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00:00:01
Josh Mandel
0 Playsin 10 hours
Ben & Jess chat with adventure game designer Josh Mandel (Freddy Pharkas, SQ6, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, and others) about comedy in adventure games, his approach to writing, and the memory of Roberta Vaughan. If you'd like to support Roberta Vaughan's family, please visit this GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/donate-to-ease-robertas-medical-burden
Quest Quest podcast is Ben Vigeant and Jess Morrissette.
Editing by Ben Vigeant
Show art by Kevin "WilcoWeb" Wallace
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Jess: https://www.twitch.tv/decafjedi
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Transcript
Unusual Recording Time
00:00:29
Speaker
Folks, it's Quest Quest, the adventure game podcast. Oh, Jess. Jess, we're recording at an irregular time today, ah which means that I can't talk about what I had for dinner.
00:00:42
Speaker
Oh, man, that really throws off our whole our old vibe here. Usually we start off with dinner talk and and all that. It's mid-afternoon. It's been hours since I've eaten. It will be hours before I eat again.
00:00:53
Speaker
i don't even know how we banter our way through the beginning of this thing. Instead of having lunch, I was in therapy. Well, that mean that we could talk about that. if We could. and we have after After therapy, like one of those TV, like after Walking Dead, after Star Trek, whatever those shows are, where we kind of decamp, talk about it. It's like, yeah, i got into talking about my parents again.
00:01:15
Speaker
um but let's let's not let's not waste time here it's not beat around the bush let's not beat around because people saw the title it's always funny when you're listening to a podcast and they're like all right well let's let's not get into it yet but you see the title of the podcast you know like if there's like a guest or something like that so you don't need to like preamble too much that's why there's a twist there is no guest air title was a lie this week um but We're switching
Special Guest: Josh Mandel
00:01:47
Speaker
it up on you. No, we do have a very special guest that's joining us today.
00:01:52
Speaker
ah Folks, we have a legendary adventure game designer, Josh Mandel here with us. Josh, how are you? i'm i am actually doing great.
00:02:04
Speaker
um i had i recent I'll make this brief.
Josh's Health Journey
00:02:10
Speaker
um A good number of years ago, i came down with a tremor. in my right hand and my left hand minor, but um for a good year or so, i could barely even type or use a mouse and I had to give up my um my hobbies and everything, but um a little over a month ago, i had a procedure And my right hand is now rock steady.
00:02:37
Speaker
I'm back typing. I'm back cooking. I'm back teaching magic, ah twisting balloons. ah I am doing better than I've done in a long time. So that's awesome.
00:02:49
Speaker
I love to hear that. I didn't know that you did magic. I love magic. I've been doing magic since I was like seven or eight. My father introduced me to it.
00:03:03
Speaker
when When you did stand-up, was that part, did you do some magic in the stand-up? Very, very little. um it just It just wasn't part of our ah part of our thing. we did we did sketches um And ah once in a while I would throw in a magic trick, but um it always frightened me to do magic in front of a large audience because I was just so terrified that something was going to go wrong and I wouldn't know how to talk my way out of it
00:03:41
Speaker
ah You know, my my favorite ah magicians I've i've seen are remarkably good bullshitters, though. So I just saw Penn and Teller.
00:03:52
Speaker
And I mean, Penn is one of the greatest bullshitter. Like he had a whole show about it. They both Well, i can't imagine anyone who's tuning in isn't familiar ah with but with Josh's work. But Ben, could you could you give our guest a ah proper introduction here?
00:04:16
Speaker
Josh had is the the voice if you so a game that I have played ah with myself is is identifying your voice in in Sierra games obviously you're you're King Graham and ah in five and six and then in the remakes.
00:04:35
Speaker
of ah one three three but then i was very tickled to hear your voice ah like recognize it in ah ah the second Laura bow the debt oh ra I was like everything like crowd follower to rhubarb was that I was Criderfology Rhubarb. I was Steve Dorian.
00:04:55
Speaker
was one of the cab drivers. Were you T-Rex? Were you the T-Rex? I was the T-Rex. All right. Yeah. I was like, i was like, I'm pretty sure it's John. T-Rex was based ah heavily on the Oakhurst bear.
00:05:15
Speaker
i But in addition to to i voice talent at Sierra, ah he also i wrote and designed, did some writing on ah the remake of King's Quest 1, designed Freddy Farkas, Frontier Pharmacist, which I told my older brother ah just yesterday.
00:05:39
Speaker
i getting to interview the guy that designed Freddy Farkas, and he said he's very jealous, so that made me feel good. um ah ah Also, ah Space Quest 6.
00:05:51
Speaker
ah You worked on Shannara, is that right? Yeah, Legend, yeah. at Legend. And then also i Callahan's Crosstime Saloon. Right. i Which...
00:06:05
Speaker
if if ah If you're able to to track that down, ah i say to you, the listener, ah worth tracking down. um i do Is Spider Robinson hard to get?
00:06:16
Speaker
I mean, I don't know. Like, is he hard to get his rights or something? Like, it's odd to me that that's not on somewhere. um It was easy to get his rights. In fact, the first time I spoke to him ah when I was at Legend, once we had already secured the rights,
00:06:35
Speaker
and I knew I was going to do the game. um i said to him, how much do you want me to um collaborate with you? Because I want you to be pleased.
00:06:46
Speaker
I want you to feel like we've done your property justice. And he said, um as long as the check clears, I'm fine. Perfect. i is is Is there anything, is there anything here I'm i'm missing?
00:07:04
Speaker
ah Well, there there was a lot at Sierra. I mean, when I first got there, i thought to myself, um I was hired as a junior producer.
00:07:15
Speaker
i didn't want to be a producer. I wanted to be a designer. I mean, doesn't everyone want to be a designer? Um, so I made myself as indispensable as possible.
00:07:26
Speaker
So I worked the remake of, uh, wrote for, uh, the remake of Larry one, um Larry five, Larry six, uh, Jones in the fast lane.
00:07:40
Speaker
um ah lock lots, lots where, uh, the remake of PQ one, ah wherever a designer would let me.
00:07:52
Speaker
I would horn my way in and write at least a little, hopefully a lot. um So there, there were a lot.
00:08:06
Speaker
There, there's something. Okay. So this actually, we're going to get to ask you something that Jess and I have been wondering about, about but the, the, the police quest remake, because Jess and I have been talking about this.
00:08:17
Speaker
There are there like, ah like It's very clear that i that the the descriptions are not Jim-written descriptions.
00:08:33
Speaker
They have things like adjectives that start to you. have yeah why But in addition, there's kind of an acid sense of humor, and I know that also Scott worked on it too, I believe.
00:08:47
Speaker
I think Laura and Shannon also. One two really kind of... like kind of nasty, like dark humor, nasty descriptions in there. And so that's something that Jess and I have talked about is it's like, do you think that Scott wrote this?
00:09:01
Speaker
But now I'm like, oh, did you write like stuff in there where I read it? And I'm just like, oh, they're having fun. they're They're kind of making fun of this little bit. That's fantastic. You know, before we jump into all of that, though, you know, Josh is joining us today for for a special reason, not only to talk about all of these fantastic games he's been part of, ah but but Josh, you're here on behalf of ah of a special cause as well. Would you mind telling the listeners a little bit about what you got going on?
Remembering Roberta Vaughn
00:09:34
Speaker
Certainly. um There who was... there was a woman who was one of the brightest lights in the adventure game community.
00:09:45
Speaker
And her name was Roberta Vaughn. ah Probably just about everyone listening to this podcast has heard of her. ah She has been involved in so many projects, conventions, events,
00:10:02
Speaker
get togethers. ah It's, it's amazing. She worked, I believe she worked on ah colossal cave with Ken and Roberta recently.
00:10:13
Speaker
um Anyway, she, she had some health issues ah which resulted in her being ah in a coma.
00:10:24
Speaker
And we started a GoFundMe for her, for her medical expenses. And the eventual outcome, unfortunately, is that her family ah eventually made the decision working with neurosurgeons to take her off of life support.
00:10:46
Speaker
um Her organs were donated in accordance with her desires. um But during that time, she racked up ah some amazing medical expenses, some of which, or a lot of which, may be covered by insurance, but some of which may not.
00:11:09
Speaker
And there are a lot of other associated costs as well. Unfortunately, her funeral, ah her memorial, um and a special project that she was working on at the time that she got sick um ah that's related to full motion video games.
00:11:28
Speaker
And so we started this GoFundMe initially for her medical expenses. Now we're sort of opening it up to more of of the family's expenses.
00:11:42
Speaker
And she was just a delight to to know and to work with. She was generous to a fault.
00:11:52
Speaker
She was incredibly hardworking and talented. And she had a real... knack for bringing people together and introducing people to each other, um suggesting collaborations between people ah that turned out wonderfully. She was everywhere in the industry and invaluable to those of us who had the privilege of knowing her and working with her.
00:12:26
Speaker
And so um i'm I'm stumping for her GoFundMe, um ah which will probably end towards the end of this month. We've had it going for about a month and a half already.
00:12:41
Speaker
And um ah Roberta, I loved you and i miss you. And so do hundreds and hundreds of people in this industry.
00:12:54
Speaker
who will never forget your contributions and everything that you've done for for this this entire community. Absolutely. She touched so many lives, just so many, just an outpouring of, of stories about everything she, she gave back to adventure game community, you know, following her passing and yeah, the, the, the link to the GoFundMe will be in the show notes. Be sure, you know, if you, if you feel passionate about this genre, you know, this is
00:13:32
Speaker
this is a cause that that definitely deserves some of your attention. So be sure to go check that out. so and And we appreciate Josh, you you coming on today and and taking a chance to talk about that. Oh, my pleasure. Anything I can do to help out Roberta's family ah in this, this dark, dark period will be appreciated. any donations, no matter how small, everything helps.
00:13:59
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah. i And yeah, that's ah once again, you could double check the show notes. And ah if you listen to this on the day that this comes out, i Jess, I believe you're having a stream with this for this too. Is that correct?
00:14:18
Speaker
Yes. yeah we're gonna be have yeah if you listen to this day of uh person yeah that'll make uh wednesday august 20th uh we're going to be having a special uh stream uh to uh to get some more eyes on uh on roberta's go find me uh josh is going to be joining me uh on twitch uh we're going to be uh talking a little bit about Sierra stuff. We'll be doing some Q and a, giving fans a chance to, you know, pick Josh's brain over all kinds of stuff.
00:14:53
Speaker
ah So ah possible other special guests. I don't know what all might happen there, but be sure to tune in. ah We would, we'd love to have you there as well. So yeah, just, ah just get out there and rally for Roberta.
00:15:08
Speaker
Great. uh so ah in accordance with the the rest of the show uh you know it's uh it's now time for me to to ask uh jess should i start with you i can go first yes what have you been playing It's a great question, Ben. Why have been playing? You know, listeners know lately I've been obsessed with my new little handheld retro console, my Ambernick 35XXH handheld that plays all kinds of retro games.
00:15:47
Speaker
I've even gotten ScumVM running on it so I can finally play Freddy Farkas handheld on the go. That's pretty good. Just like you attended it, You're that doctor's meeting room, and you're like, I well, just go sit at my local CVS, because, you know, just feels like the right place for Now, it is wild getting to put those games on, but what I've really been getting into lately is a game, I guess, also this year, published them down the road at some point.
00:16:17
Speaker
I've been playing on that little handheld um the PlayStation 1 version of You Don't Know Jack, which I found runs kind of wonderfully, and be able to put together, like, you're trying to kill a few minutes of time, like a little seven-question You Don't Know Jack round, and be able to do it all handheld with just, you know, using the the buttons to input your answer.
00:16:41
Speaker
is a kind of delightful way to get a trivia fix. I mean, I'm always looking for some good opportunities for trivia and I'm a sucker for You Don't Know Jack. Plus, I think deep down I remember a lot of the answers when I obsessively played it decades ago, so I feel super smart. That's the main thing I want from trivia is that feeling of, haha, I'm super smart. And knowing some of the questions already really helps with that. It's like watching a rerun of Jeopardy! You can really nail it.
00:17:07
Speaker
Did, Josh, did you ever play, uh, You Don't Know Jack, uh, around release? I love those games. Uh, I was so, so sad when they stopped making them, and towards the end, it seemed like they sort of drifted, uh, farther and farther from there, They're set up and i I kind of like the originals the best, but I adored those games.
00:17:34
Speaker
Jellyvision did a fantastic job. have ah have you Have you played any of their, like the the newest things they've been doing? are the they're They're pretty fun. I like, all note, I also own the hometown booster. I live in Chicago, so I'm going to Oasis Fort.
00:17:56
Speaker
the Hope team, but they're ah pretty good for like a family. but My family always plays them together, but we were a You Don't Know Jack family in what, 96? Is that when that came out?
00:18:12
Speaker
Do you remember briefly, like during the era of dial up when they were doing like the weekly yes web episodes of Y'all Know Jack? I was obsessed with that for a little while listening to it, you know, stream a highly compressed version of the audio so it could move over like a 28-8 line and all that. I think it was called You Don't Know Jack, the online show.
00:18:36
Speaker
yeah they have like seven new questions every week. And yes. We have the stickers on our keyboard because the box came with stickers for Q, B and p which were one, two and three, I believe.
00:18:53
Speaker
And we have the stickers. They lived on our Gateway 2000 keyboard. That's fantastic. and But I love it. And it's perfect, like I said, for a little handheld game.
00:19:06
Speaker
ah Just a little delight, you know, to serve as a momentary distraction. But no, that's what I've been playing is little bit You Don't Know Jack on on my handheld. Josh, what have you been playing?
Gaming Interests: Animation Throwdown
00:19:20
Speaker
I've been playing something completely out of character for me. ah I have never played a collectible card game before in any form. You know, not physical, not computer-based, but I have recently gotten hooked on something called Animation Throwdown, Quest for Cards.
00:19:45
Speaker
which is from 20th Century Games and a company called Congregate. And Animation Throwdown is a collectible...
00:19:56
Speaker
card game for mobile devices, although ah you can also play it on PC, that is based on five of Fox's animated series.
00:20:11
Speaker
Family Guy, American Dad, King of the Hill, Bob's Burgers, and Archer. So all the cards are characters and events. from those cartoons and i kind of can't get enough of it. This is a ah whole new experience for me.
00:20:33
Speaker
Maybe I'm going to have to try Magic the Gathering, but i am I am so taken with this. I happen to be a huge King of the Hill and Bob's Burgers fan, so this really appeals to me.
00:20:49
Speaker
Have you watched any of the new season of King of Hill? Yes, I've seen the first two episodes. I'm trying to stretch it out so that it's not... I really wish it was once a week.
00:21:02
Speaker
I don't like it. I just I couldn't resist. I've been straight there. And I'm actually just watching Bob's Burgers for the first time over the last month or so, too. I was totally out of the loop on Bob's Burgers. Really digging that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. dinge The new King of the Hill. It was it was so delightful.
00:21:18
Speaker
i Yeah. I'm halfway through. I've been trying, i've been trying but also I was sick for a bit, so it made it easy to just kind of burn through a whole bunch of them.
00:21:31
Speaker
But they're good. They're good. They're very good, yeah. And so, yeah, the collectible card game, that's a genre I haven't touched very much either. It's bad that you have a little more experience there, don't you?
00:21:46
Speaker
i I'm into like games like Slay the Spire, um which is like ah like a like a PC or or mobile ah like card game type thing like that.
00:22:01
Speaker
And Bellatro. Bellatro lives on my phone now, and i was when I was riding the train back here to to record this, that's what I was playing. That's pretty much just what I...
00:22:13
Speaker
do when I am on public transit now is play Bellatro. It was a game designed for public transit. it What a world we live in today.
00:22:27
Speaker
So I have been playing chess. This might even be the second time But I was messing around on my Steam Deck last last weekend, and I was just kind of like, I wonder how Baldur's Gate 3 would run on the Steam Deck. I know that like it's a pretty heavy lift for such as, like you know, kind of a lightweight in terms of like device like that. I'm like, I wonder what it would be like. It was more of just a curious exercise that turned into me playing it for three hours and then like starting a whole new game
00:23:00
Speaker
of Baldur's Game 3 and then going like, I guess it works on this team deck. I guess I'm going to keep playing. I've been really, i don't know, my social media is just a constant stream of people still talking about Baldur's Gate 3. It would be much worse.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's true. yeah That's a really good point. I should be happy. That's what my social media stream is. But, you know, I've been tempted to go back and replay it again lately, too. And I think it's like, well, maybe I should stream Baldur's Gate 3. And then it's just like, oh, man, that rabbit hole could eat up the rest of my year if I'm not careful.
00:23:38
Speaker
I mean, and it actually functions on the Sting deck. That's impressive. It functions. It doesn't look great, but it works. And then I was just like, I'm going to stream it from my PC to my deck, which works way better. Like, and it looks great. But...
00:23:56
Speaker
Wow. You know, if I'm like, wow, this like puny little device is able to play this game and everybody like looks like the worst part is their hair looks insane. Everyone's hair just looks crazy. Is that funny how that's the first thing to go when a game's graphics settings start getting a little wonky? It's just like hair is immediately either like the shiniest, wettest thing in the world or it looks like the hair from Final Fantasy VII just immediately soon as- It's like it's shimmery, it's popping in and out, like it looks like it does not look like, just just give them all a Picard, just pull the hair.
00:24:38
Speaker
Can't do it. There's probably a mod for that. I'm sure if you just went on Nexus Mods, you could get the Picard head for Pounder's Gate III.
00:24:48
Speaker
but I mean, i don't know. There's not much more to say about Baldur's Gate 3. It's a good game. they they They did it. They did a good job. Congratulations. Good Lorian. Yeah. like It's very nice. did Good for you. You did it.
00:25:03
Speaker
a lot of people are happy, and they're posting about it on Jess's Blue Sky. That's right. That's all I see. that People just updating me all day long on on which characters from Baldur's Gate 3 they have crushes on.
00:25:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:19
Speaker
All right. Well, and and just to to to check in on, you know, the other thing that we talked, Josh, have you had any memorable meals lately? Because we do a lot of talk about this.
00:25:31
Speaker
Well, um I just yesterday got back from ah ah trip to Ocean City, New Jersey. oh yeah. My daughter is about to go back to college. She wanted one last hurrah before ah we left. So the last three days...
00:25:49
Speaker
or four days I've been eating nothing but ah pizza and frozen custard and shaved ice. mean, there are worse ways to live. yeah There are, but thank heavens I brought Imodium with me on the trip.
00:26:10
Speaker
Oh, Matt. Are you on the West Coast? or like was this I'm in Albany, New York. You're in Albany, New York. So it was about a four and a half hour trip to Ocean City.
00:26:21
Speaker
All right. i like ah I used to go up to Rochester all the time, and I still have family up in in Rochester, so I need to to go over there. And speaking of frozen custard, they have really good frozen custard.
00:26:35
Speaker
Yeah. They have Abbott's frozen custard, which inexplicably also has a location in New Orleans, which really confused me because it's only in the Rochester area. And then there's one in the French Quarter.
00:26:49
Speaker
All I have is Culver's for frozen. Culver's is great. have to drive like an hour for it. But I mean, there's that bite to custard that just is so much better than ice cream or soft serve.
00:27:05
Speaker
Oh, man. Now I'm thinking about custard. Isn't Culver's sort of like the default frozen custard? When people think of frozen custard, they think of Culver's first.
00:27:16
Speaker
I think so. Probably now. I mean, it's got it at least for and know Midwest, it covers a good chunk ah of that region. I don't know how far beyond that they've they've expanded.
00:27:27
Speaker
When I grew up, ah just down the street from me was a custard stand called the Frosty Bossy that had like a soft serve cow ah mascot, the Frosty Bossy.
00:27:41
Speaker
It was very good. I had ah a wonderful ah because it was it was just my birthday. So I went to a nice restaurant. But the real show like the meal was incredible.
00:27:52
Speaker
The real show was was sitting next to you ah i two parents and their their older daughter. Like ah so it's like they're 25, 26 year old daughter and her parents having dinner at this nice restaurant.
00:28:05
Speaker
And ah they tried to set her up with the waiter. And I think ah she wanted to you know, jump into traffic. Like, what a terrible... Like, it got to the point where the waiter said, and and he used this word, he said, let's keep this discussion germane to the food on the menu. Yeah.
00:28:37
Speaker
That's how you know it's a fancy restaurant. If he's saying Jermaine. Yeah. At a restaurant, like, you know that this isn't like a hot dog stand, you know? Yeah, sir. This isn't a Wendy's. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I know that point. And know the waiter is working his way through, like, college or grad school or something like that.
00:29:03
Speaker
And he's poor guy like and poor poor one poor everyone involved in this situation except for you who got a great show. i got a dinner in a show. Yeah. Went to a baseball game, had a lovely had a lovely meal when my helmet passed out. That was my birthday. Lovely day.
00:29:23
Speaker
There you go Well, let's, ah let's turn our focus a little bit here. And, and Josh, I'm curious, ah you know, before you came to Sierra, I know that yeah you've already mentioned your background in comedy and, and magic.
00:29:43
Speaker
I'd love to hear a little bit more about that. I mean, how did you, where did your journey with video games start before you ended up at Sierra? Well, when I was a comic, uh, after the first year or so, we spent most of our time on the road and that meant a lot of downtime in hotels.
00:30:05
Speaker
So I used to drag my ColecoVision with me ah wow on all of our trips. And, I played endlessly,
00:30:16
Speaker
um during the day because nights were always in the club. ah And that's really kind of where I started with games.
00:30:28
Speaker
um The one thing that happened before that was back in the, I think it was the late seventies or early eighties before comedy even came into my life, a friend of the family's took me to the place where he worked, which I think was called Infoton.
00:30:49
Speaker
And he had a mainframe and he had the old basic Star Trek ah yeah running and he had adventure.
00:31:01
Speaker
yep my And I played adventure and I thought this, this was the greatest invention ah mankind had ever come up with.
00:31:13
Speaker
um So ah once I finally got ah my own PC, which was about 1985 or six, I started playing Infocom games.
00:31:26
Speaker
And my life changed ah for the better. um
00:31:33
Speaker
and And so my quest became more and more games that I don't have to pay for. ah So yeah that's how I got into beta testing and games journalism.
00:31:50
Speaker
i wrote a lot for the Electronic Gamer, which was CompuServe's Electronic Gaming Magazine, and for a magazine called Video Games and Computer Entertainment, which was edited by a fellow named Andy Eddy, who's still around and still very active ah in the community.
00:32:11
Speaker
And then I started getting games for free, and um life was wonderful.
00:32:20
Speaker
i yeah i mean i have friends ah who who have uh been touring comics including like jess you and i like uh marty uh sir's husband uh is a stand-up and has has done the the touring stuff and i've i've heard from ah ah people touring that it is a grind uh It's like, oh, you get to go to all these exciting places. And it's like you get to be in a lot of exciting hotels or a really hideous place that the club has for ah comics that I've heard a lot of disgusting stories about.
00:33:03
Speaker
but ah there um a lot of clubs have what are called ah comedy condos. Yes. Which are apartments rented specifically for out-of-town comics to stay in.
00:33:16
Speaker
ah while they're working at whatever club. And um the the comedy condos in Florida were frightening.
00:33:26
Speaker
I had never spent time in Florida before, so I was not used to the June bugs. Oh, yeah. And um armadillos dead in the middle of the street.
00:33:39
Speaker
um Lizards all over the place. It was... it was frightening. It really is. And then just the whoopee cushions everywhere in the comedy condos. I bet my, yeah. Every time you sit down, it's got the constant fear of having a pie thrown in your face.
00:34:01
Speaker
Somebody coming up to you and in quiet, like you you can't, you don't get a moment's rest when you try to sniff a beautiful flower. ah Horrible. Oh, and the bottles of shelter seems great in your face constantly.
00:34:17
Speaker
You get dressed up for the show, but your tide just keeps rolling up and smacking. It's, yeah, it's gotta be hard. The club sends out a car ah for you and you look into it and there's 20 guys and they're, they're like, all right, come on, get in.
00:34:34
Speaker
It's a living.
00:34:37
Speaker
It was always fun when the the owners of the comedy club ah would give us a little tour. i remember, again again, this was a chain of comedy clubs in Florida. I think they were called Funny Bone.
00:34:54
Speaker
And um the guy the guy took us around, showed us the green room and everything like that. And he said, okay, this is the office.
00:35:06
Speaker
This is the copy machine. Now, you do not do drugs when you're in this club. But if you're going to do coke, this surface on the copy machine is where you cut your line.
00:35:29
Speaker
I mean, it makes sense. I mean, that checks out. Yeah. you know It's actually, yeah, just to jump all over ah the timeline a little bit, you know, something that when Ben and I were discussing ah having this chance to talk with you, you know, one of the things that I think is really challenging for adventures games and really games in general,
00:35:53
Speaker
is finding that funny place, like how you actually go about making a funny game. and What makes a funny game work?
Humor in Game Design
00:36:04
Speaker
And I'm kind of curious, you know, with your background in comedy and eventually bringing that to adventure game design, like how do you make a game funny? What does it take?
00:36:15
Speaker
um I think what it takes is good, good deal of broad, interesting characters and interesting, unusual environments.
00:36:30
Speaker
And that gives you so many opportunities ah to to have them bounce off of each other in unexpected and ideally humorous ways.
00:36:43
Speaker
A lot of things to interact with. A lot of characters to interact with who are going to have very unique takes on the world.
00:36:54
Speaker
um So it's it's a matter of setting yourself up for success um with a variety of characters and environments.
00:37:06
Speaker
And then it's hard to go wrong, I think.
00:37:12
Speaker
And, you know, it's like, you know, on that, on that subject, when Jess and I were talking about it, like, I kind of think about. i With, with like a ah ah comedy adventure, like designing the puzzles have like.
00:37:32
Speaker
has to be like, I guess, where where's your your head at when it's like, okay, so it's i like the logic of this world is a little askew. So that the the puzzles are going to be a little askew.
00:37:47
Speaker
Like, how do you think through pulling someone along that they, like their brain also moves about 20 degrees? You know what I mean by that?
00:37:57
Speaker
Like, does that question make sense?
00:38:01
Speaker
I think as long as the dialogue and narration ah are clearly skewed in the way that you're talking about, people will just naturally go along with that and start thinking along slightly skewed lines.
00:38:22
Speaker
I mean, when you play Monkey Island, ah the world is so crazy that when it comes to a monkey wrench, It's not that big a leap.
00:38:36
Speaker
You've come to expect ah that sort of twisted ah outlook on life and on on puzzles and puzzle solutions.
00:38:47
Speaker
um So you just have to reflect for the audience that the mindset that you want them to think in if that makes any sense that absolutely does yeah and it's like i was uh like you know especially with a game like uh uh callahan's like cross time uh like where there's so much of it is like this wordplay and these puns and stuff And that like, you know, that's, that's really interesting. Like, you know, you, you can see that in, in that game. And I'm also wondering how difficult was it to get that many puns into a game? Or are you one of those guys?
00:39:31
Speaker
I'm unfortunately one of those guys.
00:39:36
Speaker
When I was a kid, ah my, my father was a writer, a screenwriter, and TV writer, um and he was very successful.
00:39:48
Speaker
I've always sort of lived in the shadow. um But when we sat around the dinner table, ah one of us would make a pun on the subject, and it was assumed that everyone else at the table was going to come up with their own puns that were even worse on the same topic, and it became a contest.
00:40:12
Speaker
And this this was a ah nightly occurrence with us. So we were always as a family making puns, although my mom kind of, she didn't so much.
00:40:23
Speaker
ah She just listened. um But ah puns just sort of were natural part of our family. And so ah when it came time, ah one of the things that attracted me to the Spider Robinson books was,
00:40:42
Speaker
in the first place was his grand use of puns throughout. So it was a natural when, when legend said to me, pick two writers ah whose games you might want to turn into games.
00:41:01
Speaker
um I said either Dean Koontz or Spider Robinson. And I don't know if they ever even considered Dean Koontz, but, uh, Spider Robinson, they said, sure, absolutely.
00:41:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:18
Speaker
Uh, and I mean, yeah, that's then, uh, my, my next question then is, is somebody that played a bunch of Infocom games was Nord and Bert really easy for you then?
00:41:31
Speaker
Um, it was a delight, uh, to play, but it was not always easy. i mean, those, Those were um subtle puzzles, but I loved it. I mean, that was that was a game after my own heart, along with Leather Goddesses and Planetfall.
00:41:52
Speaker
yeah Steve Moretzky can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. I, yeah, I i love Steve Moretzky, even though i that's somewhat like, his you know, his puzzles, like, especially like, you know, you think about like hitchhikers, like famously, like has very complicated, but they do make sense within that very skewed.
00:42:17
Speaker
Like, you know, I think I've mentioned it on here before the the no tea puzzle. Yes. And like, and you know, you're just like, wow, that's very clever. Right. You got me.
00:42:29
Speaker
Right. And bureaucracy was another wonderful Oh, yeah. Bureaucracy is one I find i'm really fascinating. The blood pressure mechanic is it really well done. And that one is as your frustration with the bureaucracy increases, your character can potentially die for...
00:42:49
Speaker
I'm guessing, you know, the embolism, heart attack, who knows? But ah yeah, you know something that's always struck me, yeah we've talked about some of your games in the past here on Quest Quest. And, um you know, Ben and I, when we talk about your writing style, something that's always struck me is, i think what I really associate with a lot of your experience comedy and humor in writing is that you write so much like the like the more the the more description the more elaborate the joke the more number of steps to get to the punchline like those are the bits of your games i tend to uh to appreciate most is it is there anyone in particular that you can think of that ah along the way
00:43:37
Speaker
games or or or, you know, novels or or anywhere that inspired that approach of of just sort of, you know, more is more? I'll i'll tell you, um ah great inspiration to me that I've kept in mind um when working on many games was Mad Magazine.
00:43:57
Speaker
um And in particular, the first panel of a lot of their ah movie and TV parodies where you had a huge a huge background and everywhere you look, every little corner, there was a little joke or a little gag of some sort.
00:44:22
Speaker
And in fact, um when i when I worked on Callahan's and and some other games, I would send to the artists ah pictures of some of the Mad Magazine parodies, the splash screens.
00:44:40
Speaker
um And I would say, I want my game to play like a Mad Magazine splash screen. It is, it's it's so interesting whenever I talk to, like, somebody that, like, has, ah like, worked on like, comedy ah projects, how, like, singular an influence Mad Magazine was, ah like, you know, ah that, like, and, I mean, including, like, my my dad, who's not a comedy writer, but has a very strange sense of humor, and, like, at
00:45:19
Speaker
like collected all of them we had the um the totally mad cd-rom set that had all of them and it came with uh mad toilet paper it was a huge box yes wow
00:45:33
Speaker
and uh we had the rare i don't know where i don't know if uh my dad still has it uh but we had the rare bad uh board game where uh it was a parody of monopoly Leave tech wise to lose all your money.
00:45:53
Speaker
One of the, i should mention, one of the um slender connections between Mad Magazine and Adventure Games is the ex-Sierra artist, Rich Powell, who did wonderful stuff when he was at Sierra and beyond.
00:46:13
Speaker
And in his later career, did a lot of stuff for mad magazine cool uh yeah oh man that means he might have met al jaffe that's so cool i don't know how often he was on site but i know he knows al jaffe very well and and used to write about him um and how much he admired him um Yeah.
00:46:42
Speaker
You know, when you think about how much Mad Magazine inspired the world of comedy, do you think that alt comics are more inspired by Cracked?
00:46:54
Speaker
I'm sorry. Yeah, I mean, they can't all be winners. That's fighting words.
00:47:04
Speaker
it's actually There's actually a little bit of a disconnect there because i don't know if you remember, but Don Martin, who was such a a part of Mad Magazine, went over to Cracked for a good good amount of time.
00:47:21
Speaker
i Yeah, I mean, I'm just... Like for me as a ah kid, when I was flipping through my, ah my dad's mad magazines, ah I was, I was just always all about the the Sergio ah stuff.
00:47:36
Speaker
All the, all the, the marginalia. And he did, didn't do the lighter side. What was his, he, he did. Yeah. yeah Which I also loved.
00:47:48
Speaker
Oh, man, I loved as a kid in the 80s, really seeing those hippies get theirs in the latter side. I was like, oh, these hippies seem like the worst. They must smell terrible.
00:48:02
Speaker
I think it was the Simpsons who ah they were looking at Mad Magazine and someone, bart Bart or Homer, said something like, oh, man, they don't care who they offend.
00:48:14
Speaker
i yeah the Simpsons is very mean to mad in a very affectionate way because obviously everyone any interview with any of them they're all like oh yeah we all read it my favorite mad magazine joke on the Simpsons is when ah we see like an exterior of the mad magazine offices and we overhear how about we call it everyone hates Raymond well it took us all night um What a nasty joke. what a
00:48:48
Speaker
ah
00:48:53
Speaker
I think about that one all the time. just ah Just a very good... I like a good kind of mean joke of something that you're that affectionate of. That could only come from a place place of love. So...
00:49:07
Speaker
so i So, john I'm going to share story, and I would ah love to take hear what your kind of reaction to this is, which is that, so, I'm a ah big, competitive pinball player. i You know, pinball is manufactured right outside of Chicago.
00:49:33
Speaker
A lot of the the the ah old arcade ah designers, ah people going back ah to the eighty s and even like the the late 70s, most of them are still here doing stuff. um And so about, I would say maybe like 13, 14 years ago, I was at a launch party for a brand new pinball machine and it was at an arcade bar here in Chicago.
00:50:01
Speaker
And that was when ah those were still kind of a novelty. I think they're everywhere now. um And so I was having a conversation with a guy that designed this pinball machine, and he had been working in the games industry for a long time.
00:50:17
Speaker
And and he was being very generous with his time and talking about, like, ah designing pinball with me. And then he, like, tapped me on the shoulder, and he said, i don't mean to be rude, but right behind you is a Tron arcade cabinet.
00:50:33
Speaker
And people are playing it. And I just, like, I worked on that Tron game when I was 24 years old and I had no fucking clue what I was doing.
00:50:47
Speaker
So I have to take a photo of people playing this. And so, like, I kind of, like, you know, here we are, you know, and we're still, we're talking about, like,
00:51:00
Speaker
Could you imagine when you were working on, you know, Freddie Farkas or on ah Callahan's or any of that, that you'd be like that people would ask you about it ah all these years later?
00:51:11
Speaker
Never, never in a million years. um I like to say um that if we had known, if we had had any idea that 35 years later, people would still be talking about these exact games, um we would have worked on them harder.
00:51:40
Speaker
If you could, if you could George Lucas something like, I'm sure, I'm sure there's a like, I'm sure there's a lot of little things. and It's like, you know, you'll see someone like you turn on Twitch and you see someone un play something. You're like, ah what what's one thing that you you would if if you could george lucas this is the special edition it's the only version that they sell on steam now uh is there is there one thing that you would special edition out is is are are we are we george lucasing enough that we're speaking specifically of graphics or any aspect
00:52:20
Speaker
Any aspect, i'll i'll I'll leave it open to you. You know, he he changed, ah that you know, Han isn't shooting first anymore. Anything's on the table. I would have done a strict editing pass on Callahan's.
00:52:36
Speaker
I thought I was going to have time for that. And um one day i got a call from, From legend, i was I was like on vacation with my parents on a cruise or something like that.
00:52:51
Speaker
And they said, oh, by the way, we've released the game. And I ah was like, wait a minute. There's a lot of jokes in here that don't land at all that I would love to take out And I thought I was going to have the time and opportunity to do that.
00:53:10
Speaker
And it needs it seriously. um Just a few weeks ago, i read a review of Callahan's that I had never seen before in my life.
00:53:21
Speaker
um i i'll even I'll even be brave enough to tell you where I found it. It was on Digital Archive. And it was an article called The Last Games of Legend.
00:53:35
Speaker
And he ripped Callahan's up one side and down the other. oh no. So, I mean, it was by far the worst review i've ever read for anything I've worked on.
00:53:51
Speaker
um The wordiness, the dad jokes, the um it just pointed up to me how badly the game needed an editing pass and didn't get one.
00:54:06
Speaker
um I lost a few nights sleep in the um But, ah jimmyie how could you I can't. How could you do this?
00:54:17
Speaker
Yeah. Ben's pulled it out. This Digital Antiquarian, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So... yeah Yeah, that's right. I mean, Digital Antiquarian historically has some ah some opinions on on games that sir yeah sometimes go in there under like he famously doesn't care for Doom, ah which, you know, it may not be your cup of tea, but saying it's not a great game seems like it. Did he say that it's not a great game or did I don't think he I think he's just I it's not for me.
00:54:45
Speaker
Yeah, no, he not for me that yeah which I get that complete. You know something Josh just sort of piggyback off of Ben asking about this idea of a fan community that's kept playing these games ah for decades, you know,
00:55:00
Speaker
In terms of designers, you know, that that did a lot of their their work in the ninety s and everything, thing I feel like ah you've really been a constant presence in the fan communities, you know, contributing your voice to King's Quest, ah you know, fan games and, you know, taking time to do interviews like this and dozens others you've done with fans through the years.
00:55:24
Speaker
You know, ah do you think part of that comes from being a fan yourself before you got into the
Fan Community Engagement
00:55:30
Speaker
biz? Or what is it about sort of being part of those fan communities that appeals to you? that That's absolutely it.
00:55:36
Speaker
I mean, I was a games fan long before I got into the industry and I've been one ever since. So when I read people talking about ah these games, um I can't help but join in.
00:55:53
Speaker
and um ah contribute trivia about you know the days at Sierra and so on. um it's It's just so much fun. i mean, talking about games,
00:56:07
Speaker
ah what a What a luxury. i mean, to have a life where we can actually make a topic of conversation the fun that we had 35 years ago playing such and such game. it's It's a marvelous thing. And i adore being part of it. And and I adore seeing what the fans come up with.
00:56:32
Speaker
And any anyone who's working on a fan game who wants... some help or anything, I'm thrilled and honored to be asked.
00:56:46
Speaker
um it's ah It's a never-ending source of joy for me. you know If I can share a personal story, you know, ah going all the way back to 1995, when I'd first ah launched my website, my Space Quest website, the the virtual broom closet.
00:57:08
Speaker
yeah I think I've mentioned this on my stream before. I don't think I've talked about on the podcast, but yeah. I remember this very vividly. ah i had gone home for Christmas break in 1995. I was in college. I'd gone home to ah stay with my family and it was 1995. My family didn't have internet access at home.
00:57:30
Speaker
But I'd been on the internet for all of three or four months, and I was just deeply addicted to it. And now I'm having to go cold turkey back in my rural Appalachian hometown. And what I was doing to like scratch that itch was calling friend of mine every day who had internet access still, asking them to log into my email account and read emails for me. This is 1995, folks. that's Sometimes you just had to call someone and have them read your emails aloud to you.
00:58:00
Speaker
And while I was, that's what, that's what we call dial up internet at the time. Yeah. You call somebody and say, what my email say? And I was, he, this guy like, dude, what a friend.
00:58:13
Speaker
First of all, you know, was dutifully going through my inbox and reading what's there. And he goes, okay, this next one is, uh, is from Josh Mandel.
00:58:24
Speaker
And I said, wait a second. Uh, yeah. Josh Mandeli said, yeah. And he clicked into it. And you had sent me an email about um and like a page I had up as part of my Space Quest website where I'd kind of told like a loosely fictionalized version of like the two guys from Andromeda story, sort of a history of the series in universe, ah sort of.
00:58:49
Speaker
And you'd written in ah to tell me that that you enjoyed it and offering a couple of corrections about sort of what happened with Space Quest 6. No, I mean, it was it was a time when, you know, sort of the development most Space Quest 6 was a mystery to people who...
00:59:06
Speaker
weren't and I mean, now the story's been told tons of times about, you know, you you starting on that and eventually Scott stepping in after you left Sierra and some of the the bumps in the road that caused. But the time, I had no clue.
00:59:18
Speaker
You know, just, I knew what I read in Interaction. i And I believed everything I read in Interaction. That's still my main source of news. That's right. I call it the paper of record. I just go back to those old issues of Interaction. to see what's going on.
00:59:34
Speaker
But yeah, you just said, like you kind gave me the first time like a scoop. I was like, well, here's what kind of happened with Space Quest 6 if it seems a little weird at times. And it just blew my mind.
00:59:46
Speaker
um You know, the idea that because, I mean, I was a nerd. That was a huge, shockingly, I was a huge Sierra nerd. You know, I knew your work from the games. I knew your work from Interaction. I remember of my favorite all-time jokes, if I can just embarrass you for a moment, I think that I've ever read that you've that you've written, was in a piece of interaction where I think you were being tasked with the job of writing couple of pages trying to sell sierra's 16 color parser based games as sierra was finally closing them out so you sort of had a ah last pitch um to to readers this magazine get these while you can at this discounted price and of course rather than just you know sort of ad copy you took the opportunity to to have some fun with it and at one point
01:00:36
Speaker
you use the phrase and sort of the joke. I'm paraphrasing here, but it was like, folks, we've pulled out all the stops. So if you find any stops lying around, those are ours, which i for me as like a 12 or 13 year old, cause like that's the best joke I've ever read. That's fantastic. How, how, how has that done at the dinner table?
01:01:02
Speaker
That's a good question. but you know, i mean, again, to to get that email, to get I think it speaks to, you know, even in those early days of the internet, you know, you were out there being part of these fan communities. And, I mean, it's been and fantastic to, you know, that you've given so much of of yourself to to talk about this work that you did years and years ago.
01:01:24
Speaker
Well, it's, you know, it was such... um such a pleasure to to work there. ah Something I never expected for myself and um ah so many creative opportunities.
01:01:42
Speaker
ah I mean, interaction and the games themselves and the videos. ah So much opportunity there and creativity eking out of every corner of that building.
01:02:02
Speaker
And um ah before then, when back when I was on CompuServe, I was a sysop of the Gamers Forum, if I can use a word that nobody knows anymore.
01:02:15
Speaker
I think the listeners of this podcast probably, yeah, don't worry. Our demographics skew a little older. True. um Yeah, Sysop of Gamers and Game Pub, ah which was the publisher's forum, and they made me quit that when I went to work for Sierra.
01:02:37
Speaker
um But ah ah it's it's always been... such a great community to be a part of. And I've never experienced specifically in in the adventure game community, the kind of um toxic ah behavior that you see in some ah game genres and their communities.
01:03:03
Speaker
um The adventure game community has always been very, very welcoming and, um, ah very friendly and very delighting in everyone's memories ah and creating new memories.
01:03:21
Speaker
And um I don't specifically remember writing that message to It doesn't surprise me. um i just, you know, i want to be part of it as ex Sierra employee, but I also want to be part of it as a fan.
01:03:42
Speaker
And this is a way for me to to do both at the same time. What now, now know Jess, you finished this question for me because you had this this question ah when we were we were talking and ah prepping.
01:03:58
Speaker
What was it like? So you you were the sys-op on ah this like this gamer ah forum forum. on CompuServe and you were, ah like, and then you come in, like, so you're, you're transitioning from like the, the fan realm into like, oh you're, you're, you're crossing over into working for the, the, the company.
01:04:24
Speaker
And were you, and, and just fill this in because I'm stealing your question. This was your question. Uh, but were you like the part of, like like a second generation of like adventure game designers Sierra? Yeah, because I think about like a lot of the early Sierra designers, you know sort of my impression is a lot of them were kind just random folks that fell into Ken and Roberta's orbit
Sierra's Next Generation Designers
01:04:50
Speaker
at some level. you know A lot of them that maybe had minimal background with games, maybe you weren't necessarily gamers themselves or yeah limited ah sort of stuff like that. But then think about the you know group of people that that come around a little bit later, I'm thinking like, you know, you, the Coles, a few others that that came on ah during during the nineties.
01:05:13
Speaker
ah I mean, was that the impression or or is that a mischaracterization of of what the culture was like at Sierra at the time? By the time I got there, it felt like the Coles had been there for a long time and were,
01:05:31
Speaker
were part of the original stable. um You know, you had, you had Roberta, you had Al, you had Jim Walls, ah you had the Coles and ah the two guys and Christy Marks.
01:05:48
Speaker
And um I felt like I was part of the next generation, which was um myself and Bruce Balfour, Jane Jensen,
01:06:01
Speaker
ah ah Gain O'Hain and Lorelai Shannon. um I think we were kind of viewed as the apprentices in the renowned ah Sierra star system.
01:06:17
Speaker
um So we all had to prove ourselves ah by working with the, the established designers. And ah and our arrangements were completely different because the original set of designers all worked on a royalty basis, ah whereas new generation, we were salaried.
01:06:45
Speaker
So, um you know, there was that dividing line. uh, between us. And eventually that changed. I, I mean, I, I think Jane moved to a royalty arrangement. I'm not sure about that. I've never really discussed it with her, but, um, uh, yeah, we were, we were sort of the new generation, but we saw the Coles as being already very well established, uh, and Christie as well.
01:07:15
Speaker
Um, and And what was remarkable about Christie was that she had never even played a computer game before she designed Camelot.
01:07:25
Speaker
And um it was was such a marvelous, marvelous game. and And so was Robin Hood. And um I love Robin Hood.
01:07:37
Speaker
i yeah love that game so much. And we've talked about this a little bit, um you know, even with that Jim Wiles' games. You know, I think that that outsider perspective has a way of creating some interesting games. Like there is there is something to Jim's Policed Quest games that, you know,
01:07:58
Speaker
That sets them apart the same way that, yeah, but a lot of how Conquest of Camelot is put together probably isn't how most people would go about designing an adventure game, but it's kind of what makes it delightful in a lot of ways. So, no, that and makes a lot of sense. That's fascinating. Yeah, now that I think about the Kohl's had been there a little bit longer than than that crop of folks that ah that you brought up there. So that's interesting, yeah.
01:08:24
Speaker
for For such a a large... company it it is very it remains very interesting to me that every game is very unique to the the people who made it like it does not have like there is like obviously they're using the same engine and like there's you know obvious like but like you know when you're playing like we were just talking about this it's like when you play the police quest one remake there's, you know, certain, like you can see the fingerprints of the people working on it, which is a very interesting and unique thing. You just don't find that, especially from what was like the largest company or one of them, right? Was it the largest one of the, yeah. I think it was for a time. Yeah. Yeah.
01:09:13
Speaker
That's nuts to me that like it it, that it didn't have like this standard. It is like standardization like that, that you were all like, i like you can detect like who worked on it.
01:09:28
Speaker
That's really interesting to me. And Sierra did such a good job reinforcing that through interaction and through its media presence in general. You know, i think that kind of like, you know, I guess Infocom had done this before, you know, I guess Electronic Arts during its early years really sort of stressed this star system, you know, does that maybe maybe in the case of Sierra, not the designer's name above the title sort of stuff, but definitely, you know, as a kid, I knew who was making these games, which says a lot since I was,
01:10:00
Speaker
you know, kind completely in the dark about who was making any other game in the industry that was played. yeah I had no clue who was making the Super Nintendo games I was playing, but Sierra had done a good job of telling me it's like, oh, this is going to be an Al Lowe game. And you know Al Lowe, this is what he's worked on before. And this is what you can expect.
01:10:18
Speaker
And your parents may not let you play this, but you'd love it if they did.
01:10:27
Speaker
was it, was it uh like when when you would have the uh opportunity to design something would it be like kind of like a being tossed into the deep end it's like this is yours or how how was that like that uh like this sort of uniqueness uh to each person like how how did that work out in practice i guess well um I mean, for me, it was not it was not difficult because I had the background of comedy.
01:11:05
Speaker
So I just used my my comedy voice. um So I didn't feel out of my depth ah in that regard.
01:11:18
Speaker
I did feel out of my depth in terms of some of the things I was originally asked to do. For instance... um I was originally but the producer after Baruka on um some of the game arts titles we came out with, like Zelyard and Thexter 2, Firehawk, and so on. And I was asked to um produce these games, and I didn't i didn't know a thing about producing.
01:11:51
Speaker
not Not one thing. Not one iota. um Same thing when I got kickstar kicked upstairs to the um to manage the the product design group.
01:12:04
Speaker
I'd never managed a group of people before. I knew nothing about management, um which I had in common with a lot of the other people there who were managers.
01:12:15
Speaker
fucking no No training whatsoever. um so um ah there were definite things that um made me feel ah thrown into the deep end, but writing on the games ah was never one of those. I was very comfortable doing that because even as a fan, um beta testing Sierra games or Infocom games as I did, or SirTech games, um I would watch scenes from the games and I would think,
01:12:53
Speaker
well, if I was designing this game, this is the way the scene would go. And so on. So um I was ready for that. data Did you vent some of those thoughts when you made the game boxes ah for Space Quest IV? Yeah, probably. Probably.
01:13:16
Speaker
ah so
01:13:22
Speaker
Uh, all right. Well, uh, uh, Jess, you have any, any further questions or do we want to, uh, i like a
01:13:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think this is a good time yeah probably to to wrap it up because I think the yeah i think we've got you know so some fascinating stuff to
Closing and Support for Roberta Vaughn
01:13:42
Speaker
chew on here. And Josh, thank you so much for coming on. And once again, everyone, please check out the show notes. Follow that link ah to Roberta Vaughn's GoFundMe. Again, anything you can do to to help out with her family ah dealing with this great loss will be greatly appreciated. and And we appreciate Josh coming on here and letting us throw silly questions at him for an hour so as ah as a way to, uh, to get some more eyes on that GoFundMe. So thank you so much, Josh, for being here.
01:14:16
Speaker
Yeah. it is It is an absolute pleasure to talk to you guys because you know, the subject matter, you, you do your homework, you ask interesting questions and, um,
01:14:27
Speaker
it is it is a pure pleasure to be able to talk to you about these things. Thank you so much. what ah What a kind compliment. We very much appreciate um All right. Well, thank you so much to listeners for listening to Quest Quest. You can send us an email at questquestpodcasts at gmail.com. You could please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts wherever else. Leave us a comment on Spotify and join us Next week, when we do actually do the after therapy talk show and we get into it.
01:15:03
Speaker
But that's next week. See then.