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S2 Ep127: Talkcast - October
74 Plays5 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they catch up on recent news and discuss a variety of topics in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction and Spooky Vibes
00:00:35
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going spooky. Spooky? I guess it is that time. I guess that should be next week's, but yeah, it's just October. It's getting those vibes. Yeah. I think it's really all hit at once. I think it's once you start to get within around that week of October, like we started having messages
00:01:03
Speaker
There's a messaging team. It's like, hey, if you guys want to dress up in costumes for this day's meetings, I will do it. I will do it. I will probably just reuse something from an upcoming video that will be released at some point, or may already be released depending on when people listen to this. I'm not going to edit it that quickly. I'll just pull that myself, so I'll postpone it in a couple days.
00:01:27
Speaker
I don't know when people actually listen to this either. That's true. Who knows? It's been out for years.
Humor in Dystopia and Halloween
00:01:34
Speaker
In the rubble of the dystopic future, they find our podcast.
00:01:43
Speaker
This may have come up before, actually. I think this feels familiar, we talked about that. This exact premise? Yeah, the idea that our podcast is the single remaining source of culture for a future that's forgotten. Oh, 100%. I mention it every episode because it's very close to being true. Yeah.
00:02:04
Speaker
People would get like probably a lot of insight into video games. I would like to believe a little bit of insight into food and then like religion, I guess, like one specific religion. It's mainly around Christianity.
00:02:23
Speaker
Here are my thoughts on Taoism. What? Exactly. Anyway, let's move on. Yeah. But Halloween is the season, as they say. It is. I really wish. I mean, obviously we didn't have all this bullshit going on because I do like to do an annual Halloween party, get some folks together, dress up and drink.
00:02:46
Speaker
And for some reason, I enjoy the costuming aspect of Halloween. It's a chance to be creative and spooky, whatever. But I hate the idea of a workplace ever being like, hey, a chance to not wear, you can wear jeans on Friday. Fuck that. It really rubs me the wrong way because I feel like they're trying when they shouldn't be. And it's not authentic, I guess.
00:03:12
Speaker
Yeah. It's like when they're like, hey, who wants to have a pizza party? And it's like, what are you going to force me to do work wise over the weekend? Like it's a right. They're trying to make pay it back in a way. I don't know. I can get that. I think that normally I'm all for the separation of like recreation and work.
Pandemic Reflections on Work and Play
00:03:31
Speaker
even though, as you know, many of my coworkers, I also play a lot of games with, we, for the most part, keep those relatively separated unless it's literally a lunch break, where it's just like, oh, what's going on today? We're playing some games, talk about whatever. But I think that the pandemic has probably made me a little bit more willing to do this thing, like throw on a costume for,
00:03:57
Speaker
a day's worth of meetings. Because, I mean, we're not really getting all of that much interaction, right? Like, we have the deprivation. Usually, like, so the people who don't know, Dave throws a yearly Halloween party. And traditionally, he's been a banger. Looks in the camera and pans up for flashback moments.
00:04:19
Speaker
It's just like the rose tent just descends over the screen. Things like fade to sepia. Let me go back to memory time.
00:04:31
Speaker
But we're not going to have any of that in person at least anymore. No. As much as I have thought about it, there is a possibility. There are a couple of people who I trust and know who have been COVID safe and are willing to interact with small groups, namely four other people. You're not in that group because you guys don't go out for valid reasons.
00:04:57
Speaker
I thought about maybe just having a couple of people over, but I'd rather do a separate thing. So for Halloween, I'm going to try and just get some fuckers on Discord and hope people dress up and drink and socialize. We'll play some games and bullshit a little bit. And then all of the points that I put in Discord, as far as ideas, are going to be worth random points for which they don't actually
00:05:22
Speaker
matter. But it's all made up. Yeah. Vote for best costume. Nobody cares. Or just a fun thing to be like, oh, so-and-so put a lot of effort into it and it looks cool. Let's give them some validation for that. Yeah.
00:05:37
Speaker
I think if you only need to, presumably this is like a top up webcam costume contest. Well, I mean, like throw a hat band back type thing. If they have like a full body, I guess it depends what their, what exactly their costume is. It'll be a closeup of my face and I'll just have like a hat. And that's all you'll see is like the hat, but I'll claim that it's like a full cowboy costume or something like that. Um, let's just rely on people's imagination and trust to fill in the rest.
00:06:09
Speaker
Yeah, mine's a cowboy costume too, but my feet are up in stirrups. Hmm, weird. This is why we mark every episode as explosive. So you know how this boom mic always blocks a part of my face? Because it's a solid object and it's in front of the camera. Not translucent. I think it would be funny if I did have my legs up, but the boom mic was used to block a very certain area.
00:06:36
Speaker
Yeah, I would probably leave the video portion of the call if this is how it started. I need to start doing that. Yeah, I don't know about that. If you start recording, I'll try my video and it'll be something horrific for you. Oh, cat. Yeah, no. I don't need any more of that. The internet's already scary enough right now. It is pretty terrifying.
Fall Traditions and Culinary Tales
00:07:00
Speaker
But yeah, Halloween's, I expect that a lot of people will still be going out this year. I think that for the most part, we're going out like actually engaging in activities as Americans. I mean, like I'm sure some people might have small get togethers, but as far as I know, Halloween itself, like trigger treating and stuff that's officially canceled.
00:07:19
Speaker
Well, I mean, it could be officially canceled, but I mean, people haven't really been the best at staying in in general. I'm talking about our group like as a whole. There's people. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, stay safe, I guess. This is just encouragement. People can make their own decisions. But.
00:07:41
Speaker
I don't know. We'll try to derive as much enjoyment as we can through the season, obviously. For us personally, as you mentioned, it'll carry through Christmas probably and we'll be isolating for a while, but I don't know. Do you have any fall traditions you guys like to do? Like, are you a big cider person?
00:07:59
Speaker
I mean, I really do like cider. Um, other than just fall being my favorite season, I don't have much in the way of traditions, maybe black Friday, like online shopping slash cyber Monday, probably the month of November at this point. Cause that's how retail works. Um, but nothing, nothing crazy really.
00:08:24
Speaker
Oh, I actually take Thanksgiving week off every year. Not for like religious reasons or anything. It's just very convenient for PTO. Oh, they're gonna say like day one, eight turkey afterwards. Need a week recovery.
00:08:38
Speaker
I actually have a yearly tradition where I play Cyberpunk 2077. It's a new tradition, but it checks out. But will be annual and daily. And then I just can't wait. When are Gobblers formally back? I think back now because I'm pretty sure I ordered one.
00:08:59
Speaker
I skipped going to Wawa today after a walk because last time I went and ordered a custom hoagie, I'm like, Hey, can I get onions, lettuce, tomatoes, and pickles on it?
00:09:10
Speaker
They said, sure, parentheses, PS, when you get home and open this, it will have none of those. Yeah. And then I was like, you motherfuckers. It's hard to fuck up a gobbler, I would hope. I'm going to start smelling the bag or the hoagie wrap before I leave the store now. So this was actually an in-person purchase and they screwed it up.
00:09:34
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. As far as I went in, I'd be booked on the computer. I'm like, this hoagie, please. Geez. Paid for it. Waited for my number. Looked at my number. Looked at my number again in two minutes because that's how it goes. Well, we're going to have to take some faction points, some rep from, from to the show, wah, wah, maybe just like acquaintance of the show. I don't know if they were on the threshold or not right now, but that's pretty rough. My feelings are hurt. That's understandable.
00:10:04
Speaker
Talk about any random news stuff? Sure. I mean, that was basically our intro section, which I'm always a fan of, like the really casual, just talk about whatever. We could just keep talking and bullshitting about random things for the hour easily. Yeah. It's very doable.
00:10:22
Speaker
Um, but yeah, as this is a top cast, uh, to justify some of the bullet points we've thrown up here. So I don't feel completely invalidated later. What in the world is Biden Island?
Politics in Gaming and Outreach
00:10:32
Speaker
All right. So this is going to feed into technically two things. Okay. If you remember back in the.
00:10:39
Speaker
thinks about years, 2012 election, where there was the infamous like Pokemon go to the polls. Oh, yeah, yeah. Am I getting my timelines right? It was a politician trying to relate to a certain demo by being relatable in like a video game-y context. Okay. This is essentially staffers for the Biden campaign made an island in Animal Crossing
00:11:05
Speaker
And they essentially had it like a big polling place and they had little informational pamphlets that like were designed that way. So you could actually get useful information when you visit the island. Yeah, I don't think it was meant to be like a one-stop shop for information about the campaign. It was more like, hey, check out this thing we did. So that's really cool, I think in general.
00:11:33
Speaker
Arguably less efficient information distribution than just saying vote.org, which is really easy to tell somebody. I'll be honest, I didn't even know that voting was happening, that I could vote online or not vote online, but that I could register online to vote remotely. I went to vote.com, I typed in some stuff and I pressed enter and walked away.
00:12:01
Speaker
But yeah, I had no idea. I haven't been getting emails, texts, or physical media in the mail. And I'm not tired of it because I voted like four weeks ago. Get off my fucking case. Jesus.
00:12:18
Speaker
Yeah, we, uh, we voted today, but I feel like there's, there have been a lot of online notifications to vote. I've noticed more at least this year than like ever in the past. Um, Facebook obviously always has a banner being like, do your thing.
00:12:33
Speaker
Well, yeah, that's like more indirect because like a lot of sites are saying like, hey, you should vote. And we're like, yeah, how's a good call? But how much have you been reached out to directly via email or your phone? Um, I haven't gotten anything email or phone wise, I believe, other than fucking kidding.
00:12:52
Speaker
I might've done something on change.org once, and I feel like they might've sent out a notification. We did get a handwritten letter, both my wife and I got two separate handwritten letters that were basically, mine said, make sure you vote, and hers was like, don't vote Trump, which I thought was funny, because they were from different organizations, I guess, but they were both handwritten, like hand addressed, all of that stuff in cursive.
00:13:18
Speaker
Um, they're just like really putting the grandmas to work, I guess. Um, well, I mean, there is like a certain appeal of like, if you get mail, you're like, which ones coupons, which ones are like bills I have to pay are actually important mail. So if you have one that's like handwritten, it catches your eye. You're like, Oh, get out of here. Whatever car insurance company or car dealership that's trying to swindle me.
00:13:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's entirely it. Get people to open it because who receives handwritten letters anymore, right? The only handwritten things that I have received have been like wedding invitations for arguably almost too far ahead of time.
00:14:08
Speaker
JK, I know they kind of had to postpone things. Yeah. Two years. That's a long time. I guess I'll put it on my calendar. Yeah. But yeah, otherwise not too many in person, 100% reminders.
00:14:27
Speaker
but a lot of these online platforms are heading it up, trying to get people out to vote. I'm not gonna tell you guys to vote in the hopes that you've already voted and have been bombarded by various forms. Yeah, I think when this goes live, there's only like a few days left that people could vote really. So yeah, do your thing. You already know it's important. All of those online platforms have told you,
00:14:54
Speaker
This is not the purpose of the soapstone to get people to vote. It'd be funny if it was though. It's like now for our final episode, what we've been building towards these last two years. What's your favorite educational podcast? Probably the soapstone. Yeah. We consider ourselves a grassroots movement really.
00:15:14
Speaker
So, to very indirectly tie into the other point, the other example of this, of politicians being involved in something more hip and current. Yes. I think it was two nights ago, AOC, Alexandria. Ocasio-Cortez. Is it awesome? How do you say your middle name? Ocasio. Ocasio-Cortez. Cortez, yeah.
00:15:41
Speaker
She was playing fucking Among Us on Twitch with a bunch of famous Twitch or YouTube streamer personalities for like three fucking hours. And there were other Congress people on there as well. But it was just fucking nuts. I was like, is 2020 memeing? No. Have you seen her gaming computer?
00:16:05
Speaker
I've not seen her gaming computer. I just saw like an hour or so of the stream. It was on the top of r slash PC master race, the subreddit for a while, because it's like it's freaking decked out. She's got like six terabytes of SSD.
00:16:20
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Only like a GTX 2060, which is not like she could get a better graphics card. Well, she's only playing among us. Among us. Right. Right. That's what the six terabytes of SSD are really for. I got to get those in faster load times, then faster than anyone else. No. Yeah, I mean, they're the sort of members of the squad.
00:16:47
Speaker
is what they were called the Democratic, like really progressive wing of the Democratic Party. And they've always been just a little more hip and happening, as the kids say, but not to the extent of streaming on Twitch and having 300000 people watch. Yeah, it was fucking insane. Yeah.
00:17:15
Speaker
And there was also like a lot of other people there. Like there was Critical was there. They had some other famous streamers, right? A bunch of people from OTV. Gus Johnson was in there for a bit. He was a big YouTube person. Other people who don't follow us constantly. Right. Yeah, exactly. It's just a weird intersection. Like,
00:17:39
Speaker
there's because this is maybe the point that like video games have intersected between like for us between politics and like adult life and it's really weird right you're like
00:17:57
Speaker
these people have say in what happens in the country and they're voting on things that matter and they're like running for elections and stuff like that. They're like, and also they're not the best at being an imposter. Like ironically, dead liars or something like that, right?
00:18:15
Speaker
oddly a good quality. It's just so surreal in the sense of if you think of anybody who has a level of fame or it's celebrity, they seem so far removed from everything.
00:18:32
Speaker
Because you're like, I don't know how you got that job or how you get paid to do what you do, et cetera, et cetera. And you just see them on TV or YouTube and you're like, oh, they're over in Hollywood land or politics burg. But then you have these humanizing things like podcasts and you're like, oh, they seem like a pretty cool down earth person. They struggle with anxiety in the same way that I do.
00:18:59
Speaker
or they have issues with people not using their turn signal. And it's just, oh, they're a normal fucking person. So having stuff like that really helps bring an audience to you to be like, hey, I'm not perfect, but I'm a normal person. And it's much more relatable than being up in a glass house somewhere just tweeting out your political opinions or
00:19:28
Speaker
retweeting something. Yeah.
00:19:30
Speaker
There was an interesting comparison because I feel like people, like a lot of people will attack this. They'll see this, they'll be like, oh, she's wasting her time. Oh, she's pandering to the... Right, like pandering or even just... Or just like people who see video games in a derogatory light will be like, oh, she's just wasting her time on whatever this is. But to those people, like compare and contrast how literally expensive golfing is for politicians. Like you have to have your security detail out there.
00:20:00
Speaker
It can cost thousands and thousands of dollars or significantly more depending on how high up in the government you are in order to go golfing. Whereas if you're staying home and playing video games, that's not the problem. You just need a couple secret service and chat, making sure you say secrets or whatever aren't getting out and you're good, or FBI I guess in that case.
00:20:28
Speaker
How cool would that be to be a politician and be streaming on Twitch, but have the Secret Service be your mod group? Right, yeah. It's like, hey, welcome to chat. It's like, I'm voting Trump. Someone's always been banned. Yeah, right.
00:20:43
Speaker
I don't know if the Secret Service is supposed to do that in particular. No, it's definitely really cool. Hopefully, as more people grow up and join things like Congress and the Senate. Traditionally, Congress is a little bit younger than the Senate.
00:21:01
Speaker
then we'll see more interests from people that I can empathize with to any degree. It's not crazy. I think a general concern and then I'll bump off politics here is that a lot of people who are in political authority roles are very kind of old and have
00:21:24
Speaker
what is now very outdated ways of thinking, they're very stubborn, or maybe they have religious ties.
Supreme Court Concerns and Political Ads
00:21:32
Speaker
The whole thing going on with Amy Conan Barrett for Supreme Court, Republican background, Catholic, more conservative, conflicts with a lot of more younger, what we consider hip ideals as far as what's fair and just for people.
00:21:52
Speaker
Right. Well, from a liberal standpoint, obviously conservatives. Yeah. Conservatives should be more in her court because she is very conservative. Oh, one last thing I thought of with politics, because obviously we do have an election coming up and there's all these ads on YouTube for Trump says this, Biden says this, attack ads, defense ads, whatever.
00:22:14
Speaker
I've seen so many things also for, hey, beware of Biden from the Catholic nuns. It's like, oh, Biden's attack on Catholic nuns. I'm like, what? One, is this a group that has an issue that we don't know about? Two? I've just seen so many things like, oh, Catholicism is under attack. I'm like, I don't think that's the case.
00:22:39
Speaker
I don't know how that really could be true. I, and I could be wrong. Uh, we'll have her political fact checker circle back for this. Um, no, we won't. We need an imaginary editor name so we can be like, you know, so-and-so take care of this. Yeah. Robert Baratheon come back here. But I'm pretty sure Biden, if elected and confirmed would be the first Catholic president.
00:23:08
Speaker
like in a hundred years or something like that. Um, I remember that was, that went out during the debates. Um, I dunno, I just, anytime religion gets involved in something, I think it's comical.
00:23:20
Speaker
No, that's fair. I mean, it's comical and sad. Yes. So he would be the second Catholic president in American history if he was elected. So it's weird that the Catholic nuns are coming out and being like, he's gonna screw this up. It's like a seven second ad. It just like puts the question in your mind. I'm like, what the fuck are they talking about? And I get to watch my YouTube video.
00:23:49
Speaker
It's really, really freaking weird. But this is election season where everything is super weird. Yeah.
Gaming Updates and Anticipations
00:23:55
Speaker
Speaking of YouTube videos though, I have been watching a couple compilations of Minecraft Steve in Smash. That's true. I've watched you play Minecraft Steve in Smash. Against you being attacked by Minecraft Steve in Smash. What are your thoughts on this newest addition to the Smash roster?
00:24:16
Speaker
I think I'm a little less... I haven't played against him today, so the salt has subsided a little bit. Do you not want me to pick him after this? No, I do. I do want you to pick him to justify the purchase and also to learn how to play against him a little bit. He seems crazy.
00:24:37
Speaker
And I don't know what Nintendo is doing with some of this stuff like they release some semi-conventional characters like Byleth And then they're just like Min Min Steve you're like how do these characters play well answer Not like anything else we've released
00:24:54
Speaker
I mean, I understand why they're picking some of those characters. It's kind of further, hey, this is also a Nintendo licensed product. Because how many people do about ARMS? Probably not as many as know about Smash. Yeah, I still don't know anything about ARMS, actually.
00:25:14
Speaker
Basically, it's what connects your hands to your shoulders. The game seemed interesting because you'd have Joy-Cons one in each hand and you flicked it to punch out your different arms in a boxing game. As first person or third person, it seemed like a cool concept.
00:25:33
Speaker
It just, I don't think it was as widely popular. Um, they're weird characters though. They're weird characters when you're used to like, um, a standard array of like projectiles and melee attacks. Um, kind of like, I don't know. I feel like you could take the link as like the middle ground for smash characters. He's just like.
00:25:55
Speaker
Bunch of attacks in neutral with a sword. He's got some projectiles. They all behave largely like you would expect they would, except like the new Link with his Breath of the Wild bomb. But in general, it's understandable, pretty straightforward. And then Steve comes out. He's like, okay, now he's literally mining. Okay, he's crafting. I don't like that. I'm gonna break his crafting bench. Okay, he summoned a new one somewhere else. I'm not sure about that either.
00:26:24
Speaker
He's upgrading his tools in the middle of the fight. Basically that, right? It's a whole bunch of weird stuff. As much as you don't know what I'm up to, I don't know what I'm up to. We watched the demonstration video and I still feel like I have no grasp of what he's capable of.
00:26:45
Speaker
Yeah, I just like seeing like the theory crafting vids come out from some smash people in the scene, like Gimmer's, hey, immediate shield break. I'm like, that seems kind of cool. Am I ever going to pull it off? No. No, there's some there's some frankly ridiculous stuff there. I guess part of the issue is, and this is a perception thing, I see the really like broken stuff that he's capable of.
00:27:15
Speaker
But I mean, a lot of characters are capable of really broken things at the highest tier. Right. Very high tier of skill, which I feel that I will never achieve. I might pull off a really cool combo, but then SD afterwards. That's the tier I'm at. Yeah. If I parry and go, what?
00:27:34
Speaker
It's not like, yeah, of course I parried because I'm good. Right, as I intended to perfect shield this. He's a really interesting character, though. I think, oh, did you see that his end animation got nerfed since this is marked as explicit? We can talk about that. End animation for what? So should he win the battle, he eats a steak or beef, whatever. And it used to be,
00:28:01
Speaker
that he would default at the end of eating one of the steaks to his holding animation. But he held it in front of him. And apparently, it was pretty suggestive. Oh, where his hand landed next to his arm. Where his hand was, yeah. And had a crotch-level meat. Yes, rather delicate in nature. So they changed it. So in his end thing, the meat's gone.
00:28:29
Speaker
He eats the steak and then it's gone.
00:28:33
Speaker
And people were like, all right, he's dropped like five tiers. Like this character is not buying more anymore. It was freaking great. That's the first I've heard of them actually making a change to like a windscreen. Yes. I mean, they don't usually let things like that slip through. What's funny is like I was like, this is completely overblown. Like there's no way this is anywhere near suggestive. And then I saw a screenshot and I was like,
00:29:00
Speaker
Oh yeah, for a couple frames there. That's actually really bad. I was going to think like, how crazy is it to be like a part of your job is like, I need to make sure there's not randomly like penises, like the end user. But literally today, I was messing around with like some third party thing to like, allow signatures where you can draw on a screen. And then you can save that as like an image and stuff, blah, blah, blah.
00:29:27
Speaker
And they're like, oh, we're having a call with so-and-so. It's just internal groups. Oh, OK. I see the picture. Uh-huh. So not great. It's.
00:29:41
Speaker
Yeah, sorry, not to disrupt your thought. I was going to have you look at this. The more it's it's it's definitely a wean. Yeah. He's been significantly nerfed in this last patch, but I mean, he's got other viable things. Yeah. So he's he's interesting, though. I was just finished my thought saying I'm
00:30:07
Speaker
I was just doodling around with some local stuff, and then I had to share my screen to show some managers and other people on the call, like, oh, hey, here's what this would look like. But I realized that the one thing I had doodled was a penis, kind of, like a shabby penis. I'm like, I'm going to redraw whatever that is quick to something else before I show people. Yeah, that's a good call.
00:30:31
Speaker
Not that anybody would call me out and be like, is that a small dick? Right. It's the gif, the penis. Well, the thing is, if you ask that, it's almost setting yourself up for failure because I'm immediately going to deny and then you look bad. Right. Why did you see that there?
00:30:50
Speaker
I'm here as a business professional. What are you here as, right? Don't play among us mind games with me, son. I will throw you under the bus so hard. I'm just completing tasks. What have you been doing? I love that the task, Terry. It's like, I don't know, guys, I want to skip vote here. Let's just complete our tasks, okay? It's comical.
00:31:16
Speaker
Is there anything else that's out currently, or it'll be coming out the month of October you're looking towards?
00:31:22
Speaker
This is the obvious setup for Ghost Runner, which looks really good. And as it's not like a full price, like $50, $60 game, I guess it's kind of, we're not really sure where PC games landed between 50 and 60. It goes back and forth between AAA title, but this is like a AA title or something. Run around with the sword, chop up guys. It feels like it's got some ruin or vibes, but it's like first person with platforming.
00:31:51
Speaker
It looks good. It looks really good. I think we keep referring to it as like it's the setup before cyberpunk. It's like, hey, this will get you in the mood. It seems like you have like a Genji dash. You have some wall running. Probably have a sick synth wave type soundtrack going on. Yeah, I was right. Vibrant. Synthe tech visuals as well. It just looks like all around fun.
00:32:19
Speaker
Oh yeah, you can listen to the demo OST on YouTube. Oh sure. And it sounds pretty good. It's not like the full OST, it's just the tracks that are in the demo, which you get if you like pre-order the game, which I haven't really done yet.
00:32:35
Speaker
But no, it looks really cool. And I'm just a fan of that whole thing. As people know, we've literally had an episode on Ruiner and the Cyberpunk future electronic vibes are just, I'm a sucker for it, right?
00:32:52
Speaker
That really is. I have tricked you into many things with the debate of cyberpunk. Cyberpunk ASMR, that's up there. It's all over the place. There I was getting my body modifications.
00:33:09
Speaker
body modification video. No, I'm sure that is an ASMR video somewhere, but. Oh, 100%. Actually, I'm going to jump around because this is a great segue point. You don't need to tell them that. Slightly less good by the fact that I pointed it out. But Cyberpunk's been releasing a bunch of videos recently on their YouTube about like just lore stuff. And they have a really cool audio drop at the beginning that they use for each of the videos where it's like
00:33:39
Speaker
It's musical. It's like a short little audio clip. But it's fading into like the codex of information. And I like basically get tingles every time I hear this, because I don't like all of the tracks that they've used for these videos. But that's because
00:34:00
Speaker
It's kind of contrary to the point I was just saying, it's like there's the theme of the video. But if this makes any sense, I'm more interested in the cyber part of cyberpunk than the punk part of cyberpunk, like.
00:34:18
Speaker
They're taking it back to like cyberpunk roots and punk music is hit or miss for me. Oh, I got you. Yeah, I didn't really like I'm never going to have a misfits t-shirt ever. Even though like I've gone to concerts, it's just that was never my jam growing up. Yeah.
00:34:38
Speaker
I like some stuff in that vein. It's more so I like, uh, Henry Rollins is a person than his music brain. He seems like a cool guy.
00:34:50
Speaker
Yeah, they are whether the music itself pulls you in as much. The intro is cool and then the lore parts are cool. They'll talk about the corpos and the nomads and these different groups and the different types of vehicles and the different types of weapons. They have videos for each of these. And I'm not usually a huge fan of pre-spoilers in a way. I'd rather go in and know a little bit less.
00:35:17
Speaker
But they're very spoiler light, like it's just stuff that your character would probably know when they start in this world, not what's going on in the game itself. I think it's cool as far as getting you hyped.
00:35:35
Speaker
When Pokemon, again, referencing Pokemon Go, Pokemon Gold came out, it's like, what color do you want to be? Red, strong, blue, smart, and yellow is interesting. It's not a whole lot to kind of get me on board with anything.
00:35:52
Speaker
But it is cool in the same way you had factions in World of Warcraft. You're like, hey, this is my squad. These are my people. These are my rob mains. It's cool to have a little subgroup of
00:36:08
Speaker
No, I really like Lollafells type thing. Yeah. That's a weird one to like, we'll move past that quickly, but the- People have their sports teams and like, oh, are we like so-and-so? Yeah. I don't get that, but I get like, oh, I like playing this class in a game. Right. Where my paladin's at type thing. Right.
00:36:31
Speaker
I think it's fun to tribe up in whatever you're doing. There is the human instinct. This is our in-group. When you get to join up with your in-group in a non-destructive, actually harming people in a real life way, that's pretty nice. I will say, because we were talking about the vetting process for having guests on the show and how elaborate that is,
00:36:54
Speaker
asking if people were part of team instinct is a very important question. I won't tell you what the answer is, because it's obvious. I made that comment on a different Discord the other day, being like, ha ha, this is the common ground joke. Like, flat earthers, am I right? And a bunch of them were like, I was actually team instinct. I'm like, oh, guys, I see. Oh, jeez. Remove friend, remove friend, remove friend. I let go.
00:37:23
Speaker
But it's in the same way, like I'll always talk shit on New Jersey. And I was talking to my friend, Lucy, who's not of this country. Right. And she's like, what are your thoughts on New Jersey? I'm like, I mean, there's honestly nothing against it. It's more of like, memeing in the same way, like, oh, I'm a part of this city. But that city, that city fucking sucks. Yeah. It's like, no, it's kind of all the same. But it's just it's fun to rib on something playfully.
00:37:53
Speaker
There was our local high school, so I was homeschooled for most of this. I was only in high school for a very short period of time.
Storytime: Rivalries and Gaming Adventures
00:38:03
Speaker
But back where I used to live in Washington State, they had this thing where they had a statue of a coyote.
00:38:10
Speaker
Like out front, it was like one of their their animal emblem, whatever it is, mascot, mascot, animal emblem. Yeah, their fire emblem thing. And they had a rivalry with another high school where the other high school would like come out and like paint over it. Yeah. And then this school would then, you know, have to paint over it again and paint over it again. People are like, how many layers of paint?
00:38:36
Speaker
Like are literally on this statue. It was actually once a very small dog. It grew into a coyote. It's like someone just puts like a sword in its mouth. There's a full lifetime life, life size. But yeah, I mean, as long as you can have those competitions and still have fun. Yeah, I like a little bit of playful back and forth or just things with dogs in them.
00:39:06
Speaker
That's fair. Crap. Right. Watch Dogs. Oh, that was such a good set up. Good job. So what's funny is I was thinking about this, but not from the dog segue, but from the competitive slash cooperative segue. But I was like, it's too abstract. And while I was pondering how to make it more concrete, Dave's like, go there. Dogs.
00:39:36
Speaker
So like I have a point on this because I'm putting some time into watchdogs too because it was free on Epic and that's a pretty good deal as far as spending money is concerned. As much as like I'll still talk shit on Epic or just not appreciating the client as much as I've used Steam over the years, still check out some of their stuff because they do have free games here and there and some of them aren't bad. So there you go.
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, this is a full AAA game and I played Watch Dogs 1. It's never been like so this is a Ubisoft title. It's never broken like into the forefront like GTA did and I don't know if it necessarily deserves to.
00:40:17
Speaker
in the way that I feel like Saints Row has earned that. But these are all similar games in a way. Open world driving with Saints Row having all of its quirks of being like, we don't care what content we're going to put in the game, make it the least appropriate for children thing imaginable. And it's a hilarious experience. GTA is the vanilla sort of thing where they're trying to be like a soap opera in some ways.
00:40:43
Speaker
I feel like that's fair. And Watch Dogs is like, you're a hacker. You have a phone and you can like jump between security cameras if cameras can see each other and you can make things happen like it's magic. But in our universe, we call it hacking instead of magic. And that's basically it. Watch Dogs 1 and 2. Hacking is the main difference. And it's surprisingly fun in Watch Dogs 2.
00:41:12
Speaker
I watched you play some of it. I've never been big on the third person open world because I just get lost. I'm like, what am I doing? I don't really want to do anything. But it was cool to watch you, I think, on one of the missions. You went and hacked another player in the game, like an actual player, not an NPC.
00:41:32
Speaker
and the player was looking around for you while he was being hacked. You had a drone that you were controlling, and you were just watching him, and you just kept slowly circling around a tree. One large tree, yeah. And he had like 45 seconds to find you, if not more, and he just never fucking did. And you kept using the drone to be like, where's it going? Okay, I'll go to the other side of the tree. It's just so dumb.
00:41:58
Speaker
It's honestly full of little moments like that. Honestly, I think the main story is super cringy. It's full of hacker man cliches and they kind of mix parkour culture and fake 80s movie hacking culture in a way that
00:42:18
Speaker
isn't enjoyable for me to read or listen to or watch. That's one of my major gripes with it. But the multiplayer components are tremendously entertaining. I had two stories, because I played a little bit before this, from today.
00:42:39
Speaker
One of them was cooperative, so people can drop in or out. Basically, it's hopping on missions. Yeah, they just they'll just randomly load in. It's like doing the Dark Souls thing where people's signs will show up if they're connected to your client. In this case, they'll just show up in your world.
00:42:57
Speaker
kind of like peer to peer. And I was like moving, trying to like go graffiti on top of this building. And there's a big crane I had to use to get up there. And I had just used the crane to get up here. And someone else was like, oh, another dead tech agent is near you, or a dead tech ally is near you. I'm like, cool, whatever, I don't care. Then I see him parked down on the street. And like right next to this building, he takes out his copter, quad copter.
00:43:24
Speaker
and scouts the building out. I'm like, oh, he's trying to get the same graffiti I'm getting. So I went and I controlled the crane with my little remote control thing, brought it all the way down to the road. He knew what I was doing at this point, so he jumps in the crane, the little bucket, and I lift it back up and I drop him on the top of the roof. We both graffiti it, and then we formed an impromptu group, and we did like a bunch of co-op missions after that.
00:43:53
Speaker
And it was just like, we didn't say anything. There was none of that. And I don't know. It's a super fun emergent gameplay that the single player has nothing on. It's not nearly as good as that. There's always something to be said about having those little moments where you literally can't speak to the other person, but there is an in-game understanding. I know I raved about this a lot with Fight Clubs and Dark Souls. Yeah.
00:44:22
Speaker
No word spoken. People knew what was up. Or if you just have like, hey, I'm a buddy, or like, oh, I'm gonna wiggle my person. Like, let's go over this way. Like, okay, I got that. I know what that means. It's just like limited ways to communicate. No direct tells, but you, you form a language. It's like, remember back in the eighties before we were born, where that one lady was talking to Gorilla,
00:44:48
Speaker
Shit like that. That's fucking cool and heartwarming to me. Yeah. And I think the game monopolizes on that with a lot of its mechanics. You can stun people if they're engaged in combat with you. Not players, because this would be super broken, but enemies or cops, depending on what you're doing. Yeah, enemies. Yeah, enemies. And overload their headsets, so they're stunned for a moment.
00:45:14
Speaker
And I was like co-oping with this guy who would always stun two people. He had stunned them in groups of two. So we both ran forward and you'd use melee takedowns on them at the same time. And it's just like you can run around and scout while the other guys run into the building. I've had people steal a car and then pull up so I can jump in the car and then we drive off. It's like it's wholesome is probably the word for it. And I don't know.
00:45:40
Speaker
It makes up for a lot of shortcomings that the game has otherwise. That's my mini review of Watch Dogs 2. Pick it up if it's free. So I think Watch Dogs Legion is coming out at some point. Yes. Is that something you're keeping an eye on then? I wasn't and now I am because honestly I've been playing
00:46:03
Speaker
Watch Dogs 2, which came out, I feel like a couple of years ago and there's still people online, like having a lot of fun with it and getting boots on the ground, like in a group experience with an active community would be crazy. So I don't know. Yeah, that's all I feel about Fall Guys. I'll actually, so I haven't paid any attention to Legion. If they've, if they've improved upon things, it might be legitimately great.
00:46:32
Speaker
I think I've just seen a trailer here or there, and I think the latest one, if it was Watch Dogs or maybe another game that had guns, was using a song from the latest Idols album. Ah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I'd have to look into it a little bit more.
00:46:51
Speaker
It's something that's been on the cusp of greatness.
Tech Talk: Graphics Cards and Upgrades
00:46:56
Speaker
And I didn't even mention most of the stuff you can do with the phone that makes you feel like you're using cheat codes. But it's just really fun. So we'll see. We'll see what it's like.
00:47:10
Speaker
I have no segue off of that. I see you have sexual favors here. Right. Is this a just for me thing to read or? Right. It's just, I mean, it's all the bullet points as sexual favors now. I'm going to read the bullet point for context. RTX 3080 and the sexual favors are necessary to obtain one. Wow. If you thought Jake was bad at ad libbing before, let that be an example to counterpoint that.
00:47:38
Speaker
Yeah. So obviously, with the recent graphics card drop, a lot of people were looking to get one. I assume you and pretty much everybody else did not get one because of bots. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, right now, both me and our friend who bankrolled our foray into control, to mooch,
00:48:03
Speaker
are sitting on some orders that may or may not come through next month. But it's been, we got like a cannot be delivered email once, so who knows, as long as I get something so I can play Cyberpunk on that thing.
00:48:24
Speaker
I mean, could you play it on your current graphics card? It would probably have to be like low graphics if it would play at all. I don't think I would, I don't think I currently would meet minimum. So it would be a little bit rough, I believe. I could be wrong about that. I should probably look at the specs before I go pre-ordering anything because I haven't gotten a new flashy game in some time.
00:48:48
Speaker
Well, I mean, that's one of the things is like technology is just not jumping ahead nearly as much as it used to. Um, so if you just get a, uh, like a pretty solid graphics card, like a high end, but not enthusiast here card, it can last you for a long time now compared to the way it used to be.
00:49:09
Speaker
I like how enthusiasm is used as a metric for, this is the high-end shit. People get excited about this shit. Well, it's usually like budget, mid-tier, like high-tier, and then enthusiast. And enthusiast means you're enthusiastic about spending money.
00:49:29
Speaker
Um, but if you know me, you know, that is not the case. I mean, like one of the things about this, cause I was literally looking like, could I buy a different graphics card? If this like stock doesn't come in, it would be suboptimal because compared to the previous series of cards, this series is actually cheaper. It's retail is cheaper. Um, so it's just the fact that stock doesn't exist. That really sucks.
00:49:56
Speaker
Yeah, and hopefully we'll come back. I'm probably honestly going to wait until things get a little bit cheaper because I do want to upgrade or maybe even just build a machine because I've never done it. And this thing is super loud and just probably needs to be replaced at a point just so I can keep up to date with cool shiny business.
00:50:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, honestly, if you have some wiggle room for time, this isn't the best. I'm actually kind of busy. Yeah. It's not the best time to like build a computer, really, even with the holiday season coming up, because so many people are fighting to like build new computers and grab graphics cards and stuff like that.
00:50:39
Speaker
AMD or ATI, the same company, whatever, is going to come out with their competitor to Nvidia's RTX. I think end of this month, so like a week from now. Interesting. And that could potentially really mix it up. But it's not likely to have a whole bunch of stock at launch either. But Q1 next year, that could be a really good time to build a computer.
00:51:03
Speaker
That'll be my New Year's resolution. Build a computer. That's a pretty good one. I can get behind that resolution. That'd be my first one. That's fair. What else have you been playing? Because we talked about Watch Dogs, obviously. That's my thing. But what have you been doing online?
00:51:23
Speaker
Honestly, it's a lot of the same staples that I'll do in between if I'm actually playing through a game. But we had a chance to do some more Jackbox recently. That's kind of been our social foray here and there. And so recently, Jackbox 7 came out. So we got to play that with people. And honestly, a solid time. That's the one with Cloud, I think, right? Oh, no, that's Final Fantasy. Sorry, wrong series.
00:51:51
Speaker
Oh, I was missing the joke. It's like, Jack box seven. What? So, yeah, it's still got another version of Quiplash, which is always classic. It had one for like drawing little superheroes that would fight each other. Yeah. And you kind of had to make a guess if you were drawing a counter picture to someone about what you'd actually be competing in.
00:52:18
Speaker
But man, people drew some very dumb shit. It had some really cool artistic ability for what would be arguably a very limited paint set and tools. I know I didn't.
00:52:31
Speaker
Yeah. Like AJ. AJ was shit at drawing. AJ, if you're listening, your pictures were garbage. But he won. He honestly won because his pictures were better for the matchups or were just funnier. I think it was a sheep. I think he literally won with like a sheep or something. A sheep named Baba.
00:52:52
Speaker
Yeah. So I don't know. I think it was rigged. Russian judge. We got to check his connections. But it was like that. There was one for public speaking, which I think everyone had some anxiety about, but I think went really well. And that was like, you essentially got to pick from a series of topics, which other people had kind of come up with.
00:53:17
Speaker
So you pick from one of those three and then you have an assistant for your speech that's kind of picking your slides and talking points. Which is another player, right? Yeah. And you are just winging it the whole time. I think you have like two to three minutes to do a speech, but you can clip between slides quicker if you want to.
00:53:39
Speaker
Certain people were like, and this is, I'm done. I went very quickly. But you get to vote if you're part of the audience, just another player who's not speaking currently. And then that's how points are divvied out. But it's just like, it's mashing thumbs up or thumbs down too.
00:53:58
Speaker
And the other thing was it didn't matter if you mashed thumbs down. It was just engagement is what you scored on. So if you're saying things people hate and they're just like mashing thumbs down as fast as possible, it counts as points for you. Yeah, but not as many points as if you were being upvoted. Yeah, I wasn't sure exactly how it worked. It's kind of like a meter over time.
00:54:22
Speaker
Yeah, because you could go into the stratosphere if most people were mashing the button like crazy. People were not conservative with the voting thing. After the first two, they realized what they could do. Yeah. But it's fun to see people's creativity in that space because you're literally just winging a topic. But none of my group, our group of friends, what I consider social and outgoing,
00:54:51
Speaker
But everyone did such a good job. Yeah, it's actually really interesting because I think one of the things that made it better was because you couldn't prepare. So like to put this into a real life situation, it's like you were giving a speech to your friends and you hadn't seen the side point presentation at all. And you had your own choice of topics. You just wrote up some topics, threw them all in a hat. You pick like three or four and then you pick one of those.
00:55:18
Speaker
topics and you're like, all right, this is what I'm going to run with. But you've never seen the presentation. And just having like a raccoon, like a family of raccoons show up in a tree in the middle of your speech is freaking great. Like you got to pivot off that. Oh, yeah. Because you couldn't plan that made it so much better because you couldn't get super stressed.
00:55:41
Speaker
Yeah. And like certain assistants were good as far as, Oh, this is what the topic is. Let me find a picture that might help as a transition. Whereas other people were like, this would be funny. And it was just interesting to see which direction people went. I'm trying to think what other games were there.
00:56:00
Speaker
I don't even care. That and Quiplash were the only two that I tremendously liked. One of them was like trivia. It was like pop culture trivia. I think that was probably, I wasn't even playing it. I was in the audience for that one. You had to like, you would know it was a story. It was basically like charades. Oh yeah, that was interesting to watch because I feel like nobody did well except for it was very confused. It's just very arbitrary for what it was.
00:56:30
Speaker
I'm not really a fan of trivia as a party game because there's just some people that are really good at trivia and like being able to pick out little facts and make those associations. And I don't find myself in that group. So I don't want to play those games. Yeah. I'm never like your fifth on a trivia team. Cause I'm good at a certain category. I'm the guy who will sit beer and watch. Right.
00:56:56
Speaker
But yeah, I think my favorite for engagement was the public speaking one was actually surprisingly the most engaging. Seeing your friends lose their minds as they're trying to improv, like when a pickle shows up in the middle of a graph is just the best thing.
00:57:18
Speaker
Little did Jackbox know that they're actually stealing our idea and week to week we essentially have a prompt with no real plan and wing it for an entire hour. Most of the topics we've come up with tonight were actually just emojis.
00:57:34
Speaker
They're just here on bullet points and we're like, Biden Island, I think is what this means. I'll be honest, when I first saw the news article like Biden Island come up through my feet or whatever, I was like, oh, I've heard about other islands in the last couple of months. This probably isn't good.
00:57:54
Speaker
I'm running on a platform of closing Biden. Oh man. But yeah, Jackbox is really fun. Um, yeah, I've always liked their wit and games. It's like a nice low bar to entry of like, Hey, social games, forget together. Bam.
00:58:13
Speaker
We've had like a couple that we've been doing LAN party replacements, WAN party online because of the pandemic slash single standoff events like the plant Halloween event, the Jackbox event. I think it's, I think it's fun. I think pretty much all of us need a little bit of that given the social deprivation. And it's just, we're playing with friends and that's always a fun time.
00:58:42
Speaker
Yeah. I honestly wish more people played games that I did so we could play games together. Right. But it's always hard to wrangle a whole gaggle of people. I'm trying to push Unreal Tournament for Black Edition for like forever, but nobody's taking that up. I can't go back to Twitch shooters. I lost that ability when I was like 15 and it's never come back.
00:59:09
Speaker
I don't even know if that's the right number. It might've been three. I think it was four though. I don't know. I think I played a lot of three against bots. And then I found you could do like the custom bunny hop maps online. I'm like, I am bad at this, but this is awesome. Yeah. Just trying to like break the game physics to like make a platforming challenge. Yeah.
00:59:32
Speaker
That's pretty crazy. I'm on the lookout for more really good party games and stuff like that. So we can recommend them for LAN parties and whatnot.
00:59:44
Speaker
Well, that'll be the homework for this episode for the people who made it to the end. Let us know what your ideal LAN slash online LAN party games would be so we can advocate for them. Um, cause honestly, it's kind of tough. Like Quake Live would have been a great Twitch shooter. I think it got closed down at one point though. Um, but things you could just like open in a browser and run with it.
01:00:07
Speaker
slash free on steam, but yeah, it's just hard to find something for everybody. It's usually good to be like, Oh, this is good for four to eight people. Just kind of the split groups. Yeah. I don't know. It's hard knock life, but anything else, any final thoughts, any words of wisdom for this talk cast, for our dear listeners, for those of you grew up having during the pandemic, be sure to tip extra.
01:00:38
Speaker
That's true. That is true. Or DoorDash or Eat Street. I don't have no idea what, nobody uses Eat Street. My words of wisdom, don't use Eat Street. I don't even think that's a real thing. This is Dave's scam. He has a website set up for him. Or probably the pizza guy who's going next door.
01:01:01
Speaker
Actually, that was here. Let me slip you 20. There's a gesture over the hand. Let me just pass you some money. I say bribing. I mean paying for that pizza you ordered. Well, if you guys have any unethical life pro tips for stealing pizza from your neighbors, send them in to us at soapstonepodcast.gml.com or
01:01:24
Speaker
You can join the discussion about games and what people want to play on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.