. Save that. We got that and reader questions coming out. Same way. I bet we do.

E-sports shenanigans. Yes, my mom was always very paranoid about like, are these games people legit? Like, are they really going to pay? And then I showed her like a check I got for $1,200 for a couple magazine features around. She was like, okay, no problem. I need a car. I, like, rewrote a cover story once. Like, I did ghost writing for a cover story because, like, there was a cover story that somebody wrote for a magazine that was really bad. Yeah.

And the editor-in-chief sent it to me on a, Friday. I was like, I need this Sunday night. Can you rewrite this entire thing based on what they wrote having you have not gone to play this game in another country? And I was like, I'll do what I can. And she's like, cool, is $900 enough? And I was like, oh, that's like, no, $1,200. What did I knew? And that was that, like, getting that check was where she was like, all right, this is fucking cool. Like, you're doing all right. And then when it was like, hey, I'm going to get a salary and benefits and live in San Francisco, she was like, holy shit. This is a real thing. Yeah. And she obviously she's like, oh, this sucks. My son is moving away,

but it's also like cool that you're going to do something you've wanted to do for years. Only child? Younger sibling, two years. Okay. He or she's still trapped up there? She is still in Canada. That's why your mom's like, whatever. I got one.

You can get out of here. She's also about the granddaughter now. So she's like, whatever. Oh, my God. Man, she's fulfilling all the checkboxes. Yeah, okay, great. Now, here, the other week, two weeks ago, yeah, we had Andrea Renea. And she ran us through her side of the industry as a host, right?

Because that's very different stuff. Exactly. But it was the same. I have the same question. of her that I have for you because like my journey and to an extent Collins journey are pretty similar in the way of like my resume is I graduated college and I worked at the newspaper and then I went to IJN and then I found out my business you know what I mean like I never was like in the lurch like yeah were there times as a freelancer where you're like I'm almost out of money this isn't

gonna work no there was a period where I worked for future US a lot and that was like official Xbox magazine PlayStation the official magazine games radar at gamer and there was this very bleak period where they were like, hey, our budget just got like annihilated. And we don't have a freelance budget anymore. So there were months where it was like me, Andrew Gru and Andrew Hayward, Tim Sepula, and all these people that I knew from coming up with as freelancers were just like,

what the fuck do we do? Like this was our primary point of income. We have nowhere else to go. Which ended up not being true because with the amount of time you had free to not work at future, you had time to do stuff for everyone else. Sure. And it was that kind of pressure that may be like, okay, like, I need to really develop a good pitch. I need to figure out how to pitch something cool and smart and interesting that

nobody else is doing and I got in the habit of doing that. Did you take classes for that or is that stuff you picked up on? No, this was all like most things I learned was from other freelancers. Like talking to people who were also coming up like I would throw a, like I'd write a pitch and send it to a freelancer. It was like this sucks. Change this. Do it like this. Okay, cool. That's better. Thank you. And we would just back and forth and trade ideas and edits and things like that. Yeah. See, that culture is so fascinating to me because that was the thing of just coming in and like already being there. You know, and I skipped associate editor at IGN. I was just an editor and I jumped in and did all the stuff.

And I, you know, it was a different world back then, a different time for sure. And I'm sure it is now. Like, I don't know. Like, the freelancers I know, I don't know if they have the same relationships I did with everyone else. Yeah. Like, I don't know if the IGN freelancers that I worked with talked to anybody else but each other. I'm sure they did. But like, because of the nature of like, hey, we need your attention a lot more at IGN.

And also, you're all together in like a Slack channel or a Skype channel or whatever. Everyone's talking to each other. They're probably often private threads. talking about stuff asking questions, getting... I hate Mitch. Yeah, probably. But before I had access to any of that,

it was just like, oh, I know Tim from Twitter. Hey, let's talk to Tim for a while. Hey, Tim, I need help. Can you look at this? Yes, but can you look at this? Cool. We just trade. So then, even though it's not the same,

I mean, starting one or on this pitch thing, what do the keys do good pitch? Like, what is somebody who wants to pitch something to an editor? Like, even, you know, I guess not for you as much because you're news, but like feature stuff at IGAN. If you wanted to pitch a good feature, what do you need to do?

I mean, the thing that I always told people, and this is like only kind of an answer to that question but like read stuff that's not games writing like if you want to work in games writing and you want to do game journalism stuff read it obviously but read it because a you're interested in b you need to find out what's good and what's bad so look at what people are doing and there are certain patterns you'll notice like oh they're doing a lot of list features i should probably pitch a list feature even though you might not be super passionate about list features because nobody really is they do them because they're necessary and a lot of people read them uh but writing them isn't the most fun thing in the world

but you can still come up with a cool list feature. Sure. And basically, if you come up with something and you're like, cool, have I read this anywhere? Would I read this if I saw it on a website? And if the answer to that is no and yes, then you're good to go. Like if it's not something you've ever seen, you're probably already on the right track.

If it's interesting to you, it's probably interesting to a lot of different people. And then when you pitch that to somebody, give them the elevator version, not the... So I'm from a small town in Alberta, and I never dreamed that I'd be a freelance... Just be like, hey, Greg, I have a really cool idea for a feature.

Here it is. Let me know what you think. And then you start negotiating fees. I think that's a good point. Because like I freelanced a, like for me, I was asking, you know, if you got learned, if you taught learned. If someone taught you how to do pitches, right? Because when I got a degree in magazine journalism in Missouri, that was something we did. You know, and they taught you.

And I remember I, you know, I have like three or four freelance things under my belt, right? That were like when I left and I was working at the Tribune before I got the column in and blog about gaming, you know, Inquest Game or whatever, I'd hit up and pitch all these different little features to and it was, I think the thing people lose all the time is brevity because you're like you are as a freelancer, you can speak to more to it obviously than I, but you are such a, a gnat in this person's world of their inbox. Totally. Like you are as somebody who has an idea that they might be able to fill a page with or get over to some of their budget with to get a cool feature on and hopefully like embed a bunch of videos in it or whatever the

whatever their approach is like that and like that thing I just explained is five things that are not the freelancer. So editors, who are really interested in a good story are also thinking about 10 million other things. And there is no trick to like getting an editor's attention. There's just not. Like sometimes your email gets buried. Sometimes they look at your pitch and go like,

uh, that's good. I might come back to that or no, we already did that. And like not everyone's going to give you a reply. And that sucks. But that's just the nature of it is like, people are too busy to answer every email they ever get.

Like I didn't answer every email I ever got from you. Never mind somebody who's like, hey, will you give me money to do something? Meanwhile, Colin answered an email from me during Colin and Greg Live. today. I was like, what are you doing? Running inside, you got to run a business man. It's true. We wear a lot of hats. A lot of different things are happening. Yeah. So when you come over for IGN and you're one of Casey's hires, like I remember I, God,

it was it, 2011. Sorry, it was late 2011. I got full-time contracted IGN. I stopped freelancing. I got paid my salary in Canada, which was amazing. And then I moved to California. I lost all that money forever. Of course. But it was February, 2012 is when I started at IGN. Okay. Because I remember. when Casey said he was going to hire you, and I'm not sure if it's when you were satellite then if you were there, but we went to a packs together. And we were about to get the demo of Mass Effect,

whatever it would have been. Three. And we walked into the thing. And I remember standing next to you and be like, oh, that's Mitch, I think. I know him as the Twitter icon. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know what he looked in.

And then finally at the end, we talked about it. And it was like, cool. And then, you know, however. Yeah, because you would tease me that I was like, wrapping Casey around my finger. And I was like, he came to me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. do anything. Well, it was like, because it was so, you know, Casey came in and, like, he brought people in. And it was like, here we go. Like, these are, we need to get going and here are my people. Yeah, and it was like, you'd come in one day and be like, he's a new guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was like, for you, I knew Mitchie D.

You'd have been tweeted out before. But not a lot of people that I Jan did. Like, I had met Clements, but when I started, Clements didn't really remember me. He sucks. Clements. Classic fucking Columbus. Clements is on top of this ivory tower. He doesn't remember anybody unless they're Jack Trenton.

You know what I mean? Go by his short story, Ferrius Foxford. it's really good. Yes, and I didn't do that. Yeah, and I started, and there were a lot of people that just, like, didn't know who I was. And, like, Casey had talked to me up as like, I'm bringing this guy, and he's really great. And everyone was like, fuck this guy. Out of the gate, like, the deck was sort of stacked against me.

Not that IGN were bad people by any means. It was just there was an established expectation of, like, what I was going to be able to do. And it's like, he's just some fucking freelancer coming in full time because he got brought on. Like, that's it. And he was like, yeah, that's how I felt too. So it was sort of a trial by fire. Like, I had all these people that expected something of me, and I just really wanted to hit those expectations.

And I guess I did because nobody hated me. Right. Like, I sort of fit. It took me a bit to get comfortable because I was like out of the office a lot. So I didn't actually get to meet that many people. And then we had layoffs like a month after I started. So it was like this tumultuous thing of like, I don't know where I fit until after like enough time spending time with people.

Sure. And going out of lunches and it was like, oh, no, I totally fit with like literally everyone here. This is great. Yeah. Well, I remember the old days when I used to always. about it. And this is, I think even before Casey's time, but like when we used to bring people into IGN and stuff, I always used to say that we were totally a group of cats. And when, you know, all the other cats are chill with each other and you bring in the new cat and everybody hates

the new cat. And then just like one day, it's like, oh, you're one of us. You're one of the cats. You're one of the cats in this house. It's fine. Yeah. And there was no like defining moment that flipped the switch. It was like, I just walked into work one day and everything was comfortable. That means a lot. So then you stay there for five years. What do you get hired on as originally? associate editor. Okay. Was the beat Xbox or was that just what your expertise was? Yeah, I was hired on to work Xbox.

Then we hired Ryan McCaffrey to be my boss May. After I was there, February, Ryan McAfre was May. And we did E3 together. We went to the conference and did all the Xbox stuff. And it was like shortly after that, it was like maybe a year later where we totally dissolved the channel teams. Yeah. And it became about previews, features, reviews, reviews, and news,

all in separate verticals the same way it used to be channels. And McCaffrey and I never really... We still always did the Xbox stuff, same as you and Colin. It sounds familiar. Well, we're just going to gravitate to our PlayStation because that's what we've always done. Yeah. And that's what we're really, really good at. And that's where we are connected.

So we just kept doing that. And we did the podcast unlocked, obviously. Like, you guys did Beyond. And over time, like, I gravitated more toward news and reporting and started working with Goldfarb. Andrew Goldfarb.com. Has he been on this show before? No. Please.

We'd never have him on here. Fuck that guy. Only people who get to, if it's not a special event, you have to quit to come on this show. Unless it's GDC, then anybody can come on. That's true. Yeah, so I started working with Andrew on news and sort of just stayed there for a while. And then every now and then I'd be like,

okay, I'm going to go on a big, like, you go do features, yeah, yeah, yeah. And do features and do... Because basically, like, the thing I found out is, like, at IGN, you need to be versatile. You can't just come in to be like, I'm the Xbox guy, and I'm only ever going to write about Xbox. It's like, no, like, do that,

but also be extremely capable on video and be ready to write a feature and be ready to break out a breaking news story and do an interview and take out all the great quotes to make a story and a feature out of that. It's like, it's a lot. You need to be thinking about a lot

in any given moment in the games press. Yeah, no, and I think that's like the biggest way is all changed. You know what I mean? We'll talk about that a little bit. So why, I mean, you keep going, you get drawn to news and that's pretty much where you stay for a long time.

Yeah, mostly. Like two, two years, two and a half years or something like that, I think. I can't remember when I made the jump officially, but like I pulled Steve R. EIC into a room was like, hey, I want to do news full time. Like, I don't want to, I can't remember what I was doing at the time.

maybe previews. I don't really remember, but I was like, news seems really cool, and I think I'm really good at it. So let me do that and let me have more time to do reporting and meeting with sources and trying to find cool stories. I remember that you wanted to go, like, because you wanted to go like, go, like, this is a bad reference and I know you don't like it, but stick it with me. You were the guy of like, like, Lois Lane and Batman v. Superman, who was like, I need to go

to Washington for a few days. I got this thing to chase. I got to do that. Yeah, and he was like, I'm going to take a lunch with a source and come back and have some intel. And I'm not going to write anything today. But I have information for a story that I'll write two months from now. Right. That's fascinating. Isn't that cool?

So weird. And it's like, it was a brief moment in my entire career where I was doing actual journalism. Yeah. And it's like I'm hunting stuff down and I'm chasing leads and it's weird. Like, because you write news every day, but it's like, yeah, okay, call duty announced. D.L.C. coming for whatever. And there are definitely stories to find and, you know, if you do an interview with a dev, you can get some good quotes and talk about what, you know, making their game meant or what it means for players, things like that. But it was the moment where I had free time to just be like, okay. I'm going to trust Goldfarb. He's going to take care of all that shit and I'm going to go over here and do my own thing and come back with a story in a week.

Yeah. And you loved it. I loved it. Yeah, I loved chasing news. And we got like a lot of really cool stories because I had the time and energy to do it. And then what happened? Because now you're leaving it.

I am leaving it. Yeah, yeah. Poor Goldfarb. For Phantom game job. Phantom game job. I like that. Yeah. That sounds sexy.

It just, it, I reached this point and I think a lot of people in media do where you look at what's next and it's this ocean of other opportunities or climbing the games press ladder and both are appealing for different reasons and some people stay on the ladder

and they climb up games ladder and they run websites they start their own website whatever like this guy or you look at totally different things because the skill set you've developed in the press starts to align with different stuff

I think anybody who comes into the games press and decides, I'm going to do this and then use it as a launch pad to make games is coming out of the wrong head and they're going to, they're not, it's just not going to work. Like you can't come into into the games press with the mentality of, I'm going to leave it eventually to make games. Sure.

Because you're coming into the job for the wrong reasons. You're not going to be into the job. You're not going to be very good at the job. And then you're not going to have the skills or talents to make a game. You won't be the kind of guy who or gal that people want to stick around or that want to work with or want to give information to. Yeah. Like if you're around people to use them for something else,

then you're benefiting nobody. Yeah. So go, like, if you want to make games, go make a game. If you want to write for games or write about games, write about games. Like, if you want to do something, just go do that thing. But I think the reason you see a lot of people in the press leave for dev isn't because it's what they were planning all along. It's because that's what their interests sort of became. Like, you talk about games long enough with people who make them that you start to think like, oh, like this guy is thinking on another level.

And you start thinking about that more and more. And then you take that information to your next interview and you ask a more and intelligent question because now you have the knowledge. Sure. And eventually you start having conversations with devs in a more unified way than you used to. Like it used to be, I used to ask how many weapons this game had. And now I'm asking like how they, you know, changed a system with the engine and how like the art teams collaborated with whatever, right? Like, yeah, yeah, technical stuff.

Not back in the box. Yeah. And it's hard without like a specific example to give a general answer to that. but you start thinking about the design of a game and the creation of the game and not just the game itself. Sure. And I feel like those kinds of conversations make you think about games differently when you play them.

At which point a lot of people start going like, I wonder if I could do this. Some people go like download Game Maker, they download Unity and they start tinkering with stuff. They start writing a story in Twine and then they publish it and it's just there. And like people... Did you do these things?

A few of them, yeah. Like I tinkered with Unity and I tinkered with Twine and I tinkered with Unreal. And never really made anything like, oh, this is a game, but it's like, oh, I... I understand now why when I cross a certain threshold in a game, the trigger happens, and now it creates like a lighting thing or it creates a script that allows an actor to enter the screen, whatever, those kinds of things. Like, I have a better understanding of that. I still don't know anything about the act of, like, designing a game at all. And, like, the thing I'm most excited about going to dev is like, I want to sit next to a designer and be really annoying and be like, hey, I want to sit here all day and just watch you.

Hey, build whatever you're building. Yeah, and then I'm going to pest you about why you're doing it. Because I want to know this stuff. I want to know how it works. They're going to love you at this job. I hope so. A lot of things are going to get done. Yeah.

Shouldn't you be doing something, sir? I thought you should be doing something. That's why I'm here, right? I'm just looking at what you do. Yeah. Yeah, and it's, uh, so I guess like, why I leave is like, I just, I started thinking about what I wanted to do in a very different way based on what I had learned at IGN. And I could definitely, like, keep applying those skills to IGN and do more cool stuff

and make a lot of fun videos with my friends, which I still would love to do. But there came an opportunity. again, like, this was just handed to me. It would, hey. Touched you, sorry. I'm handing myself to you as well. Aw. Yeah, this job opportunity I have now that I still can't talk about, just like, it fell into

my lap as somebody being like, hey, do you want this? I was like, this is preposterous. Why do you want to give me this job? Okay, cool, let's talk about this. Yeah. You know, it's one of those things like you feel like you don't deserve it, but then you look at what you did to earn it and what you did to prove to people why you're the right person for the job.

And it's like, oh, okay, no, I do feel good about this. And I do feel like I've sort of got skills that are worthwhile. Do you, so you say you sort of do this, you do, are you still every day trying to force yourself to believe in yourself on that one, right? Because like for me, look at me. Everything I've done right has been a natural progression in a way, right? They give me up at noon and I'm bad at up at noon, but I eventually get comping it up at noon and then start doing more YouTube stuff. You know what I mean? And then it's like, well, now I'm just going to go off and do that.

I'm just going to be on a video, of course. I think that might just be the professional pressure of like, okay, IGN is going to do a lot of video. Greg, we'd like to do a lot of video or like, hey Mitch, read a news video for the first time ever with no script and having read the news story once. Memorize everything. Just do it. And it's like, man, this is like going back to my theater class.

But instead of having a shitty performance on night one and feeling okay about day two, it's like, no, we just published it and 400,000 people watched it because you talked about Metal Gear Shalled 5. They hate you. And it's like, I'm so, like I go back and watch old videos. Man, it's painful. Kids send me all the time. The old video

reviews. The last guy comes up a lot. and it's just like, yesh, because it was like, I remember vehemently being opposed to when they were like, we're doing video, we're gonna change the way

we do video reviews. Now you have to come in with the script. Because before it would be, all right, go. We'd be like, all right, man,

let me tell you about this game. This is cool and, uh, this and does. And I just like, eight minutes of rambling with us and Oz and like they're just trying to find footage to apply to this.

Yeah. Yeah. And then they give you, you write your own script and you're just like, today the video games. It's like really hard to read a script and not sound boring.

Yeah. So, like, one of my first video reviews that, like, really mattered. Like, one of my first big game reviews at iTunes was NinjaGadden 3, which I, uh, legendarily gave a 3.0, like, which I still get shit about. Oh no, really? That game is not good. Internet? The Internet getting mad about video game reviews? But I go back and I watch the video review and I vividly remember how all this can be. It's like, I played this game and I hated it. And I was just like sad, having played this game for this long.

And I wrote the script and I was burned out from just like playing it all day and writing all day. And like it was all I was thinking about and I was just bummed out about everything. So that was bad enough. But then I stayed home and was like, oh shit, I can't stay home. I'm sick today, but I have to go in. Yeah. Because I have to do this VO for this video review. And like, I'd never really done a VO for a video review.

It was my first time really reading a script that I had written, and I was sick as hell. And the video review is awful. Like, my Vio is just awful. But then you look at something like, I don't know, like some video review I did recently, like the Walking Dead stuff that you and I did or my 4 review or whatever. Like, and that's way better. And I, like, I feel like those are good. And I feel like I've learned a lot. And you can definitely see how much I've learned and how much better I got at what I did.

so I feel like no matter what job you're in the pressure of I have to do this and if I don't do this I will get fucking fired I gotta get better I gotta figure it out and you talk to people around you and you talk to like your video producers

and they typically have good advice bullet like hey you're really shitty at doing this thing don't do that instead try this and you try that and you go oh that works way better and you just keep improving that's what's fascinating by you

is like I think to it now I'm just like if I just wanted to stop right now go be a baker you know what I mean now granted like your job isn't as dramatic as a shift but I mean to hang up you're talking about

like how good you are at the Walking Dead videos when we did the Walking Dead how good you're doing right now on a podcast right I remember how bad I was at my first podcast

right like to kind of put that skill set aside in a way to go make this game yeah and it's a very different skill set but there's also like parallels there's stuff that I learned

that it's like stuff you don't really talk about because it's just like behind the scenes stuff like oh I learned how to be a better professional person I learned how to communicate better based on being in a professional

environment in an office with a ton of people that rule on me and who I rely on. And that kind of stuff, you just sort of learn like, oh, I'm really good at spreadsheets. I'm really good at organizing shit. You do that IGN learn really quick if you're good at Excel or not. Yeah, and then they make you do it for a long time.

But I ended up, like, enjoying that stuff. And I enjoyed, like, the sort of like production of IGN. And I enjoyed, like, overseeing an event being like, okay, we're going to Tokyo this year. And I have five people coming with me and we're all going to go do exactly this. And coming back and being like, all right, great job. Everyone did great. We had a really good show. We had a plan.

We executed on it. Yeah, like we made money because we went to TGS. Like that feels really good to know that you were valuable to the company. Sure. Yeah, the work you're doing matters. Yeah. All right. You want to answer my question.

IGEN questions before we jump to us. Let's do it. Of course, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to be part of the show, go to kind of funny. com slash forums. Tim usually saves all the questions at the end, but I'm filtering them in because I believe in conversational podcasts. Me too. Whereas Tim believes in gulogs where we all sit here and just talk about whatever he wants

to talk, whatever NX rumor. Tim's not here. I hate him. this one comes from Jake James Lugo he says here's a question for Mitch what's the hardest thing

you had to do while writing about games for IGN anything that pushed you to limit and forced you to change up your approach to something

was it something you wish you could have approached differently now than you did back then thanks a ton good luck on everything I owe you a high five

stay epic Mitchie high five Jake James loves you love you love you too man I can't think of like a definitive like oh that was the hardest

thing for sure like this stands out there were just like really hard days where you're staying late and you're in the office of people and you're like okay well we have this event that doesn't start till seven we have to work till five anyway we can't really go out at six to get food

because we don't have time and you do like long nights at the office or an event doing like live shows all day and to be on video is like you watch someone like Greg on video and Greg is very natural he's very good at what he does takes compliments really well he's very humble but then like Colin bursts through the wall at any second I know

I'm not to call it bullshit on everything. But then, like, you see these people do this stuff all day. And then you stop doing that. You stop working and you're like, all right, let's just sit down and get dinner. And, like, you meet a different person than the person you see on video. Like, people on video are a little bit different than they are in real life. Sure. We just talk about it's amplified a bit, right?

Yeah, it's like an exaggerated version of yourself because you're trying to, like, you're entertaining people and you're doing the fun thing. Keep it going. Let's talk. Let's not be loose. Let's not mumble. Yeah. Like, we're here to have a good time. Like, we're doing the show because we're having fun. Yeah.

Whereas at dinner, it's like, well, we're just hanging out. Let's just be, like, more casual and not really worry about anything. Take a breath in between our statements and sentences and everything else. So, and the reason I bring up all this is like, you're on all day. All fucking day. You're on video and you're just like, hey, what's that? And you're just, you're fast and you're excited and your high energy. And it's like, that is fucking exhausting.

That is so much more exhausting than you would ever imagine. Being on video is hard. And I look at somebody like Damon or Naomi at IGN. It's like, you do this all day. And you have to be entertaining for people all day. Like, because people expect a certain version of you. And not to say it's a fake version. It's just like...

Ampline. They're used to seeing that person. And the minute Damon goes on to a live show and it's like, hey, we're back and Microsoft's press conference. Like, that's it, you're done. That's over. It's not interesting. It's not worth watching.

You're doing a bad job. And you can't do that. So you work in an event like E3 and you do that all day. And then you write previews all night after going to an open bar event. You know you shouldn't be going to the open bar, but you do because you had a really long day. Because you're finally done for now. But then you play all these games. like shit I didn't expect to have to write a gears of war preview tonight I didn't have

I didn't think that it'd be worth writing about forza but they had news so you stay up till midnight writing news yeah and then everyone wants to go out because it's hey it's E3 and you're like I'm never going to see this person again yep if I don't talk to this person right now who's in town from Japan that I haven't seen five years I won't see them and obviously this is all a very big first world problem it is like we are so fucking lucky to have had jobs that allowed us to go to E3 and see these people and talk to these people and go to these open bars and play these games but it is draining sure and I I love E3, but it's like at a certain point by Friday, I'm just like, I need to just lie down.

Yeah. I need to not do this. And like, I'd never expected coming into this job for it to be as like mentally and physically taxing as it is and to then have to go into work on Monday and follow up on all of the stuff that we already covered and do more. Yeah. It's like it's very demanding of your time and energy and it's not like it's a bad thing, but that is just like a hard thing to deal with.

I mean, especially for you and news. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, we dealt with that obviously is the PlayStation guys and the news teams and things start changing. But it was the thing

like you never go to, it's never over. No, like you came to me one night with like we were at a company retreat. Yeah. And you came to me like, hey,

I got a text about like a massive news story that's breaking. Yeah, yeah. We need to do this. The worst was always going to bed and then you check Twitter. Like, you know, I checked Twitter and there was some PlayStation

whatever at the time. And it was like, all right, back out of bed, turn off the computer and figure out of Nintendo at three in the morning. Yeah. I know. Why don't I check my email?

That was always the thing. Why don't I even see this? Why do I have to see this? Pro tip, never have your work email on your phone. If you can avoid it, I'll always have it. I remember thinking that was going to be the coolest thing.

Because I'm old, you know, I'm old enough to remember life before the iPhone. And I remember when I was going to sell my car and go the next day and buy an iPhone. And I was like, I'm going to go check email on my phone. This is going to be amazing. And it was and still is.

It is. But it is the thing of like, now, you know, I don't know, once we started all this and I, like, I was talking about it, I was talking about it. I thought of myself as a goalie, right? And all these shots are

coming out on net. And I'm knocking them all down. I'm going out of my way. And like once a while, someone will get past me and it's like, oh, that sucks. And then we started this. It's just like, just standing to the side of the goal. And they're just getting scored on now and sound like, I can't, I literally can't stop these. At some point, like I hadn't really done a thorough email go through in like a week because I was at the Final Fantasy thing to rooster teeth to to bachelor party, to roost your teeth, to home, to do this stuff. That sounds horrible to me. Like, you guys do such a good job of what you do, but like that, like, world tour is just

like, I cannot imagine doing that. Because none of that is even like the real work. That's just getting to the work. Well, our work changed, you know what I mean? That's the big thing. It's like, I go to, you know, I went to roost teeth on Friday and filmed some free play stuff that we're not talking about yet. Or I guess Thursday I did it.

Scoops. And it's like, you know, that was, I did it and I was done. And I also just got to be talent, which is always like, oh, nice. Because when we're here and it's like I'm producing the show and tonight I will edit the show and now I'm hosting the show like you're taking notes throughout exactly There's a lot of different moving parts to this whereas there when it's like all right do this do that all right you're done all right People take care of that stuff exactly you work around and somebody else does everything else like oh fuck that's great But yeah like you know it's funny because I you know how I had no idea what we're getting into when we did this I was like we're to travel less it's gonna be great yeah sure so we do fun stuff and like an IGN it was fun and we did a lot of really great work and I like I love it I love doing what

We did. And like, it was weird this week to not go in. Oh, sure. And, like, watch other people at IGN text me about stuff. Like, hey, let's go get coffee because I'm on a giant text throw with IGM people. And I'm like, oh, I can't go today. That's weird. And I want to catch up and find out what everyone's doing and find out, like, how I can help them. And it's just, it's a strange feeling to come into this job going to like, oh, man, I'm going to just run about video games all day and play. No, you're not. You're going to do like a real job. And it's going to be a real job. But it's also going to be really, really great. Like, a great job should be. Brotherhood 93. Piggybacks off. James. Jake James. Lukeo. What one piece of content are you most proud of for your time at iTunes? I wrote a 12,000 word inspired by Colin Moriarty. I wrote a 12,000 word long-form feature about Ubisoft Montreal. Like, it's life's work called House of Dreams, the Ubisoft Montreal story. Gotcha. And it's like starting at 1997 when the company started and the Janus Milat, who's the CEO of UBMontreal,

and I think he runs Ubisoft Toronto now as well. He was like, yeah, we're starting the studio. We're going to do these license games to cut our teeth. And we hired 30 people and 15 of them didn't know how to make a video game. We just figured it out. And then we made Prince of Persia the sounds of fucking time. Like the greatest platformer action game of all time is like the, oh, they didn't really know what they were doing. They just made one of the best things ever.

They stumbled into it. Yeah. And it's like I talked to a ton of people who worked there. Some people talk to me like about the games they made. Other people talked to me like anonymously because they had information that like, maybe they shouldn't have been talking about. just for like insights into how the studio worked and why it is the way it is. And it's this gigantic feature that I loved writing.

I worked on it for literally a year. See, that's the best stuff. Like when you get to actually sit down and get embedded with stuff and stories. And you talk to people like, okay, you worked on Prince of Persia. Let's talk about that for a bit. Okay, you worked on Splinter Cell like 10 years later. Let's talk about that. Okay, you mentioned something about this other game eight years ago you worked on.

I'm going to see if I can find that project lead to talk about how that came to be. And it's just like piecing this gigantic puzzle together is so satisfying. excellent everyone go read that give iD gand the click they don't give mitch any more money that's true rocking canadian but r a w k i n g which i like rocking canadian says hello mitch and greg hello rocking canadian Mitch what is your favorite gregg story while at igon there's the ego for you oh my favorite gregg story you can admit you didn't like me when we worked together that's fine I just didn't know you like you were doing your own thing and like you just didn't to stop me like oh it's the new guy let's be best buds sure like you were friendly but it was

like you just had other shit to worry about yeah that was a weird thing i remember because like when i was talking about it you know for me starting at igon when i started igging young and crazy and stuff like that and then you figure i got there and dammit had been there six months i got there then in one fell swoop we got uh clement's gettys and or gettis it's so hard because now i'm trained to go the opposite ways when we hired tim i everybody called them gettis and he's like it's Gettys, you're killing me. Ryan Gettis, Ryan Clements and Colmoriardi. Yeah.

And so when all those people came in, it was like, family, this is what we are. You know what I mean? When you roll. And when you came in, I got to see you do that with Goldfarb and to an extent when Marty, you know, got over his one-upness.

Come over and be that. Marty. But yeah. If you don't have one, it's fun. No, it's like really hard to find a specific one. Because now we're close friends. Now we talk, we go places. We do things.

Yeah, it's true. And I just don't have like a ton of specific memories about like, remember that one time Greg did this? and I probably should. You had a life to live. You were doing your own stuff. That's fine. I remember like one of the first moments

where I was like, oh, Greg is really fucking good at what he does. Just continue stroking your ego a little bit. He was like, I think it was the first time I ever sat down to be like, oh, I have time today.

You won an award. I'm playing at both my awards, actually. Oh, look at that. That one's, that wooden ones actually really cool. Yeah. I like the Yoshi isn't usually, it looks like getting taken from behind by the award.

That's fine. That's what Kevin set it up to look like today. You know, whatever makes Yoshi has. Yeah, no, I'm not knocking it. that's fine I remember the first time I sat down to watch up at noon because I had missed like a bunch of episodes

thank God you would not have this in pro show I just didn't have time right like it was always like hey well we need people to come watch up at noon who's available I have 10 million things to do absolutely not but there was one day I was like fuck everything I'm going to watch up in noon I want to see this and it was like sitting with a live audience

in our studio and watching the way you interviewed people in the way it was like it was so natural and it was like not the kind of interview I'm used to which is like how do you might a sequel how did you might a better. Cool. Now with the sequel, you, and it's like unrelated questions that are like sort of topic based and it was really hard for me for a long time to like listen to an interview

subject while not freaking the fuck out about what I was going to say next. Yeah. So I was always like notebook, notebook, notebook, notebook, notebook. They stopped talking, ask a next question. Yep, exactly. Active listening is so difficult. It's so hard. But like watching you went up at noon where you just went in, you sat down and I was like, you got notebook. You never had a notebook. And you were always able to just be like, okay, cool, you said something interesting. Let's follow up on that. one to something I was talking about before. Like, you just had a fucking understanding of who this person was and what they were saying. Yeah.

I was like, that's fucking awesome. I want to do that. And I started just not bringing my notebook to places. Nice. And I was like, I'm going to just listen. And if I run out of questions, I'll say like, all right, well, I'm good. Anything else? Yeah.

Is there anything we didn't touch on? Yeah. Anything I didn't touch on anything that you're really excited about that I didn't ask you about? Yeah. No. All right. We're done.

Yeah. And that just made for way better interviews. It made me, uh, and weirdly, it was like, that's how I learned to, like, make contacts because people stopped seeing me as the press guy interviewing me and more like, oh, this is a person who like gives a shit about what I have to say. Yeah. And that was how I was able to like maintain a conversation after an interview without showing, okay, thank you for your time and leaving.

Right. I got to go by. Yeah. And it's like moments like that where he sits down and it's like, oh, Greg's really good at what he does. And like all these people are having an amazing time, like laughing out loud because the show is funny and it was really good. So that like, I can't remember like what episode it was. But I remember sitting in the studio and having that thought, but like, oh, this is like

going to change how I'd do this job forever. Oh, good. Cool. See, that's the one thing I don't like about this show is that it in every episode. No, no, not the notes. Not the notes part. Because the notes are just the questions from the listeners. True. But like you were talking about things in the first part of who is Mitch Dyer that I want to talk about. But I know they're in the bucket of the second topic. Yeah. So it's like, I'm like, oh, I'd love to follow up on that right now and keep it conversational that way. But Tim fucked me. Got to have some kind of structure. I begged. I begged him. Put the show up as one big topic. And he's like, no. Breakouts. Breakouts. At least we're not like his breakout is. He's, he's. He's, he's, he's we used to be. I remember during beyond the old days, like boxing things out. I'm writing time. Are we going to bring this one out? Maybe I'll not that. Not that I'm knocking that because I can't tell you the number of people who show up on our PSI love you and like, when's the fucking topic start?

This is, you guys talking about tacos in the beginning. Final question before we jump to number two. Pepe low, 14. Hi guys. Two questions for the two of you. Okay. How did you handle the business decisions, parentheses, layoffs, show cancellations or changes, promotions that affected you and your time at IGN? the second is kind of personal oh that's where that was i'm saving that because that was already

going to be topic number three oh yeah of course yeah all right so good how did how did how did a business decisions that igian affect us uh man layoffs fucking suck they suck they suck they suck dick sucks yeah i had i had the layoffs that i gym one month after i started and i can't remember and that was like around the time where peter icemans who was like amazing peter like had the opportunity to join iGM because there were so many layoffs and he was like no i'm going to go do something else and now he's making games at congregate and he's amazing. But it was, we lost a bunch of people at once. And it was weird to be

like, I've only been here a month. But man, I'm going to miss the fuck out of Jack. And I'm going to miss all of these people that like, I didn't really know but it sucks to see them upset that they just lost their job. And they don't know what they're going to do. And it's like real life stress in the moment. You're like, well, this is hard.

And that's, it's like not a fun thing to do with. And there's no real thing you do to be like, how do you do with it? I don't know, you just do. You just try not to cry a lot. Yeah. I only failed that once. When we laid off Clements, could not stop crying. Oh, my God.

It was over. And that was the thing for me. Like, how did the business decisions affect us? I can't speak for you. For me and for layoffs and some of the stuff we're talking about here specifically. It was this weird battle of like, I understand the business and I understand what Ijean's business model is. And I understand why they need to let these people go. And I understand why they're making these.

There's only, I was talking about it. And I won't talk about on air. Obviously, there's only one person never got laid off where I was like, why, why that person. That doesn't make any sense. we need him. And the rest were like, this sucks. This is where it gets into that business.

I get it. But then there's the friendship family level where you're like, that is a family member. We can't do that. I remember at one point, goddamn, and I forget how many times we were there, but when like we're addressing the IGN mission statement or whatever,

you know what I mean, the values. And we wanted to put family on there. And like the business, the business guy in the room had to be like, I understand. And that's a lovely sentiment. It's not a family.

You know what I mean? And it can't be. Otherwise, this doesn't work. And what do you do when something bad happens? You have to fight it. Totally. Yeah, it's hard because you, at a place like that where it is very, like, it's so lame because everyone is always like, you know, we're a family.

It fucking is. It just is. Yeah. Like I talk to everybody I know who has ever left IGN, still on a regular basis. Yeah. And not like about IGN just because it's like, oh, you were here and I was here and and now we're best friends forever. That exists.

We always come in at such a formative time. You know what I mean? It's a young man, woman's game. And you pop in and you start. making those friendships and relying on each other and da-da-da-da-da. And then when somebody matures out of that role and leaves the nest again, Leah Jackson was only at IGN for maybe a year. I think she was just about a year before she went to Riot Games.

And like, Leah moved away and that was it. But I still talked to Leah, like, all the time. I think I talked to one more now. Totally. And I totally forget what was the question? How do these decisions affect us? How do you deal with it? I mean, it sucks.

Like, if a show gets canceled, it gets canceled, then you just have to accept it. Like, you can get mad about it and you can go get drinks and complain about it with your co-workers, but it's like, we always understand why stuff like this happens. And that's the thing. It's back to the business versus family thing where it's like, we're getting rid of this because it's not bringing views or it's not getting sold. And I think, you're like, okay, that sucks, but that's the realistic part of that's stuff. Like that learning about the values of what is important to the business of IGN was something

that I just went into it with literally no knowledge of. I had no expectations that I would ever need to know that. And I probably could have gotten away with, you know, just kind of doing my job. but when I started thinking about like, okay, is this good for the business? Is this good for the readers? Right. Good for us.

Like you start thinking about how you do your job differently. Sure. And better, honestly. Like, the business of what you do is never bad. It's sometimes it's like, sometimes it's inconvenient. Sometimes it's beneficial. It's just the nature of what you do.

Sometimes things have to get done a certain way. They don't align with what you want to do creatively, man. And that sucks. You just deal with it and you move on. Agreed. Mitch. Yes, sir. It's topic number two.

Kevin's on here. I'm going to write down my own notes. I hate that. That's fine. He's making me work for a living. Kevin. I want, and this is going to,

this is going to double back, like I was saying in the last topic to stuff we said in that topic and all these different things. What is the state of video games journalism? You said something very interesting in the last topic. Okay. That that was the first time you really felt like a journalist.

Like you were doing something there. And then you, but you work news and you made a reference to, this game comes on in this day. This is, where are we right now, do you think? Are we,

is there games journalism happening? What does it all look like? there will always be a place for the news right like the the act of a publisher making something and wanting the world to know about it whether it's on their own sites or through the press will exist for a long time

they will always need to get that information to communicate that information to the player you will always want people to know your game is coming out that you have a cool actor associated with it that you've got cool plans that you're going to have demo at packs whatever that stuff will always be there it's not the most fun stuff in the world to write

but it's necessary and people are excited about it so you do it. It's also like a gateway to bigger things where it's like, oh, we know this thing about this game. Now we can write an opinion piece or feature, follow up interview, whatever. Like that is a gateway to do more with something. Sure. But there's also like actual amazing, awesome journalism in the industry right now. And I think Kataku is doing the absolute best of it in the entire industry. Jason Shrier and Patrick Klipp are amazing. Yeah, they're doing a great job. Those guys do such different work than anybody else. Like those guys were constantly an inspiration for me. And anytime I got a good story, I was always just like, oh,

like isn't as good as anything they've ever done. And the answer is usually no. Like, no matter how good I did, it's still like, man, like, Clepick is so, like that dude is on another level and I don't know how he does it. When he does it because he's been doing this for 15 years. And it's what you were talking about the last one, right,

about the interviewing where Patrick's a person. You know what I mean? Like, you know he cares about it. You know, I could tell him anything off the record. Not that I'm saying my secrets are on that level. But I can tell him anything and I trust him, just like any other developer publisher would. Yeah, and that's like the best kind of journalist is somebody who isn't

always in it for the story. Maybe, like, they interview somebody and they get author record information, they hold that, and they go, like, oh, maybe I can use that later. But that's not why they're there. They are, you know, doing their job, and they're learning stuff,

and they're just kind of, like, soaking it in. And a really good journalist will soak stuff in, and, you know, when the time is appropriate, be able to tell a story that matters. And you're not going to just, like, somebody tells you something out of the record, you're going to blow it open now

and ruin a relationship and maybe a contact and your reputation for one good story. And that's, you know, when you meet people, when I meet people, even to this day for the first time and they start getting gun shy about it. I'm like, now it's easy because it's like, let me run you through all the things I knew about for months of at a time. I never ever said anything. Why would I blow it up for this? Yeah.

And I think a lot of, it's different across different websites, right? Like you see certain sites running things that I would at IGN never qualify as news. Like Phil Spencer tweeting his thoughts on something is not always news. Yeah. Phil Spencer congratulating PlayStation is not news. there are certain things that just don't matter sure and kataku has always been really really good at like oh they announced uh dLC release date we don't care like we're gonna pass on that because if it's not original or interesting or beneficial to somebody playing games or reading kataku who cares don't waste

your time spend that time doing better work and that's why they do better work than a lot of other places online do you worry about their viability yeah and then also i guess just more people doing this, right? Because we're talking about it. The list gets pretty short. You're talking about Jason? We're going to talk Patrick and then we're going to start talking about. And it's like, there's people out there doing it, but the journalism is there in such a

fashion where it is like what you're talking about. Like, all right, cool. Characters in the game. This is the DLC package. This is the release date. Whatever. I'll put up that story and then I'll think about features about it. I'll think about interviews.

But most people are just like, here it is. You know what I mean? And all these fan sites. They're just putting up the same. It's just like, I don't know. Like, that's how I got my start. it was just like, oh, news happened, I'm going to write about it. Sure.

Hopefully some people read it and some people notice it. But it's not until you start doing original work, whether that's like an opinion piece or a feature or whatever, something critical, something different, that you and your website's voice starts to stand out as distinct. Yeah. And the best websites are the ones that do that, obviously. It's like if you have a perspective that is different than the publishers, now you have an interesting thought. And you can say something crazy like Colin might, or you might say something. super, super intelligent or astute that like nobody else is thinking about. You might compare somebody's business strategy to something else that does or doesn't work. And you can weigh all these

things against each other to form an opinion and share a view with an audience that is interested in learning more because they care about whatever you're talking about, right? Like somebody who's interested in Uncharted 4 is going to want to know certain things about it. And sometimes they don't know what they want. They know they want to know the release date. They know they want to see some gameplay footage. But then there might be stories about the making of that game that are super interesting and that they didn't know they wanted to know. Sure.

So if you can kind of predict what people will be interested in, which is sort of the foundation of your business, then you can create something that people are going to gravitate toward an orbit around because it's a reliable, consistent, qualitative thing that is about things I care about. And that is like the definition of what a good game's media, whether it's journalism or whatever like that is what good games coverage is do you worry though that I mean is that

gonna burn out in terms of like here we're gonna do real journalism we're doing real stories is that gonna burn out at the big dot coms because my concern when I look at the big dot coms and I'm including everybody who's a big dot com do you mean like IGN or like I mean like IGN? No I'm talking about video games video games game game spot IGN you go there and it is such a shotgun approach and it is such big headlines that it does become that I'm I'm like all I always talk about is how we work and I was talking about it being the same

boring tired out old fucking played out analogy right that I talk about with video game publishers right and developers where it was like we have the triple A developers we have the indie developers and the middle was these these mid tier guys who have fallen away and I see that happening now where it's like you have the big dot coms and you have the little guys like us on YouTube and then the middle tier people and then you see like destructoid like losing a lot of people and you see joystick shutting down yep exactly those

sites are starting to fall away. So then for me, my concern is somebody who like Colin, likes the written word, likes long form content, likes all these different things. Even though I, you know, I'm fucking a hypocrite right there because I'm like, I guess I read Kataku stuff. That counts. I'm talking about when's last time I sat down and read like a really long form? But then again, once last time somebody wrote something really long form and great. But what I'm saying is, you know, the dot coms. It is here's the top 10 list and here's this tweet from David Ayers about the suicide squad. And here's the, and like it's all these little things to the point that either way I always think of how we work in it is, oh man, IGN's review of Batman v. Superman went up or IGN's

new clip of Batman v. Superman. I can assume this news, this breakout. What did Greg think of it? And you go to your expert commentary, your expert person, you know, your person you connect that. And I think there will always be a place for that. There will always be a place for critical thinking and expert analysis. Yeah. And that'll be the thing that differentiates any dot com from its journalism kind of output. Like, I think to some degree, there will always be people willing to rewrite press releases. And whether or not that's sustained. is to be TBD, but as long as there are interesting voices surrounding things I care about, I'm always going to want to see that. I'm always going to want to read what Anthony Bresdenkin has to say about Star Wars

because he's somebody I really connect with because he's at Entertainment Weekly and he, like, it's a big website with like some serious fucking legitimacy and he's passionate and he gets it and he asks really good questions and like I'm super into that. Anytime I see a Star Wars story on EW, I know it's going to be good. But and it's also not just going to be like today, JJ Abrams said the thing. Sure. That's not interesting. But when he starts digging into it

and speculating about what any of it means, that's when I'm like, oh, I didn't think about that. That's a really cool theory. This is a really cool question. He got this really great answer. Do you see it being though that like, we were talking about this at lunch, right?

And this is what I was talking about. And maybe you don't share the opinion. But I was talking about the fact of like, why I got so popular at IG and why I was able to keep all that going, right? Is that for pretty much eight years, I was able to focus on one beat. You know what I mean?

I established myself as the PlayStation guy. And like I was talking about it. Like I was, you know, I'm sure in the comments of this very video people are like oh this fucking PlayStation fanboy right but it's like I'm not a fan boy I just know that inside now because that's my coverage in the same way the Giants reporter isn't

you're an anomaly though like you're a person who for lack of a better term became a celebrity out of growing out of this massive website sure and it's like a team right like as growing up I love the Phoenix Coyotes when I watched hockey and when Keith Kichuk left the Phoenix Coyotes I was devastated big day for worry about it when whatever bad analogy I don't give it no it's good no they

understand that. Like, my favorite player left my favorite team and I was like, holy shit, who do I follow? And you just end up following both. It's like, well, if I like this person, I'm going to continue following them. But I'm also like, I'm going to read EW if Anthony Bressick can leave. Oh, no. And my, I'm sorry. What I was driving with that point wasn't that personality is leaving the site,

collapse the site. Totally. Okay. My thing is I'm saying is I think the day of an eight year editor are gone to where are you building it, are you at IGN right now currently building or in GameSpot and everybody else? this is in me, sizing them out. Are you building it so that you understand that when

X event happens, I need to go do that. And like, with new people. Like, obviously, if, like, fucking Nintendo shit happens, what does Perth think? What does Pran think? What does Brian think? So I think that's kind of, like, the notion and the nature of Twitter and YouTube has sort of created this weird

amalgam of, like, I don't care who I hear from. I just want to search uncharted for stuff on YouTube. And maybe I get beyond, maybe I get kind of funny. maybe I get a random YouTuber, maybe I get some random guy responding to a trailer. Sure. The black hole of like

just infinite amounts of people talking about stuff, it makes it harder to specialize. And I don't, like I still, I don't know what the future of media is with that regard because you try to do things to differentiate from the rest of them, but it's really hard

because there's just so many other people doing so much of the same stuff that to say something different, which is like we said, super important. You have to say stuff that's different to prove, with people that you're interesting to make them want to stay with your site or with you or whatever.

But I don't know if people care about the individual so much as they care about just any kind of insight from anyone. I just, I don't know. I have no idea. Yeah. Like, the way I consume media is so much different than even the way like you watching this consume media. Like I don't have my kind of funny. I don't have a show that I go to. Like I have a couple podcasts. I listen to a Star Wars podcast that I really like. And I love listening to the idle thumbs guys, but I'm not there every week. Right. I'm not hunting down to like a thing I'm subscribed to on YouTube.

Like people, especially people who are younger than me, consume content. I hate that word. So God, man much content in a very different way. You gotta get on board with it, sir. And it's... The first time somebody came up to me like three years ago to show and was like, I love your content. I was like, wow.

Like I thought only we, I thought only nerds like me and nerds like me and VidCon talked that way. You're as a kid. Yeah. So like the, the audience, even the iTunes. GN audience is evolving in a way that I don't understand. And that's why it's such, because I,

like, it's, this whole thing is so fascinating. And we're cut from the same cloth is that we came in thinking we were going to do one job. And it's, I'm a writer. I'm going to go right about video. I got higher. Yeah, exactly. And I got to live that, you know, dream for a long time, but a little time and see it change where I, like, I'll never, like, my early days at IGN when like you got there

those first, I mean, years, but I'm thinking like the first months when it's like, all right, cool, you're going to review this PSP game. Great. And I just sat at my desk. and played this PSP game for five hours. And it was like, no one interrupted me. I didn't have to go on camera. I didn't have a podcast. You know what I mean?

There weren't the giant, the things you're buried under now. And so like to see it all, a change and evolve gets me to this point where I'm like, I'm concerned, because back to the, whoever the jerk is in the comments, right? There's a jerk in the comments.

Oh, these two fuck boys talking about games journalism. Games journalism was dead and never even existed. And da, I'm like, you're not 100% wrong. You know, I'll never forget coming here with my,

I have a green magazine journalism. Hey, Roper. I wrote my first review. All right, cool, post it. Are you gonna read it? Is there a copy editor? No, we don't do that. And I was like,

and I mean like the way, not ethics in the terms of like horrible things, but in like the way like, I remember I talked about the Sierra trip they sent me on like my first two months there where I was like, all right, we're gonna send you to Palm Springs at this resort.

It's a three day party. You're seeing two games. And I went through this three day thing and I did like a total of 30 minutes of work of playing these two games. And to me now like, that sounds like such a massive fucking waste of time. 100%

That's how different it is now That shit does not happen Totally and like The idea that like going on a free vacation for work Like that's an amazing idea But I'm like give me the fuck out of here Like don't even fly Send me a disc

I don't want to go anywhere It just happened recently I won't name names But a company hit me up And like hey do you want to go I think it was London Do you want to go to London to play this game And I'm like fuck no

Hell no I don't want to do that I desperately want to get to London But I don't want to burn a week going to London To play one game Yeah yeah And that's in that so my concern This is all mixed in the same pot Just one mix of stuff

I'm talking about 30 different things I know, I know. But like, where does all this go? I still, I always go back to the fact that we are such a young industry and I'm talking about games in general. You know what I mean? That if you were to go back and look at movie criticism and movie journalism, right? I'm sure if the first 30 years of that, people are getting, they're going to get scoffing at that as well and all these different things. But it's had such a lineage to it gets to the point now that you understand that there's going to be a Roger Ebert style in-depth review. Here's what it means. You can trust me. And then there is going to be the regurgated press release that. Guess what? Channing Tatum has signed this thing to do this for a picture. I still, as somebody who just cares about the industry and the people in it and the news and the games and whatever, like, I want to keep up on that as much as I can. Maybe I'll read games media less and maybe I'll watch YouTube less because I'm preoccupied with doing different things. Sure. But I'm still really interested in like Avengers rumors and I still really want to see the first image for first trailer from this movie. And I so want to see the trailer for whatever game. Like I'm still, that stuff is still interesting to me.

I just, the way I consume it is sort of like, I'm going to sit back. I'm going to let it come to me. And if it's Greg's video that hits me first, I'm going to watch that. Of course, of course, of course. And it's such a weird way to consume news. And that's the thing of like, I worry about the Jason's and the Patrick's and the stuff that they're doing at Kataku. Where does that live in this new world?

Because if it becomes the thing I'm talking about, where it's, you have your IGians who are over here and GameSpot, again, I'm not, none of this is insulting anybody, I hope, insulting to anybody. But they're over there doing top 10 list, big Batman v Superman rumor, here's a tweet, whatever. Which doesn't mean, like, to clarify what you. said about weird. To clarify your point about like not talking

badly about anybody. It's just that that's, it's different businesses. Yeah. Different companies require or mandate or get excited about different things. And that's it. My scare. So anyways, so that's happening. And let's say, you know, all this gawker stuff pans out and Kazaku fades away or whatever. Then what, who is doing

that? Where does that go? Does it move away 100% from being written? Because I've seen Patrick toying around and I like him. He's doing a lot of videos. And I'm like, he's taking new stories and making them in videos. I'm like, this is very, very smart. And I love that. It's smart. Nobody else is doing that. Nobody else is doing documentary style news videos. And it's, Patrick's way ahead of the game. Like, Patrick, we're all going to work for Patrick one day is the problem. And we're going to play this fucking Mario

makes a little more than you go to this kid's YouTube channel. You're like, motherfucker. You're doing all this awesome news content and then all these awesome let's plays and fucking, God, I hate you. Or would you like to come work for Kind of Funny? Maybe one day, we won't work in the spare bedroom. Um, but that's, where does all that live and how does it go? And like, in the same way I'm talking about the fact that, you know, entertainment journalism, I'm sure, I think probably started in the similar fashion of what we're doing here and how all these growing pains as well. Are we growing or evolving in an unsustainable way where, because here's my nightmare scenario. And this is for all the big dot coms. Was that Kevin or was I called him? I missed

them. It's Colin. Okay. If you see Kevin, let them know the light did weird things. Where my concern with the big dot coms is that they, what you're saying, what are predicting what our audience wants. And right now our audience wants this buzz style feed content. funny gift videos, these funny memes, these tweets. Well, that's the thing that media has changed, like, the expectations of what people want has changed so much. Like, when I started at IGN, the wiki stuff was just becoming, like, as massive

as it was. And I was like, why are you wasting our time on fucking guides? People already do guides. No, guides that IG are massive. They're like 50% of the business. Yeah. That's hugely important. And I never would. Like, somebody was way ahead of the game, probably Mark Ryan, who was like, we need to be on top of this. Probably. And there are people way smarter

than me that will continue to do that in media because, and like, I was dumb. I was like, quote, just write this thing. And I'll do a video when someone tells me to, and I'll think about what I would like to do. But there are people who are like, oh, this is the future of media. And it's people like Patrick who are way ahead of the curve. And see that. And my fear for the dot coms is that they're marching in the wrong direction.

And it's going to snap back where it's going to be, okay, there's a better aggregator site. There's a better buzzfeed. There's a better video game.com or whatever. And it snaps back. And it's like the dot coms, the game spots, the IGN's who did. Their foundation was built on when I was there, IGN, we review everything. Yes. Dunham was like, we're reviewing every fucking game

and we all wanted to kill ourselves. But it definitely worked whereas like, IGN was the place for video game reviews. You knew that. So when it snaps back and suddenly it's like, all right, cool, I don't want the Angry Whopper video from an IGN. I'm getting that from Aggregator, whatever. I want to go see video game reviews. Are people going to still think to go there or is it going to be

now it is this fractured? I'm going to go see my PlayStation coverage that I play kind of funny, my Xbox coverage over there. My Nintendo stuff at Game Explained. It's going to weirdly be driven by, I think, you know, that like, whatever the number is like, 16 to 35 year olds or whatever Like whatever the major male audience is for all of this

Like the majority audience Yeah Whatever they do next Is gonna dictate a lot of how every other dot com YouTube or whatever responds Because when I started doing this YouTube was not a factor Yeah oh god no

And you just weren't thinking about it But you adapt You're always in the media adapting To what everyone else is doing And not even like what Oh IGN needs to change Because GameSpot did this It's oh the audience is going

here now. They're talking about Minecraft. How can we do something there? Like, we did not... Be every six month pair meeting. Yeah. How do we cover Minecraft? I'm like, I don't know pair. Me and Brian will play it. We don't know what the fuck we're doing. But it's a matter of like being nimble and improvisational. Yeah. The best in the media outlets that survive and thrive are the ones who are going to

figure it out. Yeah. I mean... And I don't know who those are going to be. Like I just really have no fucking idea. Well, what's interesting, you know what I mean? It's like, when they announced it was like... It's fucking awesome. I was so... I was so... big deal and then I was like oh it's a fucking huge deal. I was so down on it. I was like why Snapchat? Like Snapchat is so dumb. Right. But it's like the tailored content that team make content that team makes for Snapchat is so fucking good. Yeah. And it's very digestible and it fits the platform and it fits the kind of person who uses it. Stop drawing on your hand. I'm not. I'm just scratchy. All right. Uh, I like getting hand scratches and hand massages. I'm down. I'm with you. Thank you. Uh, yeah, it's, it's just a tactic that like I never would have seen coming. There's smarter people making better decisions than me. And that's the thing of like, how. I'm, I'm down. I'm going. And that's the thing of like, how. I remember even when we were leaving, I was like, you know, I'm still,

I still love IGN, I'll always well, and I'm gonna check IGN every day still. That's what I do every day. You know, and I don't check IGN ever, but it's because I don't check anything except Twitter ever. Exactly.

What are the news, the story, who, the curated list of people I follow that I trust their opinions of are saying this. And that's where I'll click off to go read it, Patrick's story,

or oh, Jeff's doing a bunch of cool VR demos. Let's go see that a giant bomb. Or, you know what I mean? You, or not you, but formerly you, but of this really intriguing story. I'd love to see it. And that's where you see the fact of like for the dot coms,

their homepage traffic is so down. It was, you know, IGN's was going down when we were there. And they talk about it openly and like how big mobile is and how big this is. And mainly how big it is to get your stuff out socially to bring people in. But then it does get me scared of like how easy is it to get somebody in through the, you know, through the window. Because I know how hard it is you get to somebody click a link and that's not a joke.

I mean, you know what I mean? You put a link in this video, this description. And you're looking at like an annotation in this video is like less than 1% are going to click that. So let alone to put out there and be like, we have a 35,000 words story about whatever. You're like, uh, yeah, I wrote 12,000 words about a studio's 1997 origins.

Exactly. No fucking way. Yeah, I don't know. I think things will remain, like at IGN, right? Like the biggest stories are always reviews. And it's always entertainment stuff. Like, as entertainment stuff is blowing up. Because people who care about games care about the Avengers.

People who care about the Avengers don't necessarily care about Far Cry primal review. Sure. But both of those things do really, really well. And they do way better than the opinion piece that I wrote. so I say that like the most interesting content is where the people are going to thrive the most and that's probably not true right now. But I don't know like if somehow this all bottoms out because everyone's doing the exact same thing. It's going to be the differentiators like Patrick and Jason and the giant bomb guys are doing a lot of really great stuff especially in video.

Things like that. Like those are going to be the kind of premium pieces of content that you seek out when you're like, oh, like I'm going to see a cool thing about a game. What did giant bomb say? And that's what's fascinating. I think now in the more, you know, the, why I was like, continue to talk about it and I think as you see it like everybody starts falling away where you're AAA or India or whatever like not

I'm not at all cursing them but let's say the Gawker stuff goes badly. Katakku does fold or whatever right. Patrick I could easily see going I'm going to do this on my own. I'm going to make a Patreon and I'm going to have this dedicated audience that supports me just like you guys support us that we can then make content that gets out to as a billboard to more people to come in to see this and like

it also gives him the freedom to sell certain content to certain places. Like if he has a really great story and entertainment weekly wants it, then he can do that. Yeah. It's fascinating. Games media is so weird. Like, it's so, I don't know, man.

It's like putting water in a bowl. You just like shake it up. It's like it's different. The way it's changed. You know what I mean? Just in, I mean, to think of like what I was hired to do a little less than a decade ago. You know what I mean?

Come in and you, all right, I remember being the, I have a PS2 and a debug PS2. I might ask and a PSP and this PS3. And you know what I mean? Like all these little tools there that were just like, I'm going to sit there and play this and that's what's going to be. And then all that shit slowly evolve. It's very different.

Yeah. It's very different. Yeah. Because the, the job expectations change for the expectations of the audience. And those are constantly evolving.

And you just have to figure it out. Before we go to topic three, would you like more water? Yeah, I was thinking about it. I'm gonna get you more water. Thanks, man. Did you take it out of the thing of a jig

or you take out of the faucet? I refilled the thing of a jig. Okay. So now there's thing of a jig water. Well, I do this. You pimp your stuff and whatever you want to pimpe. Just keep saying stuff for people to go doing it.

All right. All right. All right. All right. fill the air with some stuff. So as the video may have already showed, I am at Mitchie D on Twitter. That's kind of all I'm doing right now.

Just tweeting some stuff. Just doing some stuff. I'm on Twitch at Mitchie D. Not at symbol. My Twitch is Mitch ED. Twitch.com. Tvichy. Try to stream more Dota 2 lately.

That's a fun video game that a lot of people like. No, just me. Just me and my friends. No, like 12 million people play that game. People always say, people like, Calamoriariari, that mobas are stupid.

Movers are not stupid. Mo's are too smart for Cullamoriarty and his people. That is a brilliant genre and actually I think we are going to talk about it in a little bit. So we'll talk about that. I've been playing some Dark Souls 3 lately, speaking to which I see a copy right over there. So I'm reminded it was hard as hell, but it's so fucking good. And it is like way back to the like more in line with the original Dark Souls, which I thank you. I'm just talking to the kids.

You had to tell your cup. Yeah. I'm just talking the kids about Dark Souls 3 and how it's like, yeah, I know I saw that company. Listen, is anyone going to play that? Nobody at this house plays Xbox. Oh, no, do you not have a copy? I don't have a copy. Oh, yeah, there you go.

You're the prize box winner. Yeah! No, they sent us a PS3 and an Xbox one. I was like, okay, that's funny. Right into the library of kind of funny and right into the giveaway pod. On PS4, so I've been playing it. And I don't have one for my, for me, when I move. Thank you.

You can do that. It's your goodbye present for us. It's kind of funny. I love this game already. Because it's like, Dark Souls 1 was so good at having like cavernous depth in every area where it's like, I'm going to, roll through this box and accidentally found a shortcut that goes down into this totally new area with boss that like he's totally optional dark souls two had none of that and i was so disappointed in it so dark souls three i'm still like three hours in fucking love it it's so good okay cool i was telling colin earlier like i hope like Colin and i were talking about how few games compared to how many we used to yeah because the significance of so many games not to diminish their quality in any way but they just feel like unnecessary like i i jokingly used to you measure the worth of other games and the amount of time I could play Dota 2 instead.

And now that's like a legitimate thing because no I hear you or I could like okay I could play this game that's probably pretty cool but I'm not going to finish it and if I don't finish it I'll feel like it wasn't worth it. So I'll just read a book or I'll just play five games of Dota 2 which will guarantee give me a 10 out of 10 experience with four other friends and I'll have a great time. That's where it falls into like the division is the first game in a while probably since DC Universe online where it's like fuck I should be playing other things, but I'm going to keep playing this. I know Destiny for a while. Yeah, exactly.

So you know, it's exactly where, and it's like, I have two hours to kill right now. And I would love to start Republic on PS4. I'd love to get in to enter the gungeon on PS4. Play Republic. It's fucking awesome. And I know, and I'm the thing is I already know it's great. And I'm anxious to play it. But it's like, I, or quantum break. I have two hours right now. And I'm

like, you know what? I'd rather just get into something I already know. Because I don't want to do a tutorial and learning how to play and what is this? And then what am I going to get back to it? That's so fucking cool. And weird. Like, what does say about us that we're, we're the kind of people that demand innovation and cool new stuff in games, but we're totally happy to just revert to the stuff that we're comfortable with. I mean, it's part of the investment though, right? Yeah.

Because I mean, it's not that I don't think the division is not doing anything new. It's, I mean, for me, like, I, Destiny, I jumped into and I enjoyed where it was going, and I didn't get the bug. You know what I mean? And so I was very much in the outside of the window a lot of times going like, oh, I'm glad you guys are having so much fun. I would love to. Anybody want to come out and play?

Yeah, you know what I mean? but like now that I'm in on the inside of that and I granted I'm not on the inside like you know I just hit level 30 last night Fran Ty and I were playing and it's like great and we had a one of Franz friends friends arcane on helping us out just getting through this thing or whatever and he's like talking another language which is like to that point it's like oh I almost wish you weren't here because now you're terrifying me to an extent of like how many more

millions of hours I have to put in to see what you're talking about but I'm excited to be there and do that now how long like I keep you know I keep harbony harking hearkening back to this that it's my first weekend in I only weekend in April home where I'm not doing a trip or on something. And so I'm just going to play games on something like drugs. You know, I'm going to have time to play. So it's like,

I know I'm going to play. I'm like, this is what I was talking about earlier too is to the point we're making. People are like, in the reviews, I didn't read them all because I don't want to have a spoil. But I'm catching people being jerks about stuff or being nice about stuff or whatever. And quantum breaks only five and a half hours.

I got through it in six hours. Whatever. Game took me 12 hours. What are you talking about? Oh, perfect. Good. Well, some people are just, maybe they're skipping all the things or whatever.

Maybe. But when I heard that, my reaction was like, oh, cool. I'm going to be able to play that and something else this weekend. Somebody was like, Firewatch is only two out. I'm like, fuck, yeah, I'm going to play that game three times. It's awesome. Yeah. Games are fun, but we've gotten to a different place with them.

We're old men now. Yeah, like I still convince myself, oh, I'll totally play Dragon Age Inquisition someday. I'm like, I love that franchise. I have the history of Theta's book. Yeah. Where I'm reading it and I'm like obsessed with the Kunari. And I love the lore of that world. And I love the story of it's like ancient gods.

in history and like I love it and I'm not super into fantasy stuff so it's really interesting that like I really love it because it stands out as like oh this is the fantasy thing that I love yeah but Inquisition is so alarmingly big that I'm like I really want to play it and I've played the first six hours before and I loved it I can't wait to do it man it's just like I fear so much that I'm just going to fall off and not finish and it'll be like man why did I do that like I know that I knew I wasn't going to finish it why did I start but also like man what if this is my new thing. What if I play 200 hours of Dragon Age? Yep. Both of those things are terrifying. I don't know how to make that choice.

So I didn't do it. Same with the Witcher 3. See, Witcher 3 is when I was about to bring up. Phenomenal game that I just will love and I will play obsessively, but I'm scared of that. Yeah. So I don't do it. That's why I never play wild. I played 26 hours of Wishor 3. Had a great time. Not even out of Act 1. And it's like, I was like, I put it down for Arkham Night, which became, you know, Fallout, which became, like, you can just see the thing. And it's like, yeah, there was a weekend where I popped it back in. I'm like, oh, finally something in I pop in. I'm like, where the fuck am I?

What the fuck am I doing? And it's like, it's not even the same experience anymore. You know what I mean? I'm not lost in that world. And so it's like, well, I'm never going to have a change. Are you especially bad for that. Yeah, that's going to be, that's my terrifying thought for persona five. When persona five comes out, I've just got to, I'm just going to shut everything else.

Take time off and make sure. Cannot wait. I cannot wait. I love Perciano. Me too. I hope. No, we will. Okay.

They can't screw it up, right? No, it's impossible. No. Exactly. They're like the Zach Snyder of video games. They can't screw it up. Next topic. And that could have been it, but I was like, you know what?

We'll just put that in there as a long thing. Yeah, who cares? Everybody loves us. What I want to talk about is love blooming on the battlefield. Love in the games industry. Yeah. You are in a relationship with this Alexa Ray, Cornea, I believe, is how you pronounce it.

Korea, as in the country. No, as in the eye, a eyeball. No? There's no one in the middle. Korea. C-O-R-R-E-A, Korea. Okay. That is not even, that is...

No, I know. how to say her name. This is all for the visual gag. That's the visual gag. I thought you were literally writing a note. I'm like, that's gibberish. Your penmanship is atrocious. I want to talk to you about this. I date Christine Steinbara also in the video game industry. I met her at IGM. When you set off to do this, when you started falling in love with her, what was that like? I mean, you're dating someone in the industry? Did you ever think you would? Did you ever think you didn't want to do that? Did you ever, like, were there those kind of loaded questions? I was always, Jesus Christ, Greg, relax.

I always told myself that I would avoid two specific things in any relationship. Well, three things. So I was always like, I never understood like, I need a gamer girl. I don't give a shit. Like do your own like, do what makes you happy if that's cool. Do you? Yeah. And like the, I never expected anyone to be like, oh, I love games because you love games and

we're going to love games. It's like, I don't get mad to me because I play Dota. That's it. Sure. So I require. I also never wanted to date anybody primarily at IGN and definitely not somebody in the industry because it's just like there's too many close friends, mutual friends, like professional compromises you need to make or whatever. I definitely did not want to do long distance. And I have absolutely done most of those things. Like Alexa is a, when I was at IJN, primary competitor

at GameSpot. Yeah. Worked at Polygon when we started dating. Lived in New York. I lived in San Francisco. I am now moving to Montreal and she's staying in San Francisco. So like this is our second time doing long distance after we were like, huh. finally not to do long distance anymore that's terrible let's never do that let's do long distance how long was long distance the first time almost a year oh wow okay

and now it's indefinite and we're bad at it because long distance it's hard long distance sucks yeah it is real hard to like oh let's be on the phone but I'm busy right now and you're busy later and I gotta eat and shit like I gotta figure something out like you have to schedule like it's weird because like when you're in the same city

or the same apartment as somebody you just go home and like oh cool this is our lives together always now it's like I need to literally schedule time to talk to you. It's fucking crazy. And you feel like you have to have something to talk about. Yeah, and like sometimes you don't. Yep. And like I'm super comfortable just sitting on the phone and not talking for a long

period of time. And some people aren't. And some people are. And some people are. And like, I don't know. Like if you're in a good relationship, you figure that out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing with, you know, Christine just moved to LA at the beginning of the year, whatever, and us getting into that rhythm of how this works and how it is. But it's like, it is that thing of like, man, I love her and she's the best. And she's my best friend. And yeah, of that. Yeah. Like, what did you do today? I'm like, same. Connag Greg Live.

We yelled at Kevin. This thing didn't go well. And Nick got real mad. And then I got real mad. And then we did a podcast. And now I'm exhausted. And I just ate. And I feel like I have about 30 minutes to game before I'm to fall asleep.

So can we stop talking? Yeah. And luckily she gets that. You know what I mean? So Christine's also in a unique position that I'm about to be in, which is like, what do you do today? Literally cannot tell you. I signed scary NDAs and we cannot talk about it. Yeah.

So like, now I need to improvise me like, oh, well, I had a really good conversation with this person, then we had a really cool launch at this play. How about you? Yeah, yeah. She's like, I can't tell you anything as I saw either. Let's avoid I just like, I hate talking about work. Sure. So that's what's fascinating for me with your relationship. So it's a bit of, you know, Romeo and Juliet and turn

of like, you know, Monica, he was in Caput. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you were, and I know, I think you, correctly if I'm wrong, kind of got hired after the Rha, Rai, G, and fuck game spot. Because there was a time when, that was that where it was like, I think GameSpot

people weren't allowed to talk to IGM people at events and we were always like, we got my crush them. Because we, when I was there, it came from behind at one point. When I was freelancing and I was at events, it was very clear to me that like GameSpot people existed over here, IGM people existed over here and you could talk to one of them. But it was never like, it was so weird to me like

why aren't these people social? Because as a freelancer I try to talk to everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And when I started, it was like, our group of people talked to fucking everyone at events. And it was like, oh, this is different. Yeah, people didn't really do this. So it was like, I caught the tail end of that. So was it weird?

Like when, because you were already dating when she took that job. So was that a conversation? She was a polygon when we started dating. And it was like, nobody brought it like,

they were like, ha ha, the other, the enemy, ha ha. But it was like, that was it. Yeah. Mention us to like,

yay, the demise of our enemies. Like that, that attitude didn't really exist. Okay. Thankfully. Yeah. Did you have to have a conversation

with anybody? No. Okay. It's one of the things like, you really, are you going to tell me I can, I remember like when Stimer and I started dating, she was working at IGN.

And like, you know. Well, that's like a HR thing. And that was thing. I remember I was in Tokyo and I walked over. We were there for TGS. And it was like, all right, we've been dating long enough. This is like an official thing. I should, I should tell Tal.

And I walked over and knocked on Tal's door and came in. He's like, hey, what's up? I'm like, I'm going to, I'm, I'm going to, Christy and I are dating. He's like, okay. I'm like, do I have to sign anything? HR? He's like, no, neither are you. You're like, all.

See you? Bye. Pretty much. Like, you didn't care. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, and the thing we talked about was like, because there were, like, when she was transitioning out of Polygon to try to come out here, like she was talking to IGN, she was talking to game spot, she was talking to whoever else she was talking to.

And she was like really, really excited about Spot. And that's where she ended up, obviously. Yeah. But there were moments where it's like, shit, if you come to IGN, like, we'll be in the same office all day, we'll be seeing each other. Right. Someday you might work for me or might work for you. And it's like, those conversations start getting weird. Oh, yeah. Like we need to think about like what are our careers if we work at the same company?

Right. Like if you're a direct competitor, how does that work? Like what is our, how do we talk to each other at events? Like what did you decide? Like what did that ever, did that get weird? Is it, were, did you come home and like, no, because it was it everything's on the table? Or was that we're not going to talk about what happened here behind closed doors? I just never really talked about it because neither of us really cared.

It wasn't like, okay, what did you learn to do? And you can just be like, I don't know anything about Final Fantasy. She's like, all right, thanks. Don't care. No, we just, we just led normal. lives like after hours it was like okay cool let's like go to a bar and see our friends and go home watch netflix and like do regular thing sure the the video game industry people that we were just vanished it's like no we're just human beings now interesting interesting i don't know yeah i

tried to like i don't know i'm not super thrilled to talk about work outside of work most of the time like okay we worked all day now let's go to a bar and everyone's going to complain about work i'm like stop just stop talking yeah you know it's or like don't talk about the thing we did all day that was awesome i was there we don't need to like let's just talk about our lives and other cool things and like I don't know when christie and I worked together like and lived together and we're dating the first time because we broke up for a year like that was what led it to it is the fact that we couldn't get out of that cycle where it would be that we would be our relationship was founded on aim like i am insurer at work or whatever like flirtatious

i always wasn't sure if they were real something when i took it on the first date and i was like i'll pay for this it's a date she goes is it i was like oh no but she also did this really really cute thing where she was in the old i gene office where we had the giant desk she was on the other side of it. I was in here and then she's a row over so I couldn't see her though. But I would write jokes to her or whatever whenever I'd say because I'm real funny guy. And she'd literally laugh out loud and then she'd write lull. I'd be like, I can hear you.

Like, but it's also adorable because when I write lull, it's just like, oh, that was funny. I don't know. Anyways. I don't write lull when I lull. You only, but that was the thing is like you got into that rhythm of we would I am all day about something that was happening at work. Yeah.

Then talk about it on the walk home from work and then eat and talk about it. And then it's like, oh my God. like this is a nightmare so Alexa and I we knew each other because like oh you're that polygon girl you're that IGN guy okay we met at an event like playing Titan fall together and it was like after a PAC's thing it was like the after hours fight club with the response team so we just played a bunch of time

and fall and we were like ha ha fuck this AI person who sucks ha ha ha I have a nice life and we didn't talk for a long time after that but it was like Goldfarb went to New York for a work trip and they got drinks and she was like oh my god it's sort of buffy and he's like I don't care You touch the match. Mitch loves Buffy. Here's his number. And we just talked about Buffy.

And everything we ever talked about... Wait, so she just called you out of the blue one day? Yeah, it was like, hey, it's Alexa. I love Buffy. Oh my God. I'm in season one and it's weird and it's cool. What do you... And we just started bullshitting about this show.

And it was like a year later we started dating. It was like nothing... Like, we never had this flirtatious relationship before that. It wasn't like, oh, this is all going somewhere. Sure. It was just like, oh, it's that Polygon girl talking about Buffy.

This is great. I love Buffy. And we bullshitted about other TV shows and games we were playing. like texting a friend so we never really had the like industry person sure association it was just like oh this is this cool person yeah yeah I know oh they're coming to San Francisco to hang out cool let's hang out so suddenly we're dating I was gonna say when did you notice you were going from just being industry friends to day she came out for a GDC and we just started like hanging out like I was like oh cool you're coming like I'll come out to East Bay and hang out with you and like

the people you're staying with sure because we are all mutual friends and shit and it was like we just spent a whole bunch of time together and it was like oh I think this girl's super fucking cool Amarice. She thinks I'm super fucking cool. And we just ended up going out a bunch and like we had a friend. So we were like, oh, we're all going to go out and get dinner one night. And then everybody like coordinated to bail on us. You got a table for 12.

Just you too. Exactly. And we're like, shit. I guess it's just us. Because like X, Y, Z bailed. Oh, so did ABC. Shit. It's just us.

And we just like, we're like, oh, fuck. This is accidentally a date. And it's going really well because we weren't thinking about it being a date. So it's no pressure. Yeah, and it was just like, oh, like you and I click really well because we have a good rapport based on texting for a year about bullshit. Sure. And none of it was like, oh, let's complain about our jobs or talk about the things we love doing at our jobs. Let me say what I hate about you as a competitor.

Exactly. Like, yeah, I don't know. We just never really talked about that. Because I didn't really care. Like, I don't care what Polygons opinion of IGN is. Sure. You shouldn't. Nobody should care about what the other opinion are.

Because if you're sitting there gossiping like that. Go fuck yourself with your fucking job. I only care what boogie things are me. That's it. So I guess then What about this move, this change? You're going back to long distance And you know you're bad at it

And you know it sucks. Like how much is that way on it? Both of you. We were bad at it. And the thing I think now is like We were bad at it when we were figuring out What the relationship was. Yeah.

And now it's like, oh, we're in love. We've been together for two years. And like it's going to be hard and it's going to suck Because long distance fucking sucks. And like if you can avoid it, recommend you do so. But it's like, oh, like,

I love this person and I care enough about them that I'm willing to have this strained relationship where I'm far away and you're far away but like I care about you enough that we're going to do this because I would rather be in a relationship with you and far away than in a relationship with somebody else close. Which I don't know like I think that says a lot like you and Christine staying together is fucking awesome like I love that and it sucks for you guys but it's still me going like yeah that's the shit good job guys like I appreciate and respect the hell out of that. Thank you.

So now we're like, okay, we were bad at long distance. We're totally different people than we were there. Sure. Like, it's been two years since we were like, I think I like you, and this is hard, and call me. And now it's like, we spend every fucking day together and we cook dinners together every night. And it sucks that we're not going to be able to do that. But at the same time, like, she can just like throw open her laptop, throw on FaceTime

and call me and she'll cook dinner and we'll just talk. Good point. And it's, I don't know. I used to think it was like that was such a half measure for a relationship, but it's really not. like talking to somebody is talking to somebody and it's it's not as great if they aren't in the same room, but it works and it's good. And it's like that is how you connect to a person, whether somebody you're in a relationship with or somebody you're just like, oh, I haven't talked to my mom in a while. I'll FaceTime them. Right, right. Like it's, it's about maintaining that relationship and being like, oh, like you need support. Call me. It's one of those two for me that I think it mixes the sweet with the sour for in a way. You know what I mean? In the way that like when I'm sad or depressed, which happens once in a while, it's like, oh, it's like, oh, it's like, like it's worse because it's just being a party or whatever. You know what I mean?

I don't want to call Christina Bucker down. But then when we're together, like all of a sudden that's, you know, because I, like, we live together for forever. You know what I mean? And it totally was one of those like, you know, I, you know, I became a Guild Wars II widower here where I'd be like, I'd come home. She'd go play.

I'd cook dinner. She'd come out and eat as fast as she could and then run back to her dungeon. And it's like, it was awesome and fine. Don't get me wrong. But we did shit like that all the time where we took each other's time for granted. Sure. that we were in the same room and I'd sit out here and watch something or she'd play something or vice versa.

And we, you know, we didn't really talk. So now to sit down and really talk is different. To go, like, you know, she came up for GDC and then we went to Southby together and like to have each other around for those things, those occasions, those parties, it's different than when it would be a random. I'm going to go to this, you know, IGN bar goodbye thing. You want to come now? I'm good. All right, whatever. Yeah.

Yeah. Now it's going to be like, I don't know, there's a lot of stuff like because we have a lot of mutual friends. So now it's going to be hard for me to like, oh, you're going out tonight. cool, you should totally go like hang out with Marty and then send me a million pictures and make me really sad. Right. That kind of thing sucks, but it's also like, I miss this and I want you to go have that good time, even though I'm jealous.

I can't be there. Yeah, no, that was the thing over the weekend. Christine went to a friend's birthday party down in L.A. And it's like totally one of those. I would never miss this except that it's Scott Lowe's Bachelor party. You know what I mean? So I had to tell her to stop sending photos. I'm like, hey, I love everything that's happening here.

It's breaking my heart and not to be there with you on your arm to see all this and celebrate this person. You know what I mean? You got to stop right there. And those are the, you know, the boundaries and the, I think you find the test it all out. Yeah. I don't know. We had the, it's interesting because like you mentioned like when you're depressed, you go to her for sport.

We have this interesting conundrum where when I'm bummed out, like when I get hit with a wave of depression. Yeah. I'm like, leave me the fuck alone. Like I just want to be alone. I want to read a book in a quiet room alone. And obviously, because Alexa is a caring person, she's like, what can I do to help? And I'm like, get the fuck away from me. Like, this will pass.

It's fine. are, you care enough to ask is more than enough. Yeah, I'm good. Thank you. Whereas when she gets upset, it's like, I want to, I have the same thing where I'm like, how can I help? She's like, just sit with me. Just spend time with me. Yeah.

So we have the opposite issue. Interesting. And now that I'm moving away, it's like, well, if I get upset, I'm good. Great. Yeah, yeah. Problem is solved. But if she's hurting, I'm like, fuck, I can't do anything. Like, I am so helpless to be able to support you when you need me.

Like, that feeling sucks. Yeah. Did you, I mean, how much of a discussion was it? were you talking about letting, this sounds horrible, but letting the relationship get in the way of this goal, this job, this kind of next dream that's being handed to you?

We talked about a lot of hypotheticals, right? Like, what if we just stopped dating? Stimer did the same thing. And it's like, that's a shitty conversation to have and neither of us wanted it. And we're like, okay,

okay, we're like, what do we want? This. Okay, so we agree. That we're staying together. We'll figure it out. Yeah.

But you have to weigh the options and figure out, like, what is best for everyone here? How do we, like, is ripping off the bandaid better for everyone? We both agree, no. great, let's not do that.

Yeah. And you just have to be like, you have to, have to, in any relationship, be super fucking transparent about that kind of stuff. Because,

like, if I said, hey, would this be easier for you if we just stopped dating altogether? And if her answer was like, yeah, honestly, like,

I really don't want to do long distance and it would be really painful to be in a relationship while you're not here. Okay. Then that's like, that fucking sucks for a million reasons. But like,

that's best for you. Let's do that. Yeah. But ultimately we were like, we both kind of came to the decision. Like, hey, care about you and I love you a lot.

I would rather try this and just totally fuck it up and ruin everything. That's what we did. Then say, you know what? We had a good run. Let's throw on the towel and not worry about what might have been. Yeah. Like I would rather stay with and go like,

oh, I fucked up. I was a bad boyfriend and now, okay. Like, I would rather. At least you know. Exactly. You know what I mean? It says to what we were talking about with kind of funny where we could,

there was those discussions of like maybe we don't jump now. But if we don't jump now, we're going to always sit here and go, what if we jump now? Yeah. And it's always about accountability. Like being. responsible for your own life and having control over your own life and compromising that with somebody else's wants and needs. That's like if you can find a happy compromise that makes both

people happy, you've done a good job with your relationship. And sometimes it's really fucking hard. And sometimes there is no compromise. But thankfully, she's awesome and understanding and totally excited about my new job and encourages me to do it. And we're just like, yeah, like this is so important to me to do this. And you super understand that we're just going to figure it out. Yeah. Were games a big part of your relationship here? No? No. We've played some stuff together. Like we played through Firewatch together and we played through Oxen Free and we played some games we were reviewing at the same time together. But it wasn't like, oh yeah, like every Friday we sit down and we have a co-op game.

Like we just didn't do that because like games were our jobs. So we came home. We're like, let's do anything else. Like let's sit in the living room silently and eat an amazing dinner that we cook together and read. Never talk. Or let's sit and watch Netflix shows for 16 hours on a Saturday. Or let's go out on a date and not talk about work or video games. Like,

games are such a huge, major important part of my life, but they are not an important part of my relationship at all in any capacity, whether it's work or personal or whatever. And sometimes it'll come up where I'm like, oh, yeah, like, how is the Final Fantasy event? Like, tell me all about this work trip you went on for this game you're excited about. And that becomes, like, excited point of conversation or whatever.

But... You should talk about us? How good we were? Of course. Thank you. But it's never like... I don't know. Every now and then she'll ask me like, how are the Dota games last night? And I'm like, yeah, they were fun.

Like, it's not, and the question is not really about the game because she doesn't give a shit about Dota too. She's like, how was your evening with, you know, like, oh, it's great. I got to hang out with Jay and Brian and Miranda and they all said hello and we had a really good time. We cracked some jokes. I caught up with some friends on the East Coast. It was great. Cool. And that becomes the conversation rather than like, let's talk about our experiences with video games.

We don't do like the, we both reviewed a game. Let's, let's have an analytical. Sure, sure, sure. Do we just don't care. Yeah. Yeah, like that's the one thing like, Stimer and I need, like, it wasn't every weekend for sure,

but there was a lot of co-op gaming where it's like, let's move the other team. Let's have the two screens set up. And when she came up this last trip, I, I re-roll the division character, a true sign of love. So I could play with her because why the fuck would you,

of course, division developers make a way for people to play with their high-level characters with the lower-level character. Why didn't we want that? It's fine. It's not like that's been a problem since Diablo two. It's not like a million games of solved it like Guild Wars too.

It doesn't matter at all. No, nobody should have thought that through. No, that's the thing is like now, maybe that does become part of our lives. Maybe that is a really good way that we can, like, do stuff together. Because, like, you can go out on dates, and you can go out with friends,

and you can go home and watch Netflix, and that's doing something together. Yeah. We can't do things together in different places. We can talk on Skype. We can talk on FaceTime, whatever. But the act of like, oh, we did that together doesn't really exist.

And games were a really fucking great way to do that. So maybe that'll change. Maybe that's something we do more of. Make her play the Dutas. There you go. No. She would know. No,

cause? I would never do that to her. Topping number four, Mitch. Yes, sir. As always, comes from the community over at kind of funny.com slash forums

where I posted that you were coming on the show and they posted a bunch of questions. Speaking of Dota, Gregway. Apology writes in and says, Hi, Mitch. You get a lot. Hi.

I'm sorry. Hi. Hi. Hi, apology. You got a lot of heat for loving Dota 2 or Mobas in general. Various devs have come and gone

trying to explain to Greg and others why they should get into the genre. What's your elevator pitch about why you like mobas? And what would be a good place to start if someone is curious about jumping in for themselves? Apology. P.S. Best of luck at U. I mean,

at whatever you might end up doing next smiley emoticon. Apology is one of those guys. He's going to make all the predictions. It's funny. It's been really funny watching people guess where I'm going. How many you've gotten it right? I think literally one. And not even like a specific.

They didn't like nail it, but you're like, that's close enough. Yeah. So there is no There's no definitive like Oh if you want to learn to play Mobas, play this Because they're all so goddamn different

And that's the thing that people don't understand If they don't play them is like They'll look the same With like the exception to me like Oh smite looks a little different Because the camera angle But it's very similar in a lot of ways And also very different in many others

To a lot of different mobas Because they all draw from each other And learn from each other And WD2's most recent updates have been like Very heavily inspired by League of Legends But the elevator pitch I don't know. For me, it's always been like cool, five on five competitive, cooperative

multiplayer games with distinct heroes, each with unique abilities that combine in different ways. That is mechanically why it's great. On a more metal level, the reason I play and love mobas is because I get to spend a huge amount of time working together with people I love.

Like I spend a ton of time with my friends playing Dota 2 and it feels good to be like, oh, I'm going to go help J. And after that, we're going to route up and we're going to back up Katie. And together we're going to accomplish a thing because we're a good fucking team. And that feels really good. In the same way that playing the division feels good

because you're like, oh, we all, you know, we were there for each other, we revived each other, we covered each other, we had support items for each other, I protected Fran, he protected Ty, he backed me, like that stuff works. And that is the essence of social gaming. That's why Guild Wars is so good at it. And that's why Wow has been good at it for

ever. 13 years, 14 years. If you want to get into obas, I would recommend not starting with Dota 2, but at the same time, starting with Dota 2. See, the hardest part, I remember distinct, distinctive, oh, God, it's been a long day. Distinctly. When you walked into the office one day and you were like, I started playing Dota 2 last night, and it sucks.

I hate it. And then it was literally like two days later, it came in. It was like, after 15 hours, it clicked. And I loved this game. It was the FARC right 2 problem where I played Far Cry 2 and I was like, this game sucks. It's like really hard and unnecessarily punishing and comment. clunky and there's no fast travel that makes any sense and it's hard to get around and this is weird and then after a certain amount of time of suffering I was like oh fuck that was the

point cool this is and now I understand the rules of this game and I'm playing it differently and now it's great with Dota 2 I was like I hate the writing I hate the characters are all punny and they're all stupid and they all crack jokes all the time and now like I adore that it is like it is the heart and soul of that game's personality and I hinge on those jokes and friends and I will constantly like Alexa and I will be talking about something and I'll just pop out a Dota quote she's like what what stop it you stop it she sprays water in your face yeah

bad bad Mitch yeah um so and it's just so deeply ingrained at me um what was the where were we what was the topic we're talking about Movis where you jump off from and how you started it you hated it you hated it I hated it and I played for a few matches and I had

Leah Jackson at IGM was teaching me and she was very patient and very understanding and I was like this is great. I'm learning a lot. I just don't think this is for me at all. And I just kind of kept playing because I felt obligated to. Mobas is such a massive growing genre that I knew nothing about. And I felt like I need to as somebody covering games

be aware of everything. Like I need to be aware of everything. Yeah. And the consequence was I stopped caring about literally everything else because this was amazing. This was the game for me. And I love Dota 2 and made me love League of Legends. It made me love Smite. In Infinite Crisis. Here's the storm is all right. So I think it just took spending a bunch of time with it and finally like, oh, playing with friends after I felt competent.

Sure. Playing with people who could then like teach me what I was doing wrong and then actually pulling something off with a friend where it's like I used a skill on that guy, which allowed Brian to come in and use a skill on that guy. And then Katie came in and killed him. We did it. That was really good teamwork. And now we have an advantage and I get to buy a cool item that do more fun stuff. And like that escalation really, really, really clicked. But it took literally 25 hours.

Or more, maybe. And it's like, that is not remotely acceptable. Like, that is never... After 50 hours, it's great. Don't just play for 50 hours. Oh, the Final Fantasy 13 theory, okay. Exactly. But at the same time, like, if you're going to play mobas,

I've always said, like, never start with Dota 2 because it's so fucking hard. Start with something... I hate the word simpler because it sounds like a pejorative, but league is simpler in that it's like, it's just more accessible, and it makes more sense in a lot of ways to someone playing it. Smite is even more accessible just because it's like, from a perspective perspective it works

you play with the controller and it works shop stuff is kind of taken care of for you if you want to handle it that way here's the storm is a really good entry point for understanding heroes

and how they function how they work together regardless of the objectives and maps and things that I didn't love in that game how's this paragon shaping up I don't know I've only played a little bit

it seems cool but I don't know enough about it to speak intelligently about it yet that was the thing you know Colin and I were always making fun of Movis just because we don't

we don't care. I love that you love it. Everybody should love what they love. But that was like the greatest like fucking twist at PSX. The one more thing. No, no, no. They're ahead of time, they're like, hey,

so we're doing, we're not doing the playing cards this year. We're doing these collectible cards for every one of the games. Oh yeah, and Paragon's the most rare. And one of the developers wants to give you a card for your panel. We're like, oh, fuck, yeah, who? And they're like, we can't tell you,

but are you in? I'm like, yeah, of course we're in. And then afterwards we go up there, like, you know, all your Paragon cards. Like, oh, fuck, do you know who we are? I started with Dota 2 and because I started with Dota 2 and suffered and learned and it was the hardest thing I've ever experienced in like learning

to play a game. Sure. Like the most mentally exhausting thing because it is like an encyclopedic amount of information to have a baseline understanding of how to play a game and be effective. It's crazy. It's so demanding that in doing that I went to another MoBA and I

went to league after like two years of not playing. It was like, oh I feel like a god. Like I feel like I'm really good at league and I feel really good about how I play smite because it's and it's probably true the other way around like had I started with league I'd probably transition to Dota and be like well this is weird and complicated but

but I get it yeah I get it yeah and that again they are very different games that have different demands of the player and different flaws too um not because it is an imperfect genre across the board but I love it so much um but I just I just felt like I was readier for every moment that's ever come since

having spent 2,300 hours with Dota that makes sense I would hope that would make you an expert at it you know all right that's your good elevator bitch only took nine minutes

now this one I like because it takes us back to our roots George says hey guys hey George what are your hopes for Walking Dead season three and have you started

Mishone miniseries any thoughts you have good luck in your future endeavors Mitch let's do Mishone first I've only done episode one me too episode two drop while I was on this

crazy travel yeah and I'm not gonna play it I thought the first episode was fine at best. Okay. I love Michone. Yeah.

Character, she's awesome. I think I've sort of reached capacity with The Walking Dead. Oh, interesting. I'm way behind on the comic, which might be great. Oh, you mean overall as a franchise Walking Dead? I definitely don't care about the show. This season sounded great until they just, they were like, tricked you. We're not doing Negan until next year.

Fucking shit out of the ending. Stupid ending. But with the games, I've always been like, oh, this is like, some people were down on season two, and I was like, no, this is awesome. They're still doing really great stuff. Telltale is really clever about how they do stories in this universe, and I feel like Michone is not. Mishon is not a clever way to do a story in this universe. And it's not to say it's a bad game by any stretch.

Like it is still totally, like if you like the series, you're probably going to like this. Fans of the genre. It is, it's fine. And there are some good characters and there's some good moments. But by and large, I just didn't care about the people she was with, what problems she got into and what was to come. I think I'm more up on it. I'm gonna beat the next two things, but I did end episode one and I was like,

okay, whatever. It's not, it's not the telltale Walking Dead where I think about it. You know what I mean? Like you and I don't think it would have had a great, no, we wouldn't have sat in a meeting room with 45 minutes and be like,

oh my God, what did you do? Exactly, because it's not that. But what I find super interesting about it is that, you know, in Walking Dead one and two, I sat there and if I'm playing as Lee,

if I'm playing his climb, Clem a bit different with the second time around but she's my claim and I'm making her mind whereas with Michone She's defined. A character I know so well

It's the I was using the silence option left and right Like I'm like Michelle wouldn't respond to this Mishone wouldn't do this She's not gonna talk about this bitch She doesn't know And da da da da da

And like And like there's that And then also Which I like That's a part I like Yeah But I remember coming into this And it being

How are you in the comics Roughly ballpark Uh Minor spoilers They just let Nigen out of prison Okay okay Okay, okay, good. So when they announced this and being a comic nerd

and they're like, it's going to fill in the gap in time and all this different stuff. I was like, that arc is awesome. And I was like, holy shit, how are they going to explain that? And then you pick up the game, you're like, holy shit, they're not. Oh, it's completely fucking unrelated. This is just happening in that gap of time. But it's like as a reader and even, let's say,

as you may be an outside fan who doesn't understand that's happening, what does that give you in terms of stakes in terms of caring, in terms of motivation? I think that's my big problem is the context for this game is not interesting. Whereas the context for Lee's story and Clem's story were fascinating. Yeah. And I think that Lee and Clem both had a vulnerability to them that Michelle does not. So I'm never, I'm never afraid for her.

And that's the other thing too. It's like since we know where this falls in the timeline, it's like, well, we know. It's like, well, he's going to get out of here. Don't need, I don't have to worry about Glenn being in trouble. You know what I mean? And even if it's like, if any of these characters die around her, like, and anybody who did die, I don't care. Yeah, exactly.

Or I just thought it was dumb. Like, that person should not have died. There was no purpose for that. other than to be shocking. And that's the thing is like it's clearly it's a 400 days, right? It's like this interstitial, it's something that's here that, you know, we're trying out new things with the engine and they're doing new things. That's great, cool.

Which is fine. It just didn't click with me in the same way that 400 days did. Like I love 400 days. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'll get back to it. I'm going to play him, but it's a great example of like, until this question, I kind of forgotten that episode too.

And to our earlier conversation, like, it's just, it's a game that is fine and is enjoyed by a lot of people I know and love and respect and whatever, but it just doesn't feel important or necessary to me. Sure. Like it's like, okay, that's fine. It's a good game, but I'm just going to do other stuff. So what about season three then? I don't know.

Like, it's obviously happening. I don't know what I would want from it because what we wanted from season two was so clearly a Clementine story. Like we all, like you and I talked about this like season two is climb, season two is clam, let us be clem. And they did. And now, like, I really love season two. And his endings were so potentially different that for them to pick up anywhere after that, it's either one of the two things has to happen is it has to be a different story

about a different person. It cannot be about these characters and I would love to see them do new characters or I wanted to do something that Walking Dead has never really done and flash forward like 10, 20 years and be like older, way more badass Clementine.

Yeah. Like leading her own troop. This is the person she's become in the wake of Lee and Kenny and Luke and all these other people. Yeah. So I would love that too because my concern is like what you're

saying is that the endings were so different, but I feel like there's a way that, even if, and this is, spoilers for walking to season two, but you shouldn't, even if your game ended where mine did, my real play-through, which is Clem with the kid walking into the, the hoard, you know, painted up, like she's just, fuck it, I'm over it, and I'm a badass, and I can do this. You could still easily have it be that. She still makes it to the Virginia town, which name is, currently escapes me. But, you know what I'm talking about this, a Wellington, right? No. Yeah, no, I think that's right. Okay, when she makes it to the Wellington, which still doesn't But then it's like, well, is it with or without certain people?

Sure. But I mean, there's always a way to explain around that, right? Like, you could even just be that you don't talk about it. And that'd be weird. Because I don't think they're going to do the whole like, get your save back and bring this to her. Yeah, and it might even be weird for her to be like, hey, remember Kenny? And you're like, why are you talking about this?

Yeah, why would you bring this guy up that? Like, I mean, things ended badly for my last group. You know what I mean? Because that's it. She got inside by her, well, with the baby, but by herself regardless, right? Like, that doesn't matter. That part doesn't matter. So there's ways around it or whatever.

Yeah. do. I'm more excited for everything else Telltills. I was going to say, what about Batman? Yeah, Batman's the one. Man, that's awesome. They have a Marvel project. I'm excited to learn more about too. They have their original IP, which I'm excited to learn more about. They've been quiet on that for like two years. Yeah. I really wonderful from among a sequel. You're not going to get that crap. I know. Probably not going to get another borderlands either. Which is heartbreaking. Yeah. But it's, it isn't, it isn't. I mean, it was

Tales from the Borderlands. Perfect. Awesome. Play Tales from the Borderlands. So great. I forget what award it was up for recently. It didn't win. And I was like, no fucking way. I don't care about that franchise. I've never cared about it. I reviewed the first Borderlands

and I was like, this is a great RPG. I don't find the world or characters that interesting and some things are frustrating. Borderlands too, I was like, handsome jack's great.

I'm kind of over the loot grinding loot system. It's fine. I had a good time playing with Clements, but really miserable time playing alone. But fucking Taleslandland is so good. That was the thing about Talesin' when it got announced.

I was like, yeah. And I like, borderlands, but I was the same way of like, I just ignore it in. I don't play borderlines for the world. Totally. Yeah. Somebody told me, oh, they announced a telltale borderlands. I'm like, what? What? Why?

And I saw the first demo and it's like, this is fine. Yeah. But it really took playing the first episode to go like, man, they have brought some character to this world in a way that even the full 40 plus hour RPGs couldn't. I was talking about it. Like, I had it on my XMB for like a week and a half or whatever. And finally, I was in one

those moods. I was cranky and I was playing nothing was hitting it. And I popped down. I was like, well, I got two hours before bet. I can knock this out and see what it's about in like five minutes in you're laughing out loud. I'm like, holy shit, this just turned my day around and like these characters and those, the intros that they did. Oh my God. It was so good.

Holy shit. This game's amazing. Yeah. Love Tales of Moreland. So there you go. That's what we think of Walking Dead season three. Play Tales from the Borderlands. All right.

Next. Three 16 says, hey Greg and Mitch. Long time first time. My question is for Mitch. What is your absolute favorite gaming memory? it's hard to pick one. For me, it was the sixth grade, staying up till 7 a.m. playing Elder Scrolls Oblivion with my older brother for 15 hours straight.

We haven't had an experience like that since, and it just holds a special place in my heart. So what is yours, Mitchie D? Thanks, Creece 16. I'm gonna cheat. I have a couple. I rented Sweeken and 2 from a video store back when. Those existed. Yeah, yeah.

And a friend and I were like, oh, this RPG is really cool. Like, we're not really into JRPGs, but this one has like a really fascinating story. And we like the characters. and the drama is actually really interesting. And we just never got to finish it. And we rented it again and started over, rented it. And then we just did this over and over.

Like, fuck, what was it about? I remember loving it. I remember this character. And eventually we're like, you know what? Fuck this. We're going to rent it. We're going to play through it this weekend if it kills us. We played through all of Sweden 2 in like,

in like 72 hours, we played about 60. It was like nonstop. It was gross. And we must have been like 16 or something. Yeah. And I just, I loved it because it was fine. Like, it's my favorite JRP ever. Like,

equal to or greater than persona four for me. Scandalous. Yeah, I know. And I just, I adore that story and it has stuck with me so profoundly because I experienced it that way. And we just, you know, we did the thing where we hand off and on, off and on. Like, that game had dialogue choices that I don't know really if they amounted to anything, but it meant a lot to us to be like, man, I cannot fucking believe you picked that. I cannot believe you stayed silent during that moment. Like, that kind of stuff was really interesting to play with a friend.

100%. another really good one is I organized this recreational Dota 2 tournament and it was like life-sucking because it was so much to worry about like organizing 80 players across like 16 teams and getting their schedules aligned and it was a nightmare of just getting it to work

but man like once we were in it and I was watching these games and like casting my first ever Dota game while watching my 10 friends play against each other in a match that like was super competitive and really fun and friendly. Like that brought my love of Dota 2 to another level because at that point it's like, oh, this is a game I like a lot.

I'd love to get a bunch of people together to play it who really love it like I do. But for it to become something that like was as well loved as it was between all those people. It was like, okay, holy shit. Like we made a thing that. That was cool. Even as an outsider who didn't understand Dota 2, it doesn't understand Dota 2. But like watching all those people, everyone on Twitter talk about it.

Yeah. And it's like, here's the Squarionix Montreal team playing against the telltale guys or giant bomb is playing again, whoever, like having those sort of associations with every team. It's like, oh, this is IGN, this is 2K. And it was just awesome to see, like, it was people in the games industry, but it wasn't about the, the games industry. And it wasn't people like,

sort of like, we're reping 2K. It's just like, oh, here's like a bunch of people from 2K. This is like how we are assembled. It was just so fucking fun to see that and see people get really excited about like, who are these guys? Oh, that's cool. Okay, cool. And they had like a frame of reference for people they didn't know playing against people they did. Very nice. Final question.

for you, Mitchie D. Yeah. On this episode on the Kind of Funny Games cast. Chase. Hey, Chase. If you could choose any studio or individual to head up

an act, razor, reboot, who would it be and why? What advice would you give them to make a proper reimagining fit for modern audiences? Best! Oh, sorry, nope. Ben listening to you

since your first episode of Unlock. Thanks for the thought-provoking perspectives and your infectious attitude towards games. Well, thank you. He speaks for all of us. Oh. There is no studio I would give. that game too because if I could give the rights to anybody I would give them to me I would take I would do

despicable things to get those rights from square I really I have a design doc in my google drive right now for what my act razor game would be got a different name you can actually do this now you're getting into games you're going to make it maybe this is the game you're going to make yeah 20 years from now when I go india I'll make this game yeah uh yeah man I fucking love act razor and I'm really bummed out that actors are too what it was what it was and now I've just got like so many cool ideas that I have no idea how to execute on in any way, but I have cool ideas for what a new Act Reiser-like game would be. And I just have this stupid design doc

of like random dumb ideas and what might work and what might not, and what if we could try this. But I really love that series because it marries like 2D action platforming with godsim stuff. And it, on a Super Nintendo, like, it didn't have the technology to make it really a simulation. Whereas now you could do really fucking interesting stuff with the way people behave based on,

what a god does to them and the way the kind of rules that that God might impose on them or not, and then how those cultures might affect other cultures in a perimeter. Sure, sure. Like there's really interesting stuff you could do that nobody's ever done and I don't

so Act Razor and Besheedleblade. Why is nobody just remade and stolen these games? Because sometimes games are too good and they can't be redone. Where the fuck is, why isn't why aren't all the wrestling games just no mercy again? Yeah, they keep trying to do all these other shit that doesn't Oh, I'm gonna sit wrestling. Fuck off. We want the cool shit.

I want to get a baseball bat from under the stage and knock a man out. Yeah, exactly. And I don't want to look weird when I do it. I want to rip Stings fake face off and... Well, I don't know if that ever happened. I don't know we're ripping faces off. Yeah, yeah, it'd be... You remember if anybody was like a Ray Mysterio and you got behind him,

you did like the headchote. If you didn't know, you'd rip their mask off. I'm sorry, I thought you meant the flesh off their face. No, it just was the same thing where Stings makeup would be gone. Okay, okay. That'll give you. Okay, that's fine. That was the best.

Very strange. A lot of people overthink the video games. now that you go to indie games don't overthink them just make them good yeah just make them cool yeah no I was used to think like oh it'd be really great

to give the god part to Sid Meyer and the action game part to like Tomono Uidagaki yeah that'd be like weird shit like that used to excite me now I'm like no just

give it to me I'll hire some people give me a studio give me some money it's that easy square he's all set he's making games though it's that easy

he knows so much I love that goddamn game so much Mitch E. Oh ladies and gentlemen this has been the first ever episode 65 of the Kind of Funny Games cast

the first ever one-on-one Mitch and Greg podcast thank you so much for joining us on this journey as we talk to our good friend Mitch remember the Kind of Funny Games cast posts early over on patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games you can go there pick it up

but if you have no bucks to toss our way head over to YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games where we post it topic by topic day by day until the entire thing posts for free the following Friday as an MP3 in video Mitch I can't wait to find out what you do next

because there's no way you would have told me no I'm gonna miss you though I keep all my secrets I'll see you in 65 weeks 65 weeks we gotta get that back somebody Remind us Pology somebody somebody like We're week

657 let me know So I get the plane tickets Start planning it yeah we'll figure out A visit because you'll be fucking rolling in money by then Of course To fly me out it'll be great Exactly what does it make a Patreon tier goal Perfect

Okay Mitch I love you Love you I'm gonna miss you I'll miss you too man All right for real A weird hug Until next time it's been our pleasure to serve you.