Speaker 1: Hey, Ty, you'll want to see my knob. It's right here.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, can you describe it for our listeners? Well,
Speaker 1: it's certainly a girthy knob. I'm not sure I've seen
Speaker 1: a knob quite so flat and yet wide.
Speaker 2: You've got fun Factor. Two old gamers reviewing old video
Speaker 2: game magazine reviews. I'm Ty Shelter, He's Aiden Moher, and
Speaker 2: we're two professional writers who grew up loving the video
Speaker 2: games and video game magazines the nineteen eighties, nineteen nineties,
Speaker 2: and two thousands. Every episode we take a critical look
Speaker 2: back on the games media that, for better and for worse,
Speaker 2: inspired us to do what we do.
Speaker 1: First, go to Funfactor.
Speaker 2: Pod dot com, follow the show on your podcatcher of choice,
Speaker 2: leave us a rating or review on iTunes, Spotify, or
Speaker 2: wherever you get your media. We'll read the best, kindest, funniest,
Speaker 2: and most insightful ones on the air in our letters section.
Speaker 2: Please consider becoming a member of fun Factor Ultra, our
Speaker 2: premium tiers, the unlock ad free episodes, bonus episodes, and
Speaker 2: the members only channels of our discord. Just go to
Speaker 2: Funfactor pod dot com and I promise you can't miss it.
Speaker 2: And hey, if you are watching this live on stream,
Speaker 2: you are already a member of fun Factor Ultra, already
Speaker 2: enjoying the benefits that come with that membership. And we
Speaker 2: are hoping some of you guys who asked questions today
Speaker 2: in our special episode will be able to hear your
Speaker 2: questions live joining in the audience. We appreciate you all
Speaker 2: so much. Help us spread the word, get our video
Speaker 2: in more eyeballs, our audio in more ear holes, Shout
Speaker 2: us out on blue Sky, at funfactor pod dot com
Speaker 2: and everywhere else at fun Factor pod. In way back
Speaker 2: before Web two point zero and Web one point zero,
Speaker 2: was just learning to crawl.
Speaker 1: I guess be crawled. Uh.
Speaker 2: Magazines had letters sections. They were away for a especially
Speaker 2: passionate readers who give praise for the content they loved,
Speaker 2: gripe about content they hated, pine for content they wanted,
Speaker 2: and maybe just maybe get the thrill of seeing their
Speaker 2: own words and their own name in print. Geeky publications
Speaker 2: like comic books and fanzines often had a robust letter section,
Speaker 2: and game mags were no different. You've said you sent
Speaker 2: in some letters back in the day, right.
Speaker 1: No, I have not been in Canada. I guess I
Speaker 1: technically could have, but I think in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways those magazines felt out of reach for me because
Speaker 1: most of the letters. You know, I would have said
Speaker 1: before we started the show that most of the letters
Speaker 1: were from American readers, But I do see more Canadian
Speaker 1: ones and I than I expected, and so I was
Speaker 1: pretty passive with reading magazines. I got more into that
Speaker 1: sort of two way style of communication when we got
Speaker 1: into the web era.
Speaker 2: However, of course, and that two way communication, as we
Speaker 2: I've talked about before, letters sections often inspired a sort
Speaker 2: of like primordial parasociality, and game players in particular encouraged this.
Speaker 2: We go back to June nineteen ninety five, we can
Speaker 2: see ground zero for a particular brand of nonsense that
Speaker 2: set the tone for the letters section for literal years.
Speaker 2: We could, and maybe someday should, do a whole episode
Speaker 2: about this, but for now, Aiden, would you like to
Speaker 2: be Habib the Torturer or would you like to handle
Speaker 2: Managing editor Bill Donna Hughes's response, Oh my.
Speaker 1: Gosh, I will take Habibe the Torturer. Okay, great, sounds good.
Speaker 1: That's actually that was my nickname in high school.
Speaker 3: Hello, I'm Habib the Torturer. And no, I have a
Speaker 3: little story to tell you. It all started one day. Sorry,
Speaker 3: it all started one day when I bought Dew. The
Speaker 3: game seemed fun at first, but after a while I
Speaker 3: got boring. This boredom drove me a little bit insane.
Speaker 3: I found myself trying to find more rewarding ways of
Speaker 3: killing zombies and doom. Here's how I'd do it. First,
Speaker 3: I'd shoot them about one hundred times. Then I'd chop
Speaker 3: off their heads and do my ancient Habib dance.
Speaker 1: That's not all. I have a little game I play
Speaker 1: with zombies decapitated heads. First, I hang the heads from
Speaker 1: my ceiling. Then I pull out a baseball bat and
Speaker 1: take a few swings out of them. The first had
Speaker 1: to hit the ground. Wins. Now the trouble comes into
Speaker 1: my story one I have not read this time. Where
Speaker 1: did you find this ty?
Speaker 2: If you scrolled out in the dock. This is literally
Speaker 2: a printed letter. There's a big red skull to save
Speaker 2: the last dance. I feel like Bill Donnie who wrote
Speaker 2: this himself. Now, one day, while I was playing my
Speaker 2: little game, my mom walked in and threatened to take
Speaker 2: away my Doom because she somehow noticed the heads hanging
Speaker 2: from my ceiling, so naturally I had to kill her,
Speaker 2: so I did.
Speaker 1: Then I played no. Then I played my game with
Speaker 1: her head too. Then my dad walks in and sends
Speaker 1: over some guys in white and they locked me up
Speaker 1: in this big, white patted room with nothing in it
Speaker 1: but my computer and a baseball bat. I'm still in here,
Speaker 1: and I have no zombie heads from Doom to play
Speaker 1: my little game with because they took it away. So
Speaker 1: could you guys send me Doom so that I can
Speaker 1: carry on with my harmless little game habib the Torture Littleton, Colorado.
Speaker 1: I know who actually wrote this. It was Jack Thompson
Speaker 1: and Joelieberman. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2: I actually found a thread talking about like, hey, was
Speaker 2: this real? Was this a plant? Did Bill Donahy write
Speaker 2: this himself? And who knows? I couldn't fit you. I
Speaker 2: had a couple see a couple of people go ah,
Speaker 2: we should talk to somebody, and you know, maybe if
Speaker 2: I did a little digging we could get somebody to
Speaker 2: admit it. I'll handle bills respect again. Managing editor, which,
Speaker 2: for those of you in journalism, this is like the
Speaker 2: person who like signs the checks. This is like, you know,
Speaker 2: they're a senior management role. Bill aka Mugu the Mangler. Finally,
Speaker 2: one of my kind, Habib, my brother, My hourly prayers
Speaker 2: to Kazuga go out to you in your hour of
Speaker 2: pain and imprisonment. I will dance the eldritch Mugu dance
Speaker 2: on the highest minaret, every full mood until this he
Speaker 2: even sees the air of his ways and releases all
Speaker 2: of our brethren from the asylums. Soon will come the cleansing,
Speaker 2: and when the sky turns hell fire red, Gazugo will return.
Speaker 2: Until that moment, dance and dream of the many heads
Speaker 2: that shall hang from our shrines, and how the crack
Speaker 2: of the skull bats shall echo across all the realms
Speaker 2: of the thirteen dimensions. Uh yeah, so again Okay. This
Speaker 2: set the tone for the letters section. Plenty of the
Speaker 2: readers wanted to play along. Mentions of Habib Gazooga, the cleansing,
Speaker 2: the happening, et cetera flood the game player's letters section
Speaker 2: along with this conspiratorial, fantastic, wildly overzealous writing. It's and
Speaker 2: you know everybody would be making up their own proper nouns,
Speaker 2: their own you know, weirdo things, and the writers would
Speaker 2: all play along. It's much like the sort of a
Speaker 2: play along yes anding present that was already in like
Speaker 2: usenet and BBS's and we would very soon see in
Speaker 2: when web forums and message boards and now we have
Speaker 2: all over read it and social media. It is in
Speaker 2: that spirit that I offer one of my two published
Speaker 2: letters to game players. I genuinely could not find the
Speaker 2: other one. I also genuinely did not want to share
Speaker 2: this because I am genuinely embarrassed by it. But as
Speaker 2: a journalist and a chronicler of history, I offer this
Speaker 2: literally true story that I sent into game players and
Speaker 2: embellished the hell out of as best I could, again
Speaker 2: at the tender age of fourteen years old. When I
Speaker 2: wrote this. It was published in the May nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: six issue Aiden. I didn't ask you this ahead of time.
Speaker 2: So if you can't do this live, that's okay, can you?
Speaker 2: Maybe I actually could share the content here? Let me
Speaker 2: see if I can get this.
Speaker 1: I'll just I'll do man. I'm good, I'm good. I
Speaker 1: can say this all right? Are we ready? Yes? Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got it here. So here we have like a
Speaker 1: highlighted letter in the letter section. It has its own
Speaker 1: box out. It's got a big header that says quote
Speaker 1: so very carry. It's got a fancy background and everything,
Speaker 1: And besides it is a picture of a very buxom
Speaker 1: fighting woman with blonde hair, very very cool.
Speaker 2: Carrie Hoskins, who was the actor who did the mocap
Speaker 2: for Sonia from Mortal Kombat. So play little context here.
Speaker 2: This was this really happened again. I was watching just
Speaker 2: regular local news and she came on and did a
Speaker 2: sit down Q and A. There was like a Mortal
Speaker 2: Kombat Live tour where they actually got many of the
Speaker 2: actual actors and they just did some sort of live
Speaker 2: show of the kind that was you know Sesame Street Live,
Speaker 2: Ninja Turtles Live, Mickey Mouse Live. You know you would have.
Speaker 2: Then they would go in civic centers and basketball arenas
Speaker 2: around the country.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, they got actual Tonya Blade for this.
Speaker 1: So this is the thing again.
Speaker 2: Fourteen years old, I ask everyone for grace. I was
Speaker 2: out on a dangerous recon mission searching for info on
Speaker 2: the top secret Chinchilla.
Speaker 1: Drive peripheral for Virtual Boy.
Speaker 2: When I intercepted an encrypted transmission from their exclusive Icy
Speaker 2: Black Hand of Death cult. It was a live interview
Speaker 2: with uber Babe herself, Carrie Hoskins, the Drool slowly gathered
Speaker 2: in pools under my chin as she answered softball questions
Speaker 2: lab by Liz Talbot, a local news anchor believed to
Speaker 2: be a conspirator in the now infamous noodle incident. That's
Speaker 2: two Calvin and Hobbs references so far. If you're paying
Speaker 2: attention at home, outfitted in full Sonya regalia, the pultraitudinous missus.
Speaker 2: Yes she's married, Hoskins revealed. One she's never been in
Speaker 2: a fight. Two she was once stalked by a guy
Speaker 2: in Minnesota. Three she thinks Mortal Kombat is about self discipline,
Speaker 2: not splattering internal organs on the sidewalk. Four she sucks
Speaker 2: at Mortal Kombat. I hold this information up to you,
Speaker 2: mighty evil masters of Polygons. I hope it appeass you're
Speaker 2: ever growing hunger for gaming news. And I signed off
Speaker 2: as the Marlin because I was very into marlins, like
Speaker 2: the fish literally and also therefore the baseball team when
Speaker 2: they because they were just about they had just started
Speaker 2: playing at this point. So the response from Mike Salmon
Speaker 2: and again Mike Salmon, uh would go on to be
Speaker 2: a VP of bizdev at two K Game for several years,
Speaker 2: and since twenty seventeen he's been a very highly paid consultant.
Speaker 2: He's the senior vice president of games for MCGID, some
Speaker 2: kind of mega media and entertainment research based business strategy company.
Speaker 2: So just you know, keep that in mind. She's married, damn,
Speaker 2: and she can't prove I was even in Minnesota at
Speaker 2: the time. Notably, Mike did go to the University of Minnesota.
Speaker 2: Besides that, I wasn't stalking. I was sauntering, get me
Speaker 2: your husband's name, and I shall make everything okay. If
Speaker 2: you can't get enough of carry, you should check out
Speaker 2: war Gods. I took it, took a small army of
Speaker 2: very happy men to squeeze her voluptuous body into her
Speaker 2: tight and revealing new outfit. And I believe that is
Speaker 2: the picture we see here. So again, this is you know,
Speaker 2: all throughout the magazine, throughout years, you'd see this sort
Speaker 2: of you know, people trying to play along, people trying
Speaker 2: to yes, and people trying to impress the writers of
Speaker 2: the magazz, people trying to you know, be little tiny
Speaker 2: writers of the magazine themselves.
Speaker 1: It's a lot, uh Yeah, there's a lot. Like I'm
Speaker 1: impressed by the density of like information language, like I
Speaker 1: don't even know pultratudinous, Like I don't even know that word.
Speaker 1: And I'm like the person in everybody, like everybody I
Speaker 1: know in real life, I'm the guy who knows all
Speaker 1: the weird words. Right, And I've never heard of that
Speaker 1: where and you were using it at fourteen? Pretty impressed it.
Speaker 1: Like you also impress that you stuck in a virtual
Speaker 1: boy reference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, Like I've always been me.
Speaker 1: I've always know as we all hop on the virtual
Speaker 1: boy band wagon with the you know, Nintendo Switch Online release. Uh,
Speaker 1: you were there at the beginning. Yes, you were standing
Speaker 1: that virtual boy like nobody else. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean so again, it's you know, I'm trying to
Speaker 2: impress these guys. I've got my joke density because it's letters,
Speaker 2: you know. I had yeah, hours to like workshop this
Speaker 2: and put as many you know, little references as I could.
Speaker 2: But he like jokes that could, you know. And I
Speaker 2: don't know how many letters they got per month, right, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't know how many they were editing through. It
Speaker 2: was probably hundreds. But then again, you could post something
Speaker 2: today on Twitter and if you're a big account, get
Speaker 2: dozens of replies, many of whom are doing the same
Speaker 2: joke in your mentions over and over.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, and so just.
Speaker 2: That kind of delayed thing, you know, it made it
Speaker 2: a little less toxic and a little more creative and
Speaker 2: fun for everyone involved.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, absolutely, And I think like one thing
Speaker 1: that always stood out to me about letter sections is
Speaker 1: I don't know how much like editorial, like copy editing
Speaker 1: went into these, like but they're always clean, they're always
Speaker 1: like the language is always like readable, and like you know,
Speaker 1: you get in comment sections like now on the internet
Speaker 1: or any time over the past twenty years, and it
Speaker 1: was like, you know, everybody knows not to read the
Speaker 1: comment section. Yeah, but you get just the most brainless stuff.
Speaker 1: But like this just like the filter of only the
Speaker 1: best stuff rising to the top and then probably some
Speaker 1: light editorial for you know, readability happening probably helped. But
Speaker 1: like you said too, like you know, you grew up
Speaker 1: to be a writer. It was there at fourteen, and
Speaker 1: so like just that time just like not being able
Speaker 1: to like post stuff and make it public immediately, but
Speaker 1: essentially like going through an editor for all of this
Speaker 1: stuff makes a big difference in terms of like curating
Speaker 1: a lot of it. All right, well, folks, our favorite
Speaker 1: letters are yours, the ones you've sent us. And of
Speaker 1: course our audience is extremely well versed in writing, editing, producing, streaming, socilling,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And it is a pleasure and honor to
Speaker 1: receive all of your excellent, excellent questions. And in the
Speaker 1: spirit of slightly delayed parasociality, we are doing a slow
Speaker 1: motion ama about our first season, the generation gap that
Speaker 1: just came to a close. I asked you, folks on Discord,
Speaker 1: Blue Sky, et cetera, hit us up with your burning questions,
Speaker 1: and now we have burning answers for you. If you
Speaker 1: are not already a member of Fun Factor Ultra, not
Speaker 1: watching us broadcast this live not getting ad free episodes,
Speaker 1: don't worry. Just hang tight through the break. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we will flip through. Oh no, we will
Speaker 1: not flip through anything.
Speaker 2: We will flip through your questions and your emails and
Speaker 2: answer them. Okay, I had to hit them with the
Speaker 2: strong bad.
Speaker 1: I don't make fun of your spelling and punctuation. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've got mail.
Speaker 2: But this week, the letters are the show for this
Speaker 2: special episode of fun factor. We reached out to you,
Speaker 2: we received a ton of great reader questions, so let's
Speaker 2: get right to them. So our first question today comes
Speaker 2: from Chris Chapman on Blue Sky, and Chris asks, how
Speaker 2: would you design the ideal games magazine using elements of
Speaker 2: other magazines like some mad magazine scientists, for example, the
Speaker 2: reviews of magazine Why, with the editorial coverage of magazine
Speaker 2: Z and the cover design and magazine X and so on.
Speaker 2: What would be your ultimate chimera of a games magazine?
Speaker 2: Time Man, I love this question definitely, the like paper
Speaker 2: stock of early next generation super fancy laminated everything, probably
Speaker 2: previews and screenshots from game fan, but then like editorial
Speaker 2: copy of next generation feature articles and previews and stuff
Speaker 2: of not their reviews game players. This is tough because
Speaker 2: we've been talking about this a little bit on the
Speaker 2: show and on social media. Where when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: I loved game players. Increasingly through the years, wonky meticulous
Speaker 2: break it down into eighty two subcategories and pile it
Speaker 2: back up through weighted averages to try and come to
Speaker 2: like the ultimate like objective final score. And you know,
Speaker 2: as an adult, I can see how much Bologney it
Speaker 2: all is you know, how often the final score seems
Speaker 2: to be the thing they started with and then worked
Speaker 2: back to, you know, or how much subcategories seem to
Speaker 2: have been manipulated to make the score come out the
Speaker 2: way they want it. So I think I'll still go
Speaker 2: with reviews for game players because I got to get
Speaker 2: some game players love in there, and the copy genuinely
Speaker 2: was they usually put you know, good space into the
Speaker 2: review copy, and you know whatever, all the extra little
Speaker 2: score bits where at least interesting to note.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would go with game players' reviews as well,
Speaker 1: for basically all the reasons that you mentioned, but I
Speaker 1: also liked that they were very like like you talk
Speaker 1: about trying to like get the objective score or whatever like,
Speaker 1: but they were also very like personality driven and like
Speaker 1: who was reviewing it mattered a lot. But I also
Speaker 1: liked for the major reviews that they got second opinions,
Speaker 1: and you know, when I think back about the reviews
Speaker 1: that stick in my mind, they're all game players reviews.
Speaker 1: So I got to go with game players, even though,
Speaker 1: like you know, I doubt that if we averaged out
Speaker 1: our scores over the run of the show that game players,
Speaker 1: you know, like would get the highest average score of
Speaker 1: like you know what we're rating it. They are my favorite.
Speaker 1: I love game fans enthusiasm and just like their fancy nature.
Speaker 1: I like that outside of reviews, like we have read
Speaker 1: some reviews and game fan that didn't really necessarily like
Speaker 1: meet my standard for like good criticism, but the fact
Speaker 1: that they had the capsule reviews and the long reviews
Speaker 1: and just like the crazy layouts and is just so
Speaker 1: dense with just there's like every millimeter on every page
Speaker 1: is filled with something I want to look at, and
Speaker 1: that all comes from from that enthusiasm, So like game
Speaker 1: players reviews, game fans enthusiasm, and then like I liked,
Speaker 1: I felt like EGM was the one that kind of
Speaker 1: like EGM with my bread and butter. As I look
Speaker 1: over at my like library of old gaming mags, it's
Speaker 1: EGM like outnumbers everything else combined, and I think just
Speaker 1: that whole package. But it also just the way that
Speaker 1: they felt like they had a grasp on the entire
Speaker 1: games industry, like a broad depth of like coverage for
Speaker 1: like everything from sports games to RPGs to like just
Speaker 1: everything in between, and so like that sort of like
Speaker 1: broad range of EGM would would probably be the third
Speaker 1: thing I want to see in like a perfect magazine.
Speaker 2: Col cool from and I should have asked for pronunciation
Speaker 2: on this nick I'm gonna go with Geddy g o
Speaker 2: ed E on Discord. Was there a game in your
Speaker 2: childhood that made you say something like wow, games can
Speaker 2: do this?
Speaker 1: And if so, what was it? Yes, I mean we
Speaker 1: preferably no, And like you know, everybody knows I love
Speaker 1: Chronal Trigger and it did and it does some amazing things,
Speaker 1: you know, But my like moments like that had happened
Speaker 1: way before, like Chronal Trigger for me, like Finowantay six
Speaker 1: was a big one for me. That's when I kind
Speaker 1: of discovered ourpg's. And I've told this story before, but
Speaker 1: I had a cool babysitter and we would always play
Speaker 1: Doom together. But one time he came over with a
Speaker 1: cartridge for Final Fantasy III as it was known at
Speaker 1: the time, popped it in and I was just rocked.
Speaker 1: I was like, how is this a thing? It's like
Speaker 1: a book I can play And that was a big
Speaker 1: eye opening moment for me. But also just like I
Speaker 1: mean playing Doom back in the day and like having
Speaker 1: played Wolfenstein, but particularly plaining Doom, and it was like,
Speaker 1: how is this game just transported me to this other world? Like,
Speaker 1: how does Doom turn this tiny, little like twelve inch
Speaker 1: computer monitor into Mars or like one of Mars's moons? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, covered in demons and stuff, Like how it
Speaker 1: doesn't have this transportative quality. And then like another example
Speaker 1: for me was Links Awakening on a game Boy and
Speaker 1: so you know, I had played lots of Link in
Speaker 1: the past, but having like a whole Zelda experience on
Speaker 1: game Boy and this whole little like world that felt
Speaker 1: like it belonged just to me as I stared at
Speaker 1: that little, tiny, tiny screen was like magical. And so
Speaker 1: that idea of like portal gaming and the same with
Speaker 1: like Super Mario Land two, like six Golden Coins, just
Speaker 1: the idea that you can have these personal little worlds
Speaker 1: that you fall into and like because there's so much
Speaker 1: agency and video games like every experience I had and
Speaker 1: that was unique to me, and everybody else playing that
Speaker 1: had their own unique experiences. So that transformed transformative transportative, transportative, transportative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love trans I think like I guess I
Speaker 2: don't know all transportational. Ultimately, that's like what really like
Speaker 2: as a kid, blew me away was the way that
Speaker 2: games could transport me somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, like a bunch of just wild memories. They're
Speaker 2: popping into my head. Probably when I was like four
Speaker 2: and a half at a babysitter's house and they put
Speaker 2: in double dribble for the nes and the guy goes
Speaker 2: and like the most rible digitized voice sample.
Speaker 1: The video, just a double dribble out loud in English.
Speaker 2: Incredible, then doude you know, terrible uh national anthem, you know, uh,
Speaker 2: horrible digitized sound of the ball hitting the hardwood. Uh
Speaker 2: just really like wow, okay, dang. Like rich friend who
Speaker 2: had everything had the Turbographics and the Turbo Express and
Speaker 2: also which first of all, just a portable system that
Speaker 2: could literally play the exact same games, right, take the
Speaker 2: little smart card out of the Turbographics, put it in
Speaker 2: the Turbo Express playing it was like, yeah, that that's wild.
Speaker 2: And then he also had the TV tuner.
Speaker 1: I wanted a TV so bad, dude. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so we're like waiting for the bus in like
Speaker 2: fifth grade and he's got like Ninja turtles like over
Speaker 2: the air on his little turbographics, you know, Turbo Express
Speaker 2: and I'm just like.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, dude, mind the futures here, it's the
Speaker 1: future already, you know.
Speaker 2: Wipeout was something that like, it was the game that
Speaker 2: I was playing in my head when I was playing
Speaker 2: F zero, right, Like, the idea of maglove racing cars
Speaker 2: is something that like had been in science fiction, you know.
Speaker 2: I'd read like science fiction books or short stories or
Speaker 2: whatever with that concept, and like in my head, I
Speaker 2: was aw, man, like I would make a game that
Speaker 2: would have that. They would have this, it would look
Speaker 2: like this, right, And yeah, I've been thinking about it
Speaker 2: since I was a kid. I read, you know, something
Speaker 2: about oh yeah, like F one cars. At the time,
Speaker 2: this was true. They they found out this was a
Speaker 2: bad idea eventually, but a Formula one cars created so
Speaker 2: much downforce that at speed the track could go upside
Speaker 2: down because they were generating more downforce than the car
Speaker 2: actually weighed. So if it was already at speed, it
Speaker 2: could technically be going upside down, and the down the
Speaker 2: aerodynamically it would stick to the ceiling.
Speaker 1: So it's like the Hedgehog. It would work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no problems here.
Speaker 1: So F zero, like like F zero was like, oh.
Speaker 2: Man, this is like so close to the game that's
Speaker 2: in my mind, and then like Wipeout, like was the
Speaker 2: game that was in my mind and playing Wipeout just
Speaker 2: being like, dude, this is so incredible and it was
Speaker 2: also so cool. It was the soundtrack was amazing, the
Speaker 2: visual design and language was amazing. It was like, Wow,
Speaker 2: this is like really really actually cool, grown up cool.
Speaker 2: Not like I'm fourteen and I think this is cool.
Speaker 2: This is like twenty two year olds are like, damn,
Speaker 2: that's cool, you know, and that it was a great game,
Speaker 2: and so that was definitely a like huge generational jump,
Speaker 2: you know. And like you said, they had some of
Speaker 2: the rpeag stuff Crown of Trigger we've talked about before.
Speaker 2: Final Fantasy seven just spent a whole episode talking about well, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's another one that could I mean, we've done two
Speaker 2: episodes about how it was doing so many things that
Speaker 2: blew my mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. Before we move on to the next question,
Speaker 1: just shout out to the rain in the opening sequence
Speaker 1: of Link to the Past when you leave oh Yeah's house, Like,
Speaker 1: I that was like still one of the moments in gaming.
Speaker 1: You know. My other answers were sort of like emotional focus,
Speaker 1: but that one was just like holy crap, Like how
Speaker 1: it looks like it's raining in real life?
Speaker 2: Sounds like like.
Speaker 1: The this is like yeah, that sounds like it so
Speaker 1: like what in terms of like tech and art like
Speaker 1: that was one of those moments where I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is like this is for real, Like this is
Speaker 1: real life. Let's go. So our next question comes from
Speaker 1: Claya to Soandre's ault on Blue Sky, who wants to
Speaker 1: know who our favorite gaming villains are?
Speaker 2: Uh Sigma from Mega Man X Pops to Mind Yeah,
Speaker 2: I love you know, like, oh, I understand his motivations, right,
Speaker 2: you know, I understand where he's coming from. You know,
Speaker 2: even as you're attacking him, he's hitting you with the
Speaker 2: philosophy of like no, like join with us, We need
Speaker 2: to get rid of the stupid humans like they subjugate us.
Speaker 2: They but where are the superior beings? You know, like oh, okay,
Speaker 2: all right, you know, like this is and it's it's.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 2: You know, it's both cathartic to beat him, but also
Speaker 2: you're saying he's got some good points. He's not just
Speaker 2: a villain for villain's sake, you know, especially in a
Speaker 2: Mega Man game where it was like m I'm doctor Wiley.
Speaker 2: I'm Wiley because it's my name, Okay, all right, whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think like that's at the core of
Speaker 1: all the great villains, right, is somebody who you're like,
Speaker 1: you do empathize with. And so for me, I think
Speaker 1: of why Graft in Final Fanca Tactics, Sure, for many
Speaker 1: of the same reasons, Like why was basically like a
Speaker 1: social anarchist who, like everything he said. I was like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: that's like sick, You're right, like we should do that.
Speaker 1: We should tear down, you know, the you know, the monarchies,
Speaker 1: we should distribute wealth among the population, like yes, one
Speaker 1: hundred percent. But he kind of like pursues his goals
Speaker 1: too far and then turns into sort of the villain
Speaker 1: he always railed against by the end. And so like,
Speaker 1: why Graft has always been a favorite of mine?
Speaker 2: Can we give an honorable mention to all the Church
Speaker 2: officials in that case?
Speaker 1: Well yeah, well yes, the Church in every RPG in
Speaker 1: the PlayStation era for sure, for its role in radicalizing
Speaker 1: me against that. But my all time favorite villain is
Speaker 1: Galleon from Lunar SilverStar Story Complete and again sort of
Speaker 1: a fallen hero with like a noble goal of trying
Speaker 1: to lift up like an oppressed group of people, but
Speaker 1: doing it in all the wrong ways. And I think
Speaker 1: that he's just fabulous. John Truitt's voice acting in the
Speaker 1: PlayStation remaster of the game is just so good. It's iconic.
Speaker 1: And Gallian was one of the first villains that I
Speaker 1: really looked at as somebody that I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I mean exactly what we're talking about. Oh, like, I
Speaker 1: understand his motivations, you know, I understand why he's doing
Speaker 1: the things that he did. You know, I was coming
Speaker 1: off games like Final Fantasy six where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: kefks just like his brain got broken by the magic experiments. Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, that's like his motivations. He's just like, you know,
Speaker 1: his psyche is broken. You know, even even Cephrov never
Speaker 1: really hit for me, like he wanted to destroy the planet.
Speaker 1: Like now I look back and see sort of like
Speaker 1: some of the anti capitalists, anti like imperialists undertones of Cephroth,
Speaker 1: but I think those are stronger in the remake trilogy
Speaker 1: than they are in.
Speaker 2: And the personal you know, his his drive for just
Speaker 2: personal vendetta as well just taken out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like kind of muddies that up. Like, I don't
Speaker 1: think his goals were necessarily as noble as he wanted
Speaker 1: to make them seem. He was super cool, was the
Speaker 1: thing was cool?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, absolutely fat ass, But like, oh, Kafka was.
Speaker 1: Maybe Kefka was one.
Speaker 2: Of the first that I really like. You know, he's
Speaker 2: so cartoonishly evil, right, but like you.
Speaker 1: Just hate him.
Speaker 4: So oh yeah, absolutely like good villain, but not like
Speaker 4: with the level of depth that you started to get
Speaker 4: in that like PlayStation era.
Speaker 1: I mean, Lunar was a Sega CD game, so it
Speaker 1: was around, but I didn't play until PlayStation But but yeah,
Speaker 1: any any of those enemies, those villains that are like
Speaker 1: have some sort of ethical core. Uh, even if their
Speaker 1: actions or they're you know, approach to changing the world
Speaker 1: and making it better for people, you know, their actions
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily the right way to go about it. Cool
Speaker 1: rock Dan on Blue Sky goes besides the reviews, what
Speaker 1: is your favorite section slash feature.
Speaker 2: To read when you look through old magazines. I'm remembering
Speaker 2: our guest spot on Retrograde Amnesia, when Chris was like,
Speaker 2: I went right to the codes every month, and.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, cool, Yeah, not the codes or the
Speaker 1: strategy stuff, like I didn't really care much about that
Speaker 1: stuff at all. There were a few, like there were
Speaker 1: a few strategy guides, Like there's this issue of Megafan
Speaker 1: I have. It has like Teken on the cover, techn
Speaker 1: two Teching, I can't remember which one techn three, No,
Speaker 1: but in any case, it has like a one hundred
Speaker 1: and eight stars guide for sweeken in and so that
Speaker 1: was like that was what I used whenever I would
Speaker 1: replace wee it in right to get all one hundred
Speaker 1: and eight stars. And like I found it when I
Speaker 1: was archiving and processing all my magazine. I was like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: like it's too bad I just beat this swekond remaster
Speaker 1: because I would totally just use this guide, yeah, to
Speaker 1: get everybody again. But for me, like reviews were always
Speaker 1: of course, like a big one. It's hard not to
Speaker 1: say previews, Like getting a new screenshot, even if it
Speaker 1: was like one little grainy like photo of CRT was
Speaker 1: just so intoxicating, you know, like it was just so
Speaker 1: like it just felt like you were in on something
Speaker 1: in the best way. And then like as the games
Speaker 1: media kind of matured, we then started getting like deeper
Speaker 1: like analysis or context or developer interviews like all that
Speaker 1: good stuff. Whereas, like, you know, in the early nineties,
Speaker 1: it was like previews were like, hey, we went to
Speaker 1: TGS or whatever was around at that time and took
Speaker 1: some photos and talked to some guys out of booth,
Speaker 1: and here's what we learned. Whereas, like, you know, as
Speaker 1: previews got more you know, serious or they're just more robust,
Speaker 1: they became even more like just such a great source
Speaker 1: of information, and so like as we go back and
Speaker 1: look at some of these interviews, I'm like, I'm realizing
Speaker 1: how much amazing access we had to the games media
Speaker 1: or the sort of the games industry as members of
Speaker 1: the media back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, for sure. I mean I read it front
Speaker 2: to back every month pretty much. You know, like I'm
Speaker 2: just like that way as a reader.
Speaker 1: I actually read it back to front. I would read
Speaker 1: magazines back to front for some reason. Oh yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's alloted weird you can do that, I know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, Yeah, I don't know why. I think as
Speaker 1: reviews were at the back of the GMS for a
Speaker 1: while or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, typically typically read at the back. But you know,
Speaker 2: I liked letter to the editor and stuff. Previews were
Speaker 2: definitely big because again at this time, the generation gap,
Speaker 2: especially ninety five through ninety seven, it was like what
Speaker 2: games are capable of doing is just exploding, right, And
Speaker 2: so you just see one screenshot and go like this
Speaker 2: could be like what, you know, I've never seen anything
Speaker 2: like that before. Oh my gosh, you know, just like
Speaker 2: the potential. And they started talking about tex specs and
Speaker 2: stuff in ways that like that was really interesting to me.
Speaker 2: You know, I did subscribe to game magazines in the
Speaker 2: eight bit days, you know, I subscribed to I started
Speaker 2: my game player subscription and I think it was third grade, right,
Speaker 2: And they were not talking about Mega Hurtz and you know,
Speaker 2: like they were not talking about this stuff. I was
Speaker 2: just on the Still Loading podcast and doing about Mario three, right,
Speaker 2: And a huge part of what made Mario three the
Speaker 2: game it was was on board chips, you know, like
Speaker 2: what we call the the you know, the FX chip
Speaker 2: and the super nanty s days. Okay, cool, there's MMS
Speaker 2: use multimedia controller something like that multi memory controller, you know,
Speaker 2: and so a bunch of capabilities in the system were
Speaker 2: being put on the game cartridges and I had no
Speaker 2: awareness of that. I was reading game magazines every month,
Speaker 2: no clue, Right, So are all sorts of technical problems
Speaker 2: and solutions and new technologies and developments happening all the
Speaker 2: time in the games console world that we just weren't
Speaker 2: hearing about until this era, when we were like, oh,
Speaker 2: now we're starting to get this news out of Japan.
Speaker 2: Now these technical details are starting to leak, you know.
Speaker 2: So that was really fascinating. But again I was it
Speaker 2: was reviews I was fascinated by. In most magazines, I
Speaker 2: was fascinated by the reviews. I've always been interested in critique.
Speaker 2: I've always been interested in evaluating and examining, Like why
Speaker 2: do I like the things I like? What do I
Speaker 2: like about the things I like?
Speaker 1: What's cool?
Speaker 2: I get into something and immediately I'm like, what's cool?
Speaker 2: What about this is cool? If I get into this,
Speaker 2: how would I do it?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Like what cool thing would I buy? What would my
Speaker 2: cool thing be? That's you know to me. Reviews are
Speaker 2: part of that. But like next generation had a lot more,
Speaker 2: as you know, we've talked about and looked at, like like,
Speaker 2: what's the future of gaming, right, what's the future of hey, Like,
Speaker 2: here's a big feature on indie games, right, Like this
Speaker 2: is the indie scene. Here's a big feature with whatever.
Speaker 2: You know. They serialize the columns of Chris Crawford, who
Speaker 2: I've wanted to do a bonus episode on Chris Crawford
Speaker 2: for since before we started this podcast, and every time
Speaker 2: I dig into it, I'm like, there's too much history
Speaker 2: and too much I want to say. And I know
Speaker 2: the Game Studies Study Buddies podcast just read one of
Speaker 2: his books and talked about it, and I suspect they're
Speaker 2: also pursuing, you know, a pretty rigorous deep dive into
Speaker 2: Chris Crawford as well, but serializing basically a book length
Speaker 2: or you know, incredibly long essay into as serialized essays
Speaker 2: across the first like like from like issue ten to
Speaker 2: like twenty two or something, the way games ought to
Speaker 2: be and it they're fascinating documents. Everything Chris Crawford has
Speaker 2: written as fascinating because it's like alternating sentences will be
Speaker 2: like brilliant insight, unbelievably spot on prediction of where games
Speaker 2: are going, absolute idiocy, sexist, totally wrong, absolutely brilliant. You
Speaker 2: know you're just sitting there going like, man he called it,
Speaker 2: oh man, he.
Speaker 1: Was way off. Oh yeah, he was spot on did.
Speaker 2: He never hear of the internet? You know, you're just
Speaker 2: sitting there and it's fascinating, but just having somebody talk
Speaker 2: about Hey, philosophically, we're creating art, we're creating a medium here,
Speaker 2: and it's important that we as game developers, we as
Speaker 2: game consumers, we as game journalists and commentators think about
Speaker 2: what we want games to be and why we want
Speaker 2: them to be that way, and you know, we how
Speaker 2: do we want the audience to be? How big do
Speaker 2: we want the audience to be? Our games for everybody?
Speaker 2: Can they be for everybody? Should they be for everybody?
Speaker 1: What are games for everybody look like?
Speaker 2: And just thinking about that was just absolutely fascinating for me.
Speaker 2: I couldn't get enough of commentary like that. And it's
Speaker 2: it's weird that I think now we're in this era
Speaker 2: where stuff like what we're doing right now, you know,
Speaker 2: you and me just talking about what we think about
Speaker 2: games on YouTube, on podcasts, you know, is like the
Speaker 2: dominant form of discussing games, sometimes superseding actually playing games
Speaker 2: or buying or reviewing them right for their own sake,
Speaker 2: Like everybody has opinions about games, whether or not they're
Speaker 2: even playing them, and so it's just it's just interesting
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like you're I'm appreciating the choir. I
Speaker 1: obviously have a background, a long background as a critic,
Speaker 1: like there's a book critic for a long time, and
Speaker 1: that seeking that understanding of like what makes creative works
Speaker 1: work and not work, and how they connect with people
Speaker 1: as individuals and as groups like that has always been
Speaker 1: fascinating for me. And to see like this kind of rich,
Speaker 1: deep dive on a monthly basis into video games and
Speaker 1: the people who make them, like was amazing. And I
Speaker 1: feel like we're losing that big time as media contracts,
Speaker 1: Like just the openness of what you could get access
Speaker 1: to back then was wild, Like we would see like
Speaker 1: can you imagine like we go back and I was,
Speaker 1: you know, I looked through old magazines and I see
Speaker 1: like basically Alpha Productions cuts screenshots of like linked or
Speaker 1: offer enough times right right right, yeah, and like I
Speaker 1: look at those and that, like you know, the magazine's
Speaker 1: showing these off and I'm like, man, that doesn't look
Speaker 1: like the final build at all, Like doesn't look remotely
Speaker 1: like what the game ended up looking like. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine seeing like Alpha footage of like the next Zelda
Speaker 1: game nowadays, Like you just don't get it. It's so polished,
Speaker 1: it's so gate kept behind sort of the mechanisms of
Speaker 1: capital capitalism, because it's all like we have to make
Speaker 1: as much possible money off of this, we have eight
Speaker 1: years as we can and like game, and it has
Speaker 1: to be the biggest game of all time or we
Speaker 1: all lose our shirts in their jobs. And maybe we
Speaker 1: also like, I mean, like it can still be the
Speaker 1: biggest game of all time and everyone's still gonna lose
Speaker 1: all exactly right, exactly like exactly, but like so we
Speaker 1: have this like hostile environment, but we also don't get
Speaker 1: nice good access to you know, footage or screenshots or
Speaker 1: the development environment in the major like Triple A Gaming
Speaker 1: space of course, like we have early access Slay the
Speaker 1: Spire too. Early access just came out, but like even
Speaker 1: early access games are still like full fledged polished games. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you know, Baldersgate three, I think is one of
Speaker 1: the great examples of a game, a hugely popular, influential
Speaker 1: game that came out in early access and like really
Speaker 1: grew over the course of that early access based on
Speaker 1: fan experience, and so you know, that would be the
Speaker 1: equivalent now, but I do miss the fact that we
Speaker 1: would see, you know, stuff screenshots or whatever, like we
Speaker 1: would get that SGI demo of Fanazi six characters on
Speaker 1: the Nintendo sixty four. We just yeah, that stuff lost.
Speaker 1: And so going back and seeing that and old magazines,
Speaker 1: that's probably my favorite thing to do now as we
Speaker 1: as we as we read through a lot of these
Speaker 1: old magazines. Yeah. Our next question is from Jason wfd
Speaker 1: on Discord, who I believe is with us here on
Speaker 1: the live stream as we record this, which is awesome.
Speaker 1: His question is what gave you the most joy during
Speaker 1: this first season and what gave you the least joy?
Speaker 2: Oh man, this is a tough question. I mean the
Speaker 2: least joy. Uh our last episode where I did this big, huge,
Speaker 2: dramatic reading that I would like I prepped for and
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm gonna go for the gopher broke on this.
Speaker 2: I'm going to give this this review reading like all
Speaker 2: the sauce, and then you're like, yeah, that one was
Speaker 2: the child predator that wrote that. I'm like, oh, cool, cool, cool, cool,
Speaker 2: good great love that. I still did clip it and
Speaker 2: put it on social media because I was you know,
Speaker 2: I was like Okay, like this sucks. It took the
Speaker 2: wind out of my sales, but I still think it
Speaker 2: was it was it was it was fun to do
Speaker 2: and kind of encapsulated the wow, look at what game
Speaker 2: magazines were and could be, and upsides and downsides all
Speaker 2: in one go. Yeah, some of the some of the
Speaker 2: most joy I mean, actually, I think discovering some of
Speaker 2: the stuff, because it's it's great to look back at
Speaker 2: the stuff, you know, Aiden like here's the Crono Trigger review,
Speaker 2: you know, and he puts it up on the screen
Speaker 2: and I'm like, dude, immediately I'm transported back.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: I remember every you know, every inch of that review,
Speaker 2: just like heated, right, we both read that one hundred
Speaker 2: million times. We both just read it and going, oh my,
Speaker 2: someday I'm going to play this game. Imagine how great
Speaker 2: playing this game is going to be, you know, building
Speaker 2: that in like that's cool, but also going and you know,
Speaker 2: I maybe only read like one or two issues a
Speaker 2: game fan my whole life. Yeah, coming into this and
Speaker 2: then seeing wow, this is different. Oh this is interesting,
Speaker 2: you know, discovering the histories, I mean, some of the
Speaker 2: funnest stuff for me is actually just doing the journalism thing,
Speaker 2: just setting my journalism brain loose on the histories going
Speaker 2: through the Masthead and being like, what happened to X person? Oh,
Speaker 2: they disappeared off the internet in two thousand and eight
Speaker 2: and who knows, right, Like I'd have to do some
Speaker 2: real like Lexus nexus. I'd have to like purchase like
Speaker 2: public records searches to actually find.
Speaker 1: Track this person down.
Speaker 2: And then also finding like, oh yeah, Bill Donahue never
Speaker 2: stopped writing about games.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's.
Speaker 2: Got like a Facebook group that publishes a like quarterly
Speaker 2: old game zine with a bunch of former game writers.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Cool, Okay, you know it's it's all over the Oh,
Speaker 2: Dan Shoe is still He's just on social media. You know,
Speaker 2: you can just tag him and he'll be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is what happened. Yeah. And then as we discovered,
Speaker 2: maybe Kataku will write it up articles, you know, oh yeah, hey,
Speaker 2: like fun Factor published this thing, and then you know,
Speaker 2: Shoe came in and said this, and another former editor
Speaker 2: said that anyway. You know, so like like going back
Speaker 2: and just finding out how many of these people who
Speaker 2: were you know, in their mid twenties often early twenties
Speaker 2: went on to be executives in the gaming industry, executives
Speaker 2: and publishing, high paid consultants doing something else completely different entirely.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just it's just really fascinating to see
Speaker 2: how many of their careers developed and you know, that
Speaker 2: nexus in time where all of them were together making
Speaker 2: a video game magazine, and like how all their careers
Speaker 2: went from there. It's just absolutely fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: Least Joy is easy for me because it's also okay, actually,
Speaker 1: let me roll back, let me talk about the most
Speaker 1: joy from the first season. This is gonna feel a
Speaker 1: little cheesy, but it is. It's the community of listeners
Speaker 1: and fellow games community people that we've connected with over
Speaker 1: the past year. You know, we've got and are growing,
Speaker 1: you know, or following on YouTube and discord. The community
Speaker 1: on Discords amazing and Blue Sky and just seeing the
Speaker 1: people resonating with the work that we're doing is so great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and connecting with you know, like other podcasters working in
Speaker 1: kind of retro gaming, like we talked about the retrograde
Speaker 1: Amnesia guys a lot who are fabulous, Chris and Eric.
Speaker 1: You were just on Josh's Still Loading podcast, you know,
Speaker 1: just hanging out, meeting people connecting more deeply with people
Speaker 1: that I kind of knew a little bit before the podcast,
Speaker 1: having people reach out you know via DM be like hey,
Speaker 1: I'd love to come on the show, and I'm like, whoa,
Speaker 1: Like we're making something that that resonates with Pannemonium and
Speaker 1: Greg Stuart, you know, Stud and Stewie also just like
Speaker 1: in the chat. You know, we'll be like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: I wonder.
Speaker 2: What this was like, and he'd be like, well, it
Speaker 2: was like this because I was there. Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: You know, our perspective as like, oh, we read these magazines,
Speaker 1: here's what we thought. And then yeah, having like people
Speaker 1: who were actually like straight up working at these magazines
Speaker 1: at the time or whatever, and know other people were like,
Speaker 1: oh no, this is what happened, you know. Or being
Speaker 1: able to reach out and like confirm rumors that we've heard,
Speaker 1: you know, being able to reach out like to whoever.
Speaker 1: And because we have this, you know, this body of work,
Speaker 1: people are happy to talk to us, and that's just cool,
Speaker 1: you know, going on the discord every day and like
Speaker 1: just hanging out with Nick and you know, Tempest Strife
Speaker 1: and Jason WFD and We're gonna get know everybody.
Speaker 2: I'm already sitting here. I'm like, Okay, we got to
Speaker 2: mention Day from Tales the Backlog. Gotta mention Max Storm again,
Speaker 2: and Jeff from the Funny Games Podcast. We got to
Speaker 2: I'm like, every time we mentioned one more person, I'm like,
Speaker 2: there's six more people we need to mention and we're
Speaker 2: gonna look like jerks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's and it's just like the best, right,
Speaker 1: and so you know, it's a cheesy answer, but it
Speaker 1: really is the people. And then for like, least joy
Speaker 1: is also like another most joy for me. But that's
Speaker 1: just like the tech stack of running a podcast, Like
Speaker 1: I love learning about this stuff. I love going deep
Speaker 1: on getting good audio quality. I love going deep on
Speaker 1: figuring out how to run like a live production on
Speaker 1: obs with like seeing transitions, and like, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: learning how to cut videos in Premiere Pro, which I
Speaker 1: have no experience doing cutting YouTube shorts. I uploaded a
Speaker 1: YouTube short as a regular video four times two days
Speaker 1: ago and could not figure out why, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's all so headache inducing. Like we're recording this on
Speaker 1: in chat, Jason says he knew I was gonna say
Speaker 1: tech was the least joy, but you know, we're recording
Speaker 1: this episode in Riverside because going live on OBS with
Speaker 1: video Ninja was given an echo of feedback echo just
Speaker 1: for tie. It wasn't in the recording, wasn't in my headphones,
Speaker 1: And it's like why and so like, you know, the
Speaker 1: work that we do behind the scenes, there is so
Speaker 1: much that I did not anticipate. But it's also the
Speaker 1: world I love doing, and like it's the stuff that
Speaker 1: makes me feel so satisfied at the end. So like,
Speaker 1: do I get frustrated when we're fifteen minutes late to
Speaker 1: start a stream because the tech isn't working, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: like when we figure it out and whereas we make
Speaker 1: like improvements every episode.
Speaker 2: Right and again our community too, you know Lord Drew
Speaker 2: By Yeah, Andrew Blewett is you know, yeah, he's incredible
Speaker 2: video producer. And you know, we'll come in and pop it,
Speaker 2: you know, multiple people. Quabila will come in and pop
Speaker 2: in the chat and be like, hey, guys, try this.
Speaker 2: If you tried that, probably this what resolution are you
Speaker 2: running at?
Speaker 1: You know? Da da da? What bitrate? You know?
Speaker 2: And we're like, oh, okay, okay, all right, because we're
Speaker 2: learning this, We're learning this as we go. I come
Speaker 2: from a radio background, so I have some you know,
Speaker 2: audio production knowledge, but then the video stuff is like okay,
Speaker 2: Like I always kind of thought I could do this.
Speaker 2: I always kind of thought we could do this. But
Speaker 2: it's learning on the fly. And again we have the
Speaker 2: grace and grace and patience that you the audience have
Speaker 2: given us as we work through this on literally live
Speaker 2: on camera in real time as awesome. It's been phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been so good. And I'm just really happy
Speaker 1: with with what we've produced a year in and just
Speaker 1: thinking about like where we'll get a year from now
Speaker 1: is really exciting for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right from remember that guy on Blue Sky?
Speaker 2: Is there an intrinsic importance about the physical and tactle
Speaker 2: nature of an old magazine? Our high quality scans is
Speaker 2: satisfying to you all. Do you think after sufficient time,
Speaker 2: a properly archived game website will hit the same nostalgia
Speaker 2: wise as the paper magazines do.
Speaker 1: This is like a really interesting question because I think, yes,
Speaker 1: there is like importance to the physical nature of old magazines.
Speaker 1: The tactile is I really enjoy I think that brings
Speaker 1: a lot of joy. But I think it being a
Speaker 1: physical object that needs to be sort of like locked
Speaker 1: and printed ahead of time was really important. The fact
Speaker 1: that it's like asynchronous, so it's not trying to hit
Speaker 1: hourly deadlines. It's not trying to get news out in minutes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has weeks is really important for the way that
Speaker 1: they covered games and the way that we talked about games.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, like and I talked about this, I think
Speaker 1: on the Final Fantasy seven episode, just our last episode
Speaker 1: is I liked the way that like features were the
Speaker 1: big thing in a magazine, right, So you had a
Speaker 1: Final Fantasy seven review and that was the big feature,
Speaker 1: but then it was a trojan horse for getting all
Speaker 1: of that other content into your house. You know, you'd
Speaker 1: buy it for the Final Fantasy seventh feature, and then
Speaker 1: you'd read a preview of whatever game you know that
Speaker 1: you never even knew existed, and now all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you're like, hey, this game seems really cool. I
Speaker 1: never would have found it otherwise. And so I just
Speaker 1: really like, I've really think that that aspect, the trojan
Speaker 1: horse aspect of magazines that you know, you don't get
Speaker 1: to pick and choose, you don't get to just like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to click on these links. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to engage with this other content at all. You
Speaker 1: can skip through past pages. But like you and I
Speaker 1: both read magazines, uh, you know, cover to cover, But
Speaker 1: like there's a big difference between flipping past a page
Speaker 1: that still has that split second, yeah, to catch your attention,
Speaker 1: as opposed to like just not clicking links at all
Speaker 1: on a website you know do will Properly archived games
Speaker 1: websites still hit the same nostalgia wisest paper magazines do, yeah,
Speaker 1: because like there are kids who were twelve growing up
Speaker 1: with whatever one op dot com or any of their
Speaker 1: gaming sites, but also specifically like games media and games
Speaker 1: content like ty was you were just saying, is also
Speaker 1: YouTube videos, it's all podcasts, It's also all of those
Speaker 1: other things. And so you know, I get nostalgic going
Speaker 1: back and watching old episodes of One Up Show and
Speaker 1: that was digital content online. Properly archiving games websites to
Speaker 1: like maintain that experience, I think is a challenge because
Speaker 1: like it just doesn't happen, and archiving web content is hard,
Speaker 1: so you have like the way back machine or whatever.
Speaker 1: But like the interconnectedness of the web makes that's really hard,
Speaker 1: Like you click on links and then the links just
Speaker 1: don't work or you don't have an active forum behind it,
Speaker 1: and so like, are we gonna have a podcast in
Speaker 1: fifteen years where people like scroll through old like snapshots
Speaker 1: of the gia or whatever, like maybe, But I think
Speaker 1: that there's also a more of an in the moment
Speaker 1: aspect to the web that that just makes it a
Speaker 1: little bit harder to look at things as like all
Speaker 1: encompassing or like you know, like closed products that you
Speaker 1: can like look at and yeah, I can pick up
Speaker 1: a magazine and it's that magazine, it's in front of me.
Speaker 1: It's a whole complete experience the exact way it was before.
Speaker 1: And I think that's hard to replicate with like text
Speaker 1: based website stuff. I think that's much more relevant for
Speaker 1: like video based webs yeah, video game stuff, audio stuff.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean the nostalgia will always be there,
Speaker 1: because nostalgia is us like pining for the simpler days, right, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: as we get away from like games media even existing
Speaker 1: in the online space, people are going to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: remember when and like go back and look at old
Speaker 1: you know, like Kotaku stuff or whatever. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: know what, there were so many great features. There's a
Speaker 1: million million features that were like too big or too
Speaker 1: long to ever fit in magazines on the web. You know,
Speaker 1: I wrote a big ten thousand word article or feature
Speaker 1: for Kotaku about like the overlap between phone fantasy authors
Speaker 1: and like RPG creators, and that just like that's never
Speaker 1: gonna get old, and so like, I think in some ways,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be like, oh, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: look at this whole website. It's like, hey, here are
Speaker 1: these old articles that like had an impact on me.
Speaker 1: Let's look at them again. Let's bring them up, Let's
Speaker 1: think about them, see how they've kind of like aged.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I well, first of all, I've been frantically
Speaker 2: trying to weigh back Machine next Generation's old website because
Speaker 2: I was about to wax philosophical about man, I would
Speaker 2: love to see this old interface again. And then I
Speaker 2: was like I could probably do something, but end up
Speaker 2: going back. And it's like, like web archiving is just
Speaker 2: really hard.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of times depends on technologies that don't exist.
Speaker 2: You know, whether it's it's graphics assets or you know
Speaker 2: that the wayback machine doesn't capture or it's flash stuff
Speaker 2: that obviously doesn't work. You know, it wouldn't have been
Speaker 2: captured anyway. So like there was a next Generation for
Speaker 2: a while had this really clean layout that looked just
Speaker 2: like the magazine right and it had in the same bons.
Speaker 2: It had some cool layout, just a cool UI.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I'm like, man, I would that nostalgia would hit for
Speaker 2: me if I could pull up that website exactly as
Speaker 2: it existed, I'd be like, damn, Yo, I remember this.
Speaker 1: I remember this.
Speaker 2: You know, go see the forums. You know there's like
Speaker 2: v Bulletin two point one or whatever. You know, certain
Speaker 2: forum layouts that will all you know, forum software that
Speaker 2: will always be like, Yo, spent so many hours on
Speaker 2: this forum like that that stuff does it does still hit.
Speaker 2: But as Aiden said, there is there is something you know,
Speaker 2: like I said, for me, like the next Generation, the
Speaker 2: first year and a half ish run had this thick
Speaker 2: laminated like soft touch layered textured cover.
Speaker 1: It was really thick and it felt expensive. It felt
Speaker 1: really cool.
Speaker 2: You're like, wow, you know, this is not toys. This
Speaker 2: is not in the kid's aisle. This is not something
Speaker 2: that you just give to kids thinking it's gonna get
Speaker 2: thrown on the floor on you know, wedged under the bed, right,
Speaker 2: like this is a real magazine for real grown ups
Speaker 2: and real smart people. And just by purchasing it and
Speaker 2: holding it in my little hands, I was a real
Speaker 2: big smart grown up too, right, So I think there
Speaker 2: was definitely an aspect to that, and just knowing you're
Speaker 2: gonna go back to it over and over and it's
Speaker 2: gonna be the same thing. Scans definitely hit because it's
Speaker 2: so close to you know, you're seeing images like I
Speaker 2: never in a million years would have remembered that if
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen it, And now I see it and
Speaker 2: boom comes rushing back right, and then there's there's other
Speaker 2: stuff frore. I'm like, I do not remember that, like
Speaker 2: the bird poop ad that aid was like, hey, ty,
Speaker 2: check this out, and the guy standing there with like
Speaker 2: fake bird poop all over him with the target still
Speaker 2: on his head like a shadow of a hawk above
Speaker 2: it or whatever, and like I didn't remember that at all,
Speaker 2: but I was gobsmacked by it. And then since then
Speaker 2: I've seen it twice more in other magazines while you know,
Speaker 2: looking for issues to cover, so like I, you know,
Speaker 2: it definitely means something. Would it have meant more if
Speaker 2: it was in my little hands? I mean, I think
Speaker 2: we are getting dangerously close into the oldest and most
Speaker 2: boring writer debate on social media, which is you know,
Speaker 2: books versus e readers, Like it really is really reading
Speaker 2: you're you're in the audiobook if you're reading on screen,
Speaker 2: like don't you even Like, hey, yeah, I love to
Speaker 2: go into an old used bookstore and have that smell
Speaker 2: hit me just as much as any other writer or reader, Right,
Speaker 2: that means something.
Speaker 1: But also I just love.
Speaker 2: Stories and if you put it in my brain, however
Speaker 2: you put it in my brain cool. I do experience
Speaker 2: a bit of a difference between audiobooks and physically, you know,
Speaker 2: reading via site just because how I read. But like,
Speaker 2: you know, for me, some of this gets into sort
Speaker 2: of like quasi fetishistic, like oh well it's not as
Speaker 2: real cool as the physical like it that stuff does matter.
Speaker 2: But I still we've been doing this whole podcast looking
Speaker 2: at scans being like yo, like everything else. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it still hits for.
Speaker 1: Me, and like what I think, I think there's an
Speaker 1: interesting point there too, is that like you know, you
Speaker 1: talk about scans of magazines, right, and that's where the
Speaker 1: sort of nostalgia comes from, or you you know, I
Speaker 1: open up a real physical magazine to look at it,
Speaker 1: because as much as possible, the original experience is intact
Speaker 1: exactly as it was in nineteen ninety five. The MAGA
Speaker 1: is literally the exact same magazine as I was reading
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five. You know, I don't really talk about
Speaker 1: my day job a lot, but I my day job.
Speaker 1: I work for a museum, and I work in you know,
Speaker 1: like alongside digital preservation, and it's hard, Like it's hard
Speaker 1: to preserve digital assets. They take resourcing, they take computers
Speaker 1: and hard drive space, RAM and bandwidth you know, like
Speaker 1: internet bandwidth to access. Like it's it's a lot of work,
Speaker 1: but also specifically, like preserving the experience of looking at
Speaker 1: say two thousand and two era website like one op
Speaker 1: dot com on my fourteen forty p like like LCD
Speaker 1: or whatever monitor I'm using, it doesn't hit the same
Speaker 1: as when I was looking at it on my seventeen
Speaker 1: inch CRT monitor that it was designed to look, you know,
Speaker 1: to be read on, because it is letterboxed. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, this wide on the screen. The text is
Speaker 1: all tiny, and so it doesn't like, you know, imagine
Speaker 1: that like we could get magazines, but they weren't really proper,
Speaker 1: you know, like they weren't really presented in the way
Speaker 1: that they were back then. That aspect of it, I
Speaker 1: think takes away some of the like emotional resonance of
Speaker 1: webs sites versus like something like a physical magazine, because
Speaker 1: the experience is changed, like as the technology changes the experience.
Speaker 2: See me and dragging my browser window back and forth
Speaker 2: between my vertical monitor and my horizontal monitors so I
Speaker 2: can see one page in its exact aspect ratio, all
Speaker 2: big and beautiful, or both pages of a two page
Speaker 2: layout at the same time as they were meant to.
Speaker 1: Be exactly, And so you know, I think the content
Speaker 1: is always going to be relevant. There's incredible work that's
Speaker 1: been published on the Internet about video games, and it
Speaker 1: will remain like such a valuable asset for research and
Speaker 1: for preservation of culture. I just think it's like harder
Speaker 1: to just experience digital stuff like websites in the same
Speaker 1: way that we are with magazines on this And that's
Speaker 1: why I make websites for a living. That's my job,
Speaker 1: and I just think that it's like they're more ephemeral
Speaker 1: in a way that makes it difficult, uh to preserve
Speaker 1: the experience as time.
Speaker 2: Especially as many great websites have been bought up and
Speaker 2: then wiped rather than bought up and just left you know, absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, you know, on one of the episodes,
Speaker 1: we were looking at an ad for heat dot net, right,
Speaker 1: the like Sega thing. Yeah, and so I looked up
Speaker 1: heat dot net and it's like a generic WordPress site
Speaker 1: for like a HVAC company in Florida. Yep, that's what
Speaker 1: it is now, you know, And so you can go
Speaker 1: to the wayback machine and find some stuff, but like
Speaker 1: it also exists in a different form, which is just strange. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just from a from a preservation perspective, it's it's tough,
Speaker 1: really rough.
Speaker 2: It's tough, and I think, you know, depending on what
Speaker 2: you know, we're gonna look at different eras of games
Speaker 2: media for season two, season.
Speaker 1: Three, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Right, And there's kind of a scary window in the
Speaker 2: early to mid aughts where there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 2: that was published digitally a then vanished, you know, because
Speaker 2: you know, it wasn't part of a corporate conglomerate yet,
Speaker 2: or you know, maybe some of that. There are some
Speaker 2: ancient texts websites from the nineties that are still around
Speaker 2: because it was only ever one person and they maintained them.
Speaker 2: So there's some stuff that's perfectly time capsuled, and there's
Speaker 2: other stuff that's just completely gone and you never know
Speaker 2: until you go looking for it, which any particular thing
Speaker 2: you're looking for is something. These magazines still exist and
Speaker 2: we can go back and look for them. And yeah,
Speaker 2: looking at the Campus Life review of Final Fantasy seven
Speaker 2: that I couldn't track down, you know, I talked about it.
Speaker 2: It is just literally last episodes, so I won't go
Speaker 2: back into it too much. But it's like, Okay, I
Speaker 2: am now. I am in the middle of a gigantic
Speaker 2: academic research library at the physically biggest college campus in
Speaker 2: the world, one of the bigger undergraduate institutions in the world,
Speaker 2: Michigan State University, and I'm like, well, I have access
Speaker 2: to what looks to be about an eighty to ninety
Speaker 2: percent complete text only archive, where most of the issues
Speaker 2: have most of the text saved as text. But unless
Speaker 2: and until I can get my hands on a physical
Speaker 2: copy of every magazine published in late nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 2: or early to mid nineteen ninety eight. I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna find that review, and I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: know if you know, I know, I didn't hallucinate it.
Speaker 2: I read some some somewhere, but like until I physically
Speaker 2: find that magazine, I'll never know. And that's you know,
Speaker 2: that's that that is meaningful, and that will always be
Speaker 2: meanings that will always be meaningful, that that got printed
Speaker 2: and was made a physical thing that mattered.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think you bring up an interesting point too,
Speaker 1: about like corporate content and websites and like archiving those
Speaker 1: versus like smaller websites. Like one of like the websites,
Speaker 1: like the first websites gaming websites that I was like
Speaker 1: always checking was it was called Icy Brian. All right,
Speaker 1: Ic Brian's RPG page still up. I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try to share it. Yeah, yeah, And it's like this
Speaker 1: is it Ice Brian's RPG page And like, I see Brian,
Speaker 1: I did it in twenty twenty two, Ellie, it had
Speaker 1: been twelve years, you know, but like this is like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is the site and he had like
Speaker 1: tons of game info about the games that I really loved, right,
Speaker 1: and I would like reference this all the time when
Speaker 1: I was playing sweak it into you know, this is
Speaker 1: this was last up we did in twenty or two
Speaker 1: thousand and two, right, And it's just still up there.
Speaker 1: And like, you know, he has linked to his like
Speaker 1: personal website and it's he's just a regular guy, just
Speaker 1: like me and you. But he keeps this up in
Speaker 1: the same way that I keep up you know, my blog,
Speaker 1: A Dribble Think, which I ran for a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's still up and I'll keep it up as
Speaker 1: long as I possibly can because it is, you know,
Speaker 1: something that can be archived and is maintainable and sustainable
Speaker 1: for me to do personally, And so you know, maybe
Speaker 1: that's where the opportunity for nostalgia comes from. Like I
Speaker 1: do still go and check out the GA, the Gaming
Speaker 1: Intelligence Agency, Yeah, you know, when I'm trying to reference,
Speaker 1: like I was writing about Fon nine recently and wanted
Speaker 1: to go reference all the leakedon nine material, and the
Speaker 1: Gaming Intelligence Agency was the best place to get that.
Speaker 1: And it still existed and it's still up. Well maybe
Speaker 1: it's not up, but at least on the way back
Speaker 1: machine I was able to get access to it. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, so God bless the fans right making content
Speaker 1: and keeping it up there. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2: I found it, and I found it a website. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I finally got one good snapshot. It took forever to load,
Speaker 2: but like, this is this is cool man. I use
Speaker 2: previews reviews, you know. I tried to replicate this with
Speaker 2: the cool little curves and stuff when I was trying
Speaker 2: to build websites and I'm like, oh no, I can't,
Speaker 2: you know, stock watching, but like John Carmack speaks.
Speaker 1: Yo, wait ah.
Speaker 2: The eve of the release of Quake three test for
Speaker 2: Mac oh Man. One of my favorite webcomics, like individual
Speaker 2: web comics of all time was The Penny Arcade where
Speaker 2: they had their Chuck character, who they like to make
Speaker 2: fun of because you liked Mac.
Speaker 1: Hey, you guys, think you have enough machine to run
Speaker 1: the new Quake three demo?
Speaker 2: And Tycho's like, I've got a Pentium three.
Speaker 1: It's like a tiny god.
Speaker 2: He's like, cool, Well, mine's great. Well see you, Oh
Speaker 2: why is it coming out on Mac? But yeah, like
Speaker 2: it's it's great that the way Back Machine exists. But hey, uh,
Speaker 2: the owner of the Internet Archive is a multimillionaire patent
Speaker 2: troll like like he trolls the concept of IP, right,
Speaker 2: he's like reverse instead of like I own the IP
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna sue everybody who infringes it, He's like,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna infringe every IP in the world and dare
Speaker 2: people to assue me? And very high profile thing a
Speaker 2: couple of years ago where he very nearly got sued
Speaker 2: right out of existence, right, So who it takes just
Speaker 2: the wrong lawsuit of the wrong stewardship of that, you know,
Speaker 2: and wayback machine is gone and the only serious attempt
Speaker 2: to archive the Internet goes away. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: the Library of Congress has some of it stuff. But
Speaker 2: you know, it's tough. It's tough, It's gonna be tough. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: we should probably move on.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean this like, honestly, it could be a
Speaker 1: whole episode. It very nearly has been, and you know what,
Speaker 1: this might be something we also get into more in
Speaker 1: a future season as we do move into sort of
Speaker 1: the web era of games media at some point. Now,
Speaker 1: for the final question we have from Frozen Leroy Bob
Speaker 1: on Discord, how do you handle plane slash talking about
Speaker 1: problematic games like Cyberpunk twenty seventy like Cyberpunk twenty seventy
Speaker 1: seven with its awful transphobic marketing fetishization of trans individuals,
Speaker 1: and Hogwarts Legacy with all the turf stuff from rolling
Speaker 1: and all the controversy surrounding Harry Potter. How do we
Speaker 1: talk about games? I think I'm gonna jump in with
Speaker 1: an answer, But like you and I are pretty open
Speaker 1: about our criticism for stuff like, you know, anti trans
Speaker 1: content or anti trans creators. We're not really afraid to
Speaker 1: call that stuff out or talk about it when it
Speaker 1: comes up. We've noted, you know, transphobian old gaming magazines,
Speaker 1: and so I think you and I are pretty open
Speaker 1: books in our support for stuff like the trans community.
Speaker 1: And so when that comes up in games, a lot
Speaker 1: of the time, I just don't cover games like Hogwarts Legacy,
Speaker 1: and I just make no effort to try to incorporate
Speaker 1: it into anything I do, because I'm not interested in it.
Speaker 1: This might be like many people a big Harry Potter
Speaker 1: fan for a long time, but I think like addressing
Speaker 1: problematic content is important now, Like the nature of the
Speaker 1: show means we don't talk about a ton of like
Speaker 1: modern games outside of like how they are contextually relevant
Speaker 1: to whatever issue of a magazine we're talking, we're looking at.
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't think we purposefully shy away
Speaker 1: from difficult conversations when we need to have them.
Speaker 2: No, And I think it's it's it's a balance because
Speaker 2: you know, for me, I think it's very important to
Speaker 2: flag stuff as it happens. I think it's important to
Speaker 2: talk about honestly about the stuff that's out there and
Speaker 2: was out there, you know it. Like I said, the
Speaker 2: reason I showed and read that letter, like I'm I'm
Speaker 2: not super proud of that. It didn't age well, but
Speaker 2: it's a snapshot of the kind of stuff that was
Speaker 2: getting printed in the magazine at the time, the kind
Speaker 2: of stuff you know that I was reading and like, wow,
Speaker 2: this is cool.
Speaker 1: And I aspire to be that.
Speaker 2: I aspire to be approved by these people making this content.
Speaker 2: I like, you know, and there are parts of me
Speaker 2: at that time where I was like, I don't like
Speaker 2: some of this stuff, Like some of this stuff that's
Speaker 2: out there is gross. I don't like the grossest kid.
Speaker 2: I don't like you know that death trapped dungeon ad right,
Speaker 2: Like I didn't like being like that overtly marketed to
Speaker 2: in that way right, but then also like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: like that character's pretty oh you know, like that that
Speaker 2: did happen, right, So it's like it's it's it's disingenuous
Speaker 2: for me to be like, oh, like I was out.
Speaker 2: My sense of what's cool and good was always dialed
Speaker 2: to like you know, twenty fifteen Twitter's idea of what
Speaker 2: was cool and good, Like that's not.
Speaker 1: I mean, we read a whole letter about how hot
Speaker 1: right he wrote it, right, So like there is like
Speaker 1: and you said you didn't want to share it, but
Speaker 1: it's there. It exists, Like not talking about it doesn't
Speaker 1: make it exist.
Speaker 2: And I think and I you know, and it's in
Speaker 2: a weird way, I'm proud of it too, where I'm like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm fourteen.
Speaker 1: That wasn't the bad. You know, there was some good.
Speaker 2: Writing in there, right, Like you can see how I
Speaker 2: got to where I am now, right, Like it's like
Speaker 2: looking back at the good and at the bad at
Speaker 2: the same time. I do think there, like I said,
Speaker 2: there is a balance because it's like if you make
Speaker 2: the whole show about call outs, you know, first of all,
Speaker 2: we're not the people to make a whole show about
Speaker 2: the failings of games and games media and how they
Speaker 2: failed marginalized people because we are two white guys from
Speaker 2: North America, like you know, grew up middle class, you know,
Speaker 2: various descriptors of that term. We had access to all
Speaker 2: these games machines at the time. You know, we had
Speaker 2: access to all these magazines at the time. My mom
Speaker 2: spent more money on magazine subscriptions than, like I said,
Speaker 2: she subscribed as Sports Illustrated. For me, that was ninety
Speaker 2: dollars a year when I was in elementary school, which
Speaker 2: was a million years ago. That's like two hundred.
Speaker 1: Bucks a year today.
Speaker 2: You know, that'd be like we have twenty bucks a
Speaker 2: month type subscription like you know, so like we we
Speaker 2: have access and privileges, but we we are in solidarity
Speaker 2: with marginalized people of all stripes, and we try to
Speaker 2: be conscious of that and we try to call it
Speaker 2: out and stuff that's just so inherently toxic. I can't
Speaker 2: support I can't give jk Rowling a dollar. I'm just
Speaker 2: I can't do it, not gonna do it. I don't
Speaker 2: need to talk about it, I don't need to think
Speaker 2: about it. My not talking or thinking about it on
Speaker 2: this show doesn't stop the thing from being a success.
Speaker 2: You know, I'll call it out on social media, I'll
Speaker 2: call it out on other channels as well. You know,
Speaker 2: I can say this is bad and we shouldn't play it,
Speaker 2: But no amount of me injecting that into this podcast
Speaker 2: is going to stop it from being a thing. So
Speaker 2: it's it's a balance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like you know on fun Factor, we have
Speaker 1: total creative control over what we do. Recently, for mmoorpg
Speaker 1: dot com, I got to write a review or not
Speaker 1: even a review, just like an op ed about a
Speaker 1: vowed coming out on the PlayStation five. So it's an
Speaker 1: Obsidian RPG. I was always I was really excited about it,
Speaker 1: but it was only only came out on Xbox and
Speaker 1: like PC, Obsidian is a Microsoft developer, and so it
Speaker 1: does fall under the BDS boycott. Yeah, And so that
Speaker 1: was a big conflict for me about writing about that
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out how to write like thoughtfully
Speaker 1: and openly in support of you know, what the BDS
Speaker 1: boycott represents, which I believe in, while also you know,
Speaker 1: covering a creative work from people that I think are
Speaker 1: you know, intrinsically good people, and how boycotts overlap with
Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff. And so you know, I
Speaker 1: wrote in my piece multiple references to the BDS boycott
Speaker 1: and what I think are some of Microsoft's problematic elements,
Speaker 1: and it didn't make it into the final published draft,
Speaker 1: but you know, I still you still need to kind
Speaker 1: of like take your shot where contexts requires it, right,
Speaker 1: and so like, yeah, I don't know it, it's tough,
Speaker 1: but I think that there's an you know, you talk
Speaker 1: about how we're not the right people necessarily to like
Speaker 1: lead a charge on representing marginalized groups, right because we
Speaker 1: are two white guys. But I do think also recognizing
Speaker 1: where our privilege allows us to maybe say things that
Speaker 1: other people can't without fear of repercussion also, you know,
Speaker 1: does put a little bit of an onus on us.
Speaker 1: And you know, we'll get to a point where we're
Speaker 1: reviewing magazines that have Harry Potter content, right, Like we're
Speaker 1: pretty close to probably the first Harry Potter games because
Speaker 1: they came out on the PlayStation game Boy color and stuff, right,
Speaker 1: and so like we're getting close to a point where
Speaker 1: we will have to address something like JK. Rowling our
Speaker 1: relationship with Harry Potter, how that's changed. And I think
Speaker 1: just being honest, but not, like you said, getting too
Speaker 1: caught up in being a show about callouts or you know,
Speaker 1: getting too caught up in that and just also picking
Speaker 1: and choosing what we're covering. You know, like there are
Speaker 1: some YouTube channels that I really like that keep covering
Speaker 1: Hogwarts Legacy and keep using footage from it or doing
Speaker 1: like tech deep dives into it, And I'm like, I
Speaker 1: think we could pick a different game, Like, there's so
Speaker 1: many games out here. I think we could probably use
Speaker 1: something other than Hogwarts Legacy, And that bothers me, right,
Speaker 1: I don't think that like pretending it just doesn't exist
Speaker 1: is valuable. But I also think like not choosing the
Speaker 1: platform a game like that whenever possible is an important
Speaker 1: kind of court principle for both of us, for sure.
Speaker 2: Absolutely all right, I think that is all the questions
Speaker 2: that we have. This has been an outstanding set of questions,
Speaker 2: an outstanding episode. I think a lot of great stuff
Speaker 2: to think about, a lot of great stuff to consider it.
Speaker 2: We've got a lot of great stuff lined up as
Speaker 2: we speak. We are scheduling more bonus contents we wrap
Speaker 2: up this season. We are shaping up what next season
Speaker 2: is going to look like. We're going to stay on
Speaker 2: our content schedule every two weeks new episodes and yeah,
Speaker 2: so stay with us. Definitely continue to support us if
Speaker 2: you're able to fun Factor Ultra join these live streams.
Speaker 2: There are a ton of fun for us to do.
Speaker 2: They give us great, great content and I love the
Speaker 2: back and forth with the audience. Love to be able
Speaker 2: to have that kind of insight as we talk about
Speaker 2: it right and have that kind of energy. It's awesome.
Speaker 2: It helps us perk up our episodes a little bit
Speaker 2: because we know people are watching, right. It's not it
Speaker 2: doesn't evolve into just oh yeah, tian Aiden are just
Speaker 2: talking on zoom uh we forget that the red light
Speaker 2: is going, but yeah, no, and it's it's it's awesome.
Speaker 2: It's been great as this show has evolved over this
Speaker 2: first season to what it is now, it's going to
Speaker 2: keep evolving and hopefully keep getting better and better. With
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Speaker 2: to Millennium Fou for all our amazing original music. Check
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Speaker 1: So hey, go to.
Speaker 2: Fun factor pod dot com. I promise you you cannot
Speaker 2: min to sign up with you on homepage. If you
Speaker 2: do sign up, you and we will have a maximum
Speaker 2: score in fun Factor. Hold on, sorry, I'm trying to
Speaker 2: get the layout back to where it's just the two
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Speaker 1: But yeah, our millennial listeners are going wild right now.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and we just lost like half of our
Speaker 1: general All these zoomers are out.
Speaker 2: Well, the alphas are out. The zoomers appreciate it, you know,
Speaker 2: they know from strongbad a super intent, like like sixteen
Speaker 2: things are going in my head right now, my risk
Speaker 2: to Airton Senna, one of the greats. But anyway, yeah,
Speaker 2: basically one of the maybe the best driver of all time,
Speaker 2: had a crash where he bottomed out and lost down
Speaker 2: force in the middle of a corner and the car
Speaker 2: physically couldn't turn fast enough anymore because he wasn't sticking
Speaker 2: to the ground anyway. Uh yeah, okay, so we're on
Speaker 2: Claire to said no, wait I did, I did Niko, Okay,
Speaker 2: you're on Clay's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, what about least joy? What do you got? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the least joy? Besides well, I guess you kind of
Speaker 1: opened with kind of opened with it, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: get I got like go ahead.
Speaker 2: Well, like unlike these old magazines, you do not have
Speaker 2: to wait a whole month for your next installment. We
Speaker 2: drop episodes every two weeks.
Speaker 1: Sorry.
Speaker 2: I was trying to edit this on the fly in
Speaker 2: my brain and I realized I've already covered all of
Speaker 2: this material. Uh yeah, okay, that as an episode there.
Speaker 1: That was good.
Speaker 2: Yes, great question, yeah, great question, like and we hit
Speaker 2: Likebulo questions usual, our usual time pretty much exactly when
Speaker 2: twenty seven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I said to you. I was like, I
Speaker 1: think this is going to be a short episode.
Speaker 2: The next short episode will be the first one.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right.