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Episode 0: Reacquaintances
18 Plays1 month ago
The Back Seat Designers podcast is... well, back! Join SQH, Frederik Olsen, and Dr. Gareth Millward as they reconvene after 5 years of absence and reacquaint themselves with what they've been doing in the interim.
Originally published: Aug. 30, 2024
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Transcript
Introduction of 'Backseat Designers' Podcast
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Backseat Designers. It's a podcast, and you may be wondering what the hell you've just tuned into, and I will explain in due time, but first, let me introduce my two wonderful co-hosts. First, we have a man whose speech pattern sounds like a 45-RPM record played at 33 and a third RPM. Frederick Olson, say hello, Fred. Hell... Ah, fuck it, hello.
00:00:59
Speaker
And we also have a man whose soul ah mood state is that of mild disgust. We have Dr. Gareth Millwood. Say hello, Gareth.
00:01:10
Speaker
Hello.
00:01:13
Speaker
Yes. You sure weren't bluffing. Oh, yes. And I will just briefly explain because you may be listening to this and wondering what the hell you've just tuned
Evolution and Transition to YouTube
00:01:23
Speaker
into. A fact of the matter is we've actually been doing this podcast for quite a while. We started off way back when I was just getting started on YouTube. It used to be just me phoning up Frederick and we'd like literally recall record the phone call. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't. Yeah, that it's it's actually the 10th anniversary of the first season. Good Lord. Wow, really? 10 years? Yeah, that's that's frightening to think of, isn't it? And
00:01:54
Speaker
We did, we've we've done five seasons of this podcast, and ah at some point, I think it was season three or four, you'll have to remind me, we brought garrison because things were slowly starting to spiral out of control for me and Frederick. Yeah, I very much steadied the ship, I think. Yeah, it was three. um Yeah, yeah, we brought someone aboard who is not a raging alcoholic. I wasn't at that point. um i I don't know. season Season three got a bit dicey.
00:02:22
Speaker
was oh that was season two, wasn't it? Oh yeah, but but never go and listen to that. In fact, if you want to go and listen to previous seasons of this podcast, you can go to our youtube channel our old YouTube channel, youtube dot.com slash backseat designers, which we will now have renamed as the BSD Archive, because this podcast will henceforth be released on my YouTube channel, because in the interim, um my YouTube channel seems to have gotten some mildly positive response. so What is it? 100,000 subscribers, I believe you told everyone at the Adventure Game fandom. And why not? well so Just keep adding zeros, mate. Nobody's going to check.
00:03:04
Speaker
Yeah, 1 million. I have so many plaques. I've just swapped in them. If you do go back to the archive, I should probably say it was the 2010s. It was a different time. Yes, indeed. And and and that's
Podcast Relaunch and Personal Updates
00:03:18
Speaker
that's another thing. After we wrapped our fifth season, we took a five-year break. I'm not entirely sure why. Six years, actually. Six years. Oh, it said um the last video we uploaded said five years ago, but then YouTube is a massive liar. so I guess it's not entirely six years ago. No one no one's keeping count. No. Absolutely. We're young. That's what matters. We're It's always relative. We're just dumber, I think. Anyway, so the podcast format, as I said, started with just me phoning up Frederik and bitching for like an hour or so about random adventure game shit. Yeah, I enjoyed that.
00:03:57
Speaker
No, it was it was quite fun. Audio quality wasn't the best. but I didn't. And I'll say none of us enjoyed season two because that was when Frederick and I both drank heavily. And and then season three. I enjoyed that.
00:04:12
Speaker
Well, the the drinking happily part, yes, but it didn't make for fantastic content. um But then we brought on and the English patients and he sort of brought us all back down to earth. And then we started bringing on guests. We've had the immense pleasure of having Dave Gilbert on a few times. We've interviewed Tex Murphy himself, Chris Jones. we got great We got schooled hard on classic adventure games like mainframe adventure games. by none other than john Romero. That was wild. It's preferences being blasted in the face with a super shotgun. Which he also would have done given the opportunity. um So that's basically the the format has sort of gone back and forth a bit. it's But the the overall premise of the podcast, at least in its inception, was that we were two, then three, completely unqualified
00:05:11
Speaker
people who would give advice to adventure game designers on how they should do their games. Which Dave Gilbert loves, by the way. Yes, yeah um and and and and that is no exaggeration. I've done a few Adventure Jam games.
Return to Freeform Format and Personal Life
00:05:30
Speaker
Frederick was one of many project leaders on Space Quest Vohal Strikes Back, and Gareth wrote some text and dialogue for Stair Quest. But other than that, we really have no credits to speak of in ah the gaming sphere as such. We are the we aren't the backseat designers, which is worth it. title comes from. You're our name. Yes, yes, we'll remember that. um So honestly, but this is us getting back together after like half a decade's interim and just seeing where shit takes us. We don't have any guests lined up. We don't have a plan. We really have nothing. like So I'll just I'll just shoot the ball over to whoever wants to talk first. What have you guys been up to these past five or six years?
00:06:21
Speaker
Well, I think I should say before we start, if we end up jumping over each other or talking absolute nonsense is because the two of us haven't had that many or the two of us, the three of us, I can count, haven't had too much opportunity to actually talk to each other for quite a long time. So this is, I don't know, a group therapy session as much as it is in massive scare quotes, entertainment. yeah I mean, the the great thing about that is that um I think the the major curveball here is that for the first time we are actually all three of us finding ourselves in the same country. Rarely have we seen less of each other than since Gareth immigrated to Denmark and I moved to Zealand and I live approximately
00:07:04
Speaker
I would say 10 to 15 kilometers from utrals. And I've seen this guy like once in the past a couple of years. Yeah, it's just amazing. We are all like within spitting distance of each other. There's and like an hour's train ride to where Garris lives. And I could comfortably take like 30 minutes of train ride to meet up with Frederick. And it has never occurred. Well, it has occurred to us, but it's never actually yeah Materialized that we should all get in the same room. We are recording this online We we simply cannot stand the sight of each other. I think you know, we have to do like a coin toss to figure out who who had the most stuff happen to them in the interim I mean I can start not terribly long after the last episode that we did together I got married at that point my um
00:07:54
Speaker
My wife-to-be was pregnant with our first son and we enjoyed his company so much. We decided to have a second one. That's the wrong order. That's the wrong order. It was marriage by gunshot. The wrong gun point, I should say. She blew up your kneecaps.
00:08:09
Speaker
I don't, don't bring John Romero into this. I don't subscribe to that. John Romero was at the wedding holding a shotgun too. um But yeah, anyway, we yeah we had two kids got married. um And, you know, it's been blissful family man life ever since, basically. But there was always this thing missing. So I'm very, very happy that we finally managed to get this together. In spite of of the ah of the terrible odds that we seem to be having.
00:08:45
Speaker
i love i love the I love how how Frederick is like getting all warm and fuzzy on us and Gareth just starts pissing himself with laughter. I'm like, well, I've missed you guys. ha That was classic dry Danish humour of, oh yeah, I've had a wife and a kids, but what I really missed.
00:09:02
Speaker
but was talking to you. but that was That was a very coded fuck you, but I am here for it. Absolutely. So Gareth, other than leaving your home country behind, what have you been up to? God, yeah. Well, I think that's the big thing, isn't it? i've um Oh, there was this thing. Did you have this where nobody could leave the house for two years?
00:09:24
Speaker
Oh, that's right. Well, RPM didn't host parties or orgies. So no, we had a very, we had a, we had a slightly more civilized variation of the thing. Yes. Our prime minister Caligula.
00:09:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, we won't get into British politics because there's there's no need for that. But yes, I emigrated. I have moved to Denmark. I now know that your names are not pronounced anything like how I was pronouncing your names before. But I have absolutely no intention of pronouncing them properly. And yeah, I'm i'm living in a lovely little town called Ulunse.
00:10:01
Speaker
And I am learning how to swallow every single consonant I ever come into contact
Recent Gaming Experiences and Inspirations
00:10:06
Speaker
with. It's lovely. It's lovely. Yes, that is indeed how our language works. And also the R's sort of sit in the back of the throat, like Klingon.
00:10:16
Speaker
Yeah. So, um I still can't get over the fact that it's Frerich. It just does not stick. That was actually very, very nice. good You just broke your promise like 30 seconds after me. I did, actually. That's true. That's true. Well, you know, my yeah my my my Danish my danish tu tutor, Bettina, has drilled into me how to get your R's and your G's in the right area.
00:10:43
Speaker
I would say conch. Oh, that's close enough. I'm sorry. Wait, I was just like, okay, by my my language teacher, Bettina has drilled into my ass. To be fair, I almost lost it when you talked about swallowing the arse. I have to swallow so much in this country. it is It is unbelievable. Yeah, you don't want to go through customs ever. Jaina was worse, but yes.
00:11:13
Speaker
Because my my first Danish teacher was Jena, and she had to she had to just sit me down and and explain how to pronounce the Danish word for German, because I was doing some weird things with those vowels that really did not did not have to happen. But anyway, I'm going to go with further controls. That sounds lovely. And and and have you have you played any games in in that period of time?
00:11:39
Speaker
I have played a few. I was trying to think about it because I thought I thought you'd ask a question like that. Thank you very much. I. um Yeah, I mean, I've got it's been a while. So there was um ah there was stray. Did any of you play stray, the one where you're a cat? Oh, no, i've I've heard of it. i've I've seen it. It looks very nice. I love cats. I enjoyed that one immensely.
00:12:03
Speaker
Well, I mean, the the the big elephant in the corner of the room and, you know, what kind of puts into perspective that it's been ages is that while we've been sitting on our asses waiting to do some variation upon this podcast, again, we had a new Monkey Island game, which I thought was absolutely amazing, but also i think kind of like, wow, you know, I never saw that coming and certainly not Ron Gilbert in the lead designer position.
00:12:30
Speaker
Oh, that was amazing. And I have not actually played it yet. I've been savoring the opportunity to do so because um I want to do like a full retrospective of the Monkey Island series at some point on on my channel, which is going to be a hell of a time once I get to escape from Monkey Island. So I'm kind of savoring that spoiler. Guybrush Freewood is a woman. Oh, God, you had to go there.
00:12:56
Speaker
but Bringing back all the old memes. but yeah Yes, yeah, you don't need to be reminded of some things actually i've played a few games, uh by uh, the glorious francesco, uh, gonsa francesco francesco He's italian now and Francisco Gonzalez. I have i actually forgot to mention if if I may interject, one of the things that I did ah when I married, because my wife is from Uruguay, been living in Denmark for more than three decades, but she was ah born in in Uruguay, um is that I decided to get a middle name. So I am actually also a Gonzalez now, though a much less talented one.
00:13:45
Speaker
ah But really, enjoy really, really enjoyed Shardlight and have recommended it to several historians of medicine as a good ah example of a narrative based around medicine. That's that's that's Shardlight with a D. Yes, yes, not sure.
00:14:06
Speaker
Do you guys know I actually had a bit part in Shardlight? You'll never guess which character I played. Were you the fetus? Oh, yeah, you do you do a scream or something, right? Yeah, I'm the i'm the guard who gets stabbed in the gut and then has his head cut off. Lovely. So my my my lines are literally just and are, but I'm in, I'm in Shardlight.
00:14:29
Speaker
and and And thank you for recreating it here. That that was that was lovely. Oh, thank you. I did several tics. I and really got into the mindset of the character. Absolutely. Professionalism. Well, you've got to give them options. I was also in Light City.
00:14:45
Speaker
But that's that one's even more obscure. We were actually all in in Lamplight City, at least visually. I'm there and I know Gareth is there. and And you're there too, actually, a picture taken
Adventure Gaming Revival and Influence
00:14:56
Speaker
at my old apartment. Oh, that's right. That's right. We're one of the portraits hanging in one of the houses, I think.
00:15:03
Speaker
But I don't know if I've ever told anyone, ah and I don't know if Francisco wants me to tell them, but he needed like a crowd noise of drunks in in one of his scenes. just So he came to this podcast. so Yeah, well, he should have been there for season two. No, but he needed like a big like a big group of like people stumbling around and such. I'm one of those, but I'm sort of buried in this big miasma of vomiting.
00:15:30
Speaker
Well, he's a lovely fellow. Sorry, we got your name wrong, Francisco. francesca i work I work with a guy called Francesco, and I have clearly, I can only hold one language in my head at a time. And otherwise, I just go off in random directions. So I do apologize. i'm i'm I'm just grateful that none of you picked up when when Gary said, Oh, he's Italian. Now I went Buenos dias, which is not Italian.
00:15:57
Speaker
ah moving swiftly on ah Frederick you already mentioned return to Monkey Island what else have you been playing if anything I actually have you know ah memories of sitting down and playing on a vowed when that came out otherwise I haven't actually got a round terribly much to adventure games. um chiel i think Yeah, I think when I became a dad, it became very, very hard to sit down and do like immersive gaming, which is sort of a you know requirement for me to get into an adventure game. So
00:16:32
Speaker
I decided to usually plop down in front of the Xbox at night and shoot shit, you know, Doom, Quake. There have been some excellent remasters coming out on the FPS front recently, and I really hope it'll extend to adventure games at some point. um But, you know, that's mainly what I've been doing. Recently, I did decide to try to to replay the Space Quest series chronologically.
00:16:55
Speaker
kind of stuck at the moment, but it's it's it's very, very nice to kind of take a trip back and see, okay, what did I miss? um What didn't I appreciate about these games that I do appreciate phenomenally ah to begin with? um But I think As we you know we'll wind up going along with this podcast, it's kind of going to reinvigorate my interest and in adventure games ah anyway. you know i've i've been I consider myself as having been out of it. and then
00:17:26
Speaker
adventure X last year, where I went with with trolls, among others, sadly, Gareth was not able to join was also just great, you know, that was kind of like, we're, we're back, you know, not in this way in front of the microphone, we're back, but it felt like recapturing something that kind of got lost for me back in 2018, so that was great. Yeah, I completely agree. it's Whenever one goes to one of these conventions, Adventure X especially, it's it's like, oh, now I can breathe, I'm i'm with my people again.
00:18:03
Speaker
Yeah and you know on that subject real talk because you know I wanted to mention this but um I don't think it's any secret that I've been pushing very very hard for reviving this podcast over the past couple of months because I had a you know an epiphany at Adventrix no less.
Personal and Professional Project Updates
00:18:24
Speaker
What basically happened was you know as as happens during these sort of things, your social meter kind of overflows at one point and you go and sit down in a corner and go to yourself and gear up for the next couple of hours. And I found that happening to me and suddenly I'm joined by this guy called Matt Latham who
00:18:47
Speaker
introduces himself as a podcaster. He runs a podcast called Ask Us About Loom. ah Apparently, at this point in time, anyway, the man had not actually played Loom. So, you know, that's a good naming choice. that's um That's an even worse choice than ours. But we talked a bit back and forth. And you know, I went, oh, I used to do an adventure game podcast with a couple of other guys. And he actually goes, backseat designers, right? And you know, I'm like, what?
00:19:15
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I was listening a lot to you guys before I started. No one was actually doing this at that point. So you guys were a huge inspiration. ah you know okay People don't approach me with that kind of talk in general. Nothing I do in life tends to inspire anyone. so ah We'll be sure to play your your son this recording. yeah at some to point in the future. Sun's plural, please. Yes. So anyway, we are joined by a third guy who, um who had actually been one of the panel hosts earlier that day. There was a panel with them Tony Warren and Dave Gilbert were on it. I can't remember who else was, but one of the big panels with notable people on only Francisco, but who cares? Possibly now, Francesco, Francesco.
00:20:07
Speaker
And this guy who was hosting it. I write at the games. ah Also, yeah yeah, and you complain about names. ah Also does an adventure game podcast ah called the adventure games podcast. So, you know, even if we wanted to rebrand this as something else, the best name has kind of been taken now. And he basically said the same thing. This guy who just hosted this panel with a bunch of legends and Francisco um ah exactly the same thing. Oh, you guys were great. It was actually very funny. No one else was doing this. It was a huge inspiration. And I'm like, okay, well, thank you my social meters overflowing again, as I pick my jar ah off the floor and excuse myself, because now I've got to find trolls. ah So I, ah you know,
00:20:57
Speaker
Fortunately, Trolls is a very easy man to spot being 70 meters tall, yeah so I very, very quickly descend upon him and and and tell him all of this. First thing out of his mouth is... Descend? Wait, did you like drop from the rafters or something? Because I can't remember that. I wish. First thing that comes out of Trolls' mouth is don't let it go to your head.
00:21:20
Speaker
wasn't really I just thought it was ah it was amazing but you know I'm not getting a big head over it or anything I don't know why I said then what happens is that I spot Charles Cecil and I've always regretted not actually meeting Charles Cecil at at one point at adventure X I think it
Nostalgia and Revival of Classic Games
00:21:39
Speaker
was 17. I was standing on the stairs and Charles Cecil was immediately in front of me. And I'm so nervous that I, you know, that head on the back, and finger on the shoulder, couldn't do it. I couldn't actually say hello to Charles Cecil. So this time I decided to rectify that. And but at at least you didn't do what Bettina does to, to Gareth. There's no, there's no G's or R's.
00:22:04
Speaker
that finger could have gone anywhere there were no arses or or drilling or any sort of thing um but you know we i introduce myself to charles i should do there's no need for him to introduce himself so we've got that over with uh and yeah he remembered the podcast and the first thing out of it we did an interview with charles at one point yeah we did an interview with charles and there are many many interesting things coming out of people's mouths at this point if you uh if you haven't noticed ah Because Charles says, oh, are you going to invite me back on? And, you know, fuck the thing about not letting it go to my head. It's going to both heads. So that's where the monolithic direction. And I just realized we've got to get this started somehow because it seems that in spite of what we may have thought at that point,
00:22:56
Speaker
the original run, which was that we were mainly doing it for our own enjoyment, which was certainly a big part of it for me. in In spite of that idea, it seems that people actually enjoyed it and people actually got something out of it. I've had a few similar experiences where um at the very first Adventure X I i attended i met a game designer called Joel Meyer, who who went, oh, I listened to your special with um with Sean Mills and and da you know the one with Dave Gilbert and that really inspired me. Also, I love how you kept taking the piss out of Sean and his bundles. Let me be clear, that's never going in a bundle. Which it was shortly thereafter.
00:23:44
Speaker
and yeah I also love just a quick introduction that apparently several people independently told you that, oh, you're a great inspiration because no one had ever done this before. but There was a podcast with Francisco Gonzalez and Ben Chandler called the Blue Cup Tools podcast, which did exactly the same as Well, I think the difference is that they're actually qualified to do it. Whereas this is all about our opinions. You may take them, you may leave them. We don't really care. It's about us shooting shit about adventure games. Like you mentioned earlier, we have no qualifications to be doing this. true And I think that's what people found charming. It was a bunch of adventure gamers just talking adventure games for the fun of it.
00:24:27
Speaker
and And that's probably what those guys meant when they said no one was doing it. Because, yeah, you're right. Our primary inspiration at the time, or yours at least, was Bluecup Tools. I mean, that's that's high praise. Thank you. Thank you if anyone is listening to this who ah descended upon Frederick from the rafters to to say these things. and Lots of drilling, lots of descending metaphors. Lots of prostate exams.
00:24:52
Speaker
What I will say is if you can get hold of blue cup tools do, um it's brilliant for just hearing people's thought process as they try to go through a project. So if you've got any kind of project in your life of any kind whatsoever, I found it really, really helpful when I was doing my PhD and and later kind of research projects, just hear people talking about being creative, trying to find new ways of doing things, constantly learning new skills and just spending time with friends. It was a great podcast. I hope they they continue to revive it. Every now and again, the feed will just update. it's like oh
00:25:29
Speaker
ben Ben and Francisco are back. And that's always it that's always a nice feeling. and And there have been many adventure game podcasts since then. It's all inspired by us, I'm sure. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're the OGs, yeah. Oh, absolutely. um I mean, Pushing Up Roses has a podcast called Save Your Game about adventure games. That's a good title. And I'm sure there are others. ah yeah so it's So it's kind of like it has a resurgence. I will, however, quickly.
00:25:58
Speaker
reassure everyone. It's not because we feel like we're being pressured into competition competition or anything, which is this has been ongoing for a long time. As as Frederick said, and he's been pushing us real hard the way Bettina pushes Garrett's prostate. um I'm sorry, I'm not going to let that go. um so So this has been a long time coming. in them and And as you've probably picked up by now,
00:26:24
Speaker
ah We really didn't have a plan going into this inaugural episode, this episode zero, as we call it. This is literally just us reminding each other of what we've been up to. And for future episodes, I would assume we would have some sort of concrete topic to discuss or perhaps even have a guest on.
Proliferation of Adventure Games and Distribution
00:26:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah we did ask what you were doing. What are you doing, Tols? What's happened to you in the past five years? You've had a kid. Yeah. And that's about it, really.
00:26:53
Speaker
ah not I've been having fun. um with with and The channel people are probably listening to this on perhaps ah has steadily risen in infamy and I've been invited to a few conferences or or events and such and got to hop up with a few adventure game legends, which I won't brag too much about. Oh, I think you should brag. I think you've owned the right to brag. I just bragged. You can brag. Well, it's it's it's all been fairly well documented on my channel anyway, because I i have no
00:27:30
Speaker
filter when it comes to senseless bragging. um And we should probably also mention that I joined your band because you started a game music band with John Paul Sapsford and ah multiple ah people joining, including me. um So I guess the the question is, so where where do you guys want to take this? We have had some discussion of what to do format wise. Honestly,
00:27:58
Speaker
um And now we're just spitballing on the air, really. But I think we should just like compile a list of things we want to talk about. And if people have a subject that they want us to talk about, they're free to leave a comment. But other than that, it's just um business as usual, in a way, or business as unusual. you know I do want to make a point of saying that I don't take Charles' suggestion that we invite him back on lightly. I think we' we're not going to start doing interviews until we feel a bit more comfortable and we're back in a rhythm where we feel, okay, this this fits well into well within our individual lives. When Gareth can actually sit down comfortably after visiting? but Well, my my Danish sch slept my denish lessons are finished now, apparently on Fluent, which is news to me. Oh, is that what you call it now?
00:28:48
Speaker
but But as you can tell, this is a very serious and and very well thought out. I'm fluid too when someone tickles my prostate. Jesus Christ. So that's where the mammoth erection comes in.
00:29:04
Speaker
No, that's where it ends. People must like us because if not, the cancellation possibilities. Even from the 2010s. We went from Charles Cecil MBE to cock and ball torture within the span of half a minute. Medical cock and ball tournament. Tournament? What the fuck?
00:29:27
Speaker
but Yeah, well, I'm, um you know, I'm sticking with adventure X and possibly a adventure game fanfare. I don't want to join that convention. You're sticking with something else. But yes, um so we are all dying to play more adventure games and talk about adventure games with the, you know, with with the hindsight of, you know, as as we have matured over, you know, again, the past half of have of a decade. As you can tell. As you can tell. um and And sort of not only talk about what's, you know, coming out, the adventure games are even more prolific. Sven will not stop with the penis puns. I didn't even catch that one. That was good. um Yeah, but I mean, there are more adventure games coming out than than ever.
00:30:12
Speaker
And we still have, you know, all the old classics burnt into our brains. Frederik said he was playing through the Space Quest games again. um So there's there's plenty to talk about. um We just have to sort of organize that in in some capacity. As you can tell, this episode is like really rambly sort of do kind of thing, but we... I have a script. I don't know about you guys. Really?
00:30:36
Speaker
Well, no it's it's been it's been amazing that your interjections have been scripted and you've managed to fit them at just the right time, which I'm very impressed with. I know trolls very, very well. Yeah, I think we all know him a bit too well. Yeah, he actually did my prostate exam.
00:30:55
Speaker
i I also love the fact that we've we've sort of been extolling our virtues as as mature elder statesmen of adventure game podcasting. and And so far, this has been piss and prostate jokes. I turned 40 next year. Really? Oh, baby. Oh, baby. I turned 44. Give me a break.
00:31:14
Speaker
Yeah, I'm stuck at 36 right now, so um I'm at that point where I feel lucky. I remember turning 30 and going, oh shit, but now it's like, well, I'm still younger than you guys, so fuck you.
00:31:27
Speaker
and i think ah think Thinking of sort of comparisons between us, and that's let's not move to the obvious, I think one of my favorite memories of Adventure X is meeting people where you two weren't in the room,
00:31:42
Speaker
And these people looking at me and thinking and actually saying, you're not that short.
00:31:51
Speaker
um I mean, you could have comfortably stopped at ah meeting people when you guys weren't in the room. You you went you went the extra mile. um Yes, me and Frederick are quite vertically challenged in the opposite way of what you might think.
00:32:07
Speaker
I kind of missed your sound. but Oh yeah, we should probably mention that. That was what was also a running thing in our old podcast. Gareth usually wouldn't talk and until the 45 minute mark and his only interjections were done through his sound board, which kept expanding.
00:32:22
Speaker
And to be fair, getting a word in while you two are rabbiting on is very, very difficult and quite embarrassing for me, given that you, you two are rabbiting on in, in at least your second language. And I'm sort of sat in the corner going, um, I, um, well, that's, that's par for the course. soon I think we established earlier that I'm not rabbiting on about anything. Well, you have two children, so you must have rabbited someone. Oh, well, I did rabbit in that context, but I meant orally rabbiting.
00:32:51
Speaker
Okay, I did that too at the time, but in a in a podcast context. You walked straight into that one. I wonder what the Gallagher brothers are up to. oh Oh yeah, we should probably mention that as well. We have the in this the second most important reunion of the day. And and and and to be fair, we bigger slightly less than the Gallagher brothers. ah But only slightly. Only slightly. But I mean, just just to sort of roll this into a nice little bow is
Industry Shifts and Corporate Impact
00:33:22
Speaker
that
00:33:22
Speaker
We have had, as I said, half a decade to reflect on things and their head to a tone. Why why are you laughing? ah Now we have we have matured slightly, as you can tell. like You know, like, geez, not like humans.
00:33:41
Speaker
And and and there are there is there's no shortage of um games being released to talk about. There's still no shortage of adventure game tropes to talk about. Parser games are making a comeback. Has anyone noticed that? Not everyone at once, please. No. I do not understand the word comeback. Please try again. It's what happens when Bettina tells... No, never mind.
00:34:07
Speaker
um it's Are you regretting taking part in this, Gareth? Yeah, but i again, to to properly regret it, I would need you to have expected something different. That's true. And yeah and it it is also true that you were very reluctant to accept our invitation as co-host back in Season 3, and you somehow stayed on.
00:34:34
Speaker
Yeah, I need to learn how to say no. Anyway, parts of games are making a comeback. Joanna Minamata just released The Crimson Diamond, oh yes um and we've had sort of a resurgence of ah like old-school, hitherto forgotten, adventure game mechanics making sort of a comeback.
00:34:54
Speaker
um That's yeah, we also there was also a guy just a couple of days ago who ported well or remade rather I guess King's quest six in the AGI engine. Yes, exactly. And yeah it took him 18 years. I mean, imagine spending 18 years in that that's quite a feat. Honestly, I'm, I haven't played it yet. But I'm impressed by the um by the accomplishment in itself.
00:35:18
Speaker
Yeah, I've played it myself, played a stream on it a couple of days ago at the time of recording this. And he's actually in my SQH Discord and sort of used ah my playthrough as well as other people's playthrough as a sort of ah beta test. I'm figuring out little nooks and crannies where where and stuff might have gone wrong and he's you know been posting fixes for it. Also, interestingly, I did a video recently about AGI being playable on a Game Boy Advance. There's this very old interpreter for the Game Boy Advance released back in I think it was 2004 or something and it was sort of abandoned like 90% through and you know no one's ever
00:36:02
Speaker
ah done anything with it since then. It was open source, but I ran into a few bugs when I was playing Space Quest 1, for instance. And ah my Discord is just this magical, weird wonderland of nerds because the second I did that video and I complained about some of the bugs in there, someone just hopped in and said, you know, downloaded the source code and went, okay, I'll fix that. So now there's a fixed version of of this interpreter that was released in 2004.
00:36:31
Speaker
things The things that we can do now, just because a lot of us are older and have skills that we clearly didn't have when we were seven years old and software that we obviously didn't have, and computers powerful enough to do this kind of thing, that the I always find it fascinating. i mean it was It was fascinating and amazing when Vocal Strikes Back came back.
00:36:55
Speaker
um yes And ah just just to see, yeah, that kind of thing of, oh yeah, I'll i'll just fix this particular bug in a 40-year-old game. I am still in awe at the fact that we we can do this. It is the the amount of human effort that has gone into the most inconsequential thing. I love it. that that There is nothing better as far as I'm concerned.
00:37:19
Speaker
Yeah, and adventure game fans are really like like at the forefront of this stuff because we had that whole period at the end of the 90s, start of the 2000s, where we were like, no, adventure games aren't dead. yeah And everyone else was telling us, yes, they are dead. So ever since, we've been on this like crusade to prove that adventure games still have you know life in them and all that. um And and much of that effort has been spent ah touching up old classics, making them playable. There's some remasters done of adventure games, so you can play them on your mobile phones, scum VM works on your mobile phones. All of this stuff is... perhaps some Someone did a point-and-click remake of King's Quest IV and removed all the dead ends from it, which was a very nice gesture.
00:38:06
Speaker
Well, you know, it's just the spirit of the times. There's a lot of retro stuff going on. um The Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation is making a comeback. We said we wouldn't talk politics.
00:38:19
Speaker
We talked penises. I think what's great though
Podcast Reflection and Future Focus
00:38:22
Speaker
is that we, I mean, not that this is ah ever supposed to be a proper discussion, but we've reached the point now where the technology has reached a point where you can make the game you kind of want to make to a certain extent. Like if you want to make an adventure game, all the tools are there and you can build it. And it's we have to remember that when when Space Quest came out and when King's Quest came out, they were pushing at the very limits of what a computer could do. yes Whereas now,
00:38:45
Speaker
you You don't have to have like God knows how many polygons and ray tracing in an adventure game. You can just get on get on a sketch pad, draw some things, scan them in, animate them in a in a game engine and you're on your way. Free game engine?
00:39:03
Speaker
and Yeah, so I just i just i just love the ah that people are being creative and they're writing stories and they're making art and they're doing all of this kind of stuff and then making the game that they kind of want to make rather than the one that is necessarily sort of dictated by commercial interests or the one that is ah the thing that's going to push things to the very limit because that's what the AAA studios want. And yeah.
00:39:30
Speaker
i am I am glad to be at a time where, as ah as a slightly older gentleman, as we've already established, that I can sit down and play a game that might take me a few days to just really sit and enjoy as a as a story, like I would a good book or or a good film or TV series. um so But we're not here to be serious, so if you want to edit in a cop joke at this point, i'm I'm more than happy for you to do so. Oh, we have tons of those. But I will just jump on the series train for a brief moment and So, you know, did digital distribution had a lot to do with that. and No longer are we beholden to the interests of publishers and their whims and and all that sort of stuff, which is frankly what led to the so-called death of adventure games, massive air quotes there. um and And of course, this is nothing new. This is what David Gilbert was doing when he founded YGNI and released this first game, I think it was 2006 or something like that. um And has since, you know, everything's just been steadily climbing from there.
00:40:29
Speaker
It was a license to print money. ah Let me be clear, I'm not saying that there aren't commercial kind of restrictions. be It'll be news to Dave Gilbert that he can make any game that he wants, and he doesn't have to worry about markets. Market forces are actually having customers or any of that kind of stuff. I'm not suggesting that at all. oh no no But but i think I think there's much more scope to make something that you want to make. And if that then becomes something that you can build a business off the back of, great. If it's just an art project between you and a collective of people,
00:40:58
Speaker
That's great too. It's like it it can be like independent music obviously on a different kind of kind of scale and I'm just glad that there's a market enough out there that we're getting professional products and I'm glad that there's enough out there that amateurs can come up with just great things to play and to talk about and Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons why we're back isn't it because we missed that Yeah, we missed that. And also there's there's more of it now than there ever was. I mean, there was there was certainly a lot of it when we started the podcast, um but it seems like there's there's even more. And it seems like like what you're saying, there's a greater market for
00:41:36
Speaker
the you know single dev or the small teams instead of you know having large teams. i mean i know I know, of course, why did I is technically just two people, but i mean ah going back to the Crimson Diamond, it was just released a week ago or so. That's a single dev. Julie Minamata did everything on that, I think. And we have people like Tom Hardwich who did Lucy Dreaming, which is just a gorgeous adventure game. He did that pretty much single-handedly as well. ah So it's just it's just a lovely time when um Not only are we no longer beholden to publishers and their whims, but also we are able to use ah mediums that are not the sort of you like printed publication telling us what's cool or not. ah We've actually reached sort of a boiling point where there's so much cool shit going around that it's hard to get noticed.
00:42:27
Speaker
especially with Twitter being the shit shell that it is. but that's That's why Dave has been systematically going through and assassinating other adventure game devs, which is really not cool, but you know the the market dictates. yeah it It does have a tremendous fondness for manslaughter. um Well, that's why he's having to flee New York. Yes. yeah I do also feel one thing that's great is that the publishers are kind of on the mend, because if you told me back when we did the first run of this podcast that in a couple of years, Disney are actually going to allow Ron Gilbert to do another Monkey Island game. I wouldn't have believed you. But but it it honestly seems like the world at large is waking up to realize how some great things were done in terms of narrative back then. And I think when we
00:43:16
Speaker
stopped the podcast initially, we were at a point where a lot of people were certainly feeling like in the of ah AAA scene, that shit was being bogged down by stuff like microtransactions and stuff, you know, mechanics that were toxic, honestly, we're getting yeah in the way of telling a good story. So it feels like even a big actor such as Disney,
00:43:40
Speaker
ah actually has the guts to go back to a property like Monkey Island reassess that and go there was actually some good stuff here can we do more of this you know I think as as soon as Return to Monkey Island hit the shelves you know I haven't been proved right about this, but I kind of thought well now this guy's the limit You know now anything can happen pigs can fucking fly if this happens There were definitely there definitely was a sense uh at the time that we finished the podcast last time around there there was a lot of um IP hoarding from some of the beak corporations and we got I got that feeling that nobody wanted to do anything with it there was telltale were doing some stuff, but I mean that that kind of
00:44:25
Speaker
didn't really kind of go anywhere because I don't think the, again, the IP hoarders didn't get the immediate return that they wanted. And then rather than release this stuff to people who could do something with it, they just did nothing with it. But yeah, I think you're right. I think the return of Monkey Island, so to speak, kind of, I think it does make you think that something can be done. Yeah.
00:44:46
Speaker
Our very first episode of season one was about the Sierra revival, which was a new thing at that point. you know Someone took the Sierra brand, tried to revive that. They did some sort of puzzle game and then they did an episodic King's Quest game, which I've only played episode one, but it wasn't actually half bad. But it seems that as soon as they were done with that, they just kind of you know folded Probably because, like you said, the immediate return and the immediate interest weren't there at that time. I think it's a very, very stark contrast when you put that shit show up against Disney reviving Monkey Island. Do you know what the story about the Sierra revival was? It was like one dude at Activision
00:45:30
Speaker
who i got and like a corner office or something and and and she said i'm gonna provide sierra and everyone and you know you like saying this in the lunch room and i was going ya yeah you you dave you you do whatever you want to use one in this corner office and restart the sierra brand.
00:45:46
Speaker
and and hooked uh you know but released three games and then i don't know either he got off cocaine or he got fired or i don't know what the f**k happened but people noticed it was actually ken williams in disguise no now see ken williams has actually softened quite a bit uh over the years um he he put out his uh his memoir book um And where he's just like pretty frankly, I mean there are some passages in there where I still go you what? um But like like he expected his his his best employees to be ready to pick up the phone at 4 a.m. On a Saturday and you know run straight into work if that's what they were ah told to do. I think that's fair when everyone is running off
00:46:27
Speaker
libel alert. yeah The 80s were a hell of a drug. But but yeah that's it but but he has he's like he's he's become very reflective on the past and how you know he was racing towards some sort of unattainable goal of being like the Disney of ah computer games and it just, you know, in the end it exploded in his face. That sort of thinking is is way behind us now. ah No one is going into game development thinking that they're gonna you know buy up companies and and certainly not in adventure games we're not you know consolidating big companies and all that well some people some people have been trying but the less said about those assholes the better as i said the the creatives may be going with that kind of attitude i think there are still plenty of people in the tech world who have absolutely no intention of creating anything just owning stuff
00:47:19
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. and And take your Bitcoin and shove it up your bid ass. Oh, yeah. But there's, I mean, ah going back to an exhibition, for instance, ah sitting on the rights to the Sierra library, everything except for releases with Larry, ah and and doing that for years and years, and all they did with it was just put the games on Steam in the collection packages. They didn't even do anything with them. They just took the old collection CD-ROMs that Sierra put out way back in the day and shoved them on Steam and that was it. And they just made passive income from all the nostalgia nerds. The exhibition had no intentions. Which is still a better situation than we had before where we had to pirate everything. Although who knows where that money actually ended up going. I'm guessing that Al Lowe didn't see a penny of that.
00:48:04
Speaker
Oh, absolutely not. He was even told to knock it off when he put his source code of Leisure Suit Larry 1 on eBay, because even though Activision didn't own the copyright to eBay, sorry too delicious superlar um it somehow ended up in the hands of Codemasters. But they they said that, oh, well, it's it's made in AGI. So there's probably some sort of code there that's proprietary, and we probably own that. So could you please knock it off?
00:48:32
Speaker
Anyway, my point was that since exhibition did absolutely nothing with the Sierra IPs other than you know throw them on Steam and you know have one guy in a corner office revive the brand for a blip, the exhibition got sold to Microsoft recently. And the dudes at Microsoft have been sort of going, oh, Sierra, oh, that was that was a thing, wasn't it? Yeah, we'd be interested in looking at the IPs again and see what we can do with them.
00:49:00
Speaker
so there's ah ah sir There's some good stuff per perchance, even in in the vast you know corporate hallways of facelessness, I don't know. But I'm more interested, honestly, in in you know the one-man developer, the one-person developer scene. Yeah, I think the takeaway from from this is that we may be at an opportune moment where we thought we were going to be when we started the podcast initially, because you know the idea of bringing Sierra back at that time before we knew what it was held great promise. Now, this holds greater promise on a greater scale. um So I guess we'll just have to see what happens. Yeah. And I think on that note, will ah will let we'll let Gareth round this off because we've been going out for an hour and we kind of promised
00:49:52
Speaker
each other before we started. that there We try to keep these episodes relatively concise. To try and be civil, yeah. We're probably going to edit out a few cock jokes. No! oh wow oh Well then we're going to edit out some of the stuff around the cock jokes. but You mean the pubic hair?
00:50:12
Speaker
So if you want to keep up with the show, I suppose I would normally at this point say follow us on various forms of social media I think those accounts have been dead for quite a long time. You're probably listening to this on trolls as YouTube channel Keep listening to it on trolls as YouTube channel You'll also be able to join trolls as discord space quest historian. That's where you can probably find us, you'll at least find trolls there and everything will be fine. Yeah, Fred's there too. Eventually we're going to set up an RSS feed, so if you just want to listen to our dulcet tones, you can listen to that. um But as for now, ah YouTube is the home of everything ah that we're doing. I guess all that is remains to say is, say goodbye, Froak. Bye. Say goodbye to us.
00:50:59
Speaker
What happened to our website again? ah Right. So ah we are saying goodbye, but we do have to now give a ah disclaimer. What happened to our website was I emigrated, and my credit card expired. And I forgot that ah the website was tied to my old credit card. And ah yeah. Yeah, it's all dead. Now the website is gone. Archive dot.org.
00:51:26
Speaker
is the place where you can find all the old stuff ah there. And it's goodbye from me. And also the youtube dot.com slash backseat designers, if you for some reason want to listen to the old shit. Okay, I'm generally saying bye. Okay, we're done. it Bye. Yeah, we're done. Bye. Bye.
00:51:52
Speaker
No, dead leopard.