Transcript
Speaker: Welcome everybody to episode six of Control Alt Rewind.
Speaker: I am Bradley Steinbach and joined as always by my co-host Dan Knapper.
Speaker: Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker: Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And look, today's episode is really exciting.
Speaker: We're going to talk a lot about some really social games that we played and played with a variety of different people.
Speaker: Obviously, we've been a little bit more on the hardcore gaming side talking about Halo.
Speaker: We're going to lighten things up today.
Speaker: Lighten things up a little bit and talk about some multiplayer games, like some local area network, if you want to call it that, or just literally in-person gaming and
Speaker: fun games and a little bit less competitive.
Speaker: Obviously everything Dan and I did was always competitive, but we could involve some other people in our lives, which Dan's going to talk about now in some of the less competitive settings.
Speaker: So Dan, take it away.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So eventually, you know, we're going through high school, just like normal kids.
Speaker: We both get girlfriends and of course we're all hanging out together and Brad and I, you know,
Speaker: We have the girlfriends over.
Speaker: Of course, you just want to play video games.
Speaker: But, but, come on.
Speaker: Like, you can't have, you can have a girlfriend that plays Halo.
Speaker: But you kind of can't.
Speaker: because it's just overwhelming for them because especially when they're playing with us.
Speaker: Not at our level.
Speaker: Yeah, we're trying to tell them, like, Oh, overshield's about to respawn or something like that.
Speaker: And they're like, what are you talking about?
Speaker: They can't even... They're just trying to work out the controls.
Speaker: Yeah, they can't even aim and move at the same time.
Speaker: When they're aiming, they're standing... There was others in the world that were good at Halo, but ours were not.
Speaker: That's okay.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So what we did was we had to find something, right?
Speaker: So you just got to keep it simple.
Speaker: And we found some actually some really good games, you know, we play some of this track and field game, but I think our mainstay was mini golf adventures on the Xbox 360.
Speaker: We would play very many rounds around the...
Speaker: like in that game and you'd have the Western course you had, um, you had space.
Speaker: Um, I don't know.
Speaker: And then just like the first one was just like a normal mini golf that you imagine.
Speaker: Well, what was cool about that game was, was, um, you could hold one every level.
Speaker: Now we didn't, we didn't go and look it up.
Speaker: Like we just kind of learned from playing and, um,
Speaker: Of course, we eventually just got better than everyone.
Speaker: So I think it kind of just like, I like converged into the same thing where, you know, we're just like the best and we just went every time.
Speaker: But that's the kind of thing you need to do to keep everyone involved.
Speaker: It has to be easy to pick up and the controllers just have to make sense to everyone.
Speaker: It's all about the highlight here, I think, is inclusivity.
Speaker: And when you're talking about inclusivity in gaming, this is a game that was very slow paced.
Speaker: You just had to basically aim.
Speaker: Yeah, you just aim and then you press A. And then you press A. Yeah, and then you press A. So it was perfect.
Speaker: That like maximum inclusivity doesn't doesn't matter what sort of gaming background that you're from, but it still was super fun because there was so much interactivity.
Speaker: It was you were sort of sharing in something, but you still sit around having drinks like you're not completely 1000% invested like we would be.
Speaker: Yeah, you're just hanging out.
Speaker: You're just hanging out.
Speaker: You're having you're having discussions while playing still gaming.
Speaker: still gaming which is what we're all about on the background yeah and that's all we wanted to do really so i just want to highlight i want to highlight dan before we get too far as well so yeah we we have always been in even in the younger years this was really rare that we were very authentic about being gamers we always use that terminology we talked about it but
Speaker: Back in this day, we've said it before that it just wasn't as acceptable at this time.
Speaker: Like there was a lot of bullying for nerds or gamers.
Speaker: I think that like when we, even when we, in our very early relationships, they would all, people would always be like, oh, did you, did you,
Speaker: Did you tell that girl that you're a gamer?
Speaker: Did you tell her that you're a nerd?
Speaker: I think we've always been very authentic about being gamers.
Speaker: And I believe that if I can even impart some advice on other gamers or upcoming gamers in the world, it is to be authentic.
Speaker: Especially at the beginning of a relationship, if you are hiding the fact that you are a nerd or a gamer, you will not have success in the relationship because you'll be hiding what you love.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker: Because what Brad is saying is...
Speaker: If you're like hiding that part of you and you start this relationship, like you're kind of starting that relationship on a lie.
Speaker: Constantly.
Speaker: You literally are the foundations.
Speaker: You just started on a lie.
Speaker: So that's, it's just not going to work.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: No, I cannot.
Speaker: I can't stress that enough.
Speaker: It's been something that's been so important in all of my relationships in my life.
Speaker: Like, it's such a big part of my life is gaming.
Speaker: Obviously, this is why we're doing this podcast.
Speaker: This is why we can speak so passionately about it.
Speaker: And I genuinely hand on heart through experience through having many different relationships before.
Speaker: I've seen it's almost...
Speaker: like in my relationships, at least my, my partners have always loved the passion that I've been able to share.
Speaker: It's not necessarily a passion that they want to share, but they love that I am passionate about something and have this hobby.
Speaker: So yeah, if we can impart any knowledge, be authentic, um, be upfront with it, it's, it's completely, it's completely fine.
Speaker: If someone is not fine with you and something you love, you shouldn't be adventuring into that relationship anyways.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: But Dan, let's get back on track.
Speaker: I'm excited to talk about Dance Dance Revolution.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: One of the best social games of all time.
Speaker: You want to kick us off with that, Dan?
Speaker: I don't even know how we got into this game, to be honest with you.
Speaker: You got into it, and then that kind of got me into it.
Speaker: And at our local YMCA, they had it there, and my girlfriend was a swimming champion, so I went there and played it a couple times.
Speaker: And I eventually bought it for Xbox 360.
Speaker: What was that song that we used to crush?
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: Pendulum, Pendulum.
Speaker: Pendulum Slam by Pendulum, which is actually an amazing song in general.
Speaker: Pendulum is a DJ from the UK and that is an epic song.
Speaker: Yeah, so like everything we do, you know, we're just sweating.
Speaker: Like we're just taking to the next level.
Speaker: So we're actually both, we were both pretty good.
Speaker: I'm not very good at DDR now, but...
Speaker: Yeah, we could play on Expert.
Speaker: And the Xbox 360 version was actually, you know, it was all right.
Speaker: Had some good songs like Slam, Pendulum.
Speaker: And what we used to do is, you know, we're just trying to have, we're just hanging out with friends and
Speaker: You know, you invite everyone.
Speaker: We had four dance pads.
Speaker: Four dance pads in the end.
Speaker: At his house.
Speaker: It evolved.
Speaker: We had one and then we bought a second and then we bought a third and then we bought a fourth.
Speaker: It evolved.
Speaker: So you just gotta, you just gotta, if you have any like insecurities about just dancing and looking like an idiot on a dance pad, you have to throw that out.
Speaker: You have to, you're just going to have the dance dance revolution party.
Speaker: And Bradley, he used to work at Subway, right?
Speaker: And I remember the one party that we had...
Speaker: and he made a six foot party sub.
Speaker: Like every foot of it was like the most insane thing.
Speaker: He wasn't even actually supposed to use like the big ingredients.
Speaker: The hot meats.
Speaker: Like the chicken.
Speaker: Yeah, the hot meats.
Speaker: Yeah, the steak.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, so I worked at Subway and yeah, we had a bunch of, we just decided we're going to have like a sub party.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so, yeah, if you're not familiar with it, the six foot party sub is like, it's like when you get Subway to cater and you get this literally six foot long.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: yeah it's just not cut up yeah not cut up and it comes in this enormous box that you have to put in the boot of your car and then yeah we had a few friends over we played tons of ddr and at this stage like dan's dan and i were doing double mat setups triple mat setups so sometimes it'd just be one person doing two like two or three mats at the same time so you're talking about
Speaker: four buttons per mat and you're flying back and forth.
Speaker: Literally, I would be exhausted after doing one song.
Speaker: So you have to take a break because you're literally panting after playing this game.
Speaker: Yeah, you are.
Speaker: At that level.
Speaker: It's so, so, so fast.
Speaker: So we would have, how many people did we have over at that party?
Speaker: That first one?
Speaker: I think it was five people.
Speaker: I think it was me, you, Grime, Gil, and Curb.
Speaker: Yeah, and we would do, yeah, so we'd pull all nighters all the time as well.
Speaker: Like, this is us just not sleeping either.
Speaker: So we'd just be eating the stuff throughout the evening and right into the night, drinking caffeine-filled Mountain Dew Code Red,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Ruining, ruining your stomach.
Speaker: But this is so, this is social gaming at its absolute finest.
Speaker: You've got, you've got basically a teenage catered event with a huge sub.
Speaker: You've got Dance Dance Revolution that again, like it's, you're taking it, you're not taking it to the level of,
Speaker: like competitive Halo, which we've talked so much about.
Speaker: This is a social game.
Speaker: This is a fun game.
Speaker: This is a game that you can, like even back in the day, I'm sure people used to huddle around in an arcade and you have people watching and like cheering someone on looking like an idiot.
Speaker: But this is a classic.
Speaker: Oh yeah, you look so stupid playing dance dance.
Speaker: You're not actually dancing.
Speaker: Not dancing.
Speaker: But this one was so good about it.
Speaker: Like since Brad and I owned it,
Speaker: you know, we owned it.
Speaker: So our friends were like, like, imagine someone asking, when you want to come to a dance dance revolution party, it's like, what?
Speaker: No, no, I do not.
Speaker: But like, you know, Brad and I just own it.
Speaker: We're like,
Speaker: trust us like this is gonna be this can be awesome like it's gonna be a really good time and you know they'd all just come in and we'd all just have a really fun time and then that's that's going back to that point about just owning it right owning it yeah yeah and i i can't stress that point enough and it's like truly a theme that i want to impart on anyone listening is that it
Speaker: Gaming is much better if you're not trying to hide from it.
Speaker: There's nothing wrong or shameful about doing it.
Speaker: And again, yeah, like going up in front of your friends and flailing your body around playing Dance Dance Revolution is not your quote unquote cool, but authenticity.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely not.
Speaker: authenticity is what it was, what brought us like, that's what, that's what brought that group of people together.
Speaker: And it's what made it so much fun.
Speaker: And then we still like, obviously Dan and I were still super competitive and wanted, we would actually like train solo when we weren't together so that we could,
Speaker: go up against each other when we were together because that's just how we were.
Speaker: But yeah, it's still added another element, a complete other element to it.
Speaker: So it's yeah, look, we had we had a lot of good times.
Speaker: And again, with Dance Dance Revolution as well, Dan, to your point, Dance Dance Revolution was another one that we would get our girlfriends at the time completely involved with.
Speaker: They loved it because they thought it was hilarious.
Speaker: And then they thought it was fun.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they thought it was just hilarious.
Speaker: So it was another one.
Speaker: It was a really good involver.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So other than like Dance Dance Revolution, mini golf, of course, you know, we had Uno.
Speaker: And that's that's a bit of a wormhole.
Speaker: I got to be honest, because.
Speaker: What year was that?
Speaker: Like 2004?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: 2001?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: 2004, 2005.
Speaker: I can set the stage before you get into that because th is is so... Please do.
Speaker: Where Uno came from.
Speaker: This is Xbox 360.
Speaker: This was probably the first year of its launch.
Speaker: They launched an accessory, which was the Xbox 360 webcam.
Speaker: And I thought this was amazing.
Speaker: Dan knew that.
Speaker: So back in the day, I worked Subway.
Speaker: I was working full time in high school.
Speaker: I was going to high school and working full time.
Speaker: I worked 40 hours a week.
Speaker: I worked all the time.
Speaker: So the reason I worked all the time all the time is because I wanted to buy accessories, Xbox is new console console.
Speaker: You know, I wanted to buy everything Xbox.
Speaker: So that's why I was working so hard and
Speaker: As soon as the webcam got announced, I was like, oh, this is so good.
Speaker: This is amazing.
Speaker: I can't wait for this accessory because you could like, you could put your face on certain games.
Speaker: It was really gimmicky at the time, but at the time, sorry, it wasn't gimmicky at the time.
Speaker: You thought it was amazing at the time.
Speaker: Now, when you look back on it, it was very gimmicky.
Speaker: You could do very little actually with it.
Speaker: It was hilarious.
Speaker: Yeah, most games didn't.
Speaker: Most games didn't support it.
Speaker: It was horrible.
Speaker: Rainbow.
Speaker: So Rainbow Six Vegas.
Speaker: I could take a photo of my face and put it on my character, but it would look.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But then you're like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's just, it just doesn't work.
Speaker: This is the, this is the Xbox 360 webcam accessory.
Speaker: For whatever reason, they launch Uno with it because Uno is, I think, it's just quite an inclusive game.
Speaker: Social game, yeah.
Speaker: It's a social game.
Speaker: Easy to play.
Speaker: Anyone can play it.
Speaker: It's family-friendly.
Speaker: It featured the webcam well.
Speaker: So it was very easy.
Speaker: You plug and play, and then you go on the webcam and play against three other people on the webcam.
Speaker: Meet some people.
Speaker: Meet some friends.
Speaker: That's the idea.
Speaker: Sorry, I interrupted.
Speaker: That was the idea.
Speaker: That was the idea.
Speaker: Anyways...
Speaker: But the problem with that was.
Speaker: Degenerates on the internet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're so, it's so early in the days of the internet because yeah, I just looked it up.
Speaker: It's May 9th, 2006.
Speaker: It released.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: And, and this was the wild west.
Speaker: This is the wild west.
Speaker: There's no moderators really like, like they don't know what to do.
Speaker: And if you give someone that hasn't done this on a computer or a console before,
Speaker: the humanity just takes it to the next level and unfortunately um it was it was disgusting it was like let's just be real i'm just trying to think of a modern like a modern comparison we're going to get into some of the details but a modern comparison i'm trying to think it was like if you gave i don't know like you're talking about like only fans but
Speaker: with only men on it ever.
Speaker: And I, like, basically it was, it was, it was really just, I don't know.
Speaker: There was a chat roulette thing that I think was similar back in the day.
Speaker: South Park made a joke about it's a chat roulette.
Speaker: So you go into a room, there's, there's, you, you, you spin a circle and you get,
Speaker: random person, random person, random Johnson.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But the problem is, is degenerates on the Internet.
Speaker: This is anonymity, right?
Speaker: So we all have anonymity.
Speaker: We're all hiding behind our gamer tags, which we talked about in another episode.
Speaker: I'm cool cat or whatever, Stein or or cat of some sort.
Speaker: So we all have anonymity.
Speaker: So once you put anonymity, human beings in a webcam together,
Speaker: They're getting rowdy.
Speaker: It was rowdy.
Speaker: And it was, yeah, it was very, the excessive, the accessibility of essentially complete pornography and men masturbating to each other on the internet, which was all it was.
Speaker: It was, it was fascinating.
Speaker: And you're just trying to play Uno.
Speaker: Like we're like, we play Halo all night.
Speaker: We're like, let's relax on some Uno.
Speaker: And then every game there's just like, it's like, it was like no lighting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just a wiener.
Speaker: Just a wiener.
Speaker: Like every game.
Speaker: It just wasn't right.
Speaker: It's like, why are you doing that on Uno, man?
Speaker: So that's all it became.
Speaker: And people are going to that watch this are going to think that these guys know they're over exaggerating.
Speaker: One, there were times when we would go on Uno and just try to find a game of Uno.
Speaker: They weren't even playing, by the way.
Speaker: Most people weren't even playing.
Speaker: They were just on their cameras.
Speaker: Yeah, they would just sit there.
Speaker: Doing their thing together.
Speaker: Yeah, so we tried to find, we spent hours trying to find actual games of Uno.
Speaker: Yeah, because we're trying to get the achievements, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I remember occasionally you would jump into a game.
Speaker: Obviously, we're teenagers, by the way.
Speaker: We get everyone involved.
Speaker: We want to show everybody that this is happening because it was the funniest thing ever.
Speaker: I'm really rowdy.
Speaker: I'm really rowdy.
Speaker: Yeah, it was hilarious.
Speaker: So we would get our girlfriends involved to see this because no one would believe us as well.
Speaker: No one would believe us until they saw it in the flesh.
Speaker: They're like, hey, Calvin, come check this out.
Speaker: So sometimes you jump into games and there'd be two men just sitting there and you're like, oh, OK, this might this might be a game.
Speaker: This is respectable.
Speaker: All of a sudden, flick the lights.
Speaker: And it's out.
Speaker: There he is.
Speaker: There he is.
Speaker: In all his glory.
Speaker: It's like, what is going on?
Speaker: So social game turn wrong.
Speaker: Yeah, wrong.
Speaker: And I got fed up with it a few times and I'm like, man, what are you doing?
Speaker: And I just start roasting them.
Speaker: I'm like, put that away, man.
Speaker: We're playing Uno.
Speaker: And then I don't know, it even got worse.
Speaker: They'd send me picture messages.
Speaker: Some guy sent me his butt, his butt one time.
Speaker: Yeah, there was completely, completely inappropriate photos were sent to us harassing.
Speaker: And then the crazy thing, though, is when we'd have one of our friends that was a female that was brave enough to go on the camera and
Speaker: Ooh, we did set that up.
Speaker: It would go to another level very quickly.
Speaker: Thirst trap.
Speaker: It was like the scene in Eurotrip where they go to the nude beach and there hasn't been a girl there in a very long time just spent eyes naked.
Speaker: And then the girl shows up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: the girl shows up and they all turn yeah they all basically attack it's it was like yes um i don't even know what else to say about this it was just it was i almost just want to highlight the fact that it was it was a social well it was meant it was obviously not designed for this purpose it was designed to be a social family friendly connecting connecting game yeah
Speaker: The internet, we're connecting.
Speaker: But then it just completely turned into this cesspool.
Speaker: Yeah, it was like, I don't know how to describe it.
Speaker: It would get worse too.
Speaker: It's just like a slice of time that will never happen again, thankfully.
Speaker: I don't believe it will.
Speaker: There's more moderation.
Speaker: There's more moderation and stuff like that, but like you just had to be there during this time period.
Speaker: It was the wild west.
Speaker: It was the wild west and yeah, no moderators.
Speaker: And then I just want to like shed light on the UI, like what this looked like.
Speaker: It was literally just like it was all this colorful, like Uno, Uno's rainbow.
Speaker: It's all beautiful, fun.
Speaker: Uno's like red, blue, yellow, no.
Speaker: And then four webcams.
Speaker: Unfortunately, three of the four with men masturbating to each other.
Speaker: It's like, what's going on here?
Speaker: I'm going to, I'm going to, I just want to play green, but I'm also need to run away from whatever this is.
Speaker: And it's like a Friday night.
Speaker: Like, like,
Speaker: Isn't there another website you guys could use?
Speaker: Yeah, that's what I always thought.
Speaker: Why are we meeting on Uno doing this?
Speaker: That's exactly what I always thought.
Speaker: I said, is this the platform for this?
Speaker: Yeah, it's really not.
Speaker: It couldn't be less of a platform for it.
Speaker: Yeah, look, like Dan said, you had to be there.
Speaker: But we really wanted to shed light on this because it was obviously we were 15, 16 years old.
Speaker: We thought this was hilarious as well.
Speaker: And we would never forget.
Speaker: And we showed everyone because it was so unbelievable.
Speaker: Even when we were young, sorry to cut you off there.
Speaker: Even when we were young, we were like, you know, like this is really messed up.
Speaker: Like obviously, it's like,
Speaker: people shouldn't be doing this why why is everyone doing this i just think except how easy it was for us to access it as well it's like there's no there was no barriers of entry this is uno this isn't a mature rated game there is zero barriers of entry to this anyone like it was fine that we were seeing it all but anyone could access this an eight-year-old nine-year-old anyone could access this and that's remember dan like
Speaker: We would check in every few weeks as well.
Speaker: It would get worse.
Speaker: It was worse and worse for months, I swear.
Speaker: Once people started figuring it out, it's like, here we are.
Speaker: It was a community.
Speaker: It was a full-blown community.
Speaker: It had to have been in the end.
Speaker: It was wild.
Speaker: That was the wild west.
Speaker: You had people in masks or you had people with their wieners out.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Like, no one showed their faces.
Speaker: It was wild.
Speaker: The actual intent of it was to show your face and meet friends.
Speaker: Meet friends.
Speaker: I don't know how many faces I saw.
Speaker: Sometimes you get the stoner guy that's just smoking, which is cool.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: But they're always hanging out.
Speaker: They'll show their faces.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: all the weirdos, you never see their faces.
Speaker: They're all just wearing a mask or they're naked.
Speaker: Or in all dark, like all this is dark.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, it's just like they're about to rob a store or something.
Speaker: It was set up like it was wild.
Speaker: Yeah, look, let's cut it there, Dan.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think we've delivered the point here.
Speaker: And look, that was a great episode.
Speaker: I love talking about the social aspects of gaming, getting inclusivity of certain games.
Speaker: Obviously, we haven't been talking about super inclusive games to date.
Speaker: So it's exciting to talk about some of these ones as well.
Speaker: Thank you so much, everyone, for listening.
Speaker: And we're thrilled to bring you another episode next week.
Speaker: Yeah, thanks for watching, everyone.
Speaker: See you then.
