Triforce! - Triforce! #232: Ones for the Mailbag

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

Triforce! Episode 232! We dunk on Alan Sugar's hideous opinions, Sips has some wonderful family holiday stories and we fulfill our promise of making this a gaming podcast by talking about fantastic ga...mes of old! We also have a ton of questions we want answers for in the mailbag! Go to http://expressvpn.com/triforce today and get an extra 3 months free on a 1-year package! Visit http://joinhoney.com/TRIFORCE to get Honey for free. 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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Starting point is 00:01:19 Where's eating a peanut bar? The sexual sounds of the rain falling above me in Bristol and sips nomming away at a fruit and nut bar probably or nutrient nutrient grain some some breakfast bar it's a peanut bar just peanuts wonderful stuff um last night i went to the pub and the the heavens opened and we all got absolutely soaked we were all say outside and i looked up at the table and it was like me lydia ravs like a bunch of others and um i was
Starting point is 00:01:51 like none of us smoke why are we outside because of course we follow the lead of harry and tom you know the the the trendsetters in the yorks they always yeah they're the cool guys so we all sit outside and of course they were not there we had one umbrella that barely covered like the table sort of six of us huddling under it and i just i said to ravs it'll stop in a minute in that british way did it and then and then it didn't no it got worse and it got harder yeah and it poured with rain and I staggered home, drenched about half past 10. But it was nice. It wasn't cold rain.
Starting point is 00:02:31 It was kind of just warm rain. Like a soaking, a fine soaking mist. You know those light rains where you're like, it's not raining that bad, but you get absolutely fucking drenched? Yeah, it was that. It's like a misty rain almost like i don't know heavy enough to refill our pints with you know it was it was or caused them that much distress either they went splashing everywhere you know but right it was it was heavy enough that we were the only people out there and i just felt like this was the most british thing
Starting point is 00:03:00 i'd done in a while uh because we watched we spent the time watching the evening we did like a premiere of the new master tasker which is the main channel taskmaster ripoff um i don't know if you've seen it p flex and yeah yeah watched it loved it thought it was great i would love to be on it one day it's just such a funny show so yeah did not watch it not in it don't care so rude just being honest just a rude dude it's a place for sips to be open and all the friends of his are in this show and made the show he's like i don't fucking care i'm not if i don't though i mean it's i can't help it sorry it's good it's got lydia ravs in it and um nice and the tommy tommy b and tom tommy c doing the original bubble boy sips you are just the bubble boy But you don't want to be outside the bubble But it's for the baby sick and fucking crying exactly
Starting point is 00:04:04 Nappies that's it exactly yeah don't get away from oh i don't want to be in the dirty nappies it's disgusting it is gross never going back to the bubble life thank god it's kept in the bubble i gotta keep it all in the bubble until you know when they're when when the baby's bigger i can i can finally venture out of the bubble and then i might care about taskmasters nah you ain't gonna do shit you're gonna live in that bubble forever oh oh i i jest though that sounds pretty cool no it was i should i should watch it it's a fun time and then we um he's still gonna fucking watch it i've started java we'll watch it don't worry uh it'll pop up on his recommended he can't i'm sure do not recommend channel is what he's gonna click that immediately well simpsons like this though he's a contrarian like he won't um he anything that's hyped or
Starting point is 00:04:53 anyone's talked about he will put off it he'll be like uh yeah well i've been burned many times i'm not even doing it just to be cool or anything i just i i just don't i just don't believe the hype yeah anything that's hyped at all sips is like i'm i'm not into it into it no he what he likes the underground good stuff i mean yes oh yeah no discovering your own things well i like to wait i like to wait to see what the the sort of like it's weird because i don't i don't generally believe the hype but then i'm fine to sort of uh believe a consensus you know like after after the fact like with cyberpunk everybody was super excited losing their minds for cyberpunk coming out and i was like okay you know it's i'll see
Starting point is 00:05:35 how it goes and then when it came out and everybody was upset that it wasn't didn't live up to their expectations or whatever and i still haven't played it because i haven't heard great things about it right but then other things have come out that were that were hyped or not hyped or whatever and people rave on about it uh and then uh you know if if if there's enough interest or you know people mention something to me that sounds interesting i'll i'll definitely check it out and then well sometimes the hype is is the response reason for its downfall right in many ways like a lot of times people are like oh this didn't live up to the hype and therefore i mean i'm gonna give it a negative review cyberpunk how the hell could it ever live up to the hype
Starting point is 00:06:13 like the hype around cyberpunk was just insane and i feel like i feel like it could have lived up to one-tenth of the hype that would have it could have yeah sure but uh it was never gonna be what people expected because I think people's expectations were just... True, but they also didn't help. Like, if you pitch it as being this grand thing and you show off all this stuff and say it's going to have this, it's going to have that, and then it doesn't,
Starting point is 00:06:36 that's kind of on you. Yeah, exactly, P-Flips. I think that was what people were upset about. They were sold this idea that it was something greater than what it was or some kind of revolution in gaming when really it was you know i remember um spore being like that too when spore was in development and then when it was released the the hype around that game was insane and it could not possibly ever remotely live up to i was so excited for that i got the game rushed home i couldn't wait to it. And I was like, what the fuck is this piece of shit?
Starting point is 00:07:07 Yeah, it was just a stripped down version of what they promised because they just couldn't do all the stuff that they wanted to do. And Will Wright actually left off the back of it too, didn't he? Or midway through. He was trying to do stuff and the publisher, the studio were just like, no, we can't do it we've got deadlines or whatever and he's like fine i'm out you know what you know what i think that would actually work nowadays as an early access title that they built stuff on yeah
Starting point is 00:07:34 because a game like that that's that because if i remember rightly you will you could literally the whole point was you could go from like a single celled little creature in a vault all the way up to like space battles like yeah that is incredibly grand plan shit and like holy god like as a pitch yeah that that sounds great but it's kind of those kind of games where they pitch it like that is like i remember a guy i knew told me about the game he was making and he he said to me it's going to be amazing i was like all right describe it to me then and he said uh all right but don't tell anyone because this is a great idea i was like okay his idea was this game he's like right so it's sort of like elite but then it also has ground battles like planet fall but it also has trading like a sort of trading game but it's also like an
Starting point is 00:08:22 empire builder and there's like city building within that empire and there's also politics are you about to say and recruitment and that game he was talking about was star citizen no and it was the guy's name chris is it chris roberts or or that guy the wing commander guy chris robber i call him because he's a thief. But no, it's literally, I was like, mate, you know how many people it's going to take to even begin to make this game? He goes, oh no, I've got these two coders. They're top guys.
Starting point is 00:08:53 I was like, all right, good luck, buddy. It's the Alan Sugar production. So these two guys are just laying on a couple of coders this week. Oh, man. I was reading something about alan sugar recently because i i don't i don't know much about him other than you know he's on the apprentice which i which i watch and uh i never really had any opinions on on alan sugar until he tweeted calling people who work from home scumbags who watch tv all day and now my my perception of that man has has whoa just
Starting point is 00:09:26 completely and utterly changed i think i think i think home working is the best and i think if you're against it you're dead to me he and his colleagues and everyone has suddenly did a big turnaround on the old energy crisis right because it costs a lot more for them to pay for everything at the office like one of the main i read this article on the money supermarket and it was like do you want to save money on your heat and electricity just go into the office more you know do your washing in the office okay cook your lunch in the office cook dinner in the office like yeah yeah use all their energy yeah so now what's happening is all these people are like oh actually well do you know what maybe if you stay at home um well you wouldn't cost us so much you're cheaper right and
Starting point is 00:10:05 so everyone is suddenly doing a 180 on this idea that we have to fucking you know what he also said in response to people saying that they would rather work from home and it's silly he goes well then i you should be paid less because it doesn't cost you as much to get into work as if right as if the only reason they pay us is so that we have enough money to have clothes and travel to get to our fucking jobs. He is an absolute piece of shit. I don't know how you can be that stupid and have made that much money. No, no, no. Here's the thing.
Starting point is 00:10:33 Alan should. I read his fucking autobiography. I do not like the man. I do not like the man. I do not respect him. No, he's a cunt in all caps. Right. 100%.
Starting point is 00:10:42 So I wanted to read the book to find out what he thought of himself and his own personal story this is a guy who basically got into electronics at the right time opened a store selling tat electronics and amstrad was always shit always shit nobody that bought amstrad product would be like it was top of the line no it was amstrad it was budget that was the whole angle that they were going for and he then got into business to business stuff with like set top boxes and all this kind of stuff with his business deals which is basically like a fucking dell boy irl dell boy with just like just somehow managed to integrate himself in because he offered it the cheapest you know it's
Starting point is 00:11:22 like you just i think at the time he was laying on big dues for his staff and stuff as well like did you think he laid on a nice spread of like uh buffets he might lay on one for all his fucking mistresses but he's an incredibly stingy uh businessman and everything is on a shoestring all i mean the the amstrad made set top boxes anybody who's ever had a shit set-top box, you can thank Alan Sugar, because they were literally, if you open them up, it's like the shittest build,
Starting point is 00:11:52 and all the quality of the circuitry and everything like that is dog. They break all the time. They're slow. They are garbage. And it's all because he'll do it for Tuppence Hate Me. That's it. He hasn't changed from being the guy that ran a market store selling stuff cheap
Starting point is 00:12:04 and trying to get it cheap and just selling tat. He has not changed. And he's managed to build this empire. But if you look at all these business ventures that he gets involved in on fucking dragons. A lot of them fail. They're terrible.
Starting point is 00:12:14 They're terrible ideas. And the kind of people that want to work for him, I don't understand it. I do not understand. Well, that's partly how he's got to where he is, though, by treating people like shit I think that that is his whole thing these people have no qualms
Starting point is 00:12:30 to produce shitty products and treat people shittily and make money doing it you know I think if you are how come I'm not filthy stinking rich I treat people like shit all the time what am I doing wrong I'm looking up at the sky the time what am i doing wrong i'm looking up at the sky right
Starting point is 00:12:46 now what am i doing wrong oh god twitch chat don't count you know torturing twitch chat with hours of fence building in planet zoo doesn't count oh i treat them mean and i keep them keen baby whoa but yeah no i'm not uh i'm not as rich as Alan Sugar, that's for sure. No, well. I could learn a thing or two from that guy. But no, I really did not like the insinuation that people who work from home are lazy and all they do is sit around and watch TV. The fact of the matter is that most of these jobs, there's not even enough work to do to fill a day. So if somebody's sitting around watching TV, that's your fault, right? Like you probably just have too many people or whatever. And if they're in an office,
Starting point is 00:13:34 that makes sense, right? Because you can look out over your little silo and be proud of yourself that you manage five or six people or whatever. And that's cool. But when they're all at home, and you can't see them, it doesn't feel as tangible right i also think the idea that people aren't working i mean i i'm kind of personally offended by this mrs f works from home quite often obviously worked from home all over lockdown everything like a lot of people out there did and if you want to tell me that she didn't work very hard and work long hours and do her job you can get fucked i'm actually seriously pissed off when when alan sugar and people like that joke around about people just sitting around watching tv in
Starting point is 00:14:10 their pajamas first of all who fucking gives a shit that you're wearing your fucking pajamas genuinely what fucking difference does it make to you lord sugar you cunt yeah but the thing is like having worked in an office some people turned up to the office in worse than pajamas in my opinion sometimes they look like fucking shit and then they sit around all day and do fuck all they just talk or they're browsing the internet or whatever so what's the fucking difference like it's ludicrous it's it's like it's it's it's like he's never worked from home before and also like he's never worked in an office before either like maybe he should just spend a day working in one of his fucking offices and he could realize that most people are useless assholes whether they work in an office or at home it doesn't matter you know what i mean yeah but he just seems to have no
Starting point is 00:14:56 fucking concept at all about how working life is which is which is odd as as someone who has employees oh yeah of course you do um i don't want i don't really know whether we do a good job with this at all like i i don't know i i my opinion is always the same as yours it's like if you're working for someone you should get away with doing the absolute bare minimum you can if if otherwise you know unless there's any kind of incentives right like we obviously have people with fairly like simple tasks i i guess mostly like you know they feel like they're they're they're they know what their goals are quite clearly i think it's very hard when you're in a job and like someone tells you oh just just uh just do some do something you know and you're like well what like i'll just uh file those follow those pieces of paper it's like okay i've done that now what and they're like oh um
Starting point is 00:15:52 just uh i'm going for lunch see ya it's like you know when you don't have proper like goals or proper management then that's the thing you get very disillusioned very quick because that's why the managers are pushing for people to work in the office because they can't do their fucking stupid shitty job any other way. They don't know how to do it. They do not know how to decide. Most of it is just stupid make work, right? Yeah. Like, which is not necessary.
Starting point is 00:16:17 Like, like I've worked in teams before, like on projects, like coding, like big projects, whatever. And there's deliverables and there's times where things need to be delivered. Right. And so the time where you're working on stuff, you just need to be left alone to get on with it so that you can actually deliver it on time. Right. Right. I mean, that's true of any office job.
Starting point is 00:16:35 Whether I'm sitting around in my, in, in a thong, uh, watching, you know, Maury Povich on the side and like, I'll do it. I'll deliver it on time. Like I'll probably deliver it early the father yeah you know what i mean though like it shouldn't fucking matter what's the difference if i'm doing that at home or if somebody is just bugging me all the time in the office like uh you know like hey you want to go for coffee hey you want to go for coffee hey uh did you have you sat in the bathroom for an hour today looking at your phone? You know, it's all the same shit, right? Like, I know
Starting point is 00:17:06 when I have to deliver the work and I'm gonna do it. But some jobs just aren't like that. There's just not enough work to do. I mean, there are some, like, call center jobs and stuff like that. I presume that they found a way to set all those up from home. But you, like, they monitor what calls you get. They record
Starting point is 00:17:23 calls, all that kind of shit. You could do that from home. But that's a volume job, though, right? It's like working at a till or serving people at, say, McDonald's or whatever. You know there's going to be customers. It's going to be busy almost all day, right? You're not going to really have time to do anything but your job. Especially because, dude, remember, i've worked in one of these
Starting point is 00:17:45 places i did i did a call center for exchange and mark magazine rest in peace exchange and mark magazine and the calls just come through like it just goes oh you're not on the phone right now don't worry about that it goes and just puts the call through to you so it's not yeah you don't have time so this is pillar one okay pillar one is clearly defined things to do. Because I fucking hate going to have, I fucking hated having a job where I went there and I didn't have anything to do. I didn't feel like I could contribute. And I felt like my ideas were ignored. You turn up
Starting point is 00:18:13 and there's nothing to do and somebody's like, oh, can you file this? Or, oh, can you just do this? And it's like, just send me home. You don't need me here. It's a waste of time. But also, I think within that, like, space to grow and change and put your own or in and make make a make a difference right and then that's why that leads on to part two feeling like i think you are part of a group or a team or and are rewarded for doing so like i
Starting point is 00:18:37 don't know if you guys know this but obviously we we do like a profit share with yogs so like like 10 of our um yearly profits or if if in in last year was about 20 percent goes to stuff right straight oh do i count as stuff yeah no no what the i quit but i'm gonna start you're not on the payroll you i'm gonna start a strike i'm gonna start a strike next time i'm there and you've got your own benefits i'm gonna pick it the offices start a strike next time i'm there and you've got your own benefits i'm gonna pick it the fucking oh my god but no one will join me i feel like that and then there obviously also has to be to some extent like a an independence factor where people know what they're doing without a manager i i don't like the idea of managers i think managers should be assistants to people who
Starting point is 00:19:22 are doing the job to help them get their job done rather than some cuts over the top of them telling them to get their job done right i don't think that's the role of a manager should be a proper manager should be helping everyone else to to do what they need to do and saying like how do we make you this better not you know do work harder you know idiot you know i think a lot of people like i've got and also i think you're completely right about people wanting to work differently and needing to some people have never wanted to come back in i saw tom hazel yesterday for the first time in months you know because he much enjoys working at home in his pants i assume um and sure and he all we've had
Starting point is 00:20:00 no problems with anyone working where they want at Yogs. And it's been really great. I think, like, for example, one of my friends, Dan, he works for the government defense. He works for the government in some sort of defense role. And he has to sit through these long meetings. And he's a really, really smart guy. And he's been doing it from home. And he's been doing great lately. But he has to sit through these incredibly long meetings.
Starting point is 00:20:24 Has he done a lot of good defense? Well, I don't really know what he does because he's very doing it from home and he's been doing great lately but he has to sit through his incredibly long meetings has he done a lot of good defense well well i don't really know what he does because he's very vague about it he's got to be a spy or he's um well i mean nothing's happened or he's just did a really boring office job one of the two anyway he's super smart guy but um he finds it so hard to pay attention in these long meetings right but what he's been doing lately is um well for the last sort of six couple of years actually since lockdown is he's been um painting warhammer models in the meetings but right i often find that when i do that like it shuts off so i'm always like listening to a podcast or something when i'm painting models he he finds that it actually
Starting point is 00:21:00 really helps him concentrate in meetings um when he's painting models in the background you know so he wouldn't be able to do that in an office atmosphere it obviously works for his personality which is a very detail-oriented very kind of um smart guy who also can just could get incredibly bored if you're just sat there fucking staring at a screen because i think other people would get distracted like it's probably happening in this podcast right now where you guys are both like browsing something else you know paying attention to thinking about something else and people listen to this podcast right now i'm just imagining your friend dan furiously um playing space invaders like defending the country while he's in this this meeting you know like uh like something like that that's what
Starting point is 00:21:44 i'm doing right now i just he's in some bunker somewhere you know, like something like that. That's what I'm doing right now. He's in some bunker somewhere just like shooting down all the ICBMs. Listening to the codes. I think like Warhammer though, painting Warhammer is an example of something which I'm sure I've talked about it before, but it's like this thing where you can, I used to do it in front of the telly and then I'd look up on like season three or whatever and I'd be like, oh my God, that's what that guy looks like and i obviously had never actually looked at him three seasons or something and so yeah it's it's a but i'd followed the story
Starting point is 00:22:15 like perfectly without being able to see it like a blind person watching the telly or something i don't know it was it was very i guess because a lot of tv is so basic right and so formulaic and so speaking of uh basic tv i started watching uh married at first sight uk season seven again that is very basic oh boy oh why am i doing this well i was thinking of talking about lord of the rings the new show yeah you go ahead can i say something just first of all i've got a question i don't know if you guys can answer it or if someone can answer it no is it like a technical question to do with your computer no uh if i ask the question it'll uh clear everything up okay because you guys might want to guess the question first though like go ahead okay is the
Starting point is 00:23:00 question related to some sort of ailment uh on your physical being um is the question related to some sort of ailment upon your physical being? No, no, no. Is the question related... Is it a diet question? No. A diet-related question? Is it to do with... Are you looking to acquire a piece of technology?
Starting point is 00:23:18 No. Would you like a clue? Is it... Yes, please. Is it spiritual in nature? No, it's not about me or something that I experienced. It's something that Mrs. F experienced. Is this a society
Starting point is 00:23:30 sort of question? Not a society question, but... Is it okay to fart loudly on a bus? No. Is it about Liz Truss? No. It's in the fields of the arts. The arts. is it a music
Starting point is 00:23:47 question it's not a music question is it any way related to adele no okay how about is it is it about actual art i you know art galleries it's about no i said the arts so you guys have gone straight to paintings the arts the arts so think think of the things that would would create your things yeah so think of something that no uh woodworking is it graphic design really no no is it website musical musical no but you're getting closer all right uh painting no how is that closer photography Lewis said is it a musical and I said you're getting closer it's to do with
Starting point is 00:24:31 the theatre well okay ask the question I don't know fuck all about the theatre well that's why I wanted to ask you here so that we gave a chance to the viewers to answer this question has now taken five minutes to ask. I was going to say,
Starting point is 00:24:49 I think it's the best part of this podcast so far. A few seconds to answer. She was at a play last night. It was Much Ado About Nothing. It's a Shakespeare's play. Yeah. And there's a line in it where one of the characters, I think it's Leonardo, says,
Starting point is 00:25:03 either I will be heard, must be heard or i shall be heard and when she said it several people in the audience said it at the same time and then the audience started clicking their fingers like maybe that it maybe that's just a really good poetry jam right but why is that line it was the only point in the play where they did it almost like it's a good line right it is it is a great line i'm not saying it's not but what has it been co-opted by what movement what group why are people saying that line aloud on that in the play um why the finger clicking not applauding but finger clicking where did that come from because i've been to see shakespeare a amount of time, and I've never seen anything like that.
Starting point is 00:25:45 And I've never heard of this. Yeah, it almost seems like maybe a protest thing or like a counterculture sort of thing. Well, I Googled it too. I must be heard or whatever the line is, and couldn't find anything about it. Couldn't find any references, articles, posts anywhere. So if you know why they
Starting point is 00:26:06 do it uh get in touch because i would really love to know that's a good question i wish that i uh was more cultured to be able to help out but i'm not i'm really really fucking dumb and basic i'm a simpleton sorry well do you have any questions do you want to throw out their sips to the mailbag listeners like you know um the mailbag do you i i don't know i don't think i really have like any any deep uh burning burning questions um i i mean i was on a vacation recently and um i should have come back with like you know a lot of deep thoughts and questions and stuff but man i was so tired i just when i got back i was like man i need a like a an actual vacation now to recover from my vacation from the vacation oh yeah yeah yeah um i can't remember i can't remember the stand-up who said it but there was a bit where he said that um he was trying to
Starting point is 00:27:02 describe a family road trip i think it was jerry seinfeld as a vacation and he said that he was trying to describe a family road trip. I think it was Jerry Seinfeld. As a vacation. And he said, once you strapped your kids into the back of the car, and you close their door, and then you take the long way around the car to get to the driver's side, that's your vacation. It's that five seconds where nobody asks you a question or interacts with you whatsoever after you've closed the door walked around the car and then gotten into so i saw
Starting point is 00:27:32 jerry seinfeld say that on an episode of comedians in cars getting coffee and he might have been referencing another comedian right okay like is it jim gaffigan maybe that might have said that but either way he was he was referencing it because he often says you know my favorite joke of yours is x oh yeah that no that i i just think that that's such a so good it's good because it's so true as well right and like oftentimes the those those jokes are are the best ones but yeah i thought that was great i love i love that kind of not observational comedy but almost it's like relatable yes but it's also it's such you i think that the genius of of some really good comedians is that it's something that we've all thought but they're the ones who put it in a funny way and said it i mean it's like i don't
Starting point is 00:28:16 even think you need to have had kids to no you can understand relate to that joke it's it's that i think that's part of what makes it so good too Yeah I think in that case That's two things you've just suggested Sips there One is favourite bit Let us know your favourite stand up bit Because that way we can leech off their humour And enjoy it And also
Starting point is 00:28:37 Because Jerry Seinfeld's doing that And no one calls him on it Let us know your favourite vacation spot for Sips To go on holiday what are your suggestions oh man don't suggest uh center parks and longleat because that's all that's the only place we ever seem to go with a six month old a six year old and a ten year old six month old man where the hell have you been she's like 14 months almost 14 geez time is she's walking she started walking while we were on vacation this year she's taken her
Starting point is 00:29:11 steps so fast yeah it's crazy can i just say i've started work on jingle jam again i've like i've dug out the old organizational spreadsheet and blown the dust off it and i'm like fuck me this is a lot of work hey listen can i tell you uh a story about pre-vacation and and another little one i think i told you guys over whatsapp about being barfed on on the on the ferry oh yeah which was not which was not pleasant but uh but listen listen to this one uh this is uh this is the night before we're leaving we had to catch the ferry the ferry left at nine o'clock in the morning. And because we had our car and everything, we had to turn up there quite early. So it was an early start.
Starting point is 00:29:51 We had to wake up at six to get ready, get the car fastened down and everything because we had like a roof rack. It was like a proper, you know, it was like a real Griswold moment. We got the car ready and everything. So my son, who's almost 11 now, is really excited to go on this trip. And he's like, what time are we waking up tomorrow?
Starting point is 00:30:12 Because he's at that age now where he's worried about timings on things and stuff. He didn't want to be late. He didn't want to miss the boat and stuff. So he's, what time do we have to wake up tomorrow? He said, well, we've got to wake up at like 6. But maybe if you want set your alarm for 5 45 you know quarter to six so you have like a little bit of a head start you have some more time to wake up and get your stuff ready whatever and he's like okay so got
Starting point is 00:30:33 this huge like uh alarm clock that we got him when he was really little to help him like learn how to tell the time and it has it's like really old. It has like the big metal ringers on the top, you know, like the big metal domes and stuff. Yeah. And it has like all these colorful, you know, minute, hour hands and stuff like that. It's like a comedy crowd alarm clock that you only see in like TV shows. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks like it would be around Flavor Flav's neck sort of thing. It's just like, it's just like it's just it's absurd
Starting point is 00:31:05 anyway so he's like I'll go get my clock so he comes down he's like okay 5 45 and he's like yeah 5 45 set your alarm so you wake up and we'll have more than enough time to to get there whatever okay all right great so he sets his alarm he takes it back upstairs he kind of like puts a bunch of toys in front of it and stuff he's got his toys all set up like on his shelf and everything whatever so we were like oh that's cute you know like we're going on vacation he's like he's super excited so he goes to bed the baby goes to bed my daughter is in bed uh we watched a bit of tv got some more stuff ready or whatever the clock strikes midnight and it sounds like a fucking fire alarm is going off in our house but like an old school
Starting point is 00:31:45 one like one that would you'd hear like at your school you know the metal ringing yes so he set his alarm clock for midnight of course so this thing is going off and it's so fucking loud like it is so fucking loud my wife turns to me she's like it's the fucking alarm. Like, go turn it off. You know, the baby's upstairs sleeping. My daughter's upstairs sleeping. So I run up so fast, get to the alarm clock. It's buried under all these fucking toys because he set it all up on his shelf or whatever. But there's no movement. Like, he's not moving.
Starting point is 00:32:20 Like, the baby's still asleep. My daughter's still asleep. I'm fumbling around with this alarm clock, turning it off, whatever'm like oh thank god okay turn it off and then it like clicked again and it was like threatening to go so I was like fumbling around with it a little bit more and then I noticed in the corner of my eye that my my son is like starting to stir is like oh shit I think it's like woken him up or whatever so I'm looking on the back of this thing trying to like make sure I turn it off or whatever I turn around my son my son is sitting up in bed like waving his arms like you know like those fucking uh you know those things outside like uh like a used car the wavy man he's like
Starting point is 00:32:57 that with the same smile on his face and everything like he's excited he thinks it's 5 45 in the morning oh and it's time to go on vacation. He's like, no, go back to bed. It's not time. You didn't set your alarm right. It's midnight. Go back to bed. Like, oh, fuck me.
Starting point is 00:33:13 It was so funny. Oh, my God. Nobody else woke up. Luckily, I got downstairs and I was crying from laughing for like 10 solid minutes. It was unbelievable. Fuck me. It was so funny. Oh, that's just just that fit the look on his face just the sheer he was asleep still though because i i told him about the next
Starting point is 00:33:32 day he's like i don't remember any of that like i don't remember i don't remember waking up or whatever so he's still asleep with this massive sleep yeah dreaming about waking up because that's a thing that you can very much do is uh in your you know dreaming about things you're excited about doing the next day and then you wake up and you're like oh shit i've still got to do them or the opposite yeah oh that's a great that's great it was funny it was good did you ever so yeah the other thing you texted us about was you got the ferry over for some obscure fucking reason with a baby. Well, we wanted to have our own car because we have the baby seat.
Starting point is 00:34:09 We had a lot of luggage. Like, we were gone for a full week. So, it was like, you know, we just wanted to make sure that we had, like, all the comforts. Like, we took, like, the baby's still, like, having, like, formula. Like, we're weaning her. So, it was good that we could take like our bottle maker and shit like that and it was just which we kind of needed but it meant that we had to take a ferry for four hours as well which was okay for the first couple of hours but once you get really
Starting point is 00:34:36 into the channel and the and and the water gets choppy man everybody was feeling it like except for me i don't get seasick somehow i get carsick but not seasick everybody else is not feeling too good and so i'm pacing around with the with the baby because she's like really unsettled and uh and then she just barfed everywhere like multiple times like it was all over me it was all over the floor uh some random dad from the boat just appeared out of nowhere with paper towels and was like wiping me down. I know, man, there really are some nice people out there. You tend to forget, but there are some decent people that still exist.
Starting point is 00:35:14 You just have to have a baby puke on you too. Did he lean into you while he was wiping the cirque off and say, I have a tiny penis? Oh, no. I got this. No, he did not. i got this no he did not um but on on that uh subject because i feel like uh like an old washed up youtuber and stuff you know like i've been around for a long time holy crap like multiple times per day every day i was away i bumped into people who recognize me like in in center parks and in and around center parks like longleat and stuff too it's crazy like i i don't know i i don't know
Starting point is 00:35:45 how but it just it still happens because like the the sort of big yogscast minecraft era was it was about 10 years ago now i guess i suppose when you guys were like blowing up youtube and first channel to get to a billion viewers in the uk and all this kind of stuff those people are now at the age where they're starting to have kids and go on these family holidays and stuff like that and so they're like oh shit it sips i wonder if it's that yeah maybe but um yeah i was surprised like it it's weird sometimes i'll go somewhere and nothing you know and you're just like oh whatever like i don't even think about it and then other times i'll go somewhere and it's constant. And this trip was like that. It was like every day.
Starting point is 00:36:26 Well, you did say you go there on holiday all the time. So maybe people book their holiday there. Maybe people know. Hoping to bump into you. Maybe they're trying to sync up, yeah? Jeez, honey, let's go to Center Parcs and buy T-shirts. Oh, God. I guess you are right.
Starting point is 00:36:41 Like, you don't know. Normally, it doesn't happen often enough for YouTube to think about it, right? But then occasionally someone will bump into me and say, oh, hi. And then I'll be like a little bit anxious for a couple of hours because. Yeah, because you're a little more aware of it. I'm a little bit more aware that people might recognize me, you know. And then I go back to normal, just I don't care again. You know, like sometimes, for example, like I'm just, I'm like wearing like a really dirty old track suit or something like this and
Starting point is 00:37:09 i'll go out and i'll go get the shopping and someone will recognize me i'll be like oh fuck like i didn't expect this i forgot that people might recognize me um i want to take a picture and i'm like oh no well i mean uh you know you get clocked in the uh subtropical swimming paradise changing room when you're in your bathing suit and you're letting it all hang out. That's what happens. That's an interesting one. Yeah. A couple of times. Subtropical paradise.
Starting point is 00:37:39 Subtropical swimming paradise. Yeah. In the UK. So, I mean, it's definitely yeah fully subtropical i mean the water's like uh 29 degrees constantly it's raining again here by the way holy it's rained every day for like a week now i know yeah we're owed it though pflax you know i know it's been a dry summer we had some thunderstorms uh this week and man we had a quick one yesterday and i think lightning actually struck like uh close to where we were in town it sounded like a bomb oh it's so loud yeah it was
Starting point is 00:38:11 immediate too you know sometimes you see the flash and then seconds later you'll hear the rumble this was just like all at the same time like immediately it was crazy but i uh i heard some um well when the uh when the lightning was was going on there was a bolt quite near us and then because I guess London's built up you know it's got a lot of big buildings around you could hear it echoing no word of a lie for about 30 seconds I was listening
Starting point is 00:38:36 you could hear that thunder rolling across the landscape and bouncing back from all these buildings and stuff like that because obviously London is fairly flat. There's not a big hill for it to get lost in. So it just kind of rebounds off and you can hear it coming back at you from miles around. It was like, holy shit.
Starting point is 00:38:54 It was very apocalyptic. Yeah, it's cool. I always worry, you know, I always stare at the lightning storm out the window and I always think, what if I got hit? Like, there's not that many things that are that tall around here. Question for anyone out there that knows anything about lightning. I want an expert here.
Starting point is 00:39:12 I want an actual guy who's called Lightning McGee or something like that. An expert, someone with a PhD or something. Does the lightning always hit the highest point or does it sometimes get lazy and go down a few feet? Because I'm at the top of the house.
Starting point is 00:39:27 Would it go, you know what? That guy will do. He's mostly water anyway. That sounds like a good idea. Better than just hitting the roof. So if the roof is not its first choice, will it come down and hit me in a window looking out? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:39:41 My only experience with any of this stuff is watching Rescue 911 with William Shatner as the host and somebody got struck by lightning while they were standing under a tree oh well but that's silly because
Starting point is 00:39:57 it hits the tree and then as it comes down the tree it blasts it splits the tree in half and spl as it comes down the tree it blasts and i think you can get cool right yeah it's the the tree in half and splinters it out right but that everybody knows surely not to stand under a tree in a thunderstorm i mean that's like one of the worst things you can do as i understand it well i think they just didn't have a choice i think they were just in a field and there happened to be a tree right so they naturally just went there for some shelter right but what i'm saying is don't do that no but i mean you just have to get wet right the answer
Starting point is 00:40:29 is not well i don't have a choice just don't go under the tree i mean you absolutely cannot i guess so but when you're in that situation i can see how it could happen so even knowing that you shouldn't you you would consider still doing well i don't think i would think about it that much if it was really pouring and i saw a tree i would just think oh there's probably i'm probably not going to get struck by lightning i'm just going to run and shelter under that tree no no no no no i think a lot of people get struck by lightning golfing yeah but you're holding a bit of metal when you're in the middle of the field when they hold the club up is is that what you mean no i don't think so i think it's more the fact that it's very very flat there's no trees and so you are the highest point even though you're just a little bit above the surface you see what i mean do you
Starting point is 00:41:15 think anybody's ever been on the green and they've held their club up in the air and it got struck by lightning and it supercharged them and they're like watch this boom like laser accuracy was it ever everybody's golf that old golf game where you could if you hit the ball with the timing just right the the club froze as it struck the ball and there was this huge power spike and like a big glowy thing and then it would shoot off the end of the club like a laser did your uh did your friend's dad ever have the PC game Lynx Golf? Yeah. Yeah, it's an old one. The best thing about it was that if you played a shot,
Starting point is 00:41:52 it had to load in the next point where you were playing from line by line on the screen. So it would load it in like loading in line by line by line because it couldn't just go, there's the screen. It was so complicated and the processing was so weak that it would have to load it in line by line. And if you turned, it had to redraw it. So it was so slow to play.
Starting point is 00:42:12 It was unbearable. Oh, man. Young man, if I could just slide my goiter to the other side so I can look you in the eye. Okay. I've heard about something called honey. Now, not the kind that these make, but another kind of honey. So do go ahead and tell me all about it, young man.
Starting point is 00:42:33 Would you please? Well, honey is a digital tool. It's free. It's free. You can just store it on your browser. Imagine you're shopping at one of your favorite sites. Yes. What would that be?
Starting point is 00:42:44 Oh, giantmegadildos.com. I love that one. browser uh imagine you're shopping at one of your favorite sites yes what would that be oh uh giant mega dildos.com that would be my favorite i call it the triple d it's donkey dick dildos.com well when you when you check out the honey button appears and all you have to do is click apply coupons a honey will automatically search for discounts and if it finds a working coupon, you will save money. I notice it every week, for real. I reckon I must have saved, like, at least 150 quid using Honey over the course of the last few months. So it definitely does work.
Starting point is 00:43:16 I recommend it. If you don't already have Honey, you could straight up be missing out, and you'll be doing yourself a solid and supporting the show by getting honey for free at join honey.com slash triforce join honey.com slash triforce forget about your old coupon book my coupon book you could use a digital version i love i stash it under my goiter god i hope you get better. Yeah. You should have that looked at. When we started doing this bit, I didn't have the goiter.
Starting point is 00:43:49 I didn't. Oh, man. When you use the bathroom, you always close the door behind you, right? Of course I do. You know what random passes by looking in on you well So why would you let people watch you when you're online? Gosh right you ever seen those bathrooms like in those those swanky Vegas hotels that have like the glass you can like look right into Them yeah, yeah instead if you press the button it will put a little frosting filter on and
Starting point is 00:44:22 That's what Expressvpn is like oh i see in there but no one will be able to see yeah what you're doing so all of a sudden it's like somebody's watching you but it's the sims and you've been uh censored out you've been you've been pixelated yes you've been pixelated up so uh if you're like me and believe that your online activity should stay private be your business you can secure yourself now with ExpressVPN.com slash Triforce today it's our exclusive link ExpressVPN.com slash Triforce you get an extra three months free you should definitely be using a VPN for all of your online browsing needs you can
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Starting point is 00:45:17 On with the show. My friend's dad had some pretty cool games. He had this one game called Castles. I don't know if you've ever heard of it um it had really cool music and you just had to get your your your men to build castle walls i know this game yeah yeah interplay 1991 1991 interplay what a classic game love this game he used to play a game called steel panthers which is is like a World War II tank. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:45:47 They keep making new ones. And Panzer Corps and all the rest of those. Yeah. They're like, it's a turn-based tile game. SSI used to make all of these games. That's right. Yeah. He used to play all of those. Proper war gaming.
Starting point is 00:45:58 Yeah. Loved it. Yeah. Yeah. He used to play this like Civil War one. I can't remember the name of it. Space Rangers. He used to play as well
Starting point is 00:46:05 with the civil war one i wonder if that would have been sid meyer's civil war game no it wasn't sid meyer's this was this would have been around the same time 90 91 yeah but he did have um colonization though and civ civ one he had but sid meyer made a lot of games in the 90s yeah and one of the ones he made was a civil war game yeah maybe then because that was microprose who i thought microprose yeah that's right right but microprose is still going no no they're still making games they might have been re-bought interplay published the first fallout game did they not was it interplay interplay were pretty big back in the uh in the early 90s but they they have also vanished so there was Sid Meier's Gettysburg which came out in 1997 yeah um so it could have been that yeah what is that American yeah yeah Gettysburg for
Starting point is 00:46:57 anyone out there who wants a really good Civil War game that's a lot of fun to play Ultimate General Civil War it is superb it is so much fun i've played it through multiple times i have 326 hours in this game i love it holy shit the original colonization was really nice to see my colonization we used to play that a lot but again it was my friend's dad who had it but right we just saw him playing it because he was one of those guys like he'd come home from work and he would kick us off the computer we used to play monkey island right day the tentacle and wing commander all those games but then when he got home from work he's like off so we had to get off and he would sit there smoking cigarettes playing all these war
Starting point is 00:47:39 games and stuff but because we were like you know nine ten year old kids we were obsessed we just wanted to get back on so we would sit there watching and play all these games waiting for him to finish up and you know go off and make dinner or whatever so that we could get back on so we would just watch him play fucking steel panthers the original let's plays we're watching someone else watching someone's dad play games what actual dads no yeah oh i was the same with my friends who were a bit older than me at school and you know i would go around and watch them play um x-com and sieve and colonization yeah yeah that's how i got into got into gaming the first place yes same as more pc like i i had consoles but pc gaming was when i was really interested in in gaming and
Starting point is 00:48:25 it was always from it was always other people's uh dads that had all these games and stuff right that we would just load up and play like one of my friends his dad had all the leisure suit larry games and we like we weren't really supposed to play them and i don't know if you remember the old leisure suit larry games but they had They had the age verification thing at the start, which was obscure, like, 50s and 60s references. About things like presidents and shit. Yes, yes. So you figure them all out, guess them.
Starting point is 00:48:55 It was like playing an old edition of Trivial Pursuit that your parents know all the answers to. And you're like, who the fuck is this guy? Yeah. But then from playing the Leisure Suit Larry games, we got into playing Space Quest, King's Quest. Like, it was... A lot of these games would lead into, like, other games
Starting point is 00:49:13 that we would try to pick up and play and stuff. Man, Wing Commander was really hype back in the day. It was fucking so good, man. Wing Commander 2 especially. Like, again, we were 10-year-old kids, so we would arrange, like... His mum had work from home office she was like uh she was a stay-at-home mom but she was also an accountant so during like the like you know tax time like april or whatever she would do uh she had like a home business sort of thing but so she had this office and but we had all these
Starting point is 00:49:43 chairs and stuff in it and we would arrange them like the cockpit of uh of like the the spaceship and we would like role play and pretend we were like ejecting and stuff like that fuck it was so much fun sure yeah well i mean we're like 10 right so wing commander wing commander of course to take us back to the start of this episode chris fucking robert yeah yeah yeah yeah wing commander it was a good one we used to play a lot of wing commander we we tried to get the one with mark hamill in it i think it was wing commander three or four the one that came out on cd-rom but man it would never work like there was all these driver issues and sometimes we'd get it working
Starting point is 00:50:22 and it would just be really choppy and stuff you'd have to have a different boot disk yes for certain games so you'd have to boot the system with this boot disk in because it allocated memory in the right way and loaded in this that and the other and you'd have to sometimes have special like you'd have to load in the drivers for your fucking keyboard and mouse and shit like that it was nuts man we loved all the uh the lucasarts point and click adventure games too like monkey island here's the thing i never i never got into point clicks because the issue i had is for a start it's a fixed game you play it one time and it's done and games were expensive for kids right it's like holy shit the other that was like he would get he would get that for christmas you know right
Starting point is 00:51:09 i remember he got monkey island 2 for christmas we were we were little kids but we were really excited too of course um and then for the whole christmas break every day i just go to his house and we just play play through monkey island 2 try to figure it out and stuff but that's the thing is essentially it all boils down to clicking on everything on the screen yeah attempting to use everything in your possession with everything else in your possession and using that with everything because some of the puzzles are so fucking bad man right game yeah the puzzles and the gameplay itself aren't great usually like the story is is is pretty bearable pretty funny there's some
Starting point is 00:51:45 funny jokes in there whatever but then but also it's like you know it's it's it just depends where you're at at the time like it's like subjective right like your age all that kind of stuff you know like that those are those are those are just like mega nostalgia for me because we we always look forward to new those kind of games coming out because we just work through them together and it was it was good fun. I remember the last one we got was The Dig. You remember that one? The Dig?
Starting point is 00:52:10 I think Spielberg had some part in it or whatever. I think he did, yeah. But we were like 17, 18 when it came out, I think. So it was like a little bit different. You know, like we were kids when the Monkey Island games were coming out. We were super excited for them. And we kind of tried to relive that excitement through the dig but we went to like a party and drank and i had
Starting point is 00:52:29 the dig like in my backpack we're like oh you want to go home and play the dig oh my god i guess so i'm kind of drunk all right let's go like you know it was it was all a little bit different but oh it's still still good times you know there's some great point and clicks these days they really are um yeah there's some news yeah there's there's there's been some some good ones there's a new monkey island coming out like next week 19th there's a brand new monkey island coming out by the by most of the team that made the original games so could be good could be bad who knows what wadjet eye games they make a couple of really got some good ones unavowed is one of my favorite games actually in the last few years i really really recommend it they're not like they're not like gamer games but they're just nice like experiences right you just you just fumble your way through them and it's just whatever you know it's it's kind of like a
Starting point is 00:53:19 a visual novel-y thing mixed with a bit of puzzle mixed with just like a bit of you know it's a game it's a game though right um and thimble thimbleweed park was another one that came out again and again but it's it's a one and done experience but it's still a good experience you guys if you guys um you know when when i think about the 90s and games i think there were so many games that they did they did the best they could with the technology that they had. Yeah. And they were amazing.
Starting point is 00:53:49 But when I think about sort of now, games are so much more like technically unbelievable. Yeah. But a lot of the ideas that they have came in that era, I think in the 90s when gaming really came to the fore. And this was before graphics cards really became a thing, because I feel that was towards the end of the 90s, the start of the 2000s. Monster 3D and all that kind of stuff
Starting point is 00:54:15 was towards the end of the 90s, for sure. There was a guy that worked at Valve. He was the guy that did the VR stuff. That was what I knew him for called Doug Church and Doug Church let me give you a list of the games that he worked on okay, Ultima Underworld and Ultima Underworld 2
Starting point is 00:54:33 which at the time, if you looked them up there was nothing like them, like any kind of 3D dungeon-y game, any kind of 3D fantasy game, this was like the start of all of that. And they were unbelievable for the time. Unbelievable.
Starting point is 00:54:48 And then he made System Shock, which was one of my favorite games of all time. That's a classic. I never played it, but it's still banded about as being like a huge hit. Have you played Prey? Yes, I did. I played Prey. I couldn't get into it. It didn't quite have the same claustrophobic terror the System Shock did.
Starting point is 00:55:10 They were going to call Prey, like, Neuro Shock or something like that instead, but Bethesda wanted it to be called Prey, and it did badly as a result. But no, I thought Prey was brilliant. I thought it was all right, yeah. A lot of people really rate Prey. I couldn't get into it. I just didn't really. He also did Terra Nova terra nova strike force centauri if you look it up it was basically like starship troopers the book but as
Starting point is 00:55:31 a game um and you flew around these giant suits and had to fucking blow shit up thief the dark project system shock 2 thief 2 deus ex deus ex invisible war and and then CSGO the guy worked on an unbelievable pantheon of games he's a really lovely guy but I just like holy shit those games seem so legendary to me and a lot of the things that they did if you try to go back and play them
Starting point is 00:55:59 we were talking about this the other day actually just me and the guys on my discord a lot of games when you get nostalgic for them you go back and you don't realize how much gaming has evolved in the last 20 years 30 years to just add shit in that you're like if you go back and play these older games you're like oh my god it's fucking no quick save no you know it's like what is that it's a lot of like the replayability feels limited too but at the time you would you would replay the shit out of these games because like you said they were expensive you didn't you didn't get
Starting point is 00:56:29 games on tap like you do now right like you could buy like you know 50 games in a day for like a pound each or whatever and this is the thing we are flooded but at the same time we have this wonderful indie seed going on where you can still get like a pretty shit basic game that is takes the world by storm like look at vampire survivors or some of this whole genre very quickly which is very old school in design yeah vampire you know it's already spawned tons oh man i love like little clones and stuff you know it's a two quid game but you know it's it's so playable um and so basic like so so there is still room for for creativity and originality i just i just think that a lot of the the time that is spent um and this is why i think a lot
Starting point is 00:57:21 of the times in indie scenes you see the most innovation. It's because if you're making a AAA game, the expectations that people have for the sound, the graphics, the length of the game, the campaign, means that you have to spend so much time and energy on that that you don't really have time to come up with new mechanics in games. And really original and new things. I mean, if you think about Half-Lifelife 2 that game was not developed in a hurry No It was like love and care and time and a lot of brilliant people working on it Given space and time to work I think a lot of the time games now the bigger they get the more of a rush there is to get them out because
Starting point is 00:58:00 It's yeah think how much money you have to spend just getting it all to look modern enough that people are gonna pay 60 quid for it or whatever. Yeah, it must be crushing. I mean cyberpunk we were talking about cyberpunk That's a that's a good example of a game that people wanted so much from it They promised all this stuff and I think when they got into it They realized that it's incredibly hard like having at what feels like a living city of that scale is almost impossible even now and by a major developer to be done well because it was terrible but the whole lead up to the game releasing with like the um the the work hours that people had to put in oh crazy all that kind of stuff it's just insane right like i just think but they're under a lot of pressure because it
Starting point is 00:58:43 costs a lot of money to to make the game just making it is million a lot of it is unlocked once the game is is is is out right like people get their money back when the game starts selling so there's there's always a lot of pressure all that to push something out out the door but something on that scale it's incredible that anything gets made like so don't you think that perhaps the desire that people have for an open world game like Cyberpunk, if you made it more on rails and just focused on it being
Starting point is 00:59:13 a really good single player game with good locations and good everything, you could actually deliver. Because if you look at Grand Theft Auto, it manages to deliver on an open world with missions and quests,
Starting point is 00:59:24 still has some bugs and stuff like that, but it delivers. And I feel like Red Dead Redemption 2 delivered. But I mean, GTA 5 and Red Dead 2 are big time outliers. Like they're both masterpieces. These games took five years to make by 500. But Cyberpunk cost a fortune as well. How long did Cyberpunk take? You're not wrong.
Starting point is 00:59:44 Cyberpunk did. But I think that Cyberpunk hadn't made a game. but cyberpunk cost a fortune as well how long did cyberpunk take you're not wrong cyberpunk did but i think that cyberpunk hadn't made a game i mean they had made the witcher 3 which was that a real masterpiece but i think they i think they just bit off more than they could chew even the witcher took took longer than they thought it would it didn't it wasn't perfect when it was released it took time to make it good and like it was real crunch heavy like they really the people who made it like said that oh my god they they almost died making that game yeah and almost i think those people were just like i'm not going to do that again um they're almost even though you're making it in poland um so it costs with So it cost $313 million to develop.
Starting point is 01:00:27 And it started in 2016. And it came out in 2021? Maybe 2020? So they spent all that money on it. I'm not trying to make excuses. No, no, no. They obviously... They must have had Alan Sugar in charge. Do you think he laid on a swanky booze cruise for all the devs that were working on it?
Starting point is 01:00:47 We laid on some borscht and some vodka for you. You guys are going to stay overnight. We'll finish this game. Have it wrapped up by morning. All right, let's do it. That was his bullshit management style. Fuck's sake. I just think if they reined in, rather than say it's going to do everything
Starting point is 01:01:05 you just reigned it in a bit and just said this is what it's going to be it's going to be a site set in the future it's going to be cyberpunk you know but but just just focus on making the expectations now are so high though especially from a big a big studio like if it's a triple a game with a big studio with lots of money behind it people want everything they want it all they're not going to settle for an early access here's the bare bones uh join us on our journey for the next 10 years while we get to release or whatever you know what i mean like it's right but if people will take that for certain things but not for something like if they made something like
Starting point is 01:01:45 half-life 3 right which i'm sure they never will but let's imagine if they did you wouldn't need it to be some vast open world thing where the way you affect one faction affects the game world all this kind of shit i think at its core people still want a single player experience that is fun to play through that is challenging i mean elden ring is a good example of that right it's a game that has a semi-open world and that you can go where you want but much of it is locked off to you you can't go there until you do this you can't go here until you do that it's divided into realms sure but the counterpoint to that is that say the half-life franchise for example you've got half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2 which are that
Starting point is 01:02:25 right they're really fine-tuned good single-player experiences right so for a franchise to uh evolve past that they'd have to add more stuff to 3 right otherwise it's just a really fucking good game more of the same yeah and it would be it would be a good game but but it wouldn't be as good as it could be, right? Because the idea is that the first one was good, it was a success. The second one was good, it was an enormous success. So the third one should be good and just an out-of-the-park success, right? With more bells and whistles. It has to grow.
Starting point is 01:03:03 But do you think that those bells and whistles automatically means it has to be open world? Because that's how we feel all these games go. It's not necessarily open world, but it would have to introduce some new stuff. Otherwise, it risks being just the same. And then it'll get reviewed as such as well. But my point is that if you scale up to promising the fucking moon and saying like oh it's all open world and there's cars and there's this and there's all this and you can't deliver on that there's no point because you're not going to have the time and energy to actually make the game good
Starting point is 01:03:35 yeah make the game good like design a really good game and then if you suddenly realize you know what we could expand this out a bit then i think think as part of your design, you could do that. But they set out for this grand thing and they never, there's no focus. Sometimes they set out for something and that just changes halfway through. You know,
Starting point is 01:03:54 like if you go back and you look at some of the great games, you know, the classic games, they started life as something completely different to what they ended up as. Because especially when something they started life as something completely different to what they ended up as because
Starting point is 01:04:05 especially especially when something takes a very long time to work uh on like say like five years or whatever your team could change you also you're you're also um dealing with designers who are designing a game at the start based on the stuff that they're playing and then that changes halfway through right so they might get up to a point with the system and they might be like this isn't going to be fun this isn't going to be engaging we didn't plan this out properly also i've been playing this game and it's awesome and we should crowbar this in somehow so it changes all throughout system what was that game that blizzard were making for years and then binned um they were making a point and click warcraft game at one point no it was like some
Starting point is 01:04:45 grand thing i can't i think it was meant to be it was overwatch in its first the the idea for overwatch originally was a big uh mmo like sim style life lifestyle but you were a superhero that went out and did missions at night or something like that but then you'd come back and just be a regular person during the day but the the scale and scope of it was enormous and then in the end they were just like oh let's just make a shooter like right it's i mean but that happens all the time it's that's not just a project that's not just a blizzard thing you know like starcraft ghost i mean i think when you're when you're a guy, when you're an Alan Sugar and you're like, I've got all these guys who are really smart.
Starting point is 01:05:28 They're going to make me a game. All right, make me a game. It's like, this doesn't really work like that in a sense. Like, it has to come from an idea. Some of the best games are from one guy's vision or one guy's clever plan, not necessarily something that a studio who've got coders lying around need to come up with.
Starting point is 01:05:46 You know, I feel like this is why game designers are a strange beast. You know, you have obviously people like Hideo Kojima who are famous for creating these weird ideas and weird things. He's almost like an auteur yeah like it's kind of bizarrely associated with the games he's made um and almost like people see that as some sort of seal of approval as well like certain people like ravs will only will play anything he's made because
Starting point is 01:06:18 or been involved with because he just finds it so genre breaking yeah you know you think you think sid meyers has holds that weight as well oh for sid meyers made it i'm in i'm buying it absolutely i think that he did and i think that it obviously changed as he changed and games changed and his his name got sold to a big faceless corporation kind of thing. I think that it's, it's, it's a thing that games, look,
Starting point is 01:06:50 I think there's so much, so much out there now, right? From story-based games to open world games to horror and short experiences, visual novels, porn games, whatever you want. There's something out there,
Starting point is 01:07:03 right? Like seems full of all of it. And, um, and I think that there's something out there, right? Like, Steam's full of all of it. And I think that there's a lot of genre crossovers. A lot of people try and do experimental stuff, and they get quite a long way down the road before they realize that it doesn't work. And that's really sad. And I think, in a sense, you know, nowadays,
Starting point is 01:07:22 with all of these Unity and all these engines, it's the thing that i'm told that is is something to do is fail quickly um if you're gonna make a game like just don't you know make a make a game jam demo and see if it see if it fucking sucks another thing or if it's great you want me to fail quickly i'll be i'm. If you look back at a lot of these big games that have come out, I remember reading about the guys that made Angry Birds, for example. I mean, whether you like it or not, it doesn't matter. It was, it's a big, it's now a big IP.
Starting point is 01:07:58 It was a big, big game, a mobile. They've got arcade games, movies, everything now, right? But these guys made like 30 games before that that right nowhere that did nothing they were just not good abandoned nobody was interested some of them were published they didn't sell you know i mean like they've got a whole raft of experiences behind them and then angry birds for whatever reason right place right time had the right ingredients, hit. And it was huge.
Starting point is 01:08:26 A lot of people, a lot of these big publishers now are publishing indie games with some sort of underground wing. Like Square Enix have done it, Frontier Paradox have got an indie wing where they've got people hunting for indie games. hunting for indie games and they well we'll put them under their you know under their expertise and their marketing and and also like almost under their reputation and these games that would otherwise have potentially just either not got any recognition at all or fallen by the wayside and now are now couched under these these these these guys but i think the problem is these studios have such high expectations when you look at companies like Frontier and Paradox. Paradox have
Starting point is 01:09:10 fucking every game. Stellaris, City Skylines, all these games have massive mega hits. They get incredibly disappointed when I would imagine when a game sells only 100,000 copies. But to an indie dev,
Starting point is 01:09:25 that's a massive success. Oh, hell yeah. But to Paradox, that's a failure. Yeah, yeah. You know, or to other games developed, not necessarily Paradox, but I can imagine that their mindset is definitely, like,
Starting point is 01:09:38 based on their previous titles, right? Yeah. And every game that Paradox has done, I think... At that size, though, performance matters, right? Because they have people investing. Big hit. titles right and every game that paradox has done i think at that size though your performance is it matters right because they have people investing big hit like constantly so they need to appeal to those people and they need to be able to turn around to them and say
Starting point is 01:09:54 well the last game we made sold this much so come on where's your money you know so if if they have disappointing sales that is a problem for sure, because people will lose faith and not want to do that. I just can't imagine being in charge of Angry Birds, right? Because Angry Birds was such a huge thing. And just trying to, or even like classically Minecraft, right? Like Notch, the idea that you have to create something else afterwards, or you have to follow it somehow. But in reality, you don't now. Like, look at someone like Terraria.
Starting point is 01:10:23 The dev of Terraria has done it is his name steve terraria his name god i should know because he's really famous bill terraria guy i mean there are there are devs who just they get the game it does well and they just stick with it um yeah well absolutely that's what terraria have done so it's it's been well the guy's doing that for 10 years i still i don't think he is now though i think he's moved on and i think the prison architect people yeah i think i don't think that happens as much as people think i think um i think when you when when you're somebody who likes to create uh games and stuff like that it runs its course right like the among us guys were like that too among us
Starting point is 01:11:02 funnily enough got popular three years after they just stopped development on it they released this game it didn't do too good or whatever but then found uh its popularity much later on i think just from people streaming it or whatever but now 100 there's it's it's huge now like it's it's maybe it's not huge on twitch but man go to a toy store there's fucking among us merch everywhere it's not huge on Twitch, but, man, go to a toy store. There's fucking Among Us merch everywhere. It's insane. Like, they must have made so much money off of it.
Starting point is 01:11:35 But even, like, even the devs are just like, well, we're past this. Right, right. It's great that it's become popular, but we've worked on, like, three other things since. You know, like, we don't want to work on this now. Understandably, too. You know, like, you're on to the new thing don't want to work on this now well understandably too you know like you're on to you're on to the new the new thing that you want to work it has to be driven by some degree of passion yeah right it has to because otherwise it's just not going to be very good like you have to have people you have to find if my advice to them would be
Starting point is 01:11:59 don't even bother trying to do it yourselves it would have been like get some people who are really passionate about the game find some devs who want to take up the mantle of making this game to the next yeah you know taking it to the next level making the improving it tweaking it adding new roles adding new maps like that's what i would have done yeah um and and do it quickly as well it's capitalized on the success but i think yeah at the end of the day it's up to them what they want to do it's their game well they're just a small team too like i think there's only three of them so it's like maybe they're happy with that i'm sure they are now yeah gosh i've got a lot of respect for for for the terraria guys though for their sort of attitude which has very much been like
Starting point is 01:12:37 you know you pay one price you get the game and you know we're gonna keep giving you free stuff you know all the all the way. I think Minecraft has definitely changed a lot since it's been bought. Now you can buy a Spider-Man costume pack and all this crap. I mean, it's definitely changed. My kids still play that game almost every day. Well, of course they do. Yeah, they love it.
Starting point is 01:13:01 And it's still a massive amount of popularity and focus and even more marketing now going into it than ever before would you say you know i've wondered this before is minecraft the greatest computer game ever made i don't know if it's the greatest but it's probably one of the most popular i would i mean i i would say it has to be the most popular yeah of all time and therefore surely you'd have to say it's the greatest game ever made i mean it's hard to quantify it really like given how little relatively it's changed since it came out i mean you can list all the the things you can now build and everything but the game looks the same and plays the same as it always has done as far as I can tell. It runs on pretty much any platform.
Starting point is 01:13:47 Little kids can play it and understand it and enjoy it and grew up with it. Honestly, it's not for me. I never really got into it. It's okay. But my kids, and I know that kids that played it and are now grown up,
Starting point is 01:14:02 I think it would be very hard for them to look at any other game for the rest of their lives and say that it had as much of an impact on them as minecraft did yeah so i think you have to say that it's a and me exactly literally the two guys i'm talking to the two guys i'm talking to could not point to another game and say yeah this podcast would not be none of it you know if it wasn't for minecraft for sure. No, you're right. So maybe it is the greatest game of all time. I think that's a good place to end. I'd welcome any suggestions otherwise.
Starting point is 01:14:29 I just feel like its reach, its impact, the number of people that have enjoyed it, the amount of joy it's given, especially to kids, I think you'd have to say
Starting point is 01:14:37 it's a crowning achievement in gaming, I think. Anyway. We talked a lot of shit at this podcast. It's good to chat. We don't do these gaming chat. We don't do these gaming chat.
Starting point is 01:14:45 We don't do these gaming chat podcasts very often. So it's nice to get it out of our system. Yeah, it is nice to get it out of your system for sure. I enjoyed that. Thanks, guys. Thanks very much. Good to see you. It's nice that the kids are back to school, man.
Starting point is 01:14:57 It just feels like life is back to normal. It's nice. I'm sure you feel the same way, Flax. You know, you get that routine back, which is kind of good. It's pouring with rain. I don't have much routine at the moment. I'm very you feel the same way, Flax. You get that routine back, which is kind of good. I don't have much routine at the moment. I'm very busy today. And tomorrow. A lot of stuff on my mind. A lot to do. Oh, man. Well, good luck.
Starting point is 01:15:14 We'll talk about it next week. See you soon. Peace. Bye.

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