Triforce! - Triforce! #222: Diaper Changing Pro Championships

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

Triforce! Episode 222! Flax is back from the Diaper Changing Pro Championships, we talk about helmet safety and Lewis is an old-school loser with a paper diary. Support your favourite podcast on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2SMnzk6 Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly hello everyone let's welcome back to the yorks i haven't done this for ages i don't even know very jovial what we're doing so it sounds like santa claus when he opens up the podcast hello

i'm just excited yeah i'm so like i'm so keen to speak with my my closest two friends in the world yeah um good old sips how you doing oh man just i'm lucky to hear that i'm just vibing that's what they say nowadays right i'm vibing all over the place i can't stop vibing i'm just vibing just full-time vibe just unfit yeah uh period back back from sweden i'm two weeks of being doing an actual job yeah i know i know. I was just chatting to Sips before we started. He was just telling me about it. I'm stressed out and tired just hearing about it. It was a lot of work. It really was. Not just the final three days, but my average day... So there were two of us. There was Shiva is the main host,

and then I was the second host and so she did like the grand final and all that kind of stuff um but i i would say i i think we both hosted as much as each other because they kind of split the schedule at her insistence she she was like no no ted should have exactly the same amount of of time as me which was super nice of her because yeah i think a lot of other people would have said i want more airtime or whatever but she well also well she's a seasoned vet time you've done it right she's done it loads of times so she she's a professional whereas you're like a bumbling fool thank you jesus appreciation for how hard shiva works because uh i don't want to do that job she works very hard

like also if i was her i'd be like yeah make i want to do that job yeah she works very hard like also if i was her i'd be like yeah make i want to only do half otherwise they would have put her down for extra stuff you know you gotta have some time off i would be like can we get a couple of other hosts i'll just come in and like crack one or two jokes and the rest of them can just do all of the work like uh i would that's what people like not even half i'd be like could i do like one twelfth of the work please or or something like i would not want to do all that work well it's that's my that's my role at yogs as well though to like just surround myself with funny people who are enough that i can just chill you know i don't have to do anything like and even in this

podcast you know it wouldn't work if there were two of us because i'd have to do that's another like 17 percent more work wait you're saying that he's actually done the math on this no yeah he's he's right yeah i thought you were implying that only do 17 of the podcast but yeah no you're right of course i do 33 instead of 50 indeed so it would be up to 50 yes you're making yeah yeah so so so go on tell us tell us what it was like did Did you have to do briefings and stuff and rehearsals or what? Yeah, there were some rehearsals. So generally speaking, the show is very structured in each of the two sort of stages. So the DPC, which is what they, in Dota terms, is like the lead.

The Dota Professional Championship or something? I have no idea. I don't know. Okay. I feel like that's something you should probably know it's the diaper changing professional championship you didn't realize you'd signed up to some furry shit you go check these acronyms or whatever i don't know what it means i don't care it doesn't matter wait dpc you don't know what dpc means no i don't i think it's dota pro circuit that sounds right yeah it's like it's like the regular pro season that is exactly leading up to yeah it is i just don't care all i know is it's dpc and i know what it means but you were esl i don't even know how i know that though i'm not actually i'm not showing off or anything i

think it just is one of those stupid bits of knowledge that somehow I've retained. I'm not even sure what ESL is and why they are doing a major and what that is and how that fits in with VALS. English as a second language. You can get a license to learn another language. If you have your ESL driving license,

your European driving license, all of a sudden you're eligible for far more jobs than you would have been before. Yeah, you can apply for a checkbook at the bank and you can take that checkbook to the bank and you can cash that check safely in the knowledge that English is your second language and you have a license. Your pennies will be protected. A license to thrill. Yeah. Sorry. It is. that english is your second language and you have a license pennies will be protected by yeah sorry indeed so it's like one of three but normally they're out of order what are you talking

about the majors all right so yeah there's there's three majors and so the whole point is the whole point of all of this all year long is to to get enough DPC points to qualify for TI. Because in the old days, they used to just invite teams. Like Valve would say, you have played well this year. We shall invite you. Whereas then everybody was like, that's kind of unfair because then you're just inviting big names. And like, for example, this year,

Team Liquid have not done particularly well. Nygma, Galaxy have not done very well uh nigma galaxy have not done very well and those are two big name teams yeah eg didn't do particularly well the finish last at the major whereas in in days gone by they would have all been insta invited because they're big name teams yeah now you have to qualify performed poorly right and as a result said why are they there less interesting exactly so now it's the teams who have performed the best over the year. That's good. And your placement in the DPC leagues, your placement in the majors,

gives you DPC points. You get over a certain threshold, you're there. So the teams who are playing for a bit of the money, like it's a bit of money, you know, it's a nice chunk of change, but it's not like life-changing like TI is. You win a TI, you're automatically in the top 20 or 30 esports earnings ever. So it's that much money each. And everybody wants to make it there.

Just related to this, and I don't want to go off on one too much, but I just had the thought about... I've been watching Winning Time, you know, the story of the LA Lakers in the late 70s, 80s. It's such a good show. It really is good. But it's made me think about esports as well. And the whole like Lakers Showtime era, you know,

when they brought in like the cheerleading squad, the Laker girls, and they weren't just like traditional cheerleaders. They were doing like kind of like raunchy dances and stuff like that. were doing like kind of like raunchy dances and stuff like that and it just uh it just it just blew open the the the franchise for like um you know like a lot a lot more people to to enjoy basketball you know you could go to the game but there's like the atmosphere of the game that people liked um you know opening up the court side for like celebrities to have seats and all that kind of stuff but if they did that in dota i mean dota is already pretty pretty popular but imagine there was like uh like the era of like showtime dota and all the teams had like a cheerleader squad but they weren't traditional

cheerleaders they were like furries like wearing diapers like doing the dances and like all like you know relating back to the kind of things that like your average gamer would like to see you know what i mean like just hardcore porn like uh playing like in the background while the players are playing and you know like all the all the kind of like the typical things yeah yeah the stuff that gamers are really into you know what i mean like they could i feel like they could introduce some of those elements and just really spice up the DPC big time. Well they did have a cosplay thing, didn't they? I guess so, yeah. This year. Which was quite, you know, Comic-Con.

Did you go to Comic-Con? No, it's quite Blizzcon-y, Comic-Con-y, game-y thing though, isn't it? It's quite- They did a cosplay competition for Dota? It's quite nerdy, cosplaying. Yeah. I think the cosplay scene for dota is is is not bad like you you do see there's always people posting like hey check out my uh crystal maiden cosplay um

you know like there's always there's always pictures of people dressing up as characters yeah there was a really good death prophet um I saw at Stockholm Majors. They did the whole thing, P-Fax. Did you miss it? No, I was there. Literally, she had a ghost running around, like a guy literally in a white sheet was one of the Death Prophet ghosts, which was very funny.

It was good. Some of the cosplayers I actually know, they've been at every Dota event that I've been to doing their cosplay stuff, so I've known them for like years um and the amount of work that they put into their cosplay uh is crazy like they work yeah it takes a whole year it's like their whole their whole um hobby is built around it you know they have a lot of people in the community oh what's what? Lena again, eh? Oh, okay. Well, yeah. Good stuff. Oh, wow.

Crystal Maiden again. I think some people do wear the same costume every time, but other people make new ones every time. I don't know. I think it's up to the people, right? Some people enjoy the community spirit of being in this community and taking part. Other people just want to entertain people. They want to show, they want to like show off.

And challenge yourself though. Just have fun. You know, you know, one year terribly the next, come on. I got, I got a lot of,

I got a lot of time for cosplayers, honestly. Yeah. I think it's, it's, it's impressive for sure. It's a lot of work. And the ones who do it well,

do it very well. Like, you know, like they go as far as to have not only a great costume and stuff, but then they get like a professional photographer to, you know, like they go as far as to have not only a great costume and stuff, but then they get like a professional photographer to, you know, take pictures of them posing like out in nature and stuff like that. It's pretty impressive. It seems like it'd be a pretty fun thing to do if you're really into that, you know? Yeah.

You get to like make your costume, you know, write the theme tune sing theme tune all that kind of stuff like uh it's it feels like it'd be pretty satisfying to do i was talking to simon this week about um he had to take his cats to the vets right and obviously his cats are kind of outdoor cats very independent and they hate him um well they don't hate him but they they're not really like cuddly friendly they're not really on his side tolerate him and so he had to get him into these cat carriers so he goes to the kitchen closes all the doors and then like sort of turns around to these two cats that are already trying to escape from the kitchen and he has to wrangle them into these boxes to take it to the vet for their shots right but they've got this um uber pet now because apparently it was quite tricky to find a taxi that would take

pets to the vet right because you can't like there's this policy will be like no pets yeah a lot of the time or like um v cars who is like the bristol-based taxi service that that we use usually use instead of uber uh well uber i think haven't had up until recently had a no pet policy but yeah they made a fuss about it they'd be like oh you have to call half an hour and we might not be able to do it and so i think he had like missed an appointment because like the taxi didn't turn up anyway um uber pets now thing which i kind of liked because i think any taxi driver who's like once willing to like check the box that says they're gonna take pets he's probably a nice guy right like i'm just pet

owners in general i think like cosplayers do you know i mean i think they're probably nice people i this might be like just a very sort of strange idea of calling my head but i i don't know like i think that having a pet makes you in the same way as being a dad makes you a certain way um be like protective of your creature and i don't know dad friendly but pet i don't know i just i just feel like it might be nice to take an uber pet than just a regular uber you know because you're more likely to get like a nice driver even if you don't have a pet i think you'd be disappointed if you because you'd be like where's the where's the cute animal i get i think i think a responsible thing to do is uh if you are thinking of ever owning a pet or or or having a pet or whatever have a car as well and maybe get your license too like you know just just see it as like uh

as like something that you kind of need because i think you kind of do need to have your own car well when you have a pet i think for emergencies just for general taking them to the places they need to go you know if you need to take them to get babysat or whatever people's life situations don't always let them afford or or have a car you know i think with simon they weren't his cats right and he right ended up with them right i didn't he didn't volunteer even to have them i don't think he even agreed to get them. I think he just actually ended up with them because of unfortunate circumstances. Yeah. And so now he's a cat dad and he's doing his best.

He's just doing his best with the hand that he's been given. He's doing it. Exactly. And so I don't know if everyone's... No, fair enough. I'm not saying... I know a lot of people can't just have a car or drive or whatever, but I think if you don't have a pet and you're thinking of getting a pet bear in mind that it might be handy to have a car and a driving license you know what i mean like i i think it's it's same with kids if

you're thinking of having kids it's pretty useful to have a car and a driving license and a seat for the kids to sit in the problem with i had with my car when i had it was that i used it so rarely that every time I went to use it, there was something wrong with it. Because it had been sat out for a month and the battery had gone flat. Right. Or, you know, one of the tires had gone down. Do you know what I mean? There was some dumb thing that was wrong with it. And so almost every time I was relying on it to go somewhere, like I had to go to a wedding or my parents or something, and it wasn't.

It just wasn't ready. Yeah. um yeah it was like hibernating so no i had to slap it slap it awake but no it didn't work for me so i think there is a i don't know i do these days as well i feel like there's also this service now which some people have been encouraging me to use where you can actually just um it's like an app-based thing where you can just pick up a car on Queen Square and rent it for the day. Kind of like, normally Red Sea cars are completely full. Yeah, they do that with a lot of electric cars.

Like I know they do that over here as well. It's like just these small little electric smart cars. Yeah. And they're like, they feel like, I don't know, they're probably not because they're probably fairly expensive, but they feel like they're disposable almost. You like park it up anywhere like the scooters yeah the scooters just update the lime or something i think it's on the slipway there is the one we had in germany

yeah there are when i when i was uh when i was in stockholm there were scooters everywhere yeah yeah every city has a wide variety of. I always figured it would just be the youth. You see people in business suits and stuff, fucking scooting along. I've still yet to brave it. But I really think I would enjoy it. You know what? I'm gonna fucking

do it. I'm gonna fucking do it. I used them in Lisbon when I was there a couple of years ago, and it was pretty handy. It was just a little bit uh dangerous because obviously you you don't have a helmet yeah i mean you're like right on the road with other cars and stuff which is do you go on the road well yeah i mean there's there's like bike paths and stuff but you're still kind of you know brushing shoulders with a lot of the time the cities are not perfect and there's no moments where you're on those scooters and you're still kind of you know brushing shoulders with cars a lot of the time the cities are not perfect and there's there's moments where you're on those scooters and

you're like oh shit i'm gonna have to go on the road a bit here and then you sort of feel you squeeze a trigger and it goes or do you rev a thing yeah it's like it's like it's like you know the brakes on a bike you know it's like a little like it it's like that you press that and then it just goes sometimes sometimes the handles uh turn as like they twist you know right well you can adjust how fast they go based on they're not very i mean when i ride them i press the thing on full immediately it gets it to max speed and then i hold it there forever so it's it's never like you might be insane no well he is i'm not i want i whenever i'm on one i want to go about twice as fast yeah he wants to get he wants to get where he's going yeah very fast

but they go fast enough it's actually quite well i think it's probably like probably like 15 or or maybe 15 miles now maybe maybe 10 to 15 it's not it's not a lot yeah okay all right but it's but it's it's it's good enough to like, I used one recently because I was going to be late to a thing down here at the office and I was up in Clifton for some reason and I was like,

I don't want to get a taxi because I don't know why. Do you have a helmet? Do you carry a helmet around with you? I didn't have a helmet. No, you don't have to. I think that's the only downside to it because you really should have a helmet if you're going on a scooter or a bike or anything i watched uh you're talking about

um i don't want to i don't want to give a spoiler away but in the uh winning time thing there is there is a somebody hits there's a bike accident there's a bicycle accident it's pretty gruesome as well holy crap it is but that scene is just i don't think people understand but if you're on a bicycle your head is probably eight feet above the ground maybe maybe even more yeah you have a big bicycle like you're quite high up if you fell onto your head from even just like a standing position that's enough if you just sort of add velocity as well down yeah but if you're from a standing position and you hit the back of your head on the pavement people die that way quite often yeah it's incredibly dangerous i saw

a guy skateboarding the other day uh on the harbor and he obviously didn't have his shirt on because it was a nice sunny day and he had the the most unbelievable like scrape up his arm and on his back oh yeah he was like actively bleeding and i was like you and he wasn't wearing a helmet or anything and i was i was like who does that who like especially on his elbows scraped up his elbow i'm like everyone i've seen she's wearing elbow pads at least i mean i wouldn't go skateboarding without elbow pads and knee pads these days right but the the you know if you're like a hardcore skater you're not gonna wear that if you're just skating along in a straight line it's not very dangerous

if he's actually doing ramps and stuff like he was he was doing the stuff that where yeah they don't land the fucking trick and they fall over skate culture look up hill bombing they do this in san francisco a lot hill bombing is when you get a huge number of people on skateboards going down a very big very steep hill on their skateboards on the road and the police always come out and try and nick them all and shut it all down these guys are absolutely canoning along like insane speed well because no helmets so steep some of those they don't have helmets crazy steep when i was in i was in seattle and we were we were coming back there's a part of seattle anywhere that

lives there or no it's the quite sort quite cool bit that's very hilly. I don't know if that really sums up too much as hell. But it's like there's one particular area where a lot of cool bars and clubs, it's a little bit rundown. It's not in downtown, it's out towards Bellevue, up that direction. And it's a very steep series of hills leading back down into town. There was a guy,-shirt shorts keeping up with all the cars just skateboarding that grinding noise it makes and i'm thinking all it takes is a

pebble or a drain cover that's slightly loose or anything and you are gonna fucking die my dude like what are you doing you've got nothing between you and the pavement. Come on, man. Life is so precious. Or worse, suffer such a catastrophic injury and then survive it. And your quality of life is just cut in half or less. It's not worth it. But I think these people are numb to that due to a number of reasons. There could be. I mean, one, they might not have much care for.

They might be unhappy and not have much care for themselves. Two, I think they've done it before safe and didn't get hurt. So they just have this level of confidence that seems to make them immune. And I think also possibly sometimes they've done it before and fallen over. And they were all right, you think? And they were okay. It's interesting with helmets and stuff, though, because I'm sure I've spoke about this before.

It's like a trademark thing to say on this podcast but i don't know if i've actually spoken to you guys about it um the the attitude towards helmets um for instance when i was a kid like in the 80s was totally there's so much more awareness now around needing a helmet and the kinds of things that can happen to you when you're riding a bike or, or whatever, doing, doing something where you would normally nowadays definitely need a helmet for. Like we used to ride bikes when I was a kid, nobody wore a helmet. And in fact, if you turned up with a helmet, people would just laugh at you. That's true.

Which is weird, right? But like at the time, you don't really think anything of it. But I, and, and looking back to like, you know know hockey in the 70s and stuff man those guys barely wore helmets and there's like there's a fucking it's like a bullet in in the arena that you're playing in constantly you know like that thing pings you upside the head you're probably dead like they're going fast it's it's hard as well right like it's uh it's crazy Like even goalies didn't wear helmets. They had like no helmets.

Like it's wild to think. And it's sad to think too that it's taken so many people to have head trauma or, you know, die in an accident for people to finally realize, oh, hang on. Maybe I should wear a helmet when i'm doing this like high speed sports or whatever uh yeah it's crazy but like now that i have kids as well i'm i'm like extra aware of of uh you know helmets and on bikes and scooters and everything else like we we just put their helmets on all the time like just it's just not worth it right like you just wrapped up in like bubble wrap yeah pretty much but like in duct tape man you just like like i've known people who have who have been hit by cars like on their bikes and stuff like that and and thankfully they've all had

helmets on uh but if it hadn't been for wearing a helmet they would be it would be a different story for sure would you take either of your kids out on the scooters or are they too small still people that's how big you have to be for these like i don't know but my my big electric scooters my kids are pretty tall uh i mean i think my my eldest is five foot four and my youngest is just under five foot so well that's probably fine right yeah but i guess it's would you allow them out with you? Like a family of giants, what the hell? The thing is, if you're scared for them,

maybe you shouldn't go yourself. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I mean, I guess I would put them on, after the Croggy incident, which we spoke about in Triforce, maybe a good 80 or 90 episodes ago now. We did briefly remind me of that. Croggy is when you give someone a lift on the crossbar of your bicycle yes and my daughter's foot got trapped in the wheel and we had to get oh yeah that's rough she was fine it was just a bruise but it was very scary and i realized what

a fucking idiot i'd been because kids will do whatever you if you're up for something they'll be like yeah it's only when you say this is incredibly unsafe and we should not do it that they're like, okay. Like, they trust you on it. So like, I felt, I still feel awful about it. It was just, it was kind of a wake up call, really, that you shouldn't take chances like that. And they have to wear a helmet every time they get on a bike or do anything like that.

Helmet. Because it's, I mean, you know, if you break an arm or something, that's reparable. If you break a finger, that's reparable. But if you get brain damage, that's itutable but yeah if you get brain damage that's it so yeah be careful kids please yes good suggestions what a good message what a nice message we can we can cut the rest of the podcast and it just be a three second stay safe kids that's it we've done our job man yeah we're gonna sleep like a baby so back to your two weeks in stockholm so so how busy were your days then because are you i mean i saw you every like i i didn't watch all

of it obviously it wasn't on every day did you do that thing when you recognize somebody on a screen where you like like touch their face with your finger just so connect or is it just me who does that i don't know i felt quite proud watching you up me who does that? I don't know. I felt quite proud watching you up there doing a good job. I don't know. Like, I felt like... I don't know. No, I think I wasn't nervous, oddly enough. I thought I would be.

Like, when we had to do the stage bit to open the final day, me and Tsunami had to... He danced around on stage and I pretended to be a grumpy old man. That was great. So we practiced that for like 20 minutes or something to make sure that we had the camera movements down and everything. And we chatted amongst ourselves what we were going to do and everything. And I think 10 years ago,

I would have been absolutely shitting myself about doing something like that. Whereas now, once you've done enough stuff on a live stream or a live audience or in front of people or whatever, you just don't worry as much and i honestly i owe a lot of that lack of fear to doing stuff with you guys uh streaming uh things like when we did yog con and and when we've been to comic con coming to face to face with people and meeting them talking on camera being live being aware of things that you say are going to be clipped

if you say something stupid or whatever. It is a pressure, but you get used to it. We do it every day. We stream every day. And everything that you're saying and doing is there on camera. And after a while, your brain adjusts to a point

where you can switch on and you're just not going to, you're hopefully not going to make too much of a tit of yourself. But you also are aware that if you do, people are just going to find it funny. I think that's the main thing. Yeah, it's forgiving.

Yeah. I definitely still get a bit of that scary brain fog, like just paralyzing kind of anxiety when I'm on stage. And I'm never going to shed it entirely. No, that's fair. It definitely dissipates. When the show opened and I was never going to shed it entirely. No, that's fair. It definitely dissipated. When the show opened and I was there at the panel and it was the first day.

Was there a live audience there too? Yeah. Oh, okay. So it was like... First live land for two and a half years. It was a big audience as well. Yeah, it was big. I mean, it grew throughout the day.

And of course, on Saturday and Sunday, it was much busier. But on Friday, people were like, when the stream first started, there's no games for 45 minutes or whatever. So people were taking their time. On Friday in particular, it was a work day and a school day. It was like maybe 1,500 people or whatever. On the Sunday, it was packed. It was really, really busy.

Thousands of people. Nice. And yeah, I'd say initially when it first started, when they were counting down your live in three, two, one, there was a moment where I thought, am I nervous about this? Like, am I genuinely nervous about this? And I was like, we'll give it a go. Like, I think you just got to give it a go.

And you know- I'm here now. Yeah, exactly. We're not going to have to do this now. What choice do you have? The trick is when you're about to speak publicly and you look out at the audience, the trick is to imagine them all ass naked

wearing only black socks. That's what Frazier said one time. And he said it makes it easier. Well, I couldn't see them. The lights are too bright. I'd be far too aroused at that point to even carry on. Yeah, how could you concentrate with a lob on? It's impossible.

Yeah, that's it. I think we've had that a lot as well when we've been on stage like the bright lights just dazzle you and you sort of you can't really see anything you accidentally like do a habit that is only private to you but you forget yourself because the lights and there you are just picking your nose and eating it on stage and like oh my god disgusting maybe that's your trademark thing yeah you're picking your ear and like that's okay at like fortnight tournaments and stuff i think the average audience is doing that as well i had a lot of uh a lot of a lot of triforce fans in sweden by the way oh nice say they love the podcast so shout out to those lads um yeah there were a lot of people that loved the did they say

anything did they make give us any questions i have a tiny penises or a couple of those those are always very funny aren't they i like one of those in passing i tried to try to explain to the esl quite senior esl exec that i was with chatting to him in the arena why someone just came up and said to me period i've got tiny penis and then ran off um trying to yeah explain that it was a joke made i think nearly five years ago now and it's uh yeah it was really early on and it's still reaping dividends that's right it's still paying paying out like a time like a low yield long time bond is what it was a really wise investment it's like you're looking at one percent a year

but it's consistently paying out um i was walking past the uh ice cream shop that's like the number one on trip advisor in bristol this swoon since it's hot weather it always has a million people in and so about every time i walk past there's someone in the queue like recognizing me so hey but they don't want to like come out of the queue and actually say tiny penis because they're surrounded by people right so yeah i just usually make it by that so yeah you should have lied to them at the time and been like did you know that this is the worst rated ice cream place on trip advisor and you're standing in line for for this you could have really pranked them hard there yeah you could have got some got a better space in the queue yeah and then after they left you you take their spot,

and you're like, hell yeah. I don't think it is that good, but because it's number one on TripAdvisor, it gets packed by tourists, you know, the people who are coming to visit. And so there's always a queue all the way down the street. Anyway, I was walking past, and this morning, not this morning, yesterday, I was walking past,

and there was a guy there, and he started waving at me. And I was like, oh, OK. So I sort of waved back and sort of smiled and stuff, carried on walking. But he'd waved at me quite early. So I'm sort of approaching and approaching. And he sort of carried on waving and smiling at me. And I was like, OK, is this what's happening? And I didn't want to look behind. So I thought maybe he's maybe this one behind me. So I did. I look behind. there's another guy and he's waving and i was like it's one of these moments where i've just caught in the i got this big idea of myself that he recognized me and i built it all up and it was like it was i wasn't i was a little bit deflated and a little bit embarrassed because

it's one of those it happens all the time right when you're in the street and someone like nods your waves at you and says like looks at you in some way and you're like oh am i supposed to recognize them or do i know them or did i go to school with them or like you know yeah like do they recognize me from somewhere or something it's it's really kind of weird um to like to know what what they and you you can never like kind of be rude about it or like you always have to be like super super polite and i guess my go-to is just assuming that they're a fan even if it's just like so i just randomly wave at people in the street now um that are even closely looking at me funny you know i'm like oh hey i don't think it hurts like it's like how you do it to people and stuff no one somebody

drives by and they honk at you but they're not actually honking at you, they've honked at somebody else or whatever, I wave to them. Just in case. I just think, whatever. Right. I see. You might know them from nursery, or- They'll forget about it immediately. Have a tiny penis.

They might say, oh look, that guy waved. And then that's it. They'll never think about it again. I don't know, it stressed me out. There's no harm. To some extent, talking about forgetting forgetting stuff I've bought a diary or a journal like a paper journal

why don't you just use your phone well because you've got an app for everything and you buy a paper journal what the hell is wrong with you I wanted to just try writing stuff with my hands it's a kind of therapeutic mental thing people have been telling me it's a good thing to do.

And just to put your thoughts. So my journal is currently super fucking boring. It's like the most boring shit ever. What if they find it one day and you become like a sensation? You know, like. The diary of Louis Brindley. It's not only boring as fuck, but it's so personal to me. It's just me keeping notes of things.

It's like, oh, I watched this TV show today. It was boring. I played this game today. I didn't like it. I had a cheese sandwich for lunch or whatever. It's super dull. But it's almost like just for me to kind of get a snapshot of what my life is at this time. Why don't you just use Twitter like everyone else?

I think this is a nice idea, Lewis. I'm with you on this. It's quite sweet. You're on the internet all day. No, no, no, it's not. In my head when I was writing my first page, I was like, why don't I just do this digitally? Because then I could just control F and search for words. But here's why.

Because if you think about it, we spend, all three of us, spend all day on a computer or on our phone or, you know, on a fucking device of some kind. It's nice to take a break from that and do something, what do they call it? Not digital. Analog for a while. Like to just relax.

Writing something. I mean, I find it very stressful writing because it hurts my hand and my handwriting shit and i just think if i misspell something i could just fucking press backspace and type it again so man it is annoying it's not as convenient but i understand i surprisingly have a lot of time in the day when i'm not on a computer device but i think it's because my kids are still quite small and i have so many of them as well so it's a little bit different but yeah i don't know maybe like at some point i'll i could benefit from having a diary i don't know but like right now i just found like i was i think this year particularly has gone by so fast and that's partly because i have a pretty good routine you

know we do this every thursday i do the stream every monday i do recordings tuesday and wednesday and we play the pretty much similar game type with similar people it's all a bit revolving and stuff and to keep it fresh and exciting and i i enjoy it everything i do i think that's linked as well to why it's so fast but i think it's just i can't believe it's june you know and it's just so my our baby is almost a year old uh now which is uh insane it's gone so fast so i i'm i'm there with you i know how how you feel like this year especially has just gone by like a like a like a like a flash of light it's been crazy so my first entry i've i've actually left it at home but i was gonna i was read it out. But basically, I ordered this fucking diary on Amazon.

And of course... Is it an Amazon Basics diary? Yeah, it's like just a... No, it's like a moleskin journaler thing, right? Oh, okay. When it turned up... That poor mole. Moleskine or whatever it is.

Moleskine. It's probably Swedish. The fucking, it turned up and it looked like it was like a big one on the fucking Amazon page, but I got as always scammed. And it was like a fucking half A5, like A6, like tiny, this fucking tiny diary that fits into like a, smaller than my phone. And I'm like, I can't fucking write in this.

So like, I started writing like a journal entry in it about how i was worried this diary would be too small and i'd already like filled the page and i was like oh my god i'm gonna have to a stop waffling so much and b like i'm a waffler when i'm apparently writing as well like i'm just concerned that i'm gonna fill up this whole fucking anyway so i got a bigger one. But the bigger one has this mantra on the front of it, which says, never give up, don't ever stop. And I'm like, I'm not really... I think sometimes you should stop, you know? There's a lot of times in life when you should not take

these fucking buzzword-y self-help things to heart, because they're harmful. You know, they make you think that you're inferior or something. Do you know what it's like? They make you feel bad when you have a day off. It's like those people that go on the singing competition shows. And the moment you see them, you're like, this is a no. And the guy's like, I'm going to be a pop singer and write songs

and I'm going to be a superstar. I know it. It's what I've always wanted. I'm going to do it. And I write songs. I'm going to be a superstar. I know it. It's what I've always wanted. I'm going to do it. And I would like to sing for you now, please. Like in your own time. And they go, and I will always love you. And then they look at the judges like, I await your praise.

And they're like, I'm sorry. It's a no. It's like, what? I know I'm going to make it. I will never give up. It's like some artist somewhere who has made it that had talent and perhaps didn't find their breakthrough up until that point and then made it big is very different.

They're not just some guy that works in McDonald's that thinks he can sing. They can actually sing. They're just looking for their lucky break. There's a huge difference. If you have talent, if you are good at something you should never give up if it's not working out and everyone's saying to you this is not working out maybe you should give up have a think about it just entertain the idea of giving up that's all i'm saying we're not saying that you should give up i'm saying you should give up a lot of things you do learn gradually, and your progress might feel slow,

but if you compare it, if you keep a journal and see how bad you were a year ago, maybe the dream is closer. But I think that there is also an aspect of your friends and family will always tell you you're amazing. So sometimes that poor guy might well have had praise from every single person he sung that song to up until that point his mum and dad and sometimes that's okay uh also you know i think their standards are a bit higher on old um old x factor you know it's not well as

opposed to the other one um as opposed to the local bar. Teen Idol or whatever. I think he'd probably be a good karaoke singer. No, no, no. The guy can't sing. This is my point. He's just awful. Did you not hear my rendition of I Will Always Love You? I could listen to that in the bar.

That'd be fine. So Moleskine, just to go back. Well, Moleskine, uh 1997 that's when it was founded it feels like this really old prestige brand but it's 1997 just interesting 97 still a while back though i mean you're still 25 years a good couple years there yeah right but if it said moleskine or how it's pronounced since 1897 you'd be like oh yeah but then you know that they're about to go bust because that's it's too long to be around for you no you can't sustain about 20 episodes ago we listed all the oldest companies in the world some have been knocking about for a thousand years i know but

they're not they're not anything like they don't even resemble like what they started out as right and they're only around because of uh investors and and people who kind of like know what they're doing sort of propelling them along right i don't think i don't think moleskin is gonna survive moleskin is a heavy cotton fabric yeah right woven and sheared to create a short soft pile that mole pelts have been used in the past to make fur clothing but they are not referred to as moleskin um yeah so moleskin mole mole mole actual is similar to mole it ends up being similar to mole fur in a sense but it's just weird isn't it they call it moleskin because it does sound so awful i was uh i was

perusing in the pharmacy the other day i happened to be in the pharmacy and i was looking at a high quality loofah but i don't really know what that is and uh i thought the name would you use it for i don't know it looks like a towel like i don't i don't know it's it's one of those products that is is packaged so poorly that you just you're not really sure what it is that you're meant to do with it it looked like some sort of towel or like a face cloth or something but i don't know it's just so poorly that you just you're not really sure what it is that you're meant to do with it it looked like some sort of towel or like a face cloth or something but i don't know it's just called a loofah and it had a woman's face smiling holding it up against her face it's made it's a vegetable is it that is it the idea is that scrapey the back scratchy sponge thing to get

the dead skin off yeah yeah it looks soft though it looks really soft alufa is a vine it's like a it's a vine you dry it out and it's a it's a it's a it's a vine right it's like pumice stone is stone right like a sponge good sponge is actual sponge right like these are like vegetation or fauna or whatever you call them like that's what alufa is for some reason i thought sponges were bad like for the environment like the way they're harvested i don't know but maybe i just got that from somewhere somewhere because it doesn't seem like it would be like just growing like lufas on a tree that seems like fairly disposable right i guess maybe the plastic ones uh apparently the almonds are going that way now the uh the amount of almonds that are being um harvested and the way that they have to sustain this industry but because so much demand and stuff yeah not just that pet

they sound like some of the pesticides and stuff that they're using as well apparently it's um it's wreaking havoc on like bee colonies and all sorts yeah there's always something that we're doing that's that's wreaking havoc, but almonds are so delicious. Yeah, I know, but it's just the scale of everything, that's why, right? So, you know, the ancient Greeks and Romans used sea sponges tied to sticks as toilet paper. They washed their arse with a sea sponge.

That poor sea sponge. Yeah. I think it was dead. They chucked them back in the water afterwards. No. What happened to you, Frank? Oh, you wouldn't believe it, I i was sponging around by the shore i didn't think it was curry night last night some fucking greek lad stuck me up his ass i'm covered in shit i can't believe it yeah what a way oh man guess

what i've been playing this game this week just to talk about this you have you guys heard of the cones of dunshire uh i have okay so in relation to what so it was a joke on parks and rec right where adam uh invents a board game he's unemployed and um his girlfriend i can't amy poller's character comes back and um he's he's he's gone mad inventing this board game called the cones of dunshire which is like ridiculously complicated it's very it's very funny mrs f said that when she hears me talking about dota or or some arcane board game that i'm playing she's like this is getting a little bit cones of dunshire you know right um so it's like uh you know you must play as the provost but he can only move in the hinterlands

and he can deploy three bells using two resource cards and four trappists yeah that would be such a good name for like a legendary stripper as well though right the cone yeah she's like a fucking henry the eighth's favorite stripper bring me the cones deploy the cones but if you haven't played this card game called cultist simulator i'm sort of oddly intrigued by it, but my God, it's frustratingly arcane. You start the game, there's no indication of the rules or how things work. The descriptions on the cards are very arcane, and there's no hints, there's no help, there's no tutorial, there's nothing. And the point is, though, it's meant to be a game of discovery.

help there's no tutorial there's nothing and the point is though it's meant to be a game of discovery but it's like you you start off with a job card and work is the verb and then there's also dream and study there's like you drag a card into one of those things and it chunders away and does it's like a real-time card game like there's a timer on these things and it'll when it's finished it'll chuck out a card and or it'll chuck out two cards or it'll eat a card and then you'll get these random things like you are you know uh not tired but your reason is fatigued so the reason card now has fatigued and the eye is closed and you can't use it and then you get a an ailment card and you have to dream about health and maybe it'll relive it it's it's bonkers it's a very specific yeah you've seen it's crazy it's an interesting game mechanic we've seen things

like it before it's so hard to understand like i'm struggling so much and it'll be like for instance you'll get a card that says fascination and the fascination card will say if you deploy two glimmerings and use your erudition you may acquire a glimmering it's like what the fuck are you talking about like an urgency of appetite when combined with a grail card can lead to an erudition a lesson learned it's just it's too much like i'm really struggling to get into it well part of that is the the idea that you are supposed to not look up any guides because as soon as you do it completely ruins it and you realize how shallow it actually is right when these games part of the like with sun the sea or even like with elden ring like you know you have this big world that you're it's better not

to look at a map or a guide and you really have to focus you really have to work hard not to because i think we do get easily frustrated in these games i mean mean, even back in the day when playing point and clicks, like, my God, Sips, when you played Grim Fandango, you must have got stuck a couple of times. A couple of times, yeah. And had to look up something to get out of it. So here's my issue. I don't mind exploration in a game, and that's part of the game.

But when there is a mechanical element to the game, like a card game, that will punish you if you do something wrong, you would at least like to understand what went wrong. How did I fail? And the exploration, it takes a long time to play this game. You're sort of dragging cards around and there's timers going and stuff and it spits stuff out. And it didn't even tell me, for example, that when a thing pops up and there's an empty slot, I can click on that slot and it will highlight which cards might go in that slot and it will highlight which cards might go in that slot i didn't know about that for several hours when playing this game because

there's no hint so i'm dragging cards in there and it's booting them back onto my board it's dragging about i was just like what what is this i didn't enjoy i didn't like him he just checked his diary like day 53 played cultist simulator did not like it much. Here's a game I played. I played Stat Clans, which came out the other day. I played that. That's very similar. That is a really fun... It's very similar.

Is that why you played Cultist Simulator? Because it was like recommended similar game. Exactly. I noticed, I think it was yesterday, you were playing Hardspace Shipbreaker, which is released now, right? It's 1.0. Yeah, it's full release now.

But yeah, I played the Shipbreaker Hardspace or whatever it's called. Have you played it before? No. Oh, right? It's 1.0. Full release now. But yeah, I played the Shipbreaker hard space or whatever it's called. Have you played it before? No. Oh, right, okay. I wish I'd started it without Oxygen Limit on because that's just a frustrating thing. So I don't know if I have to start again now,

but it was okay. I think that the issue that I had with it was that it's just kind of like half the time I'm just farting about trying to drag objects around and get them into the right thing like it felt like less of a puzzle game and more like i'm slowly burning my way over to this bit of debris to hook it into this furnace and that's not a puzzle and it's not difficult it's just time consuming well it's all time limited so you have to you're you're you're trying to be efficient right like that's the puzzle is is is figuring out how it wasn't time limited though for me i was just

in space with a ship and i was just breaking it down there didn't seem to be a time limit oh normally um i guess depends on the mode that you're playing or whatever maybe i turned off time then uh can i shout out a game i got a to shout out a game called Patrick's Parabox. Look it up. Did you guys ever play Baba is You? No. I heard it's really good. The name annoyed me.

I'm sorry. I heard it's really good. Imagine Baba is You, but more. More Baba. More Baba and less you? Or more you as well. It's a really cool, very complicated, very deep. It's really clever.

It's really clever. That's really clever. So Patrick's Parabots. I wish I had said that. Yeah, no, I've added that. But the Baba is You, the name annoyed me so much I never played it. That's how petty I am. The whole point of the game is that's such a big element of the game, Baba is You.

A lot of the time you're pushing that and that together. Right, but it just annoyed me i'm just it's petty have you played um satisfactory before um flex i i've looked at those games that and factorio and stuff and they really don't look like my cup of tea no i've been playing a lot of satisfactory recently it's been nice like um i i haven't really done much with uh with trains before so So this time around, I'm just trying to make like a big logistics network with trains. And it's been pretty great, actually. It's really fun.

But I mean, I do like games like that, Factorio. Science Factory is an incredible game to just lose hours and hours. And it works great for streaming too. I think Hardspace works great for streaming too. Yeah, Hardspace is kind of nice. Factorio. I want to give, there's another game called Workers and Resources, Soviet Republic that I played a while back.

Again, it's a logistics distribution sort of thing. Less of like a city builder. just trying to create these little little towns for workers to work in to extract resources and stockpile them and export them or use them to to build stuff so it's a bit like open ttd but but set in like uh you know at the height of like the uh i'll check that out i love i love that stuff it looks it's a little bit janky but uh apparently like a lot of like it's been updated a lot and a lot of people are saying like even though graph like it's been updated a lot and a lot of people are saying like even though graphically it's not incredible and stuff like that the the systems are really really good satisfying and and uh it's just like it just turns into a really nice sort of like management uh logistics workers and oh here it is yeah yeah yeah. God, it's so grim. Yeah, it is.

It is, yeah. It looks like a kind of transport simulator with a capitalism thing on the top of it. Yeah, it is. Real-time Soviet-themed city-builder tycoon game. Yeah. Construct your own republic. Yeah.

Can you get fires and incidents like that? God, this looks bonkers. I think you can, yeah. I think there's all sorts of stuff that can happen that can happen but it's like i feel like it and from when i played it it plays a bit like tropico as well you know where you have to have like the right people like and and you have to assign the workers to like the right jobs and you can have these gigantic like uh communal farms and everything and uh you know trains trains to just haul all of the products and everything. So I like that.

I tried a game called Songs of Conquest. Do you remember Heroes of Might and Magic and those games? They were sort of early 2000s. Yeah. Maybe even late 90s. Not quite pixel art, but that was what graphics were like at the time. It looks very mighty magic although i've never played might and magic before it is very much like here i know like the look but

it's incredibly difficult and i follow the guy on twitter it's quite funny they they gave me a key um and i i played the game a bit off stream before the embargo lifted and then i went away to sweden so i couldn't play it on stream yeah it's very very hard very very hard and loads of people like when you get to mission four good fucking luck because it's like game over every time i was like jesus and the developer was like we're sorry that this level was so hard we thought people would be able to do it it's meant to be hard but we didn't realize how hard it was going to be and like it's just funny to me that this game has like been in development i've been in development for ages yeah and then something as simple as this mission is so hard that nobody can fucking beat it is it just slips into the release it's just i guess it happens that that does happen

sometimes they just have to like balance it out a bit or tone it down or whatever but if you're designing a game how do you decide like if you err on the side of this is going to be really difficult that can be successful like the elden ring and games like that but if you err on the side of let's not make it too difficult then it's too easy and the game is over so i think balancing the difficulty must be the hardest part of designing a game yeah um which you normally have people play testing to help you with that right right stuff before you release but if you don't have that luxury it would be would be fundamental to the the mechanics of the game so it would be very difficult i think you i think it's one of the more overlooked aspects of game design might be balancing the difficulty making it challenging

but fun which is the i have a take on this which is that I think the evolution is that difficulty breeds good reviews, right? Because no one is willing to leave a bad review that said this game was too hard. Because that makes them look like a pussy. Oh, man. Do you know what I mean? So everyone's got to be like, yeah, this game was rock hard. And I felt satisfied and joy. I felt strong when i beat it yeah uh

i'm genius i'm brilliant i'm gonna put that on my cv they're gonna they're not gonna know what i think it's longevity too right like i think i think just playing games like if it's if it's easy it's boring uh if it's too easy it's boring um and i don't think all games ramp up difficulty uh necessarily quickly enough sometimes um you know if you're just going through the motions and it's everything feels like you're on autopilot you're just mindlessly clicking because it's so piss easy that's not not not hugely fun um there's no challenge to overcome and that happens in a lot of games especially roguelikes too it's hard to balance those to get them to be not what about what about spot the difference um

games right they're quite weird that's quite a weird genre you've picked there well yeah and there's also hidden object games they're very how many are they popular i mean there's billions of them on yeah but i don't know if that makes them popular. There's billions of platformers, and they're amongst the least popular games there are. They're easy to make, which I suppose is a thing. Here's an unpopular game I just saw a news story about. Lord of the Rings Online. How many people do you think played Lord of the Rings Online in the last 30 days?

Oh, in the past 30 days? I have no idea, but I did play it when it came out. So the average number of players over the last 30 days is 1369 1369 yeah and that's obviously there's been something's happened because i'm just looking and i can't believe that that game is still going honestly yeah i mean in february 2020 there were in january 2020 there was an average of 516 people playing the game so they're so they must have one server now like they must have scaled back i guess i mean it says here that the most players i've ever had was january 2013 they didn't even have 2 000 people average no well the game didn't come out until like the game came out in like 2000 and 2012 really even when it just yeah even when it just came out it only

had an average of two and a half thousand i love lord of the rings i actually recently watched the m4 book edit of the hobbit um i really enjoyed it it's basically a guy like actually had the book open when he was editing the three lord of the ring the hobbit extended editions together with all the behind the scenes and there's quite a bit of extra footage that didn't even make it in the extended hobbit and was left in the behind the scenes so he's put some of that in to this one to make it actually like the book because obviously fuck fuck knows why they're just terrible films the hobbit films i think he had to make them contractually or something there was some some bullshit yeah the book had it actually you know it's pretty good

and there's another couple of edits out that i recommend but there's a huge fan base of lord rings i mean i remember playing this back when it came out i think you originally had to pay you know like an mmo you had to pay you had to pay a subscription fee then they made it free and then they made it free to play and then blah blah blah and the next thing you know they've even they've kept going keeping this game on live support for so long along because there is this hardcore fan base of and i think there's always people coming into the lord of the rings fandom you know um i think it's it's i don't think it's good but it's certainly of a universe that you can get a get a feel from uh get a feeling of being in the lord of the rings

world which is kind of what some people want you know some people just want more of the universe they love like mass effect you know some people just will play all of the shit mass effect games just because they're desperate for more of a massive they'll read the books you know but sometimes these universes just don't have enough content and i think lord of the rings is probably one of them you know when you look at like warhammer they've got absolutely reams of fucking books and and stuff and codexes and tomes and maps and lore. It's coming out of the fucking bleeding out of the walls, the content. But for some universes, you're lucky if you get a comic and a podcast and an audio. Yeah, looking at you, bad rats.

Where's the lore? Where's the podcasts and the cosplays? Anyway, I'm not surprised it's still going we better wrap this up because it's been a long one but we've got a lot to say so just let me say quickly

Dark Age of Camelot is still going wow no fucking way yeah and that was the first MMI ever played

has about 9000 players still playing wow what about Star Wars Galaxies that's that died no that's meant to be coming back though

I think they're they're talking about maybe officially bringing it back let's have a look because my mate that doesn't play games played that and he said that it was absolutely bonkers i think there are some like fan servers there's one for city of heroes as well oh my god so here's here's the daily live play account for 24th of may so two days ago the play account was 9 000 on what star wars galaxy there you go there's still people out there living the dream it's true man might have to dive back in i've played a lot of that but you know what it'll be 9 000 it's 9 000 9 000 jedis easily right yeah because you're playing that if you're playing that game in 2022, you are obsessed with it.

And probably you've been dry for content for like a decade. You are like a totally maxed out to the gills Jedi. And so is everyone else who plays on that. You would think so. Nobody is casually playing that game. Wait, there's no way people are still playing warhammer online we gotta stop we gotta stop this uh thank you everyone uh for listening we gotta stop it's too much it's too lewis lewis is too tempted to play all of these old dead mmos

please we want to play all of them at the same time yes please don't do that it's like you know well if you do wear a helmet stay safe take care everyone alright bye bye