Tomorrow - Episode 33: Chris Grant Spikes the Controller

Episode Date: November 29, 2015

Following a discussion about fatherhood — which includes insight into a unique weight loss method and theories on how to turn your child into a video game master — some serious shop talk goes down when Chris Grant joins the pantheon of Tomorrow podcast guests. As editor-in-chief of the gaming publication Polygon, few people know the video game industry as well as Chris. The two men try to get to the bottom of what sets gaming apart from all other forms of pop culture, why Gamergate happened (and what it means), the future of VR, benefits of gaming tourism, and much much more. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll lose 30 pounds in 60 days or you get your money back!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey and welcome to Tomorrow. I'm your host, Josh Wittipolsky. Today on the podcast, we discuss French New Wave, NAFs, and the penis size of video game characters. But first, a word from our sponsor. This episode of Tomorrow with Josh Wittipolsky, which is who's me, is brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a low cost automated investment service that makes it easy to invest your

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The answer, by the way, to that question is nothing. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, friend, an amazing man, a talented internet personality, blogger, a journalist, a gamer, the former editor of Joystick, editor in chief, the current editor in chief of Polygon.com, the owner of that cat that you just heard, or a baby, I don't know what that sound was. That's a cat. My guest is Chris Grant. Hi Josh. Chris, welcome to the show.

Josh, this is like, I wanna set this, go ahead. This is like a classroom reunion, I feel. It really is. Chris and I have known each other a long time. We have not talked in a long time actually. It's been a long time. It's been a really long time, but I wanna preface, I wanna start each other a long time. We have not talked in a long time actually. It's been a long time. It's been a really long time. But I want to preface, I want to start

before we get into that, because we are going to get into it. I want to say that we have put our children to bed. We have brand relatively new children, very close in age, and they're both asleep now. I'm at home, you're at home. Yep. Where it's post Thanksgiving. And I just wanna say this, because I know Magnus is gonna give me shit about it. And I'm sure the fans out there,

the audio file fans, all six of them, are gonna hear this and say, what the fuck is that echo? I'm in my office at home and it's very echoey. And I'm not gonna make any excuses for it. Standing outside Josh's office window. Yeah. So it's not as accurate.

No, the sound is actually amazing. I don't know why I didn't just go out there with another mic. Made a big mistake. Anyway, so we haven't talked to each other in a long time. We've had a lot of things happen. I think the biggest thing, I guess, would be the children that I just mentioned.

Yeah, they're human. And it's bizarre. Well, a human with like air quotes around it. There are some days. They're on a hot like straight up today in human. Oh, yeah. Today was in human day. Yeah.

We were supposed to record this podcast eight literally almost to almost the dot eight hours ago. Yeah, we're very punctual. Plus eight hours. Yeah. So thank you. So my son's name's Lauren. Thank you Lauren for refusing to nap

because you fell asleep in the car for literally five minutes. L-O-R-E-E-N. L-O-R-E-N. This is a thing, we were talking about this, Chris and I were talking about this. This is a thing that happens, well, maybe not tall babies, or to toddlers, because they're toddlers now.

How old is Lauren? How old is Lauren? She's 20 months? Okay, so Zelda's 22 months, 20, roughly, 22 months. But there's this thing where you start napping them in the middle of the day, and in certain situations, if they fall asleep or even literally if their eyes closed for one minute,

they nullifies their ability to actually take a nap. That's it. It's a one time use card. It's like, they're like, no, I'm good, I'm good. You know, there's like a person who drinks like, who drinks two six packs, and they have one cup of black coffee. And they're like, I'm good, I'm good to go, don't worry about it. Yeah, it's bizarre.

Like, we'll drive home, and I'll be looking back and you know, the crappy plastic mirrors they have that you hang over your car. I'm looking back and like, don't you, don't close those eyes. Yeah, yeah, don't you close them. I'll put someone in the back seat sometimes to keep the child from sleeping. You know, like, Laura, I'll be like, Laura, get in that you can't sit up here

because if this baby falls asleep, our day is fucked up. Our lives, it's like a jettison to them really. It really is. And then they're not normal. It's like by the way, and I know this is boring, everybody wants to hear us talk about fallout for or whatever,

but I'm just gonna say, it's within their not like normal kids. They're like very animalistic upset. They don't know why they're bothered. Things are not, they're falling over, they're going high. They're getting high. They're all fucked up. They're all like cracked out on no sleep. And so we went to the please touch museum.

And just what? Please touch museum. Great museum film. I'm going to have to go ahead and assume that everything there can be touched. So the weirdest things that there are actually display cases with things behind glass that you can't touch That's why I think I'm sorry. I'm bullshit. I think it's bullshit. It's also way off brand I think you all should just get rid of this like don't even have them. Yeah, yeah

It's either rubber and no rubber, you know what I mean? So who this went there? It was like I don't even know what that means. At least the beast just go wide. I think it's like a sex thing, but I'm not really sure. Rubber or no rubber? I think you are talking about sex stuff. It's weird. Rubber, no, rubber, no. I've wear Jimmy hat all the time.

Put a wrinkle on it is what I always say. Jimmy hat are people still saying that? That's definitely a modern contemporary thing. People are definitely still saying that teens are talking about Jimmy hatsats all the time. Anyhow, you went to the Doop, please touch museum. Please touch museum. Yeah.

How long were you there? How many hours? They closed. I would have been back another hour. It's just a place you can go. They're like, you're in the six, five o'clock, where it closed, you're like, please stay open. Just one more hour.

I need more hours. And just like, literally, just go beast out. Yeah. Go Hulk out on some kind of. That sounds great. I gotta take Zelda there, man. It's a good museum. That sounds cool.

Yeah. So this is like a class reunion because we've spent the last couple of years doing kids. Did you hear that beep? Whatever. I'm not even gonna get Ben. I just hear it out this. Okay, good. I think if you heard a beep, I mean Magnus is gonna kill me for the quality of this audio.

But you know what? I don't care. It's, I just spent, I just did like a six day Thanksgiving family event. It's a whole weekend. Yeah. We're in dad mode. You're just trying to get, you're just having a,

I'm having a Corona extra. Whoa. What's the, what is the added part of the Corona? What are they put in there? The added beer. The additional extra, I think the beer. They're like Corona, they're like, hey, the Corona is ready to get the foreman's like hold on

I'm drinking just what else can we just know that I'm for real. I'm for a hard day with the kids I'm I'm drinking a double-bock. I don't here's the thing I would be having like a vodka or whiskey but I I was like I'm not gonna drink because I'm so tired I was actually having a cup of coffee. I actually have a cup of coffee but then I came out to the like office at home as a behind the garage and as all man caves should be and I have a refrigerator out here that we actually bought just for Thanksgiving a second refrigerator and I remember there were beers and I was like You know, I'm gonna have a beer and all that we had in there was was Corona

I'm not by like Corona. Don't get me wrong. I'm very bad when it comes to beer But I would be having a hard liquor drink, but that's it, you know whatever. Magnus will edit that little excuse out, and I'll say I'll still sound like a cool guy. I'm not judging. I feel like somewhere you're judging, but- Okay, a little bit, yeah.

Anyhow, so we've been busy. Obviously, I've been doing things, you've been doing things. Polygon has been, my only, by the way, my go-to, my only thing I read for game information. Thank you, sir. You know, I disagree with everything you write, but I've read it anyhow.

It's like, Fox, you're like the Fox News of games, you make. Here's the thing, if you wanna get your SJW agenda on, you get one stop shop, you come to Polygon.com. I gotta get reports back to the rest of the game or gate community about what's going on in the rest of the world of SJWs So I'm like you won't believe what they wrote on polygon today. I mean bad news So the national issue W meetings tomorrow

So I can't actually give you any like scoops I have a time I have some ideas just based on the agenda I'm like they had a woman a woman wrote a game review on there. You're not gonna believe this Yeah, didn't like the game You know that's your headline a woman of the game review you won. You're not going to believe this. Yeah, didn't like the game. You know, that's your headline. A woman in the game review, you won't believe what happened next. Yeah. And that was.

I'll tell you what happened next. I'll tell you what happened next. Lack of lack of ethics. That was no ethics. No ethics. Clickbait equals no ethics plus SJW. So those people are this. They are actually the worst people.

Yeah, SJW. I'm all right. I feel there's neither the edge of the worst people. Yeah, I should use them. I'm alright. I feel like there's, you know, the edge of your shoulders. I feel like there's a, I feel like, you know, it's like, it's like, when I think about the gamer gay people, I think these are just people who need help. They're actually like, they're people with problems. And I should definitely, I shouldn't devour to help them in some way. There's definitely a thread there that is like sad. It is a thread there that is part of an,

like a growing and increasingly hostile culture war. Yeah. That it shouldn't be surprising that. It feels like Donald Trump is like the head game or gator, right? You know, like, if they had a precedent, it's Donald Trump. Straight up, that is not that off base. I feel like- It's not, right?

His views and their views align pretty closely. But it's also part of the same media-bashing culture where Donald Trump is like something somebody says. The ethics. These guys are unethical. And they're these guys. Alfred Klicks. So whatever they want.

So it's the same like... I'm like, John Travolta, I don't know how that works. You know, reactionary, right wing, very conservative. And I mean, conservative and like the sort of fundamental sense of like, make America great again, make gaming great again. Yeah. This super back to basics, yearning. For like, 1950s America.

Yeah, well 1950s America was great. There was no crime. There was no racism. Everything was perfect. If you were a wiseen time. Christian, if you're a white Christian, everything was fucking amazing. Who is an white Christian? That's the case. That's the worst part.

I think, I think, call me crazy. I didn't know other people have said this. I just feel like Donald Trump and Game Regate and these young white shooters. I mean, basically, all of the worst of America is just like the death throws of conservative thought and and write like sort of Christian right wing agenda and policy. Like I think that like we are unfortunately for all of the people who don't

want this, like all the the fascists and the assholes, we are steadily moving towards a more progressive liberal outlook on like society and the the world. And maybe this is my optimistic viewpoint. I'm not saying that because I've got some dog in this hunt. Is that the right expression? I think that works. Because I have a ball in this game or whatever it is. Because honestly, I'm going to live my life and you're going to live your life.

I just think that the trend line is that kids growing up today, like my child, your child, we're going to grow up in a world that is so radically progressive in the liberal and open, and different than the world that even was existed 20 years ago, that like this shit is over, that shit is over. My big frustration with that whole thing in general is the dishonesty in it, where it's not about, actually, it's not about ethics and games, so it's about, it's about like, everything else.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's not. But actually it is. It's about all this other stuff, and it's like, that's okay, just say that. Just say the thing you mean. And I still disagree with you. Say, hey, women, just get it out.

It's not even that. I think a lot of them do. I think some of them don't. I think it is literally about a frustration with the idea that progressive politics and that criticism belongs in gaming. It's a frustration with that. Criticism belongs everywhere. I think this idea is absolutely great. I mean, we, oh God, Lauren, I talk about this all the time. I think we're at this weird point in culture. And by the way, this is, this is pushed by

the biggest, I mean, Buzzfeed is actually one of the purveyors of this idea that critique is bad. I mean, I like Buzzfeed. They do some things that are good. Some things are a lot of things I do not agree with. But they have pushed this agenda of no haters. And somehow we've merged this idea of hate

and criticism in popular culture, where it's like, if you say something negative or something critical then you are like bashing it. It's like you're not actually, it's actually not always the case that you're bashing. A lot of times you're actually saying something. I would admit that strong healthy criticism in fact celebrates a medium. It doesn't have to do with whether or not you like a certain thing or not, but the medium itself benefits from healthy criticism. No, it's of, I mean, it's to me, it's like the greatest form of cheerleading is that you give a shit so much about something that you've sat down and created some

articulate thought that where you're like, I didn't disappoint it or let down or, or upset because this thing didn't do what it, I felt like it needed to do. And by the way, that's all a debate, it's all an opinion. It's not like, this is an empirical, like, my criticism was something, is some empirical fact. But the space needs to be there, it needs to exist. And I think that, like, if we lose criticism, and it's in the form that it needs to exist, and we've lost some like vital component of human expression. I'll say this, I like to criticize my kids sometimes.

He's the worst. But I like to tell you. You know what? I'm only seeing him on Instagram, I gotta tell you. I've written several 10,000 word streets. He's trouble. I'll use the other word, I love him. But, wow. I'll criticize that little dude. Oh my God. I love him so much today.

Today Zelda had a tantrum and I was just like what the fuck like what do what the fuck is it? Are you doing like what do you want like I just can't? Because sometimes like you're so stupid. It's like I don't know what you know like Some of the dumbest things I've ever seen a person do. You know, I know she doesn't know. Here's Lauren's big tantrum that is now. Every day. Yeah. He wants to play in the sink. He wants to put water into a cup and dump the cup into another cup and dump that water. Cassie Huesha is he in Montessori school? No. That's a Montessori thing. Yeah, they do that. They like transfer water between cups. He's super into transfer water.

It's cool though. That's a great skill. Why don't you let him develop it? I don't understand why you're... Because he wants to dump it all over himself. Classic. And if at any point you decide, you know what? I don't want to be in our kitchen for another half hour watching you dump water.

Let's go into the other room, meltdown. Instant just Supreme meltdown. So he doesn't... his brain is so small. It is it is actually physically small. I mean if you if you really get in there if you just really you know take a get an X-ray or something crack it open, take a look at small. I mean I feel like you're a suppressive person in that scenario. I'm an SP. You're an SP and he's trying to be like an operating level faton. Right. And you know what level we don't know but the point is that you're not saying you're not telling me which level yeah. He needs to move you out of his world

space. I think that's actually there's always something I can't see there. However, we're speaking. Yeah, he can't. He can't. And also how would he ever eat or get clothes on? I mean, you know. He thinks he can. He has no idea. Sure, you have a partner, but I'm just saying, let's say, both impressive, because you're obviously both impressive people. He learned the word snacks,

and he thinks he just runs the world now. Oh man, snacks. Snacks. I know this is boring to people who don't have kids, to people who have kids, they're like, they're nodding their head. I know, because all children are basically the same. They all want the same things, they all do the same things.

Josh, I figure the people listening wants them red meat. They just want us to get into the good stuff, which is... I think we're giving them a little of everything. It's video games. This reminds me, we're going to talk about video games. This reminds me of the Thanksgiving dinner I just had. We had a big spread, lots of different things on the plate. If you guys saw Josh's Instagram, it looks like he had

maybe like a delegation over. I actually was having, I was hosting the UN delegates hosting all the UN delegates. No, I had 24 people for Thanksgiving. Do you guys do Thanksgiving or do you go somewhere? We've never done a year before, so we moved recently. Did you? Yeah. Did you move to that house?

Did you move to that house that, uh, wait, did you move out of Philly? No, we're still in fish towns I live there, but we moved back in the day before it was hip. That's true. I was a pioneer in fish town You should have stayed I live over six months because it was so miserable So we moved to any place we we saw the old place, but you get like a I remember you were like I mean this is now This is just some just guys talking. You are, I remember you were looking at some like big old like Victorian, I don't know, I think maybe I showed you that place, we didn't get that place. We got another place that's really nice. It's got a garage,

kind of carriage house out back. Oh, yeah. Now, are you renting that? Are you parking in car? So, well, we're, it's just, it's a wreck right now. So, we're going to read, I'll show you pictures of, I'm gonna show you while we're having this discussion. I'm gonna send you, I'm gonna text you, image. Great, that'll make a beeping sound on my,

can I do, I'm gonna do a, you know, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna drop into this, do not disturb mode. I'm gonna do. Can I text, can I give you text? You can text me, but I'm just going to do not disturb. Can I give you TXT's if I, if you can? Yeah, yeah. So, by the way, I can't search for anything, You can text me, but I'm just going to do not disturb you TXTs if I yeah So I can't I can't search for anything like because I'm in my office. I have my keyboard

My like real keyboard in front of me. I'll just give you a little taste if I were to search for anything that we're talking about right now Oh, oh, I've seen your keyboard like suppress a person this it would sound like It would sound like you're popping the packing that's's a press of person, I type it, but that's a press of person. Also abbreviated SP is a term used in Scientology to describe the anti-social person now, that's who according to Scientology's founder, Al Rahn-Habbert, make up about 2.5% of the population. Oh. Hmm. So you're just another number on a page. Well, I've always said that about myself.

Anyhow, all right, what are you gonna show me? I'm gonna text you a picture of the place that we're looking to build behind our house. Ugh, I'm loving it. And it's gonna be like, I mean, I don't know, whenever we get money, which is TBD, I think it's what the kids say. I can think of ways you can get money.

Hey, I can think of several ways you can get money right now. Really? I mean, a couple of ideas come to mind. Almost half of them are not non-sexual. Did you ever listen to, you look nice today, great podcast, and it would be about how they could maybe make some money. No, that's a good, that sounds fun though. I should listen, I don't listen to enough podcast. People are always a whoop podcast, listen to them, I'm like yeah, I don't really listen to that many.

That podcast is such a classic and I write so much. I'll listen to it. But Magnus keeps telling me to listen to hardcore history. That's his like favorite podcast. Yeah, that's a good one. After this one, I assume. Magnus, my premier two. It's for me too, it's for me too. Wait a minute.

Anyhow, so you're texting me something. I'll let people, now, as soon as I get it here, on my, on my, uh, maybe frame, I'll, I'll be sure to mention it. Anyhow, Apple, I'm using Apple, send, Apple, Apple, Dash, Apple Dash. And, uh, that's a service. That could be a service.

It just has to, like, load up all the images and, cause they're all, like, in, they're in the cloud. It's cold. I feel like, I get to tell you, now I don't know how this conversation seems other people, but I feel like, I could have this now I don't know how this conversation seems other people but I feel like I could have this conversation for like Six hours. I feel like we have six hours worth of stuff to talk about right now

This has always been true of the Josh and Chris show. I think that's true. I think that's true We have we started talking right away and we and we was very easy to talk So although we've had long a long period where we have not said a word to you. Why did you start it? A.O.L. What was that? 2007. So I've known you since I've known you for eight years. Eight long, whole, weird, horrendous years. I remember our first conversation that we had, it was about jogging. And I said something like, what are you running from? And I said, I said, I'm scared. Well, they say that joggers are running from something. I said, I said, I'm scared. Yeah. Well, they say that joggers are running from something.

I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad't do anything physical, I feel like I'm in okay shape. I feel the same way. I thought I'd be one, but you won't. I thought I'd be one, I thought I'd be one. I don't, not to say I'm a kid. I feel like I could set things off if I just did a little bit of exercise. If I just did a couple of yoga sessions a week, I might be like a morampit-style adonis.

I always thought that way. I lost 30 pounds since we had the baby. Here's how I did. Number one, I found out I had the heart health of a 90-year-old smoker. Oh, so that was good news. Well, I've been smoking for 90 years, so that's not surprising. I'm also 90. So yeah, I guess it starts to make sense to be pretty. Actually, actually. So I, step one was diet. My diet was terrible, but red meat. I changed, it was all red meat in cigarettes. Is that what it? Yeah.

You were actually smoking red meat. That's the weird thing. So I started to eat a little better, but the biggest thing I changed, so we're gonna get graphic, is this an adult rated podcast? We've said the F word several times. That's not the same as what I'm about to talk about.

No, no, this is very adult. I mean, if a kid is listening to this, then like all I can say is, you're a cool parent for letting your kid listen to this or you're a cool kid for sneaking around and listening to this podcast. So I started some breakfasts and important meal they say. And it's important to get high fiber for your BMS. Yeah. So I started eating breakfast. I don't like that meal. It's bad. Yeah. Okay. I eat it all for breakfast every morning. I take the biggest fucking. It's bad. Yeah, okay. I you don't feel for breakfast every morning

I take the biggest fucking shit you've ever seen The shits I take I think aren't healthy. I think I should this is bravery what I think I should take a picture I should save it. Please I should look a year long like I'm flicker when you take a picture a day I should do one of those of just my shoes shit a day This is a brave I was a brave admission, I have to say. This is the kind of thing not a lot of people come on and just this is why they come to this podcast for this.

This is big. No, no, I'd like to get raw with people and this is about as raw as you can get. And these poops are so big that, I'm not kidding, so straight up, this is, you become just, I want to interject. I lost 30 pounds. People hate what I do this, but I'm going to, this is what, to me this is a conversation.

You, you and another interrupt him on another. And you know, I lost my thought. Anyhow, go ahead. You were gonna talk about how weird it is. I lost 30 pounds eating, oh, me on the morning. No, no, you said, oh, I was gonna say that when you become a parent, you become much more comfortable with a fecal conversation

of any type. Yeah, I got poop on my hand twice today. Yeah. Like, whatever, it's dark. No, I got poop on my hand twice today. Yeah. Like, whatever. It's dark. No, it was actually light. The last one, it was very light. All right, now we're getting just a little bit too adult.

Too adult. But anyhow, so okay, so you believe this oatmeal has colon below this colon, hello, more nutrition. So you have going on is improving your health. I think that's improved my health substantially. Okay, just regular whatakano, me, all we talking about here.

Fucking steel cut, man. Steel cut, are we doing like an instant situation? Yeah, okay. I'm not making it in the crock that I hate. I'm not fucking, I'm not honestly, I'm not fucking with anything that's not, you can't microwave. Yeah, that's what I'm at that spot.

By the way, Trader Joe's has done a plug for Trader Joe's, although they want to sponsor the podcast, they won't stop them. Unbelievable selection of microwavable foods. I mean, if you are a person with not a lot of time who is impatient and lazy and doesn't really care what their food looks or tastes like. For sustenance, I can be heated quickly. I know.

Honestly, they have like the best of the frozen crap you can get in my opinion. It's not crap, it's very good. Thank you, Trader Joe's. Thank's not crap, it's very good. Thank you, Trader Joe, thank you, Trader Joe, so that's sponsorship. That was a fleeting, that was a flea flirtation there. It was like, yeah, we were good at sponsor, right at the beginning of that, 26th grade.

Trader Joe's, we make semi food, you can eat. No, it's good, it's good, they have a lot of good steak meat too. So yeah, either way, that's been my health routine for the last 18 months that I've had a human to take care of and it's been working okay. I put a lot. Um wow. Oh, me oh, wait, so what did you do for lunch? What about lunch? I pull here's a thing about oatmeal. That's weird No, I eat lunch now. Yeah, I just didn't eat before and oatmeal You get you don't me on 7.30 the morning and now I'm hungry as shit by like 11. I love a clock

I'm like oh you to oh you to this baby like anything You do the thing where it's like from the Cheech and Chong movie where his he starts to look like a turkey. Yeah, right Yeah, I mean, that's like literally what happened So from like cartoons whatever it's from so I uh and then I did it early It's just the whole thing. I think it's basically called the eating properly They did it early. It's just the whole thing. I think it's basically called eating properly. That's like three meals a day.

Three whole meals. It's a pretty radical idea. Three square. See people, people diss the American family, but look at the improvement it's made in your life. It's amazing. I mean, really when you think about it, you are a Trump supporter for just eating

those three square meals. Look, I'm one of the great all-time meal eaters. You're one of the best. You know, losers like these other people. He's other time who just nagged Who do you see he just eating one big meal in the middle of the day? I do that shit a lot, but so we have that losers very huge losers and dummies and who knows where the what they where they came from right so so we didn't we've been rapping about stupid shit since 2007 rate us You've done seven playing video games and and I'll never forget when we actually met at this a. O. L

I was like some kind of web logs um like retreat or Power wow, I can't I don't know what we called it. It was like a thing off Sider yeah offside and we had I flew down to dullis Virginia, which was the home base of a O. L on the a. O. L. plane that they had a I flew down to Dallas Virginia, which was the home base of AOL on the AOL plane that they had Dull ass. Yeah, which the plane left from Teenac, maybe a teen now. It's like teen act or something like that. They had their own plane And because that's the kind of excessive bullshit that AOL was doing even up even into 2007. Yeah Anyhow, we went to this retreat. I remember you and I met we drank some beers

I remember just vividly at that retreat. I was telling somebody one other editor who who left who was voted from Engadget at some point I was going like do video we have to do more video and he like laughed the idea out of the room Basically, he was like vid no he's watching video It was this thing I remember like I think back on it all the time because like it's like now every time You're in a conversation with anybody in any part of the media world. They're like dude. It's all about video video What do you know with video? Advertisers with your video plan publishers everybody is talking about video. Yeah, anyhow just a bond fond memory We stayed in some hotels like in like obstrip mall. I remember that's the entirety of dollars is talking about video. Yeah, anyhow, just a fun memory.

We stayed in some hotels like in like, up strip mall. I remember. That's the entirety of dollars, yeah. So this is one big, gross, boring strip mall. Okay, here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna take a break. I'm sorry listeners.

I'm gonna take a break. We're gonna hear this from our sponsors. I'll be telling you about the sponsors of this podcast. And then we're gonna come back and we're gonna going to get really going to get into the nasty stuff. Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's. Check it out. How we missed it, no one knows.

But now, Nikki Tomel and a PhD in linguistics from the University of Chicago is working on deciphering it with a team of cryptologists at a research think tank called Cypher. Linguistics scholar, Tomel and is trying to decode a message received from outer space 70 years ago, we think. The message is the new podcast from GE Podcast Theater in Penopoli, which falls Nikki's work. The new eight episode podcast series will blow your scientific mind. It will also blow your regular mind, just for the record.

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SJW site on the internet. Do you guys get a lot of shit? Have you gotten like a, has it been, have you been attacked? Yeah. Not like, not like Kataka though. It's no, there's two things like that. Kataka is like the, that's like the fusion reactor of gamer gate. They definitely hear it more in part because of this sort of, you know, Genesis the whole thing, but. But we get like a lot of weird blowback, and I think it's very notable that you,

that there are two sites that hear it. Yeah. And that's it, like. Okay. We meet IGN isn't getting the... It's weird, right? you that there are two sites that hear it. And that's it. Like, okay. We meet IGN isn't getting the... It's weird, right? I mean, the game's, the gaming, you, it's always struck me, you know, who is it?

Did Totilla just write something about being blacklisted? Yeah. On Ketaku, this, like the game's industry blows my mind. Cause like I've covered technology, I was like for a long time, we've obviously dealt with gaming companies along the road. Certainly the Verge covers games. But like, if you're really in the world of gaming journalism, it is very, it's a very uncool place. And companies are very, very uncool. They can be very caddy, very punitive. It's like, it's like old school magazine, like access journalism

from back in the day, like from like when there were, you know, for, it was like Stephen Levy era. You know what I mean? Like the dawn of tech reporting, where there were these like really, cause like Walt Mossberg and Steve Jobs were good friends. Like they hung out and knew each other and like Steve would call Walt and complain about a bad review. Like I feel like that's an error that has

basically passed. What's his at gaming is who in the gaming side? Who at name a single person, any publisher that is visible and important and meaningful enough to have that kind of relationship. You don't have relationship with people. You have relationship with PR departments that have massive turnover. By the way, maybe there's a more. I need to talk to Jake. They're like, Oh, Jake, it hasn't been very long. It was your first experience. Maybe a marketing department that has been there for a while on marketing VP or something. But there is no steep jobs there. There is no,

there are no owners that you have relationships with. and it becomes this very, you know, I think increasingly they struggle with the importance and value of the press. So, you know, I don't know, Ubisoft and Kataka's case says we don't need them. Yeah. But, inversely, the press struggles with wondering why they need access. When Kataka can break the news on Ubisoft's games before Ubisoft does, can go buy their games. And so they don't have a review on time,

but guess what doesn't do great traffic anymore for anybody? Reviews. And Bargo reviews. So just go buy it when it comes out, or go to Chinatown and buy it three days early anyway. No, Bargo. No, no, no, no.

I mean, with Fallout 4, I was like bitching because I didn't get my Amazon order and some of it was like, I've been playing this for a week because the store here just sold it to me. I'm like, oh, that sucks. I wish I lived there. And that's not terribly hard to find. And so I think this idea that you need them

or they need you is becoming a little out of date, a little an of date, a little anachronistic. And so, uh, yeah, I, I mean, the whole thing with Kataku, like, I'm sure there's a lot of different reasons and explanations and maybe they could have done a better job here or not there, whatever. But for the most part, I think it represents like a really, um, valuable reminder that the way that this industry works today is not the same.

That needing access isn't the same. That burning bridges isn't the same. Ubisoft is notable. Dan Schoo in the pages of EGM and Eddler's letter, this is probably back 2007. It was 2007, the right one, it's not the screen came out. Here are a piece letter from the editor about how they gave a Ubisoft game a better review and they didn't

get any more ads from Ubisoft and no more cooperation from them. Like, like, Ubisoft is not new to this strategy. And people applauded it when it was Dan Chiu, and a lot of people are criticizing it when it's Kataku. Well, I think what's interesting is that, and it sort of goes back to the criticism conversation we're having, but you know, the gaming industry is such a monolithic and so built around these AAA titles, these, you know, I mean, there's so many of them. But I actually disagree with the idea that's monolithic. I think that there is a huge monolithic part of the gaming industry, but the gaming world is becoming so

Balkanized way more than ever before because nobody has the answers anymore. Ubisoft doesn't and EA doesn't and Activision doesn't. And they can all be very successful, but there are fewer and fewer big successes every year. Right. And there are more and more middleing successes. And for a team of 10 people, that middle success level is enormous. Right. Like you go on steam any day, you see the number of games coming out, the number of really innovative titles coming out that are only hitting a relatively small audience. And you see indie games across platforms and steam. That's

pretty mobile, which isn't a kingmaker for indie devs the way it used to be But you still see a lot of really innovative type down well recently, right? Like you see a lot of innovative titles come out of it. What is down well? You got your down well dog I keep it up. What I get by the way I just wanted to let me just say what I meant by but also I got to get back to these some of these Architectural renderings of your new house which look amazing I'm just gonna search search for down well. Now I might as well tell you,

because you're going to hear me type in. But what I meant by monolithic is that it's built on this, at least the biggest part of it, the most visible part of it, the most, at this point, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the most financially lucrative part of it is built on this massive apparatus that has been moving in one direction for a very long time. And that apparatus doesn't rely on things like criticism, or it doesn't even care about things like criticism in many ways. They'll use it when they can use it, but it really is brute force.

I mean, I look at the way they sell a game's unequivocally correct, yeah. I look at the way they sell a game like Halo 5. Now, look, Halo 5 might be the greatest game in the world. I don't really know. I have no, I'd say almost no interest in the Halo games. I've played several of them. I don't know what it feels like. I'll say this, I've played all the Halo games. And Halo 5 is definitely a Halo game.

I just hate the funny aliens that make noises. It's like the little like, they're the funny aliens that make noises. It's like the little like, they're like turtle aliens that make funny noises. Oh, really? Yes, you're right. I think crazy. It's like what are these goofy cartoon aliens doing

in this very serious game about like Marines or whatever? At any rate, it's just like this, it's like, you know, it doesn't rely on, it's not treated like an art. I think increasingly, and I will say there are games I've played recently that are, I think, and I'm gonna say this, and I really strongly believe that I think gaming is the most interesting inventive, exciting new art form that exists. I think it's the first new art form that has existed in a really long time. I mean, I think everything else is,

basically like movies are a version of plays, TV is a version of plays and theater. I mean, all of that stuff is like, kind of leads back to the same place. TV, film, gaming, there's been never been anything like it before and what people are starting to do with it is like. When you play a game game that's really different, the Stanley Parables one that I think of.

Did you play this new game? Beginners Guide? No, I haven't played it. Gone Home is one that I think is like, just like crazy, weird and different, and really like kind of cracks your head up. And when you play those games, you're like, oh, this is gonna be different.

So this is what I mean by that world, not being model, it being like bigger than ever. And it's changing. It's changing. I think that's your point. And I'm a green with you. And so like there is this huge triple A world that is becoming more conservative in many ways in that they, this is sequels, right? They have a formula to hit and that deviation from it can be so punitive,

so costly, it'll literally put your company in a business. Like, the bets are so huge, destiny, right? Like, the bets are so massive. And at the only way to succeed in that space are these huge bets. You need to have these huge games, better graphics, bigger world, better technology. You look at technology E3

It's like every presentation everyone is like feels so similar now. It's like this You know there it's like you know, it's like a trailer for the Avengers, you know the next Avengers It's all this like fans or this all copy out this to say like I like the next event Or some sort of like I like a lot of those games. Did you like the last Avengers? I actually didn't. I thought it was fun. Terrible, I mean, honestly. I like a lot of those movies. It was like two and a half hours of fans, or something.

And I think a lot of those games. One of the games I spent the most time on this year was Arkham Knight, which was a huge, massive, triple A Batman open world game. They had a ton of, I played on PC. I tried a lot of fun. I tried a bit of it. It's one of the many games I've started that never finished.

I loved it. I like a lot of those games, but it doesn't mean I don't think that going home isn't one of the best games in the last decade. I think that what's happening in games and the allowance of the publishing platforms, the technology, the audience, and here I'll back the press to find and champion certain games is so powerful because it is finally a way for a lot of those creators to break out of a sort of coverage cycle of AAA only and that AAA has gotten so narrow that for our business we actually need to break out of it.

We need to find new things that are exciting to talk about. Right. But I think you find, I think in all popular media now, there is this trend. I mean, you look at this Adele thing like in music, Adele's new record when it came the week it came out accounted for was obviously a huge hit. So, a bunch of copies wasn't on streaming, but it accounted for the sales of that record accounted for 42% of all music sales that week, okay, which is not like wow Adele sold a lot of records, I mean she did sell a lot of records, but it's also like wow other people aren't selling a lot of records. Yeah. And increasingly like what people are looking for is like the Beyoncé secret album or Adele or Taylor Swift and you're finding these like it's this like funneling a very very big marketable easy mass

products and then you've got all the rest of the stuff which has been completely like it's just like It's all in its own little Tributaries their own their these own little like these little streams little streams. And like, they exist and they have follow, like bands have followings and musicians are, like, loved by lots of people, but they're not selling, they're not gonna be blockbusters. They're never gonna be blockbusters. And I'm not even sure if they're gonna be profitable.

And so what I wonder is, like, is all popular, is all entertainment moving toward, I mean, entertainment's actually a shitty way to describe it. But like, all of the things that the arts, let's say, that are commercial arts. It feels like our moving towards this really weird point where there's more stuff than ever. It's more varied and interesting than ever. I mean, if I look at music or if I look at film and TV, the big hits are bigger.

Yeah. And everything else fights for the rest. Right. And media, it's the same in journalism. Actually, it's the same in news. You know, it's like, it's like everybody's trying to be, it's you can be this niche little guy over here doing this like you have a blog,

there's two people that work at it, like you write these really interesting articles, one of them's every. I don't think it's quits at all. But when you hear about the companies, the media companies that are important, that are making a change that are impactful. And you hear Buzzfeed, and Vice, and Vox media. And you hear the same four or

five six companies, you know, repeat. Like who are all who are all like I gotta say, increasingly being bought up by much larger, like the same media companies. I mean, you know, admittedly, I mean, as a person who, you know, helped to build Vox and is invested in Vox, like, you know, look, there's a huge investment from NBC Universal, or Comcast, or whatever. They're being called at this point. VICE is funded by a news corp and the bus feed is Comcast. There's a lot of money in the ocean to a lot of the same groups. But that idea is sound there where there are bigger companies

taking a lion's share of the attention. Right, exactly. And I think that's absolutely accurate, but it doesn't mean that there's no other way to be heard, or that there's no other market for you. No, absolutely. The question is, I think in gaming at least, how does that change the industry, does it change the industry? I think it really quickly does for the better. But I mean, the big guys, I mean,

call of duty is still gonna sell. I mean, let's just say there are a lot of people who would classify themselves as gamers who are going to, with these golfers. There's also a lot of people that are really into music, that love music that are passionate about. They have collections, they have framed records on their wall of

Erosmith and that's it. Right. And like that doesn't mean that they don't love music. They absolutely do. No, right. They just love kind of bad. And there were a lot of people who define their love of music by being encyclopedic by being deep, but by being maybe in some ways, wide and shallow, not narrow and deep. And I think, you know, it's true for gaming too. There's lots of different ways that you can enjoy gaming. There's lots of people, you know,

despite with some corners of the gaming world say, who only apply games on their phone, who actually think of themselves as passionate gamers. Right. And if the phone is their platform, it doesn't mean they're stupid, it doesn't mean that they're casuals, quote unquote, to use the pejorative of the day.

It just means that that's their preferred platform. Well, this is just an evolving, but this is so interesting because to me, it's like, this actually gets the heart of it, not to go back to gamer game, but this sort of gets the heart of that shit where it's like, you know what gaming is not yours anymore. Like this idea of it,

like that art form has evolved to a place where it isn't just like that. It's just guys who build PCs, people who have PlayStation 4. It's like, I'm the guy that builds PCs and plays games on it. And like, that's my thing. I love, I'm like so enamored by the idea

that gaming is expanding beyond me. Yeah, it's great. That's great. To me, it's like the most exciting thing about my job in a decade. I mean, a gone home doesn't exist in the old world of gaming and that's a real, I mean, that's. I mean, gone home to me is a gone home is a direct descendant. Gone home is a child of the triple A world, right?

Oh, totally. You have a straight shot from BioShock to BioShock 2, to BioShock 2 DLC, Minerva's Den, to Gone Home. Like, that is a direct lineage. It's not even an abstraction. That's amazing to me, that you can have the skill set, ideas, creativity, curiosity, peat all developed in this process, be converted over, you know, to be converted into something like Gone Home.

And I think that's a great like analog for what's happening in gaming is that we've used the scale and opportunity and potential presented by AAA over the course of all these years. And we've also used that as evidence that we need more, right? We've used sort of boundaries of that as like proof that like we need to do something different. We're running up against the edges here. We can't, this doesn't work anymore. And that's a really powerful idea. It reminds me a lot of, it reminds me a lot of, it reminds me of the French New Wave, like Coyote de Cinema and the young French writers,

they started as writers, criticizing film and finding and championing the Hollywood Art Tours, you're John Ford's and Hitchhawks, and then emulating that using the technology they had at hand, 16 millimeter film, and creating their own films, and like they were different, right? They weren't the same as the AAA. There was this much different version of it, but it was this very personal interpretation of the values that they saw embodied in big Hollywood films like Hitchcock's. And that created one of the most powerful, meaningful, influential,

and transformative movements in cinema history. I see something very similar happening in film where we have this opportunity to revisit and reimagine. In gaming, you mean? I'm sorry, I'm in gaming. We have this opportunity to revisit, I've had two beers now. I'm sorry to take a fact. This opportunity, the podcast is gonna

allow for another three hours to start out. Oh yeah. This opportunity to revisit and reimagine a lot of what we thought about gaming. And like, that opportunity for me is so powerful and so alluring. And it doesn't mean that those will all be successful. In fact, I would probably guess that most of it won't be,

but it is an opportunity to find something different and new, using a lot of the language and vernacular that we've built up in the AAA world. Right. Well, that's, I think that's the, that marriage is what has made some of the most, I mean, for me has taken me to a place where I'm like, changed by some of the gaming experiences I've had. Josh, I want to talk about something really dorky. So we just got a little like sensitive over there. Yeah, Very sensitive. Let's work out for a bit. I know you can dork out about, I'm going to say two, I guess the words, one is not a word,

it's an acronym, but. Sega CD. Okay. So I, I've got a small child. Okay. He's dumb as rocks. I've heard about this. But I think he's a cool guy.

He's ready for the say. And he loves Sega City. He loves, he loves, he plays nature. He loves processing. It's what he's into. Stature was a village. Oh, I played this as a village. I finished the Sega City version of Stature Act.

It is very expensive. But of course, Sega City runs any burn discs. So if you want to just get it on it, you can't. So here's what I've been doing. Andy Bio wrote a piece about playing the video games of the Sun. He decided, you know what, you have a kid. You might as well experiment on them. So he decided to teach this kid to be a elite gamer by starting him on early games using

like those plugin, play TV TV systems like 30 Atari games on this part of the dress. Played a bunch of those. I got to the point where I want to say some is like eight or something. And he beats Spalunky. You're not not the easy beat but the hard beat like through hell. Like a pretty brutal task. I think this could ruin your kid pretty bad. If you played Spongebob for the record, I just think this is a bad idea. Okay, if you're listening from Diffus, if you're a cop, you have to tell me. You have to turn this off now. Okay.

Here's what I've been thinking about doing. Be an expert. So I have a bunch of old consoles, and I bought a bunch of other ones. So I've got a whole ton of consoles. A lot of them I'm fixing in various stages of fixing or like modding them to be RGB compatible. I got something called the FrameMistor XRGB Mini. What is that? Would you believe it's Japanese?

If you told me it was, I would believe it. I'm not going to tell you about the XRGB Frame Master Mini. Can we, you have a producer, right? So if I send you a link, yeah, yeah, pause and watch a link. I can do it. I can pause. This is great, because I have literally sitting just so you know, sitting like, where is it? 10 feet from me in my office, I have my Neo Geo. The actual Neo Geo from like 1986 or 89 or whatever 91 or whatever the fuck it's from.

One of those years it's definitely one of the years it's from with like the the JAP massive Japanese cartridges and I've been I just pulled it out of my garage and I was like I'm gonna Get a TV in here and I'm gonna hook this thing up. So here's how you're gonna hook it up. This is exactly how you're gonna do it. Do you send this thing to me? I just sent it to VSkype, Twitter DM. Twitter DM, Jesus Christ, this is really me. Have you heard of Twitter? I'm hearing about it, I've heard this a new thing, it's happening, how.

So I'm watching this video right now. Okay, we're gonna take a pause, so you can just watch the video real quick and it'll get edited out. P.S.E.P.D. If you're enjoying today's episode, you might wanna check out another pretty awesome podcast called Ventured,

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and even practical topics for entrepreneurs like tips for surviving a tech bubble. Check them out on iTunes or SoundCloud by searching Ventured. It'll be worth a listen. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Wow. Yeah.

Wow. So what you're not seeing, dear listener. So wait, I'm... So RGB is what I'm looking at. RGB is the dope stuff. The middle one is the one that is... Yeah. This device outputs.

Yeah. Or it inputs RGB and it outputs HDMI We're right, which is digital. Yeah, I mean so oh wow the RGB signal out of your system into the frame My god, I gotta get my turbo duo out of a box right now. Yeah, I think turbo duo supports RGB out of the box So yeah, I don't know, but my favorite game ever, my favorite video game ever, maybe, maybe favorite ever. It was, I played on Turbo Duo, which is the Japanese, which is Dracula X, which is the Japanese Castlevania that they released for the Turbo.

What do they call it? PC Engine, PC Engine CD. Yeah, Turbo Graphics. Super, I mean, it's super CD. I can't remember, because they have these different versions of the PC Engine. They had like a better version that came out at any rate. Let's get back to what you're doing. So, the whole point being is you can get your old systems.

How much is this thing? How much is this RGB? It's about 300 bucks. Oh, I'm buying it. XRGB is what it's called. XRGB Mini. Frame Lister. So, this is like, I wanna, we're gonna nerd out because this is like I want to import it from Japan

It's weird the whole thing is no problem. You'd get special cables that are custom built on eBay to export our GB signal from your consoles to the to the frame myster. Oh for real, but I can I can help you with all this stuff But once you get there the image quality on your HD set looks amazing running off your original hardware. So I've been building this collection, building and getting all the systems hooked up. I'm manually modding some systems like the NES that don't output RGB. So you have to like, it's a whole thing. You have to like, you know, splice them. You have to desolder the graphics chip. And then solder on a new board. Certainly. So many cells.

So many some of you must sell a version of it. They've soldered. Yes. But it's a lot more money. And I sure I'm a nerd. So you're saving up for all these house renovations. You said, man, it's right. That's what I'm saying.

I gotta say, but you're sliding black panels or whatever it is. So, so the thing about there, it's like you through this right. Amazing. And the goal is when Lauren's a little older, four, five or several. You start on Atari, and I've got a bunch of Atari games, I've got Atari that's hooked up with, and then you go move on to NES, and then Genesis, and TurboGraphics,

and PlayStation, and Jaguar, I got Jaguar. I have Jaguar somewhere in a box. I have two links, oh wow. The original version and the new version. Oh, no, you got to keep both Yeah, so that's my plan. I got second CD so he's gonna play Snatcher gotta get in there Snatcher's an amazing game So that's like the whole strategy here is trying to use my kid as an experiment to make to one end man. Here's the end. Yeah. I worry when I meet kids that are like 10. Yeah, I talk about video games. I talk about Minecraft and they talk about Minecraft and Angry Birds. And that's it. And they don't play video games. They don't like

a challenge. And Mega Man isn't knowing is this something that they're not fluent in they don't know make a minute? But I think that that type of game Wouldn't appeal to them. What is the And and more specifically once they're a strider strider. That's right The new strider is actually pretty good. I don't know. I don't know. It was like 3D. Yeah, yeah But it was like a strider needs to be like strider. I remember when they were well what did it first come out for? There was like a Japanese there was a There wasn't released in the US I think the Divert for a while maybe for a while it had a had a I

Think it was like 64 mega memory of a box. Yeah, it was like one of the games that was like the cartridge itself was like special. Yeah, it was a good game. Yeah, but you get like sometimes I like a I want a kid who can and Lauren if you're listening in the future or future Lauren, I'm telling you now. If you don't beat Bloodborne by the time you're 15, I'll be disappointed in you. Bloodborne is for what, what is that? That's a place I should for. I've never played it.

We're building up to that. We're building up to, is a good show. Bloodborne is my game of the year. I don't know, man. I always select the games that everybody loves. I don't like. Here's what I'll tell you about Bloodborne. I'm not saying that to be the different.

Are you ready to spend eight hours being humiliated? Just absolutely not brutalized by a video game. Nope, definitely not. No, I have almost spiked my controller several times playing Alien Isolation. So, it's not easy. It's tough. Bloodborne is, it's the same designer,

developers of Dark Souls. Okay. It's designed to completely fuck you up. I'm not into games of skill. You know, like, I can't. I like about it. So, so you have a background in music. I think it's a bug born and the Dark Souls games to me,

I didn't get them for a long time and somebody explained them to me this way and now I get it. Literally one explanation, it made so much sense to me that I love them now Which is that they aren't normal video games Think about them as rhythm games Which is that literally the input mechanics require a lot of rhythm a lot of timing and consistency But also the way that you play most video games

The way you play fallout Your character gets better. You don't get better. You Josh Topolsky don't get better at playing Fallout. Your character, who is a furiosa Topolsky, wandering the wasteland, she gets better, she gets more powerful. For Bloodborne, there is leveling up. It's a video game. What you're saying is it's a classic video game. But you get better. You get better the way you get better.

A guitar hero when you play a lot of the song. But like a Gallagher you get better. Yeah, a Pac-Man. Those are games where you don't, you don't, yes, the levels get harder, but they only get harder to like push you to get better at the thing that you've learned to do. So at the time you go back to that first level, it's easy.

Right. Yep, so like, Bloodborne's that first level, it's easy. Right. Yep. So like, that's a video. That's like classic video game mechanics. And the idea is like really powerful. And by the time you play Bloodborne, and you'd be even the first boss, by the time you beat Clarence Beast,

you feel so badass. Like that victory isn't the game's victory, it's yours. And that feeling is so rare in video games now, as in, well, we'll never get it. You're making me want to buy and play Bloodborne, I have to say, this is amazing. But I will say that I'm sort of, I'm sort of, I don't enjoy games

that need to humiliate the player to move the game forward. Because like I actually, I think, I wanted to talk when we were talking about like Storytelling games and sort of like the evolution of games You're talking about that bio shock to to gone home. I was thinking a lot about bio shock infinite Is that what's going to infinite? I always think it's like infinity, but it's not as a definite. Yeah Which I thought well from a storytelling perspective and you may disagree but from like as a triple A game from a storytelling perspective and you may disagree, but from like as a AAA game, from a storytelling perspective,

like when that game ended, I maybe was maybe cried a little bit, but maybe was definitely with like holy shit. I can't believe this wild, insane adventure and the way it ended up. I felt like I had watched like the best most interesting movie, but also had played it. But I was extremely agitated many times in that game by like how much it needed

me to be like also a really great, like I like being, I like playing a game, I don't want to like see cut scenes, like quick time events annoy the shit out of me. But, but, but, sometimes there were points in that game where it was like you just made this difficult because you wanted to prove that you were still a video game And I think that's like I don't maybe bloodborne doesn't feel the way, but I think it's a dangerous shitty feeling so blood Right, I think there are definitely there was one moment when you fight Comstock's ghost. No, no, Comstock's mother Somebody that Comstock's ghost. I don't know whatever the wait you say make bio shank infinite bio shank But yeah, there's one fight there's a fight where you're on a ship and you're running around like the edge of a ship.

Oh, that part. You're running it. It's like the final battle. Yeah, it's like, it's so tedious. I mean, it's so tedious. I remember, because like a lot of times Laura will sit and like she'll be reading and I'll be playing a game. And I just like, you know, it's like the feeling, it brings me back to like when I was eight

years old playing like the NES and would like spike the controller because I was so like mega man feeling or whatever are Super Mario brothers. So you're just like, we just like fuck this game. And some of that in those old games, it really hurts you. Yeah. And some of those old games like some of it was expertise. Some of it was, that was a way of them extracting longevity and value out

of a game, right? Make it harder, make people work for it more. Bloodborne to me and the souls games in general are that in a rough nutshell, but refined to a point where like the difficulty is so elegant. The difficulty is so intentional. Your path through the game and your emotional state through the game is so designed. Like it is not accidental. You are in the exact place and feeling the exact level of confusion. The way that they write the story, the story is almost nonsense. It's like these loose sketches of a story. There is no strong narrative pulling you through it. The narrative is your own, the narrative is your struggle

in your battle. And so like a lot of what they're pulling you through on is this sort of like outlines of this thing, which is like a fantasy world or in Bloodborne's case, like a Victorian kind of horror world. And that's it. And like everything else is you and how you prepare for certain battles and how you budget your resources and time playing it, how you focus yourself. I'll give you an example. I can't play Bloodborne or Dark Souls at night. I'm tired.

It doesn't work. I fail over and over again. If I play in the morning, first thing, when I'm wide awake and I'm fresh, I'm actually pretty It doesn't work, I fail over and over again. If I play in the morning, first thing, when I'm wide awake and I'm fresh, I'm actually pretty good at it. And I noticed that enough time, it was consistent enough that I just stopped playing at night. And the idea that a game is so dependent on me being

up to the task is so unusual for me that I find it really intoxicating. Like I find it quite literally alluring. I can't play a game in the morning. To me, gaming with the sun out is like not. Oh, you gotta, it doesn't fit mine. It doesn't fit mine. It's the same thing as waking up and going for a run.

No, that doesn't sound good to me. It's not good to wake up and hit old yard of and kill some beasts. That's what I'm talking about I To me gaming is all about a nighttime. It's all a nighttime activity. It's all about dark being in the dark So in bloodborne you're you're at night in the dark sure So just play it during the day you get most of the same thing that makes no sense all right I want to talk about we actually have

Burned through quite a lot of time talking about this. There's a bunch of, but you there were two things. The XRGB and training training, training, Lauren to be an expert at games from the 90s. Wanted to be a pro gamer. Yeah. Pro gamer. But only games that are well, you want him to be a pro gamer. You just wanted to progress through like the evolution of it, which I think is a cool idea. Yeah. I don't know, but I haven't thought about that stuff as well. I like, I don't know, but I haven't thought about that stuff as well. I don't know, I have these two cousins they were here for Thanksgiving and they are really into Rubik's Cube is like a thing now, it's like a big thing.

Is it really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, with kids, like the Rubik's Cube, there are all sorts of variations of Rubik's Cube, there's like huge tournaments, it's like a big deal. And I was like, first I was impressed, I mean I heard about this year's ago they were talking about it. I was a kid who played Mega Man, so come on. Yeah, well they're into games too, but I mean I heard about this year's ago. They were talking about it. It was a kid we played mega man So come on. Yeah, well they're into games too But I mean, they definitely more into Rubik's cube than anything else, but maybe they're weird

I don't know, but at any rate. I don't think they are I think they're like, you know They're they're flowing with the the whatever is happening in the world, but I thought that was very interesting and cool that like Rubik's cube could actually hold a kid's attention these days. But I have been thought about with Zelda like what her relationship, I mean, I worry, I cheat freaks if you, you know, if a phone is anywhere near her, she loses her mind.

It's like, I see like how sad we all are actually through her because she's reacting in an animalistic childlike way. There's questions. The way we react. She's using tweeting and tumbling and googling and whatever, using your thumbs on your phone. When you give her the phone, does she hold it up to her ear like she's talking about the

conversation she does? Yes, she does. Why? If 99% of the time that Zelda sees you with your phone, she sees you using your thumbs on the screen. She doesn't see you holding up to your ear, she's saying like, hey, hey, Bob, I need you to process that order ASAP.

It's not, I don't, I never talk to my phone. No, I talk to my phone a lot. I think Laura does too. We literally don't get a cell phone signal at our house. She almost, like Laura almost never sees us on the phone. And when he gets the phone, he holds it up to his ear and says, hello. Yeah.

Why? He's not even did that really early on. Like really early on, she, I mean, I have video of it. I think I put it on Instagram. She literally is like grabs the phone and I'm like, hello, and she's like, hello. Like before she could, like she could really not barely even talk. It's cute though.

It is cute, it's cute as hell. But I haven't thought about what I'm going to, how I'm going to train her as far as video games are concerned. I, what I do know is I'm trying to not let her become one of these kids. I mean, this is going to maybe sound shitty, but I'm trying to not let her be a kid. And I see the temptation to do it. One of these kids is like sitting in a restaurant with an iPad instead of like hanging out with their family. Like I want my child to suffer the same kind of boring

indignation that I suffered. I will say that there are times when the shortcut being like, okay, it's either we leave and like Pay the bill now and get everything to go. Yeah, or you check out some Daniel Tiger on this phone here. I Don't we we leave I have to say like I I don't even know that she would give a shit enough I think she'd throw the phone on the ground after like two minutes.

Like I just don't think she's even that into it. Maybe that's my fault, I don't really know. But she looks like so many pictures of herself on it. That's basically her number one thing to do. And she also, my mother sent her, she had like shutter fly books made that were like all pictures of Zelda. She has several volumes of Zelda books

and she's really into them, which is, I don't know what kind of signal that's ending. That's an point. By the time Zelda is like a teenager, there's going to be a bookshelf. Oh, yeah. I mean, there are so many pictures of her. I mean, I'm sure you have so many pictures of Lauren. I mean, we are taking so many pictures of our kids. It's insane. There's like, I mean, there are a lot of pictures of me when I was a kid, but there are not that many. There's like a couple, there's a half a decade in the late 90s where there are no pictures of me. Right, yeah, you just disappeared.

That's not gonna happen to these kids. I mean, they're absolutely- Everything's gonna be documented. All right, I wanna get to this really quick because I actually have to wrap up soon, unfortunately, because we could definitely do in like a six hour podcast. Maybe we will one of these days.

I wanna talk about virtual reality. Oh man, I wanna talk talk about VR because I have, I don't know if you played with this at all, have you played with the gear VR? Yeah. I've not played with the retail version. I've played with the, with the innovator's addition though. The retail version is an improvement. Yeah, it's a lighter and there's a lot of things. And just seems like there's, I don't know, I didn't check out all the software in the innovator's addition. Seems like there's a don't know I didn't check out all the software and the innovative edition seems like there's a the store is a somewhat more complete and interesting. Yeah. So I had like I said I had a bunch of people here and I had like my cousins my two cousins a

14 year old and 11 year old tried on. I had their father try it their mother try it my father who's in his 70s. A bunch of different people. And except for my father who basically cannot be impressed by anything, it seems like he was like, I don't get it, it looks fake. I mean, he literally like dismissed it right away. Everybody else like basically lost their mind when I put them in it. My brother, my brother who's like not nerdy, he's like a, you know, he's musician, he he's focused on creating beautiful art. I mean, everybody who put it on was like, oh my God. I mean, one of the kids, Sammy,

it's the future. He was in it for like 20 minutes straight, playing Lanzand, I think, as the game. And it was just sucked in. It was just like, did not exist in our reality. And I find, I have to say, I can't believe, like when I think back to where the Oculus was three years ago, this version that we saw

in our CES trailer that was literally like, had like, gaffer tape or duct tape on it. And now I was tweeting about this the other day, but this thing is like, I know you need to have like a note or whatever, but it's like $99 thing, you drop your phone into it and it's really good. Like it's really, really good.

So the thing about gear that people don't get, is they wanna know, how is this different than cardboard? Oh my God. That's the thing you hear all the time. Like, I have a Google cardboard, isn't that the same? No, it's not the same at all. Not even close. So gear has, not only that the same? No, it's not the same at all. Not even close. So gear has, not only does it have the optics,

so it has the actual lenses and optics that help make an experience that is comfortable, but it has all of the extra hardware, the gyros, the accelerometers, that make the experience really super low latency. Yeah, it's super low. And so the latency is, that's, and it's a combination of that hardware plus the Oculus software toolkit that all these developers are using to make their game.

And those two things working together create an experience that is not mobile VR. It's not budget VR. No. It is VR VR. It's VR. And I have to say, like, yes, obviously the graphics are not going to be like a PC rig. But that's not what makes VR. No, not at all.

And actually, the experience is to me that have been most mind blowing, weirdly, where is the theater experience? Where they've got, like, you can buy a movie and watch it in a theater. And it's like, when you watch a movie in a movie and watch it in a theater and it's like when you watch a movie in VR and you watch it in a theater you're not watching a movie on your phone which feels like you're watching a cute David Lynch YouTube video here yeah you feel like you're watching it on a 70-foot screen and like you're in a room yeah like you're in a theater but Yeah. Like you're in a theater. But it feels so huge. It feels like a theater.

It feels like a theater. Yeah. No, it really does. You look up at the ceiling. You're like, oh, that ceiling is really there. It's that far away from me. And like, here's the top of the screen. There's the bottom of the screen.

I think it's an unbelievable. I just think like I kind of like hadn't paid that much attention to the gear to the whole thing that Samsung was doing. But I put it on and I was playing around with it for just like an hour or something. And I was like, oh, this just makes everything else that's happening in technology feel. And I'm not trying to, and by the way, this is not about like Apple versus Android or any of that bullshit because I have, I don't know why somebody hasn't made this. Where is the Oculus that you drop your iPhone into? Like I don't know why it doesn't exist.

I think Samsung paid you know Decent about or the partnership Facebook but it's Facebook company I mean I can't imagine they don't want to have everybody in these things I feel like they're gonna make an iPhone version. They're going to they're obviously going to and once that happens Then you know we we won't have to have this debate. I will say like the the the Oculus store Seems to be taking on like it seems to be pretty real and pretty meaningful and I think like it's they're executing on a lot of things in the right way. I think it's just our our reviewer Ben Kuchero who covers VR for us and is super into VR. If you

want to have like a VR nerd Sherpa. Yes. Walk you through all the best games and all the best experiences both on gear and on Oculus. Ben he has like um he's he's a nerd that made you a playlist like uh he made you a mixtape. He's like a music store nerd of stuff that he thought you would like he'll take you on like an Oculus tour and be like okay so check this out this is exciting because of the way that they do jumping and check out jumping fields on this one. And you play like, oh my god, this is so cool. So he's like really into it. He's very fluent in it.

And his take on gear VR, the retail version, is that in some ways it can't help it be better than the retail version of the Rift, which is that VR is so intoxicating, especially when you can share it with others, which you can't do with Oculus. We have a card on your gaming PC, you're relatively beefy, by the way, gaming PC,

and hook up this thing with wires all over it to it. Like no, but with Gear VR, you literally pop your phone into this thing that's portable and people are playing it and they're experiencing it. And also VR, you're moving your body and your head, being portable is important. And the retail rift will be portable.

Yeah, and the motion tracking, like the physical, like the being able to actually spin your body around on this, which you can do. It's tracks really well. It's like better than anything I've been in. Yep, it's all pretty spicy. And like people will tell you it's like John Carmack's crazy magic sauce in the software plus solid hardware and the hardware is not. The whole thing about Oculus is the hardware isn't amazing. It's not complicated. It's a bunch of sensors and it's like,

it's mobile phone hardware. It's not crazy. But it's the software magic sauce that they put in. And I think this is in part why there's this ongoing lawsuit between Zeta Mac, Slash Bethesda, and Facebook Slash Oculus because CarMac started development of some of this stuff, at least he says it was on his time and hence the lawsuit. Well, he was an employee of its software, which is owned by Bethesda slash.

But that's the magic sauce. That's like, you know, Oculus one of the hiring spirit Michael A. Brash and John Carrick, they were on the hiring spirit of brilliant people to make this stuff work. And the stuff that's complicated, when you hear them talk about it, it's not some crazy graphics, right? It's all about latency. It's all about making the image be more palatable to your eye. And so even on a mobile game, where the graphics are relatively simple, and sometimes like

they're better when they're simple. It doesn't matter so long as that input mechanic feels one to one, as long as you move your head and it makes sense. Right. No, I agree. I feel like that's why. I mean, that's one of the things that's,

it's so strange to me like, you know, the New York Times that this project, this VR project, they shipped a bunch of cardboard with, I mean, I looked at it and I think it's really interesting and beautiful. But it's not VR. It's also not the thing that is going to. It's not VR, not really.

And it's not the thing that is going to make this click for people. It's a really breathtaking and interesting experience. But some of the games, like, it's just a theater, that theater experience. I think when you put people in that, they start to recognize the power of it, which is this takes you into a completely different place. Like it really does. This thing that Paul Merlucky said about

a different company that's joining the VR space and PlayStation, his point was that he's not scared of like a lot of other companies coming in or competing. What are you scared of is somebody coming in and making a bad VR product and nuking the words VR, virtual reality, forever, that people try it and they get sick. That's what you're talking about. You're not talking about it. Oh, I didn't enjoy it.

That wasn't fun. You're talking about. You're not talking about, oh, I didn't enjoy it. That wasn't fun. You're talking about playing something and throwing up. Yeah. And like, it can be physically really jargous. Yeah. And so like, if you do a bad job, and a lot of that comes out to that secret sauce, you're gonna turn people off to VR forever.

And so his, that's his fear. His fear is that somebody's gonna make a bad experience and turn people off. Not that Sony's gonna make a great experience and people people off. Not that Sony's gonna make a great experience and people are gonna love it. Like, right, that would be fine. I think, yeah, I think he's totally right. I mean, it is still like even with the Gear VR,

which is like the latency does feel very low and it does feel very natural. There still is, you know, you, it's hard to adjust to. It takes a little while to adjust to. That's an area where the retail Oculus Rift is probably going to perform better Where it has a screen that is custom designed for that type of stuff and like you know, but I think the wirelessness of this is really a huge advantage

I mean the wires to me every time I've used any VR setup to me It always gets in the way, in a major way. And I'm sure there'll be a lot of solution for it. I'm excited for like, this gets really dorky. Games, I think are gonna be amazing in games that figure out how to use it, are gonna be amazing. And they're gonna be amazing the way that nothing on this generation of consoles has been amazing to me.

This generation of consoles is a better version of the last generation of consoles, but there's nothing effectively really new. I play 99% of my games now on a steam machine hooked up to my TV. Really? Not a steam machine branded. I just a living room, Windows PC, running steam. I should see if I can just, oh I guess I could just take mine in the living room. Yeah, I mean, I think it's all my brain had it set up before, but it's such a pain in

the ass. I'm sorry, I just think it's such a clunky. The steam offering is so clunky. Here's what I use. I use a portable Logitech keyboard trackpad thing. The batteries last like four months. Just the words you're saying to me right now, I'm like, we want to get started crying. I honestly got, I think using like a lot of the different set-top

boxes with all of their custom apps and their custom interfaces. It's actually way harder than just grabbing a portable keyboard and using your thumb on the trackpad. You want to listen to Spotify? Click the Spotify button in the taskbar. I mean, you're talking about Netflix. It's called Netflix.com. It's so computer.

You're describing a computer. It's just a solution. I just use a computer. I think it's, I think it's, I think it's, I've had set up boxes, I've had every set top box, I've had every game console. And I think honestly God, just having a Windows computer hooked up to my TV makes so much more sense to me. Well, there's no question, I mean, there's no question that, that having the complexity

and flexibility of a PC is superior in almost every way where it's not superior is in simplicity Yes, right like it is not a simple. It is not a simple So my girlfriend doesn't give a shit about set up boxes or video games or Like that stuff is noise to her. It's a it's annoying and she would load up a different console And so how do I do Netflix on this? Is that the same thing or whatever? Right, right. She gets the PC, I never had to explain a single thing to her. Well, I think, but you know,

you consider for most people, like you're a special case, most people will buy like the Xbox or they will buy the PlayStation and then that will be their portal period. They're not gonna have like also an Xbox and also an Apple TV and also a roco. I have like literally like a Roku and Apple TV and Xbox so that is a good point. We're like in my case my girlfriend has to deal with like 30. You're an annoying person to be around. Trust me when it comes to that.

Okay, that's fine. Normally you're lovely. That's fine. No, but I'm the same way. I'm like it's like, oh yeah, here's the four things you need to turn on to make this happen. Yep. So let me like the steam box is really simple. Just not you turn the TV on, you turn the receiver on, you click the trackpad, and it's just a window. It's just a computer. Just load up whatever you want to look at, and it's there.

It makes it simple, but I mean, for gaming, steam is great in everything else. I have it up in my office now in a steam link, and it runs on wireless. Up to my office beautifully. So I can probably fall out up here. I just know how to latency. It's like 20 milliseconds. There's nothing. You can't really notice it. Yeah. I think it works amazingly. It's really great. It breaks about once every three weeks because Valve updates something on steam. See, this is this is it. Yeah, that's getting right into it. It's like, oh, there's a driver update something on Steam. You see, this is it. That's getting right into it.

It's like, oh, there's a driver update for your car. It's not a driver update. No, I'm just saying, that's the kind of thing that happens. Like, oh, there's some new GeForce drivers. And the next thing you know, you're down some weird rabbit hole. You were like, how come the interlacing is off here? It's not so weird. The problem with the Steam link is quite literally

that Valve has bad QA. And so they push out an update. They update Steam a lot. They'll push an update that breaks it for certain computers. And then three days later, they realize it and they push out another update that fixes it. And like, you just have to get comfortable with this idea that Valve, we can talk about Valve and how weird their corporate structure is. Valve is this weird, experimental and arcade company that refuses to like, like organize and the cost of that, the benefit of that is that they make some of the best games of all time.

They have this massively successful, lucrative, popular gaming platform steam. The downside to it is like, maybe we're not super awesome at QA. Like maybe QA is tough for us. Yeah. Well, I mean, they look, I mean, look, everybody's got their, everybody's got their whatever, I don't know, their negative side. I think that they've contributed more to gaming than I mean, almost anybody in the last decade.

I'm willing to deal with their bad QA. Yeah. I mean, listen, I mean, on this, you know, but then there's like, I just have to say, the steam experience, the whole thing is like It's very uneven if you just want to play like I think it's very uneven some games. It's like this is perfect This is great. I've had tons of problems just trying to like get games started. I want to here's what I'll say Yeah, I want I want to help make this better for you. Okay. I want to take this on it's like my personal cross the bear really

Yeah, is this for a later at a later or are you going to say something now it's going to change everything? This changes everything. I just think it's a great experience. For me, Steam has made gaming more exciting to me in the last two years I've been basically playing exclusively on Steam because that's where a lot of the innovation is happening in gaming. It's not happening on the variety of games, it's much better. I mean, it's way cooler.

There's so much weird shit going on. There's a weird shit happening. I mean, it's just like crazy, strange, awesome things occurring there. It would never happen because you've got to go through these like on Xbox, all these gates and all these checks and all the PlayStation want to be cool. Yeah, they don't know how.

Well, they had, and they need to basically have like a sandbox where you can like, you know, do beta, do beta games. Yep. And sort of starting to do it a little bit, but not really. I don't play stations doing a better job of it in general than the Xbox but like in general like they're just it's not I don't know like if you want it just go right to the source and get get the shit uncut like go to steam and just get it Well, it'd be nice if it were that easier for most people But it's not and they haven't really come up with a solution Where it's like machines is theoretically the solution right?

Can a system but there's no plug to play there? I mean, it really isn't. But if you've used like the actual like, you know, Alienware Alpha steam machine, it is plugged by like, you turn it on, it just boots into big picture, it is console simple. There's downsides to it. It runs Linux and it is stable and you know, ever see Linux, but there aren't that many game at least. Well, yeah, the games you made for PCs. There's not going to be games of Linux compatibility. So, that's the thing. It's like really cool idea. Yeah. But

the guy I get news for you, like none of those games are going to come to Linux. Or they do. You'll find like, I think Alienized Salation came to Linux. Okay. Yeah. But like a year after. Six months later. Right. Yeah. No, no, I'm saying, but the most innovative, nobody's going to do like, you know, what's a game that like I know TC plays rust is a game that he's talking about? I think rust is on Linux. Maybe it is. Okay, but like there are other games where it's like Some of those games are like you know, I think some of those games are like if it runs on Daisy or Daisy

Daisy, I don't think is on that game by the way That is the craziest bug he's experienced of anything I've ever played my entire life There was so much hype around it and I I like got in, and I'm like, I have no fucking idea what's supposed to be going on here. And this thing's crashy as hell. Like the crashiest game I've ever played in my entire life. The thing about games like that, I don't know, I don't know what Minecraft here is, you know,

a kind of experimental PC game that took off. Is that the PC world allows you the lowest bearer to enter to just go make a weird fucking thing. Yeah. And do it. So rust is this weird thing. But if you're everything about rust, one of the weirdest social experiments, speaking about social experiments on human beings, like forcing my son to play Sonic CD by the

age of seven, is having, in rust, you start and you are your gender, your size, your race, and even things like for if you are a man, uh, your penis size, or if you're a woman in your breast size, is, um, randomly generated and is tied to your steam profile. So you can't ever get away from it unless you were to literally buy the game again on a different steam account. Um, I got to play this game and that idea of like, what? I got 13 year old white kids right now. Um, I just want to see more information becoming, you know, I don't know, an elderly black woman and being like, wait, what the fuck? That's not what I would have picked.

And it's like, well, that's who you are in this game. That's how you exist from now on. So like get used to it. It's like this fascinating social experiment. When you read about some of the backlash that they've had in the forums, which is, uh, can be pointed. Um, yeah. But I think I haven't checked it on Rustin so long. I get the impression that the community is like embraced it now. That is the game. That is how it works. So Russ is basically like, just so I'm understanding it. I'm just clicking on some information about it right now.

I've looked at it before. I never looked that deeply into it. Russ is sort of like off the back of Dave's eat, right? Yes. Yeah. Survival-based. It's like, and it's like ultra like you don't have shoes. You don't have a shirt. Yeah, you start Bucknake. But you're in it being you're in some kind of apocalyptic hell world just to be clear. Yes, and I think they've

They've even tampered that down. I think the original versions of Ross and they changed a lot of the other Translate the engine and the way it looked Because it looks pretty bad to me. It had zombies and stuff before. All right, they don't have zombies anymore. I think it, again, I haven't checked in on Russ for so long, but I think they do, but it's like downplayed. I think it really is about like people versus player versus player. It very much is about like you're in a wasteland

and the scariest things aren't these zombies over here. It's like these other players. Right. And you can like kidnap people. Yeah, and you're building fortresses and defenses and you're gathering materials and you're, and there's persistence on these servers. So you have a server you play on

and you have a giant fortress and you're recruiting people and it's, it's can't be good. It's can't lead to anything good. It is a, but I will say, I had Russ really fun to have, and this is like, it seems cool. It looks pretty cool

I mean I have this benefit if TC plays it has TC to give you a tour It's great when you have a Sherpa to take you through it ask somebody to like I don't have time for this I mean I honestly don't you know this is the thing like this. This is a game. I need to invest time into What I'm saying is don't invest anytime It's a game that you invest dozens of hours into what I'm going to suggest instead is invest one hour into it I'll do that one hour is like have somebody who's in there who is on a server that has stuff They have a fortress. They have a house. They have whatever Start the game they can show up they can throw a bunch of items in your inventory

So you can close yourself and have a weapon and then they can give you a tour and you know You're on Skype or you're on vent or you're on chat or whatever and that person can walk you around and show you that World on that server and what's happening and you can get into some go get into some mischief be a rascal have fun You've got somebody who has your back Having having somebody walk you through it in that way. And literally, it's video game tourism. Have them show you what rust is.

I'm not saying come back and play for five hours a night for a month, but you will learn a lot just by having a one hour, you know, a one hour. Got a tour. Got a tour, yes. All right, well, I'm gonna wrap up here. Unfortunately, there's so much more to talk about. I have so many things we didn't talk about

I want to let's wrap. Let's do a quick rapid fire here Okay, you already said you already said your game of the year is bloodborn my game here's bloodboard I work like I'm playing through a ton of games right now in parallel like a gross amount of games and what else is good to you Right now what is great? What are things that people should play if they want to play games? So so big ones play Melanchor solid five. It's amazing. I've started playing it I can't I'm sorry any game. I feel like any game where I ride a horse I'm just like you lose interest in now. Melanchor self-adjusting like like Witcher 3 I hate all the Witcher games so much. I can see how you can eat Witcher Melanchor style five is the weirdest fucking game. It was strange. It is a strange game

It is fucking bizarre like I I will say it breaks the weird it. Nothing about that game makes any sense to me. Yeah, that's right. Like like it's like what is this a funny game? Is it a serious game? No, it's very serious. It's about nuclear war. It's very serious. The acting, the acting, the writing is like crazy. Super funny. Yeah. Like wink, wink, wink. It's very Japanese. It's the weirdest thing and it's like amazing. I'm, follow four. If you like, but that's the game, you know, I love it. Okay, it's like, you're, just do that.

You're gonna love it. Here's a great game that you should, that you can play on your, it's more fun. I've had our iPhone, you can play it with friends. It's on Steam, you can play on your TV. If you have that, it's great with a group of friends. Contradiction, the all-video murder mystery.

I'm gonna have to name the game. What? It is an FMV murder mystery, and it has the cheesiest acting, but it's cheesy in like the wink, wink way. Right. And it is self-aware. It is a lot of fun.

And it's like a five-box or something. It's a really fun old school style FMV mystery game, and I'm really just enjoying the hell out of it. Okay. There's a game called Magic Circle, which is very short, very much in the sort of bio-shock realm and it's very much basically a game about what if a game like BioShock took really long to make and the person who made it made a different game and you are inside of that other game and you're getting out. Magic Circle is like, I haven't, right? Magic Circle is like, I haven't finished it yet, so we'll see how it ends, but I'm really

enjoying it. It's only four hours, I'm like two hours in, two hours in. Beginner's Guide is another game, follow up from Stanley Parable, which you mentioned before. Beginner's Guide, I got to play that. I highly recommend playing, which again, not very long. Is it available on consoles or is that PC only? Yeah, PC only. Yeah, the best stuff is PC only really. Tell me weird stuff.

A her story, which is another FMV style game where you are trying to solve a mystery by interrogating a woman and you're only looking at the police tapes of the interrogation and playing them back. Trying to keep track of what they're saying or what she's saying and like it's a it's hard. I don't want to like spoil anything. I don't spoil. That sounds really good. It's really good and it's very different, very unique. That's PC only two, but definitely worth playing, worth your time. Bloodborne is my game of the year. I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna find a game I like more. I'm playing the DLC right now, old hunters,

and I just, I love everything about it. You really, you really like that game. I really, really, really like it. What's, what's, go ahead. What else am I playing? I have one of them, I want to have I have another I have another I absolutely horrible games that people should avoid

man seems like there's a lot of games like I really want to play that new Star Wars game but yeah it's not good is it no I so we I think the early buzz on it was that it wasn't getting any good our review is very solid I think we can add 10 I think a lot of people basically said uh Chris planned at the verge uh the way he put it was like it's like dad rocked the video game. And like there's a way to get into that. It's it's Star Wars and you shoot stuff and it's big levels and it's a lot of fun. It looks it looks pretty it's pretty beautiful. If you're into that like then that's your game. And like you just have to know that that's what you're into. Right. I would say this, the new Call of Duty, some of the reviews are really good.

Arswell isn't. What's it called? Black Ops 3. Yeah, whatever. I mean, Call of Duty is like, I'm sorry. I bought the last one I didn't finish. I got halfway through almost Kevin Spacey. Is that the Call of Duty game?

Yeah, I was like, yeah, it's a Call of Duty game. That's kind of what I'm on. I usually like Call of Duty games. I do. They're amazing like six hours of like full throttle Like you're like you're playing you're living Like an action movie you're in a brookheimer movie. Yeah, and it's fun. It's really fun I've just gotten to a point where like they need to do something more

I think the last game advanced warfare was really good a lot of people said it was one of the best ones the series I couldn't finish that one and that was one of the best one I think I finished that one that was the one that was like set in the future, right? Yeah. And so Black Ops 3, like I just haven't gotten around with it. But that's not the Kevin Spacey one. That was the one for previous. I just don't have the enthusiasm for it.

So I'm going to skip it. Halo 5, I played about six hours of it. It's a Halo game. I'm skipping it. I'm done with that. I would say another game that's actually really surprising that a lot of people might not have been looking for to playing, but should.

Rock Band 4 is a really good version of Rock Band, if you like Rock Band, you won't play more Rock Band. But, guitar here alive is a game that most people, I think, were ready to laugh at. And is in fact a really great reinvention of the rhythm game. Is this the one that has changed the controller? So it's actually more like playing a guitar? I don't know if it's more like playing a guitar

but it does feel like you're playing chords a little more. Right. Is the developers freestyle games behind DJ Hero? Which was like a really great, really, actually I mean it should be say it was unsung. It was a very well sung when it came out by critics. It didn't sell at all. They made guitar here alive. It is a really great rhythm game. It is a lot at all. They made Guitar Hero live.

It is a really great rhythm game. It is a lot of fun. It's great for parties. It's great for pickup and play. The Guitar Hero TV system where it basically has channels that are just playing music all the time. So you just turn them on. You don't own the songs anymore.

You just like turn on play songs that are happening. Oh, that's a good idea. It's a song thing became a little overwhelming. It became overwhelming. That's what rock band did. Rock band 4, if you have a bunch of those and you own them, you want access to them again, you can get it. But guitar here alive to me reduces and removes a lot of the anxiety of like, oh, you're managing

that library. Right, that's good. That's interesting. And they just did a great job. The hardware feels great. The game is really smooth. It's a lot of fun. It's very goofy.

I really enjoy it and I think a lot of people, if you liked rhythm games, I think you would really enjoy that one. Here's another great one, Jackbox Party Pack 2. It's a PC game, I think it's out. What is that? How old are you coming up, how old are you? What is that?

The company made, you know, a Jack. They make a bunch of party games. And you can play it on your living room, hook up your laptop to your computer or to your TV. And people can play. So you're playing, you know, on the computer. The way that you're controller, that was your phone, you go to, what is it? It's like jackbox.tv and you type in like a four digit alpha numeric code and then you're that that's your controller in the game So you can have 24 people over for your Thanksgiving party and have for some of those games

I think all of them could play but for a lot of them. It's like 8 to 16 All playing the game at the same time and playing on their phone and they're writing in it'll be like Come up with a punchline for this for for one of the games and you write it in. That is like one of the best party games I've ever played, especially in larger groups. Wow. Wow. It's quite an endorsement. It's not cheap.

Oh, it's like, as far as endorsements go, like if you need a game in your back pocket for group play, that is what you should get that one. Yeah, like, it's okay. All right, I mean, I don't usually do a lot of group play, but this sounds like, you know, it's like four people over each other. If I have it like an emergency, oh, no, these are not people you could get

to do anything in a group. It's so easy. You can get them to eat in a group. That's about it. Okay. That's about the extent of it. All right, look, we're gonna wrap up. I'm sorry, and there's so much more to talk about,

but we're gonna have to do this again, I think. Maybe next time you can, you'll be in New York, you come to New York, we could go into a studio and do it. I've been to New York. I'd love to see you. I'd love to see you. And December's rough, because it's on December. But I'm a roundish.

But it'll probably be after December, I'm guessing. But anyhow, thank you for doing this. Thank you for joining me late on a Saturday evening. This is what the listeners don't realize. We're two totally cool grown men. And this is what we do on Saturday night. This is it. I don't know. There's no, I don't, I don't do anything for fun.

I mean, very little. I play games. I mean, what's fun to me is the stuff that I make in like the real world. Yeah. Like that, that is that, like I actually found a job that I think is as fun as anything that I might do otherwise. Drinking. Drinking, obviously drinking and making love. Long, tantric love making sessions.

There's a lot of people that don't know about me. It's thinking I have quite a bit in common. Anyhow, okay, that's the show, Chris. Thank you for being on it. You have to come back. And of course, we'll be back next week with more tomorrow. And it's how I wish you and your family the very best, although your family is all jacked into an 12. Draw the edges of the back of the head. 12. Draw the back of the head. you you you