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Streaming Adventure Games
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On top of being the most successful podcasters around, Ben & Jess also stream adventure games. They take you on a meticulously researched and well examined deep dive.
Quest Quest podcast is Ben Vigeant and Jess Morrissette.
Editing by Ben Vigeant
Show art by Kevin "WilcoWeb" Wallace
Watch us on Twitch!
Ben: https://www.twitch.tv/ps_garak
Jess: https://www.twitch.tv/decafjedi
Give us a review, they help people find this show! Unless you hated it, in which case, don't.
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Transcript
Introduction and Comedic Launch
00:00:31
Speaker
It is Quest Quest. Hello. hello it's the Adventure Game Podcast. That hello. I saw you winding up for the Adventure Game Podcast and my hello just completely demolished na it what you had.
00:00:48
Speaker
i should have known. I was actually thinking as we went into that, what's Ben going to do to throw me a curveball? Not intentional. Yeah, no, but I mean, here we are. It's Quest Quest, the adventure game podcast. Welcome in, everybody. um Oh, sorry, the studio audience is still here.
00:01:02
Speaker
oh wow. They didn't leave? They've been here, like, for the whole week?
Funny Anecdotes and Misadventures
00:01:09
Speaker
That evil wizard isn't here, is he? ah Let's see, evil wizard, are you there? Oh, man. They bum-rushed the guy out of there, huh? They removed him.
00:01:22
Speaker
Honestly, it was it was actually a little... Like, hold on, hold on. All right, one more time. And and Boo Birds, please be quiet. Evil Wizard, are you there?
00:01:32
Speaker
all right. Well... ah You know, I think the crickets ah might have to stay in the sound bank ah with the Beverly Hillbillies theme, Codename Iceman theme, and some other ah solids just, ah you know.
00:01:48
Speaker
That's what you could think of as essential audio in any podcast. and you Some things you just need there at the touch of a button. Oh. Yeah. Jess, how are you doing today? ah how was how was ah How was your your break? ah How was your escape from ah the inside of a whale's mouth with ah human teeth?
00:02:08
Speaker
Well, you know hearing you tell everybody about that, I feel like you misrepresented... what I was doing. You may sound like it was some sort of like King's Quest for just like joke them up thing. Like I'm crawling up the tongue, et cetera. You know, as well as I do, i was there for one purpose and one purpose only.
00:02:27
Speaker
That was to collect precious ambergris so we could launch our new scent, Quest Quest, the Scent of Adventure. And that will be available at all fine cologne and perfume retailers later this year.
00:02:40
Speaker
Parfumeries. Yeah, but um all the parfumeries are going to have it. If you have a favorite parfumerie, just go in and ask for Quest Quest, the scent of adventure.
00:02:51
Speaker
And got ask yourself, did I harvest this ambergris humanely? No, because it actually smells different if you do. You want it like. yeah You got to have the ethics like it. it It's like veal. There's no ethical way.
00:03:05
Speaker
No, there's right there's no ethical consumption of ambergris under capitalism, but there is ethical consumption of Quest Quest, the scent of adventure, coming to a parfumery near you later this year.
00:03:17
Speaker
Is it ambergris or is it ambergris? i say ambergris because, you know, I think of grigy gris from... um Gabriel Knight.
00:03:28
Speaker
Yes, that's right. I mean, I don't know which came first, Gabriel Knight one or Wells, but, well, I mean, you know, maybe Google. Okay. Yeah. Let's get, let's get pronounced it. We're not the first time today. Grigri is, is not from Gabriel Knight one. It is like, what?
00:03:46
Speaker
Yeah, believe it or not, it is, ah you know, it's a phrase that originates from West Africa. And I'm just pulling this from the top of my head. It's so a voodoo amulet originating West Africa, which is believed to protect the wearer from evil or bring luck, citation 2.
00:04:02
Speaker
And in some West African countries, it's used as a purported method of birth control. that's like i just said that like right off the top of my head. Well, here's what I have for you, Ben. It turns out if we're to believe Google's pronunciation results, we are both correct.
00:04:18
Speaker
Apparently in British pronunciation, it's closer to Ambergris. Let's see. Yeah, it's Greece like a Greece actually said, Oh, amber Greece is the word. yeah And then yes it is it is the word and American it is ambergris.
00:04:37
Speaker
So I don't know, probably the answer is neither of those do I trust like the AI results that pop up at the top of Google? No. But the important thing is I harpooned that well and I took all that good amber grease right out of it.
00:04:53
Speaker
I don't actually know what to do with it next. This is the problem. Like I put the cart before the horse. Now I just have like this bucket of amber grease. And i know we've talked to some perfume distributors, but i mean, i don't know I'd drop that off at their headquarters. If they send like a pickup guy, I don't know.
00:05:13
Speaker
But yeah stay tuned, listeners. Quest Quest, the sin of adventure coming later this year. It's like ah the the ivory dealer in the Simpsons episode has an ivory pen.
00:05:25
Speaker
Yes, that's right. just put it on toast this morning and it was awful. It was terrible. his ah His desire for ivory, like ah he has so much ivory that he wouldn't want more.
00:05:38
Speaker
um' exactly yeah I got it right. This is it somebody whose ivory stores are quite low. I just watched the village people movie. Can't stop the music. Okay.
Appreciation of Campy Films and Documentaries
00:05:48
Speaker
Tell me about that. This is one of the first Razzies.
00:05:52
Speaker
um It's starring ah Steve Guttenberg and considerably well before transition, Caitlyn Jenner. um and her uh uh first role and only role uh in a film until uh this movie came out in uh 1980 uh the next movie that caitlin jenner was in was 2011's jack and jill um oh wow and so um you know took a break uh yeah there you go but uh but it has all the village people and i gotta tell you
00:06:24
Speaker
I loved it. I loved this movie. Oh, yeah. Made me. It was because, you know,
00:06:31
Speaker
ah you know, audiences, especially like ah those ah dopes at ah the Razzies, they didn't get that. It's like intentionally campy. Yes. Like, like essentially the joke of it is, is that you have the village people who are.
00:06:48
Speaker
unbelievably gay and all of the women like all of these wait second yeah all the I know that one that one guy in the village people has been saying who wasn't gay at all uh but uh but like this uh like ah like women just being like ooh and it's it's just very very funny the there is YMCA I'm sure this this has to be on YouTube or or something please look this up this YMCA musical number in it which is just like a bunch of men in speedos like coronating jumping into a pool and like hanging out in a locker room stuff like that Isn't kind of amazing? I was just screaming the whole time. I had a lovely time.
00:07:36
Speaker
Isn't it great this period in American culture before mainstream audiences discovered the existence of camp and all of this stuff was mystifying and strange. It's like, why is this movie being made? I don't understand what this is all about. i don't understand what this, this is like, what's the, like, I don't under, like, there's also a lot of talk about how the village people are going to be the voice of the eighties, which,
00:07:59
Speaker
ah You know, this, I guess this came out like just at the end of like, like the collapse of disco is like right here. And ah yeah, anyway, we also watched a movie the four stars.
00:08:14
Speaker
I just finished watching a movie maybe not dissimilar completely from this. um The live action Leelon Stitch. I watched the live action Leelon Stitch and let me tell you, it's not. I haven't seen that yet, but I will.
00:08:27
Speaker
ah I just finished watching the new Pee Wee as himself documentary. I gotta watch that. gotta watch that. That's gonna turn on the waterworks. I know. Like I watched the trailer for that and I was getting a little teary just watching the trailer.
00:08:43
Speaker
It's a fascinating look into Paul Rubens. and And two, you can sort of see even like toward the end of his life, ah you know, he is still very much a creative force who at some level wants control of his own documentary that's being made about him. he's still, I mean, has that sort of wicked wit. yeah And ah you can also see bits of like the control freak that he was notoriously throughout his career creeping in.
00:09:14
Speaker
He's kind of a prickly guy. That sort of dangerous energy that Pee Wee Herman brought to the table occasionally. you know Paul Rubens has some of that. it is charming. It's wonderful. Just a ah terrific and heartbreaking yeah documentary. Well, Pee Wee is such like you know, he's, he's, you know, a big part of like the peewee character is that if, if things aren't exactly the way he wants, yes, an enormous tantrum.
00:09:43
Speaker
Yeah. That's, what's great about peewee Herman is that he's not like, he's, he's, he is like beyond that. It's like, you know, this man child, which is just itself like kind of irritating by, by creation. um But it's also, it's like, he's also kind of a shitty kid.
00:09:59
Speaker
yeah you know like like he's kind of in his way yeah and that mask sort of drops and you get like kind of nasty peewee it's amazing it's such a layered character peewee is a little asshole peewee's big adventure i am not uh you know if you watch my uh stream last night i was making fun of tim burton i i'm not really a tim burton guy but peewee's big adventure i think is just a spectacular movie it cracks me up every single time i see it I would say I'm the same boat. Like there are a decent handful of Tim Burton movies i enjoy, but I wouldn't say I'm like, what's that? Not with my guys. Yeah. I wouldn't, I wouldn't go see a movie just because of Tim Burton, despite loving handful of his films.
00:10:47
Speaker
People liked a Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. I didn't see Beetlejuice. It wasn't bad. I mean, as i see was like that's fine. Yeah, I mean, most legacy sequels don't need to exist. This is probably something we should talk about in an episode about adventure games sometime.
00:11:00
Speaker
but you just want a bag on Return to Monkey Island. There are lots of of legacy adventures. There's like ba Beside a Still Sky or whatever that one's called. Well, yeah, but I haven't even played either of those.
00:11:14
Speaker
Well, and that says a lot about them, doesn't it? Not really. One of us would have played one of the two games if they were that good. Surely by now.
00:11:25
Speaker
But no, I mean, for a legacy sequel, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice is pretty entertaining. Didn't need to be made. Didn't ruin what happened with the first one, which is kind of best case scenario. Yeah. ah But yeah, the the I got to watch that that is definitely on my list of things to watch.
Fan Engagement and Nostalgia
00:11:42
Speaker
I think you'll dig it.
00:11:44
Speaker
It is. It is really good stuff. Highly recommend it That's your quest quest ah a documentary recommendation this week. All right. Well, while we're doing our document ah documentary documentary documentary request, you know, I think it's time for us to ah get a little literary literary ourselves because, you know, you and I, we're we're men of letters.
00:12:11
Speaker
Yes. And speaking of letters, we have couple emails. Email the first. So this comes from Yap in the Netherlands.
00:12:25
Speaker
And I'm, Yap, I'm gonna cut it down a little bit for this. But ah anyway, I shall begin. Dear Ben and Jess. That's right. Me first.
00:12:36
Speaker
Alphabetical.
00:12:39
Speaker
Thanks for making my favorite podcast I listen to every week religiously. Maybe we will read this whole email. This sounds good. Keep going. Or just read that sentence over and over again. Good so far. Naturally, as a big point-and-click adventure game lover, your main topics are always a delight. Somehow I also, but somehow, I also enjoy most of your totally irrelevant banter.
00:13:01
Speaker
Good. I know. Do you think... here's a question for you. Uh, was Pee Wee Herman, is he in an at all known quantity in the Netherlands? i assume not, right?
00:13:14
Speaker
I'm going to assume yes. yeah Whoa. Split decision. All I've been thinking about lately is Pee Wee Herman, but that's probably because I watched both parts of his documentary and back to back nights. So I just assume everyone's thinking about Pee Wee Herman all the time.
00:13:28
Speaker
How's there not a capstone game for Pee Wee Herman? Continue. Um, So, you know, he's recently started, like, he's talking about how he has a collection of game magazines, he has PC Gamer, USU and UK.
00:13:48
Speaker
Now, Jess, you study game magazines, but you do not, like, do you have a collection of them yourself? I have a little handful that aren't really a collection, but more so just stuff that's stuck around through the years. I do all my stuff digitally. I feel like it's too deep of a rabbit hole for me. I know I won't be able to quit the first time I collectible gaming magazine.
00:14:12
Speaker
It's game over for me. But he says, PC Gamer US s and UK, Game Players, PC Entertainment, Computer Gaming World, PC Zone, and many more, including Dutch magazines, as I am from the Netherlands.
00:14:24
Speaker
Sounds amazing. ah By reading old CGW, I discovered Countdown by Access in 1990, shortly released after Tex Murphy's Mean Streets.
00:14:36
Speaker
Now, mostly forgotten. guy Interestingly, it was lauded as, quote, as close to perfect as any game can be. oh did I put this on the, oh, I didn't put that. There we go.
00:14:49
Speaker
Which is, that's funny, right? Like when we looked at like the review for Codename Iceman and they're like, this is great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't Blue Force get a, like a really good review or like a surprisingly...
00:15:04
Speaker
I think it was better review than you would expect. Yeah, like for a game that is, mean, it's a Wallsian tryout, Blue Force, but is it a great game? No. And then um what was it? with Wayne's World or like didn't one of those capstone games get like a pretty good write up?
00:15:22
Speaker
CGW2. Yeah, like an eight or something out of ten. Yeah, like just like, this is a great game. If you love the Beverly Hillbillies, you'll love this game. Well, it's like, no, you won't. Computer gaming world only did five stars.
00:15:34
Speaker
Um, I got you. They gave it 80% of five stars, which is four stars. It is not parentheses. It is not, by the way, very unfair. logic Illogical puzzles by today's standard.
00:15:46
Speaker
Are there any hidden gems that people have forgotten?
00:15:52
Speaker
We'll have to think on this. Maybe this will be like in the middle of the episode will come up. Yeah, and I would love to hear from other listeners. Like if they're hidden gems, games that are way off the beaten path that you think are good ones. You know, one that springs to mind that...
00:16:08
Speaker
I mean, is only semi-hidden. I thought Flight of the Amazon Queen was a pretty good game overall. I thought it was pretty charming, well-made.
00:16:21
Speaker
You know, it's not a big LucasArts Sierra release. I think nowadays it has some prominence in some of the online stores that maybe make it a little more familiar today among adventure game fans than it might have been in the 1990s when it came out. But...
00:16:37
Speaker
That's one that i would say is a nice little gem, especially if you love LucasArts games. It's passable as like a lost LucasArts game if you've never played it. Um, one, one thing, uh, I would say uh, I would always, uh,
00:16:53
Speaker
suggest um you know what what's it like because i think all of the quote-unquote like kind of hidden gems are kind of like it's like what do you you know is it a game not made by lucas arts and sierra you know because all of those like and i guess other than like broken sword and a couple of like my you know most of those kind of exist in in that category but i would say to explore a little bit And this is fun is early AGS.
00:17:20
Speaker
Get your your DOS box out. Yeah. ScumVM doesn't support them at this moment. and Maybe some builds do. i forget. But like some of those early AGS games from like, you know, 2000, like to but move before it was like really
00:17:37
Speaker
Like, before, you know, people were seriously considering it as, like, an engine to make commercial games. And it's, like, a bunch of people making low-budget little nostalgia things, which people still do. there There's still a scene for that.
00:17:51
Speaker
But, like, there's just some interesting kind of rough-around-the-edges stuff. Obviously, the most well-known games from that are... like at least arguably the most well-known ones are the Yahtzee AGS games.
00:18:07
Speaker
Was it like seven, 12 days or something? I'm thinking 12 days. Like the seven days, they all have day names.
00:18:19
Speaker
Those are all pretty fun. And they're like, last time I played them, which was a little while ago, but those are still pretty good. don't know if they would still be hidden gems per se. Did you ever play those old AGSs?
00:18:31
Speaker
That was outside of your your period, right?
Exploration of Early Gaming Experiences
00:18:34
Speaker
I don't think I jumped into AGS maybe until like 2012 when some of the Space Quest AGS games started coming out, like Vahal Stark's Back and Incinerations. right I think those may have been the first AGS games I played. I was kind of away from adventure gaming during that early heyday.
00:19:06
Speaker
even be aware of their existence. yeah I have to figure there's probably been some pretty neat stuff. Oh. Even pre-Twine, but certainly in a post-Twine era that, you know, yeah just again, but I'm not the person to talk about this. i mean I'd love to hear people who know some of those and could recommend them. I have a tertiary like I, uh, uh, amateur I have is something that every couple of years I do a ton of research on and then I played a little bit and I'm like, Oh, I'm just not this type of the type of player, but there is like, I have played a lot of it. Like I think, but unfortunately my knowledge is like, you know, kind of the, the light level of it where it's like, if, if you know anything about IF, you'd be like, wow, Ben read a Wikipedia page, you know, yes
00:19:53
Speaker
That's level of knowledge about most subjects. Yeah. Yeah. I would be like, Jez, have you heard of Photopia? And anybody who's played IF is just like, what, the most recommended amateur? Like, at this point, it's a cliche.
00:20:06
Speaker
We're all tired of talking about Photopia. It's like, it's not even that interesting to us anymore. i mean, yeah. But I mean, I love of IF. I love Galatea by Emily Schwartz. Pretty much all of her Emily Shorts stuff, you know, is all super fascinating.
00:20:24
Speaker
What's her Anyway, the email goes on. Another interesting topic is copyright protection. This might be a full episode.
00:20:35
Speaker
Yeah. I want to put a pin in this. Okay. I want to put a pin in this because I think that might be an episode. You just got request quested. Yeah, you just got request quested. We're tabling this. We're going to talk about it. But if we'll we'll come back to this paragraph at the the end of this email and talk about that. But if you have any interesting or irritating copy protection memories, shoot us an email at questquestpodcast at gmail.com. I have one more email.
00:21:09
Speaker
from this guy. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. His name is Andy, Jess. Okay. Okay. I know Anna Andy. Hi there. It's Andy, Jess's childhood friend and former neighbor.
00:21:22
Speaker
In the King's Quest 3 episode, Jess mentioned that we recorded a home movie reenactment of KQ3 on my, quote, brinky-dink camera. That camera was a Fisher Price PXL2000.
00:21:34
Speaker
He provided a link. PXL2000 or Pixel Vision.
00:21:42
Speaker
introduced in 1987. Anyway, which recorded pixelated black and white video to audio tapes. A 90 minute audio tape provided 10 minutes of video. That's fascinating.
00:21:53
Speaker
Yeah. Absolutely no recollection of these recordings at all. However, I do remember recording just quote dancing and quote for a homemade music video set to Beastie Boys Brass Monkey.
00:22:07
Speaker
I'd pretty much forgotten about that camera, but when was packing for up for a move last year, what did I find in the attic? Uh-oh. The PXL 2000 and a stack of tapes.
00:22:19
Speaker
Oh no. Now I don't know how well nearly 40 year old tapes held up to the brutal Texas heat for almost two decades. If I can get the 1987 technology to work again, you better pray that the tapes have disintegrated.
00:22:34
Speaker
Oh, no. You see, I don't know what I would rather have out there in the world, like me dancing to Brass Monkey or this KQ3 film that I remember. And that's why I said, I would know at the beginning of this email is, uh, I know this is a disputed memory where I seem to recall it very vividly and Andy does not.
00:22:54
Speaker
So it is possible that this KQ3 attempt at a, uh, at a fan film maybe only exists in my imagination. Uh, but. Your beautiful, wonderful dream that you had.
00:23:05
Speaker
Yes, I do have a beautiful mind. A lot of people have said that. And, you know, I do think that there's a chance that could be the case. But I think it's real. And that Beastie Boys one, I did not remember. But sadly, that sounds like upsettingly real.
00:23:24
Speaker
That absolutely sounds like something that would and does exist. and And don't know how feel about it. Let me let me type into YouTube. I'm curious if. Jess dancing to brass monkey. PXL 2000. I'm just going to type that into YouTube because I'm curious what like someone out there has it and is using it to do cool things today. Yeah. Like, you know, like glitchy yeah um oh god now i'm looking at and i remember it so vividly i'd forgotten about its existence and i will say for a fisher price okay camera yeah that has some very like adult aesthetics it almost looks like a laser tag gun
00:24:09
Speaker
All I wanted. Or a disruptor blaster. One of the things I so desperately wanted as a kid was a camera. on Me too. So desperately, desperately wanted to make whole movie. This is something about, let me talk about this Paul Rubin's Pee Wee Herman documentary. Sure.
00:24:23
Speaker
Like every documentary ever, there is so much footage of this person from the time he is a child going back to like the nineteen fifty s and sixty s I don't understand this. i Andy was the only person I ever knew who owned a camera.
00:24:42
Speaker
And even that, I mean, i don't want to say rinky dink, but even that was not like, you know, a full on camcorder sort situation. How does everyone else have like copious amounts of video evidence of their childhood and entire lives when my first video of me in existence is like shot on an iPhone 4?
00:25:01
Speaker
Now, I'm sure the documentary goes into some amount of this, but I'm going to assume that like many people ah who are famous, and this isn't to put down Paul Rebens, but he probably came from, you know, kind of a comfortable upbringing.
00:25:15
Speaker
This did come up in the documentary. Yes. So youre I guess I was just, you're just saying I was poor. I wasn't saying you were poor. I was saying he was rich. ah Okay. Compared to me. ah Yeah. Okay. I got it. then Now we've cleared that up.
00:25:30
Speaker
ah But no, thank you, Andy, for writing in with that. and thank you for honestly, a mental image that will probably haunt me as I try to go to sleep for the next several days, wondering if this video will somehow get out there.
00:25:44
Speaker
I will tell you, Ben, I wasn't a great dancer. I am now, but back then, no. Well, we could see, we could, we could chart the progress. That's right. I will make a new one. If that, if that does come out, I will make a new one of me dancing better right now.
00:25:57
Speaker
Now, uh, well, that's all fascinating, but there's only one thing that fascinates me. Mm-hmm. and that's, what have you been playing? Wow. What have been playing? Ben, i have, you always have such odd answers to this, like games I've never heard of. Weird one for you this week, too. Okay, good. I like it.
00:26:17
Speaker
I have one that maybe is a little bit off the, off the rails here, but I have the last couple of days been playing Electric Crayon, Super Mario Brothers and Friends when I grow up from 1992.
00:26:33
Speaker
Do you know this game at all? No. Electric Crayon. Super Mario Brothers and Friends Will Not Grow Up. It is a virtual coloring book program that came out for DOS in 1992.
00:26:48
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I've seen this. Yeah. So basically, where it is. yeah Is this on archive.org? Yeah, it's a bunch of blank coloring pages where you color scenes of Mario and all of his friends um performing various professions if they'd like to do. You know like how everybody was into adult coloring books there for a minute like five or six years ago?
00:27:12
Speaker
It's kind of like that, only these are incredibly simple images that even a baby could color in. And I've just been kind of finding it soothing and calming lately. And what's really great about this is that a lot of these scenes are just so bizarre.
00:27:28
Speaker
Like, there's one of Mario where he's a chef and Princess Peach is a waitress and she is taking Link's order from Zelda's there. And he's sitting at the table and Mario's just making some pasta.
00:27:44
Speaker
There's another where Princess Peach is a judge in a courtroom and Mario is arguing a case in a little suit and Bowser is on the witness stand.
00:27:56
Speaker
There's one where Mario is a carpenter and everything around him, it's just like all ramshackle things he's assembled out of bent nails. And it turns out Mario is a really shitty carpenter. And he was a carpenter professionally.
00:28:09
Speaker
back during Donkey Kong, right? Before he was a plumber, he was a carpenter. Well, that was Jumpman. That was Jumpman. That's true. There's one where, like, Bowser is an executive, and he's wearing, like, a little tie, and he's, like, chewing out and Luigi.
00:28:24
Speaker
Do you think he was on the stand for white-collar crimes? Probably so. Do you think he was being tried? here's All right, so here's my challenge to you, Jess, is can you assemble...
00:28:37
Speaker
all i'm I'm looking here. So this is on archive.org. You can play it there on on the website. It says it has 29 pictures. Yes. So I believe that there is like there's a game on like Iowa, like like mobile game where it's like, you know, you get the disparate like it's a puzzle game and you get these pictures and you assemble them and it creates a whole narrative.
00:29:02
Speaker
So this is my question to you. Can you take all 29 of those images and with with the assistance of, you know, some narrative, like you, you know, you write a little bit.
00:29:17
Speaker
Do you think that you could create a coherent narrative out of the 29 images in electric crayon 3.1 hyphen super Mario Bros. ampersand friends hyphen when I grow up?
00:29:34
Speaker
Ooh, this would be like the most interesting visual novel ever made. This just now feels like a project. You know who need to bring in on this, who I think would have the juice to make this happen? Who has the juice to make happen?
00:29:47
Speaker
I think we need Grayson on this. We need to bring in our buddy Grayson, a codename Iceman fan, a kid named Iceboy fan. My Wikipedia you mean? Your Wikipedia guy. We get your Wikipedia guy in here.
00:29:58
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah. And, oh man, now I'm, this is the best idea I've ever heard, Ben. This is, this is kind of, as soon as we go to market with Quest Quest, the Scent of Adventure, this will be our next Enterprise.
00:30:15
Speaker
Sounds great. Yeah, so that's what I've been playing. I don't know why I've been playing it. I just kind of felt like, out and who doesn't want color occasionally it has 256 colors to choose from only like 200 in which are duplicates let's see okay pictures could be colored from a palette of 16 and a mix button would mix current color with the 15 other colors and give a total of 256 so you do have 256 but uh like a selection i see i see okay good game. I mean- Several pictures have animation sequences.
00:30:50
Speaker
They do. Yeah, like you can see like Mario tossing his pasta up in the air and it like lands on Link's head. It's really funny. Can you imagine how mad Link would be? he has a sword.
00:31:02
Speaker
He could just, you know, cut down Mario right there. Well, you can use the, uh, He'd use his shield, you know, kind of above his head to capture the spaghetti.
00:31:13
Speaker
Yeah, why didn't he do that? Why didn't he use his Hyrulean shield? Yeah. I guess these are questions thatll be answered in the game. Yeah. When we make our visual novel. All right, well, Ben, that's what I've been playing.
00:31:25
Speaker
What have you been playing? Yes, I've been playing with a UEVR...
00:31:33
Speaker
Now what? UE, that stands for Unreal Engine, and VR stands for virtual reality. OK. So it's Unreal and reality together?
00:31:45
Speaker
Yeah. Huh. Huh. But what it is, is it's this tool that messes with, I think it's Unreal Engine 5 games, but I could be wrong.
00:31:58
Speaker
I just started messing around with this. Uh, like, so, know, I have a VR headset, uh, and it takes 2D games made the Unreal Engine, or at least specific ones, like, he has a compatibility list, and then makes them VR.
00:32:24
Speaker
um Okay. and Will this work for like old Unreal Engine things? I don't think so. I think it only works because the thing is- So can't play like Unreal Tournament in this thing.
00:32:34
Speaker
No. I think the thing is, is that it takes- the, like, again, i i could be talking all right out of my ass here, but I believe what it is is that the most recent version of the Unreal Engine has support for VR. So what it does is it just like kind of messes around with its settings and then turns that on.
00:32:57
Speaker
Essentially what that does, so it doesn't make it like a VR game. What it does is puts the camera in a VR mode and then doubles it up. Like because when you have a headset on, it's making damage twice.
00:33:11
Speaker
So you least get the look around effect. Yeah.
Streaming Adventures and Personal Motivations
00:33:14
Speaker
And so it's like you're you're playing, you're still playing with your gamepad or your keyboard or whatever. and so i was messing around with it yesterday Pinball FX, which is like it has, it's by Zen and like it has recreations of pinball machines as as well as originals, which are largely bad.
00:33:40
Speaker
And so I was doing it. And unfortunately, like this is one of those things where where Jess and the problem with all this stuff and this this little, this program is as easy as can be.
00:33:53
Speaker
You download it, you open up the thing. For the longest time, my computer thought it was a virus, but this time, for whatever reason, it didn't. You make sure that the Trojans get deep in the kernel and, like, some guys, you know, are recording everything that I do, I can mess around with this program for a little bit.
00:34:16
Speaker
Anyway, but... You just start a program and you push a button in the thing and then it makes it VR. But the thing is, is that I'm going to have to finagle with it more because the like playing pinball effects, uh,
00:34:36
Speaker
It's a game that requires a ton. like i I feel every fan in my desktop fire off when I play that game generally. don't know if that if that is because of the physics of it or if it's not like particularly...
00:34:53
Speaker
elegantly made or whatever. Like, I don't know what the situation is, but it already like is a game that for some reason makes my computer like, you know, sound like a fucking helicopter.
00:35:05
Speaker
And then now I'm doing it where it's creating the image twice and making it so I can turn my head around, which is great. Like pinball in VR is actually really cool.
00:35:15
Speaker
So you're looking it at the table and like around. Yeah. So you aren't like first person ball experience. No, that would be- Like Chevy Chase said, you don't get to be the ball.
00:35:25
Speaker
No. Famously in Caddyshack. But never seen Caddyshack. Maybe one day- you've never even watched a Chevy Chase movie, you right? Not once, actually.
00:35:40
Speaker
But it is actually cool because like one of the problems with like playing a pinball game is that it never feels like you get the right angle of view. It always feels like something's obscured. This way you can move your head around.
00:35:51
Speaker
But- the challenge so I finagled and I finagled and I finagled and I was able to get it run smoothly and everything looks good but there is like you know like a quarter second or less of wait and see oh on it which is just death for pinball yeah that's not gonna work at all I imagine yeah just death for pinball and so I'm just like ah that's gonna be a bad gameplay feel
00:36:22
Speaker
Yeah. And so now, know, I'm like, well, do I continue to fuck around with this? Is it possible? Like I bet, you know, like, because I've just been turning down all of the settings. I turned on the ray tracing. I turned off like everything. I put the resolution way lower, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:36:43
Speaker
And there's still just a little bit of latency. And I'm kind of like, now I'm at the point of it's like, do I keep fucking with this? Or do I just say like, all right, well, that was fun. And then pay for the VR pinball game that Zen made that does all it instead versus this program that I got for free that is making me do a lot of work for essentially of the same.
00:37:11
Speaker
And, you know, Now, have you considered just dropping a whole bunch of money on an even better VR headset? Well, it's not the headset. It's because the headset is It's streaming from my PC.
00:37:28
Speaker
Gotcha. So we have multiple points of failure here because it could be my PC. It could be my network. The thing is is that I pay a lot more money to upgrade my network to 6E so I could get a much higher, you know, like I get pretty good latency or whatever. Like I, you know, everything is pretty good streaming because when I'm playing games on my PC to my headset, it's already streaming from my PC to the headset.
00:38:02
Speaker
That's one latency point of failure. And there's another latency point of failure, which is like the bottleneck of my desktop, which I'm not happy with my desktop recently.
00:38:17
Speaker
Does it get a lot of latency like when you stream awesome retro games through Xbox Game Pass? places I don't have Game Pass. I haven't had that for a while. But...
00:38:30
Speaker
But like the problem with my desktop is that it's remarkably poorly cooled. Yes, my old one was as well. It it is always pretty much at the maximum temperature.
00:38:46
Speaker
yeah. That's an exaggeration, but barely. um And this is something I've done some amount of work to fix. And I'm just like, it's either...
00:38:57
Speaker
Whatever. Anyway, I'm sure there this is tough. My old computer, like you could hear the fan revving up from all the way on the other side of the house. yeah If I was like playing a 3D game or something like that.
00:39:10
Speaker
And I thought maybe that's how new like high end computers are. And I replaced it with this one like, you know, a year ago or six months ago or whatever. And I've never heard the fans once. And it's like magic.
00:39:22
Speaker
Well, that is probably, this was originally, that is probably water-cooled, I assume. It is. It is water-cooled. And this was water-cooled, and then the water cooler broke, and the manufacturer didn't make it.
00:39:37
Speaker
for that mother like it was just like and so then i had to replace it with like just a shitload of fans like physical fans and now it's just so loud I'm just imagining like a bunch of like oscillating fans surrounding uh your computer just like from every angle just like oscillating around it uh in addition to whatever internal fans you added it's It's one of those things where it's like the the the parts of it are pretty decent, but like the construction of it is terrible. Like, you know, it's like, you know, it was a prebuilt, right? Yeah, this was a prebuilt.
00:40:15
Speaker
um And, ah you know, it has like the the engineering quality of a Cybertruck. Yeah. And the aesthetic like it's not steel, but it has like that shitty gamer aesthetic like it's it's like flashing lights and shit. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
00:40:31
Speaker
Mine is glowing at me right now. Yeah, mine is just glowing. everything Yeah, slightly more not to have that. This looks like a garbage can with like Cylon lights um is is what it looks like.
00:40:44
Speaker
and ah like i would pay an extra 200 for uh like a gaming computer that i don't know looks like a gateway 2000 from nineteen in a beige case yeah maybe with like ah fake turbo button on it yeah yeah push the turbo button and it just goes like yippee uh or it plays the yacht the old yahoo team tune like yahoo yahoo
00:41:14
Speaker
Uh, all right. We've put it off long enough. You know, the, the first half of the show is increasingly becoming longer. Yeah. The first half of the show is increasingly becoming the first two thirds of the show. And, uh, you know, if people would quit saying this emails at quest quest podcast at gmail.com, telling us that they enjoy our banter, we're getting too much positive reinforcement on the banter a bit. Like we're hearing this too much that people are like, Oh, guess Yop was sort of like, somehow I even liked the banter.
00:41:44
Speaker
which maybe isn't exactly a ring endorsement. it was like begrudgingly. ah sit through the banter as well, but we do have a topic for today. We do have a topic. Uh, today we are talking, ah I don't think we actually, did we say PS underscore Garrick and your decaf Jedi on Twitch?
00:42:02
Speaker
We didn't. You bungled the intro so badly. We lost track completely. i don't even know if you ever introduced yourself. I'm Ben. hey I'm Jess. right. And, uh, uh, I've got a couple emails.
00:42:15
Speaker
No, no, no, we've already done that. Okay, great. ah what are what are we talking from the top Today, we are talking about streaming adventure games. ah Both of us, of course, as as all of our listeners know, our Twitch streamers who most of our live streams consist of adventure games, not exclusively for either one of us, but certainly that's our bread and butter.
00:42:37
Speaker
And I just want to a little bit about this sort of unique way of experiencing adventure games, whether it's games that we played in the past and now are streaming at the wider audience or even games that we were playing for the first time in front of in front of our viewers. And I guess maybe where I would start out, you know, this is something I'm not sure if I know the answer to this.
00:43:04
Speaker
ah How did you get started streaming adventure games? Where is our adventure games where you, you began or is that something you came around to? Well, so I think it's worth thinking like, like my streaming history and maybe this is true of other people too, but like my streaming history was part of me. I would like, I thought streaming was stupid until I didn't, you know? Yeah.
00:43:31
Speaker
Like I definitely had. and And maybe this is like streaming was one of those things where I was just like, why would anyone be interested and watching anyone else play a video game? That's the stupidest shit I've ever heard my whole life.
00:43:43
Speaker
I don't believe it. That sounds so boring. Like, why would you do that? Um, did did you Did you feel the same way? I'm cosigning every word of that. Like, literally, when I streamed a video game for the first time, I don't think I had ever watched someone stream a video game.
00:44:02
Speaker
Because i lot of the same thing. i' just like, i'll get I get it. It was bizarre to me that, like, I had a kid who watched, like, Minecraft Let's Plays and things like that. like, what is... yeah Why the world the appeal of watching someone else play a game, which, you know, raises the question of why did I decide to do it?
00:44:18
Speaker
Yeah. But, you know, I was absolutely came from the same place. I didn't understand right the appeal of streaming yeah and thought, I'll do this for some weird reason. I, and I might've talked about this on an earlier podcast.
00:44:33
Speaker
um I was occasionally on ah stream, um which was ah so like ah like a Chicago, ah like pal of mine.
00:44:47
Speaker
ah He's on on Twitch and he doesn't really, he's mostly retired from streaming. He'll pop up every now and again from time to time. uh, this guy, ah Jack danger uh, did I talk about him on, on here before? Do you recall? I don't think so.
00:45:03
Speaker
But, uh, he, uh, and I, yeah, I've told him this story. I'm pretty sure. ah He was a pinball streamer. um and when he And when he pops up, like, that's what he's doing again.
00:45:17
Speaker
And I remember, like, so he, like, set up, and he came out of, like, some amount of, like, video ah production and stuff like that. Because it's also, it's like, i he's like, I'm going to do pinball streaming. And that was, like, double insane to me. Because it's like, well, at least a video game, you could hook that up to, like, your streaming computer. yeah Now it's like you're streaming, like,
00:45:40
Speaker
a pinball machine. Like, can you even do that? Like, will, will a computer be able to stream a pinball machine? How you got fit inside the computer? Yeah. Like where, where does the pinball go? I can't open up a pinball. Like I can't open up a computer.
00:45:55
Speaker
ah and yeah, And so like he set up like this, this streaming rig. i And like it was this, like I think it was like three cameras. There was one camera on the table, one camera on like the score screen, and then one camera on like the player.
00:46:14
Speaker
Um, and, ah he started Twitch streaming and like, he would invite some of us over to his studio from time to time and be like, Hey, come over. ah you know, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm recording, uh, if you want to play some pinball on the stream. And I just remember thinking like, this is like, God,
00:46:34
Speaker
dude, you put so much fucking work into into this. And like, you know, like i' just hearing this, I'm exhausted, like three cameras, um but a half dozen of people are watching this right now. You're full of shit, man. Like, what the fuck?
00:46:46
Speaker
Like, you're crazy. And then
00:46:51
Speaker
it's Like, obviously, the reason that I'm using, like, this guy's name and telling this tale is because you you could figure out the ending of this. which You were right all along. have you rubb it in hi But it was, you know, that it turned out to be wildly ah successful. And he ended up getting, like, hundreds and hundreds and, like, on occasion, thousands of viewers and stuff like that.
00:47:14
Speaker
and uh like loyal viewers to the point where now he works at the pinball factory and is designed uh uh two pinball machines and i'm sure he's working on a third right now so uh he works at the pinball factory sounds like a make-believe job yeah he he literally does pinball factory he designed a a foo fighters pinball machine and a x-men uh pinball machine they're both pretty fun good i've seen this x-men pinball machine quite impressive And, uh, and, and so like this, this long anecdote is essentially to say like before, like, so I had been on Twitch streams, but even when I was on them, I was just like, it's more than I'm just getting to, to play at this, like at my friend's cool studio.
00:47:57
Speaker
um like I was just like, this is who the fuck is into this. And then like, you know, like he saw it, like, this is just one of those things where, uh, Like, you know, like, you know, I'll just eat all the crow. Like, I absolutely did not understand. i did not understand the appeal of it. I didn't understand the appeal of YouTube video essays. There's all sorts of shit where like that are wildly popular online where I took a look at it and i was just like, there's, there's nothing here.
00:48:29
Speaker
You never made the pivot to video. I mean, now I did. Yeah, that's right. Several years after, like, you know, everybody else pivoted. was like, days pivot. No, in the same boat. Yeah, like the idea even for me, i remember at one point someone asked me to subscribe to their YouTube channel. And I was like, why would I subscribe to a YouTube channel? i just like look up a video I want to see when I'm on YouTube. The idea that you would have like regular viewing of someone's content was even a little foreign to me.
00:49:01
Speaker
Circa like. you know, 2019 or so. Uh, so yeah, I think I was in kind of the same boat. So, so what moved you on from there then to say like, I want to do this.
00:49:13
Speaker
So yeah, two things. It was, uh, another thing was I, were it was, I, my first couple streams were just a little bit of like, it was honestly just a sense of it's like, yeah, why not? Like just give it a shot.
00:49:30
Speaker
Like I'm curious. Because this this is towards the end of 2019, what happened was ah for me, ah Twitch released, and this no longer exists, I'm pretty sure.
00:49:41
Speaker
Like, I mean, I'm sure the program's out there, but it's not supportive. um what ah Twitch Studio, which was i that Twitch created like a client that was like, you know, baby's first stream thing.
00:49:59
Speaker
ah like it it it did all the work generally for you ah that like a like an OBS or like a Streamworks or whatever ah ah would do And I was like, all right, well, this is nice. And it's like a big Fisher Price buttons. Like i don't have to really think about doing this. And like as evidenced by my UE VR story, like I'm just not,
00:50:29
Speaker
I I'm just not someone that's very good at sweating the technical end of things like just at a certain point. I give up. Same. No, absolutely. And, and so that like, uh, that this came out,
00:50:43
Speaker
It was also, it's like, I didn't have a particularly good internet. Like I didn't have a bad one, but I didn't have one that I would consider great for, for streaming. um And I honestly, like my, my internet now is, is, is fine. I stream at like 720p opposed to higher, but that's fine because I'm playing fucking Wayne's world.
00:51:05
Speaker
so ah ah you don't need that it's fine and you could be playing tales from the borderlands right now and you're not you chose wayne's world yeah i did and you have to live with your decision um but anyway uh so um uh i the first game i streamed uh was uh microproze's master of magic oh because i was just kind of like Why not?
00:51:33
Speaker
It was that and... and this was a recurring stream for me in my very, very early days um was my magic six, which I love. That's it a game I have a ton of fun with.
00:51:50
Speaker
And actually my magic six, like I have like this little group of, of people that were like my magic six fans and would like just hop on and chat with me about the game and Grayson, like Grayson did with me too.
00:52:04
Speaker
um And that was fun. But I mean, it was the release of Twitch Studio, um which, you know, now I just straight use OBS.
00:52:14
Speaker
um But, and then, like, and and I have a feeling it's this is gonna be the same for you. Like, it was sporadic. And it was just kind of a like, Oh, I wonder what this is kind of thing.
00:52:27
Speaker
And then ah it was the pandemic and all of a sudden I had a ton of free time and also like a ton of um like creative energy and like I need to be seen by a crowd energy.
00:52:41
Speaker
yeah As a performer. Yeah. i And so i it was like it became like it's like, oh, this is kind of an outlet for that energy that I have.
00:52:55
Speaker
um Because that was very much my story. You know, it was it was very much driven ah by the beginning of the pandemic and some of the same things like I kind of I had a lot of free time. I was stuck at home.
00:53:07
Speaker
And, you know, I think that. weirdly, you coming as someone who is, ah who is a professor, i kind of miss that audience too. Like I'm so used to, you know, getting up several times a week and and speaking to a small crowd of people that I wasn't quite sure who I, this is sad. I wasn't quite sure who I was without that.
00:53:31
Speaker
an audience to speak to. I just didn't quite feel like myself. You just felt disconnected from kind of what I did and by extension, you know, a part of who I was. And, know, another thing that was part of it for me, you know, a lot of listeners will know that um,
00:53:50
Speaker
i ah for a few years ran a website ah called the the video game soda machine project where I collected screenshots of soda machines from video games. ah I put together a collection of a few thousand of those.
00:54:05
Speaker
And part of what like got me to stream for the first time, i saw from some screenshots or gameplay footage or something that there was a soda machine in doom eternal.
00:54:19
Speaker
And I thought it'd be a funny little supplement to the screenshots I put on my website. I was like, what if I just record gameplay of my myself, getting a screenshot of this soda machine. I'll play the first hour or so of the game until I get the place where the soda machine is.
00:54:33
Speaker
I'll take that and then I'll post the video on my website. So I'd be like, here's a behind the scenes of how I grab screenshots of soda machines. Obviously essential work. This was stuff that, you know, people needed to see. You were an essential worker at the time. I was an essential worker at the time. Yeah. So I, I fired up Doom Eternal.
00:54:49
Speaker
I played it on Twitch and kind of found that it, it scratched an itch for me. I was like, okay, this is kind of fun. I'm bad at it. I have no idea how to get better at it, but kind of dig this process. No, no, when you say that you're bad at it, were you referring to Doom Eternal or streaming?
00:55:10
Speaker
worse at streaming than I was at doom eternal. And I wasn't great at doing it. I heard doom eternal was, was kind of like, you know, a very tech, like, you know, kind of a tricky game. i But no, it was, I had no idea. Again, hadn't watched streamers. I didn't know what was entertaining.
00:55:27
Speaker
Like I didn't know what people wanted to hear if they wanted personality, if they wanted trivia about a game, if they want gameplay. And the answer is, Yes, all of those or one of those or whatever people watch streamers or, you know, very, ah very idiosyncratic reasons.
00:55:45
Speaker
And i yeah didn't want to keep playing Doom Eternal, that sort of game. I enjoy that sort of thing. But, you know, I've been an adventure game fan. all my life and eventually moved around over to those where I felt a little bit more at home.
00:56:00
Speaker
And yeah, they definitely though, the the pandemic was such a big part of yeah, just need that connection with the outside world. And streaming felt like a way to do that.
00:56:13
Speaker
Yeah. With $5 Amazon basics microphone. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, yeah, i started. and I was just using like a gamer headset ah for for my mic.
00:56:27
Speaker
um And ah like the onboard laptop camera. So which was like looking up my face. ah There you go. That's the angle you want. I don't think I added a face cam for like eight or nine months. I was didn't do the big face reveal until down the road, mostly because I just literally didn't have ah camera.
00:56:48
Speaker
Um, but let's talk about adventure games in, in, in the specific is, you know, we're talking about, uh, like streaming. What is it? So, because you and I, we have very kind of, we have kind of different, uh, streams, how we, how we do it.
00:57:06
Speaker
Yeah. Um, like, curious to see how you characterize that. Tell me more. Yeah. Like, I mean, I would say like with the adventure Tuesday, Um, like it's the three of us and like the, the adventure game is maybe I would say about 40% or less, excuse me, of, of the stream. Like it's mostly like, so my stream is myself and my friends, Grayson and Sarah.
00:57:36
Speaker
And like, you know, we're doing bits. We're making each other laugh. We're giving each other, uh, you know, You know, we're we're we're busting each other's balls yeah for two hours.
00:57:48
Speaker
It's meant to be like a fun Hank. Yeah. And so, like, the adventure game, like, comes up. And like, sometimes we get really captured by it and get really into it.
00:58:01
Speaker
And then sometimes it is, it it it is just kind of a, like an action on the screen in the same way that sometimes there's TikTok videos that have like three different screens. This is like chopping carrots at the bottom of like footage from Always Sunny in Philadelphia. hey just Yeah.
00:58:20
Speaker
And, and so like, you know, ours is, is, Kind of like, a yeah, i it's it's a hangout. It's a like, and I think the the the hangout is is kind of more...
00:58:36
Speaker
more important um in it and like the adventure game is is kind of second yeah and i mean i can speak to that as a viewer you know before we start collaborating on anything or you certainly long before we we made a podcast together you know i i was a fan of adventure tuesday and and the appeal for me there was it's just kind of fun to watch three friends being friends Right.
00:58:59
Speaker
Yeah, there's something charming about that. ah It helps that you're three funny and interesting friends. But yeah, i mean, that's definitely the vibe there. I think Adventure Tuesday. Yeah, that that fun hang with the game being maybe less the focus.
00:59:16
Speaker
Yeah. And ah again, like sometimes we'll get really captured in a game um or like Jumanji style. Yeah. like or Or it's like, especially if it's something like more recent or something like that, like where it's like, like people might not have as much familiarity.
00:59:33
Speaker
Like, so it's like, you know, when we were playing ah like ah the the Crimson Diamond, for example, um uh like as we were giving that more attention because it was like that's that's a more recent thing it's also made by like you know like a person in a small team yeah uh so like i don't want to you know like whereas like i don't have any particular you know if if it's like you know, King's Quest, like, everybody, nobody watching is seeing King's Quest for the first time. Nobody watching, like, also, it's like, you're if you if you're buying King's Quest now, it's like, that money goes to what? Microsoft? Like, who gives a shit? Like, it's like, I'm not...
01:00:20
Speaker
I'm not worried about like, I don't want to negatively hurt like, you know, somebody like, you know, Julia or like, uh, Grindislav or like, you know, the, like Dave Gilbert or any, like anyone, you know, indie game, uh, people. But you're fine hurting Roberta Williams's feelings.
01:00:38
Speaker
yeah She lives on, ah on a fucking yacht. She'll be okay. mean,
01:00:46
Speaker
ah But no, you're right. I mean, yeah, you don't have to be crazy dialed in into King's Quest four because everyone there has played it and seen it a million times before. You can, yeah. Or a game like Wayne's world, you have to preserve your sanity meter and can't, you know, completely allow yourself to be immersed in that or you may never get out.
01:01:04
Speaker
Yeah. It's like a darkest dungeon. Um, uh, yeah, I mean, all right. Well, and then, so for your stream, you're you're typically solo every now and again i'll be there if you're playing a star trek which i think it's time to do yeah we'll have to do originally i was calling dibs on it for my stream but you know what you have it and i'll join your stream sometime uh okay yeah let's let's do that you heard it here first yeah um because i've taken too long uh to do it so we got to do it now um Uh, but, uh, but yours is more kind of like, and I say this as a viewer and as we're recording this on a Wednesday.
01:01:43
Speaker
ah so you're going to be streaming a little later today. Like yours, yours is a little more game forward. There is like kind of the hang, like, I mean, the, the enjoyment of a, like of a stream is, is building like that rapport, with like the people watching. And that's the nice thing.
01:02:01
Speaker
Like you and I, we're uh we're pretty small potatoes streamers like yes uh like i usually have i don't know like uh 15 20 usually have like what like 20 to 40 around there yeah and 40 on on a rare occasion yeah i mean we're we're even by adventure gaming standards we're not we're not big time and to be clear i that's fine for me yeah like i can't speak for jess Yeah, but it's like yeah my marketing director says that's fine. And this is right where I need to be right now.
01:02:36
Speaker
um Excellent. Who's your marketing director? Grace. Okay. But it's like, I know, like, at this point, we we know, like, most of the people watching we have, like, there are people that have been, like, with us all five years, ah like, yeah since we became, like, adventure game streamers, ah that, like, you know, like, we'll make references to, like, something from five years ago, and they'll be like, ha, ha, ha, ha. I understand. Yeah.
01:03:03
Speaker
But yeah, yours is is collaborative and it is also about the game until like you get like really burnt out and furious. like Let's say it's the end of The Legend of Kyrandia.
01:03:16
Speaker
um Oh, man. Kyrandia. We'll have to talk about Kyrandia on an episode sometime. But no, I mean, i think that's a fair way to put it. and yeah I think maybe a game like Kyrandia makes me think you know i think kyrande is a good game to stream in some ways and maybe a a tough game to stream in others i'm curious you know most people on twitch aren't streaming retro adventure games what makes retro adventure games a good fit for live stream like what ways do they work and maybe in what ways are they a poor fit for this is like ah what works and what doesn't uh i think i think adventure games are are
01:03:59
Speaker
are good to stream because it kind of gives like a ah hook.
Challenges and Humor in Streaming Adventure Games
01:04:04
Speaker
Okay. Like, because you have this narrative and ah like by design, they're there they're there for for people like, you know, you can watch it as kind of like ah like a story. So there's something that people can kind of hook into. Mm-hmm.
01:04:21
Speaker
um the thing also with and i mean i'm sure this is true of all retro streaming if like you're somebody streaming like old mario games or whatever like final fantasies et etc um the the the like the people watching again i already said this but it's like but the people watching generally have seen this.
01:04:48
Speaker
Like, not only have they played it, but they're like, they'll probably also have seen people stream it. And it's also, ah like, You know, like, you know, i reference this on on this podcast a lot, but in my previous podcast, ah The Last Best Babylon 5 podcast, like that was, the the gimmick of it was there were three of us.
01:05:11
Speaker
There was me who had seen the show before and two people who hadn't. And there is a, like a, like a, a thrill. It's like, you know, we all want to have that exciting feeling of playing like, you know, of this big twist or something.
01:05:28
Speaker
ah Again, after, like, after we've played something that really touched us or really animated us in some sort of way, you're, you're not going to get that back, you know, generally. yeah.
01:05:39
Speaker
And, and so there's a lot of a thrill and, you know, like that was for a lot of our listeners on that podcast. Like a lot of people who are big fans of something love the idea of like because like you played king's quest 6 and that was your first time playing king's quest 6 yeah and so there's a lot of people who uh are like holy shit this guy's gonna play king's quest 6 yeah the first time love this game and so yeah like maybe i can draft a little bit on on your reaction.
01:06:12
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, absolutely. and i think that makes a lot of sense. yeah I think the pacing of adventure games is also really nice for live streaming in the sense that I'm like, say, you know, i'm actually going like Doom Eternal, where the whole idea is that you're just like moving from one kill to the next and ah and a first person shooter.
01:06:37
Speaker
you know, adventure games tend to be somewhat punctuated, which is useful if you're trying to also talk to an audience, if you're trying to do some sort of commentary, you know, there's, you can kind of pace an adventure game at your speed, whereas a lot of other genres, you for me, like I'm never going to be able to do super engaging games commentary while also trying to say like play a Resident Evil game.
01:07:03
Speaker
That's just not going to happen. I'm going to be too focused on making my guy move around in a 3D space and not getting eaten by a zombie to say anything too terribly clever. Adventure games give me that space as an old slow person to actually actually commentate as I play.
01:07:20
Speaker
Yeah, like ah that's that's and that yeah, like adventure games because you could just like pause and slow down and um ah like.
01:07:32
Speaker
um ah Just stand on a screen without giving any input and generally an adventure game isn't going to punish you for that. The way say, you know, a battle royale multiplayer game might.
01:07:46
Speaker
Yeah. Like, you know, yeah, it's, it's, it is like, it's easy to kind of build a report, keep an eye on chat and talk and stuff when you're playing an adventure game, that's a lot easier.
01:07:58
Speaker
uh, and like, you know, we're talking retro adventures, but like I just, you know, I brought up a bunch of like the new, like indie adventure games, those that's, that's kind of a tricky thing, right? Because it's like,
01:08:13
Speaker
You know, i I try to, like, i've I've streamed some new stuff, as i aforementioned Crimson Diamond. I also streamed shortly after came out. The Expelled, ah the Inkle game for a little bit.
01:08:29
Speaker
um And I try to be careful with that because, um you know, i adventure games by design,
01:08:43
Speaker
Once you know you kind of seen it, you've kind of seen it. Yes. like And so there's a little bit of a drop-off in in the the the viewers because there will be like a combination of people that just want to see like the games that they're... like you know They just kind of want to vibe games they already know.
01:09:05
Speaker
But then also there's people that are like, well, I don't want to see something I haven't played because I might play that. And this is a challenge of streaming adventure games. yeah i mean, it's not like your skill with them alone is going to be enough to bring people in. People don't want stories spoiled. It's not like you can be like been so good at adventure games. He's 360, no scoping puzzles left and right. I just want to see his mechanical abilities here that, yeah, i mean, it's,
01:09:32
Speaker
different from other genres in that sense. As you said, you know, there's not really room for the gameplay, short of speed runners. Now they're their own category where yeah, they're just the mechanical gameplay. It's like, that seems virtually impossible. That's not us.
01:09:44
Speaker
ah We are we aren't speed runners. I would love to imagine I could speed run. But I think any amount of practice, I could never be good at speed running. and Watching have you watched the quest for glory speed runners?
01:10:00
Speaker
Yes. Like Mr. P.R. Miller and and and so on and so forth. ah ah those I've watched some of those. They're i Yeah, but like my brain can't comprehend what I'm seeing.
01:10:11
Speaker
I certainly couldn't do what they're doing. Yeah, but so for most of us at some level, it's going be the commentary and it's going to be the the story of the game itself. Yeah, as you said, with with newer games, you ran into the challenge of, yeah, people may not want to be spoiled, which is going to make them a challenge ah to so stream at some level if you want to bring in that that same kind of audience.
01:10:35
Speaker
I mean, what makes a good streaming adventure game, though? Like, what we both have streamed enough at this point to know there are some that work and work really well and end up being the kind streams people are like, oh, that was great. I can't wait to see the next episode of you playing this game.
01:10:51
Speaker
And then there are others that I think both of us have felt like we're just absolute slogs to get through. You can tell when the audience isn't engaged by it. Probably that's a little bit of a two way street of the less engaged. i am the less engaged. They are, which makes me less engaged.
01:11:06
Speaker
What makes a good or a bad streaming game? Why does some work and others don't? Well, you know, it's funny because I don't know actually the answer to this because it's like, I think that there's, So it's like, as ah as a streamer and like somebody that's like trying to entertain, like if I'm playing a game and has a really tedious sequence that I keep failing, ah that's very finicky, like, let's say, like in Codename Iceman, any of it, or ah like you know like just all those, like, you know, now I'm in this big fucking maze in Wayne's World, the...
01:11:44
Speaker
there's there's a certain amount of fun and joy to be had as a viewer in ah like the that repeated failure um but as a streamer it does feel like it's like i'm boring everyone like it's like in the same way that like did you get that feeling uh again when you were just playing ah the the first kyrandia game and um the uh like you know like you had to find that one gem and it required you to like just like go all the way back to the first forest and then wander all the way back and then like just like literally check every screen of the game of which by that point there were like 40 or so yeah um yeah I mean that's rough I mean the same way that like the fireberry caverns in Kyrandia were rough I mean it's
01:12:35
Speaker
When I know that myself, it's like painful to try to navigate through this, even though I'm sitting there with a walkthrough, know, just sort of like north, east, east, south, east, north.
01:12:47
Speaker
And just sort of, you know, walking through this horrible maze, reading from a walkthrough. I'm not really playing the game at that point. yeah I'm just more like entering in a sad directions that someone else has been kind enough to write down for me.
01:13:00
Speaker
And yeah, trying to like keep it going through that kind of tedium is, is always a challenge. Now, sometimes that can result in, yeah, I think there is a a certain level of, um,
01:13:13
Speaker
let's see, i'm going to say that's sadism, right? I always, i can never get sadism and masochism straight. ah But I'm pretty sure that yeah for the, for the viewers, it's, you know, sort of the fun sometimes of watching us suffer, right? I think there's an appeal to that.
01:13:28
Speaker
like like you know like so again i'm playing you know as we record this i'm playing winds world uh right now and we just started the miserable cave maze and it sucks and it's not fun i'm also playing it up a little bit for the the camera to wait you would exaggerate your reaction to the game for your audience a little bit ben that's dishonest little bit I would know just want all of my viewers to know i have never been anything but myself and an honest version of myself on camera I'm a trained actor well that's true you are from the theater yeah I come from the theater I've tread the boards with an re yeah that's how you know it's legitimate uh you know that's why we can't record on Sunday it's because I have a theatrical engagement
01:14:18
Speaker
and that might be that might be ah six people to see this improv show oh
01:14:26
Speaker
ah but some of them who may have paid uh yeah some of them wouldn't be the the that they did it might not just be the stage manager ah It's nice to hear you talk with your actual accent though.
01:14:41
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah, that's, that's what, no more of this Chicago band stuff. We can finally hear the, the true transatlantic band. Um, but, uh, but yeah, uh, you know, it is, it's, it's such a, here's a question for you.
01:15:01
Speaker
Like on the, what makes a ah game good to stream? Is that like, so I think about games that have, like yeah that kind of lean more visual novel. This is an honest question for you. is it It's like, I'm generally not a, ah like like, I'll i try to avoid those because, you know, there's kind of, like, I don't want to, I don't want to, ah like, sit and read all that text.
01:15:36
Speaker
because that's too much. But it's also, it's like how, you know, how how long, but you just streamed Norco and I think you had a pretty positive experience. I think you you had a good time doing that.
01:15:47
Speaker
So yeah how how do you do that? How do you square that circle? Like you didn't read every single line of text on that, right? I read almost every single lot texts. I did. And that may have been a little bit of a mistake. I was thinking about that one too, because that was a challenge. And while I was doing it, I was very self-conscious about the fact that, you know, sometimes I'm just like reading text that's on screen for like two and three minutes straight. And so it was longer segments of dialogue in that game. It's not voiced. ah So either I could just let the,
01:16:20
Speaker
viewer read on screen themselves and kind of push forward. But that game is it lives in the text right in a way that I feel like again, very visual novel as I feel like if I didn't voice this stuff, people are going to get lost and people are half paying attention aren't going to be yeah if they're like me, there's a good chance they have another tab open while they're watching my stream. They're jumping around things like that. i I typically have my Steam Deck out and I'm playing a game. but That's right. Yeah, i mean, that's me. i And sadly, that's me with kind any form of entertainment. I'm seldom focused on completely on the thing I'm supposed to be paying attention to.
01:16:58
Speaker
ah The Paul Rubens documentary was good enough that I actually put my phone down out of reach to make sure I wasn't tempted to pick it up and check it. This is why I actually, I mean, among other reasons, this is one of the main reasons I like, now like, this is a ah good reason why I like to go to movie theaters is because it's like, it forces me.
01:17:16
Speaker
Like, everything is turned off. Yeah, I will not do that. i will not be the monster who pulls out his phone. i'm i'm in a miss Yeah. yeah It's the only way I can be guaranteed to only be watching one screen at a time. Yeah. I spent my entire childhood suffering with just one screen. i don't want to have to go back there at a time when I can have four or five screens open at a time. Why would I just look at one?
01:17:37
Speaker
um But yeah, I mean, that that's hard. i mean and I mean, on the one hand, it's just like, God, i start... getting way in my head about God, why does my voice sound like this?
01:17:48
Speaker
Why do I say things the way I'm saying them right now? Oh, right. What's the goal? I can't stand to hear myself say another sentence. And yeah, that's tough. yeah I think that and I know this is somewhere where streams sometimes diverge a bit.
01:18:03
Speaker
I am so grateful when a game is voiced so that a I don't have to read a bunch of stuff constantly on screen. and B, maybe the voice acting sometimes is a source of maybe a ah laugh or two.
01:18:18
Speaker
Yeah. Either it's, it's so good. I love it And it's like, ah, this is wonderful. Or it's so bad. You can poke a little fun at, you know, how poor the performance is or whatever. i know a lot of times you guys leave voices off.
01:18:29
Speaker
So you can do that. Sometimes ah we do have a lot of fun, like in the same way, or like we play the game of like, are they hitting the all caps? Yeah. Like in Adventure Game Dialogue, you know, if if you don't watch either of our streams, ah like we, ah you know, and in an Adventure Game Dialogue, there are a lot of, you know, most all Adventure Games, like, and this is like up to today and all the way back to like, you know, early 90s, probably late 80s too.
01:18:59
Speaker
They'll have dialogue, which like, you know, to emphasize, we'll have something all caps. And probably in a world where bold and italics weren't always available. Right. All caps gets to the job done. And, uh, so in games where there's a voice acting, little game that I, I, I play, on my stream and it, then I'll, I'll call it out.
01:19:22
Speaker
You know, when I'm a viewer in your stream, jazz is that if the voice actor hits the all caps word, um, And I think that's always yeah sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.
01:19:34
Speaker
Um, but that's why we're compiling a list for, you know, it's going to curated steam list for people who don't want to play games where voice actors couldn't be bothered to not hit, uh, all the, all all caps dialogue. So you'll know whether game is safe for your consumption. If you care about all caps. Yeah. Yeah.
01:19:52
Speaker
But to rewind a little bit, it's just, I don't know what to do with visual novels because I don't know if I ah should be reading everything or not. Like, it's like, so we played years ago, we played ah two, maybe three cases in the first Phoenix Wright game.
01:20:10
Speaker
And like the amount of dialogue and description and all of that in that that game, because they're visual novels, ah like was just so much that it's like, we just, there was just too much.
01:20:25
Speaker
Like, and so I ended up like, because it's, it's kind of case to case to case. Like there was a nice little, like, okay, we can call it here. We can, we can stop here. ah Because I was just like, this is just, these streams are too long and we don't even, we're not having a lot of our like kind of downtime where we can fuck around because we're just doing too much reading dialogue.
01:20:48
Speaker
And like, I'll talk to Grayson and Sarah before we start streaming sometimes and be like, ah let's just read some of the dialogue or like just pick a sentence or two because it's like sometimes it's there's just too much.
01:21:02
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. now then And thats that's a challenge. Again, yeah, you know, that was my concerns. I was playing through Norco. It's like, am I just reading? And because I'm reading so much, I'm not bothering to do any like commentary or add anything to this, which I don't know.
01:21:18
Speaker
For me, I would think if I were watching it, I would want more of that streamer to come through. But if I'm reading... ah so you know, a short novel over course of a stream. It's a little more challenging.
01:21:29
Speaker
Yeah, I was thinking about this too. You know part of me is tempted and I hate these phrases, but part me always feels like when my streams are really like working well, when I'm having a good time and I think my audience is having a good time, it might be in cases where the game is so bad, it's good.
01:21:49
Speaker
Or maybe just so good. I mean, some of your, some of your, your, yeah, like your Wayne's world and your Beverly Hillbillies one. I mean, Ace Ventura, the CD ROM game, you know, is like maybe one that springs to mind for me. Uh, you know, where the CD ROM game, the Rocky horror No Ace Ventura, the, the CD ROM game. I mean, which is a weirdly like competently made game in some ways and just like bizarre and infuriating in others, which was a good combo. It meant, you know, was kind of a constant rollercoaster ride of me. It's the few games I ever quit without finishing. I got so frustrated, like literally the last puzzle. I just walked away from it.
01:22:33
Speaker
Um, Like, it was also, ah yeah, to your point, it was a really handsome-looking game. It had great animation. Like, it had the voice cast of the cartoon and all of this.
01:22:44
Speaker
um But, like, I'd never heard of it. I don't think anyone really, like, you know, I'm sure yourre your more kind of hardcore people might have been, like, familiar with it, may have heard of it. But it's not really a game that that gets a lot of press.
01:22:59
Speaker
And, I mean, now we know why. bad.
01:23:04
Speaker
and it has a puzzle in it. Like, the final puzzle of it is impossible, and it's a game made for children. um Yeah, I mean, that's kind of... There's a certain...
01:23:15
Speaker
joy to that to that too especially yeah watching you play that then like make your way to that final puzzle and try it I think you spent like 45 minutes on it like you you gave a pretty good I did try and before just that I barely remembered it was like some sort of like rewiring a security system it was a very puzzly puzzle that required yeah it was very like yeah here to click connecting wires and I don't know but it was terrible you know i think about the game probably that stream that I had the most fun with maybe splits the difference too, in in the sense that like Gabriel not to, I think it's still maybe the game that enjoyed bit of everything.
01:23:54
Speaker
i mean, it's, it's a good game. There's also deeply silly and ridiculous in a lot of ways and occasionally a little frustrating. And it kind of hits that sweet spot of, oh, my God, we're all enjoying a great game together.
01:24:09
Speaker
yeah And oh, my God, did you see that ridiculous scene where Grace freaked out at Gerda over, you know, who gets to be Gabriel's new assistant? And did you just see this ah part of the game where I had to go around museums for two hours straight clicking on everything so I can get you move forward in the story the boy that's tedious and frustrating kind has it all in a way that just made it the the perfect game for stream fmv ah is is actually really good for for streaming because it it adds like because most of those fmv games even like the very good ones like gabriel knight 2 are still
01:24:47
Speaker
you know like they they're generally not getting the best actors i mean the goosebumps the game for some reason had isabella rossellini in it briefly yeah um which is baffling alongside a couple other uh pretty interesting cameos and even if you are getting the best actors you're probably not getting the best performances no out ah but um no one would say tim curry's best performance is in muppet treasure island the game no i i i had that game as a child he you know he's pretty locked in as uh like he's just doing his same performance yeah i mean tim curry's pretty locked yeah yeah he's just you know some he's just he's just showing in i uh but but yeah like that adds like a little bit of an extra like mst3k you know quality yeah because you're getting
01:25:37
Speaker
uh you know these these like often like kind of b-movie or you know kind of like working actors not not as well-known actors that uh are being directed by video game people and not act acting directors and so and acting against a green screen ah you know in the the mid 90s so that's you know that's not as like commonplace it would end up being.
01:26:04
Speaker
So the performances are all over the place. That adds a ah lot of, lot of fun. Yeah. ah Yeah. You know, i think a good game to stream is something that kind of, you know, kind of gives you something to kind of get your hooks in ah on.
01:26:21
Speaker
And it might be ah like a weird or funny performance, or might be that you're captured by the mystery or the, the story or it might be you know it could be a variety of things but it's just like sometimes it's it's just as much of that you or if in my case the three of us like have something that we we kind of like get our like become fascinated by yes yeah like i'm thinking like police quest one vga which is a very meh game all around it's probably more meh in some ways than the original police quest one
01:27:00
Speaker
But stumbling on a weird thing like, oh, it has all this odd like masculinity, still like toxic masculinity stuff that gets written into the VGA remake that wasn't in the EGA original.
01:27:14
Speaker
And suddenly it becomes like a little Easter egg hunt to find these bits of dialogue that for whatever reason, you know, were added to this game and like, why are those there?
01:27:25
Speaker
And it can take even a pretty big game like that and give it, give it something. Yeah. Like you say, to sink your teeth into, to really, to deal with you and i both, I think when we're streaming, we're walkthrough boys. Now we've talked about this going on there back to the very first episode yeah of quest quest. We're walkthrough boys in life and we're walkthrough boys, or actually I think probably we've matured to walk through men.
01:27:51
Speaker
and our streaming careers as well. ah I don't mind you. I try not to look at a walkthrough usually for a game I'm playing for the first time, unless I know it's a game that is notable for its bullshit.
01:28:07
Speaker
Like i'd I'd never played most of Legend of Kyrandia. When I dove into that, I knew there were going to be dumb mazes and way too many gemstones. And I tried to look at the walkthrough sparingly, but once it became frustrating, it's like, I'm digging out that walkthrough. It's be fun to watch me sort gemstones.
01:28:26
Speaker
I like for, for newer, like, so generally my policy is for newer stuff, I'll, I'll give it an honest try and have like a walkthrough, like kind of on retainer. Like generally we're just straight walkthrough because i and And actually, I think that people really enjoy the process of someone trying to figure out a puzzle.
01:28:53
Speaker
But I don't like that friction as part of like what what we're doing. I like constant motion yeah in my stream. I don't like kind of like, oh, does this work?
01:29:06
Speaker
Does this work? um ah But I know that that some viewers love that. i With newer stuff, I tend to prefer like going in blind it's kind of similar to yours like when we do play like a newer game i'll try to solve the puzzles first especially because like a game that that came out recently just they're designed by players that are like i don't want to make like i'm you know ah like ah like a rose water or like you know like most most of the the newer kind of generation of AGS games are are are made not to like stump you for days they're made for you to beat them
01:29:52
Speaker
um and And so generally you could do that. Like when we were playing the Salmon to Max games, I tried to to solve those ah without yeah without a knife. And they're very solvable. Yeah, so I mean, yeah, those are, you know, seldom did I run into in the Telltale Salmon Max, a puzzle that just completely stumped me. And we're lucky in the sense too that we have viewers who in many cases are familiar with these games as well and can offer some hints of varying degrees of directness. like I have like my own Sierra reveal a clue hint book seen in chat at any given time where it's like, can someone nudge me in the right direction? Or can someone literally just spell out the solution of this puzzle? Like I'm an idiot for me.
01:30:35
Speaker
And oftentimes there's someone in chat who can offer something along that continuum. Yeah, exactly. Uh, yeah, you know, so is there, is there anything else ah that that you wanted to, to, to, to cover?
01:30:51
Speaker
i mean, I think that covers yeah a lot of I mean, i guess I, I, You know, for me, streaming adventure games has been, you know, just a really fun experience.
01:31:02
Speaker
and we've talked about this before, you know, something for me that with adventure games was an important part of playing them growing up was playing them with other people, playing them with friends. Like my buddy Andy, who wrote the who wrote the letter earlier. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:31:13
Speaker
ah calling into question my memory of our childhood. um You know, having friends like that to play adventure games with is such a part of how I enjoy these games. Streaming gives me a little bit of that back.
01:31:26
Speaker
And I think that that's ah that's really rewarding. And then, you know, also, i think it's been fun just sort on personal level, trying to get better at it, trying to figure out what works in this medium and how to be entertaining me in a perfect world. I'd like to think that, you know I'm putting on a little bit of a show and I don't know if
Podcast Evolution and Listener Interaction
01:31:48
Speaker
it's a show. Apparently it's a show about two dozen people want to tune into, but which may not get me on network anytime soon. But yeah, i mean that, that part, I like the challenge of it. I like the challenge of figuring out how to, you know, to, to pull this off in a way that anyone would want to see.
01:32:04
Speaker
Yeah. And we wouldn't have quest quest presumably. No. If, uh, if these streams didn't exist first and that would be a sad world to imagine. Yeah. ah Can you imagine Ben how awkward these conversations would be if we weren't recording a podcast during them?
01:32:19
Speaker
Well, Yeah, they'd be terrible. They'd be horrible conversations because they they wouldn't have ah the frisson of ah being knowledgeable streamers.
01:32:31
Speaker
That's right. That's right. Exactly. i mean, we bring a level of expertise to this topic that is virtually unrivaled among anyone I know personally.
01:32:43
Speaker
All right. Well, folks, thank you so much for listening to Quest Quest, the adventure game podcast. ah Please rate and review us. ah Helps people find the show. You can watch us on Twitch and YouTube. PS underscore Garrick and Decaf Jedi. You can send us an email at questquestpodcast at gmail.com.
01:33:08
Speaker
And if you ask a really good question, it can become a future episode. We just plucked out a future episode from this week's mailbag. That could be you. That could be you. That could be could That could be you.
01:33:21
Speaker
You. That... It's you. it was you all along. ah But join us.
Upcoming Series Announcement: King's Quest V
01:33:30
Speaker
Next week, ah when we begin our 10 part series about all of the various little ah vignettes in the that little town in Sirenia in King's Quest V, investigating the shoemaker's life, ah that guy that's fitting people in the clothing store, ah you know, just checking out everybody. The fish in the barrel. The fish in the barrel.
01:33:56
Speaker
That little boy that puts his hand in the pie. What's his story? ah We're going to do it all in a 10 part series starting next week. We'll see you then.