NZXT PODCAST - #060 - Jeff

Episode Date: September 24, 2020

This week on the podcast, we are joined by NZXT’s Product Manager for CAM: Jeff! Jeff and the crew discuss Mario vs Luigi, Dollar Tree Steaks, and fixing CAM. Listen live to the NZXT 💜 CLUB CAST on our Discord server at discord.gg/nzxt every Thursday at 10AM PT and submit your questions to [e-mail]! Thanks to 'take me back#3589' for the artwork!

Come on, man. I'm going to be late for work. Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 60 of the NXT Clubcast, the official podcast of the NXT community. This podcast was recorded live every Thursday at 10 a.m. Pacific Center time with the official NXC Discord server and is available to stream on demand on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, Spotify, and SoundCloud. So triple jump, wall kick and dive onto that baby penguin, and let's get hooked up, everyone. Check it out.

My name is Dennis with me, as always. I would say is Ivan, but I haven't. actually out today. He's chilling. He's out there vibe in, but I have a very special guest, and that special guest is our product manager for Cam, Jeff. Hi, Dennis. Hi, chat. Hi, everyone. Hello. To be honest, I wouldn't have come if I had known Dennis was going to be the only one here. I was mostly hoping to talk to Ivan, but I guess we'll make it work. it'd be like that sometimes right

yeah you know it's also very funny that you because last time I appeared on the podcast you accused being like a miven and then ivan was out and invite me to be here it kind of makes me feel a little like used in my defense

I did not call you mini Ivan I kind of called you like Ivan light or like like diet Ivan right so it's fair not really the same you're like a you're like a great value brand Ivan right or like a dollar tree Ivan.

Have you seen the dollar tree like meat? You ever seen that stuff? The dollar tree meat? Yeah. No, I have not seen the dollar tree meat. So like I saw this video like a long time ago and then I was brought back to it by a friend of mine. And this one guy went to like the dollar tree and he picked up like the steak, right? It's like dollar tree steak.

and it's like the stringiest, fattiest, like whatever you would maybe even consider to be meat, meat, and this dude cooks it up and it looked like the most disgusting thing in the world.

So that's kind of what I'm imagining like you being. It's like, it's like Ivan's like a full like quarter house and then you got this like dollar tree like, wow. That's very hurtful. All right.

I'll think about that. I'm trying to find a photo of this dollar tree steak right now. There you go. It's right. It's right here. You know what? All right.

I'm going to think about this. There you go. That's what it looks like right there. Wow. All right. All right. Yeah. That doesn't look that bad.

I'd eat that. I'd eat that. Yeah. I mean, yeah, there's a, let me see. There you go. It looks even grosser in the packaging. Here you go. This is it right?

It looks scary, right? Like it looks like it's going to hurt somebody. Ooh, yeah. That was like, like if you left it there long enough, it would just turn into beef jerky. Like, this is beef jerky before, like, you wait one year, and then you don't cook it at all. It just turns into beef jerky over time.

Anyway, thanks for comparing me to that. No way. It's great. Thanks for telling me that you wouldn't have been on if you knew it was going to be just me and you. You look like an out-of-work oompa-lumpa, dude. You look like Willie Wonka. hit hard times and to lay some umpulipas off.

And that's where you come from. Did you know that there's this guy in TikTok who is like a Tim Burton Willie Wonka impersonator and that's like his like whole TikTok persona. Wait, and out of work umpalupa or? No, no, the the, the wait, which in balumpas are we talking about? Are we talking about the new the new impalupas? Are we talking about like the orange of balumpas? I only know the orange runs

Okay then you haven't seen the new Sorry I think it's Charlie in the chocolate factory Is it's a new one I was 32 years old when it came out So I didn't make a point of watching it I mean you still could right Like it's no reason not to

It's a reason not to Well Anyway Anyway anyway I'm happy to be on I'm happy to be on And I'm very happy to have you on Jeff, you're one of my favorite people at NST.

Oh, thanks, yeah. Just one of them, though. How many total would you say? How many people or in your list of favorite people? How many people total do you have in the company? So, Jeff, Cam, what do you do? What do you do? What is your official position at NSXT? Sure.

Okay, so this is kind of a discussion of what a product manager is. I'm happy to get into it. So what a product manager does is theoretically represent the voice of the customer or the potential customer of a product. So that means several things. One is if we're looking at adding new features to CAM, I'm in charge of determining what features we add in what order, sort of how they behave and what needs they try to fulfill. If we're talking about bugs in CAM, one of my priorities is to try and show. sort of understand the impact that bugs have on users and how widespread they are.

So we can address them in order that makes sense and we'll have the largest impact for users. And then finally, sort of like turning those things back outwards and making sure that the work that the CAM team does, since we have however many engineers, like 10 or 12 engineers and a designer and the analytics team helps us, the QA team helps us, making sure all those things are properly represented to users and communicated outwards. So that is kind of my day-to-day, what I hope to get done. Okay, because I was about to ask, what does your daily work routine look like? Yeah, that's a great question.

And you roll out of bed, first thing you do, what does it look like? So work for me officially starts at, well, so I have a kid. now. So I am up pretty early every day at like six. But then our first meeting for work is every day at 1030, we have what's called the standup, which everyone who works on Cam gets together talks about what they're currently working on. And people can offer to help them if they happen to have insight into how to help them or they can talk about things that what we call are blockers. Like, hey, I was working on this feature. We don't have the design for it yet. And I need that to, complete the feature. So that's the first thing of the day. That's with our engineers and designer and our project manager, Hanata. Then throughout the day, I have meetings

with a bunch of different teams about upcoming products and how software can or cannot play into them and how we get from sort of a vision of that software into the creation of it in a way that's helpful to users. So, for example, let's say we were making the Cracken Z from scratch. It would be a lot of talking to Kevin Sheet, the hardware product manager for the Cracken Z, talking to users, figuring out what would be compelling for them and trying to set a very interesting vision for how the Cracken Z can fulfill its goals via software, which is a little

heady, but I promise it's interesting. I'm not making it sound interesting, but I'm not making it sound interesting. promise it's a very interesting job day to day. I mean, it, it, it, I feel like there's always something interesting in any, in any position, right? Like, even from, like, what could be considered, like, the most, like, quote unquote, boring, like, job at a company. Like, you know, we had, uh, we had Mary on the podcast, right?

And she pretty much told us, like, her and long, like, duke it out every day over financial stuff, right? And that sounds to me, like, super interesting, right? Like, I think there's, there's, there's, like, so many things that, like, people don't realize go into like any any given position right that like nothing can can ever really ever really be that boring because there's always like so much so much um there's something little like bits and pieces that go into it you know yeah one thing i really appreciate my job about my job is that it gives me the opportunity to see you know there are probably dozens ideas floating around

at nvx t about upcoming products so it gives me the chance to get a involved in that stuff really early and see what's happening. So anyway, yeah, it's a cool job. And the other thing I want to highlight, and not just because some of the members are in the chat, but we have like an amazing team. I really, really like all of our engineers on the camp team. I like her designer.

I like our project manager. So NST is lucky to have all of them, for real. Cool, cool people. Yeah, I think we kind of assembled this really interesting cast of characters at the company. And I think we were just talking about it's like during the pre-show about how we have so many people who have something like side gigs and like side hustles and like different things that they do on their off fires. It's kind of it's kind of like mind-boggling, you know? It's like why you hear when you're like this, you know, I don't know, like a, you know, this like super hype beast who, you know, makes the dopest Jordan's reselling bots, right?

Yep, yep, exactly. Yeah, the people on the camp team, there's some interesting people with sidegags. One engineer I know is working on his own video game. It's very exciting. Cool to see it progress along. Yeah, and to your point, there's someone in bright spots to buy and sell sneakers. I think it's cool. It's cool.

Yeah, it's a, it's pretty dope. How long have you been here at NXT, Jeff? Two years and two months. months. So, yeah, you started just after me, right? You started pretty much about two years ago. No, I started last year in like May. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It was my year around May 4th-ish. At the time that I joined NGXT, I think the company was like maybe 120 people and now it's, I don't know, it's 350 or something, I would guess. So the company has blown up a lot So in some ways having been here for a year

Kind of makes you like an old head around here, right? No, yeah, it's definitely it's definitely grown a lot Like I just remember when like I had no idea How we ever felt the space in like the bullpen In the in like the main office in a in a in a Los Angeles And now it's like When we get back to the office I don't know how anybody's going to fit

Because I can't possibly see there being any room for anybody. Yeah, yeah, it's going to be packed. We'll see, though. I think a lot of people are switching to, like, I don't know what the company's policy is. I don't want to represent it, especially on the podcast, but a lot of companies are switching to just permanent work from home. My wife works for Square.

They're talking about switching to permanent work from home. Twitter did the same thing. So, who knows? Maybe that'll come up for NZXT, too. Yeah, times are definitely changed. Like, there's, like, no secret that, like, a lot of companies, like rethinking like what work looks like right um which is weird to me because like i actually don't don't mind going into an office every day and like you know interacting with like my co-workers

um can it gives you something to do you know yes i like it i like the breaking up the day and stuff too yeah um how what did you do before you joined nzx2 uh that's a good question so i was a product manager at a company called forge where we made uh video capture and streaming products along with a couple of the engineers from the camp team. We all came over in an acquisition at that time two and a half years ago or two years and a few months. So it was interesting. We ended up retiring the product we worked on there.

The product was cool and it was fun to use. And I think over time it's become more and more relevant what it would look like. This is before Discord had this functionality. Essentially what our final product allowed you to do was everyone could stream. their game concurrently to each other and show it in a picture and picture window on top of their own gameplay. So essentially, if you were playing at the time, PubG was the big battle royale, you could see all your teammates' perspectives and see where they were and similar. So it was an interesting product, but it had some, I don't know, some problems that kept it from really blowing up. That's crazy.

But now Discord's taking a big piece of that pie too. And also the gaming market has changed too, right? This would be a useless product for something like Fall Guys or Among Us. It would be the opposite thing for Among Us. Yeah, yeah. It's funny. There's like there's like a timeline where like you guys never got bought up by NST and then like Discord buys you guys out because you guys have the tech already.

Yeah, well, it's interesting. I'm happy to work for NXT. I think Discord is a cool company. They make a cool product. but it would have been coming in as a product manager there would be very interesting because it's relatively very settled right like our team got to rebuild cam from scratch which I think was a really really cool opportunity especially for a product that historically people had a lot of concerns about right and that's actually really helpful for a

product manager if you know you have complete liberty to do everything but you also have a huge backlog of user sentiment about product. Because Cam was so troubled in the past, it was easy to come in and say, I know exactly what users need, and we have the liberty to redo everything about Cam. So we did. I hope it is hopeful for people. So since you can already get into this, let's talk about Cam for a second then. So you guys are brought in, you guys are brought into.

to essentially kind of just, I don't know if it's like even fixed cam, right? Like, what's the right phrase for that? Because it wasn't the fixed cam. It was basically to like redo everything, right? Yeah, the term we used for it was a rewrite, essentially rewrite cam from the ground up. So for, I don't know how many people who listen to the podcast

have been NXT customers for a long time, CAM is actually a super duper old program. I think it's like eight or nine years old. And this is arguably the fourth iteration of CAM. And the vision for the product has always been the same. Essentially, if you had one product that let you control all of your NSXT hardware and keep a monitor on how your computer is doing, what would that look like? So it's interesting because you can go back and look at old versions of CAM from 2012 or whatever and see,

oh, it's sort of trying to do the same thing just in a very different way. And that's true across all the different iterations of CAM, which is a great learning opportunity. I know I use that a lot to look back and see what could have been done better or stuff that's in older versions that we could have done better in the newer version. Because, I mean, obviously even CAM4, despite all the big, brains that work on it is not a perfect product. What, I would say, what was the hardest part of like, I guess, rewriting cram,

rewriting cram? Technically hardest. Probably stuff related to overclocking because the stakes are really high. Or the ambient kit is a very complicated product from an engineering perspective. We actually made some really really big gains on the responsiveness of the ambient kit when we

rewrote it but it was a it was a large technical undertaking the overlay is a very complex product that continues to have what we call like a lot of overhead you so essentially every time a game comes out or someone makes a change to a game there's a total chance that the overlay could completely break so that's very complicated product those are all from an implementation standpoint from from a design and sort of understanding what users want and delivering it to them, I'd say the monitoring panel remains the most complicated. The monitoring panel, like when you look at it, you can see right away, it delivers probably close to 20 pieces of information. And if you think about other things that you use, very few

very few products actually deliver that much information on one page. And what that results in is kind of like a hierarchy problem. Right. So thanks for linking it there in the chat. What you can see is, for example, we made a bet that load is the most interesting metric here. If you look at the CPU panel, load is the largest dial, and then temperature is the second most important. That's not true for all users, right? For a lot of users, temperature is by far the most important. So that was something that we took a bet on. Is it right or wrong? I'm still not sure. One of the things that floated is maybe we give users a way to customize this. So that is something that might be coming up. One thing I can say is that we view mini mode as a place to solve a lot of these problems for users.

So for those of you who've used CAM for a long time, CAM 3.7 had a feature called Mini Mode where you can show a smaller version of CAM that's sort of a little more global. We have that coming up for CAM 4. I believe it will hit beta on October 6th. And that will allow you to, I guess this is a huge,

maybe this is a bigger announcement that I'm giving it credit for. But mini mode is coming up and it will allow you to sort of pick and choose which monitoring is most important to you and only show those things. So for example, if you're this user who only cares about temperature, you're no longer beholden to the decisions we made on.

on the monitoring panel, you now get to choose for yourself. These aspects of monitoring are most important to me. So for a lot of users, what that'll mean is they'll show CPU temperature, GPU temperature, and network, and nothing else. Storage is not super interesting to many people. RAM is not interesting to many people. So anyway, I think it'll solve a lot of problems for a lot of people. And I think we've done a really good job with the window controls.

It'll let you do things like keep it always on top, lock it in place, snap to edges, window behaviors that 3-7 did not offer. So sorry, I talked for a long time. No, that's really interesting. Like, like, I'm looking at a person who like, whenever a game has an update, I'm always going through like all the change logs and stuff, right? So for me, like, it's, this is totally cool.

And I think you're totally right. I think that I think the cammino mode is like a way bigger update than you're giving you credit for because like people are constantly asking about mini mode, and especially now that we have sunset at 3.7, like, people don't really have that option anymore to use mini mode. So I'm sure the, like, need for it or like the want for it is like much, much more, much more dire, right? Considering that like you can't resize the cam window, right, it kind of stays where it stays. There's, you know, there's empty space there that isn't being used, you know, for like, you know, UX, UI reasons.

But I know some people just don't want to see all that information, you know. for me like you know i i i use the overlays you know like you know the only time i really need to worry about my monitoring is it's really like if i'm playing a video game right because i'm not doing anything else it's like intensive like i know my temps are going to be fine i know my load's going to be fine i don't have to worry about that but at the moment i'll turn on a game a game is turned on and like okay what's my fPS is my stuff running hot what is it looking like under load right

yep yep so uh yeah I do think very much for people who optimize everything about that computer, right? People who are into overclocking and want to keep an eye on everything at all times. But yeah, the overlay was kind of, in some ways, sort of our high watermark for what we were trying to achieve with mini mode too. The overlay is actually pretty good. It could be a lot better, but I'm pretty happy with the way it brings information in and the way users get to use it. So we looked at that a lot for how we wanted to do mini mode as well. Because mini mode for CAM 37 was very different.

Yeah, for sure. Essentially just like shrank everything down and kept it, but it was still the same window and it didn't have like smart window behaviors and stuff. So anyway, yeah, it's been fun to work on. I think it's an interesting product that not just solves. So it solves the face issue. It solves the choosing to monitor. just what you want issue, like the monitoring priority issue.

I hopefully it's all some of the customization issues because you'll be able to change the colors on it. I know that's a request we see sometimes from users, the desire to change CAM to reflect the sort of theming of their computer. So anyway, I hope users will like it. If you join the CAM beta program, you will see it as soon as possible. Yeah, I can't wait. I'm just like, I'm permanently running the beta because I just want all the new features and I would say spoilers like you know check it out guys like it's it's it's it's free to download and uh tbh like just I really for for a beta I wouldn't even call like a beta

it's just like hey here's here's an early feature that works like 99% and just try it out before and for everyone else does because I've never had a problem with like any of the updates to beta so like I just I just that was like my main worry that because like this is my work and also my gaming computer. So I was like, you know, if I'm testing the can beta for the team, right? And something breaks my computer, you know, we'll have to, like, swap back and forth between the beta and the non-beta version. And I just leave on the beta to be honest.

I just don't even worry about it. Yeah. We're very, very conservative with our beta program. I believe Sitang at least is in the chat. He's one of our engineers on the camp team. Shout us to peek-a-blub. Yeah. Yeah. So he and the other engineers on the CAM team do an amazing job of sort of making sure that we can release stuff somewhat confidently. Because one of the interesting things about CAM is it's a software program that brings in hardware components. Yes. And if you think about the number of failure points and the number of different configurations that users can have, like let's say, cam had 100 users.

That's 100 different configurations that we need to support. And each of those configurations can have a different CPU, a different GPU, different fan setups, different lighting setups. So it gets infinitely complicated. So I think Sittong, along with our other engineers, deserve a lot of credit for getting us to a point where we're somewhat stable. What, Jeff, is your favorite thing about the cam like a team oh

well this is very heady and like abstract but I would say my favorite thing about the camp team is sort of the level of trust we have with each other and that sounds very cheesy but it has very real world implication

so one thing we do on the camp team as an example is every time we do a release of cam that doesn't go as expected so recently we had a release that had an impact on grid V2 devices. Yes, I remember that. Yeah, so after that went out, we tried to fix the issue as soon as possible, and then immediately after we were, to we hold what's called a retro,

or some people call it a post-mortem. Hello, hold up. So why a retro as opposed to post-mortem? Because everything that I've ever done, like, with like Ivan and everyone else, has been a post-mortem. What do you guys call a retro? I'm not sure. If Ray is in the chat, he probably has thoughts.

It's short for retrospective. Because it doesn't sound so sad. Yeah, Mary is right. It doesn't sound as sad. It's short for retrospective. It means like looking back. Oh, Siton's telling us, what's up? Postmorten is about a specific event.

Retro is more of a scheduled thing. Okay. So maybe postmortem would have been a more accurate way to describe this thing, right? This release didn't go well. And what happens was it doesn't go perfectly. It's not that it went horribly. It didn't go perfectly. So we get together.

and we talk about it. And one of the things that works about our team, I think, very well, is we all trust each other to have done the best job humanly possible. No one, and we all know we all think that about each other. So when we come into these meetings, it's not about, hey, Jeff didn't do his job or whatever. It's more about the process failed. Sorry? I said, yes, my job to say that.

Yeah. The process failed. And so how do we fix the process the next time it doesn't go, it doesn't go wrong because we're assuming everyone did the best, best job that they humanly could. And so that I think is like very precious.

That's awesome. Yeah. And then so other things play into that, right? Like we all play games together. We've all worked together for five years. It's not free. But I do think it, makes it so we can be really effective.

Because if we went into this postmortem and everyone's scared that someone's accusing them of something, then they get defensive right away, right? But instead, it's like a specific device broke on a specific set of computers, on specific versions of CAM. Yeah. That's not, you know, no human being could have predicted all these possible outcomes of our update. Yeah.

So let's just figure the process out. Yeah. And that's what like why I'm not going to say like I don't care. or like it doesn't matter to me when things break, but it's like, you're using like this really, really old device and we're updating like the newest version like years later on. Like there's going to be a problem,

you know, like we're going to possibly forget something or there's going to be some weird compatibility issue. Like, you know, it sucks that yourself's broken, right? And like I can 100% sympathize because it was working before and now it's not, right? But at the same time, it's like, you know, when you're using much older hardware, like,

like there's going to be, we have to support that. And sometimes, you know, it's like, how do you remember, right? How do you remember like, oh, yeah, you know, this thing that we used to have, like, you know, people are still actively using like every single day, right? Yep, yep. And so that's sort of one of the burdens of working on CAM.

Our QA team is doing a very good job of putting together like a testing lab. So they, I don't know, they have maybe a dozen computers with all these old devices and stuff in them so that we can keep an eye on all of them. What's the oldest device that we support still? Sorry. What's the oldest device that we still support? Well, we still support everything in CAM. So I guess theoretically the first Cracken is probably the first, the oldest device that has software-enabled settings.

Oh, no. So I don't even know what the, I know Ray on our team actually had one of them. I remember one day he bought it for himself. like eight years prior or whatever and he brought it in and we used it to test it. So yeah, we still allow you to change colors on ancient

crackens and stuff. Do you ever wish you could just tell people do you just upgrade your hardware? And is that? No. I mean, I think it's cool. It's cool. Yeah, the problem isn't the age

of the devices. It's the, variety of the devices. Yeah, yeah. And like, there's a still significant number of users whose ancient crackens are still working perfectly fine from a hardware perspective. The thing I worry more about are like weird little one-off devices that not many people bought, but we still have to support it for them.

So like, I can't even think of an example, but let's say as a counter, say the crack and z sold like a hundred that for whatever reason people didn't like the crack and z only a hundred of them ever sold we would have to continue to support the crack and zee which is a super duper complicated product for 100 people which would be very frustrating and there are products like that exist so not not but anything only sold 100 in dxte but the concept is true can you can you can you name like a small device like that because i'm trying to think of one but i can't like other than maybe like the doco, but I don't think that was cam enabled right? I don't think so.

Yeah, let me pull something up. We do have analytics on all this stuff. We have like counts on there. Yeah, so this sounds really cool. So like whenever Jeff says, hey, we're going to do this thing to Cam, it might make like 100 people very angry because they still use this thing. Literally nobody does out of like all of our thousands of users, these hundred people still use it.

So if they get angry, send them to me. And I'm like, oh, okay, cool. and then like it's always really really neat to see like just how many people are using X device, right? But I don't even know if you're like allowed to say like the number, but like just just the fact that there's like still really like dedicated users who like have this one device, right? We don't make it anymore. But we still got to support it because, you know, they're actively using it and they like it, right? Yep, yep. So how good DMs are mentioned on Twitter about that stuff on the revision of the grid plus?

is probably the smallest device. So the grid plus went through several revisions. Right. So each of those revisions have different implications about the technical implementation. And that's probably a great example of something. We have to think about every time we do something. And that's one of the things that broke was a grid plus in this recent update

that we have the post-mortemone. So it wasn't the grid plus. It was a version of the grid plus. Yeah, looking at our analytics, I mean, it's kind of hard for me to read this particular chart because there's like a really long tail here. But it looks like there's at least three different revisions of the grid plus. And interestingly, there's one called Revision A and one called Revision One. I'm not sure what that means is why they have essentially the same,

like they have two different numbering systems that imply the same thing. But anyway, yeah, that's if you're one of the, those people out there with a grid plus revision A. We still got you, right? Yeah, we're still doing it. There's two dozen people trying to help your grid plus revision A keep working. Yeah, you know, so if you do have problems, like, you know, it's not a lost cause. Like, literally let us know so you can fix it because that's the thing to you read is like we can't, we can't fix it unless you, like, send your logs and submit a ticket and like, you know, help us.

the what's the term right like uh help us help you right yep yeah all right um and i think you might have touched on this already but what's your least favorite thing about working on the cam team oh geez that's um i mean even the specific devices because the thing is uh we tend to it's it's only a problem when it goes wrong right uh which hopefully is not as common as it could be. My least favorite thing about working on the CAM team, to be super honest, it's probably the fact that we're working on a lot of different hardware products. And I feel like the amount of time and focus it takes to give those hardware products software support, which is totally justified, but the amount of time it takes to do that

makes it so that we can't serve all CAM users as well as we'd want to. So mini mode is a great example of this. Many mode is something that every cam user, you'll get it, you'll be like, oh my God, this is cool. This helps me. This is great. But because we're working so hard to support hardware products, we don't get to do enough stuff like that that I would love to do. Right, right. Was the solution? Do you have more people? I don't know.

I don't know because I'm wary of that too. That's something we've talked about on the team. But one thing that I think is really cool about the CAM team is that everyone sort of unified around the vision of the product and where we're trying to go with it. And the more people you add, the more you kind of lose that vision, especially. people like our designer Joe, right? He's a very, very strong voice on the team that gives a lot of context and really understands users that are trying to use cam. And so if we added a second designer, sure, we can do twice as much stuff, but would

each of those things be half as good? I don't know. It's something to be wary of. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. What is your favorite ANZEXCSEA product?

Jeff. Ooh, Cam, obviously. Hey, there you go. The right answer. What is your least favorite NZXT product? Least favorite, Grid Plus Revision A.

And when would you like to see NZXT make? Sorry? And what one product would you like to see us make? Oh. It doesn't even have to be like a computer thing. Whatever you want. Okay.

Here's my. Mine's a little complicated. I'm ready for it. What I would, wish we would do is produce more custom cases or similar, right? So like one thing I did for my case is I found this big vertical form factor poster map from Dark Souls and I printed it out as a sticker and stuck it to my case. And I think it's really cool.

I mean, other people may find a dorky. I don't care. I think that our cases are really prime for something like that, something that you can like, they're like a great canvas. So I think that we can do something cool there. That's like literally what I've said so many times is like our cases are literally a blank canvas, right? Yeah. And I think some of that stuff we do well, right?

Like the cases do a great job of showing off the RGB inside. of them and the crack and Z is sort of like the crown on the top of that sort of RGB story but yeah we could do more for sure we could always do more yeah okay let me see if I can find a picture of my case to post to the chat for sure for sure and while you're looking for that photo do you have a special shout out to anyone in the company who you believe deserve some recognition anybody at all oh this is a good question There's so many people. There's so, so many people.

The entire customer service team, I think that's, you know, I've worked in customer service too in the past. I think that's a hard, hard job. That doesn't get enough appreciation. I think Drogon, Dracaris, in Discord. I think he or she is doing a really good job. I think, God, there's so many people. I don't know, everyone on the camp team.

It's a hard, hard job. Ruin, that's a great example of someone. Ruin is a person that, yeah, he's extremely quiet, doesn't look for credit for anything he does. Is that what you like him because he's quiet? Sorry. Is that what you like him because he's quiet? Yeah, yeah, I do.

I want people to be quiet around me so I can fill up the airtime. But yeah, I think he will never, ever get enough credit. for how much his, like, giant brain is powering what happens with Cam. So shout out to ruin. Nice. Yeah, there's a, I think this, like, I don't know, I kind of like that. The way you explain it because some people just do their job, and they do it extremely well, but you'll never know it because part of their job is to make sure things run well, right?

So, like, for example, if my tweets suck, you know it. it right away because Jeff is always watching the social media channel on Slack, right? But like, you know, there, you know, but like if I, you know, was working, okay, for example, right, just, okay, a good example, Mary in finance, right? Because she's in, she's in chat right now, right? If something went wrong with payroll or, or with the financials, we'd know right away, right? But if she's doing, you know, an amazing job, which, you know, I think we can all agree that she is, right? We would never have anything to say about it because she's just doing her job, right? but like it's not an easy job, right?

It takes a lot of work. You know, and, you know, it's one of those things are like, if customer service is doing their job, right, we may get like a couple of, you know, tweets or, you know, emails about it. But for the most part, if like, if like CS is doing the, like, fantastic job, then, you know, they just do their thing, right? So I think it's always nice to kind of give recognition to those who, just by virtue, just doing their job means that they're doing, like, a fantastic job.

If that makes sense, you know, kind of get out here, right? Yeah, I think... We can't really poorly. There's so much, like, being thoughtful about your job will always be invisible to other people because they can't appreciate the subtleties of what goes into your work. That's a way of wording that, yeah. Way more eloquent than how I said it. Yeah, but when people screw it up, you will know for sure.

Yeah. Oh, excellent. There we go. It's actually funny because I was thinking about this the other day. There was this thing where I think I tweeted the wrong thing or I tweeted something twice because there was like a, I'm going to blame Twitter on it, right? And like within seconds, right? We have a channel in our Slack. It's called the social media channel.

We're literally, whenever I post a tweet, it always posts there regardless of whatever the tweet is, right? So I think what it was that I posted it Twitter. twice, right? And within seconds, you're in that social media channel and you, like, react to it, right? With like an emoji. And I'm like, I don't know anyone else who's job has such visibility to the entire company because that's a public channel and everybody can see it, right? Yeah. And in fact, you're set to auto join it when you joined the company. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I left it for a while, but I came back because I wanted to see, I wanted to keep an eye on you. Yeah, I wish we were going to do it for like, for like Facebook and like, uh, and like

Instagram, but the APIs for those platforms really suck. Yeah. But yeah. So, yeah, it's really funny, like, how, how, like, if I screw up, everyone will see it, right? But, like, you know, other people don't have that level of visibility. And it's one of those things where it's like, it really keeps me on my toes. And, like, I know that as soon as, like, I screw something up, the first thought is like, oh, God, Jeff's going to see this.

It's going to react to. Yeah. It was, I remember what you, I remember the case you're talking about. What was it? You just said congratulations to no one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so Twitter has this annoying thing where sometimes when you click to reply to someone, it'll actually just set up for a whole new tweet.

So I say congratulations with the purple heart emoji to literally nobody. And I see, saw it. I'm like, what the heck happened here? So I had to delete it and then go back and then and then reply. And like I look back at the social media channel because I know whenever I screw up, it always shows up there. And I see you with your with your eye reaction emoji. And I'm like, oh, God.

thought. He knows. Jeff knows. Yeah. Yeah, my, um, I learned that from my new boss as you just put eye reaction emojis on everything that, that could make people self-conscious. Shout out to Sean Collins. Another invisible person at NZXT who's just constantly eye-oji reacting on everything I do. Yeah. Yesterday wasn't my fault, though. Yesterday, Twitter was literally having problems where I posted the tweet. It didn't show up. I refreshed it. popped up twice. I refreshed it again. It was not there anymore. Refreshed it again. Both posts showed up somehow, deleted one of them, left it alone, came back 30 minutes later. Both of them was still up for some reason. I don't know what was going on on the platform, but it was really

tripping. Yeah, I know it's really, really weird. Social media is kind of dumb sometimes. All right. So that's that's it for the general world. questions. Folks, if you have questions for Jeff or for me or for, you know, anything N-Z-T-related, please drop them in the chat. Okay, we'll be taking those questions now. If you are listening not live and want to send a question, please send an email to Clubcast at N-Z-X-T.com. That is, Clubcast, Z-U-B-C-A-S-T-A-S-T-com. Got that set up just for you guys. Send, send emails. Send emails. Let us know where you're listening from. Send emails. Okay, thanks. Bye.

I did see one question I want to talk about earlier. I forget who asked it. I accidentally posted it on that picture of my computer. Oh, where is it? I see that. I deleted it since then. Someone was asking, and sorry I don't remember your name, someone was asking about having gifts in the background of your Crack and Z,

and I think that's such an interesting question to answer. So to give some context on the way that, so essentially what the user wants is, you show the temperature on your crack and Z and then behind it there's a gift playing which makes a lot of sense to me I understand exactly what they're asking for and why but the reason that that's very difficult

with the current implementation of the Cracken Z is that the temperatures are themselves gifts so what happens is when you set on your Cracken Z I want to show my GPU temperature and it has to be purple and red What we do is we create a GIF with 100 frames of purple and red temperatures, and then we tell them which frame of the GIF to show it at a time. So putting another GIF behind that would actually make it exponentially more complicated.

Right. So let's say the GIF is NianCat floating up and down. So you would need NianCat at the top frame at each of the 100 temperatures, and then you need NianCat at the second frame at each of the 100 temperatures and then the third frame at each of the 100 temperatures to tell which one to show. So anyway, there's a super interesting question.

And hopefully that explains the complexity behind implementing it. But yeah, thanks for that interesting question. Very interesting. Yeah, so normally we would have Ivan here with some banger questions and it kind of leave him to him because he always asks us like this really off the wall crazy stuff.

But I'm going to do my best to ask me these questions. These are questions that you do not know. You're not prepared for, right? They're off the wall, hopefully, right? Shout out of the vans. First question is, why Luigi? Would you so lame, dude?

Okay, first of all, Luigi's really cool. How? How is he cool? He's a scaredy cat, dude. Compared to Mario? You don't think Luigi's cooler than Mario. Mario's like super alpha 100%

Oh my god He's the man He will grab a giant Spiky Turtle thing By the tail and throw it into a bomb Luigi goes into a haunted mansion That he owns right He owns a place and he's like

Crying the entire time Yeah but he does it anyway Right And then he's like crying for Mario the entire time Yeah but he Luigi gets through it Luigi's struggling But he gets through it

Mario you don't know Mario might be just too stupid to understand the situation he's getting into. He doesn't know it's dangerous. Luigi knows it's dangerous, but gets through it, man. So anyway, Luigi is obviously superior to Mario. He's also taller, which is inherently good. It's good to be taller than it is to be shorter.

He probably has a healthier BMI than Mario. Mario is not in great shape. What else? I think Daisy likes Luigi. Princess Peach doesn't even like. Mario's defense right how you were seen like an actual like like strong man bodybuilder they're not the most cut dudes right those dudes are a little chunky for a reason right that's true that's true you get to hold that power Mario's got to have those thick thighs oh yeah for sure you got to have the

strong core behind that little belly is literally like all muscle man he's this dude like triple jumps kicks off walls grabs dolphins in midair come on man fair enough fair enough but luigi's just i mean he's just got Luigi's got such a cool energy, right? I don't know. It's just hard. Mario doesn't seem cool to me, right?

If I went to a party and I had the choice to talk to Luigi or Mario, it's to Luigi every single time. I would not want to talk to Mario. He seems like arrogant, boring, not fun.

So Luigi's like, yeah, he's relatable. He's out there. I think Mario is the kind of guy who just chills and vibes all the time and he's just always down to just hang out, right? Are you an older sibling? You are an older sibling, right?

Technically, I am, well, I am in my family, but technically I'm not. But for sake of argument, let's just say that I am. I would say that's probably why you like Mario. I think older siblings are a lot more forgiving of Mario's flaws and younger siblings. want to see Luigi and get in that Luigi business. I see no flaws on Mario.

He's a perfect player. All right. I can't even talk to you about it then. Just forget it. Okay. Next question I have for you is how many hours do you have in Dark Souls? I can tell you right now.

Yeah. Let's see. So I did play on PlayStation 3, too. I don't have that information available to me at the moment, but Dark Souls 1 is 172 hours Dark Souls remastered

is 80 hours so we're at 250 Dark Souls 2 is 40 super low so 300 Dark Souls 2 scholar The First Sin is 164 so that's now we're at 360

and Dark Souls 3 has the takes the cake at 560 hours. So what am I total at here? 800 and 900 hours total in Dark Souls games? Which of the three Dark Souls games do you think is the best one? I think one is still the best. I like three a lot, but I think one is probably the best.

It's just so rich in like metaphor and symbolism in a way that I've never seen in a game before other than maybe like Sechara, which is the same, same thing. Do you think that what are your thoughts on Dark Souls 2? Because it knows a very controversial game in the series. I don't know if I can answer this on the podcast.

This is a political question. I think it's okay. I will say Dark Souls 2 is, both versions of Dark Souls 2 are the only Front Soft games I have not gone through in Platinum or like 100%ed. They just, it's very awkward. There's a lot of history behind it,

and I don't know, to go into it at length, but essentially, I believe the story is Miyazaki, who worked on Dark Souls 1, was essentially pulled off, I think, to work on Bloodborne. They asked him to work on Bloodbourne instead because PlayStation was paying for an exclusive, And so they say that Dark Souls 2 was kind of made by the B team, and it does kind of show. Like, it's not the movement and the feel of the combat is not as crisp.

The story is not as compelling and frequently doesn't really even make sense. The visuals of it are pretty whack. So anyway, yeah, I'll eventually go through in Platinum, but yeah, not as a, good as the others. Yeah, I remember I spent time because, like, I've only, I played all the one. I never finished three because I got to the, I forget where it was. It was that place after the bridge with that big dog or whatever that you're not supposed to actually fight.

And then those, those like wispy knife dudes, it was too much, man. I couldn't do it. Yep, the pontiff nights. I know exactly where you're describing. Yeah, I never got past that point. Yeah, that's a hard check, a mechanics check to make sure you understand how to play the game. Sounds like he didn't, Dennis. I don't know.

I mean, like, I got through it by like doing a lot of blocking and stuff. But like I've always been really bad at like parrying like any game. And I feel like the window in Dark Souls has been is always like super, super tight. And like I'm, I need something that's a little bit more forgiving, just like a little bit more. Makes sense. Did you play Sakura? Saccharo is like, cool. I don't own a PlayStation.

Sekaro is on PC. You're thinking of Bloodborn. I'm thinking, okay, I mean, I do want to play Bloodborn, but I also don't want to buy PlayStation. Bless you, that is? Yeah, uh, your, thanks. Thank you for blessing me. No, uh, I, uh, I don't know why I haven't played it.

I, I think it's like, like, missed the boat on it, to be honest. Like, I, I wanted to. It looked really cool. And then, like, by the time, like, I even thought about buying it, I was already playing something else. I don't remember what came out during that time, but I just, like, I just missed the boat on certain games.

I almost got, what's that one that was Dark Souls, but not Dark Souls, that was Sekiro, but not Securo from, I think. Oh, I know the one you're talking about. Nairo? Nio? Is it Nio?

I think it was Nio. Yeah, Neo? I've always said Neo, but yeah. I don't know how it's pronounced, but yeah. But I saw that one, and that one looked pretty cool. It looked like Dark Souls Light, right? Like it was a very arcadey version, so I just, I don't know.

For some reason, I just, like, don't pick these games up. Like, I didn't play Dark Souls 1 until, like, way, way later. And, oh, Jesus Christ, dude. Hold up. I've got a screenshot this. Thank you, Jeff, for gifting me, Sekiro on Steam. I appreciate it. Yeah. My pleasure, dude.

What a great game. Yeah. No, because, like, I'll also do this thing, too, where, like, I'll buy games and then I won't play them, right? And I'm sure everyone has the same thing. Like, I bought Yakuza Zero. And I think I've played maybe two hours of it. And I kind of don't like it because there's a lot of,

there's a lot of small crap to do in that game. But I think that's part of the charm, no? I think those games, like, Grand Theft Auto and Yakuza, they get harder and harder to get into as you get older and, like, more easily distracted and have more pressure on your, your time. So I don't know. Yeah. That's why I don't like games that have a bunch of side quests and stuff. Even Dragon Age Inquisition, I really wanted, I really wanted to like it. I loved the first Dragon Age. Dragon Age Inquisition looked like super pretty and the mechanics of it

were compelling. But there was just too much, there was just a vibe that I was checking boxes and like not really playing a game at all. So I gave it up after. I don't know, maybe five hours. Oof. Yeah, that's the thing I'm kind of falling into now, but I'm noticing I have a lack of time. And like if I do have time, it's always like by chance, which is why like whenever people ask me,

hey, you know, I can add you as a friend on this or that so you can play. I always tell them yes, but we'll probably never play because I don't schedule time to play. I don't just like, I'm on when I just happen to be on, right? It's never like a set time. So like, oh, you know, like I have a couple hours here. I'm going to play for.

for a little bit and then like I'll not play that game again for like two weeks or something. Yeah. Yeah. I think luckily some of the stuff that's popular now are like very, very small commitments, right? Fall Guys, when you start a game of Fall Guys, you know you're going to be done within five to ten minutes. Yes. And when you start a game of Among Us, you know you're going to be done in five to ten minutes. And I love that. Yeah. No, like I've been playing this game called a Hunt Showdown for a bit. Yeah. And it's it's it's it's it's it's it isn't it isn't but it's like it's it's like it's like you know it's it's funny actually thinking about it now it kind of gives me a lot of like dark soul-ish vibes from like from like

the monster design but long story short though I can load into a game right either beat either beat that round or I die and lose my character right and then you know either choose continue or not and it is one of the things where like I can play for like 20 to 30 minutes. And then I feel like I did something where I feel like a game like maybe even like Dark Souls, right? If I don't set like a good hour to play, I feel like I'm not making any progress. Especially I'm going to be dying over and over trying to get past the nights or something. It's true. Yeah, I also, I finally bought Hades.

I had kind of been putting it off. So that's another one that I just got that this weekend. It's super good. Yeah. I'm not sure how I'm going to relate to it though, right? like because it's a little bit longer of a commitment I'd say per run right it's probably like 20 minutes per run and um you're like building something so it's easy to lose your context right if I walk away from the game for a week and I come back am I going to understand what I was trying to do at that time

yeah I had the same problem with the witcher uh I didn't play the witcher for like a month and a half and then getting back into it was really hard but I can have part of the theory because like I I really love the Witcher. I love the setting. I love the characters. I loved, like, the story. Granted, the main story was kind of lame because, you know, got to save the world from a big bad evil, right?

But the game in general was like such a, the only way we can describe is like, the game was a huge vibe. I just vibe when I was playing it. It was super fun. But like, for the most part, like, if I don't, if I don't finish a game, like start to finish and like consistent, like, sessions,

I find myself losing more and more interest, which is why I've kind of been leaning more just like the short multiplayer or like short like run-based games, right? Because if not, then I'll just like never, I'll never get back into it. Yep, yep, I agree. And yeah, on which I had, I don't know, for whatever, I, it's such a popular game and people love it and I sort of see why. But to me that the guy is just, Gerald, he's just so reprehensible. And so he's like over the top, right? He's like the nerd power image. Like, I don't know.

No, he like, creeps me out. The girl, girl's the best. I have 142 hours in the Witcher, by the way, in the Witcher 3. So then you don't like it as much as I like Dark Souls 3, apparently. True. I think the game I have the most time in, well, I mean, this going on, because like once I finish again, I finish it, I'll get into this habit where like, I'll try to do the most in a game and then like halfway through.

I'm like, okay, I'm over collecting everything. I'm just going to play the game through for the story. Happens every time I play like a, what I call it? Like an Assassin's Creed style game, but there's like a bunch of collectibles. I always go in thinking I'm going to play and just do everything. And then at a certain point, I'm like, no, never mind. Let me see. What's my most game time in a game on Steam?

Okay, so it's Black Desert Online, but it doesn't count because it doesn't count because I used to work for the company. So I would have a game on all the time. time of the background because that was my job to play the game essentially. So I have 1,500 hours in it. But the next game down, the next game down, which I actually played all these hours is Planet Side 2 and I have 669 hours in it. Wow. That was a good game though. I really liked Planet Side. Yeah. I miss it, to be honest. I miss those large scale battles. Like you don't see that anymore. Now it's like Call the Duty 12B12 and that's pretty much it. I also assume I don't know this. And you probably would know much better than me.

But Destiny sort of ate Planet Side because they took all of the theming. I'm not going to say who had it first, but essentially, if you really like sci-fi shooters, there's a decent chance you would play Destiny before you would ever play Planet Side.

I would assume. No, I would say that Destiny kind of ate like MMO players is who, because like I grew up playing FPS. Like my first game on PC was Doom, right? So I just have a huge background in just shooter games. And I played Wow for like a long time because everyone else did.

And because it was a cool thing to do with like a group of people to like accomplish these really cool tasks. So I've been like on this constant itch to find like the next like MMO game that'll like take up my time and I haven't found that game in. And the only game that kind of scratches remotely that itch is destiny because of the looting aspect, because the shooting aspect because they have the raids in there. Yeah. I don't think anybody takes Planet Side too. two's like player base because there's nothing that's like mass scale battles you're literally waging war in like several fronts right you can make these like really dope plays where you load up like an entire platoon which is I believe like 50 people or something like that into this

carrier and you all just drop on top of this fight and you turn the tide like in the second um I miss planet side apparently this like is really big update yeah no it's um um much i'm looking up right now planet side Because they just had this huge update. It's like two, what's called Steam charts? And also my time in Destiny, so it's 343, but it doesn't count because there's like a huge chunk of time where it was on Bunji on Banji on Battleman. So I don't even know what my hours are on Destiny, but all I know is that currently just on Steam, since they released on Steam, I have 300 hours. But Destiny 2, Planet Site 2, 24-hour peak is 2,000 people, which is not a lot.

lot, but it's fairly decent considering, like, how big the fights get sometimes. Yeah, I mean, it's enough to make the game still playable, right? Yeah, for sure. A game like Dust or a game like Planet Thly could eventually get below the level where the game even makes sense anymore. Yeah, because I think you can have, let me think, I forget how many people per server, but like I know that if you have I'm trying to think I think if you have like a least like a hundred people to 200 people per per faction and there's three of them for one map you're good because then you can split off or you can have these giant fights but I haven't played it in a while I know this has been like a huge update where like people are like yo it's really great you should go play it now but yeah I mean they went from like a thousand concurrent players now that they're at 2000, so I guess it kind of

technically doubled their playership, but it's not even like that much though. Like, they've dropped a lot. It sucks because it's a really good game. And I think what happened is like after like Sony Online Entertainment, like kind of dropped the game and gave it to look a different company or gave it to whoever was running it then,

there was like this big like question mark or whether they were going to just keep the game in its current state, if they were going to develop it, if they were going to like shut it down or something. So I think people just like were tired of like not knowing if their game is going to be up in like two months, just, just,

just, yeah, because it does, it does have significant progression, too, right? You, like, progress on the game. It's grandy, yeah. Yeah, it's very grandy. Yeah,

but that, I mean, not, not necessarily in a bad way either, right? Like, being grindy in itself isn't criminal, but, like,

I could see why that would turn off more players, right? If you're working towards this progress, but you don't know if this, the game's going to be shut down all together. Yeah. Well, like, it's a, because there's a, you could, you could buy weapons in the game with, with money or you can, like, grind them out if you want. I forgot, like, if they, if they changed how that works, but I think, like, the starter weapons are, like, not the best, but they're good enough.

And, like, as long as you're, like, not bad at the game, you're, you're pretty much good to go. So, like, it isn't a, like, necessity for you to grind stuff out. But there's, like, you know, there's, like, specialty weapons that are really good or will make things easier for you. But, like, you know, I haven't played such a long time. time. And like I think there was a bit where I tried to get back into it. And I enjoyed it. But I think the part that I really missed was being part of like a group that played. And because yeah, this kind of goes back into like what, what we were talking about earlier, playing as like a lone wolf in these kind of games is fun. But it's nowhere near as rewarding as like having a set group of people that you start to build a relationship with. Right. You build a community with. And like you're, you're all. Hey, we logging in tonight. We're going to take over. Esimir. Let's do it. Bro. I'm like, I'm like, attack that, you know, tech plant and then, you know, you go do the thing. Yeah, yeah. Although I would do wonder, it's also possible that we're just, or me especially, since I'm

significantly older than you, just aging out of that kind of behavior too, right? Like, maybe, yeah. It's kind of, it's harder for me to make relationships with people online, especially via a game, because I don't know how much of a commitment I'm even able to make to that game. Yeah. Yeah, like, I would say the biggest, like, I was playing a hunt showdown the day, and there's this guy I found in the game. Really cool dude, his name is Garfield.

Like, literally, so his name is just Garfield, and his profile picture is Garfield, the cat. So I'm assuming it's on purpose. And we had a really good game together. I added him as a friend or we added each other's friends. And then I haven't played with him since. We tried to do it once. And he was like, yo, I'm on this phone call. And like, an hour later, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to lock off and go do something else.

Yeah. But, yeah, but, like, I haven't seen them online since. Garfield, if you're out there, homie, you know, stay safe. You know, we're thinking about you. He didn't know. He didn't know he was playing with a famous podcast host. Exactly, right? Doesn't know who I am.

Okay. Do we have some questions for people, I think, am I, like, yeah, we got some questions here. I'll just go up a little bit. Some cam-type questions, though. hire intern for Cam when Oh, so we actually did have an intern for Cam

It's funny you would ask that on Discord No intern for us The summer before this just Most recent past one He did a great job As of right now We don't have any current plans For hiring interns

But we totally might have in the future Who asked that? Probably an Asian Is his name So I'm assuming Yeah, I'm not going to assume anything. But if you can wants to know, thoughts on cam, rich presence. I don't know what that means, but I think you might have a better idea.

Yeah, I believe the person's describing the Discord implementation where essentially APIs feed information into Discord, and that information can be set as a status below the user's name. So you can be like, oh, I'm NZXT Dennis and my GP temperature is whatever, 85, and it would update as your GPU temperature updates. It's an interesting question, assuming I'm understanding what the person's suggesting correctly. We, you know, as I described earlier in the podcast, the goal of a product manager is to try and think of the impacts, the features that'll have the greatest impact for the greatest number of users.

Is rich presence up there? probably not but it's definitely interesting if one of the engineers came to me and said hey it sounds cool I want to work on this on nights and weekends I'd be like yeah sure to go for it

are we going to put it above developing support for hardware feature or hardware products that NZXT wants to put out nope unfortunately not okay if you work for NZXT

do you get a free PC Yes. I mean, you have to give it back when they fire you. Yeah. Actually, it's funny, I was just messaging Melinda about this the other day because I don't, you've seen me talking about it. Yeah. I'm super interested in the 3080, but I only have one PC at home. And so I'm like, what would happen?

If I buy a 3080, do I have to keep my 1080 that I have in my computer? And then at the time that NZXT eventually fires me, do I have to, do I have to give them back to this 1080? and then pull out the 3080 and find another home for it. So anyway, she said yes. The answer is yes. So if you want to upgrade your NXT computer and then eventually you quit, no longer at the company, you have to reassemble the components and send it back to them. All right.

I'm just looking through the questions here. Thoughts on Crisis Remastered. Have you played it at all? I tried it. Sorry. Have you checked it out at all? Because I know of all the people, you play a lot of video games.

I know Ivan, like, plays a one game. It's like Tetris or like Super Mega Baseball, unless they're really it. So like, so actually, I try and play a variety of games, but, or like at least keep up to date with them. I think Crisis Remastered is really interesting.

I think the release of it is very planned. I think people don't. So crisis itself was never an amazing game. I think a lot of why it got a lot of publicity is because of the impact it had on people's hardware. Yeah. And I think that trend ended, right? You remember for like five years,

the meme was, oh, can it run crisis? Can I run crisis? Yeah. And I think launching right now is very good timing to have that, you know, reenter the popular dialogue. Do I think anyone was out there wishing they would remaster crisis

compared to some other games that people would love to see remaster? Probably not. Right? People don't. It's not like a nostalgic game that people miss or thought that didn't get its chance. I think now it's can't run Microsoft Flight Simulator because it's very low back. It's like super beefy.

Yeah, although that games really cool. I wish I had time to play that. Same here. It's like the right time to release that game because people are trying to imagine what it would be like to not be stuck in their houses right now it's all planned right yeah verroon i don't i don't know if you had veron on the podcast but veron sent a video of himself crashing into my apartment so jesus it sounds like an HR violation to be honest with you i will call someone about that we're we're we shouldn't get veron on but he's a little shy so i think it

might need some some some some some prokeying for some people in the company to tell him that that his presence on the on the on the podcast is not only uh requested but demanded from the community yeah that necessary to do his job correctly exactly yeah like how can he possibly compile data on the community if he doesn't sit on the podcast for an hour and a half and talk about uh why luigi is trash computer to mario whoa he would probably do that he'd take you up on that just to annoy me. Probably. You know what the thing is?

Beroon doesn't know who either Mario or Luigi are. He doesn't not play any games. He'd be like, who? I never met Mario. But it is play flight sim and crashes to your apartment. So there's something to be said there. He has the gaming habits of like a 70-year-old. He just plays flights of nothing else.

G.B.K. wants to know, what is your favorite fall comfort food? Oh, that's a good question. Butternut squash soup? That's probably it. Butternut squash soup is a good one. What about you, Dennis? I'm Hispanic, so I'm going to say tamales. That's mine, yeah.

Slead wants to know, he says toxicity in Dark Souls, question mark. Can you explain a little bit about that? I don't know. I mean, the community around Dark Souls is like a little bit unwelcoming, I guess. I don't know. I think that's kind of a meme about it. People are like, oh, get better. If people are talking about having problems with the game, the idea is people just say get good.

Or, I mean, the game is, so the game doesn't have chat, right? So that's something that jumps out right away is preventing it from being toxic. But it does have this invasion mechanic that is kind of in him. apparently toxic, but that's fine, because that's kind of the intent of the game, is that it's supposed to feel punishing and unhappy sometimes. So, anyway, I don't, I don't find, like, being someone who played League of Legends when it first came out, something has to be really toxic for me to be impressed with how toxic it is, and I don't think Dark Souls is there.

What do you think is the most toxic game? I haven't played Dota yet. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like Dota. actually I would say the game that I played them so like lead toxicity is just people whining and being being a baby right but I would say there's it's nothing compared to like rainbow six toxicity because it kind of transcends as being salty and it's almost like they're

trying to personally attack you and like destroy your soul with their words like I think people and rainbow six actively try to make you feel bad about yourself and your life choices because you decided to play I don't know, Ash or something, right? I haven't played the game in years, but there's just something on Rainbow Six players that make me sad and wish that I'd never had, I would never

have to interact with them again. That's very funny. Yeah, the Overwatch got pretty toxic for a while too, and I was definitely like... I forgot about Overwatch. Part of that. Dead by Day.

Daylight, super-deeper toxic game by nature. Okay, so let's talk about that because I recently started playing Dead by Daylight again because of B, right? She picked the game. She said, hey, play with me. I'm like, okay. So I first played it. I think it was the, I think it was maybe last. Last, no, it wasn't last holiday or whatever.

But anyway, I bought the game during like a holiday sale. and I played it for like a month. And the first two weeks were like, this game is super awesome. It's super fun. I really enjoy it. And then it got to a certain rank where people started being so mean to me

because I was just picking like, because I was picking like, you know, oh, this, this perk looks really cool. This item looks really cool. It makes sense. Why wouldn't I want to have it on here? And then people were like calling me all kinds of names because I'm using this mechanic that's in the game.

I'm like, well, then, you know, don't hate me. Like, hate the developers who put this dumb thing in the game. Like, it's not my fault. oh, you don't want me to play a doctor because he does whatever he does, then don't play this game then because I'm going to pick the, I'm going to pick doctor, he looks cool, right?

He's a cool-looking character. I don't like the other ones. The song one's really annoying to play, so I'm not going to do that one. Rip the game, right? It's just people are so mean. They're so rude. Yeah, it's a pretty, like,

I mean, it's like I was saying about Dark Souls, it's a game that's kind of toxic by nature. Yeah. Right? Like, there's no way to come out of a game where one guy is trying to kill everyone and the other people are trying to not get killed where people come out of it feeling like,

oh, that was good and fun. I mean, it can be good and fun, but it's a really steep hill to climb. So anyway, yeah, I don't know. I'm super toxic in Dead by Daylight. Ray, Ray for, oh, I'll just, you know, same thing that you saw. As soon as the game ends, I'm like, they're in chat being like,

I can't believe you picked this garbage. You're like a total. I can't say it on the podcast since we've done the last swearing. Why do you get like that, huh? I'm sorry, I don't know. You know what? Ray from the camp team was the most

into dead by daylight of all of us. And he set the example of toxicity for me where it kind of became a game where we would try and be more toxic than each other at the end of a game. And then he stopped being toxic all together and was like, he's like, I can't believe how toxic you are.

I'm like, dude, I learned it from you. It was you who taught me. I only get toxic when like, when like the killer is on my butt for like the entire game. And like only one, one generator is fixed. And it's like,

do you like, why aren't you guys doing your job in this game? Like you have literally one job to do. Literally one job. And that job is to repair the generators. Why in this like 20 minute game or only like two generators repaired? And it's all me. Like,

can you please like just? go to the thing and click the button. Like, it's, it's not hard. It's not a hard. Just hearing you describe it is, like, triggering me. I'm getting sweaty over here. Or, like, or, like, someone will play, like, the most annoying killer, right? Like, it's just like, do you like, do you like, do you like, do you like, Freddie?

Yeah. Freddie players. Freddie or, um, what's the, what's the one that teleports? What's your name? Haag. Is it hag or teleports? I mean, there's a lot of people who have things that look like teleportation. There's the spirit, too.

Kind of is like teleportation. Someone that goes through walls. She literally goes through walls. It's really annoying. It's really annoying. Every go what her name is. Oh, nurse. Nurse. Yeah.

I think you're nurse. Yeah. So, like, I'll see that I'm playing, and I see that I'm playing in Snurice. And then my first thought was like, does your mother know what you do all day? Like, where you're not hugged enough as a child? Like, why do you do this to people? Like, you're so, you're a terrible person. please uninstall the game and go play

if you have room in your queue you should play with Ray and I Ray and me will show you true toxicity Ray will bring it back no I mean I'm I'm super down because like it's one of those games that I feel like if you have a

like a four group of people to play with against the killer it might be super fun right and I haven't had that experience yet so no for sure yeah I'll we'll round up the game you me Ray and B will fight against some some sweaties and dead by daylight and then and then you'll

I'm scared to get yelled at by you because you're like typically a pretty nice dude right so I'm like I'm like I don't want to see that side of you but if you're like you know this is the only way that we could like continue this relationship is if no no I don't yell at my teammates in dead by daylight I just yell at the killers Ray will yell at you that's fine that's to me that's not toxic to me that's just the game right because the goal of the game is to kill the other players, right?

Or to beat the other players. What I've always hated, though, is when survivors, like, taunt you. It's like, dude, just leave. Just escape. Just escape. Like, I'm not going to run towards you. Please stop it. Like, I want to end this game, you know, or like, the killer will, like just, oh, my God.

This. Let me talk about this game now. Why do killers just sit on you when you're on the hook? Why do they do that? What's the point? I don't know, man. What's the point? The best for those blood points, I guess.

And then, right, and then your teammate, they just stare at you. They never. No. Just go do it. Go do it. Jen. He was like, you see that he's literally dancing around me, right? You have the perks.

You see him there. Go repairs and generators. Make him leave. That's how the game is play. Then people don't do it. And they'll just stare at you getting, like, killed. And then I'm like, well, I guess I'm out of this game. And then you get to wait for your teammate to die as well because he cute him together.

And then you like, you want to yell at them. But they'll look over. And then they're doing their job. So it's not their fault. It's the two other people. Anyway. video games are fun everyone should go play some video games it's a great way to relieve your stress oh man we should play that that'll be fun I I don't know if I've

ever played in a 4 Q I've never so here's the thing too right because of virtue like what we're talking about earlier I don't play with a lot of people like it's very rare for me to queue up with with other people in like any game like especially Destiny like I literally would just solo the entire time and like I feel bad because destiny is a very grinding game. So like as soon as I play the game, I have a plan, right? I'm going to go do this thing, finish this objective, grind out this gun, right? Get get like this exotic finish these missions, right? And for me, it's a good, it's a very, um, it's very cathartic because I'm just completing tasks, right? My brain is turned off. I can have something in the background, right?

But then as soon as someone else joins in and they're like, yeah, man, you know, just, you know, I'll just join you. And I'm like, no, and like, now I feel bad because you're just following me like while I do errands, right? that it feels like I don't like to invite people when I'm doing my errands right like like if I'm gonna go like you know like drop off my clothes of the cleaners

I don't want you coming along because it's literally like there's nothing in it for you you can do anything else you want like hang on TikTok or play a game or watch a movie don't come to me to this thing because now I feel bad and I feel like I'm wasting your time but I know some people don't feel like that

but to me it's like I don't want to be Burton I feel like this podcast has just been just like unpacking a bunch of stuff right now Jeff is on my therapist, right? But it's like, I don't want to burden you with the things I choose to waste my time on, like grinding this exotic in destiny that I'm not going to use

just because I want it and I want to clear that little check off the list. Yeah, this is weird. It's weird. It's hard to introduce people to MMOs. And like, it feels weird to be introduced to MMOs too for that exact reason. It just feels like you're, you, guys shop at the same store or something. You're like comparing notes about which,

which aisle you like to go to first. It's ultimately very boring. I tried to get into Warframe recently, and I was talking to someone I know who plays Warframe. And part of the conversation, I'm like, God, this is such a boring conversation about, like, the rate of fire on different guns.

Like, okay, some sort of, I guess, interesting, but ultimately not really something. I think we should be talking about it. Yeah, Warfirm reminds me of like a wifu gacha game where like the difficulty in the game isn't playing it. It's like how much more efficient you can play it, right? And then getting the unlocks, you're getting the drops for the next thing you're trying to do.

Because it's like, so like I've been playing this game on my phone. It's called Epic 7 and it's a wifu game, right? And literally the game isn't hard. You just go through the missions. But what's hard is like, I want to, upgrade this wifu from a five stars to a six star. So now I've got to grind these two stars, level them up into three stars, level those up into four stars so I can feed him into my five star to make it into a six star. And that's a difficulty of the game. And then there's like a special

drop you got to get. So you got to go to like a specific spot in the game and grind it out for like an hour to get like these five drops or something. And when I played war frame, it was going to the same thing. But I also haven't played the game like a million years. But like that was a great. in the game, right? It's like, I want to unlock this thing or do this thing. So I got to grind this part a million times and then, you know, until I get it and then I go do the next thing that I got to unlock or something. You just did the trademark MMO grind story where you just sort of trail off at the end. Back when I used to play World of Warcraft, I would do that all the time where I'd get like 80% of the way through a story about World of Warcraft and then I'd be like,

wait a minute this story no one has any context on this story this is so boring but that's going to like how it works though right like that's how

it's how all of these games work like I can talk about like why I enjoy playing Destiny but unless you actually know why I'm doing this it literally sounds like I'm just grinding for no reason right

and like to a certain point it kind of is right that like you're grinding for no reason it's like just like what can a grind do you want right like now the grind is like can I get enough blood points to get, you know, a nice toolbox so I can repair these generators quickly.

Shoutouts to Tap, by the way. I wish you had him more sticks. Detective Tap. He's cool. I just wish they had more skins and stuff. That's why I don't like the licensed characters or like the licensed stuff because, you know, they're not going to get a lot of skins because you know there's like some back-end deal where if they sell something for this character, they have to make money off of it so they're not going to put the effort in, you know, because they want to make the most amount of money, right? I don't know. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. They're doing a better job of it than they used to.

Yeah. Yeah, well, at least now there's some hope. For a long time, it was like, oh, third-party characters will never get skins. So they're doing a better job than they used to. Yeah, games, games gotten huge. Oh, man, unfortunately, I have, like, a hard cutoff. I have to go. I should have primed you for this.

Yeah, it's all good. Don't worry about it, man. I can't believe we talked this whole time, but fighting games never came up. I always look forward to talking you about fighting games. I haven't played in forever, man. It's just like, there's no events to go to, so I kind of stopped carrying. Yeah, the lack of events definitely broke the scene for me. But I, for whatever reason, I'm still very interested in Dragon Ball Fighter.

I just think. Why? I feel like, I don't know. I just think it didn't get a shot. What? Like, I mean, first off. First of all, it's a poor man's Marvel. It'll just be real, right?

So I came up in the Marvel scene. So don't try and tell me about what's Marvel and what's not Marvel. It's Marvel meeting, though, dude. So it's a poor man's Marvel 2, but it's a rich man's Marvel Infinite or Marvel 3. The Marvel dropped off, so someone has to come in and fill the scene. And it's such a good execution of that vision

and such a good execution of an anime fighter too, right? Like, anime fighters are the piece that was missing is they're not relatable. But Dragon Ball fighters, yeah, everyone knows Dragon Ball. So now suddenly you're like, I get why this has to be an anime fighter. Very true. All right, I'll be back next week.

We can talk about Dragon Ball Fighters for an hour and a half. All right, Jeff. I'll see you later, man. Thanks for helping on, buddy. I really appreciate it. It was great talking to you, Dennis. No worries, man. Thanks for being on.

Thanks for tuning in, everyone. Nice to hear from everyone. Take questions that I could. All right. Bye, Jeff. Talk to you later. Bye. You're free to bounce.

All right. So Jeff is gone. not going to talk all the smack I want. Number one, Luigi is trash. Mario is the best. Second of all, and the best dead by daylight player in the world, Jeff will see forever. Or maybe B. She probably, I think you survive more than I do. But anyway, yeah, so we're going to go ahead and cut the podcast off here then. Third of all, Dark Souls ain't that fun. Oof. Dark Souls is work, man. Okay, so before we close everything off officially, a couple of things. first off is community roundup stuff.

Oh, there's Ivan. Hey, Poppy. So we are still working on dialing in the shirt rewards, the purple shirts. Those will be coming soonish. We got, we have a plan in place. It's called the Ken and Stephen plan. We will unveil that later in the future. Congrats to the setup of the week winner, Dino,

who I kind of wish had like a little dino picture on their, on their Discord name or something, they'll be pretty cool. Very neat setup. Shout out to Team Liquid. And someone real likes darling in the Franks. Sorry if you haven't seen that show

or sorry if you have seen that show. Very, very, you know, big bummer. Yeah, Evan, you did miss the entire podcast. Don't forget that you guys can submit email questions to Clubcast at nzxc.com. That's C-L-U-B at nz-X-T.com. Is that correctly? I think I did.

Yeah, and other than that, I mean, really pretty much it. No, no big news. You know, we're working on the back end to to clean up our, our Discord. So you guys have any suggestions, any questions, any thoughts? Feel free to DM. I was just like DM me, right? Just send me a DM on Discord with your feedback. And, you know, we'll do our best to implement whatever we can.

You know, we listen to everybody. And I think that's the most we can do, right? or at the very least it's like the bare minimum ramp. Shout out to the wallpaper of the week winner. Whoever that is, we'll announce that later on today. Thank you, too, me, told me to be creative. Carly the owner of the Ena. That's not the name that I gave you, Dark.

That was definitely someone else. Other than that, though, guys, thank you very much for joining Jeff out there in, in Dark Soulsland. Thank you, everyone who tuned in. Remember to tune in next week at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, the official NZXCD Discord server and follow at NZXXXT.

on all relevant social media. And don't forget to listen to previous episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. And don't forget, you can send an email with your questions to Clubcast at nzxte.com. And finally, if you like what you hear, or even if you don't, please be so kind. Leave us a positive review.

Share with your friends. share with your mom, with your dad, all that fun stuff. All right. With that, guys, we'll see you next time. Thank you very much. And peace out.