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S3 Ep232: RSS - November - Justin
74 Plays3 years ago
Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Justin as they talk about voting, what they've been playing, microtransactions in single player games, and more in this week's episode!
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Transcript
Introduction and Banter
00:00:49
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? With both my fingers crossed, because I only have two fingers, I want to say hopefully better. I've been sick for the better part of way too fucking long, and I miss the week. But I want to say hopefully good going forward. Well, I hope so. Justin.
00:01:18
Speaker
I'm glad that you're starting to feel better. I know it was a bit of a struggle. Also, whoa. Whoa. I like the baton pass of before introducing him, you switched the topic to being your own personal health. So if he had some other direction he wanted to go, he really can't, right? It has to be. Oh, no. We're talking about this. To your health state, yeah. Beautiful. I'm glad it's starting to be a little better, though, right?
00:01:48
Speaker
Yeah. Honestly, for like a good part of today, like I ran an errand or two because like work was quiet. Like I've had some coughing fits here and there, but like. I feel relatively normal, but every time I say that, I feel like I'm jinxing it. And then like, as soon as I wake up tomorrow, it's going to be there. Uh huh. There's a little leprechaun somewhere listening to you and it's like one more hex.
00:02:12
Speaker
Yeah. We knew it was bad last week when we invited you out to a restaurant near you. Yeah. And you're like, I can't. And we're like, OK, David, still. He may be dead. Yeah. If I'm passing up food or like other things, I do not feel well. I was actually supposed to go to a. I think I showed you guys both James Acaster.
00:02:37
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah. Oh, so I was going to go see him down in D.C. with Mike this weekend. Right. Yeah. Because like he got tickets and planned it like a couple of months back. And I'm like, hey, just a heads up. I've been feeling terrible. Probably won't be able to make it, but I'll let you know. Yeah. Yeah, I.
Humor in Illness and Social Plans
00:02:55
Speaker
I couldn't second that usually when it comes to social... Now, admittedly, I've invited Dave to far fewer social situations than he's invited me, but that's just by nature of my social starting point. But if I were to ask Dave if he wants to go get food or something and he turns it down, he's probably going to follow it up with, but you can drop it off at the hospital. That's basically the scenario I would expect to unfold.
00:03:23
Speaker
The hospital is a place I like to go to. Uh, they've usually pretty good drinks on tap. You get that. You can get that direct feed too. Oh yeah. That's true. The whole, the whole physical drinking. Yeah. And then that's overrated. Yeah. Like decades has like a pouch bags for mixed drinks. This does too, but it also has an IV. Yeah. See, yeah. I wonder, I wonder if you would get in legal trouble for opening a bar. That's just called the hospital.
00:03:51
Speaker
Right.
National and State Rivalries
00:03:52
Speaker
Like, because here's the issue. There's going to be someone and they're going to need to go to a hospital and they will be directed to the wrong location. They'll say Alexa hospital near me. And they're like, hospital is open until 11 PM. And they're like, that seems odd, but okay.
00:04:08
Speaker
Well, they should be suspicious if they if they talk to automation and it's like it's more busy than usual at this time. I mean, you wouldn't have to deal with copyright at least because like you're in a different genre of business.
00:04:28
Speaker
What if you did a math spin on it instead of hospital? It was lopital. Oh, gotcha. Gotcha. Well, then you'd just be tricking French people and it's not fair. Um, but to be fair, what have they given us baguettes? Get out of here. Yeah. Freedom. I don't know who keeps track of these things. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know if, uh, if we're still supposed to be bearing a grudge against the red coats or not, but you know, it feels safer to just hold onto it.
00:04:57
Speaker
I mean, we were just you were talking about British comedy. This is why I haven't followed up on James Acaster's work. I'm pure hatred of the Brits. Well, it's like whenever I talk to the Brits on the other discord where we play Dota, there is always kind of like a friendly ribbing between like America versus a European country. Oh, yeah. In the same way, like if we had people in discord who like from New Jersey, you'd be like, yeah, you're state shit. It's just one of those things where it's.
00:05:26
Speaker
It's kind of like sports teams to a degree, but it's it's low, very low effort. The national team. Yes. Yes. But but fun laid back nationalism. You've heard of ultra nationalism. Now get ready for like apathetic
Elections and Voting Humor
00:05:41
Speaker
nationalism or something like that. No, I think that's fun. It's it's good to have
00:05:50
Speaker
We talked about in groups a lot on the podcast. And I think it's also good to have an in group that's close enough. Like your group is the people playing Dota. It's close enough that you can poke fun at each other's subgroups, which is allowed because you're all part of the same in group.
00:06:07
Speaker
to go into, uh, to make it social hierarchy. Yeah, exactly. Because you're all friends and you're all in Dota, you know, it's just ribbing when you're like, Hey, remember that time that we overthrew your government. That was great. That was a highlight for me. Would you like to bring that up a lot?
00:06:28
Speaker
But at this point, we can't really be, they can't really say to us, your politics are fucked. And we really can't say that back to them either. They chose the correct time to do it so that it was all just a cluster everywhere.
00:06:41
Speaker
Yeah. Synchronize your watches to go as maximum political chaos. Oh my gosh. Did you guys get a chance to vote this weekend? We did the mail-in ballot. Yeah. I did. We did the mail-in as well. We were sitting on it for a while and then it was like, well, this is going to get crumpled. So we filled them out and sent them in. Nice. Yeah. I was talking to some people at work about them.
00:07:06
Speaker
Because we have to travel occasionally, I think there was one midterm election that I missed and from that point on I've tried to do anything I can to do it. They just don't schedule us quick enough out that I was able to submit the request for before the
00:07:22
Speaker
What do they call it? The no-cause style that they enacted? Oh, yeah. Oh, you have to do it enough in advance. Otherwise, that'd be like a crazy emergency. Yeah. You have to have some explanation. No, they're very convenient. We also got like a, I don't know if you guys got this or not, but like an email that's just like, hey, your ballot's been received. That's really nice.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, I got that. Rachel didn't. So I think she ended up calling them verify afterwards, because at least it's county level. So it's not as huge of a system, I guess. The weird thing is I never gave them my email address. So they just have that. A little suspicious. I'm sure I put it somewhere on a ballot. Yeah.
00:08:09
Speaker
Or not the ballot itself, but probably the accompanying paper because it's not supposed to be on the ballot itself or it would be personal identifiable. PII. Yeah. Yeah. I want to own my vote, though.
Church Voting and Stereotypes
00:08:21
Speaker
Like, yeah. Sincerely, Dr. Rupinthor Esquire. I wasn't sure if they got mine, so I sent them a couple just to make sure.
00:08:34
Speaker
They love that. Stuffing the mailbox instead of the ballot box. The mail carrier is just a little bit suspicious. There's just multiple printed out ballots. They're all exactly your name. No, people think that happens, though.
00:08:51
Speaker
One of these will make it through. Uh-huh, right. It's kind of like, what is it? Like TCP communication. I was talking to Dave earlier about, like, Sanac. And yeah, it's a UDP type problem, or TCP, where the first packet maybe didn't come through. But they're just going to disregard it if I send duplicates. So just like, spam madam for a bit, and then one of those will make it through. Hey. Hey.
00:09:20
Speaker
Hey. A real life DDoS attack against the election system. Yeah, that would get you in like federal prison probably real quick, like instantly. I mean, technically it's what, elections are required to be handled by the state, so may not be federal.
00:09:39
Speaker
I think that's probably that might be true. I do think that some of the laws for election security are set at the federal level, though. OK. So you might be you could probably be prosecuted in both. Why pick? Right. But yeah, I think even on the ballot, unlike the back of the ballot, it details it's like, hey, do this right. Also, by doing this, do not show up in person.
00:10:03
Speaker
That is election fraud. You will be in so much trouble. And I was like, you could have just said it like a normal person. You don't need all these pauses. And this isn't high school, but it actually sends a little recording box and you press the button and it's actually somebody sternly talking to you about it. It's Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam's on the recording. A date fake. Mm hmm.
00:10:31
Speaker
I just, I did it in person because it was really, really close. Wow. You went outside? Who does that? Well, then I went inside of a church because I live in a very rural area. I mean, we are, our voting place is also a church. So yeah, these, this church was like gigantic though. Like it took me a while to find where it was within the church. So church is pretty big.
00:11:00
Speaker
You know, it's really funny. I get that this isn't this isn't a real argument at all. But. What did the separation of church and say actually mean, if not like literally the separation of voting places from religious locations? I think it was churches can't be taxed for stuff and they can just make money for free. OK.
00:11:26
Speaker
I'm curious if that'll actually, this is turning into a very political episode, but I wonder if that'll ever really see challenge, like what the line would need to be, like how far someone would have to go as far as endorsing a candidate or publicly funding the candidate or being the candidate.
00:11:44
Speaker
in order to actually say, like, hey, about that separation thing, like, you can't be both, right? Because there was a lot of talk about that for a while. People behind the pulpit, like, they're like, oh, no, it would be tremendously taboo to endorse a political candidate. What in my fair country? And then we allowed for money to equal voice for corporations and everything has
00:12:12
Speaker
devolved. Corporations are people, my friend. Well, I mean, we literally had, I'm from Pennsylvania for as I assume most listeners are for our demo. Um, but we have fucking Dr. Oz as a candidate for something, which is fucking wild. So show enough that like money equals voice.
00:12:35
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Speaking of Dr. Oz, though, very brief, I'll sanitize all the personal information, but someone like my wife was going for a walk and some guy like got like stopped in his truck, I guess it was, got out and talked to her and was like, hey, are you old enough to vote? And already this is shaky ground like you have started this as this is a problem from the get go like.
00:13:02
Speaker
work on your cold open. But anyways, he was just like, hey, like, do you know about Dr. Oz and all this stuff? And I guess he was canvassing and she just was like trying to be friendly or whatever to like get this guy to leave. Smile and nod back. Yeah, OK. Yeah, right. Yeah. I'll vote for whoever you want me to. Just give me the names and then like gave her a handout and I guess and left. But like,
00:13:32
Speaker
That's such a bad situation. No, canvassing is usually like door to door of, Hey, this is a residence. I can drop off mail. Or if you're home, I can stop and talk to you for two minutes, not drive by. And then it's also soliciting in some form. And there are non-solicitation laws in place that just, just get ignored.
00:13:58
Speaker
Yeah. And for clarification, she didn't, she wasn't carrying a door with her at the time and she had a no soliciting sign on her back. So like faces were covered. It's fucking crazy. Yeah. I just try not to talk to people in general and we usually do. Okay. I will say having facial hair and the look of like you, you're dead inside really helps really help sell it.
Audience and Gaming Anecdotes
00:14:26
Speaker
Nobody's coming up to you to be like, Hey buddy.
00:14:29
Speaker
If you shave the mustache and put on a straw hat, they wouldn't know immediately who you'd be voting for. That's fair. I have a beard for anybody who doesn't know. That might not be enough to fill everybody in because I don't know how many people think of Amish stereotypes. That's probably Pennsylvania context.
00:14:55
Speaker
Again most of our listenership as they pointed out was probably Pennsylvania, but I'm looking everybody's heard the weird owl song Amish paradise So I feel like even if you're outside of the thing entirely, you don't have the context you've seen that music video probably right I Don't know. When did that come out? I'll be too old for the kids 15 years ago either 90s or 2000 early 2000s Yeah, it's almost too old for me
00:15:22
Speaker
Which is crazy. I think about the, it's all about the Pentium was probably like a Pentium three, which I think was like, maybe like 2002 ish. I have a more interesting topic. So I was looking up analytics for the podcast and what would you guys think are the top three countries
00:15:52
Speaker
that listen to our podcast. And I guarantee you, one of you will probably guess wrong for number two. That's the clickbait title. That doesn't help you at all. United States is the first one. I mean, it has to be Anglo speaking. So I guess Canada?
00:16:16
Speaker
So top three are actually, the United States is the second one, but I'm gonna say it's also first on technicality, because first and number two are the exact same percentage for listens. I don't know over what period of time. I'm not putting an extensive effort into this. At 37.5%, number three is Australia, then France, the Netherlands, and Ukraine. But India and the United States are tied for first. I was gonna ask, who's the other first? India.
00:16:46
Speaker
So I actually see cities that people are listening from. And I'm going to just censor the cities that are close to us. I'll just say it that way. But we've got Lucknow, which could be in India. Or maybe it's the UK. And then Ahmedabad. Ahmedabad? Ahmedabad. Does it also include the duration listen? Or is it just? There's a lot of words with bad here. And then Melbourne. That's got to be Australia.
00:17:16
Speaker
I feel like there has to be some degree of like click farming happening somehow in our benefit for the podcast through India.
00:17:25
Speaker
You know what it probably is? I'm looking at the devices that listen here. And we're over 60%. We're probably 70% mobile, 30% desktop, and less than a percent tablet. So I guess we haven't really reached tablet saturation. But Spotify is 50% of our platform. And I'll be honest, I kind of thought it was 100%. Near 40%? Who's listening on audio boom?
00:17:48
Speaker
That's fair. Uh, that probably shows up under web, which is 6.3 or other apps, which is 6.3. What's funny here is this is on audio boom site. So the fact that they don't even give themselves representation in the chart is hilarious. Um, but at like 38 or so percent, there's a platform called geo seven, which I have no idea what that is, but I think it's probably in India.
00:18:15
Speaker
Interesting. I wonder if people are listening to the podcast to learn or improve their English. And if that's the case, I'm sorry that I'm here. Maybe, maybe it's been like the first five minutes of each podcast we're talking about food. And I often say I love Indian food and tikka masala or someone leaving their VPN on. That was the last seven days actually. And listen, so maybe I could have picked a larger sample size.
00:18:44
Speaker
Yeah, maybe really a flash in the pan. Uh-huh. Interesting. Have you guys been playing any games lately? India is still number two, if I expand it out to a month. But the United States is 65%. I think Jake is playing Geoguesser, bud.
00:19:07
Speaker
That's really funny. One of the things is Geoguesser, the one where it like drops you down and you have to quickly identify. It's like one image or depending on like your settings, it's an image and you have to try and determine like where you are within a certain radius. And like some of the ridiculous people are like, I am this specific latitude and longitude within like five decimal precision.
00:19:32
Speaker
I've seen it for Google Street View, where you have a certain period of time to make your guess. And I haven't done this myself, but I've seen compilations of people playing this online. And the most hilarious thing is when people are adamantly, confidently incorrect.
00:19:51
Speaker
I'm freaking right there. That's the Netherlands. That's the Netherlands flag. And then they're just like completely wrong. It's Japan. Japan side sheet of little Netherlands. Yeah. Oh, it's interesting the context clues that you could potentially get. But then you get like, I'm in the middle of a field.
00:20:13
Speaker
Oh, yeah. But then people start picking out like, oh, if I can look up and see where the sun is and like the shadow is cast here, I can figure out what latitude and longitude I am from that. Like, uh huh. Yeah. Well, clearly this is buckwheat, which only grows during the winter months in the northern latitudes. Right. So. Yeah.
00:20:32
Speaker
You could, you could show me a picture of my street and I might struggle. Yeah. I, uh, I can be like, just, uh, I literally use navigation sometimes just because I'm not sure if like a road might be closed, even if I'm very close. Um, but it is like pretty shameful when it's someplace we went to Taco Bell.
00:20:54
Speaker
I was like, there's some traffic on the way here. Let's see if there was a closure and navigate our way home. Freaking five minute drive. There was one time we were visiting Dave and Rachel was driving and there's this one intersection that always has bad traffic on our way over there.
00:21:12
Speaker
I was just like, Rachel, just go straight here. And I was like, we'll figure out the way around it. Every single intersection, until we got far enough away, it just wanted us to turn around. And she's like, do I turn here? Just keep going. How dependent and ingrained using navigation and listening to the robot lady tell you to turn left now has become.
00:21:36
Speaker
Yeah. When I used to visit people down in Philly and I drive in and out of it, I'd be like, but which road do I turn on specifically? Because sometimes it'd be like, hey, here's the name of a road. And hey, there's this road PS, you kind of veer off a little bit, but no one's going to tell you that. And you're like, huh? And then you have to wait another 20 minutes to get where you're trying to go, because now you're fucked or you're locked into I'm on the highway now, I think. And I hate being in the situation. So I'm like, just tell me how to do it verbatim.
00:22:05
Speaker
I'll be the baby, you get me there, I'll do the driving, and we'll call it a day.
00:22:10
Speaker
It's just like when the assistant's like, you're going to need to jump the curb on the right. Yeah. Hit the homeless man. You're like, eh. When Google Maps implements the AR gamification, start getting points. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's just straight up GTA. It gives you tips on how to evade the police.
00:22:36
Speaker
Yeah, that's a gaming topic we haven't talked about, actually, because it's old.
Player Choices and Game Ethics
00:22:42
Speaker
But for people who haven't been keeping track, there was that leak of GTA six. Yeah. And they officially confirmed that they yes, they are actually working on basically they confirmed the link to what extent. I guess what are your guys's takes on that, if any?
00:23:00
Speaker
We did talk about that. Excellent. Next topic. What's your takes, Justin? What are your takes? I played a lot of GTA IV. I tried playing GTA V when it came out. It didn't grab me the same way. I think I've grown out of that specific semi-gritty,
00:23:26
Speaker
I don't like playing as an asshole and that's kind of specifically. Yeah. What you gotta do. Yeah.
00:23:37
Speaker
That's fair, actually. I don't know if we've ever talked about that, but forced morality sounds like the wrong term for it, because that makes it sound like the game's trying to make you a good guy. But games that kind of shoehorn you into decisions that you don't want to make always have felt
00:23:58
Speaker
It's bad to me. Yeah. For a game, you are inhabiting that person in some extent. I think they tried to avoid some of that because of the multiple characters you were picking. Those decisions didn't like it was that character making decision rather than you. That plays easier in movies because action is happening once you take control. Like you can lose some of the immersion by
00:24:29
Speaker
I have to make an action that I am not comfortable with, which is video games are a medium. There's not a lot of mediums that would be able to accomplish that. But then you also, when you do have the options, you end up with the Mass Effect issue where so many more people played Paragon than Renegade because that was the character that they were playing. And then there's this whole part of the game that was developed and
00:24:57
Speaker
but also some of those choices didn't line up or it was one extreme for the other.
00:25:06
Speaker
Yeah, there's less nuance and things like that. Like, even Fable is an old, canonical example of, oh, yeah, am I good or am I like chicken chaser? Like, fucking everybody buying and selling their houses and like murdering. Did you kill your wife? Yes. In front of this door. Right. Well, even more. Or you eat a lot of chicken, which is baby chicks, baby chicks, baby chicks. Sorry. And two equally evil things.
00:25:34
Speaker
Back when we played Divinity Original Sin 2, like when you picked one of the special characters, like there was a story for them and you could just miss there. At some point, if you made one decision, basically you ended their story and they were stuck in limbo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was. Go ahead.
00:26:01
Speaker
I would have liked, I guess more of a notification for that. Cause I think when we first played, we had Sebelle was our actual character NPC and we missed part of her plot line and like we reset it back to get back to it, but we had to like, look it up because at a point it's just, we got locked out of something. We weren't sure what it was and that was fine. Um, like we didn't need it, but at a point we were just kind of curious to see what happened there. Yeah.
00:26:37
Speaker
Some mechanism to either know exactly when it happens or an option to save Smurf or go and correct the past in some way.
00:26:50
Speaker
I think I prefer, although it is literally the definition of immersion breaking, the point of no return dialogue in a video game, particularly an open world game or something like that. It's like, hey, if you start this mission, you're going to be locked in a sequence of long cut scenes we'll play, please set aside sufficient time. But you know that you're done, right? Maybe you get free roam afterwards. Maybe you don't. We're not going to tell you that.
00:27:20
Speaker
You start this, and this could be the end of your play session once you're done.
00:27:24
Speaker
Yeah, I prefer those over the I think Rachel was telling me about the original release in Xenoblade, where there were multiple segments of the game where the game world would change so much that if you did not complete the side quest, they were just completely unavailable. Yeah. But it wouldn't tell you when you were doing the transition. So it instilled a sense of like, I better do everything as soon as it
00:27:54
Speaker
comes up or not at all. Yeah. And that sucks so much from a design standpoint, because you want to experience all the game, not feel like you're, you somehow cheated yourself out of it.
00:28:09
Speaker
I think we talked about that for cyberpunk, too. And some other games have done it, but you have a time-sensitive quest, but you don't tell people that it's time-sensitive. That always kind of feels like a gut punch because it's oftentimes completely justifiable. Yes, I should have run and taken care of this thing. You were saying it was important, but I am a player playing a video game. But here's the thing. Part of that contract is I don't want to miss content.
00:28:34
Speaker
You have multiple people in a game like Cyberpunk specifically, you have multiple people saying, hey, can you do this thing for me? It's important to you priority. Yeah. It's like, how do you prioritize that? Yeah. When it's a lot of these are optional things that I'm choosing to do. Also in that game, I did not know what the correct romance options were to like proceed forward. And I was like, oh, I thought like I was having a good relationship with this character. And then it's like.
00:29:03
Speaker
Remember that one time you said something mean about my socks? And I was like, I thought that was being playful. And then it's like, it's the options gone. And you're like, OK, I had no idea that.
00:29:14
Speaker
You should have spent more time in honey pop. I can't spend more time in a honey pop. The game just doesn't launch anymore. It just says you've had enough. It just says, Dave, no. What was that one game that if you played it and died, it would actually delete parts of your hard drive?
00:29:34
Speaker
Oh, I think I know what you're talking about, but I can't remember the name of it because this was like a small kind of it was a shooter, right? Yeah. Yeah. There was a shooter where like the enemies that spawned were files on your file system.
00:29:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I don't think Windows likes that game. I think there's also a mod for Minecraft at one point where it was like super hardcore mode where you like you built and as soon as you died, you can no longer access that save. It had to be sent to somebody else or something like it was a whisper down the telephone type of situation. That's kind of novel. That sounds very frustrating, but super novel. Yeah, it was like super hardcore or something.
00:30:16
Speaker
Like the part of Super Hardcore, that's not the interesting part. The part for me is like hand off gameplay, sort of like bang, screwed it up, your turn or whatever. But if you could get a collaborative game based around that concept, I think that could be kind of cool. Well, spoilers for Nier, the ending E for Automata, kind of played with that a little bit.
00:30:39
Speaker
Yeah. I always wondered how true it was. It always felt a little fuzzy. So I have the background story for this, actually. It's one of the things I know. And Justin already knows it, but I'm going to take it anyways. The developers.
00:30:54
Speaker
didn't manufacture all of that data for helping people out at the credits. But what they realized is when the game launched, that it was very, very hard to complete with literally no one helping you out. So what they did is they signed in
00:31:13
Speaker
They're basically pre-released copies to the servers and ran through the credits. And they're like, all right, let's freaking go. We got to make it through here. So they use a code or a jump point or something like that to skip to the credits. So they could run through the credits and get these runs so that they could actually make it accomplishable for the people who could then play the game the next day or something.
00:31:36
Speaker
so they they seeded it they they did it themselves yeah they they didn't they didn't provide a mechanism to just have generic people like as like a default
Game Development and Indie Trends
00:31:49
Speaker
controlled computer generated ones and on the I guess they couldn't generate the data for it. They had to actually have a legitimate save to delete for some reason. Like it was probably one of those things that was like oversight and the easiest way to solve it. The guarantee to solve it before the the actual problem arose was to just deal with the situation rather than like hacking in something someplace else that could have had
00:32:13
Speaker
violations for whatever. Yeah. Yeah, I tried. I tried doing it for a while without accepting the help. And yeah, it was a struggle. Yeah, I think I tried like six times and I was like, all right, I got to beat this thing. It was one of those. It was it was kind of a kajima moment in a way. I realize this is in the kajima game, but like it's a kajima moment and that it's like.
00:32:38
Speaker
You are not supposed to do it this way. I'm trying to teach you a life lesson. You're supposed to accept the help of other people. Very much that. Like beating the snow grave route. So you got the reference too.
00:32:59
Speaker
No, he didn't get the reference from what I said it earlier. He's saying, cause the only thing he did for that entire thing, like I was struggling on the boss because like you don't have any weapons or upgrades for whatever you're doing for that. I would just after five times, I'm like, I'm not going to get an entire don't give a shit. And then, so we pulled, we tapped Justin. I think he got on his second or third try and maybe fourth.
00:33:24
Speaker
OK, I'll give you. I'm going to hear about this until I die. This is coming from not playing Undertale or Deltarune at all up to that point. So they literally just drop me into the game on a a super boss. And I'm just like, sure. Yeah, you get the games. You figured it out. Yeah. I hear Tam Storm. Easy. It's right there.
00:33:55
Speaker
Yeah. That's a good topic. Speaking of games, what have you guys been playing lately? Version two. I mean, it's been a lot of destiny. Yeah. Anything outside of destiny? Because I picked up some I was a dome keeper, I think is what it was called. I was playing dome keeper. OK. I think I did like.
00:34:22
Speaker
three runs so far. Definitely enjoyed the sword version more once you get some upgrades.
00:34:30
Speaker
I see Dave frantically looking up Domekeeper so he can relate to it. I was just opening my Steam. I'm like, if I need to answer this, what am I going to say? No. Like, Domekeeper is basically a combination of, what, Missile Command and Digduck. Yep. Essentially, right? I really liked Steamworld Dig 2 when it came out. That was where I was coming from, the Digduck side. Yeah.
00:34:58
Speaker
I'm a little torn on how frantic it is to get back up to the dome because I like just how Zen mining in certain games can be. And this game definitely does not let you just the Zen out.
00:35:15
Speaker
There are a lot of gadgets that you can get in the game that assist you with returning. So one I got was literally a teleporter. And there's a lot of cool stuff there. It's in early access, just a high level.
00:35:30
Speaker
But the TLDR is you land on a planet, you have a dome, you have to periodically defend it against basically enemies from World of Goo. Wizard of Oz situation. Yeah. When your dome landed, you crushed somebody and now they're angry at you. And then between waves, your job is to mine to get resources to upgrade your dome or your weapons or your gear.
00:35:55
Speaker
Um, so you can get more resources so you can continue to upgrade your stuff and survive these waves. Yeah. Um, and there is, it's rogue like for the most part, there isn't a whole bunch of like interim upgrades to get necessarily, but if you fail a run, you are allowed to carry a gadget forward into the next room. Oh, that's good. So you're able to start with a little bit of a power creep early on. Um, if you fail runs repeatedly.
00:36:24
Speaker
Yeah, I've done two runs of it and I just picked it up because it looked very cute. I'm keeping an eye on it. I'll probably play it a bit more once it's got some more progress, but they've had at least one major update since I grabbed it. So I'm hoping for something like vampire survivors almost, you know, consistent. Also the audio is like super great. It reminds me.
00:36:46
Speaker
Dave will judge me for mentioning this, but reminds me of Hyper Light Drifter and Disaster Peace.
00:36:56
Speaker
If Dave can't remember the reason he should judge me for this, it's because I actually returned Hyper Light Drifter and I did not complete that game. But it has those vibes. From a technical standpoint, it's also it was made in Godot, which there aren't. It's it is a completely open source game development engine.
00:37:17
Speaker
Um, so it's, they have Godot script, but they also, it's a, it was originally motto based, but is, does support like C sharp as its scripting language. Um, and especially with stuff like unity having a couple of, uh,
00:37:35
Speaker
problematic decisions in recent time. There's a lot of community onus, but it is an open source system. There haven't been a lot of games actually published in it and how well this is managed to release. I never had a crash or anything like that. So it's one of those things where it can potentially start pushing that platform further and further.
00:38:05
Speaker
It sounds good and cute. I will say towards unity. There's so many times where it's just been like, nah, um, it crashed.
00:38:17
Speaker
Yeah, Unity seemed like such a great thing because there wasn't a better option, right? It's because the alternative to Unity was literally Unreal, but this was Unreal before it was more accessible, and they had all of their deals with Epic Game Store and stuff, because Epic Game Store didn't exist. And so I absolutely believe that
00:38:40
Speaker
there's a big space in the game creation market for something that's more community owned and developed there. Godot has the general open source problem of like documentation can potentially be stale. I think they're primarily funded from Patreon. Like interesting. Last time I was I know Shane is really was really big into a time I had tried producing something mine was basically a
00:39:10
Speaker
a snake, I made a snake game just to see what it was like to try and do something in it. But yeah, so like there are tutorials, but the ecosystem is nowhere the same as what Unity had. Right. Which makes sense. Yeah. Very mature platform by comparison. But no, that's cool. Competition is good in such things, especially if it's free. What have you been playing, Dave?
00:39:41
Speaker
uh void scrappers which is kind of like a space a lot of things have followed the vampire survivors model of like i'm a guy waves of shit passive progression um so this is just one i got when i was drunk and it was like three bucks it's cute i still play occasionally just to like burn some time
Microtransactions and Economics in Gaming
00:40:04
Speaker
Not like a crazy Awesome game, but if you're looking for something else like it, there's a lot of stuff in that space now There was something that was referenced I'm trying to find the name of it that uh, it had a lot more like Diablo asking the aesthetics reminded me of Torchlight, okay
00:40:29
Speaker
I know it was on sale recently. Torchlight 2? Torchlight 3? 3 did not review very well. It was just an aside. I think that game, that series actually just had descending reviews. I think it's Gearbox. I think Gearbox made Torchlight. They bought something. The Torchlight people made
00:40:57
Speaker
I'm blanking on a whole bunch of names now. Soul Stone Survivors was the game I was thinking that has like a Torchlight vibe. It's like a 3D isometric. The developers of Torchlight 2, they were trying to make an MMO on it. And they spent a whole bunch of time there and it did not pan out. And then I think like,
00:41:28
Speaker
one of the Nexon style, I don't think it was Nexon directly, tried to come in and fund them and that added a whole bunch of microtransactions and then turned it very generic. And so when it did finally get early alpha stuff, everyone was just like, this isn't what the other games were. Why are you doing this? And then they
00:41:51
Speaker
They got separated again and then finally published something with the scraps of existing development basically and it kind of lost its vision multiple times. But I love Lost Ark. I've heard people speak favorably about Lost Ark as recently as like within the last week. Are you talking to Andrew? No, I think it's somebody from work.
00:42:21
Speaker
I can see how it would, but it's definitely built for a different era, I guess. It was a different time. And it's about dinosaurs that's in the era. I'm sorry, I'm out of jokes, you're good. It's actually Lost Ark Survival. I don't know what the art games are titled as anymore.
00:42:49
Speaker
You know what? I actually immediately, I was thinking of Arc Survival Evolved. Survival Evolved, that's what it is. Yeah. Lost Arc is a completely separate MMO. Maybe my jokes still lands, I don't know. But I was thinking about Lost Arc or the Survival Evolved, I mean. They both have dinosaurs. That's fair. I've been playing.
00:43:12
Speaker
Uh, shadow of war or, or the ring shadow of war. That was the sequel, right? Yeah. And it is still just one of my favorite games, like just for how ridiculous it's Pokemon with orcs. This is how I describe it to people. Um, and the nemesis system is just like chef's kiss, like.
00:43:38
Speaker
I really hope that their studio isn't closed or dead, but it probably is because I think it's EA. It's how it works. But it's it's so freaking good. I think I bought Dave a copy of this game at one point.
00:43:52
Speaker
I think I thought about it. The first one, maybe when it was on sale. Yeah, the first one was good, too. But the full name. Shadow of War. Yeah. Shadow of War or Shadow of Mordor for the subtitles on it. It's Lord of the Rings. Shadow of Mordor 2017. Yeah, sounds about right. I I don't see any information here, so I don't know if I launched it. Yeah. What about Shadow of War?
00:44:20
Speaker
Okay, well, I just wanted the credit for buying something for Dave without actually buying it for him, I guess.
00:44:27
Speaker
But it's really cool. I remember there was a community out roar when Shadow of War released because of microtransactions or something. You could buy loot boxes. It was very much like... If you guys remember the Deus Ex release where you could buy Praxis. It was in microtransactions like that. It was dumb. It was stupid. It was also pointless.
00:44:53
Speaker
So it was just like a level up type thing? Yeah, what you would get from it. So I'm not going to go into extensive detail because I don't want to take everybody's time with something that only I care about. But in this case, I'll do it later, but this case.
00:45:09
Speaker
Basically, you could get loot. The way you would get loot normally is by killing an orc captain. That was part of the Nemesis system. You can also convert them to your side through domination with your ring magic and stuff. And having your orcs fight their orcs and they all have personalities. Yeah, they've doing the choking thing. This is the Force choke. But when an orc captain dies, be they an ally or an enemy, they drop loot based off the rarity.
00:45:37
Speaker
And if they're a shiny Pokémon, they could drop really nice loot.
00:45:42
Speaker
But the loot boxes were a way to just buy loot, basically, or just be random drops. And I think you could also buy a box that would have orc captains in it. So if you didn't really want to interact with the system and train them up and send them to the fight pits and have them do assassinations and things, you could skip all of the parts of the game that were fun by engaging with these loot boxes. Because there's also a time commitment to actually do the leveling. So the frequency at which you were getting that loot, if you played the game, was extended.
00:46:12
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, so the loot boxes were pretty additive. There was other ways to get everything that you got from them. And this is most emphasized by the fact that when I launched the game up this time, because I started probably a week ago or so, maybe not quite that long back, there's literally a pop-up that's like, based off community feedback, we've removed the store.
00:46:36
Speaker
They just they just disabled it it's disabled in the menu and it's just not an option anymore and the game is just as good or better for it, so I Don't know it's it's ridiculous it it feels weird
00:46:53
Speaker
When you talk about certain games and you have like a season pass, the idea of like loot boxes and like some of that progression makes sense because it's now existed as a concept for five or so years, maybe more. And in those contexts, you're like, okay, I accept that that is what it is, whether or not I'd like it. But if you look at the root of it, basically a loot box is, hey, I'm going to give you something in here that you could technically get from just playing the game anyway over time. Yeah. Right.
00:47:20
Speaker
You're not guaranteed to get the thing you want, but we'll give you a shiny thing from the game and you'll be happy about it for a little bit. Cool. But now apply that idea to some other games that don't have that concept or that system. Imagine playing a FromSoft game and it's like, man, are you having trouble finding a really certain stat faith weapon? We can get that to you in a loot box, technically.
00:47:40
Speaker
Just get some random gear. You don't want to have a souls booster? Do you want to get a boost for souls collected? Got to do your daily login. And now it seems fucking insane because it doesn't make sense for that because it's always a essentially a single player play through type game. So the idea of this extra bonus stuff you'd have for multiplayer like catch up to people doesn't make sense.
00:48:04
Speaker
It's worth noting for Shadow of War and Shadow of Mordor. Shadow of Mordor specifically was just single player, I believe. Shadow of War has multiplayer components and that you can kind of do the MGS thing and attack someone else's fortress, but they don't lose anything for it. It's just you get resources if you beat the simulation.
00:48:24
Speaker
You have to remove all the nukes from Mordor. Yes, exactly. Extract the nukes and steal their personnel. Or my favorite type, which are vengeance missions, where if a captain kills another player, it'll create a mission where you can avenge them.
00:48:40
Speaker
by dealing with that captain. Okay. Either by killing them or dominating them into your army. And then you get a vengeance loot box. And there's like a full set of gear because there's like Diablo, the green gear that was part of a set. This game has the same system. It has gems and things like that. But there's a full set of gear, which is the vengeance set that you specifically get from these vengeance loot boxes in game by avenging other players, which is really cool.
00:49:09
Speaker
I think we may have misspoke earlier. I think the two games is actually WB published them. I think part of the community outro was the fact that it was power loot that was coming from those boxes. You could literally buy it.
00:49:31
Speaker
But that was the same issue with Deus Ex. Yeah, you could literally just buy a million Praxis or open cheat engine and give yourself Praxis, right? But it was a single player game, so who cares? The game was balanced around, when I say who cares, I mean, it's a bad idea, not that I'm condoning it. The game was balanced around progression, assuming that you did not interact with the shop. But on Deus Ex's side for Mankind Divided,
00:50:01
Speaker
you were it felt more like a skip than because I played through the entire game and they also did have a new game plus where you got to carry through your points. Yes, like I basically had a maxed out Jensen at the end of normal playthrough. I also did
00:50:20
Speaker
all of the contents to basically get that so it was felt less less egregious at mankind divide mankind divided its problem was that certain things were pre-order exclusive they had no methodology for getting in game once it released like it was like full-on missions and that's kind of what Deus Ex is known for so
00:50:46
Speaker
That's something that, it leads to really hilarious scenarios. I don't know about the Mass Effect remake. Maybe they probably toned it down, but for a while there, if you got a Game of the Year collector's edition or something like that, it's like, all right, I load
Indie Success Stories and Fandoms
00:51:02
Speaker
it into the game. And it's like, here's all the pop-ups, because we combined all of the pre-order editions content from every single platform into this one thing.
00:51:10
Speaker
And you're just sitting there like, I get it, I get armor, I got a gun, I got this, I have like a companion, whatever. I can go to this area for the DLC. You know, like you just tab through all this crap. Fallout was the same way. You get like radio transmissions for like 14 DLCs as soon as you step out the door.
00:51:26
Speaker
Eventually, they started level gating them to even notify you. Coming back to Destiny was a cluster because every time you launched the game, it wanted to put you into the most recent mission in a certain order. So the first time we launched it, it put us into the current seasonal story mission. And then the second time we launched it, it put us in
00:51:48
Speaker
the current campaign mission which actually took place before the current seasonal mission and then the third time it was like here's the new light experience like it was working in reverse chronological order so like even following it you're
00:52:03
Speaker
It is so hard for me to try and get Stevie to play this game and me to try and explain stuff about Destiny 2 and how it works and how he's level gated on certain things or certain content he doesn't have access to. It might just randomly happening. I'm like, listen, it's a Bungie game. Let's just try and shoot stuff and have fun. But Jesus fuck, it's a nightmare. Launch the game four times, skip the missions.
00:52:25
Speaker
And then you're playing the fresh game experience. Also, you chose Warlock for jumping. It is so bad for him. I don't know. Warlock, Warlock jump is actually fine, I think. I don't think I'm too much of an apologize. I don't think it's, I don't think it's. Do you have glide jump? Huh? Do you have glide jump?
00:52:44
Speaker
burst. I started running strafe. Strafe is good too. Starting out the game, that's the first thing he has access to. So he has to now unlock something to get better mobility or different mobility options, which is just dumb. They're pretty cheap.
00:53:02
Speaker
I would say. Everything with the fragments are relatively cheap. The biggest problem is that Warlock Jump doesn't work like jumps in any other game. You have to double tap it because it's completely momentum driven. You can't even see your momentum unless you have a sword equipped. So learning to do two rapid hits of the space bar to do a regular jump is so counterintuitive. And I think there's a text box that pops up, but no
00:53:33
Speaker
tangible methodology for it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, destiny to as shit conveyance for a lot of things in my opinion, but to what we were saying, as far as the add-on content, I feel like I don't know how I phrase it outside of like, it's a shitty foot in the door type thing. Like if you're opening up like a new restaurant, you're offering me free stuff.
00:54:00
Speaker
That's kind of like your foot in the door like, hey, come try our thing. Worst case scenario, you still get a free drink or a free appetizer. But that's like a small business that's starting out. That makes sense. For a large company that has a lot of money that's making a game, if they're trying to get people to get in the door with just trivial nonsense, your gameplay is not that engaging.
00:54:23
Speaker
or your story's not that engaging, or the content isn't there enough, where you feel like you have to supplement it with these tchotchkes, pretty much.
00:54:32
Speaker
I think I soft disagree. And I don't know if that's. I don't think they should do it. That's the part we probably agree on. But I think the rationale for it is they ran the numbers on it. And like Mass Effect 2 was a good game, but it had all of these preorder additions like exclusive platforms. Yeah. Legitimately, it's like, oh, do I buy the game on PC? Do I buy it on Xbox? Like for a while, I mean, you can go back to
00:55:01
Speaker
What's the fighting game about the sword? Soul Calibur? That one, Soul Calibur. Like the fact that they had different console exclusive characters. Like you could argue that that's all kind of pointless because they could have just put it in all of the games, right? You are just depriving people of content.
00:55:24
Speaker
But the reason for it in MassFX case was they knew they could get pre-orders if they gave people pre-order bonuses. That's the reason we still have pre-order bonuses. And if people buy the game before the game comes out, they're much more likely to buy the game.
00:55:40
Speaker
like regardless of whether the reviews are bad or good like I pre-ordered cyberpunk and that's probably gonna go down in history is one of the worst games to pre-order but I also I either bought or pre-ordered no man's sky launch which is the other game that's going down on that list um how's the fallout 76 by the way
00:56:00
Speaker
Uh, yeah, that's i'm like i'm probably have at least three of the top five How about anthem? I didn't know when it got anthem That was the issue Man anthem did look cool for so long and they just they just absolutely failed the launch Jetpack joke, um But yeah, I think it's more of a business decision that they wanted to
00:56:26
Speaker
have those copies sold, also it's an investor thing, right? Because people look at pre-order copies to gauge interest and they're like, hey, we had 50,000 pre-order copies or whatever number is actually meaningful now. You're locking those in before the actual sale as well.
00:56:44
Speaker
Yeah, so like it's it you basically go on pre-sale and then your day one sales end up being astronomical you have another whole thing for advertising or
00:56:58
Speaker
Cause if you launch like a great game, that might not actually reflect your day one sales, right? Like, um, yeah. Um, even what was, uh, Valheim, right? That one launched to early access, but it was, it was picked up massive as soon as it was actually picked up among us. Another one where it was like massive. Once it had this big explosion and took off.
00:57:21
Speaker
But that wasn't its day one Profitability, those are both indie games. So yeah, they're also they're not competing space streaming platforms by major streamers Exactly generated the interest and a lot of people started playing and not doing their own streamers as well. Mm-hmm companies in for launch I think among us like had launched and then
00:57:45
Speaker
They actually were trying to plan on the slow burn, like, hey, we're going to release an expansion. And then there was some inciting incident where it was picked up by the streaming. And that's when it caught on. They had to actually go back and redo all of their plans because they had so much immediate interest that they're like, we were going to make a different game. Yeah.
00:58:05
Speaker
It was xqc streaming it that really like made it explode and then literally everybody and their mother was playing it and so they've expanded so much more with it than was initially planned because they're like the game was already out for like two years or something yeah yeah they're like it's kind of done and dead and then it just boom now we have literally among us vr i think came out this week
00:58:26
Speaker
Also, I'm glad you brought up Among Us VR. I was watching some streamer highlights of it. Jorma did some. I reckon people looked that one up. Some of the most hilarious shenanigans. Among Us already had really funny
00:58:41
Speaker
scenarios that would play out but when you put people in a 3D space and like this guy's backing up while this guy's moving forward and then they have like a voice chat I think built into it I believe or people were all in discord I'm not sure but like I think no it has proximity voice because you can see people's names pop up so if you're farther away you can't hear people but up close you can
00:59:03
Speaker
So you can have like a little voice conversation where you're just like, please don't stab me in the back. Please don't stab me in the back. Please don't stab me in the back. It just amplified it. It's it looks like the funnest thing. But it's going to be literally impossible to get a group of people to play VR games. Well, I was going to say, do they have methodology for like non headset versions? Because like some VR games, I think the
00:59:26
Speaker
The one like playground style VR chat has a console version where you just don't get the immersion as much, but you can still participate in those games. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure I have, I can second that I've seen that in some other games. I'm not sure if this one is mandatory VR or not. I always wonder for like something that's as immersive as that.
00:59:54
Speaker
what you miss out on or if you get an advantage from not literally having your head locked in the space versus just, oh, I'm playing, I'm a monitor at home. Yeah, like, is it a first person shooter or something? Yeah, or you might have specific advantage in the console versus PC or literally in the headset. I think shooters are largely people.
01:00:17
Speaker
This is a hot take, I don't have evidence to back this up. I think people think shooters works better with mouse and keyboard, but there are some people who like might and magic, not might and magic, swords and sorcery.
01:00:28
Speaker
Can't remember, one of those games, one of those is an old RPG series and the other one is a VR title. Has like sword play where your actual hit detection is the sword in your hand versus different parts on the body. And like, that's amazing. There's like people who are basically artists in the VR space for that and there's no way I could replicate it outside of like a pre-programmed animation.
01:00:55
Speaker
Well, there was the whole thing with like Splatoon and other gyro aiming being like there, there is some amount of fidelity gain from the physical manipulation of the object and being able to have a three dimensional space to manipulate it to get those
01:01:17
Speaker
point the pointer that you're shooting through a little bit faster, a little bit easier, which kind of extends on the reason why mouse and keyboard is so good is that you can train muscle memory to I know I move this much, I go here, you can do that in a extra dimension with the gyro anything basically.
01:01:39
Speaker
There was, um, this is esoteric, I guess at this point, but I at one point watched a corridor digital video, I think that had a comparison on this where they had a first person shooter type game. It was a first person shooter. I don't know. I said type game. Um, where you could play either mouse and keyboard or in VR and they had a head to head.
01:01:58
Speaker
It's like a 1v1, one person in VR and the other person with mouse and keyboard. The advantages to the person who is in VR is they could literally duck behind cover and do things that, you know, have to be programmed as a cover system in a mouse and keyboard or, you know, controller-based game. But I think mouse and keyboard are just absolutely decimated because, like, whenever you guys actually made contact when you saw each other, the person who had mouse and keyboard had all this flexibility to strafe and do all this stuff while shooting.
01:02:28
Speaker
Harder to coordinate that way. Yeah, then we are But it looks cool. Do you have macros or do you not? Mm-hmm? Well, there's a YouTube second. What was that? Not in balance game, but a it was a VR game From like David versus the David versus Goliath type thing. Yeah, basically the VR person is playing like a kind of Andross giant head and hands
01:02:58
Speaker
throwing stuff at players who are just like jumping around with like a sword. Yeah, David David go David go I think is what it's called, which is kind of a stupid name, but yeah, you basically play it's literally what you're describing. And I do think that asymmetrical. They submit yards a really cool idea.
01:03:24
Speaker
I think we talked about this some time when it was like in pre-release. Probably a year or something. We talked about that with asymmetrical gameplay at one point, briefly. No. Was it the Evolve episode? What was that? Was it the Evolve episode? I don't think we've had an episode on Evolve. We probably talked about Evolve, though, in that episode. Yeah. Yeah, I think we definitely hadn't. We had an asymmetrical video game breakdown episode.
01:03:54
Speaker
And I think this might have been an honorable mention. I'm kind of disappointed it hasn't launched yet on Steam. Because this was added like a while ago. Epic Game Store exclusive? Oh, OK. Maybe that's why it hasn't launched on Steam. No, it's on Google Stadia. Ah, OK. Well, let's show it. That's down January 1. Got it. Related to VR discussion, did you guys see the thing from Palmer Lucky, the guy
01:04:24
Speaker
for I guess this article is saying that he's the inventor of the rift. I can't remember exactly where all of that BS ended up falling. But so his NDA with meta finally resolved and he like basically did an interview about some of like the technology that he was working on behind the scenes and also some personal projects he was doing.
Nostalgia and Gadgets
01:04:53
Speaker
one of which was creating a VR headset to emulate the Sword Art Online. If you die in the game, you die in real life. My brain immediately went to like springs. Explosive cartridges, literally explosive cartridges attached to like the frontal lobe of where the rift was and would supposedly detonate if you died in the game. Why?
01:05:23
Speaker
Why the art? OK, we'll talk about deleting files in the hard drive. I said, man, that seems extreme. I know. I know people say like it covers a multitude of sins and like maybe art covers a multitude of sins, but like murder is an actual sin. I don't know. That's pretty aggressive.
01:05:47
Speaker
We've come so far since you had laser tag with the vibrating chest piece or something like that. The armor you would wear. I had one of those sets when I was a kid. It never worked correctly. You couldn't play in daylight. Laser tag never worked correctly. Blanket statement.
01:06:05
Speaker
There was a, we had like a professional set, because we had like a yard sale as a kid. And it was like, it wasn't all of the equipment, but there's some really cool stuff in it. And we had like, like rifles, basically, that looked really cool. They were kind of like slick, like sleek. And
01:06:24
Speaker
Some detectors, I think it was just the chest. But the piece that I remember was there's this conical, like, emplacement thing. And what it would do is it would count down and then do a spray of lasers that was like an AOE, like a detonation, almost like, you know, mission fails, you know, tactical, you can bound or whatever. It was really it was just such a such a cool technology that I don't care about at all now.
01:06:52
Speaker
That's how I felt about yak backs for a good summer. I'm not sure what that is. That was just recording something into an audio. Oh, and then you could play it back and like kind of distort it. Okay. Like also like send messages to people. It's like a shitty walkie talkie. Huh? Like a one use recorder type of thing. Yeah.
01:07:17
Speaker
But this is also like when I was fascinated by like skip bow and so I'm sure that lasted until one person asked, should we be giving kids the ability to record the conversations of adults? And they're like, maybe not. Oh, yeah, like all the spy kids era of like, oh, my God, you had like the camera glasses and like the hearing amplifier thing. Mm hmm.
01:07:43
Speaker
Speaking of dumb 90s type things, I had a really good drink yesterday that was called a Pogslammer. It was just a beer though. It was a fruit beer, but they called it a Pogslammer, so I had to order it. You have to slam Pogs into the bottom of it.
01:08:07
Speaker
Really difficult quarters. Yes. 50 cent pieces, if you will. It does confuse people when you're talking about a a POG tournament winner in the modern age. As soon as you mentioned POG champ, they have no idea. Like they go off on something completely different.
01:08:26
Speaker
I do think I may have accidentally like my in the in the podcast. I can see it in his mind. He's not. Go ahead, Justin. I think I did talk to the bartender and ordered a pog champ and not a pog slammer at one point. So that is so ingrained. And he didn't complete the or they didn't complete the the honor oath to kill you right then. And then they're just just one requiescent pache.
01:08:54
Speaker
Did you ask is this drink a Mimi? Oh my gosh. There are certain things in customer service that you should basically immediately quit if you encounter in the wild.
Fandom Culture and Outro
01:09:06
Speaker
Internet speech is one. Oh, you're from the internet. I'm out. I'm sorry. I'm not dealing with that today. Ordering Szechuan sauce at McDonald's. Oh my gosh.
01:09:21
Speaker
I was at Rick and Morty how that tasted. But then I just saw all these articles of like people acting, acting an asshole from McDonald's. I'm like, I don't even want to go to McDonald's anyway. And now you've fucked it.
01:09:33
Speaker
Rick and Morty just very rapidly became the fandom that you just didn't want to have any public association with. Um, or like family guy when that was big. Yeah. It's when people glomp on like way too hard. They're like, this is me, my full identity. Like Jesus Christ. But we should probably call it for time. Thank you, Justin, for coming out for another episode. Thanks for having me. Always good to have you. Um,
01:10:02
Speaker
That's it. That's the outro. No. Um, if you guys have suggestions for future episodes or popular celebrities that you think we should bring on, like Justin, um, you can send those requests in to soapstone podcast at gmail.com, or you can join the discussion on Facebook, which has had a terrible fiscal year at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.
01:10:30
Speaker
Bye!
01:11:02
Speaker
you