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RSS - The Biggest B^S@&
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Join Dave and Jake and special guest Eric as they chat about upcoming games and what it's like to contribute to and organize a regional LAN party in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Mega Man X6 OST - T10 Infinity Mijinion Stage Weapon Center
Outro:
- RWBY - Time To Say Goodbye by Jeff Williams and Casey Lee Williams
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Transcript
Introduction and Banter
00:00:06
Speaker
over at this point, but now it isn't currently. What? What a flick to get that kill. Oh no, you should be ashamed. What? What year is this? What if I could just water my plants in Stardew Valley for 10 minutes?
00:00:39
Speaker
what what year is this oh my god where where am i
Eric's Introduction and Podcast Recording Insights
00:00:57
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? Jake, I feel like every time you just blatantly overlook our guest, how's it going tonight? Eric. Fellas, fellas, fellas, it's excellent to be back on the podcast. Been a minute and a half since I got to share a podcast with you guys.
00:01:18
Speaker
Don't tell everybody that we do consecutive recordings, please, with only time for peeping. Yeah, a minute and a half is a very short refractory period for our podcast. You usually record once a week, but for Eric, we're just going to pound out six of these things and go.
Game Difficulty: FromSoft to Mega Man
00:01:33
Speaker
What do you think about this topical thing in 2025? And you just have to make a mess, guys.
00:01:39
Speaker
Just got to record a bunch of, uh, uh, footage like internet comment etiquette did and just do some like ridiculous callbacks from five years ago. You just got to get the world's biggest media bank. Yes. Yeah. There's, I know that's a thing that they did a lot in like legacy television, like consecutive recordings or a bunch of content creation at once. And then they'll just like release it over time. Um,
00:02:02
Speaker
but it's been like literally half a decade since we were ahead on episodes. That was the very start of the podcast and never again. So, I mean, it becomes difficult when, you know, there's life responsibilities and you're not playing a new game a week. Or it's a new game and you can't talk about it. And it's just like, what's the point?
00:02:31
Speaker
It can't spoil it because you actually were able to just like play for 36 hours straight, but everyone else had actual life. Yeah. Tough living. That is, that is, so we've had a couple of games that were like that. Usually stuff from, from soft falls a little bit more into that category of like, okay, maybe we shouldn't even talk about full spoilers for this, you know, not even have a disclaimer on it. Um, but we're pretty far removed from that at this point, I think.
00:03:00
Speaker
For FromSoft, the bigger issue I would say is that you have to worry about the varying skill levels across your listener base here. Some people might be able to champ it out in 10 hours or whatever, and then someone might be stuck grinding on this one guy. It might take them 20 or 30 hours. You got to think of the people. That's a tough one to work with. I don't know how you guys do it, but you guys got a masterclass on it for sure.
00:03:28
Speaker
I'd like to believe, but those games are also kind of self-selecting. At this point, I don't think anyone's going to load up Elden Ring and be like, why is it hard?
Nostalgia & New Releases: Berserk Boy
00:03:38
Speaker
I know that there are people who believe that. They come into this and they're surprised, but they weren't paying attention to anything up to this point, if they're surprised at that point. It's meant to be, oh, OK, this is the way it is.
00:03:57
Speaker
I was a little bit surprised when I recently dusted off Mega Man 2. I forgot how hard that game is. Oh yeah, it's so tight on some of the jumps and attacks. Because you don't have the, like if you jump in the air, you can't jump, you can't go backwards, right? Yeah, I think it's as soon as your feet leave. That's it. You can fire mid-air, but that's all that you can do.
00:04:23
Speaker
I was spoiled by growing up on Mega Man X where I could dash and then be like, Oh, I'm kidding. My bad. I'm sorry. I got a little bit too close. It was a fake. Mega Man X definitely, definitely, uh, was a little bit more helpful. A great game too. I might have to actually dust off the real SNES for that one. Oh, he's got the OG. I'm stuck here with the, uh, the PS two version where it's like X through X six. I'm still good. I'm sure. Yeah.
00:04:52
Speaker
I mean, like old games, old games were for the most part harder than new games, right? Like we had, I don't remember what episode it was, but we talked about like regenerating health and first-person shooters and some of that.
00:05:07
Speaker
It's it's really hard in some cases to go back to like old half-life or something like that Where it's just like well, I took a bad engagement. I've got like 10 hit points Do I continue? Right? Like they really saves back Yeah, you're like, I don't know. Maybe I should just load anyways But old games are just they were there to eat your quarters even though you're never in an arcade I
00:05:33
Speaker
Yeah, either it'll decimate your quarters or the big thing was they wanted to make sure that the game lasted longer than however long you can rent it from Blockbuster. So it's got to be at least a few days long or at least you got to grind it out because then you have to buy it if you want to actually finish it.
Nintendo's Legal Actions and Modding
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:52
Speaker
You guys did mention Mega Man, though. I don't know if you have eyes on this game or not, but it came out very recently. I think it launched this week. It's called Berserk Boy, which is supposed to be Mega Man-esque. I know I'm doing the thing where I force people to Google in real time, which is... Wow, it looks like it got pulled out of a time capsule. Uh-huh.
00:06:13
Speaker
Uh, yeah, it launched last week. Um, but it's supposed to be pretty good. Got good reviews and it's got cool art. Although I missed anime vibes and everything. Uh-huh. Which, you know, I feel like is a fair, a fair pairing with Mega Man. Um, even though it's not like traditional anime, it's not that far removed. Mm-hmm.
00:06:43
Speaker
Yeah, that looks great. Pretty polished as far as all the sprite animations and movement tech. Yeah, I think it's one of those games that's like an early access survivor, not like a survival type early access game, but it actually survived early access.
00:07:00
Speaker
and launched, which is a good sign. And it came out for the Nintendo Switch as well, which is also a good sign because Nintendo at least looked at it and was like, no, yeah, your game is garbage. I feel like it's like boobs on the front page of the the album or whatever. They should really be adopting anything or a platformer. Anything to encourage use of the joy cons that makes sense. They should be picking that up.
00:07:32
Speaker
Well, as long as the word emulate isn't anywhere in the game title or description, I think Nintendo is going to be okay with that. Yeah, don't do that. I think there's plenty of things in life where you can pick a civil rights cause to champion or improve your community or otherwise exercise civil disobedience.
00:07:57
Speaker
against the government or something you don't believe in don't do it against nintendo that's the only that's the only underlying advice like if disney doesn't even parody things from nintendo you know that there's some serious lawyer force on that side oh my gosh yeah i remember recently i think it was like the guy who was he was distributing modded switches or something like that he was assisting with it
00:08:25
Speaker
And they're just like, we're just going to like sue you into oblivion. And absolutely. We know that you're not good for any of this money. So we're just going to garnish your wages forever.
Indie Game Development: Palworld & Trends
00:08:35
Speaker
Um, and that was what Nintendo did. They're just like, we can't legally deport you to Japan and just make you like a peasant, like in this feudal system, which I assume Nintendo has, um, but they might not. Um,
00:08:49
Speaker
But we'll do the closest thing we can, like just take it to zero. It's gotta be crazy. I think you're going out to the bar with friends. It's like, uh, Jim, you're gonna like grab the next round of drinks. You're like.
00:09:05
Speaker
I can't, Nintendo, you know. Uh-huh, right. What Nintendo does is you order a round of drinks for everybody and then they come by and they grab yours. They just leave the table. There's one guy who's just constantly following you and just literally eating your lunch.
00:09:25
Speaker
We joke, but it's, it's, it's not too far away from that. They do not use proportional response. Yeah. It's not hyperbole of what you guys are saying. Yes. Yeah. But that kind of blows my mind that like how world was not, I mean, like there was a comment that like, Hey, we're going to look into it. But I think everybody from day one is like, this is Pokemon as far as they were concerned. And they thought that Nintendo as litigious as they are, we're really going to jump in.
00:09:54
Speaker
I do think, I think Nintendo fielded that to the Pokemon company as far as like whether to chase it down or not. And as far as I know, the Pokemon company was basically just, they had that notice of like, hey, we understand that something is going on and if we choose to chase it, we'll do it. But I feel like that was just so people stopped reporting the whole world to them, right? Because I don't think it led anywhere.
00:10:22
Speaker
No, I think I was pretty much the end of it, which is really surprising, but I guess because they're not using Nintendo property or Pokemon property, it looks really similar, but it's just different enough. They are on like the razor's edge with getting the full force, but I don't know how in the world they dodged it.
00:10:47
Speaker
Yeah, it was, it was really interesting to see that that didn't actually resolve into legal action. Like they must have really threaded the needle. Cause what I know from that development team that made power world, it was like, it was, it was pretty thrown together. Like I put a lot of time into the game and I was playing with a group of people who played it a lot at launch, but like.
00:11:09
Speaker
The development was haphazard to say the least. There were several times like in an interview where the, the, I think it was the creative director or the director, cause there's not that many positions at the company. It was like, we just didn't have a
Game Pass and Discovering Hidden Gems
00:11:21
Speaker
person at all to do this. And so we hired someone and they were amazing. And like, that's how the game got over the finish line. Um, but yeah, I guess they threaded the needle.
00:11:35
Speaker
Do you guys think there's going to be more Pokemon and everything? Is this going to be the next, uh, the next steam horseman of the apocalypse? So you're going to have like survival, survival, early access crafting. Yeah. That's got to be in the pipeline. Yeah. Fortnite. That's probably going to be on that battle royale games. They had one for my hero academia. I'm sure they have another one or probably there's one for Naruto at this point, but
00:12:06
Speaker
I mean, if there's a popular IP and you can get it on that train, even if it's not the best, I think people would check it out. Maybe a need for Pokemon speed. Mm-hmm. It's just all these rapid ashes lined up. I want to see Rapidash driving a Lamborghini in Tokyo at 2 AM. I think it would work. It would work.
00:12:34
Speaker
Um, but I'm sure no one's playing pal world anymore. What have you, what have you guys been playing? What have you been up to? Anyone do anything interesting? I've been, uh, dusting off battle bit and remastered with its, uh, post hype player base where it's, uh, boiled down to the, um, the fun folks and the sweaty tryhards. Uh-huh.
00:12:56
Speaker
It's interesting. The big problem now is somebody keeps D-dosing all the community servers and there's not enough devs to care about it. It's still a three-person dev team, even after making like bajillions of dollars, which I'm kind of surprised about, but I guess I don't really know much about game companies.
00:13:22
Speaker
They were really in debt. They had a $2 billion angel investor before that game. Their bookie was like climbing down their shirt and I'm like, okay, you better get me this $10 million by next week. And they're just like frantically making Reddit posts about their game and hoping it gets big. That is unfortunate though. Cause I heard like nothing but good things about that game.
00:13:50
Speaker
It's depending on which players you ask. They think it's like the worst game, but then they have 500 hours in it. Uh-huh. I enjoy it. It doesn't look good graphically, but that's kind of the point. Right. You could play on a toaster. Yeah. But I mean, the, the core concept is there. I've never seen anybody who's playing it not have a good time. So.
Roguelikes and Gaming Preferences
00:14:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's a big focus on just the gunplay and the destructive environment. It doesn't need to look fantastic. And I think it looks that way because it was originally a Roblox mod, and then it just ran with that, which kind of makes sense.
00:14:27
Speaker
That's a good idea. From what I know of the ROBLOX monetization scheme, it's pretty aggressive in the cut that they take. I think the upfront metrics look good, but it's like how much ROBLOX or whatever ROBLOX, I don't know what it's called, but their in-game currency you get is reasonable initially.
00:14:51
Speaker
Um, and then like the company, uh, the owning company takes everything else. Um, but when you go to cash it out to like your local currency, they take another cut and that's where you lose out as a developer. If you're making something in their system, maybe they should switch over to, uh, to unity.
00:15:12
Speaker
So unity did backtrack a lot of that People who got hit by it or like hey fuck off and like they they've lost all trust there's no rapport Yeah, then they literally like the CEO left or something like that. I think I'd hope so
00:15:31
Speaker
There's no way to recover from that otherwise, man. Yeah. If I search for unity CEO, the, uh, it's John Ricatello. I didn't realize that. Um, but yeah, he stepped down in October of last year. It's probably for the best. Yeah. Um,
00:15:50
Speaker
You know, whatever you can do. I know everybody's trying to entice people to make games on their platform, like Epic and Unreal and Unity and Fortnite. Fortnite. I don't know if you can make games in Fortnite or not. Well, I mean, they adding things to Fortnite, which seems like a partnership with somebody else. Like they had a basically a LEGO thing that basically had Hot Wheels Racing or something, maybe closer to Rocket League. Yeah.
00:16:21
Speaker
I think that they have, it's because they have more than three employees though, so they, Epic, Epic knows the stream that they drink from and that is the Fortnite well of money. But yeah, that's fair. Have they added anything to Battlebit Remastered that's got you back on it?
00:16:44
Speaker
Um, I think it's just being able to jump in with the limited time that I have and be like, okay, I got 15 or 20 minutes. Let me just jump into a map and click on some heads for a few minutes. And then if I'm lucky, I can stretch out some more time from that. But, um, that's also why I've actually been jumping into some more, uh, Roguelikes since that's also like, okay, cool. Here's like 15 or 20 minutes. You can play a game or most of a game at that point. That's fine. Like, um,
00:17:12
Speaker
I've dusted off tape to tape, which is a hockey rogue-like, which is just the most fun. I remember you streaming that one, yeah. Yeah, that one was just so ridiculous. You could do things like throw your stick at people, depending on if you have power-ups for that, or you can have an ability where you fart and players in the puck all get blown away and stuff. It's just ridiculous stuff.
00:17:38
Speaker
And then a shotgun King, the final checkmate, which is a chess roguelike where you are the black King who has a shotgun and you have to defeat the white King. I've seen that one marketed pretty, pretty aggressively on steam. I think it's, it's got good market penetration. Highly recommend both sidescrolling roguelikes.
00:18:02
Speaker
How do they play? Tape to tape plays just like in an arcade style hockey game. It's top down and the nets are either in the top of the screen or the bottom of the screen, depending on what side of the rink you're on. And then shotgun king is you're just looking at chessboard and that's the view. And then you have like your abilities and the other other sides, abilities on each side of the screen. So it's
00:18:33
Speaker
Gets no side scrolling or anything like that. It's pretty static compared to some other rogue lakes that are out there. It has the same steam tags as like normal chess would. So like turn based combat, uh, stuff like that. Actually now I'm curious. I have to look at the steam page. Uh-huh. Oh yeah. Turn based strategy, chess and rogue, like pretty close. It's pretty close.
00:18:59
Speaker
I like the term turn-based strategy because my mind will always go to something like a risk or like a tabletop thing from when I was growing up. And they're like, no, no, chess, because you're taking turns and you have to be strategic. And like, you're not wrong. Just my brain didn't jump there. Right. It's just too integrated to be like classified, like all these other things, but that's fair.
Gaming Habits and Nostalgia
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah, I've been, I've been playing also a roguelike. Technically, it's like a roguelike, I guess, against the storm, which is like, um, apparently actually launched towards the end of last year, but it's a, uh, it's a real time small scale city builder.
00:19:43
Speaker
but in a harsh environment, so there's some sort of viable aspect. But the thing that's different from other types of games in the space is your intent is not to just build a really long-term, sustainable anything. It's basically to make a settlement as quickly as possible, accomplish whatever goals are set for that settlement, and then just make the next one.
00:20:09
Speaker
And whenever you place a settlement on the world map, it kind of extends a branch that you can keep working down to get further and further away.
00:20:18
Speaker
And the reason for that is because after every cycle of time, it wipes all of it out. Everybody retreats back to like this one place of shelter, and then they have to go out and get resources again. And that's like the start of a new cycle and you build stuff anew. So it's a really cool idea, but I don't think it's like a pocket rogue-like game, like you were saying. Like you can't play it for just 15 minutes unless you really just snap, snap, snap, like let's go everything as fast as possible and you get like good RNG.
00:20:47
Speaker
Um, so that's my only gripe with it. I think that it could be a little faster. It still sounds fun though. Oh, it's a really cool idea. And it's, it's different, which gets a lot of points when you have so many games out there. Right. Um, what about you Dave? What, uh, like broke like game view plan. Uh, uh, uh, last thing I played that was new was a, we love Katamari reroll.
00:21:17
Speaker
Which is definitely not a roguelike. But I feel like a rogue as I'm rolling up citizens who are minding their own business in Japan. There you go. This is close enough. But even that, it's been a little bit. I've been burning a lot of time on. I mean, I guess it's actually a roguelike. Brotato, they had a demo that came out a long time ago and then it was free on Game Pass and then I just get sucked into it. Because again, I don't want to do necessarily like a lengthy commitment game.
00:21:47
Speaker
And so I'm just trying to beat it with every character now until I actually get locked into a single player game again. That's fair. Free on game pass is a dangerous line because there's so much good crap on there now. I'm sure you guys see the spreadsheet. There's some other crap too. Like it's just crap. Yeah. Again, like you can try it, find out and then be like, nah. And there's a lot of stuff that I always hear everyone talking about on game pass. Yeah.
00:22:17
Speaker
They add a tremendous amount, like, and some of it is like flavor of the month type stuff that people are playing actively at that time. Like, like they added, I think it's still on their dark tide, which is like a great game. But if you're looking to drop a bunch of time, they have like persona, they have at least one of the Yakuza or like a dragon type games on there, and I think multiple.
00:22:44
Speaker
and just a bunch of RPGs and crap like that. But also some fun roguelikes. Dave and I, we had an episode on RoboQuest. And that was on Game Pass.
00:22:54
Speaker
Uh, I bought it because Dave was like, you really got to play this game and I bought it on steam. And then he was like, why did you buy it on steam? It's on game pass. And so I refunded it and went back and played like that. But that was a really good game. So it's dangerous. And it is better if you have the time to play, I would say. Yeah, for sure.
00:23:17
Speaker
But even, I don't want to try and sell it too hard because again, I get nothing out of this. Um, not yet. Not yet. We're when they be climbing the sponsorship. Yeah. Soon to be friends of the show at game. Uh-huh. Yeah. Um, cause it's like what $10 a month or maybe 15. Yeah. 10 for PC. So like, let's say you find a title that you like and it's just, just that one that month and you maybe get to put a little bit of time into it.
00:23:46
Speaker
Okay. Now technically saved 50 bucks. Yeah. And that's really huge. It actually does make a difference. I think the only issue really comes into, I'm looking for the latest and greatest fresh new hot off the presses. They might not have that immediately. Some things might have to wait. But I mean, if you have a busy schedule and you're like, I want to get around to this and you're like, Oh, it's on game pass.
00:24:11
Speaker
It's just then you've already done that fairly cheap buy-in and they can take advantage of it. It gives you a chance to find some hidden gems too for what you could look at at zero cost. It's true. Yeah. Like they have a pretty good mix of games that just came out and then games that have been around for a long time. But.
00:24:32
Speaker
Like, so I've posted it on the Discord, which you guys don't have access to, sorry listeners, but there's a master spreadsheet for this, for Game Pass, and it'll show you the games that are like upcoming, about to come out, the games that have been announced as leaving. It's got like the Metacritic scores for everything. And like the average scores for games on Game Pass is not usually super high. Like the last one that got a really above 90,
00:25:00
Speaker
was Resident Evil 2, like the remake from 2019. But there's a lot of games in there that are still plenty fun to play, like Man Eater, where you play as a shark and you just eat people. That was fun. Was it smart? Was it great? No, but it was fun. It's the perfect thing of like, I'm interested to see about this. I want to spend a couple hours checking it out, but I don't want to buy it.
00:25:29
Speaker
Yeah, like I've always been interested in a Plague Tale Requiem. I've seen some footage. I would never buy the game for myself because it doesn't seem that interesting. But if it's under that blanket of I already spent 10 bucks for the month, maybe. Yeah, if you miss Remnant from the Ashes or Remnant 2, those are both on it, you know. I have recently downloaded some games that I'm either actively playing or want to play.
00:25:55
Speaker
Warhammer 40 K bolt gun, which is definitely feels like a boomer shooter. And it's fun to go wrong with those control standard edition. I've already
00:26:08
Speaker
I already have control, but I'll play it again. Well, they have the ultimate edition on Game Pass. It's better than the version that I actually know. Oh, then I should maybe get that version. How did I get the standard version instead? And also No More Heroes 3, which I had heard some mixed reviews on, but I'm still curious about it. But now I don't have to, again, pay that premium upfront. Yeah.
00:26:33
Speaker
And you talked about the price or we'll, we'll honestly let you talk here. Just a second. You talked about the price. The game that like got me the value was starfield. Right. Cause I actually put a bunch of time into starfield, but it was a bunch of time. And then I was like, all right, review complete. I don't think I actually recommend it. Right. I don't know if you guys have played games like that where it's like, okay, on the far side of a hundred hours, not really my jam, but, uh, that's a $70 game.
00:27:04
Speaker
retail, they're doing the whole new retail price thing for PC games, which was kind of justifiable within consoles have their own fees attached. Um, but it's completely unjustifiable for PC games. Um, I was like, all right, that's, that's seven months, right? That I basically paid for by not buying starfield with, you know, in-person dollars and owning it forever. Um,
00:27:32
Speaker
And I think I've reached the phase of my life where like, I don't have to own another 500 games. The Steam account has that many now. It's a good number. It's not doubling season. So if I just pick out a couple of games that are exceptional and I buy those later on sale or something like that, fine.
00:27:59
Speaker
I want to let Eric speak before. I'm looking through my Steam library to think of games that I dumped too much time into than they deserve. Have you played Eve Online, Final Fantasy XIV? No, because I'd probably still be playing those and I wouldn't have a wife or kids at this. TF2 is always big, Counter Strike. Counter Strike, Global Offensive, rest in peace. I think all the time I had on
00:28:24
Speaker
If I had to pick something, I have 107 hours on totally accurate battlegrounds. And it is just this stupidest fun game, but it's, I can't fully recommend it. It is just, it's quirky and it's the user base is ridiculous. And, uh, it's, uh, kind of buggy and.
00:28:48
Speaker
I like it. I haven't played in a while because if I do, I play for like two or three hours straight, which is a lot when you have two kids in a job. But if I had to pick something, it would probably be that.
00:29:04
Speaker
I know there's games like, uh, I'm looking at prison architect. I have 18 minutes in that. And that is too much for me. My brain cannot handle that game. Uh-huh. You're not, you're not in like the rim world camp. I think they're made by the same people. If not one of them stole the art style from the other, um, where we have like a group of friends that are just like rim world addicts. And I've spent ridiculous amounts of time in that.
00:29:32
Speaker
But if I had to pick something, it'd be one of those two. That's fair. We already know Dave's shame game. Although you don't put time in it anymore. How long has it been since you played binding of Isaac? It's been at least half a decade, if not more. Uh, yeah, I just fell off when they added yet another expansion. I'm like, I.
00:29:56
Speaker
I'm good for a bit. Right. We get it. Isaac's bound. Right. Got it. Well, Dota 2 is my current. I wouldn't necessarily say a shame game. You should be ashamed of playing a MOBA, Dave. Come on now. So much time gets spent. I was honestly invited 10 minutes ago and I wasn't, I was going to respond and be like, I'm recording. It's a Thursday.
Indie vs AAA: Longevity & Success
00:30:20
Speaker
But.
00:30:22
Speaker
but instead he just silently joined and you've been playing in the background this whole time. It's okay. I'm crystal made and I'm sitting in the fountain. My team's getting benefits still in the passive man region. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's fair. Um, I don't, I also don't find myself putting a bunch of time into new games as much or occasionally. Um, I don't have any of the like good justifications for, for real life reasons to not really do it as much. I have a couple, but like.
00:30:53
Speaker
It's also just, I have so many games I would like to play. I'm always playing a subset of those. And like we've covered in previous episodes, comfort games mean a lot more when you have less time. If you had like a busy day or something like that, yeah, I could try hard to like figure out something new or launch a game I've never launched. But like, I know how destiny works. I know how Starcraft co-op works, you know, like,
00:31:21
Speaker
I could just do something that's not work. What if I could just water my plants in Stardew Valley for 10 minutes? There's a major update coming out for that. Yes. Shortly, if not now. I think this weekend. Yeah. The 19th. Okay, it's coming up. I don't know when they're going to stop working on that game. When he dies is probably when he'll stop working on that game.
00:31:50
Speaker
I can't remember his name. My brain went to board ape, but that's so wrong. Concerned ape. That's the one. He had an NFT name before NFTs were a thing. Oh, wow. Yeah. He's really ahead of the game. Maybe that's why Stardew was so successful. I do like the idea of having a passion project like that, that A, it becomes successful and then two, you get to keep doing it.
00:32:20
Speaker
Yeah, there was a big, uh, there was a big deal for Stardew Valley when it was like millions of copies sold in, and he was like, all right, I really want to develop multiplayer.
00:32:35
Speaker
but like co-op, but literally none of the game supports that. I'm going to hire one other person. And so it was a two-person team. And we'll play the game together. They did get co-op out. It was like a free update, but it was just very funny to be like, all right,
00:32:55
Speaker
We're relinquishing control to literally one other individual on the planet was a big deal. Yeah, that's huge. But he's been working on this game as I thumb through one of my books about it. Since 2011, he had started up with the concept of this game. And 13 years later, he's still writing updates for it. Damn.
00:33:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think No Man's Sky gets a lot of credit for continual updates and stuff like that. But a lot of these indie games, they've been doing the same thing, right? Factorio was in development forever. They're going to have a major expansion.
00:33:38
Speaker
Yeah, no, if it's good for the people that are very successful with it, like that is 100% the case. I think Dwarf Fortress has been in development for that developer's entire life.
Perfect Dark Sequel and Franchise Evolution
00:33:50
Speaker
Yes. And for the remainder of their natural and unnatural life will still be in development. They put themselves into the game as a
00:34:03
Speaker
No, it's pretty good. I think it's something that Indie will always have over AAA is like you can have a finished product, but then you can enhance it, right?
00:34:15
Speaker
Like Minecraft was initially a $20 game and it was okay. But even just that okay bit was surprisingly entertaining. And then it should have only grown ever since. Whereas AAA games are like, we've shipped it, it's done. I know they have to go on to the next thing. Or it's live service, right? Like, and live service is its own type of poison where
00:34:41
Speaker
It's either not sustainable or it's overly monetized or like there's so many ways you can just screw that up and people do. Um, or is these indie games, it's like, oh yeah, I've been working on this single player game for 10 to 15 years or whatever. Right. Um, that seems a little better to me, but I don't know. I'm biased. I'm a consumer.
00:35:08
Speaker
As a fellow consumer, I'd have to unbiased agree with you on that. That's how I introduce myself. Meet new people. It's like, oh, what do you do? I'm a consumer. Well, then when you meet an influencer, then all of a sudden they're like, oh, wow, this is amazing. The target market, we found them.
Upcoming Games and Favorites Discussion
00:35:29
Speaker
Here he is.
00:35:35
Speaker
Well, I got to ask Eric, so maybe maybe visiting some of the oldies for games right now. Is there anything you're looking forward to?
00:35:43
Speaker
this year or beyond. If you're really holding out for that good Duke Nukem game, this would be the time to mention it. Oh, too soon. Too soon. Too soon, is it? A decade past the most. Well, you might be paying me into a corner because I am looking forward to a game that has been talked about for a long time, the remake or I guess the sequel. I forget what they're calling it.
00:36:09
Speaker
The next perfect dark, which I have been very impatiently waiting for since like 2005 because perfect dark zero was not good. That was the, that was actually their end of the game. And I never heard anything else about it again. They just had baked their estimate, their estimation of review scores into the game title. Because the N64 game was great. The Game Boy game was actually pretty good as well.
00:36:38
Speaker
the Xbox scene was not good. And now they, what was it like a few years ago?
00:36:44
Speaker
Um, because, uh, Microsoft owns rare now, at least as far as I know. And they're coming out and saying, Oh, this is going to be back when they were talking about the first quadruple a game. Okay. It's like, Oh wow. Yeah. Yeah. So an actual quadruple a game comes out and now you're like, Oh no, I don't want, I'll take that fourth a away. Please.
00:37:09
Speaker
The last day is just, ah. Yeah. As you fall into a pit of despair, that's just what you sound like. But hopefully, it's better than Skull and Bones. I mean, it's not, was it, were they Ubisoft with Skull and Bones? Ubisoft, that's it. Okay, so they're not them, so that you're already starting off on a better foot. Yeah. But still, it's like, oh man, because that's the only news. It's like, hey, we're working on this game. Uh-huh. Here's some concept art.
00:37:39
Speaker
Hopefully it's not like two guys just like frantically slamming on a keyboard. That's it. I'm curious like who's left it rare in order to, or like how many people stuck around across this entire time to like keep telling Joanna dark story. Like, cause I remember the N64 game. I freaking loved it. Fantastic game. I could still go back and play it.
00:38:02
Speaker
even in its single digit frame rate. I just hope the main menu music and the laptop gun and the farsight. The ideas for weapons are so good. These are so many degenerate options that you're in perfect. So like the only way you can make this worse is facility proximity mines.
00:38:25
Speaker
And you get the dragon assault rifle that you just throw everywhere and you just wait in a doorway for all your buddies to come in. Oh my gosh. There's also, wasn't there like an Uzi that made you invisible or something? You could like drain the ammo to turn invisible. Yes. There's the RCP 120, which, which like absolutely eight ammunition, but you'd be invisible. I thought of a joke, but I don't know how to monopolize, like how to actually cash it in. So people are just going to have to,
00:38:54
Speaker
pretend it's funny. Put your joke in the comments. Yeah, put it in the comments. So we were talking about the quadruple A game. And our discussion around that reminded me of this indie game that's a reckless disregard for gravity. It's basically like you're falling and dodging projectiles and stuff like that. I was like, this would have been funny. This is like a sextuple A game or something like that. But that's fine. That's fine. We can move past that.
00:39:24
Speaker
the most A's that a game could possibly get. Uh-huh. They really wanted to make sure that if a list was sorted alphabetically, they were in top standing. It's all about the SEO at the end of the day. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Did you guys see that they, I guess they now have a new Contra or they, uh, they redid it, remastered it. Yeah. What year is this? Yeah. I just saw, um, on YouTube, there was a recommended video of Game Grumps playing it.
00:39:54
Speaker
What what year is this? Oh my god. Where where am I called? Operation Galaga or Galuga? Stop. I was just a galaga is a different game. What smells like Galuga? That is a galaga. Interesting. Well, this is still Konami, so I'm wondering, like, how did they incorporate Pachinko into it?
00:40:22
Speaker
That's an excellent question. Basically my question. Based on the, this is news to Eric and he's looking forward to checking it out. It's just crazy. Oh my goodness. Okay. I was, can't believe they got Konami on again for this. And it's, yeah, it came out last month back in February. Oh my goodness. Hello. Dang. He realizes that that's good.
00:40:49
Speaker
Dang, dang. Wow. Oh, you can demo it. That's cool. More games need demos. Oh yeah. Yeah. Cause like, I'm very curious about, I mean, I guess it doesn't matter for this install game pass, but like the resident evil series looks very cool. Uh, love the world building in it. Very weird. Um, but I would need to definitely check out.
00:41:15
Speaker
some part of it to be like, oh, I enjoyed this part of the gameplay. Or maybe I'd rather watch it on YouTube. You gotta just dive in, man. You can't demo something like that. You gotta just go in and just gotta envelop yourself in that world. Even if it's like super pixelated and the dialogue is worse than what you'd see on a soap opera. You just gotta be in it, man. That's how you know it's good. Oh, yeah.
00:41:46
Speaker
You know what game I'm looking forward to, it's gonna be on Game Pass. This also goes back to the games we play a lot, but can't recommend. They're making another stalker game. I don't know if anyone, has anyone here played stalker?
00:42:00
Speaker
Yes. Not enough. Not enough. Okay. Is that not enough as in like the game was good and you'd like to play more or the game was not good. Therefore I don't have a great view of it. The game was really enjoyable. For some reason it, I think I just didn't have enough time to really play. I only got a few hours into it, but I loved the idea. And, um, I've really wanted to play more, but it's, I never got around to it for whatever reason. That's fair.
00:42:28
Speaker
Well, this might be the chance because even though there were already three games from memory, Stalker, Shadow of Chernobyl, Stalker 2, Clear Sky, Stalker 3, Call of Pripyat, they didn't actually have a two and a three there. And so this new game that's coming out is Stalker 2.
00:42:50
Speaker
part of Chernobyl. So I don't know. I don't know where Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat went, but those were kind of like DLC. They were they were add on content to the base game. Two was basically unplayable, not because it was bad, but because like it actually was unplayable, like it would just crash out of menu or something. And the three was probably the only one that I can actually recommend people play now because it's really good.
00:43:17
Speaker
But it's coming out in September, straight to Game Pass. Wow. We shall see, but I like Stalker. It's cool. It's cool. Yeah, it's a really cool concept and just real exciting.
00:43:34
Speaker
It's probably the game that simultaneously has like the lowest average Metacritic score and like the highest personal score for me. It's just, it's the intersection between games I love and games I can't recommend. So we'll see. You're defending the ugly baby. Everyone's like, your baby looks weird. It's like, no, he's perfect. Uh-huh.
00:43:56
Speaker
I figure if anything is in that realm, um, the game I think about is escape from Tarkov. Oh no. That's not a game I play, but I hear everyone who's plays it. It's like, I love this game. This game absolutely sucks. Don't ever buy it. Cannot recommend it. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's about, it's at that funny intersection between like, so like the reason the issues with Tarkov are like,
00:44:23
Speaker
Cheaters obviously making the game harder to play. The developers are like not the best people from what I've heard. They say some, some pretty miserable stuff. Um, but it's like, if you're addicted to the game, what are you going to
Eric's LAN Party Involvement and Streaming
00:44:38
Speaker
do? Like we're all cogs in a machine, you know, free will's a joke. I've said it before.
00:44:44
Speaker
If only they had another game similar to that. Escape from Tarkov. That was free. What is it? You're talking about that magic battle royale game that was around for like two months and then got canceled. I actually forget what it was. It was like a call of duty war zone. I think it was a call of duty. The war zone was, oh, okay. I was going to say call of duty had war zone, which was fun. And then it got super grindy.
00:45:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It was the big focus on like some of the missions they have. It's like, Oh, there's one of this item in whatever session you're in. Hopefully you can get it out of the 50 people that are here. Uh-huh. That's ridiculous. The thing I remember about war zone that was like fun for me. This is after we pretty much like stopped playing. Cause we just, it was sort of a flavor of the month type game. Yeah. Um,
00:45:38
Speaker
was they had a premium skin you could buy that was basically optical camo. It literally blended with your surroundings. And it wasn't like, okay, you're fully invisible, but it was if you crouch down in a shadow, no one can see you. And the player base was like, huh, it might be bad that you could just buy this, right? Classic example of a pay to win.
00:46:08
Speaker
So that was funny. They should do more pay to lose things where it makes it more challenging for you to play. And then if you win with it, you should get more street grid. Isn't that just a FromSoft title? Unfortunately, I lose FromSoft games regardless of how much I pay. I don't know if they can influence it too much. Yeah. But.
00:46:35
Speaker
As foretold, I was going to interrogate Eric at some point, um, word on the street. I'm not sure which street, not sure where the street is. There's boys on the back street. Yeah. The backstreet boys, if you will. Hey, they're back. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. Um, is it, yeah, you've been, you've been pretty invested in land party shenanigans recently.
00:46:59
Speaker
Oh, yes, maybe not even just recently. Maybe this has been an ongoing thing. But what's what's your what's your what's your take? What's your what's your investment here? What's going on? Oh, it's the scoop. First off, highly recommend searching for any land parties that could be happening in your area. If you just do a little bit of Google searching, there's I think like a land party dot actually, I really
00:47:26
Speaker
Let me do some Google searching myself. There should be, nope, nope. That's hardcore pornography. Yeah. Don't look at that. But there are ways to find, uh, land parties within your area.
00:47:38
Speaker
Um, uh, for me, I've been attending two in-person ones that are coincidentally close to me. Um, and I've been at one of them RGB LAN. I was helping out with, uh, streaming a whole bunch of stuff. I actually did like nine hours of streaming across the weekend, which was really fun and really exciting. And by the end of it, I was laying on the floor because it is just.
00:48:07
Speaker
A lot, but it was really, really fun. The tough part is when it's hour five and you're like, did I lock my computer? But, uh, no, I did have the, uh, the honor of tuning in for some of that and it was a pretty good time. Um, I think, I think they, I think they could afford to have the stream live even a little bit more often, even if they didn't have commentators. That was my only critique.
00:48:33
Speaker
I'll pass that along. Yeah, that was something that we were thinking about I want to try to encourage more like fringe Content just like you're not always streaming because for that particular land party the big draw is team fortress 2 and yeah, it's been around for a few weeks now and
00:48:58
Speaker
They were doing tournament stuff all weekend long, pretty much. And even though we were streaming other content, there was still TF2 matches taking place during all that. So I helped out with Overwatch 2 and two different PUBG tournaments that they had. And TF2, of course, was a huge portion of my time there. I think that was like
00:49:21
Speaker
Um, probably six hours collectively that I had streamed and I had never played competitive TF2, but thankfully my co-host was this guy who's been on the scene for like eight years and he was a champion of like nine V nines.
00:49:37
Speaker
For whatever the league is going on and stuff. He was very knowledgeable in the scene So I kind of let him carry me for a bunch of it But it was I absolutely loved being in the casters booth and just being able to to bring the excitement it would have been better knowing the game a little bit more and just being more familiar with the flow because for
00:50:00
Speaker
certain games. I'm more familiar with traditional sports that like I'd watch on TV a whole lot. Yeah, Transports. And I parallel those to video games at times when it comes to casting. I expected to do Rocket League, which just ended up falling out of the schedule for that weekend. And I figured, OK, well, I'll look at that just like a hockey game.
00:50:26
Speaker
And for PUBG, I'll look at that exactly like a baseball game where there's a whole lot of nothing happening. Usually you got to stretch it out and just take your time with it. But then when something's happening, you got to be it's in it. It's it's the baseball is explosive in the way that there's a whole lot of nothing. And then you get very brief, fast moments of action where anything can happen.
00:50:51
Speaker
It can't just be silence. And then you just jump and you're like, he hit the ball. The ball went really far. Oh my gosh. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But Team Fortress 2, I had no familiarity with it. And it also changes depending on the format that it is. You could cast a 6v6 game one way, but then a 9v9 game, you'd have to look at it a different way.
00:51:10
Speaker
And depending on the map type that you're on, you have to look at it another way. If it's king of the hill, then you might pass out from losing your breath. But if it's like a five control point where it's like you go back and forth, then you then there's like there's like waves where you're up and down and people are regrouping and stuff. Yeah, constant skirmish.
00:51:31
Speaker
Yeah, you can have concentrated team fights in the way that you see Overwatch 2, where it's like, okay, here's a team fight, and then you can break it down for like 45 seconds to a minute, and then focus and let's see, okay, what do we have for team ultimates? What hero? Do we have any hero swaps? And okay, next team fight's coming in, and then you call that, right?
00:51:55
Speaker
It's exhilarating and I love it. And it's a really good way to, um, reach championships without actually having to play. Do you have a good place to be? What's that? Go ahead. Preference between, uh, essentially the buildup and kind of theory crafting, how the skirmish is going to go or kind of like shout casting and hype casting the actions is happening. Or do you like just riding the whole roller coaster?
00:52:21
Speaker
When it comes to TF2, so it depends on the game completely. For TF2, I really try to focus on play by play, which I guess would be pretty much shout casting what is happening on screen and talking about the kill feed, which might not be happening like the action that's happening just off screen. In a traditional to
00:52:44
Speaker
step back for a moment, a traditional broadcast of sporting event will have a play by play guy who's telling you what you're seeing. And then you have a color analyst who's sitting with them. And they're going to say big picture like, okay, here's the strategy of what's going on. Here's why something had happened. Here's what we think is going to happen next and so on.
00:53:06
Speaker
They swapped off their medic. That might've been a bad idea. That's personally explained why that's the case. Yeah. The color guy is going to come in and tell you like, wow, they swapped roles here. That's a big, big decision there. And they'll be able to expand on the strategy of it because the color guy is going to have a lot more insight into the game. And if you look at trad sports, um, going back to a baseball. I'm trying to get that to catch on.
00:53:32
Speaker
It's happening here. You heard it here first. If you're like a trad sports, for one of my favorite teams to watch is Philadelphia Phillies, your play-by-play guy, I'm pretty sure he hasn't had much or any professional baseball experience, but the color analyst had played for the Phillies for quite some time.
00:53:53
Speaker
And you'll usually see that across sports is your, your play by play guy is really good at broadcasting. And then your color guy is a retired athlete of that sport who can expand on what's going on. I know that that's, that's something I think Dave and I would both be a little bit familiar with. Like we would watch the international for Dota and a lot of time they have a similar role. They'll bring on, um, like an ex pro player, um, or just somebody who's been playing the game for a long time, like purge.
00:54:24
Speaker
and be like, okay, they're gonna fill in some of the context here. They're going to give you a perspective maybe you wouldn't have as a new player, but if they're doing a good job of it, they're gonna make it accessible to whoever your audience is. That's the big thing that you have to do as a broadcaster is you need to not just say what you're seeing, but make it in a way where the layperson can understand what they're seeing. With TF2, it would have, like I mentioned earlier,
00:54:53
Speaker
if I knew more about the flow, then I would have had better moments where I'm not like I'm expecting the wave to go up and my voice is going up and I'm waiting for this thing to happen. And then I just drop off a cliff for like five seconds because I don't there's nothing going on. And I just feel like a bozo. But thankfully, my color guy was helping out tremendously with that.
00:55:17
Speaker
So for TF2 to go back, that's something that I focus more on play-by-play. For PUBG, even though I don't play PUBG, I very well understand the concept and what you're trying to do and a bit of the strategy to it.
Community Engagement through LAN Parties
00:55:33
Speaker
So I would do a little bit of the color along with play-by-play because I would have, with those down waves,
00:55:40
Speaker
You have time to see what's to talk about what's going on in a particular gunfight. And then my co-host would be looking at a monitor to see, okay, you're looking at this gunfight in like the left quadrant of the map. Gotcha. Maybe they're going away.
00:55:58
Speaker
where should we look next so that the cameraman who can only see the program feed knows to, okay. Oh, I'm going to zoom out and go to this part of the map. So the color guy comes in and says, okay, let's, let's peel away from this action. Look over here. There's a gun fight happening. So it's like a,
00:56:15
Speaker
different roles for different games. But far and away, the most fun I had was for PUBG, just because I could really hit the high points of those waves for excitement. And that was just exhilarating. There were some crazy moments in PUBG I can attest to. I still remember the finale
00:56:41
Speaker
with the one guy in the little shack. Yes. And the other guy like in the middle of the field and the guy in the shack, it's like people, people make a comment, like people in chat and we're just like, all he has to do is just open the door and shoot the guy. He just opens the door and shoots the guy. It's all he has to do. It's the one thing. And he's just like sitting in here. It really does lend itself to a lot of excitement. Um, once you get through like kind of the slog of the early game and the battle royale, or it's just like,
00:57:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's been 10 minutes and no one has seen each other like another person on the map. What do you do? What do you do in this scenario when? Because I think like it's definitely a skill you're describing is being able to do more than just convey information like a transcriber. Right. You're like, if you are blind, I'll tell you what's going on. Right. Like you got to provide more information than that and translate it. But even beyond that, how do you fill the gaps? Um,
00:57:36
Speaker
in that scenario when you're like, it doesn't seem like anything's really happening yet. Still no gunshots, still no gunshots, still no gunshots. There's an alternative to say that, right?
00:57:47
Speaker
Certainly, you have similar to going back to baseball. There's a lot of time to fill. Sometimes you'll look at some of the players that are going on or like playing. You're like, okay, here's this person's kit. Here's what they might be going for. Oh, this person's going for a vehicle. You try to talk about
00:58:13
Speaker
Um, some of the big picture items that are going on, like, okay, circles are closing in on this direction. Um, there might be some gun fights over here. This part of an area might be a focus. Um, it's like prediction and strategy kind of high level stuff. Yeah.
00:58:28
Speaker
Yeah. And also you can just be cracking jokes with your co-hosts as well. Like him and I are, um, we had thankfully prior experience where sometimes we were just like, uh, I know the last year we had like broken into song for a brief moment. And then I was singing a song to him. We're going back and forth and like, Oh, you should know this and stuff. We're just like, um, uh, cracking jokes with each other and just, you have fun with it. You find ways to fill the time. It's not always just about the game. It's about making an interesting broadcast.
00:58:58
Speaker
And that isn't solely going to be just because some dude gets double digit kills for his PUBG tournament win. Yeah, that's fair. I will say I've primarily watched Smash Ultimate games and anytime that they have a video uploaded where there's nobody casting, I'm like, no.
00:59:21
Speaker
because I really appreciate the energy that casters can bring to really hype up the hype moments, because I'll just be like, oh, that was a move. My brain just defaults to the flattest thing ever, but having a caster actually drive that really helps me get into it. And also specifically for Smash, they have to be black casters. I stand by this. I don't think white people do a good enough job. I don't know what it is.
00:59:48
Speaker
Smash casters and fighting game casters. Uh, yes. Definitely a class of their own. Sorry to cut you off there, Dave. Oh good. But yeah, I, I appreciate that aspect of it. And I'm glad that, I mean, you've always had a voice for radio and a face for TV. You're gorgeous. Um, but you're too kind. Um, I mean, you've been organizing, uh, land stuff for a long time and you've always been.
01:00:15
Speaker
the face of land and definitely the voice of land. You have, maybe it's how you got two kids. You're just like, bam. But yeah. Yeah. Ladies are not at my door. It's, it's, it's a wildlife. I live up there. Did I see you to that land party? Oh, you're on, you're on that Twitch stream for that regional land party. Oh my God. You're a Twitch, a Twitch streamer and a discord mod.
01:00:44
Speaker
Oh don't say it too loud out here, the door knocking already.
01:00:49
Speaker
Yeah. I feel like I interrupted somebody. Maybe not. It was me. OK. But it's cool to see you come into this because it seems so much of your wheelhouse. Even back in college, you were very much the person who's like, I'm going to get all these people on board with what? I don't know. Maybe it's like, hey, we're going to do this for dinner. Hey, this is going to be our ACM activity, whatever it is. You had a way of making it very approachable. You still do.
01:01:19
Speaker
So it's cool to see you now just doing this. Just out here, just pumping up my ego, David. It's too kind, man. It's too kind. It is true though. Like you definitely have that hype man personality, which I think is the reason you could get away with actually pulling together people for LAN, right? Like I don't think.
01:01:42
Speaker
So most of the people I know now from our group, I actually met at LAN because of when I graduated in the group. Dave is one of the few people like I knew beforehand because he was like chasing me across campus. And I was just like, please God, I don't want to be a zombie. But no, it was it was absolutely like I'm a shut in. I'll admit it. You know, I'll call it out.
01:02:10
Speaker
And land party is one of the few things that I still go out and do. And it has been even before I went out and did other things. So that does, that does say something. Well, I'm glad I could have that honor of giving you an excuse to step out of your house.
01:02:30
Speaker
It's a pretty high honor. It's pretty prestigious. I occasionally try and get Jake out of his house by standing just down by the street, at least a couple hundred feet away, but I just hook up a bag of sheets. He's like, what's in it? I'm like, you're going to have to come here and find out.
01:02:49
Speaker
My brain went to like a different, a different visual. I'm just imagining you there with like a baseball glove and a ball and you're just like standing there staring at the door waiting, you know, feel kids from the sandlot type scenario or whatever. Um, but.
01:03:04
Speaker
It has been rewarding over the past now, I believe 15 years. It's been doing hosting our land parties and mostly thanks to COVID. Technically five years I've been going to public land parties, but from
01:03:25
Speaker
mid 2020 to 2022. There's like two or three years there and there that I, of course nobody could go. But the first one that I went to was back in 2019. And then I went to another one in February, 2020. And I was like, oh man, I can't wait for the next one. And I had to wait like three years for the next one. It's been, sorry, go ahead.
01:03:51
Speaker
No, you're good. I mean, you were still, you were still helping organize even when it was, um, when, right. Yeah, for our private. Yeah. It's definitely a different vibe, but at least the main thing with that is just trying to keep people together. And I know recently it's, it's been a little bit challenging with family, but it's, we're working toward a place where we're more available. And I want to try to get back into that because it's, it's an important, um,
01:04:20
Speaker
It's an important tradition and it's something I really want to maintain. But that also goes into some of my experience with these public lands and helping out more with that, volunteering my time, finding different roles that I can fill with that. And I'm really finding a lot of interest in that as well. And that's rewarding in its own way. It's a different vibe from our private land parties, which have evolved from, Hey, everyone, let's just play
01:04:48
Speaker
Team Fortress 2 as long as possible. Yeah, for 16 hours or something. Yeah. To, hey, everyone, let's drink as hard as humanly possible while we play Smash and Shoot Pool. To, hey, let's all hang out and bring our computers in the room too. There's like 10 people with newspapers all at the same time. Exactly. Have you heard about this thing in the Middle East? You're like, yeah. Uh-huh.
01:05:13
Speaker
But it's it's it's still an important tradition to me. So I want to I want to get back into that. Going into these next few months here, but public lands highly recommend looking out, ask around, look onto the scene. The very least you could do is look at some of the big ones, big, big ones like Dreamhack and QuakeCon for US based listeners. Definitely those are some of the bigger ones. I know they're a lot bigger in like
01:05:43
Speaker
California and Texas. For me here in Pennsylvania, you got RGB LAN and Fights LAN. F-I-T-E-S. Those are exciting ones that you will see me at.
01:05:58
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And hear me too. Right. You might not even have to go to the lane. You can just see him on Twitch.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
01:06:04
Speaker
Exactly. Front page trending, promoted spot. Yeah, 12 viewers, front page. Let's get it. I think we got significantly higher than that this last time, but yeah, that's fair. That's the other thing. That's the other thing you got to do is you got to get a little screen over here on the side for Twitch chat. It'll be distracting. You won't always have time for it, but occasionally you just look over and be like,
01:06:27
Speaker
Chat's wrong, and that's all it takes. That's how you build engagement on Twitch. Or just periodically drop a random emote, and then you're good to go. You're good, yeah. Just watch everybody else copy it, add and finish them. Yeah. Or if I copy and paste one of those stupid
01:06:45
Speaker
three sentence long copypastas that is always in the Twitch chat. According to all known laws of aviation, a bee should not be able to fly. But don't forget to copy the username of the person who posted before you. Exactly. Exactly. It must grow. It must grow.
01:07:03
Speaker
Well, I would like to thank you, Eric, for once again coming on and being our esteemed guest, special guest. Thank you for recording the five episodes prior to this that we will release over the next five years. Absolutely. Also, thank you for waving using your voice in perpetuity because I have now programmed this AI so well that for any future episodes, I can just
01:07:29
Speaker
Drag it up. If you ever have a conflict, I'm like, that's okay. I'll make the bot do it. Thank you for the payment of 13 cents and a used Burger King gift card. I will, I very highly appreciate your payment. Yeah. Unfortunately I AI just doesn't have the charisma yet. So we'll just have to, we'll have to call you back. Um, and yeah, I can, I ought to be able to wiggle in some more room here. Awesome.
01:07:58
Speaker
Glad to hear it. Well, if you listeners out there on the Internet and beyond have your own wiggle of advice for what we should cover next on the podcast, send that in, sofestonepodcastgml.com. Or you can wiggle your way over to Facebook, facebook.com slash sofestonepodcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. I'm wiggling. See ya.