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LAN Stranding 2 - The Movie image

LAN Stranding 2 - The Movie

Soapstone
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21 Plays1 month ago

Join Dave and Jake as they talk about LAN parties, Death Stranding 2 critical impressions, the Japanese, Anime heroes and villains, video game movies (Comix Zone?!), and more depressing industry layoffs in this week's episode!

Intro:

  • TUNIC - Ocean Glaze

Outro:

  • TUNIC - Sunset Breakfast

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Transcript

Introduction and Light Banter

00:00:39
Speaker
How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host as always Dave. How's it going today Dave? it It's going. Yeah?
00:00:50
Speaker
I need the sun to be out a little more, my back to be a little bit less achy. That's right. I mean it's been a pretty low-key laid-back day so can't complain so far. It's been.
00:01:01
Speaker
You can complain but it changes the tenor of the entire podcast. Yeah. Welcome to Bitchstone. This is where we complain about all of the things that are going on. with and This really grinds my gears. Well, we can't have Family Guy coming after us.
00:01:18
Speaker
um We wouldn't survive. ah Any lawsuit. Please don't sue us.

LAN Parties: Nostalgia and Social Aspects

00:01:23
Speaker
We don't even have a legal team. ah But our legal team adjacent, we probably know people that know legal teams. So maybe maybe they could protect us.
00:01:33
Speaker
That's good. ah Yeah, no, I mean, keep it on, keep it on. I've got on on my front for things going on. A couple land parties coming up.
00:01:45
Speaker
Oh, yeah? Yeah. One of them I know you're you're aware of. I'm not going to say specific so as to not. um We have so many stalkers. There's just like a lot of people out there. um But listenership may already be familiar with some of them. If you follow the same discord circles that we do.
00:02:01
Speaker
Um, but, uh, yeah, I'm getting more involved in either being an active participant going out there into the world, uh, or in the case of, uh, one of them, um, being involved as a volunteer trying to help with tournaments and stuff like that. So it's a fun time.
00:02:18
Speaker
been doing that more over the last year. Nice. What's been the the impetus for that? I was asked. And I was like, sure, I'll volunteer for whatever. I will say the person who asked you does have a very high charisma stat. That's true. I mean, we we can mention him. He's coming and talk about LAN parties. Friend of the show and special guest, Mike Lowry.
00:02:42
Speaker
um Just literally name drop him because he uses his Discord tag. Yeah. There you go. You can find the land parties I go to now. i have set up the full docks chain, but um very charismatic.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. But no, it is engaging. It is fun. I hope that I continue to have time for it um because there's been more busy at work and stuff like that. But...
00:03:09
Speaker
um It's very rewarding to to help out with things like that. um Community things. And it's also like a LAN party is the most, I want to say essential, but it's not like essential. Of essence, focused PC gamer cred thing you can do is ah attend and assist with LAN parties. So i don't know.
00:03:35
Speaker
I belong in the industry, I guess. It's a good place to be. I think also for a lot of people, online stuff has been their primary interaction with people. Like Discord, other voice over IP stuff, just in-game voice stuff with people.
00:03:54
Speaker
um But it is nice to be able to shout insults at somebody who is down a table. Or just to like... You can literally like pal around with them afterwards like, oh, it's so crazy on like stock two, you pulled this stunt or this guy for the friends tournament was insane.
00:04:15
Speaker
don't know. There's something about doing it literally with people and like you get to hear the excitement literally. um Yeah, it just it's more alive in person.
00:04:28
Speaker
I think it's like for an entire generation, coming generations, you we're not going to be able to make the assumption that they're familiar with local gaming, like having friends over at your house to play a game. They're to be more familiar with things like Discord calls or TeamSpeak or Venturello come back, whatever, whatever the voice over IP platform is of the day.
00:04:49
Speaker
um And it is completely different compared to just like sitting in discord versus being in a room. People have their energy drinks, their snacks, their stuff like that. And there's just a lot of excitement.
00:05:02
Speaker
Um, the, I think it's important that people should at least try that out. You don't have to like, there's a lot of land parties you can attend and not even necessarily bring a computer. Still probably good to bring like at least a laptop or something, but, um,
00:05:16
Speaker
like console games happen. um We had like a Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament um for the one that I was assisting with. And, you know, lot of people just showed up and ah played in the the tournament, you know see where they land in the bracket.
00:05:32
Speaker
um And so like that's that is a completely different vibe. You can watch videos of people playing Smash up on a stage or something like that. But it's a lot different to be there at the live event, I would say.
00:05:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of similar to watching a concert versus being at the concert. Because like when you're at a live event like that, you can literally hear like the thousands of people. You hear the music or whatever is being performed and you're a part of all of it.
00:06:05
Speaker
And not to get like hippy dippy, but like you can feel people's energy or the like the excitement in the room. Yeah. Usually more so hear it then your body kind of internalizes that. But yeah, it's, um, it's nice to do these types of things with people in person because not to like diminish having online friends because I have a bunch of online friends who I've never had the chance to meet in person and I don't think of them as lesser than an in-person friend.
00:06:34
Speaker
Right. Um, But it's just nice to do social stuff with people of a like mindset, whether it's going to a convention, ah going to a LAN party or just going to a store that is for stuff that interests you. It's getting together with like minded people to share in something you enjoy together, you know?
00:06:55
Speaker
Yeah. It's also a good way to to make online friends, right? Like from the last LAN party, there was someone who was you um I was talking to throughout the event, you know, they were involved in and some of this the smash play and stuff like that.
00:07:11
Speaker
um And after it was all done, they became a volunteer. Now, I don't take 100% of the credit for being the good influence to make that person volunteer.
00:07:23
Speaker
But like 98, like some good, some high percentage. I kid, but yeah. um it is a good opportunity to meet other people. Where is a better place to meet people that are interested in video games and consoles and PC hardware and stuff like that.
00:07:41
Speaker
Then a land party, right? Like it is, it is a great ah networking opportunity. And yeah, if you're like one of the many people who kind of like never emerged back into the greater, uh, greater society after the pandemic and stuff like that, that's, it's an opportunity to come out and play a land party.
00:08:00
Speaker
Um, or just visit it, you know, hang out. So it's a good time. Didn't mean to make this an advertisement for land parties in general, but that, that is what happens.
00:08:13
Speaker
Um, What else is going on here? What's happened recently?

Discord Dynamics and Digital Customization

00:08:19
Speaker
I posted most of these topics. Do you want me to grab one? Do you want to? Please. Sure. ah Something we didn't cover, and it's it's been a while in in the the making. um Discord tags.
00:08:32
Speaker
How do you feel about the geopolitical implication? of having users represent specific tags across the greater greater sa you so sao economic socioeconomic landscape of servers with boosts, without boosts, things like that. We're forming factions. Where is this where does this end?
00:08:56
Speaker
i I feel like that's an extreme way to put it. I feel like just kind of similar to having your own discord name. It's just like having a prefix.
00:09:08
Speaker
So maybe you could treat it as like this is our c client tag for our server for when we play these types of games together. um
00:09:17
Speaker
But that's about it. Okay. All right. I just stole, I stole s simp from the other server. Cause I'm like, that's funny. Simp is pretty good. Yeah. So that's what mine is. Also, somebody had to like point out to me, like how to set that up. Cause I saw some people had it, but it was not fresh in my mind as far as like, Oh, this is something I should look into.
00:09:38
Speaker
Right. But it's just another nice little level of a personalization or customization. Hmm. you're not thinking about the political ramifications. So I can jump in for those. um No, just kidding. the the the The joke basically that I'm making is for people who have several tags available.
00:09:56
Speaker
And if you're if you joined several Discord servers, um that might be possible. you know You might have three or four tags available if they have... um the nitro boosts to spare, because you can either put boosts towards the server like unlocks, like more soundboard slots and things like that, or you can allocate those boosts to unlocking a tag um for the server.
00:10:21
Speaker
um You might have options, right? So you might be joining up with a friend group and be like, all right, those kids are from Westside. And they've all got their their W tags or something like that. and you got your east side gang.
00:10:34
Speaker
They've got their tags. What's going to happen? What's going to happen when they have servers in common? I don't know. you Are you saying that somebody might be like a ah rogue agent going into the the west side server? You're like, oh, yes, I am ah west dot.
00:10:51
Speaker
Exactly. um Now, I think it is. I think it is funny. Jokes aside, like. um there there were some concerns around like server privacy because you can click the tag to generally see what server it's from but it seems like from investigations it's possible to you have that server still be private um even if the tag is publicly facing um oh yeah I'm doing that ah with a friend's tag right now yeah
00:11:23
Speaker
um But I mean, it seems like it really does seem like this was meant more for the um, the community aspect of servers where servers would be open. Um, it's just having new members join versus like private servers and things like that.
00:11:40
Speaker
Um, but it's a cool feature. it's It's nice to have. This joins um one other feature that a lot of Discords don't use, which is like you can have um reaction um things like a thumbs up or some other like Pepe or something like that, like attached to your username.
00:12:01
Speaker
And that'll just show up in the Discord. for whatever highest ranking role you have that has that reaction, um, for our server. Um, the Johnny Silverhand, uh, reaction right there that shows up for people who are tagged as members of the cyberpunk game.
00:12:18
Speaker
So, um, I am kind of curious where they end here because I mean, how many steps are we from my space where it's just glitter and special effects all over the place?
00:12:29
Speaker
Well, I mean, a Twitch has already done something like that where like if you are subscribed to a certain Twitch channel, they might have specific emoticons in chat that you get access to and then you can use that in other streams.
00:12:45
Speaker
um And I think that is already like In my mind, it's chaos. It's a lot of text and emojis. Yeah. And I'm...
00:12:56
Speaker
I now define myself as old, even though I am not. It's just I feel tired and the younger younger generation has more energy than I do. And I am aware of that and no okay with that.
00:13:09
Speaker
Uh-huh. No, that's fair. i think I think it goes in cycles. um We kind of like, we'll develop platforms towards excess. um And then the novel thing will be minimalism again.
00:13:22
Speaker
Yeah. That's the the MySpace to Facebook jump yeah because facebook was very trimmed down yeah you had to have a ah edu email address to sign up for facebook back in the day and it was just like do you want to be in a group with other members of your school enjoy and that's not what it is anymore yeah yeah At least it it did away with um having like the MySpace top eight and the MySpace.
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah. Other customizations like, this is my favorite song. This is my blah, blah, blah. MySpace felt like just an evolution of everybody having like their own GeoCities. GeoCities, Angelfire stuff. Mm-hmm.
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah. And we'll see. I mean, it might reach the point where... There's more going on with Discord because I know that they're seeking an IPO. um So there might be other changes made that the community will not like. We'll see, I guess.
00:14:24
Speaker
um But yeah, I mean, if they go too far with it, somebody else is just going to come up with the features that people actually care about and um leave it there. But for the time being, for our...
00:14:38
Speaker
older or aged group i suspect it's uh pretty tough to switch away from the main platform right now nor do i really want to discord still does a lot of things better than everybody else but there might come a time when that's not the case anymore That would be wild just because, i mean, we've been on Discord for so long compared to other things.
00:15:02
Speaker
Like I remember, i mean, Vent was like a million years ago. Yeah. It's been about a decade for Discord, give or take. I remember Dolby Axon. And the only reason I ever remember that is because it had like a little room and then it had positional audio.
00:15:19
Speaker
Yep. Which why? But it was a cool thing to like fuck around with. We're like, oh, that's interesting. It was a novelty. Yeah, exactly. um But a lot of those things were...
00:15:31
Speaker
I want to say like maybe a summer, maybe a year. And then usually someone would float something new. And then once Discord came around, nobody has really blown it out of the water yet.
00:15:42
Speaker
As far as features, it has. um so yeah, when that day comes, it'll probably be pretty significant because I know Discord is, I want to say top dog.
00:15:54
Speaker
It is, yeah. In this space. it has It has momentum. Um, but i mean, let's all switch over to Microsoft teams. What do you think? Let's let's not do that.
00:16:05
Speaker
Um, there are downsides. Like you can't use discord compared to slack or teams. If you care about maintaining ownership for everything that gets posted, right? Because discord servers are shared and they're hosted on discord servers. So you don't really have control over the things that are there.
00:16:24
Speaker
Um, But yeah, it's just, as it turns out, people want text channels. People want multimedia channels. They want persistent channels, communities, friends, things like that.
00:16:36
Speaker
And these other ones were like, here's our event or team speak server information. If you want to jump in voice, you can, here are some voice channels. So Anyways, innovate.
00:16:49
Speaker
That's what you got to do. um And tags, maybe for some people, are innovation. i don't know. ah I mean, it's nice to, like, I've always publicly identified as a simp, but now people will know from a distance. and where This guy's a sniper. Badge of honor.
00:17:11
Speaker
um I think a great philosopher once said, I simp for my friends. Yeah. Yeah. I think that was correct. What was I fight for my friends from?
00:17:25
Speaker
I can't remember now. It burned in my mind my mind. That could be... I'm just going any anime. I'm sure it is from some specific anime. It could be... don't know. i know what I'm thinking of. I even messed it up. It burned into my mind, but incorrectly.
00:17:38
Speaker
My brain went to I fight for the users from Tron. I fight for the user from Tron.

Critiquing Kojima's Storytelling

00:17:44
Speaker
But... You're right. It's also every single anime. um In other news, and this is pretty recent, Skill Up, who I steal tons of content from.
00:17:57
Speaker
Not actually steal, but they cover ah recaps and news and things like that. So sometimes I'm like, oh, that's interesting. let me ah Let me talk to Dave about that in the podcast, right? so you See what the group thoughts are.
00:18:10
Speaker
um And also does really good in-depth reviews. They had a recent review on... them the next death stranding game, uh, that I really recommend because this guy literally had the, the mental willpower and fortitude to both visit Kojima productions and then be critical of the game in lengthy review, um with a lot of glazing as well for the things that the game does incredibly well.
00:18:41
Speaker
But, um, I mean, i encourage people to check out the review. The thing that resonated for me was Kojima writing is nonsense.
00:18:52
Speaker
Yes. Like, and don't want veer too much from a the skill up site and changes. Yeah, we can go back to it. I will say I did watch...
00:19:06
Speaker
a significant part of Death Stranding 2 playthrough. Yeah. I'm just like, give me the interesting cutscenes. I don't want to actually play through this. I just want to know what nonsense is going on. Mm-hmm.
00:19:17
Speaker
And yeah, it's complete fucking nonsense. Like... Yeah.
00:19:23
Speaker
It's hard to look at that and be like... okay, like I really understand the motivations behind that and like why this is happening and why this character would do this versus if you approach it as like, hey, this doesn't look like an anime, but yeah it's going to read like one.
00:19:42
Speaker
Yeah. And that's fine. Like, you can do, like, some cool off-the-wall shit. um It's just weird when, like, it's crazy off-the-wall shit, and then you're like, but actually, here's why this works within the chiral network. And you're like, what the fuck are you talking? Here's the human drama or something like that. Yeah, I don't know. It's...
00:20:03
Speaker
It's always interesting, his stuff. um But trying to like connect it all together can sometimes feel a little bit ham-fisted. And I feel like you could just be like more Suda51 where it's like, hey, this is going to be um more expressive and crazy than some AAA stuff that you're used to, but it's going to be fun.
00:20:25
Speaker
And we're we're going to lean into that versus trying to... Well, actually, this character will... And be like, dude, I don't don't care. Uh-huh. The thing for me is, I guess, lack of verisimilitude or believability.
00:20:40
Speaker
And that the universe takes itself seriously for Death Stranding. But some of these characters cannot be taken seriously. Because they were made on an LSD fueled like vendor essentially.
00:20:56
Speaker
You're like, I don't know how the cotton candy elemental is going to be the best person to teach me about like parent child relationships or something like that. And I just made that up, but there's like a 50% chance that could be and death stranding based off of some of that nonsense.
00:21:12
Speaker
So like,
00:21:15
Speaker
I'm not saying that they need to make it all grounded in reality, but it has to be at least somewhat believable in the universe that it's set up in. And increasingly um for Death Stranding 2, I think for the first game, I should say, ah gave it some leeway because I was like, this character seems insane off the jump. This seems insane.
00:21:39
Speaker
But maybe you can wrap this back around to make it more internally consistent in the universe because I haven't seen the rest of the game yet or something like that. But by the time you get to the second game, you're like, that's just a puppet.
00:21:53
Speaker
yeah That's not a person. That's a puppet. If you wanted me to relate to this person, you could have made them a person instead of a puppet.
00:22:04
Speaker
um or you know but here's the thing Jake it's actually that guy's car residing inside the puppets ha ah okay gotcha that makes sense then separation between body and spirit I forget like they don't they don't go into like good details in my opinion yeah that like all that stuff makes sense you're like oh yeah cool it was kind of like okay like in universe you're like oh my guess that's what happens Yeah.
00:22:34
Speaker
And it's like, i don't know, there's other critiques for the game that I think, you know, people who have played it could... There's a lot of critique out there you can already check out. um But i am I'm personally less and less interested in Death Stranding 2. I enjoyed the first game for like the logistics and stuff, um but I pretty much entirely detached from the story because it's just too far out there, right? I literally read fantasy novels and I play RPGs and ah even tabletop RPGs, right?
00:23:07
Speaker
And Kojima Productions is too far out there for me. i literally am removed from it because it seems so nonsensical. And yeah, the the thing that came up in the Skill Up video, the thing that was mentioned, and I was like, this is kind of a kind of a deep cut, was like, Kojima should have a writer.
00:23:28
Speaker
Kojima should have someone who is actually helping compose the story that these interesting characters are playing out. So that there can be more consistency as far as their motivations and development and things like that. Yeah.
00:23:44
Speaker
Because right now it does really seem, I think this is the case that he's the guy, right? and the Yeah, I believe that. um And whenever he comes up, it's like like Jeff Keighley, for instance, is like constantly glazing him. It's every video game show. It's like Kojima couldn't make it or Kojima could make it. And ah we love him for that. Like, again, not going to say the guy's not smart, talented, etc.
00:24:14
Speaker
I think he's really good at creating unique, a unique world and like unique gameplay, like taking like an interesting spin on stuff, right? Yeah.
00:24:28
Speaker
Definitely not your and cut and paint or cut and dry type. Like, here's this 17th installment of a game. He's a novelty specialist. Yes. But that doesn't mean everything that he makes, which is novel, is going to be the best.
00:24:45
Speaker
Yeah. Right. Everybody is fallible. Everybody has and misses. um i mean, he has made which which That was cool.
00:24:58
Speaker
I really enjoyed that. Yeah. Really been cool to have finished that game. Um, but I think some of the mechanics of five did get into death stranding too.
00:25:09
Speaker
Hmm. At least as far as like, if an enemy detects you, there's that slow down period. Right. Um, maybe some of the combat interactions, um,
00:25:20
Speaker
some nods to his earlier stuff, which I don't hate in games, but improve upon what already exists, right? Whether it's your stuff or other people's stuff. But it sounds like this person from Skill Up is writing the article pretty unbiased then.
00:25:34
Speaker
Well, I mean, he's obviously biased, but everybody's biased when it comes to Kojima one way or the other. There's a picture of him. it says Ralph is the main guy. um A picture of him with Kojima, like next to the statue at Kojima Productions. And so like once I saw that, I was like, i don't know.
00:25:51
Speaker
I might have to, you know, take a step or two back from this review. You're literally flown out to the studio. i mean, they're they're one of the more reputable places. Like, they don't, um... I'm pretty sure.
00:26:03
Speaker
ah you Fact check me, Internet Sleuths, but I don't believe that um they accept... ah payment coverage for things like flying out. Like they're like, okay, we'll go out to look at your studio. Thank you for the invite. We're going to pay for ourselves.
00:26:18
Speaker
Stuff like that. So that they're not beholden to the um developer or publisher what have you. But yeah, that's... Sorry, bit my dog. For Death Stranding, um I'm kind of curious. I want to see like...
00:26:32
Speaker
What does Kojima do after mixed or mostly positive reception? Right. Like what what changes could be made in the company? Because already it's like 60 years old or something like that.
00:26:44
Speaker
um There's going to be the questions of what does the future of Kojima productions look like once other people need to be brought in and involved? And doesn't it make sense to start training those people now and, you know, bringing them up?
00:26:56
Speaker
In ways similar to like what happened with um Night Ring, right? um Where the creative director was completely different for that game. um Kind of giving an opportunity to the next generation of crazy Japanese weirdos.
00:27:13
Speaker
um So that's what I want to see. you I'm curious at least. I will say I've shout out to the Japanese for making always interesting stuff.
00:27:26
Speaker
Um, been watching anime again. Not like I ever really stopped, yeah but they have such a ah more nuanced focus on people interactions and like motivations.

Character Depth in Anime and Games

00:27:40
Speaker
Yeah. Like I just don't know what to think of this show. Uh, it's called like to be hero X, um, it It has been so random as far as like the animation style or like the tier of content how serious it's going to be. Sometimes it seems very silly and dumb.
00:27:59
Speaker
And other times it seems to go into some interesting angles where they actually... in one episode, they'll kind of give you a view of this character. you're like, oh, they're a piece of shit from this angle I'm seeing it at.
00:28:12
Speaker
And then the next episode, they're like, hey, actually, and then they do like the full deep dive and you're like, out that's why they're like that? Oh my God. And it it brings you into it because you care about the human aspect. You care about um what things happen in their life to bring them to that point. You understand they're struggling with things and it it makes the characters human and interesting versus, I mean, there still will be a tropes and may where it's like, Hey, this is the clumsy one. This is the really smart one. Who's not good at socializing. This is the one who's way too excited all the time.
00:28:47
Speaker
Um,
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's it's important. I've said it multiple times on literally even just this ah ah podcast, but every villain is should be the hero of their own story or is the hero of their own story.
00:29:01
Speaker
And I think you can extrapolate from that and be like, if you have, obviously every story has a protagonist, whether it's anime or whatever, you have the people who are the point of view characters. Um, But I'm a strong believer that you should be able to, from a writing perspective, um you're like, OK, if we switch the protagonist to be the antagonist, we switch those roles around.
00:29:23
Speaker
This person should still have compelling motivations, right? Like if this was the person that you opened up with on page one. yeah Some people in the audience should be rooting for them.
00:29:35
Speaker
um And that should also be flipped and kind of the opposite for the protagonist for a lot of stories. I mean, these get these are more for like darker adult stories, things like that, and stories intended for adults. But like the protagonist should not be the shining paladin of good. That's, uh, excellent in every way.
00:29:54
Speaker
They also need flaws where you're like, Oh, I understand why this person has opposing forces because they themselves are, um, they have aspects that are worth opposing.
00:30:07
Speaker
Right. Yeah. It's against. Do you like the comparison of like Superman where it's, I am good, I am perfect, yada yada.
00:30:17
Speaker
The flaws that they gave him are bullshit and frankly don't even come up that much. yeah But like that's an example of... A kind of like, I am good and the people I'm facing are like mustache twirlingly evil.
00:30:31
Speaker
um Versus if you look at, I'm going to use the one of the greatest enemies as an example, Code Geass. yeah You have Lelouch, Lamparouche, who's doing his own thing for how he wants to see change in his world.
00:30:46
Speaker
Versus...
00:30:50
Speaker
Suzaku Kuriragi? Kuriragi Suzaku? I'm not going be able to fact check to you. That's correct, yeah. But like the other your main character who's like working on the side of the Britannians, aka the the enemy from the war of ah with the Japanese, and he's trying to work from inside the system right to, again, do the same thing, but...
00:31:12
Speaker
both of their motivations are not invalid. Yeah. Uh, they are at odds with each other, but you can see the value in each of their approaches. Right. Right. So it kind of leaves you in this balance of, okay, I'll see what they're coming from. Oh, I see what they're coming from.
00:31:29
Speaker
So it makes you as an audience member think, what would I do the situation? Is this morally right? Or is it more contextual? And it's not just an easy black and white.
00:31:40
Speaker
Um, I prefer that. Yeah, it's a much more interesting story. um Something to get into. And I don't don't think this necessarily relates too much to like Death Stranding or MGS5, I believe.
00:31:57
Speaker
So I'm going to give my two cents from what I've seen. Sure. I think it's a little closer to the mustache twirlingly evil.
00:32:08
Speaker
Yeah. I know towards the very end of the game, there's my antagonist exposition. Yeah. But it seemed like bullshit to me. Like, it's like, oh, we need to humanize this character. What can we? Uh-huh. Right. it was sad or something to that effect. And it's just it didn't.
00:32:28
Speaker
In the moment, it did not feel warranted. Yeah. Didn't seem to really match. um There's a trope ah called kick the dog, which is just like you have a bad guy and you need him to be the bad guy. You need him to be the antagonist.
00:32:47
Speaker
And the quickest way to just make him the antagonist is just to have him do something reprehensible. Yeah. Right. You're just they they're basically like. They're outing themselves as the bad guy, right? You're like, okay, well, you kicked the dog. So the good guy would not kick the dog. Therefore, you're miserable, right? Or something like that. Or you threaten this person's family for no reason or whatever you've you've shown.
00:33:10
Speaker
You have this duplicitous nature, whatever. Yeah. And increasingly, i'm like, that's not really and enough. Like for some stories, it's fine if the story isn't the focus.
00:33:24
Speaker
um But if the bad guy spends most of their time using the stroke, kicking the dog essentially, and then you get to the end and you're like, oh, crap, we actually just made like a one dimensional character. We need to try to inject some depth here.
00:33:40
Speaker
You've made your job so much harder. Because you have to go back and justify why this person with a troubled upbringing, um, didn't, doesn't have a responsibility for all the times they kick the dog, right? You're like, yeah, I mean, i get that your dad drank or whatever, but you do kick a lot of dogs, right? Like, that's still, that's still bad. I'm still remembering all of that.
00:34:02
Speaker
Um, And yeah, it's not always the easiest to do. i get that. um And it's not even necessarily appropriate for every story, depending on the tone that you're going for.
00:34:14
Speaker
Sometimes it's okay to just have heroes and villains, right? But um if you do want to have a complex story, and I think Kojima Productions does...
00:34:25
Speaker
they need to be willing to put in that effort to fill out the human aspects of their characters just as much effort as they're putting into filling out the quirky nature of their characters.
00:34:36
Speaker
Yeah. I will say they definitely do character exposition for each character. Yeah. um I did not notice that with the antagonist until the end. Yeah.
00:34:47
Speaker
Because this one has the same antagonist as the first game. There you go. I guess. What? It's for the first game. But it's one of the few things I know that I'm like, ah ah I don't know if I care.
00:35:00
Speaker
The part that I get into ah with that is like all of those cut scenes. Really cool. Yeah. Like it's fun, exciting, fast paced stuff or it's just otherworldly enough and cool. You're like, OK, you're along for the ride, right? Yeah. You're willing to suspend your disbelief and just be a part of that. Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:25
Speaker
I mean, then Kojima should make a movie, right? That's basically what I'm saying. This is kind of the... And have somebody else write. And I think, yes, that would help a lot. Because that that would be my fear, my main fear for the movie, is are these characters just unfortunately one-dimensional?
00:35:44
Speaker
Are they, you know, this guy has a heart motif for everything just because for everything. Right. um You're going to need more than that if you want to keep people's attention for a movie.
00:35:58
Speaker
Though novelty does help. um And I think that would improve both their games and storytelling if they did make that jump. Right. And I expect out of all of the things that are going to be adapted to a movie, like something from Kojima is going to be right. Like it has to happen.
00:36:16
Speaker
A part of me wants to say, but I mean, look at the things that they've made movies of recently or planning to. yeah I don't think anything is quote unquote safe. Yes. From being a movie.
00:36:29
Speaker
And I think certain things would definitely benefit from that adaptation. um Other things could, you know, kind of flop. It depends. But I mean, recently, the past couple of video game movies that have come out have been, I think, pretty well received.
00:36:45
Speaker
Yep. I think generally people enjoy the Sonic stuff. I have not had a chance to see any of those yet. ah Super Mario Brothers movie was way better than I expected. There's still like very much a like ah family friendly type movie. Just almost as summer blockbuster.
00:37:04
Speaker
Weirdly, slightly better. I have, I looked this up because I was curious. Here are some of the games that have upcoming movies. um Some of these are announced. Some of them are to be announced for when they would come out until dawn. Not super familiar. Mortal Kombat 2 already has, you know, movies. Mortal Kombat always will have movies.
00:37:26
Speaker
Five Nights at Freddy's 2. Street Fighter. i don't know what the fighting games are. they i't they They make movies for those. i They've done like Tekken stuff. Like they had a Tekken animated movie and back in like the 90s because I remember like going to Blockbuster being like, oh, I know Tekken's a video game. Uh-huh.
00:37:46
Speaker
I guess it's because it could just it's easily translatable to an action genre. for Yeah. Yeah. Super Mario Bros 2, which you mentioned. Angry Birds 3. Sonic 4.
00:37:57
Speaker
ah Legend of Zelda. Right. i have so many questions for what they could do for Legend of Zelda. Ghost of Tsushima. Horizon Zero Dawn. Helldivers 2. I don't think that's actually going to happen, to be honest, as Helldivers player.
00:38:11
Speaker
The Sims, Gears of War, Silent Hill. like Death Stranding also is on this list. So this is less theoretical and more like that's going to be the movie,

Video Game Movie Adaptations

00:38:23
Speaker
I guess.
00:38:23
Speaker
But I think there are worse candidates to make a movie.
00:38:32
Speaker
Definitely. Definitely worse candidates. Comic zone is here? What? Sketch turn? Bullshit. Okay, I got it. Sorry. Normally we go through topics and stuff like that, but this is breaking news for us.
00:38:49
Speaker
Sega. ah For anybody who's not um keeping up with Jake and I on this very specific topic, Comic Zone is an old Sega game that I played on an emulator way back at my cousin's house.
00:39:03
Speaker
And I'm sure Jake had a similar experience with it or maybe he played ah back on the Genesis. It's for Genesis, yeah. The concept was there's like this guy who draws comics in New York City. His name is Sketch Turner.
00:39:17
Speaker
And one of his drawings like comes out and like pulls him into the comic book. So, it's like this side-scrolling thing where you're going through a comic book. And it was fun. ah The sound effects were very bit crushed.
00:39:32
Speaker
It just it stood out. And also it was hard as balls. Like, yeah you could beat the first level, but good luck beyond that. um Oh, yeah, it was meant to just devour quarters once you got to like level three or something. it Hey, try jumping to this ledge. By the way, there is a guy on there who's going to be in the way and he has a projectile. If it hits you, you're going to get hit stun and fall into the hole.
00:39:55
Speaker
Oh, if I use the special attack where I literally tear the page, throw a paper airplane. Oh, that takes a good chunk of my health. Fuck. Um, And you couldn't mantle if you missed the jump or something. You had to get your feet on the ledge. Mantling was not a thing back in those days.
00:40:12
Speaker
It was a different time. um So yeah, some of the information... so Zone is what they're calling it right now. Hopefully they rename that at some point because Zone is not a good name. um It's written by Matt Cat. matt cat meca Sorry, i don't have that ah name.
00:40:30
Speaker
Not familiar with that person. and But they wrote for Young Justice, How to Train Your Dragon... Transformers, War for Cybertron, Chilogy. ah Some of those more interesting to me than others.
00:40:42
Speaker
um Yeah, so anyways, more information to you can go on this, but apparently this is a real thing. where They're going to make try to make a Comic Zone movie. If it's animated, I hope, please, um then it has a chance. That that game had some like really significant style.
00:41:02
Speaker
I don't know how you would do that not animated. yeah Comic Zone. Live action. Because that would just be like a ah fuck ton of CGI yes stuff. Yes.
00:41:14
Speaker
Versus Hear Me Out. Everybody's been doing that ah lower frame rate animation. Yep. but Ever since it took off with Spider-Man. Yeah.
00:41:25
Speaker
So I could see them doing something with that. he Because that already has a bit more of a comic book-y style to it. Yeah. Yeah.
00:41:36
Speaker
I don't know this list, though. Is there any that you're like besides Comic Zone being like a huge surprise? ah Are there any that you're excited to see? i mean, I don't generally watch movies in general, so like these are already at a massive disadvantage for me.
00:41:51
Speaker
um So further down the list, I hadn't covered these. didn't talk about these, but there is Bioshock as a to be announced. um I kind of have questions whether that would ever see the light of day.
00:42:06
Speaker
But amongst these, i mean, like this is a narrative movie. And so I think I'd be more interested in the ones where the games have a strong narrative. that could be executed on and the world of Bioshock.
00:42:20
Speaker
Absolutely. Yes. um I really don't want it to be live action though. Is that weird to say? I mean, uh, they would have, to it's it goes back to what you said. There'd have to be a lot of CGI with plasmids and stuff like that to sell a Bioshock.
00:42:38
Speaker
Um, And also, I mean, the creators for Bioshock have left, right? Ken Levine is working on um Judas, I think. Which haven't heard anything about in a while.
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah. So there's question marks about like, oh, is this going to carry the soul of the the series if it does come out? I don't know about that. But... um Another one on this list that I would mention for a completely different direction, completely different reason is Detective Pikachu 2. Because Ryan Reynolds and Pikachu and all of that together was actually just a great movie. I really enjoyed watching that.
00:43:17
Speaker
Yeah, that was a ah sleeper. Because when I heard was coming out, I'm like, okay. like i didn't realize you were going to do something with that. But sure, yeah, whatever. And I went to see it with people.
00:43:28
Speaker
i was like, that was a fun movie uh-huh i just love this little like uh midlife crisis coffee drinking it was pretty great um they did a ah weirdly good balance of like this is the real world and we're gonna have real people and also like cgi pokemon but like they live together in this universe yeah and it Yeah, like it could have gone so bad, but it sold very well.
00:44:01
Speaker
Yeah, it did a really good job. um Yeah, looking over these lists, I mean, other ones could be executed well, but they're not guaranteed things.
00:44:11
Speaker
I'm more curious for things like Legend of Zelda, for instance. Right. I mean, that's going to be a huge movie regardless, just because how big the franchise Yeah. Like with Minecraft and Super Mario Brothers. Yeah.
00:44:25
Speaker
I'm curious of the challenges here, right? Because like Bioshock, Comic Zone, you can have your main character talking, things like that. Traditionally, Link doesn't really talk. What does a movie with a silent protagonist look like when it's not the 40s or 30s anymore, right? like I honestly...
00:44:45
Speaker
I think they can go one of two ways. One, they abandoned the silent Link thing entirely yeah and just have it be like, here's relatively young Link, relatively young Zelda, and this is like our first ah meeting with a big bad like Ganon, right?
00:45:00
Speaker
Kind of like setting the stage. This will be our first movie, and then maybe we can do mother more movies. Or... they will essentially make him just emote more it's like what do you think link and it would be like thumbs up and then the audience would like oh yeah because he doesn't talk i get that because i played the game right um because they could go two directions they either do it humorously like that exaggerated email option or they could do it more like the recent zelda games where like Link still doesn't verbally talk or if he is talking, there's no like voice lines for it and stuff like that.
00:45:39
Speaker
But in cut scenes and things like that, he's very expressive. Like you, yeah you get the impression that he's just silent. He he's quiet. He's not a mute. Right. That's, that's kind of the vibe they go for.
00:45:51
Speaker
It'd be funny if like he didn't speak, but the entire time like his mouth was moving, like he was muttering something under his breath. Yeah, he's just a psychopath. Movie has no subtitles. The other thing they could do is have Link not be the point of view character for the main thing.
00:46:09
Speaker
And that could ah that could change it, in which case... I mean Zelda Zelda is the top contender there. It's not many not too many other main title of characters for that series.
00:46:21
Speaker
I I honestly see them going the the main protagonist way kind of how they did with Mario where it's yeah hey we're shutting the stage this is character this is how they get into the situation they meet other notable characters from the game and then kind of go from there.
00:46:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
00:46:42
Speaker
Also, the there's a lot they could draw from for this movie. I almost assumed that this would be... It wouldn't follow any of the existing game canon. Probably. I don't think they do like Ocarina of Time. They would like draw for, they could draw from as many as they want though, right? Because fundamentally, The Legend of Zelda is the hero's journey over and over again um for basically every game.
00:47:07
Speaker
um And there is a, there are a whole lot of cool troops, right? Like I wouldn't be upset if they borrowed things from Majora's Mask, obviously. Well, um, Again, looking at Mario Brothers movie as the example that I think has done the best in recent history. Yeah. Because like I know Minecraft movie sold well because it's a kids movie and Minecraft is huge with kids. There's a second one on this list. But I don't think it was a good movie. I thought it was dog shit personally. Chicken. Yeah.
00:47:39
Speaker
It has two quotable lines that come up in memes. That's the only one I know. Flint and Steel is the other one. okay. um But anyway, with the Mario Brothers thing, um they had their own story, but they did borrow a lot of stuff as in-universe Easter eggs because it now has a very...
00:48:02
Speaker
wide range of like different characters throughout the games, different areas and stuff. So I would honestly expect them to be like, Oh, we're going to have tinkle in this.
00:48:12
Speaker
Yeah. As like a very brief, maybe one minute interaction. people would be like, Oh, it's fucking, it's fucking tinkle. Yeah. Um, there's that weirdo with a balloon. Maybe there's like a nod to the happy mask salesman or something else.
00:48:26
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I think it will be, it's probably its own,
00:48:32
Speaker
semi-generic story of like there's an evil coming oh shit who do we get to solve this problem uh-huh because there's if you just mash so many of them together you still would basically have the core same line through all of them so you could just do hero's journey plus and co right the people who assist here or something like that but this should be an adventure movie do you know what actually take back everything i said here's what they're doing right all right for anybody who's just listening and not watching yeah i've rearranged my chair i'm now leaning in and talking with my hands but he's clipping like a mofo in the audio no just kidding using ocarina of time as the example
00:49:15
Speaker
Is there a character that follows Link around that does speaking on behalf of Link to maybe explain certain things? You got your fairy, you got Navi. Yep. I see them going that route, where if you don't have the character who speaks, you have one that like rides on their shoulder and effectively plays that role. That's true, yeah.
00:49:36
Speaker
i think you probably I think that's probably correct. they ah They have the communicative companion that would speak for them in situations like that. That would be one good way to ah to deal with it.
00:49:49
Speaker
Nintendo, if you want to hire me for any of the writing, i can come up with some pretty generic things I've seen in other movies. And I quote Dave reaching out to Nintendo. Hey, listen.
00:50:02
Speaker
Yeah. No, that would be that would definitely be a good way to swing it. um I don't know how they lay it all out, but I mean, I guess if they could make dialogue for Minecraft, they can do anything.
00:50:13
Speaker
We'll just see. I think they can't rely on making this a Funny movie though. i yeah I don't think that's the angle. i would love to see something. Closer to like.
00:50:25
Speaker
Twilight Princess or something like that. There was that one Zelda game that was rated T. um I believe it was for the Wii or the GameCube. I think it was Twilight Princess.
00:50:36
Speaker
But they're like. I guess we're just going for teen now. So... um my Link's gonna say fuck. Yeah. That's the only thing he can't say.
00:50:50
Speaker
of That would be the stupidest possible thing to do. I would love that so much. I would watch the movie if they if that was the one confirmed thing that we knew about it was that at some point. just get the news article. Link says fuck. It's all over YouTube.
00:51:08
Speaker
I wouldn't even believe it. Wouldn't even believe it. But yeah, that'll be one. I'll be curious to see more clips of or maybe actually just see. Yeah. um Because if I'm going to see a movie, it's probably going to be video game related um because it'll either be entertaining Or it'll be like funnily bad and then we can make fun of it later, you know?
00:51:29
Speaker
Yeah. No, I think that's fair. um So yeah, just to wrap out that topic, Skillup launched a website. It's thisweekinvideogames.com and ah check it out.
00:51:42
Speaker
It's split into a supporter non-supporter section. But if you don't check it out, that's better for for me because those are the things I'll be suggesting we talk about ah half of the time probably here for the podcast.
00:51:56
Speaker
um No ads though. So interesting take. We'll see how that lands for them. Um, for remaining time, there's a lot of these that I don't care about covering. Is there anything that really stood out to you something you wanted to discuss?

AI's Impact on the Gaming Industry

00:52:11
Speaker
So, I mean, I feel like there's two overall topics and one is either going to be layoffs or AI. Yeah. Or both. Or both. as As it turns off end out. um That's fair. So quickly in layoff news, the first one was Oblivion Remastered Studio ah Virtuous.
00:52:34
Speaker
um They ah lost people. Not sure exactly from which offices because different offices were responsible for different games. um And presumably they weren't all working on the Oblivion Remastered.
00:52:49
Speaker
But this is yet another instance of wild success meeting meaning nothing ultimately as far as further employment prospects in the gaming industry.
00:53:01
Speaker
um This is one of the best selling games of the year. Whether it should be or not, I mean... It's Oblivion. I don't know, but lot of people bought it. a lot of people played it.
00:53:14
Speaker
um If you know the actual outcome of that ah development could have saved them, I think it would have, but that's not how the industry works these days.
00:53:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's and still insanely unfortunate and bullshit this is happening because, again, I think the people who work in game development really do care about that because it doesn't seem like an industry industry. You're like, oh, I guess I'll randomly do this one. Right.
00:53:44
Speaker
So I think the people who are there want to be there. And it's got to suck when you like. work very hard on a project like that that has to span multiple years. Yeah. With a a large team.
00:53:56
Speaker
And then it's like, hey, ah you guys did a great job. Get the fuck out. Yeah. And it was it was definitely a tremendous amount of work. I mean, there were still um there are still a lot of bugs, as as were the case as was the case with the original game, too.
00:54:12
Speaker
um But they basically took the entire engine and then just like made it run inside of Unreal Tournament, um which is crazy. um So like a tremendous amount of work. This was not just recompiling the game and shipping it.
00:54:28
Speaker
um And it is unfortunate to see like all of that work not ultimately lead to a situation where they're keeping their jobs. um Because ah if that's not the thing that saves you, what does save you, you know, as ah as a developer, as a game developer these days? Like what what what performance criteria do you need to hit to not be laid off here?
00:54:58
Speaker
And I think the reality is there isn't one. Yeah, I think it's honestly just a hey, we just care about numbers. This thing has already shipped. We don't need these people at the moment.
00:55:10
Speaker
We're going to take them off payroll. Yeah. Yep. I think that's probably what it is. But ah hopefully those people can find ah good employment um in a place that respects them a little bit more and values them a little bit more.
00:55:26
Speaker
um Because, again, for for what issues it had, it was still a very high effort remaster and the only thing i recall that they messed up was the dark brotherhood door where they had too many too many murdered kids by the night mother um and they eventually went back and fixed that anyways so just took them a while um yeah In other news, you were mentioned there's a combo here for for ai um This was from mobilegamer.biz. There's a follow-up for earlier earlier announced news. King staff.
00:56:05
Speaker
um So these are the makers of Candy Crush. They're owned by Activision Blizzard, now owned by Microsoft. um They had a good number of staff that were laid off as well. I have the exact count. I'll open here in a second.
00:56:20
Speaker
200 staff. um But the interesting thing about this, more than just like mobile developer lays off staff, um is after this came out, there was some follow up interviews with the people who were laid off and they claimed the reason that this happened or the reason this was justified was because they themselves worked on tools that replaced their functions in the company with AI.
00:56:50
Speaker
And that is terrifying. Yes, this is... I don't want to say capitalism to a T. and I don't have enough time to go into all of this. But if we look at it from like ah the early automotive days, right?
00:57:10
Speaker
Cars at some point were made by hand. yeah At some point, someone's like, hey, this is taking fucking forever. What if we had an assembly line or what if we automated some things? We didn't need to have so many people here to do it. We had machines, et cetera, et cetera.
00:57:23
Speaker
So from the business's perspective, they're becoming more efficient. But from like a worker perspective, you're literally taking jobs from them.
00:57:34
Speaker
Yeah. So it is a balance. I'm not saying you have to employ everybody all the time. Like if somebody's bad at their job, and they're not doing what you're paying them to do. By all means, find a way to get them to do that or find somebody else who will.
00:57:50
Speaker
Because that's what a job is. But... To just like plan to get rid of people's jobs, I think is nefarious. There's no other way to say it. Right.
00:58:03
Speaker
Like I've been laid off before and it just feels like somebody wanted to pay less money in general and they didn't give a shit about any of the people who got laid off.
00:58:16
Speaker
Like, hey, this is cheaper for us. So sorry for you. bye. And then a bunch of people are losing their only source of income. Right. Which is scary because...
00:58:28
Speaker
Well, there definitely are people who work multiple jobs. um They're doing that because they have to, not because they want to. And losing a job in general, again, if it's your source of income, you use that as a stream for everything.
00:58:42
Speaker
Yeah. So having that disrupted is terrible and terrifying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with what you're saying. i also think another aspect to this that probably balloons open and into like a full topic in its own right is um the the downstream impact of having um white collar jobs, like office jobs, things like that, increasingly being...
00:59:07
Speaker
um Either massive ah efficiency bonuses by using AI automation alongside existing positions um or outright replacing those positions entirely.
00:59:20
Speaker
Like what does that actually do for the labor market? Because, um you know, the the wide picture of what was going on is you talked about the... um how cars were made by hand, now they're made by machines. Those people that were making cars were told, you know, pick up these white collar skill sets.
00:59:40
Speaker
um Or, you know, go into the trades, you know, maybe you pick up ah plumbing, electrical work, things like that. But there's only so much bandwidth. We can't all be plumbers. We can't all be electricians.
00:59:51
Speaker
A lot of people, including you and me, both work in the white collar space. And so if there is a shrinking, a reduction in the necessary human element to that entire industry, like what does labor look like in the US and the world if you know businesses, which always will focus on the their own priorities, um just say, well, we could have 500 positions here.
01:00:21
Speaker
Or we could have 250 plus an ai ah agent for each person. And that's just what we're going to do. um And I know this this is not like and a novel idea. People have been talking about this for a while.
01:00:37
Speaker
But it's one that's easy to set aside if you say Copilot is trash. If you say, you know, these various AI tools aren't actually helpful.
01:00:48
Speaker
But eventually they might be right. And there could be some aspects where they are right now. And if they ever do cross that threshold, don't we need to be ready in some regard, you know, as a society? um Yeah.
01:01:03
Speaker
But I think in general, when there's change of foot, um, People are just looking forward to the the new thing and they're not thinking about how to get from where we are to where we're going.
01:01:21
Speaker
To use a not personal example at somebody's workplace, um like they'll plan to do something out and like from the business side, they just want the end result, right?
01:01:35
Speaker
Right. Whatever that may be. Get for me to be. Yeah, but they're not thinking of how to get there. And if there are things that we need to do to transition from A to B, if we need to train people on that new skill set or something, um that should be a consideration.
01:01:52
Speaker
So in this case, Following that same car example, and so instead of just saying, hey, we've removed your job. Maybe like, hey, this is the direction planning to go in.
01:02:03
Speaker
We still want to keep you guys around and not throw you to the wolves. We'll train you on these different skill sets that we can still find use for. or ah heads up or something.
01:02:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you can get that, then I would say that was that's probably above the average case for how... Yeah, this is me trying to design a very idealist ah world.
01:02:29
Speaker
Yeah. But ultimately, it comes back to what you said, right? You need money. You need a job to um to live, kind of, in a lot of ways, um at least in at the same quality of life that we're used to, um which is not crazy. It's not like we're rolling in all of this money. It's like, for when I say same quality of life we're used to, I mean like...
01:02:51
Speaker
have ah house, be able to pay for an apartment, ah be able to afford more than beans and rice at the grocery store. um These things pretty much require a job. So, it's going to continue to be, you know, something that we need to talk about. And somewhat ironically, some of the first people who raised this as a concern were the AI evangelists because they assumed AI would become very powerful, very rapidly.
01:03:20
Speaker
And they might have been wrong about the timescale, but they might not be wrong about the potential impacts to society. Oh, there's going to be an impact. Yeah. Whether it's um just people slowly becoming dumber because in the same way, I don't know maps because I haven't had to learn them because I have Google Maps that tells me where things are.
01:03:47
Speaker
And it's super convenient and I'm glad that I have it. Would I be better for knowing my surroundings and how to get for me to be? Of course. But there's now other things in my life that take up my time. So that convenience is just a part of what I'm used to.
01:04:04
Speaker
yeah But as we go in more and more of a trend of like, oh, just going put my faith in this one thing and hope that it's correct.
01:04:14
Speaker
um I feel like even when we used to just Google stuff, there's always a grain of like, I don't know. These are page two results. Yeah. These first three are sponsored. Not those, not those, not those.
01:04:28
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, I think in general, there could be some very deep ramifications. Yeah. I'm not going to get into now. We're at the very end, but. Again, we could probably have a topic just on this.
01:04:41
Speaker
We would just need to read research papers and things like that. At least a couple articles. Didn't we have an AI episode? We did. um But unfortunately, didn't go away. So it's it stayed relevant in some ways.
01:04:55
Speaker
Yeah. And we probably have a better picture now of what the potential impact will be for a lot of industries. I can finally have an AI girlfriend.
01:05:06
Speaker
hmm. Grok is her name. ah A side tangent to you and anybody who's listening, was as well.
01:05:17
Speaker
um Internet comment etiquette and did a video on Grok that I think is chef's kiss. There you go. I also just giggled a lot throughout it. So very fair.
01:05:29
Speaker
All right. Well, we will leave you with that off ramp. Check that out. Friend of the show and internet comment etiquette. um And ah otherwise we will circle back with more news, more topics, maybe more Delta rune at some point.
01:05:45
Speaker
And as always, we'll see in the next one. Have a good night.