Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 24 07/09/09
We've got a special guest on the podcast this week as Anthony, Tyler and myself are joined by former 1up copy editor and current Bitmob.com Contributor Jason Wilson as we talk about Sacred 2, look on in amazement as Tyler falls down the rabbit hole of Civ 4, and opine about the appeal of Fight Night Round 4's controls and boxing vs. MMA. Then we go into a long second segment about writing in games media, but not how you're used to; if you've ever asked how you can be a better writer, or wanted to know what you might be doing wrong, or what everyone else might be doing wrong, you'll want to pay close attention. Then we close out with letters. Apologies for some spotty audio quality here and there, as some nobs were nudged where they shouldn't be. This will be fixed in time for next week, where we'll be judging theme song entries with our special guest judge Robert Ashley. Fat Penis (it's cool, we're taking it back!)This week's music, in order of appearance:Portishead - RoadsLamb of God - DescendingB L A C K I E - Like a Little Kid, Yeah
You are now in possession of the rebel captain. Thank you. [Music] Now we're out of some joys, all right. Hello. Welcome to Rebel FM episode 24. Do you remember them? I'm Anthony Gallegos of gamespy.com and EatSleepGame.com joined by Tyler Barber and Arthur Geese of EatSleepGame.com and also joined by Jason Wilson, who is an editor and contributor at BitMob.com. Hi everybody! So we're going to... It's kind of stupid, wasn't it? Jason, you should... If you want to hear stupid, you should hear the stuff that comes out of me and Tyler's mouth on a regular basis. He's correct. You want to hear stupid listen to some of our pre-uggle FM podcasts? Yeah, me and Arthur have. You can still find all of our old podcast we used to do before I even worked officially in the industry out of our bedroom. So we're going to talk about games we've been playing and since you're the guest, we're going to let you kick us off, Jason. Well, I've been playing two games rather compulsively recently. The first, Sacred Two, Fallen Angel. I've been playing this on PS3. What's different about this is, I've been playing this with my wife. That is awesome. Which is very awesome considering she's never played anything like this before. You know, the most in-depth game we've ever played together was most likely Lego Batman. That's about as core as she's ever gotten. That's a good lead-in game. Yeah, you know, my wife's usually a circle who said they were for DS to play Peggle in bed. And she'll sit there playing Joel Quest for two hours, three hours at a time. So she's hardcore in a way that she'll spend a great deal of time playing games, but not necessarily in the games that... She's dedicated. Yeah, she's dedicated. She enjoys games. She enjoys games, which, you know, I don't know how in the hell I got that lucky to find somebody who can put up with it as well as she does. Yeah, but I said, "Okay, well, here's this game I really like to play with you." And she said, "Okay, well, we'll give this a try." And we've been playing it now for about a month. Almost every evening. Almost every evening, couple hours in the evening, after work, we'll come home. Well, after she gets home from work, after we've had dinner and we'll settle down, we'll start on the couch and we'll play for a while. And it's been a lot of fun. And, you know, sacred, for those of you who haven't played, it's an action RPG. It's the same vein of Diablo. In fact, if you're waiting for a Diablo 3, and you want something like this, play Sacred 2 right now, you'll get a kick out of it. I was going to say, did you ever play the old Baldur's Gate console versions? They were action RPGs. They were action RPGs, and they were fun. They were fun. You know, a good action RPG that you could play together on the same console is always good for a lot of fun. I've always felt, you know, you know, the Baldur's Gate games, champions in our half-year play those. Yeah, I did. Yeah, or, you know, the X-Men. I did, and actually, it's almost like with those games, like I'm generally a big fan of co-op online and stuff, but with those games, it was almost better playing with the same person, like the person in one room. Like, I did all those Baldur's Gate games with the Everquest one. They were a marathon for, like, six or seven hours. Yeah, exactly. We just, like, order a pizza and just go nuts. That's a lot of fun. And that's what my wife and I were doing. You haven't played a marathon on five or six hours yet. No, but, you know, two hours is pretty much but are threshold. But, what's really good about it is, in some ways, you know that MMO structure for quests where, you know, you come to a town, you find some guys, you get some quests, you got to do the quest, and you come back and find some more. That's kind of part of it, but in a way, it's great because, you know, you've got the main story quest, but you've got all these little side quests that you could do at your own pace, at your own time, and you have nothing pushing you through the game, which, you know, a lot of RPGs, one of my criticisms of them is that sometimes the story moves you through it so fast that you don't get a chance to really, you know, drink in the game's world and just go to slower pace and enjoy it. But in Sacred 2, you get to do that. No, we haven't done anything on the main quest in a week and a half. Oh, man. How is she responding to the difficulty curve, I mean? Is it a hard game, or is it an easier game to do change the difficulty? Well, we're playing right now on the silver difficulty, which, at our point, is about as high as we can get. You have to beat, from what I understand, you have to beat the campaign to open up the gold difficulty. Oh, okay, so just normal. Yeah, normal would be good, but decided. And she's doing pretty well. I mean, you know, there's some conventions that we have to teach her, such as, you know, how to, you know, what sockets needed your weapons. It has that convention. Magic versus, you know, melee attacks. What class does she play? She's playing the angel class. I don't know what that is. The Seraphin. Oh, so is it like a spellcasting melee class? It's a basic melee class. Okay. Yeah, that makes it easier. It's not some abilities on the side, but it's mostly melee. And we picked that one for two reasons. One, because it's an easier one, I think, for people to just jump in and start playing because you maybe want to take a sword or an axe and just start whacking your things. And she thought, you know, the Seraphin was pretty. It's a girl. Yeah, that's good. That's why I picked them. Yeah. Actually, the only game I've ever played with a girl like that all the way through was the Baldur's Gate games. Yeah. It was the same thing. I was just like, here's a melee class. All you have to know is that if you push square, you hit, I don't know, is X to hit, I think, in like, square to pick up items. So I was like, if you just mash both of these at once, we'll just mob through this game. Well, one of the great adaptations that the Vela Brassron has made with this game is the way it uses the trigger buttons on the controller. Because you can use the triggers to map more of your abilities, you know, combat arts and such. And it's of, you know, how like pressing different keys on the keyboard, you hit it, and what it'll do is you hit the right trigger, and then it has the four face buttons, and you just pick which one you want for which art, but then you hit the left one, and then there's another four, and then you've got another four, which it just stacks. So really, you've got all this flexibility in the way that you could cut out your character and decide what abilities you're going to use and how to access those things. Yeah, it makes me wonder if that's how Dragon Age works. I've been trying to think about how they could do the controls on Dragon Age, and maybe that kind of makes sense to me. If it's going to be something similar like that, I think it'll work really well, because it works very well in Sacred, too. And if my wife, somebody who's never really played with all these different button controls before, can get down, understand it, and use it, I think anyone can. Yeah, that actually, that's good. I mean, I actually, I was going to get Sacred for PC, but hearing you talk about that kind of like, it makes me romanticize the idea of playing along with someone in the same room, so now I'm going to have to get it on console, I think. Someone of the opposite sex? No, well, that would require someone from the opposite sex to play with. But, aww. If you, if you really enjoyed the Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance games, if you enjoyed Champions of Nerf Graph, you know, read up on this, take a look at it. Yeah, I mean, now I definitely, I'm kind of excited. It's a lot of fun, and then, and then it also has one of those great things that come from games, you know, this is a German game, but you know, some of those wonderful things that come from Germany or from Russia, you know, really, really weird localizations of the quest tax, which, you know, I don't know if it's intentional or unintentional in this case, but some of them are very goofy and funny. I like to imagine that some of it's probably intentional. I would hope some of it is. Yeah, I mean, I remember that when I went back when we worked together, and there was that like, King's Bounty game that I previewed. That game had some of like, the best. That game. That game, if you haven't played through that game, you really should, because the localization for that was just just outstanding. Reminds me of some of the really ludicrous stuff that came from Japanese games back in the late '90s. Right. That's awesome. So you've been playing anything else, or? Yes, I have. I, uh, steam have a sale on the Heroes Mountain Magic series. Heroes Mountain Magic 5 plus its two expansions, and I couldn't resist. After playing King's Bounty, that's what got me through the downtime after the layoff. I played that compulsively when we got laid off from Ziff, and that was the game that got me through it. And I had not played the Heroes Mountain Magic series before. I had a grudge toward it. Why did you have a grudge for it? Well, I love the old Binding Magic RPGs. But as you know, as the series got older, the games got worse. Because they stopped. And then they stopped. And I, Elrak, you know, just really foolishly, I always blame that on just all the different directions that Magic, my magic took. You know, they had some of those really bad action RPG games on the first PlayStation. Yes. And they had the Heroes series, and I just said, okay, you know what? If you guys can't focus and make the flagship series, the original RPG series, the best of them, I'm just not going to play any of this other stuff. So this is like a progenitor of the whole console gaming, killed PC gaming, Mem. Yeah, you can make a case for that. It's more of the fact that I just told crudges for really, really stupid reasons sometimes. And you would think as I've gotten older than I realized how foolish that is. But that hasn't happened. No, I'm perfectly okay with holding grudge. So they had the great sale on it, picked up that, plus two more for $15. We ended up a week and a half ago, and I've just been playing that non-stop. If I'm not playing Sacred Tooth, my wife, I'm playing this. And I'm having a lot of fun with it. Man, it makes me antsy because I've wanted to play a fantasy game for a while. I've been playing nothing but realistic games that are supposed to take place in the real world. Even Hitman, it's like a real world type game, you know? I want some elves and magic. You see, that's not like a meal like I'm judging you, fuck man. See, I've always been very escapist with my gaming. I've always wanted something that's just something I can't do in the real world. You know, during the years when I was a sports journalist, I didn't even play sports games. Well, you know, very rare exceptions, because it's just too much of what I've been doing. And if I'm going to play a game, I want something that's just going to take me completely out of what I'm doing, completely out of my normal life, from being into something that I can't experience. Right, yeah, I mean, I hear that like when the layoffs first happen for me, Arthur going to attest to it, I pretty much just like after a while, vegetated in World of Warcraft for some pretty extenuated periods of time. I seem to call it a sieve as well. Sieve as well, yeah, that was actually when I first discovered sieve, because I never played. So sieve is another one that is easy to lose yourself to. Yeah, well, here is about magic. One of the great things about it, and one of the bad things about it too, is if you're someone like me, I have this compulsive streak. Me too. And it can get really out of control sometimes. And RPGs bring out some of the worst parts of it. And I wrote a piece about that today on BitMob. And it was about this one mission. And you're playing a demon character. And you've got all these demonic forces. And you're in this world of elves. All right. So you're going around it and you're taking elves' towns. And you've got this option to use elvish units. And as you're learning about the units, there are dragons. Dragons are cool. I don't care what kind of game you're playing. Dragons are cool. And if you have a chance to have dragons, damn it, I want dragons in my army. OK. I hear that. Yeah. I think we're all on the same dragon page. OK. But as I started my pursuit of dragons and building up my resources and building up my towns to be able to produce dragons, it was like, why am I doing this? I don't need them to accomplish the mission. Right. I don't need them to get to where I'm meeting where I'm going. Or climb a mountain, Jason. It's there. Yeah. And that was the thing. It's not that I needed them. It's that I wanted them. You know what? No. It's like they're sitting there. That last donut of the box. You just can't resist it. You want them. You've got towers. You've got divided attention now. That allows donuts more than anything. Just favor food. Good man. More than dragons. But I realized that, no, I didn't need those dragons. I can go through this. Did you finish the mission? And you know what? And I'm proud of myself, damn it. You stopped. I did not pursue the dragons. This mission. For that. Well, what's great is in the next mission, you know, no problem getting them. I'm often the same way when I play a lot of strategy games. Like, I will build unnecessary amounts of forces to win and just sit and gather and gather and gather or like mine every resource on the map. You're the reason that they change the rules to risk. So it's like, yeah, because I just, I just, I just hold on. I just like to build like crazy amounts of forces or build like I will max my pop cap before I will attack that sort of thing. Like, I'm the same way. It's kind of, you know, just kind of the way that strategy games are developed. You know, you know, think about, you know, company heroes kind of changed all that. Yeah. Company heroes, that's right. That's the one game where I, whenever I hit pop cap, I'm like, oh, whoops. So. Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise, it's, you know, mass as many army sees as you can and then thwack them over the head with it. Yeah. I think, I think I agree with that assessment. But there are a fair amount of our readers who, when we say that about other strategy games, they cry foul and say that's not true at all. If only we knew what tournament play is like. Oh, well, some of us aren't brave enough for tournament. Yeah. That's kind of how I feel about it too. But, you know, you know, as the guy who's beaten the developers and company and heroes, the fucking game. Yeah. I beat some of them. Only one of them was a, was a balanced tester though. Apparently those are like the balanced testing team at, at relic is, is like the people that are the best at co. So that's all they do is test for balancing. So. Hence the term balanced tester. Yeah. But I would think some of these tournament players are just even, even above that skill level. Yeah. And if you watch like the videos of the Korean Starcraft players playing each other, it's like, it is a whole different game. Those make me cry when I watch those. Cry like they cry when they found out there's no land play in Starcraft 2. Yeah. Did you know that Jason? Yeah, I did. I guess we're at the point now where land is unnecessary. I mean, it's true. People could all come over to our house and we could just use a couple of hubs and hook them up and have everyone play. I mean, it's an every 360 game at this point, like even games that do Xbox live, they all system like play. Like, it's just such a thing that I expect. I'm really about giving players the option to play the game the way they want to. Right. You know, I think that a developer and a publisher should, for any game they're saying, okay, how do people want to play this? And how can we help people do that? Yeah, I mean, Arthur talked and we've kind of said that it kind of like smells to us like maybe this was an outside decision in the sense that in the old Starcraft, it even told you in the actual instruction manual how to play multiplayer with your friends with one day. Wait a minute since I'll spawn. Right. And it would just tell you that. But in the new one, basically, that whole thing is if you're going to have to play online and you have to use BattleNet, that also means that from my understanding is that every person will have to own the game to play. And the only thing, the only thing I'll say is that in Blizzard's defense somewhat, one of the big things that happened when Starcraft first came out in BattleNet was becoming huge is that if I am called correctly, there was this group online that tried to run like a shadow version of BattleNet. And there was like, there were huge lawsuits about it where Blizzard was very adamant that all multiplayer traffic needed to go through them and that it was. And this other group was like, why it was a serious terms of service violation and it was illegal for them to run like a duplicated version of BattleNet. So this could be their way of preventing that because I mean, and obviously it's a piracy and DRM measure. And that's the part that strikes me as pretty consumer friendly for a Blizzard title. But yeah, well, remember Blizzard isn't just Blizzard anymore. Yeah. So, active Blizzard. But have you been playing anything else or that's pretty much it for you? Those are pretty much only two games. I, you know, in my DS, I've been playing more of just new Super Mario Brothers, but you play that a little bit. You and every one of us. That game still makes it into like the top charts. I know, isn't that amazing? It is pretty staggering. And Mario Kart for DS. And Mario Kart has like constant re-emerging cells. Well, you know, if it's a good game, great, you know. Great to see that Super Mario Brothers are still selling at large amounts this deep into their life cycles. You know, I'd be really interested in seeing how well Halo 3 is still selling. Yeah. Pretty well, actually, from my understanding. So, yeah, I mean, not only that, yeah, I guess that's true, I mean, maybe sometimes people who put a little too much emphasis on those first month sales. I'm very interested in seeing how games sell one year, two years, three years after they come out. I mean, one of the really big franchises over the last two console generations actually have had really good legs. Like, Grand Theft Auto has had, has typically had pretty good legs and the Halo games had legs in the duration of the Xbox. Yeah, you know, a lot of people were saying that Chinatown Wars, you know, didn't do that well on DS, but I'm, you know, I'm like, Jason, I'm interested in the picture, you know, a year out, how are the cells going to look. Yeah, but those are also games that have typically had extremely heavy debuts as well. Well, right, GTA is a brand, but GTA on DS, this is like the first one, so. Well, you know, you know, game sales are very similar to, you know, any sort of other type of BDS cells, you know, how much can you do as quickly as possible? You know, and frequently, you know, I think it's not just about bracket rights, but I also think it's a lot about, you know, propping up stock expectations and sales numbers and all that. Yeah, keeping the channel feel how much retail wants to keep it on the shelf because they have limited space and Walmart is such a huge retailer. So, Tyler, I want you to talk about what you've been playing, and specifically, I want you to talk about, about your first, your first Oops, your first PC gaming Oops. Oops, I had a, oh, moment this weekend with my PC gaming because I was, I was going to get red faction this weekend to play with you guys on my 360, but GameStop was close for inventory. So I was like, oh, okay, that's cool. So you could have like go to one of the other three or four game stops and whatever town you're at? Well, there's only two in San Francisco, and surprisingly, there's only two in San Francisco. Wow, we've got more than a double in it. It's only got 35,000 people in it. Right. But at the same time, and so it's sort of like that, that in itself just solved a quandary I was going over, which was to get red faction or to buy the 2K steam pack with, which had like all the CIV, four games, X, com, rail road type, BioShock, BioShock, it was 50 bucks. That's a great point. I've been thinking about picking it up even though I have a few of the games already in it. What's the date today? Today's the eighth. It ended yesterday. Yesterday, yeah. Ah, crap. Well, they saved you from yourself. I guess. So, so, so, so I picked that up because I'm, you know, I was a huge fan of, of civilization revolution, which was on 360, the UPS three and the, and then Nintendo DS. Because I was interested in CIV4, but I didn't have a PC. So this was sort of my first time to check it out. And, you know, I was telling Anthony like, yeah, man, I checked out CIV4 last night. So, and, uh, may I break in for a month? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tyler, how, how new are you to PC gaming? We brand new. And had you done any at all growing up? I mean, like, I would say like my PC gaming history has sort of like been the kid looking at the dog and through the window at the pet shop. Like I would go to friends house to play PC or if, you know, or maybe I could get Starcraft for run on my parents, you know? Okay. Junkie PC or something. You know, so it's just very desperate, you know, disparate sort of. Tyler, I've run Half-Life in software mode. I know you're pain. Right. It sounds amazing. But, um, but yeah, so, so I'm really fresh to, to PC gaming and I, and I'm really enjoying it because I've always felt like I really would just because some of the things you guys were talking about with the Starcraft two situations because of all the options that PC games give you. You know, like they give you just, you know, a lot of options. You know, not only like how do you want to display the graphics and everything, but, you know. Oh, yeah, no, exactly. You know, you know, what, you know, as much as console gaming has really changed in this generation when it comes to online play and the option it gives you, you still can't, you know, download mods and hackbacks and all these other alterations they can make to your games that you can make with your PC games. And not only that, but Tyler never really played RTS games or, you know, and Tyler. True. Tyler had really never played a first-person shooter with a mouse and keyboard setup. So now it's crisis with a 360 controller? Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know. If that's what you like, nothing wrong with that. But, I mean, you know, it's not totally true that I'm not experienced with RTS because that's probably the one genre on PC I've played the most as a kid growing up because things like... Don't you dare contradict me. Well, no, I mean, because like, things like Age of Empires are very easy run. Like, I remember specifically we had Age of Empires 3, StarCraft and World of Warcraft, the first one. Where did you just Warcraft? Warcraft. Warcraft. Yeah, not World of Warcraft. Okay. It was all World of Warcraft. Yeah. So, you know, I know my way around, you know, a PC RTS, but Civ 4 is a little bit different than the RTS that I'm used to because it's like turn-based, which also adds that like just one more turn. Yes, it does. You know, sort of play like, "Oh, I got a factory that's just about to be done and not allow me to make military, you know, machine guns." And so when I was playing, I was like, "Oh man, this is so good. And this literally happened to me. I'm not joking." I looked up for my screen and it was daylight outside and I was like, "Oh shit." And I looked at my game, saved the next day. I saved it at like 5.53 a.m. I was like, "Fuck dude, I came crawling back in the bed with my girlfriend." She was like, "Tyler, it's daylight out." So you've never done that with console games? Stayed up all night? I mean, sure I've done like console games, but like- It's like with friends over like a party. It was like where it was like, "Okay, I'm going to sit down and play this game." Well, it's a daylight. I didn't know it had occurred. Like when I'm playing my console games, like I'm sitting in front of my TV. I got other things in my periphery, you know, like maybe alarm clock, you know, maybe go get- But like, I felt maybe the experience with the PC since you're sitting in like a desk chair and it's more upright and you're closer to the monitor. That's a cocoon. I just did not even notice, and my monitor is in front of my fucking window. Why did I not see it getting daylight? That is a good thing. You know, you really can't bear yourself when you're playing on the PC, especially if you're playing with headphones on. And as I was, and like it's very, just playing Civ 4, it's almost like having NPR on all the time just with like classical music going in the background. And you got Leonard Nimoy occasionally talking to you. I thought, yeah, getting sexy in my ear. So, yeah. Unfortunately not saying about Bilbo Baggins. That game is- I was wondering if anyone's going to make that crack. How could I not? That game I thought was a- I mean, I've not played it this week around, but what civilization are you playing right now? Are you playing a- You're just playing the regular standards Civ 4, right? Not more lords or anything like that. Yeah, yeah. I wanted to start with the first one. Just to sort of get used to the differences between the console and the PC versions. So, right now, and I'm still through my first campaign even though, but I'm about to end it. There's like 45 turns left. Is there like, so like, there's a UN and all that now? Are you in control of the UN? I'm not, I'm just going like military. But there is a UN, right? Like, do they cast UN votes and stuff like that? No, no, I haven't got so far yet. Oh, so one civilization has to build the UN, and then after they build the UN, one of the ways you can win is becoming the UN majority leader for like X amount of turns. Uh-huh. And like, yeah, I was like such a tyrant. When I would do that, I would always vote. Like, it's like, you have 270 votes out of 1,000. I'd be like, me. I vote me. And then I would just like go into the other civilizations and be like, here, here's some optics, here's some gold. Like, vote me. Man, that sounds rad. Maybe I, I hope I didn't destroy the civilizations that we're supposed to, that we're trying to get there. You can always start over. Yeah, exactly. That's the thing about Save. Yeah, there's no story or anything. Right, right. And yeah, it's the story you make for yourself. Exactly. And that's the other thing is it's fun if you try and spend time winning other ways. Like, I pretty much always win by having like, the greatest overall civilization, but like, winning that time is building, like controlling the UN was cool or being the first to get into space. That's also a really cool way to win. But you really have to dedicate your whole society to like, getting into space. It's fun when you can win economically or when diplomatic compiles are supposed to military. I love taking cities just because my civilization is so great that they're like, we want to be a part of this. That is like, such a cool fact to me. Yeah, the first time I played Civ Rev on consoles, I, I would just do military victories just to get familiar with the game and then I would challenge myself with the other victories. And that's, that's basically what I'm doing here. Like, I figure like, whatever, I'm gonna just do like, global conquest and then come back and try to do culture victories. Now, did you ever play Civ Rev online? Or did you always play against the CPU? I just played against the CPU on the console. It seems like it'd be pretty intense to play online. Like, how long would that take? Right. And like, would players drop out all the time or stuff? Civ 4 is another game that if any time I've ever played it on Steam with another person was only a real-life friend because you got us a year in there for a long time. Right. So, I mean, that's just too intense otherwise. What else have you been hitting up? So, yeah, and then like, it's pretty much been like real-time strategy game for me all the way. Like, I checked out the copy of Black and White that you let me borrow. Is it Black and White or Black and White too? I let them borrow Black and White one because that was something I could find. Wow. Which subsequently crashed on them, which isn't that surprising. Yeah, it crashed. Yeah, that's like Windows. I think that supports Windows 95. It's like Windows 95, 98. I was like, I was like, all of those. I was like, you just loved trying to get that stuff properly. Really good me support for Black and White. Yeah, like basically the only way you'd probably find something to get Black and White work is if fans made a patch for it. And we're gonna be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised either, but yeah, I've been telling Tyler some other classic games. I wanted him to try Bungie's other franchise of myth that they used to do back in the day, the RTS, because apparently I found out from like a feedback mail submitted to games by that there's a community that keeps that game alive, including some people that actually work making games. So they've not only patched it to work in XP, but they've also completely redone the art. Like, new hand-drawn sprites by artists and stuff like that. Well, you know, they're-- Could they fix the issue that would format your hard drive if you tried to uninstall it? I don't know about that. Holy shit. Only one way to find out. Well, you know, I love seeing instances of communities of gamers coming together and keeping these whole games alive. I know there's a project with X-Wing Alliance. I did not know that. Where a group of started doing new artwork for high-res ship images and container images and stuff like that. In my opinion, if there's another company that could do the Nintendo route or something of re-releasing old games, it could be LucasArts. I would buy a lot of older LucasArts. I mean, they're moving in that direction considering-- Right. How does it today, several LucasArts games did come out on Steam? Speaking of which, did anyone download any of them? I have not yet, but I-- actually, I downloaded it. It's not LucasArts games, but I did download Tales from Monkey Island. Yeah. So, Episode 1, which I plan on playing. So, but I haven't downloaded the other ones yet. I mean, to get back to what you were saying, there's also, like, I think I saw today that there's this guy that, by himself, is taking Snatcher from the Sega CD and remaking it using the Crisis Engine? Yeah. Or the people that, for a long time, have been making a new mech warrior in the Crisis Engine. And there's also the team that's working on Black Mesa Source, which it would be awesome if that ever came out. Although, at this point, it's been in development as long as Half-Life 2 has been out. Right. Although, I still think it could come out before Half-Life 2, Episode 3. That was a very distinct possibility. It doesn't matter how long it takes. You know, if they get it out and it's in some sort of format that you can play it and enjoy it. Oh, yeah. I'm just complaining because I want to play it. I still have this small bug at my ass that they're saying episode in the title. Well, it's not episode. They almost have to now. I mean, you got to kill the torch. Otherwise, it should just be like Half-Life 2, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, really, instead of episodes. Well, at this point, they're saying that if they could go back and do it again, that they would have just made it. It is essentially Half-Life 3 with the inspirations. Right. Yeah, that's true. I'm still excited for it. So, now that you've been playing some RTS games on a PC, do you have a preference over RTS versus turn-based? You know, yeah. That is a good question. I think, well, here's the thing because another RTS game I'm playing at the moment is like Company of Heroes, which is like very, what I would call, like, stress-based. It's intense. Like, it keeps me, like, you know, like sometimes I feel like Palm sweating. I feel like I'm... Did I just... did a few hairs drop out of my head when I was playing that? Clunging your fists tight that the fingernails are making impressions of your palm. It's true. I do feel a little bit bad when I play with Tyler sometimes because I'm like, "Hey, man, you need to do this." This unit is standing still. Why is there a unit standing still in the title? Sergeant Chuff. Yeah, I don't mean to. No, no. And it's not just that, you know, it's also internally like, "Oh, am I even playing it right?" But then with the turn-based, you know, what I enjoy about that is just like, "I can really take my time." And I'm probably like you in a lot of ways, Jason, and that, like, I will also get lost in side quests, you know, in games that allow them, you know, just because I like to take my time, you know? Yeah. I like to enjoy it. It's slow, I, you know, I drink slow, I, you know, I like to enjoy it. Dragon Age Origins is going to steal your soul. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I can imagine it will. Because it can be real-time or turn-based. Like, you can zoom Dragon Age Origins. And I've played it and it's definitely a better turn-based. And you can zoom it so far out that it looks like the Baldur's Gate games did. Uh-huh. I love the Baldur's Gate series. I love Icewind Dale. I loved it for Winter Nights. But I never liked the real-time combat that these games have. Come on, Jason, this is the new shit. Uh-huh. Did any of you play the Temple of Elemental Evil that came out in 2002, I believe? Wasn't that game broken? Like, I think it got, like, 3's and 4's because it was the most broken D&D game ever, which is saying something. I don't know if it's the most broken D&D game ever, but it's been patched and folks in the community have kept it alive, have done stuff to it. It runs pretty well today. And that is just true turn-based D&D combat. Which, you know, if you try to modify that into a real-time circumstance, I just don't feel like it works as well as it was designed to because it's a turn-based system. Mm-hmm. So, and in that same way, company heroes, like the World War II sort of weapon sets almost works better in the real-time than it would like. It's true. I've played some turn-based WW2 games and they were pretty bad. Yeah. So, but yeah, so you said, so I guess that's true. I kind of feel the same way as you that it depends what I want to play. Like, when I go and do a game of company heroes, it is pretty stressful. Like, for me, I can know in, like, the first two minutes if I've already screwed something up, especially when I'm playing with people that are, like, a really high caliber. Whereas you're right, Civ is, like, a game. All right, it's put on my headphones and you can get up, go get something to drink, eat some food. Yep. That is pretty much like the T-party of PC gaming. Mm-hmm. That's my quote. That's my quote. I've never heard anyone describe Civ as a T-party. My, what a lovely T-party. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm interested, like, what are the, what are all the expansions? Like, there's, like, Warlords, colonization. Warlords, as far as I know, just adds, like, it adds, like, Vikings and the Mongolians and a bunch of other, like, leaders, like, Germany, like, it'll still have, like, America, but they'll add, like, a third president that, like, FDR that led during the war. Mm-hmm. Stuff like that. FDR is, is there in the, in the original? Oh, is he? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because I also bought this, the... For sure, it adds new civilizations, like Vikings and I think it adds, like, it might add the Zulu or they might be in the original, I don't remember. I don't think they are. But, uh, but yeah, and then as far as I can tell, people are a little bit crazier with the military in it. I'm not positive, but that's sure how it seems. People would definitely fight a lot more than they might do in other Civ games. But I, I can't really tell you, because I tend not to play Warlords. I tend to just play regular old vanilla Sim as Civ. Civ. Yeah, I haven't downloaded any of the expansions yet. I'm perfectly happy with vanilla Civ. I want to try Beyond the Sword, because that gets like, that's like, starts you off way more in the future, I think. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I kind of have a fascination with that, because I like the idea if we can fight with Laserguns or something. Yeah, but that's what Galactic Civilizations is for. If I want space, that's what I'll play. That's true. Yeah. And that's another game you should play Galactic Civilizations. Yeah, it's like, that was a game that had like no copy protection, still sold really well. Is that a Sid Meier civilization game, or it just happens to happen? No, it was just a, it was like the, yeah, it was, it was like the precursor to Sims with Solar Empire. Oh, okay. Cool. But it was turn-based on like Sims with Solar Empire. It's real-time. It's a real-time game. It's a real-time game. It's a real-time game. No, you can play against just computers. Well, yeah, but there's no like campaign. There's nothing there. Well, it's just like, it's just like, so four. I mean, there is no campaign. It's just you set up a, you set up a universe and in you go. Mm-hmm. So, so you've been hitting up anything besides the PC games lately? I haven't, but I will be hitting a battlefield tonight. Oh, that's right. 1943. I think. 1943. And it is, it is very good. Although earlier, I know they were having some server problems, but I think it's fixed by now. Yeah, I think they might have just gotten overwhelmed. Probably, I mean, I guess. I mean, be free copy. Well, that and it's kind of a pain only at first because you, to play you have to, you know, you have an Xbox Live account and then to play you have to sign in with an EA account. And then once you signed in once with it, it's always there. But if you've ever, I don't understand how you needed to do that again, because we played battlefield modern combat. Different console. Just a different console. On 360. But it was a different console, physical, physically a different console. I, I didn't have to do any of that for Tiger Woods or fight. Yeah, I don't know. I had to. I had to sign up for my EA account. But like beyond that, I don't know, maybe it was a failure on EA account side. Could be. But it had some problems there, but that game is great, man. Four maps, but they're just four really, really well designed maps. And I have become a fighter ace in that. Like now when my plane gets damaged, most people just bail out and parachute into a town. I go and land on my aircraft carrier, get out and repair it, and then I'm back in the air. Soaring again. We'll have flying planes in that game. Plus, you know, it's so funny because you'll see really realistic things. Like someone will be riding into jeep and you'll see a plane come to a bombing run. And then you'll see something totally ridiculous, like a guy that just bails out of a plane and parachutes and lets the plane go like floating off into the water. Like no one do that in real war, but Battlefield has like that mix of kind of absurd that's still fun. You can't wing ride. So which is a big thing from the old battlefield games, getting on the wings of someone else's plane. Well, they, well they flew and riding him as a little posse. Right. And Battlefield Heroes. Yeah. Battlefield is a series I just never been able to get into. It is, it is pretty much if you don't like competitive stuff too. I mean, because that's all it is, just highly competitive and that's another game that's kind of stressful because it's constantly like such a back and forth all the time. Like I have yet to play a game in Battlefield 1943 that was really one sided. It's always like right down to the wire. So. So are the three, are you going to play that on your 360? Yeah, I imagine so. Yeah, I don't know. Is that even coming out to PC? I don't think it is. No. It's coming on PSN. PSN yeah. But it comes out to tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. It was a, it was a daily. So I mean, if anything, I would eventually pick it up for both so that we could play with people in the community on both, but for my primary one's definitely going to be through 60. I don't like using the PS3 controller for shooters like that if I can help it. All right. I like the PS3 controller for shooters, but only if I, only shooting with the top shoulder button on the bottom. I think it's not the shoulder buttons, it's the sticks. So yeah, Arthur doesn't like stick placement. Arthur like stick placement like GameCube controllers or 360 ones or it's got the high level. It's gone to the point where I'm actually considering buying a PS3 controller that has sticks that are laid out like a 360 controller. Oh. Yeah. Which they do sell, but unfortunately it doesn't have any motion sensitivity off the six axis used anymore. Same one stupid arbitrary way in fucking every game. It's true. Like in Killzone, it was like used to turn a wheel. That was like the fucking arm bombs in the most arbitrary way possible. So yeah. That's a sensitive spot. What have you been playing? I also played some Civ. I did not lose a day. I just lost like six hours. That's still good. That's a healthy amount of Civ right there. It took me a few tries to really get into the swing of things. Like the first couple of times I didn't get my ass kicked the first time. I just didn't win like I was in like third or fourth place. Right. You just got everyone else took all the land before you could? No. I guess it just, I didn't play aggressively enough. Like I didn't, I didn't research the things the right way because this is still before I really understood how the research process works. So everyone else is going around and horse-drawn buggies and your people were like still walking the streets with. It was weird. I had a high technology level but I was just missing certain things that I felt like I should have. I was like I have no high tech military units at all. And then I realized that oh because I have to fucking research rifling specifically. What sense does that make? I can make jeeps and not guns. And then the next game I think I got invaded pretty early and so it quit. See that's what happened to me and that last time I told you that it always throws me for a loop when they do that. And then finally I didn't hit my stride until ironically enough I was the Germans. So that's who I started with. Well it is kind of just important to pick out like what civilization. I just wanted to do it at random because I don't have any traits. You gotta mind that. Like Monazuma is kind of cool at first because he gets those swordsmen with the big scary Jaguar skins. Oh the Jaguar guys. Yeah. Now do you have a favorite suit? I don't know if Rev is the only other sub game that I played. No I mean of the civilizations. Oh I mean I've only played with like three at this point. Which was the Americans, the Russians and the Germans. I was going to say I like to play as the Japanese a lot of times. I think that the Germans seem cool to me because I'm like oh they get panzers so. As a special unit. Yeah and that's when I figured out that instead of doing upgrades one at a time like research things one at a time I could go to the big map and just say well this is what I want to be able to do. I do not know that. It will research everything you need to know to do that thing. Oh I did not know that I'm just kind of I just go with like whether I want to work military or economy I just like and right now I want to work my economy. But then there's like I think I had to research like religion to make a tank. Yeah. So because I think you had to get some religion and you had to get to code of laws or something like that and code of laws which allowed yeah it's all about. So it just seems like doing things one at a time is kind of the sucker bet. So did your country have an established religion or was it more like they just adopted what other religions kind of infiltrated. There were just a bunch of different religions in my country and it was like okay they can be Buddhist and those guys can be driven down the law as far as that goes. You like setting a state? I actually like yeah my favorite civilization I ever did was an Aztec civilization that was all Jewish. They founded Judaism and they maintained Judaism. Other people would come in and be like we want you guys to adopt like a Islam and be like no we're Jewish all right get out of here. And then I would I love sending Jewish missionaries into their towns to convert them. So the lost tribe yeah we're exactly where the lost tribe yeah I remember being frustrated that I researched ICBMs and couldn't figure out how to use them. Yeah I did that too one time I researched nukes and ICBMs and I was like all right now how do I nuke someone I've never used nukes instead I thought that I you you you click on the town that you researched it in and then if you go in your build order and you look in your build orders they should it should be there no I built several ICBMs like nuclear weapons all over right and then you couldn't figure out how to use them at all see that that was the part that bothered me and that another time when I did it I built the nukes and like right when I built nukes someone else built the UN and the first thing the past was a non-proliferation treaty really so yeah then it was like that yeah that was actually one of the first things I got to in my in my playthrough right now I'm playing through as the as the Germans as well and right now I'm in a war with Egypt and oh fuck I can't remember what other country some of it the Persians you just crazy per unit yeah and I've I did a nuclear strike on the Egyptian capital huh how I'm saying you click on the city after you build the the nuke and then I believe that's in your build order and you click on it and it's like what city you want to attack but you have to you you attack come from I mean I still have that game saved even though I don't get ICBMs you can still drop nukes I think with long distance bombers - no but you can build no incorrect because I have fucking stealth bombers and all they can do is bombard cities or do like bombing runs on units oh incorrect so besides if besides if you've been playing anything I finished Call of Waras spend blood which is probably after playing it the the story and the characters are some of the best I've seen in the game in a really really long time interesting how so the dialogue between the brothers is extremely believable there's a lot of good banter where they're antagonistic but also supportive I mean like basically if you've had brothers or close friends that you've interacted with and like there's always that slight bit of a sort of competition or tension but there's also like I've got your back and you've got mine and like screw you asshole and then the next minute it's like oh shit so what you know yeah it's all cover you it's all I mean in the AI plays well which is good because otherwise it would make the omission of co-op even more egregious but but the dialogue is really good the story is it's not completely original but it's in a video game it's not something that you're accustomed to seeing and and at first when I started playing one of the things it was really interesting about the first call waras is that you're playing from two very different sides of the same narrative which is the person chasing in the chase and in this you're just two brothers that are together all the time so you think well how does that what kind of conflict can be there but then you become two brothers that are separated by the same woman and they're both sympathetic and in their ways in which they they covet this person even though it's very clear right off the bat that one of them will get her and the other won't but he doesn't know that and then there's the third brother who's the the the brother who had to leave the seminary to to take care of the farm during the civil war and he's the religious one and he's the one quoting the bible and so there's this dynamic between the three brothers where they care about each other but they're always sort of in conflict and that's an awfully complicated narrative style to have in a game especially and the ending you probably see how the the story is going to end but it's still manages the prize here and there and you there's moments of suspense and surprise but uh but yeah I mean everything just works really well narratively speaking which is good because occasionally they're the the last part of the game playing as thomas who is the weaker of the two characters he's the good long range fighter um I came inches away from throwing my like bouncing my controller off of the wall I talked to matt channon a friend of the podcast and area five person and I asked him how hard the last section was for him and he said it was super easy and that made me feel like an asshole well he was also playing like and yeah he was playing his ray who has a fucking piece of armor on his chest and cannons in his hands whereas the last guy would one shot me basically at will so um but uh it's good I'll probably play it again to get the the other side of the story and so far as it varies and it was a lot of fun so if a piece of armor on his chest and cannons his arms I guess this game doesn't always be he can carry gatling guns he can carry gatling guns I have a fucking lasso and he can carry gatling guns but uh but yeah I mean the even the villains are generally multifaceted and moderately sympathetic with possibly one exception and they don't always do what you expect them to do so narratively speaking it's probably one of the most successful games I've played this console generation now does the game fit the era pretty well it was a good depiction of I mean I it is as if it's it as well as a game could um I mean you have rifles that seem like there may be a few years past where they should be where I'm not spending like two minutes reloading like a muzzle loaded musket from the Civil War but uh I mean the all the weapons have very clear identities and they they feel like six shooters and there are not different six shooters that have different abilities that they're they feel distinct um and some of them reload different ways and it it all feels really good and the last mechanic is dumb but you're not forced to do it very often and so I mean it's really good the voice acting is generally really good um with the exception of the parts where there are just some games you know that they recorded voices in separate rooms and then put them together later and there are definitely points like that where there are sort of awkward gaps between dialogue but um yeah it's just another example of a of someone in a foreign kind of a place a creative force in another country doing a really interesting story about our west fair enough so is that all you've been a lot of fight night and I actually wanted to ask tower something because the chatter I've been seeing online is that uh people were bitching about the controls they say the controls are broken well now they're really excited that they're doing DLC later in the year that adds face button support I think a lot of people probably feel like the snapping a stick in a certain direction they're like I can never do the punch I want to do or something like that and and I was the same way at first I'm tired have you been having issues at you know at first maybe maybe I would do a straight when I was trying to do a jab but I mean it's just like with anything else with just a little bit of muscle memory you you get used to it like what I would do actually um I would go into the training mode to make sure I was always doing the punches I would want to do and not the training in legacy mode but the training from the menu that doesn't count for anything yeah exactly you can just go into training from the main title menu and just do all the training games which I highly recommend so you don't waste your training sessions because you only get so many in your legacy yeah yeah for sure yeah I also recommended that in my my cheats super good in my cheats super good I mean it's a game of of of skill in that respect it's not a game that you can just bully your way through and and retry and retry yeah and like one thing I wonder how they're gonna do with the buttons is I don't I don't know if you notice this but like each punch has sort of like two ways to execute it you can either do it slowly and he'll just punch normally or if you do it fast and and sort of like you know like doing it like you're assured like this is the punch I want have the punch faster you know hey it'll have a snap to it yeah exactly and so I don't know how you do that with the face buttons and and also I feel that with the analog controls it kind of keeps it in the pacing of realistic boxing whereas as opposed to a street fighter yeah whereas yeah if you have face buttons you're just kind of you know and I don't know what that's supposed to mean any of you heard that that he was doing I think he meant bigger booger he's astounding cockroach to be fair you can't scurry across an analog stick yeah exactly it that yeah that's what I mean you have to and and and and in a way it's more like boxing like you have to commit to your punches you have to decide this is the punch I'm gonna do whereas it's it's it's not the difference between like pressing the wire or the A button the only the only thing control wise it's frustrated me in it after learning the as I was talking to Jason or before you guys got here after learning the idiosyncrasies of the controls is that the controls are sort of dial in combos where if you snap punches faster on the stick than your person can deliver them then he will do every command that you input before he'll stop right and that can really fuck you if he counters and then slaps you in the side of the head mm-hmm but as far as the controls go I find that I figured out that when when it showed the problem is that it shows all the the controls in a sort of eight direction sort of layout where it's strictly 45 degrees and in each direction or strictly 90 degree angles whereas the controls are more like if you want to do say an uppercut or a low body shot instead of hitting 45 degree angles to the left you want to hit like 20 degree angles like leaning more towards down on the stick and then moving up right and and once I learned that everything started clicking a lot more especially the training modes where you're you're doing out combos mm-hmm once you know that then it seems much easier to get done what you want to do now Arthur Tyler do you guys play a lot of sports game no which is the funny thing about this is that I mean Tyler has played a fair amount of sports games I think not that many I mean not a whole lot but you and I have sort of like been in the strange situation where we both played the recent Tiger Woods and we're both playing fight night where we don't I mean I I played the skate games like I you know I do like there are some fringe sports titles that I really get into you know but I'm not an every year Madden kind of guy I mean it's starting to dawn on me that one of the the itch that these games are scratching to me is similar to the itch that Ninja Gaiden black scratched for me which is that they're very of the moment skill based games that that force reaction time as well as is a heightened level of skill and that the more skill you have and the more time you put into it the more you're getting out of it which sort of blew my mind that all of a sudden I started looking at Ninja Gaiden like it almost like a sports game and that probably sounds really strange no I mean somebody who's been involved with sports my whole life the one way or another it makes a lot of sense to me you know got practice for it to get good yeah I mean it most other action games the enemies exist as things for you to destroy and Ninja Gaiden is there these are things that you compete against and it is this in word scratches racing games as well yeah I once I I had a lot of frustration with the training modes and in fight night and with certain certain fights because that I didn't understand why my punches weren't working the way that I expected them to but once I I went into the the train the free training mode that doesn't count for anything and really started putting time into learning how the controls work is when I started enjoying the game more and getting less frustrated and I also felt that training modes were really well designed to teach you what you're doing wrong I felt like they were showing me you know like I felt like they had enough feedback to where you know for example like I knew I was doing the right punches during the punch bag combo because you know it lights up all the combos and you know yeah go all the way through or like one thing I realized as a fighter I didn't move around in the ring at all so like when I was doing the the double ended bag where you have to like move to one position and punch moved to another it sort of like made me think in a different way like oh you know I got to keep busy I gotta keep on my feet and so in that way it improved my game and the the commentators during matches are actually pretty good about telling you oh maybe I should start doing that because they'll say he's not moving his head at all and the other guy is moving his head for him with his fists or maybe he should he's just not landing anything you know he should try doing counter punching and it's like oh that might be a good idea because this guy does so much more damage than me on every fucking punch right and which is helpful when you go into the ring and it looks like fucking something from fucking punch out where you were like two thirds of this guy's size my fighter is 5'11 and I'm fighting dudes that are almost seven feet tall that have 10 inches of reach on me do you do you have your boxer as a long or short reach boxer he's a long reach I don't know he's I think he is because man when you match up using his people they got like six inches on you a lot of times your reach is only like two inches apart I have his reach is 73 really see he's a heavy weight so 73 isn't that long for heavy weight from the left yeah which is why like there are so many situations where he is dwarfed by people he's like 200 pounds and 5'11 and I'm going against people that are like six seven and 240 pounds but because I did the training and like listen to the cues and learn the controls I can actually get knockouts usually so yeah I didn't mean to interrupt you no no it's gonna say so I I've actually been playing a sports game too which Tyler can talk about which well I mean I consider sport I mean there's some people probably don't but you know I've been playing the UFC game I would say UFC is probably more of a legitimate sport at this point than boxing is in a lot of people's minds and not as a game but as an as you see they make a big spectacle out of it but they are still athletes doing their thing oh yeah I mean you wrestlers are still athletes it's just that's sports entertainment yeah exactly in every outcome with you see that they I still think it is I mean to me it's a sport for sure it's very athletic the competitors can be very skilled are you saying that the outcome is predetermined no I'm just saying I'd rather watch boxing why is that Jason as someone who covered sports I'm just curious it's more of a science there's more of an art to boxing for me and this is part of the whole myth of boxing and one of the attractions that boxing's had for such a long time especially in England or in America it has has been you know it's two guys just their fists and who can knock down the other with the best technique or be it just you know just bum rushing him right working within a very limited framework whereas in UFC you know it's just so much so much more open to me it's just brawling I know I know that there's a lot of technique involved especially with especially with some of the mixed martial arts that they do and these guys do this amazing amount of training not only to keep themselves as fit as they are but to master those techniques but for me it's just not attractive it's just you know two fists I can understand that yeah I mean I I guess there that there is a certain part of me that likes that whole brawling aspect of it at the same time plus I really like fighting with kicks so that's why I really like UFC I really really like feet fighting so I made I made the closest approximation to myself which I did five foot six but five foot six you have to be like like you have to be 170 the weight classes are all you cannot be yeah you cannot be more than 170 because I'm obviously more than 170 yeah I weigh like I weigh like 185 and so no and and so yeah I want to do some five foot six 170 welterweight and it's like the same thing you're going through Arthur we're like a welterweight I'm at the very bottom of the wake and I'm dwarfed height wise all the time because even a lot of the guys that weigh similar to me they're more lanky so my guys like this short little little stout little Mexican dude El Toro I use the same the same name as you coming up next El Toro el Toro yeah what made you give UFC a try that doesn't seem like something you would plug it isn't really um but I had heard it was it was excellent it got lots of excellent reviews it sold a fuck ton of copies and I mean I used to watch UFC because I lived with a guy who did mixed martial arts oh yeah he used to come home looking pretty mangled sometimes skinny guys fight like they're burger yeah and so uh and then Tyler we I ended up picking up a copy and Tyler played it um and you know it's just hearing Tyler tell the stories about it I mean I used to take some martial arts back in high school and stuff so I have a fascination with it and uh I actually like the fact that it is so complex like when you first get in there's like a 12 part tutorial and you need all that and then you probably need to go back and do it again I did yeah I especially when especially when you're talking about grappling I mean the actually the last time I played like I've been playing UFC for weeks now I just went through the grappling tutorial all over again just because I really want to try to understand that system because that's my main complaint about UFC is the grappling to me feels a little uh a little too abstract and abstract I don't know whereas it's true I'm more of a stand-up fighter the whole time yeah it's kind of weird because THQ does the WWE games it's true but this game was designed by a studio out of Japan like it's done by a totally different group isn't that it's a studio it yukes has done like WWE games like yeah they did SmackDown right then they do I don't know see like they did the N64 I think I've heard some people say that the ground fighting and if they really like it so I guess I don't really know because I'm more like you I'm more about the stand-up fighting is really good but it is pretty crazy that they managed to like make a game that is good that not only has like like you have to sit there and think about strikes to lower part strikes to the upper part and then how that completely changes whether you're holding someone or on their back or whether you're you're holding someone by their neck yeah like all these things change like I actually really your your character would need to focus on that more because one of your advantages of being short is that your center of gravity is so much lower well for me I'm a striker but I but the good thing about my guys I can fight really close range and still throw punches and a lot of times they can't but do you your your boxer yeah I do I do kickboxing actually okay I knock people out with my feet all the time yeah that's what quick jabs up to the kidneys is that what you do yeah like I do a lot of body kicks too to when they come close to me which is something nice and you'll see that I'm finding sort of lacking in fight night which is that I wanted to try to play the Joe Frazier typeboxer that like destroys the other person's body to the point where they're almost paralyzed by round eight but it's just not working that and just and you see that just the mechanics they put in like if you hit the right stick and you're holding one button it'll do something it'll like do a close grapple whereas if you're doing it another way it'll do a takedown like it's just so complex but it works so or it'll do a uh a clinch where you can like you're grabbing their head and you could just punch your head or do knees if you're guys like and you see too there's a lot of blood and you see but that that I think that's kind of almost more important in a way because uh there's no health bar so the only way you can tell how you're doing a lot of times is by the way your guy looks and how he's moving so if he's slowing beat up his hell you know that oh you know you need to sit there and back up yeah and try and get away I don't know like this isn't a game that if you're if you're like a teenager you don't want your parents to walk by the door and see you playing if you're on top of some guy and it's pounding your fist it's true because unlike boxing it is it is way less elegant like there are definitely times that I knock a guy down but he's not out which and UFC happens and then what happens and UFC the guy runs on top of him and starts punching him till the judge calls it yeah and that happens in this too I mean there are in a way when I think about the way you were it is true like UFC sometimes is is very much like two cavemen beating on each other sometimes they could be brutal yeah it could be brutal and it shines and you're walking into injuries though you know and it's not so many hits to the head yeah and and it takes and it's like one hit to the head knocks you out as opposed to unboxing where you're gonna get hit like 50 times distributed force leading making you punch drunk you know if there's you know if there is one thing that that I've sometimes have shamed about might how much I enjoy boxing it's the state that all these blows to the head leaves the competitors in especially after years and years yeah like a poor Muhammad Ali yeah Joe Frazier's not doing too well as I'd say to let me know if you speak at the very least but yeah he's not he takes so much punishment so yeah that's pretty much the main game I've been playing um so here's an interesting question you know all these podcast it's always what you've been playing what haven't you been playing that you really wish you had this one I was just thinking about this as a topic the other day actually well you start right there um as in what do I want to play or what am I what's sitting on my shelf unopened yeah yeah what do you know something that you wish you could be playing but you haven't but you kind of like you know why am I not playing this uh I'm kind of going back and forth on Ghostbusters yeah I mean we have sitting on my shelf but like today I actually took the shrink wrap off but I didn't get past the sticker on the side oh god because I was opening it and I was thinking uh I'm gonna be busy all weekend and I have so much capture to do for the last hitman episode you didn't play explosion man I didn't play explosion man which is probably good because it's been going for a long time that's another game that I like to play I didn't play battlefield 43 on on our our debug well and I can't it's been disabled as soon as the real game came in and I'm a little sad that I didn't but I just never had a chance to get around to it yeah yeah what about you Tyler mate um Team Fortress 2 you gifted that to me it's true and I have not been playing that very much and part of it's just my uh my clumsiness with was the and mouse controls you know having not you know just not feeling adequate knowing how good I am on a controller when I feel like a complete nude you know yeah probably that one I have never played my copy of TF2 really like I played the console version I played it at someone else's house like once and other than that that's not because I hate it yeah I guess uh for me the one besides sacred 2 now I'm thinking of it I really want to play is uh I keep meaning to play more salmon max I mean I played a little bit yesterday yeah but that's like the one game that is perpetually on my that I want to be playing because I'm so far behind on it I'm not even in season two and tell tell make so many great games that like after I finish having max I actually want to play like even the Wallace and Gromit games just because I hear they're good so for me I played two weeks ago a lot of red faction oh man red we can't make this the red faction get cast again but I haven't touched it this week and that's because I've been playing you know so much of heroes when I've been playing in my single player time right that I just completely shoved red faction to the side and I was really digging in I had a lot of fun with it you know I just loved running around Mars and smashing things with my hammer I would just do that for an hour you play on casual or normal I played casual I heard uh there's this divide in the red faction community I've been noticing about whether you play casual or normal yeah like on the when I was on co-op when uh Matt and John were talking about yeah I really love the upgrade system like when we were playing through we got so much scrap I we were able to buy every upgrade I was like I was quiet at that point because I remember thinking I struggled for scrap the entire game and then I talked to Nick Suttner hello Nick uh who was also playing on normal and talked to me because he wanted to know how the fuck I finished it because the last section is so hard and I asked him and he said no I've had a problem with scrap the entire game uh so I guess it was because you guys played normal yeah see I don't care about finishing it I don't care about how much scrap I get I just want to know stuff like how many bombs do I need to place to bring down this building how long can I run around about getting killed smashing things and I definitely start caters to that impulse quite well it does I love about it I have you ever a game that you might be really good for you but the person that has those sort of compulsions to sit there and figure out stuff like that did you ever play that game for PS3 called Elefunk no I haven't Elefunk is is basically like you that you have X amount of pieces to build a bridge that this elephant can make it from point A to B and a lot of times you got it you got to make it just right or else the way to collapse kind of like world to go yeah I think in a lot of ways that would like totally jazz that compulsive party that sounds like a lot of fun it is really fun but I guess in game right yeah yeah yeah you know as much fun as I've had with red faction I haven't touched it because I've just been into other things yeah I mean I have it sitting a string crap on my shelf right now and you know this is so funny I mean here we are we're in July and in past years in the summers you know throughout it's catch up time yeah it's catch up time yeah it's been a fucking amazing year this has been a great year for games you know I would think what maybe 2000 2001 or maybe 1998 was the last time it was you know just so many good games coming out so many different titles I remember I feel like last year we thought well there's been a decent amount of games and then in 2007 we were everyone was excited that Bioshock came out in August but this year it's just been there's there's been a steady amount of games every month that have been really great to keep everyone busy and a variety of games you know and they're not just coming out of these big blockbuster you know titles for platforms you know a wonderful downloadable game this is the slowest period right now where it's just downloadable periods really through July like but next week you have the remake of Monkey Island so I mean and then in August I think you I think well I think in August is when Batman finally comes out yeah and I heard that that game is way too good that's what I heard like that comment that the guy that's made about the CEO talking about how he expects to get Nines I heard that's not totally unreasonable from the people that played it and that was from Ryan Scott who you know Ryan Scott's a little bit of a hater so rebel of them breaking embargo since January 2009 that's not a bargain we put up a preview about it did you okay yeah you can read Ryan Scott's preview on GameSpy it's yeah but Ryan either loves something or hates it it's true but it's an excellent point but if Ryan's going to hate something it's going to be a DC license game oh yeah no and this is like one that he just said really makes you feel like Batman so I don't know I'm pretty excited I don't know I thought I and I know someone I saw the most inappropriate joke to make about this right now and I've known various people who worked on the game and they also said it was pretty good I'll tell it I'll tell it during the break oh don't tease it like no no because this is so totally inappropriate on that note I think that yeah we'll take a break we'll kick and then we'll come back and talk about games writing and see what that takes us in journalism in general oh yeah. [Music] I got nobody in my side I'm sure that he ran away [Music] [Music] and we're back and so we're going to talk about games journalism journalism in general and some writing and I think it's important that you know people who listen to show know about us but they don't really know about Jason and and you know a lot of people follow this podcast because of one up and EGM and all that and you know towards the what the last two years of all that like I joined ijoins of davis in july of 2006 so from 2006 to win july 2006 to win all that bad stuff went down basically uh if anything you read on one up with the exception of very few people was really good it's like at least 25 to half percent due to people like Jason and Andrew Fitch I wouldn't say 25 and a half percent 25 to 50 percent no I wouldn't say that we had a lot of good people we had a lot of people but there are some people that I mean the broken-call names are there I'm just saying that there were times that you made people legible so well I was the copy chief ads of davis before the layoffs hit and before that I'd spent eight years either as a reporter and editor or copy editor in newspapers mostly working in sports yeah what newspapers did you work for I started a community weekly in meringue called the nivato advance and then took my first step into daily journalism at the reading record searchlight and then I came to the meringue printer journals covering sports always yeah sports copy desk is what it was what I was doing and copy editing was something that I never thought I would have been doing but when I was in college I always wanted to be a beat reporter but the older I got the more satisfying you became and it just seemed like that's what I was most comfortable doing helping people become better writers and helping people become better editors I agree with that I was really looking forward to writing coach lessons that we had all planned out before the layoffs happened oh yeah I was developing a whole lecture series for for for for some of the less experienced folks in our office at the time of the layoffs and it was really sad it was so excited about it I had just the less experienced people huh just the less experienced it was geared for them but it was for everyone because there was a fair group of us that are yeah there were there was a lot of really you know people who were really getting started fresh talent yeah fresh talent would be a good way to say it so I guess let's I think that one of the best ways to do this kind of just go over the points that the Jason kind of laid out now before we get started we're not gonna we're not going to pick out anything that is you know bad in particular about anyone's writing or any outlets writing we're gonna be talking more on a general scale we'll do that next week though oh okay nine another week you know right now and I'm gonna I'm gonna acknowledge yourself you know just as we kick this off this is this is such a trying time for journalism via gaming journalism via mainstream journalism via any sort of journalism you want to do and everyone who's in it be at the enthusiast press in the mainstream press are under you know more trying times than they've ever been and everyone is right now really trying to do their best with such limited resources right and one of those limited resources is editing editors are getting you know especially copy editors are getting fired left and right in layoffs and and even some of the really good ones are losing their jobs in copy editing circles there are some guys who stand out as stars for example the copy chief at the Baltimore Sun was laid off in April and he is considered one of the better copy editors of the country and when people like him are losing their jobs you know it's a really really tough time because he he's a teacher and he was just really good at helping people edit you know and not caring about you know the little copy editor things like you know over and more than and stuff like that you know just basic editing what makes a good story better I mean at this point we're sort of on the precipice of seeing some of the journalistic institutions fail I think right now oh you definitely right now I think it's between probably the Boston Globe and the Baltimore Sun to see who who falls first probably the Boston Sun those I mean the Boston Globe out of those two things are going right now what they didn't negotiate yeah they've been in really rough negotiations for a while and I think there was a deadline either yesterday or today or something like that yeah and you know I think you know here the barrier where we live and call our home you know let's have to screw chronicles and fairly dire straits there's rumors of media news which is one of the larger chains and newspapers in this country it's a private owned chain that's not I did not know that I've never heard of this name media news well San Jose Mercury News ideally you'll never hear those names though they don't want you to know their names they want you to associate your local paper with people who live there yeah yeah but I mean you know it's like you know it's just like a gaming journalist I mean how many of these outlets are owned by large corporations yeah I think I think honestly I one-up might have been one of the last ones that was owned by a smaller company in the city and I was you know that was part of the problem well they were previously owned by a publishing giant so well a one-time publishing giant yeah so you know what we're going to talk about or some of the things that that we all see as as issues that that you know journalists especially the enthusiasts pressed are facing these days and things that you know kind of go right at the quality of the work that's being produced and you know and again you know it's just these challenges of how do you get readers in this internet environment where you have so many options and you face this huge pressure on delivery of content so just to contextualize this a little bit we get a lot of letters from people saying well how do I write about games how do I get better at writing about games like how do I break in this is where you sit down and pay attention to Papa Jason well I wouldn't quite say that uh I feel like one we get a lot of letters from people asking like can you read my stuff can you tell me how to write better and what is good writing yeah um and it's it's often for people who write just who write and then submit their stuff to copy it can be kind of a nebulous thing to say well this is what good writing is outside of just basic concepts whereas editors tend to have more specific ideas about well this is a mistake I see a lot this is a mechanical thing well okay well here are some good rules for writers these rules are from the man I was mentioning under the former copy chief of the Baltimore Sun John McIntyre he has a blog called you don't say it's a must read if you care about quality of writing I have seen you link it a couple times and it is he's a curmudgeonly old bastard he's very good and he's very knowledgeable but here is you know five good rules for writer first one right the way a literate informed adult would talk it seems simple you know you know right the way that you would expect someone to talk to you you know without you know using all these little means about using all these little insight jokes it goes down to to you know the kernel of writing right clear you know communicate what it is you want to say in a way that your readers can understand what you're writing second point shun jargon shun journalies and the enthusiast pressed and the mainstream press both they do this a lot they wrap what they're doing and the little buzzwords that they use and the jargon that they use the jargon that the people they talk to and interview use um that's a big one right there that's a big one and it's it's bad in the gaming press because you're talking to folks who you know in their offices as they're developing games you know they're using this jargon all the time to communicate and they understand what it means but people who reading it may not understand well and the reason that jargon and and memes come around is they're sort of shortcut to understanding you assume that your audience knows something so you can just instead of laying out a paragraph that says this is what this means you just say internet or series of tubes instead of sort of espousing oh well there are a lot of people that are really ignorant about the way the internet works and so we say series of tubes but but jargon what do you think about it um if you don't know a jargon for something like for example well i'm going to use sports writing for my for for this just purpose of this discussion if you wrap up something in on base percentages and slugging percentages if you don't know what that means and you see this you know stat ops what's that telling you about what you're reading yeah how much should we go ahead not this i've read some sports game reviews where i was like wow i really don't understand this yeah and i mean i understand the need to cater stuff to your readers you know especially when it's a niche but at the same time what if somebody just could be interested in something and they don't understand what it is they're reading well okay so how do you balance not assuming that your audience is familiar with something with not being overly pedantic in your description of that that's that's the challenge that is the challenge because you need to understand who your readership is yeah i mean in in a lot of the submissions that we've gotten for the site one of the things that i see on on a regular basis is that there are people that are speaking as if they were explaining a game to someone who would never touch the controller before yeah and and i understand the impulse to want to be clear because that's something that they that they nail into you and on a lot of college and high school writing classes is that especially you don't want to assume anything you want to be and also you want to fill up your page count but i mean how do you how do you balance between knowing your audience and not being overly pedantic well okay for game writing you know if you put down what a d-pad is you could pretty much assume that people know what a d-pad is you know when you write out you know the genre is a first-person shooter you can understand you don't have to explain that oh it's a shooting it's a game where you have guns from the perspective of you looking out at it as opposed to having an avatar who you could see there with a gun you know you can you can assume those certain things but then again say say you bring in this um a mention of something else for like a series you know some people may not have played the series and you say you know excuse me um the the you know say the hallmark of the halo series all you gotta kind of say what is that hallmark you know what is that you know patent gameplay of halo you know not everyone right now bring understand what that is yeah i think about this every anytime i read any sort of like news story about wow or just like anything about wow there's a lot of stuff that's just completely lost on me just because i don't understand you know just basic terminology well if you don't play MMOs you know what a mob is no yeah yeah i mean i know i know what a mob is in real life like a gathering of yeah people but in in world a warcraft or an mmo a mob can just refer to a single yeah any single thing you fight yeah and and you know that that's something right there where you know why does that why is that term mob i just don't know does somebody started somebody started using it i was gonna say yeah i don't know that i you know i don't know the origination of it but i do know that you know if you're somebody who's not familiar with that genre and you're reading something that says you know and then we face down a few mobs you would think oh okay so you're taking on these cords but really you know a few mobs yeah i can recall hearing that term being thrown around and so like maybe i'm picturing like world of warcraft more like left for dead we are fighting like war instead of enemies you know i mean they're one of the the things i've noticed lately um maybe not just lately but there are places where being more clear and more leaning a little bit towards a pedantic works um john davisin's site actually if you look at john davisin's site if you compare the writing that you find there with somewhere else then that's a good example of catering to your audience exactly you know because you know they're not hardcore gamers over at what they play you know they're you know sometimes they may be but a lot of those also is you know parents are wanting to know okay is this gonna be good for my kid what is this about is this something i want my kid to be playing and then there are stories in mainstream press publications that talk about games and gamers always get super pissed about those stories but again their audience is a more broad sort of group of people than our subculture well i think about even jargon let's let's go into the world of politics you know if you don't look at the maps do you understand what red state and blue state mean i think at this point it's become such common usage that people do but i see your point yeah you know and that's the kind of things i think you want to avoid in your writing you know instead of saying oh it's not it's a you know it's a blue state or red state say well what is it that they believe in you know you know are they state that goes to every car they state that goes republican or they state the care about social values or their state that cares about tax policy you know say it you know just don't cloak it in this camp i totally hear that i guess yeah i'm i'm just like as you say all this introspective about a lot of the writing i do and i realize that a lot of times i do cater it quite obviously and the hard thing about jargon is we all do it we all do it and it's something that's very hard to to to reign in into control because it's like you know it's it's shorthand for your for your core audience why is it bad writing because it's not always clear just like i was saying with my red state blue state example it's not always precise okay and i don't know about you but i think precision is something that's you know a very laudable gold writing i i'm a bad person to ask some my favorite books or style manuals so i thought i thought there agrees with you he just wanted to hear you tell people i know i mean my my main the reason that i i wanted you to elucidate or to clarify that is because there are a lot of sites that don't follow these that in particular that that focus on using memes and and quick catchphrases and clever snark as shorthand to get across points and those are extreme those are extremely popular sites and we're not going to name names obviously because we said we were going to do that we'll talk about it next week um but uh i mean there has to be some reason why they're popular oh yeah um i mean they just i guess maybe they cater to that audience right yeah yeah you know and and let's face you know people have this idea of gamers as being a very cynical and jaded bunch and that snarky writing really goes towards that what i don't understand is you know you really see snark in news and my thing is well if i want news i want the facts i don't want somebody writing some really half-assed joke that goes in with it you know and this is something that almost every outlet does you know what game spot plays their news pretty straight game spot is the the closest to like traditional journalism as far as their news goes yeah you know i mean when i'm looking at news i i certainly don't want you know a snarky tone to it i just want to know what the facts are about the situation you know what the information is how does that pertinent to me how is that pertinent to gaming in general yeah i guess i can see how in the future it'll be kind of hard for that you know people always talk about games writing growing up and stuff but it's hard to imagine like any games news writing going towards like not being snarky and stuff because all these kids that are getting into the thought of it that's all they're seeing oh this is how you write gaming news you know my and and that occurred to me i think the thing that that i try to pin hope on as far as games writing go is that i i don't know about everyone else but i'm i'm sort of snarked out after four or five years of the the blog news cycle and the writing that is accompanied it and and i kind of wonder if other people are getting that way as well i know i am but you know it's it's so much of it goes to the churn that we see on the internet and this applies not just a game in journalism it applies to everything when it comes to media you know this this need to put up as much as possible as quickly as possible in a constant state so that if you click on the site an hour later there'll be something new there for you and i understand the attraction to that but at the same time you know that that drive to get as much out there as quickly as possible to be first you know you miss facts yeah get facts wrong and do you also don't get perspective on those facts you don't get fresh quotes on those facts i mean how many news stories are really just rewritten stories off a press release or someone else uh a majority yeah because i get kind of looking at your point here where you're talking about uh does low pay drive regular news writers to plot there's many stories as they can in the given day in order to make a decent amount of money yes yes i mean and and you know and you can't blame them when you're getting paid per post you know when you're getting paid per post or even you know how many views you get on a post you know you can't blame them for that they want to you know be able to get some sort of investment on their work and you know that that's great what what i one of the trends i'm really hating i'm seeing in media now is how do you make money off content when you don't charge for that content i know and which is really we're interesting because today um the editor of wired was on npr fresh air talking about you know the economy of free on the internet he just wrote a book about it i think yeah yeah which which um you know it's a fascinating topic you know the first you know the first person who really understands how to make money off a internet news site be it gaming be it entertainment be it sports it is something that has occurred to us and has been discussed yeah you know you know you know i love that people are trying so many different ways you know some works some don't some are ethical so may not be as ethical but until we start figuring out the way to do it it's good that people are at least trying to find a way yeah because i honestly like it's kind of like he touched upon it in his thing but we've also been talking about it me and me and various other people that work for sites you know the the model that's been transitioned from magazines to the internet of just like supporting it all based on ads just doesn't seem like it can sustain like sites like there's just no way yeah it can't sustain organizations news gathering organizations no and we've seen that and and it's it's not just you know the internet that's tailing or that it's not just newspaper it's just television as well i mean take a look at the major broadcast networks so may argue that nbc cbs abc are getting further and further relevant in the way that we consume media now wasn't there one of the big three that has essentially shut down their international bureau at this point i'm not sure on that but they've all cut back severely you know Ted koppel was on npr talking about that yesterday uh tuesday for those of you who may be listening to this on yes we'll get them on Thursday um and and it's everyone who's coming back i mean you know you take a look at you know zip davis selte gio was a special example you know that was just just a mass layoff but you know you take a look at other organizations you see people who have been cut because of cutbacks be it in a way to save money in a way to hoard money against further possible losses and coming the next year or two this recession continues to be so severe and and it's it's it's just it's just difficult you know it's hard to cover all your bases i mean even even at a place like igm you guys probably have trouble correct it's true yeah i mean igm so much as other aspects of the fox media empire well games by itself has has pretty big troubles as far as it not like financial but i'm saying as far as like coverage wise but even an igm yeah i mean they you know i actually won't work as if i used to just assume that they just had like this mass amount more people than us but really they're working with about the same size to you and you know every every media outlet you know in the history of the world has dealt with you know won't the history of the media i should say history of world that's hyperbole but you know every media outlet has always dealt with making that decision okay what can we cover with the manpower and the resources that we have and a lot of the news that gets covered or based off those decisions but nowadays with with even fewer resources it's just such a challenge to get those things covered but going back to my list of mr. McIntyre's five good rules for writers number three grammar syntax and usage are the tools of your craft master them and this one is such a challenge for everybody because i don't feel that be it in you know in elementary school and middle school and in high school or even in college i don't feel that those subjects are really taught properly i'm not sure people understand how to teach those properly i know i didn't learn those properly when i was in school i still don't know properly and this is a challenge i think everyone will always struggle with as they write you know being very careful and and the way that you you know to repair this is just a continuing reading there's a number of people out there who are experts in this and they even read other people to learn more about grammar to learn more about how to use proper syntax best usage of words of phrases of concepts and what i can say about that is you know find your resources find your sources and that's where the internet is great for because there is there are a number good places to find those sources what you finish with your rules i'll make a book recommendation that i've made before on the podcast i'll be interested in seeing i actually have a couple myself there's a nice grammar podcast that does like a tip of wheat oh don't tell me that it's like really short yeah and this next one dev tales into number three which we're just talking about there are few real rules of english and a host of bogus rules learn the difference between what is a real rule and what isn't i'm going to give you two examples right here splitting infinitives how what were you guys taught in school about it i don't know actually yeah yeah we taught that splitting verbs was bad no that's how grammars usually taught no but then again think about you know good you phrase it in a sentence yeah we're going to use star trek well you know you know to boldly go that's where you're inflated of a spit because your inflatative is to go but you're putting in oh well i well okay if you'd phrase differently i adverbs are the enemy yeah well but if you were going by the whole you know you can't split your infinitives rule you had to be writing to go boldly oh man that would sound terrible to me i feel like my my view of of the usage rules and grammar rules is that and this is paraphrasing um strunk and white which is that unless you are assured of doing well follow the rule yeah if you are so familiar with the rule that you understand why it's there and you feel like you can phrase it in a way that that works even if it violates the rule then you're fine yeah so that goes with learning what is the rules and how to use them yeah so so what is so what was your answer to that like what do you split them or not no i i have no problem with splitting infinitive infinitive infinitive adverbs it's it's it's one of those you know one of those rules that's silly but if you go in for example you go and mariam websters you know you know guide to the english language you'll you'll see passages that they're citing back to the 1600s of where you know people such as shakespeare we're splitting their infinitives dinner his writing shakespeare was a poet who was writing the specific rhythm yeah but writing still writing doesn't matter what the form it takes i tend to feel like um adverbs are not necessary usually if you're writing clearly they have their place just like adjectives i use them and i'm mad at myself when i do there's nothing wrong with adverbs the whole thing about our adverbs of magic chips is just making sure you do them properly and you're not you know using way too many you know it's it's so easy just to throw in a number of adjectives a number of adverbs just basically to to put this into context for games writing um if you're adding adverbs to your writing chances are that you are resting you're you're falling back on boilerplate exactly you could find such a better way just to describe what you want to describe rather than say the shockingly good framerate yeah and chances are if you don't use that boilerplate if you don't use the cliche and just use your heart and use your soul and decide you know how i want to say this you're going to come up with something that's better than that cliche no matter what i realize this is sort of venturing super into english usage and grammar territory well i'm just for the audience sake i i hope that we can put these things into context that makes sense and and if you know and we'll do our best um and it as i've said earlier you know clarity is the it is so important it's so key get to your point uh and that's the last rule of hair get to the point use a sentence from the bible in the beginning god created the heavens of the earth period the creation of the universe has a ten word lead so that that's a perfect example of being concise yeah it could probably be shortened down a little bit it probably can it probably can but you know one of the things i loved about kind of writing that we had ed ziff kind of writing that we had in e gm was that it made you boiled down what you're writing down to the essential points that you wanted to make and so you feel like didn't have room to to dither around you had to say what you wanted to say especially in those small reviews in e g yeah 90 word counts and that's what made the writing so good in my opinion so do you feel everyone was so focused on what they're trying to say everyone was so focused on what they had to say because of the short word counts i still when i write trying to hold myself to to to what i would consider a reasonable word count i don't want to get too overblown and you look at some places and who was a little said murder your darlings your call that's another paraphrase it was a fuckner i think it was don't remember off the top of my head which is basically just don't be afraid to slaughter what you write to cut it down to a more concise like i mean think about it you know how many people really want to read something that's twenty five hundred words when advertisers but imagine if it was half the size yeah it gets a completely focused on what it was talking about talking about the things are most essential to the points the writer was trying to make yet to bring it around it Ryan scott who is my editor at game spy who murders your darlings always he merges my darlings on a regular basis but he also says that the internet is not an excuse to to write with a no word count just because there is infinite space yeah and i completely agree with that one of the things people always say about the internet is it's not print but i still view it as print it's still words and type and you know a lot those those words are precious i mean there's virtually a limitless space but the same resource of the audience applies which is time yeah i guess i i look at your points the one that i feel like you can see the most in games writing is the the lack of editing and team development because you're right in print like we it's like it's if when we did it even with the online stuff for a long time the way it went is like you wrote something it went to an editor the editor gave it back to you you corrected it and then it went to a copy desk when the copy desk would send it back with more and in a magazine Abe doesn't go through just one or two editors it can go through hands of three four five and it was a great way to learn yeah you're writing especially when you get the sheet back and you see the red marks and you see the comments of the margins and they're not there to make you feel bad and they're not there to believe all you because the editors want to help you become a better better writer makes their job easier well it doesn't make just their job easier it makes really gratifying it makes the product better so for those of you who do get stuff that gets marked up a lot and you get it back don't look at it is saying oh i just did horrible or don't look at it as oh i suck no no take a look at it and see what kirtles of knowledge you could take out of those comments see what you can learn from it and to apply to what you write the next time so i guess the aspiring writers then that would like to get in this one of the biggest things they could do is find someone to learn from or find someone that is at least a better writer than them that can read over their stuff and and and give like harsh like if necessary like edits i mean it doesn't hurt it doesn't hurt the challenge is finding somebody who's willing to do that you know be in an organization that values editing or be it somebody who is a good writer that you know who's willing to give up some of their own time to do that and i think can take a long time editing could take a very long time right and it's just it's just that you know i guess the thing is is that a lot of things people ask us how to get involved in this and what's on me you know start a blog and start writing the thing is if you're writing a blog and no one's ever looking at it critiquing it then it's like easy to take stay with them the same like i mean they're i'm pretty sure that there are forms for writers where they where you can get feedback like quick feedback well what are some suggestions that you guys were going to make about like maybe books and or magazines where they can find great examples of good writing magazines about writing i mean well not necessarily about writing like why generally if if you want to look at it that's a good idea for good text writing and they do a lot of really short pieces um seano is used to recommend the Atlantic was the one Sean this direct meant the Atlantic has some amazing writers in it the New Yorkers New Yorkers amazing writers the key is there there's are many different ways to be improve your writing one of the ones that i always say is just find good writers and read good writing it doesn't matter what the source is it could be fiction it could be nonfiction could be enthusiast press it could be serious journalism you know if it's a good writer just read you know and if there's a writer that you really like maybe try to analyze why you think that they're they're writing is good yeah yeah when you read something and you say wow that affected me or you say hmm i learned something from that read it over again find out well how did how how did it move you how did you learn something from it i agree with it uh so do you think i actually think this points kind of important like uh does the attention span of gamers hurt the enthusiast press and to some extent i kind of feel like that it's weird right because uh for instance in my experience with games spy since Ryan came on and since i've been there we've kind of applied the old one-up ways of you know hey we're going to do 600 word reviews like you know 800 words to thousands like whoa you really had a lot to say whereas like other games by reviews in the past um have been multiple page reviews and we actually get a lot of comments about people saying where the multi-page reviews we want the multi-page reviews but we've looked at omniture and stuff like cite you know traffic reporting things and it shows us like people just skip the first page and go to the second page for the the conclusion of the score yeah like i i in a way it's like i kind of i don't understand because it seems like there are these people that are saying they want more but uh i do feel like the attention span definitely kind of hurts it because it seems like you know Ryan's actually joked like you know you could just make a site with 140 word reviews like a twitter thing and that would do much better for people because really that's all they want they just want like just give me something real quick and easy so i can move on and we're going to see that at some point you know see somebody really tried to push the you know the short to the to the point to the curdle reviews i don't know what the attention span of the audience is and i really would love to learn that because you get you get you get you get some people who really just want to score you get some other people who want to read you know pages and pages of things and i don't know what the breakdown in the audience is of that yeah um one of the things that you don't see online least i don't see um is is you know a decision on okay what is it that what gamers want to read do they want to read really long insightful pieces do they want short to the point things do they want critical analysis i'm not sure what gamers want in their journalism these days i'm i'm that's that's very puzzling for me as as a editor and a writer um because you'll go on forums you'll take a look and every form gets bashed it doesn't matter what kind of form we're writing it's going to get bashed by somebody and and there's you know that's just human nature but when you read stuff about like for example quarter three there's this thread 2009 the continuing pledge of games journalism i may not be accurately quoted there um and it talks about about you know the way things are getting quote-unquote oars and oars but when i say read that i'm not sure exactly what it is that the commentators want in their games journalism today i feel like this is i mean this is just my opinion you guys can chime in or or shoot me down if you want to but shorter reviews and more concise writing works better for identity-based sites where you are encouraged to become familiar with someone's opinions as opposed to sites that like something that in my editing jobs in the past i really had to worry about was programmatic voice or the voice of our program the the voice of our content i would have to have a unified sort of tone to it and voice is important um but with with one up in egm one of the things i didn't feel that there was a lot of was there wasn't this monolithic tone to egm or one up so much is there were general style guides and there were sort of guidelines that they wanted people to follow but other than that people were encouraged to to maintain their own identity to to groom their opinions and to really become comfortable when expressing themselves i always thought that the voice of zip was many voices right i mean i guess that it's kind of like what arthur saying like having the short writing work to there because it it was an audience that wanted to get to know the opinions of what is shawn have to say i mean it's i mean we know like to to use shawn l_a_ does an example like you if you know who shawn l_a_ it is chancellor you have a pretty good idea of of the stuff that he likes because that was something that was very it there's a lot of dedication put in to making sure that people understood the identities of the people writing or at least what they wanted you to know about their identities and their tastes so that way if shawn l_a_ is saying well i i don't think this works or or were to provide a concise review of something you would say well this is the kind of game that shawn lights this these are the opinions that he's had in the past and this is what i've heard him say about games in general so i don't need a lot of the the really detailed breakdowns as justification for everything he's saying whereas long reviews are almost to me it seems like they are trying to justify their opinions as opposed to just saying these are my opinion yeah yeah and and you know it's it's a it's very easy to fall into you know i have to you know back up what i'm saying as the excuse for justification of your opinions but sometimes it's really important especially when you're doing a review especially when you're doing criticism to say you know this is how i feel about this this is why i feel like this and leave it at that right so you we actually made a point that our reviews don't need to be straight out objective which is true i mean that drives me insane when people say review should be non-biased or objective and you're just like that does not review at that point you want the calorie content of your games yeah exactly well you know that that goes to the whole point of you know the perception that journalism must always be objective right you know that's actually what i wanted to get to yeah because that in news coverage like people want it to be like they think it should be as objective as possible i feel like the definition of objective has been perverted i would agree with that um it's i don't think you can be objective every story is assigned with a slant every story has a bias to it every person who writes something has a bias towards what they're covering right the bias can be very small it can be a bias even towards something as simple as you know i like to write in this style as opposed to you know i don't care what it is i'm writing about it i just want to write it in this time of a voice you going i'll just catch my breath do you need to drink of water no no no i don't know um but what it comes to review what are you looking for in a review do you want consumer reports or it's a breakdown of this is what it does this is what it does well this is not what it does well this is what we feel you should buy it or not or do you want to know how it affects somebody how to make some think how they react to it on an emotional level on a human level and i'm not sure what it is the audience wants from that i think it's because more than any other entertainment medium games straddle the line between product and cultural item more um music is i feel like a lot of it is price point if nothing else and investment of time but and and the fact that it takes so many people to make a game and there's such a huge marketing machine behind it whereas movies have those similar sized teams but they're everyone is so comfortable with movies being the product of very distinct personalities whether it's the actor driven vehicle or the the auteur theory of a director or a writer or the creators of such and such it's driven by personalities whereas games are from studios and companies and their concepts and they have mechanics yeah very rarely they are driven by a personality behind it uh tim shafer being a good example and jimma being another example um but games games don't have aren't comfortable with that as much so for games it is sort of torn between well this game really made me feel a or this game hits a certain frame rate and the online play has this many features yeah oh i think part of that comes you think about it as a gamer you know you know especially in this recession you know fifty sixty dollars for a game some people have a hard time dropping that for something they want and for some people they have to sit down and think okay how is this going to work my budget and so they say of course they're looking and say okay does this have what i want in a game does this have my you know multiplayer modes does this have you know my sixty hours of gameplay than i want from something right justify it yeah but i think that's where the the the whole media in games needs to kind of figure out what it is they want to do with a review now there's definitely room for different types of reviews and i really want to see different types of reviews from different outlets we need content that goes beyond reviews oh definitely because it seems like when when people bitch about reviews doing something weird it's because they're trying to straddle a line between i mean you mentioned criticism but criticism is another word that's sort of been perverted into meaning this is someone's evaluation of a product yeah as opposed to this is someone's analysis yeah exactly of this work reviews a lot of times writers because reviews and previews are all they really get to do they try to find a way to evaluate the artistic merits of something in in a review they try to criticize it instead of review it and we there's needs to be more avenues where people can evaluate the artistic merits of something or the creativity or something well how do you guys feel about now like most major websites now at least have like an overview page for a game so it's like you know you have the spot for the review for the opinion but you also have all the previews where you could just go back and look at all the facts and like all the breakdown that sort of thing so do you guys feel like maybe it's just a matter of sort of condensing how we're putting out the content you know i don't i think it's expanding the way the content is provided yeah i want to read more about a game after it comes out i want to read about what people are doing with it and that is i want to read with how people are playing it especially in ways of playing it that the designers may not have attended you know i want to read about say you know three years from now you know is this game still important to the gaming community i want to read five years later from a game you know what are its players doing to keep it alive what is it about it that still draws into something they may have played three four or five times you know what impact did it have on gaming on the community on the design of games that's what i really want to read from games media nowadays and that is i mean that's something that we sort of dabble in from time to time and that seems to be something that people like about certain some of the stuff we do is that a game club like game club they like hearing about the the legacy of a product or or more in-depth sort of exploration of something beyond okay it's november and there's 17 games coming out this is this game is worth your money because or maybe you should buy this instead yeah so does anybody have any uh final thoughts before we wrap this up we have book recommendations but then i do have a book recommendation i'd like to make you should definitely i have two um one is is is is from the copy one of the copy chiefs over at the washington post his name is bill wash it's a style manual uh he's got two ones called lapsing into a comma the other is the elephants of style these are great elements of style yeah that both titles are puns uh some copy editors hate puns others don't um that's it's certain or about puns someday um um we love it we didn't have puns in south africa but um these are both excellent guidebooks about writing clearly about tactics you can make to make your writing better about ways you could think about your writing as you approach it on how you could say what does you want to say and the easiest most you know easy to read way to say it some stuff about rules some stuff about hyphens and commas stuff like that it's a little bit of grammar it's a little about style but they're both really good reads and they're very educational reads another book i'd like to point out is the mary of webster guide to the english language um this is not a good read this is a very hard read um but it takes concepts such as the split infinitive and it shows you about the context where it is in the english language going back as far back as they could research uh here you learn about why you know certain idioms and certain syntax of the language is how it is and how you can apply it and use it in your writing okay um i'll go old school with the first one which is if you take any composition class in college you will be handed the elements of style um and there's a reason for that which is that it's extremely short and extremely concise and very useful um even now it's pretty useful yeah some parts of it are certainly outdated yeah but there's and some of them are charmingly so yeah yeah like ebie white's dislike of the word uh student body yeah of the term student body yeah or their opposition to there is there are yeah um and it doesn't really cover the idea of the the gender-free pronoun yeah which is something that's becoming more of an issue in writing now yeah um it's okay for they to be a singular yeah i they they're them um and then to to go slightly in a in a maybe more controversial direction it's a book i've i think i've mentioned before which is on writing by Stephen King um and he actually covers virtually every one of the rules that you set down right now yeah um and before you talk shit about Stephen King being a writer of pulp novels and i'm not saying that anyone in this room will say that or not i'm not going to um he was uh an english teacher for for he was a business english teacher as he phrased it which is he taught grammar in high school for quite a while and he taught english in college so and that's another really entertaining pretty short book this might sound a little controversial but good writing can be found in pulp fiction i agree you know don't what it what it comes to looking for good writing don't roll out any source even Star Wars novels Kevin J Anderson well okay we'll draw the line of him but all right all right but i do want to say one thing go for anyone who wants to be a writer write right for yourself right for other people it doesn't matter who you write for just write and have passion with it you know and if you're writing is writing is so rewarding it's so much fun you don't need a professional outlet to do it you don't need to be paid to do it that's one of the things i love about it anyone can do it all you need to do is sit down and just give it a try if you don't like it you don't have to do it anymore that's another nice thing and i will add to that one thing which is that uh yeah i think Jason has a great recommendation with saying that you should write right now but you should also write about the things that you really want to write about not what other people want to hear about because it becomes a whole different world when you're being assigned something to write about that you may not have that passion for so right now if you can pick the sort of features and stuff that you have passion for that'll be so much cooler and as a practical recommendation if you're in college and you hear people saying well i need someone to read my paper do it because one of the ways that you will learn how to improve your own writing is by reading other people's writing and exactly for for problems and also what they do correctly and who knows if you get really good at it maybe they'll pay you to edit their papers yeah one of the things i've always suggested especially with humor writing is when you write something you're not sure how it works or how it sounds make sure how someone else read it how someone else listen to it or if nothing else read it out loud yeah to yourself there's things the ear catches that the eye does not all right and on that note thank you this was very enjoyable thank you Jason for joining us i hope i hope to listen there's some joy i hope so too and if you didn't then i would better go what school ain't always fun way i should i don't think of the consequence it's blasphemy simple and true the credit for the past the voice does have its uses but in most cases you really want to use a nice active flow to your we have your writing to your life an excellent steven king example actually i was gonna say we have a fairly younger voice so we should younger audience we should tell we should get an example so act as passive voice is when the subject of the sentence is acted upon so the verbs are the verbs in your sentence the the infinitives are acting upon the subject so the example that steven king gives and this is one of the nice things about this book is that they're really excellent examples is a passive sentence would be the body was carried out of the room because the subject of the sentence is the body and it is being carried so it's being acted upon acted upon a better sentence would be tom and janet carried the body out of the room because tom and janet are the subjects doing the action and then the example you gave the example i gave is evenly even more basic jane through the ball the ball was thrown by jane i like bodies it goes with gaming a little better i can see that but when you the first of this a role example yeah well the first example you could you could read it for i mean first of all shorter and you know short and precise it's always something you want to go forward for your writing but also it's it's it's more active the the the the subject of the verbs flow together the object is there in the right place the the action goes from one point to the other in the sentence whereas when you're using a passive construction you're you're just cluttering it up with with extra words you're wondering sometimes who the subject is who did what passive voice is one of those things you really want to watch out for in your writing it signals weakness and i think that it's been established aren't as you're not assured by your points as you are yeah um it's a basic it's started in legal writing i think like writing about legal topics and then it's spread to people writing papers because you're afraid to assert an opinion and now we have letters all right yay letters sorry in may it was announced that the fallout 3 dlc would be coming to the ps3 in late june i don't remember that it was it is now july and there's no fallout 3 dlc to be found would you happen to know what happened to the dlc and if so when it will be hitting the ps3 andrew i had someone asked me this on twitter and i checked my email for press releases and they haven't announced anything else about them i was just thinking maybe they're waiting because aren't they releasing that version with all the dlc on the disc i think that Bethesda would really rather get people to buy the dlc before they release the greatest hits version where they could get it all together uh i was just gonna say that's what they did with the Bolivian they just released it on the disc that was uh that was due to technical issues which i thought maybe it would be the same technical issues that are preventing dlc from appearing on the ps3 that's what i'm saying so i'm just wondering is it just me or is this whole technical issues talking about with the ps3 started to get hold i mean companies have had um these units long enough they should have been able to figure out these problems well if they had if it was just a ps3 and then i'm sure they would have figured out the problem but when it's on two other platforms that are very similar to each other and the third platform has a much smaller install base sells less games and is completely different in architecture then it will continue to be an issue it's so it's it's something about the way that uh the ps3 handles memory and the amount of memory that it has which is less than 360 i think maybe if the ps3 was outselling the 360 like three to one or something like that and the install base is way huge they'd find you know you bet your ass they they base their publishing on the ps3 but that's not the way the world currently yeah uh the next letter is from david and he says i've been checking out some videos and reviews of infamous quite a bit recently and unfortunately it has become my most wanted game right now i say this is unfortunate because i have a 360 and no ps3 right now i have no plans to buy one because they are upwards of six hundred dollars in in australia where he is so i ask you is there any hope of the exclusive exclusivity of infamous fading away and it coming over to 360 or should i forget about it and pick up red faction gorilla forget about it and pick up red faction gorilla yep and i was about to say that it's that it's the perfect time to buy a ps3 but but you're in australia like in america they were releasing the killzone two and what is the other your solid floor metal your solid four bundle at best buy which is ridiculous yeah like that would have been the starter kit red faction it's a lot of fun and infamous you know give it a couple of years price drops things may change you could play it then there's nothing wrong there's nothing wrong with waiting on the game i hate i i mean i hate saying to someone not to buy infamous or like that they won't be able to buy infamous because it's i just have the sneaking suspicion that is it tomorrow when amputee numbers come out all right man i never keep track of that um i think amputee numbers for june come out tomorrow and it's just going to be another situation where it's an awesome ps3 game that doesn't chart very well yeah my my gut tells me you have to see how it tells it you see on the charts again my gut tells me red faction isn't going to place too high on the list either unfortunately yeah but you should definitely get red faction because it's i only wrote a preview of it so i only played like the first hour and a half but i had ridiculous amount of ideas it has an awesome game without qualifier generally yeah but getting back to another point you know there's nothing wrong with waiting to play a game it's true you know you still have games and strings sometimes you'll be able to get it when it's at a lower price or when the consoles are lower price sometimes you'll come out with a better edition of it later on true and there probably will be i think i heard that they want to do dlc for openness yeah yeah you know i there's a i can understand you see something that's like oh i must play this i must play this now and and you know i think a lot companies prey upon that with gamers especially with the really hardcore gamers so and you shouldn't feel bad like you know especially living in australia where the systems cost more money about you know having to make the decision oh you know do i have to pay rent or do i buy a ps3 so i can play this one game or in this case can i buy this awesome game or am i going to be forced to buy this other awesome game yeah really if you love your ps3 you would get a second job oh no i'm just kidding that that was awesome that was our first job that was our that was a famous quote from uh from as hoorai kuduragi san kuduragi he said he said people are going to want to play season three so bad who is ironically enough he is more or less the person you have to blame for not having dlc for the ps3 version four out three so uh the next letter is from keith which is more geared towards me because he says i've been playing donald war two recently and i'm wanting to know more about the lore of 40k have you guys checked any of the novels for 40k where should i start and he also asked me do i play normal siv four or one of the expansions it's kind of already touched upon i would just play the normal one antony could record an entirely separate podcast actually i've only read a couple of war hammer books but the one that sticks out in mind i believe is called it's called uh grey sky black sun so is that about the space marines yeah well they're all about space marines what's your favorite games workshop product uh i mean i'm i played i play fantasy dwarfs and war hammer so yeah and specifically if i had to get down to a specific model it's a it's a war hammer dwarf general i have that was the first model i ever painted growing up my best friends and i and my brother we played this board game called talisman to death we still play it we have pages and pages of house rules that we have made house rules oh yeah welcome to first edition dnd type shit yeah exactly because things were so vague that you would have to come up with your own ways to deal with them or you know you have to you know deal with the exploits that people find such as the role we had the you can't put a horse and cart inside a meal inside a traveling bag we it's a min maxing it's funny good war hammer we had that too it's funny because even in the war hammer rule book it specifically says if you ever come up with wordings that you can't quite understand you should all just come to a consensus of what it means that's the thing workshop philosophy we actually called games workshops hotline a couple of times to ask them about certain rewardings you have fucking nerd and how they would go about it and they actually there was at least one time that they told us they would have to call us back and they call us back like two hours later and so they gathered everyone and this was the consensus they came to wow it was awesome we never got to that point we just made up our own room we couldn't figure it out yeah we also didn't allow people to bring over girls what we're playing you're nerd weighing this larger congratulations so i didn't get the name of this person um because i suck but really the main crux of his question is he wanted to know if there's anywhere your listeners could go to view ty arthur or anthony's designs but i think he actually met tyler because he just said tyler describe it designs so people are just wondering if you had a portfolio anywhere they could look at your stuff i should but i don't because i'm picky and lazy all right you either tyler i have like a really basic portfolio up right now i think it's like tylerbarber.carbonmade.com and you'll see my design on the t-shirt yeah and then i think we might try and make a t-shirt or something of one of the designs tyler did which you still need to send arthur because it's better yeah i know man um i can't even draw a straight line i can't well no one can draw a straight line i mean trust me jason when i draw if i were to draw a concept for a shirt it'd be like all right well there's gonna be the stick figure guy right is this poop from done a piece of paper yeah exactly that's what it looks like um okay so i have a question that i hope you could discuss in the podcast so i could hear all of your input advice anyways how would you suggest or advise people who are just starting out in the industry to gain context with developers like getting review copies interviews etc when starting out it's difficult to get that coverage without a bigger footprint but to achieve that bigger footprint you need the coverage how did you guys deal with this starting out and and advise others to do so thanks and qf the excellent work shawn so the thing is is that uh i have a friend that works in outlet or um if you want to look legit you need a domain name that doesn't have dot wordpress.com or blogspot.com after it you get a letterhead and a letterhead to be good um business cards once you have an email address from a domain that's your own you can get a membership at someplace called gamespress.com and they have PR contacts are pretty much everybody and they will also have press releases that will also include PR contacts a lot of times if you ask ask you will receive mm-hmm i would say persistence yeah and and politeness oh yeah politeness please thank you tracking polito pain in the ass yeah but you know with rare occasions i've always found back in my reporting days as long as you continue to ask and ask it a nice way you know not being an asshole about it most people would at some point would land to ask you know give you the information you're seeking or at least help you with your query the only person i ever had who just completely ignored me was berry bonds but he did that to a lot of people that's that's a pretty big person to get ignored by anyways he had a lot of practice ignoring the drug testing people oh he he was he was very good at it um so this next letter is from benn and i this one's kind of more like an ask Amy to f letter or something it's not dating advice but it's just kind of like a thing about it's like you mean dear abby dear abby whatever her name is i don't read uh you know i don't read i just don't read cultural icon i just don't read it all like i i'm actually just guessing what this is i just made it up successfully for all these yeah karnack i would first like to start off by saying that this is my favorite podcast and i greatly appreciate all the work you guys do oh you didn't skip the dick sucking i am in need of help i'm a 15 year old with an obscene amount of nerdy hobbies video games comic movies etc are all things that i play read watch my free time i can also code c++ and build computers for neighbors and friends of my family oh jesus all right so this is where i think i'm like i just don't understand right this does not compute i don't know how to tell my friends about this i'm pretty popular with everyone in my school but i'm constantly worried that by revealing my nerdiness nerdiness i would have made an outsider and lose all the friends i have is there any advice you could give me about how to reveal my other side to my friends it'd be great that this sounds like first off this guy sounds like he's trying to see if we would if we would fund his hollywood hollywood movies right like that's what it sounds like i'm the cool guy at school but no one knows what's that all right for a second i thought he was gonna say i am gay how do i tell people no no no it wasn't that but he says yeah it's like i don't know why i don't understand why there's any hesitation to your friends me my friends this is this brought us all that stuff you described brought us closer together i mean how are they your friends if they don't do any of the shitty or if they don't know but you even know or don't understand who you are and what you'd like i mean it's been a very very long time since i've been in high school but you know my friends and i we're role-playing geeks yeah amongst the other things we did you know but we also did so many other things too um and and we still have our friends and nobody cared and you know you know you think about popularity and what it means but think about it's only a couple years of your life in high school do you really want to spend it with people who don't get who you are okay that i agree with but the when i hear people say it's only a couple of years in high school i think back and think man it all seems so important when you're in high school like it seems like the end of the world is an eye yeah when you're in high school you're like ego centric um but i mean i just think that the most important thing you could realize that like speaking someone who is like exactly that type of person like i just don't think you're gonna find that life is going to be very fulfilling until you can embrace that part of yourself and have people that it will embrace you for that too because like right now i wore hammer poster on my wall right next to the star wars poster and why do they why would they care that you can code c++ in a negative way whether you play video games just look at this way you're a fringe part of society i mean if you're popular and interact with people well and you feel like like these people your friends and chances are you are highly socially functional anyway so these hobbies don't cut into that right like the stigma attached to role-playing in gaming is that those are people who can't function in society so they retreat into these little rooms and that is clearly not you plus if you can already program see plus plus you can go out and get yourself a part-time job exactly yeah buy yourself a car maybe you can program yourself some accepting friends oh that's me no i you're you seem highly socially functional it shouldn't even fucking matter exactly that's how i got by with it i got i was always really good at making friends so it's like you know and plus i don't know with your friends that you play video games with yeah like your guy friends and stuff i'm sure you can find some common grounds like they like certain games that maybe you're not into but you can still talk about it with them i have to imagine that's true like i'm trying to imagine i did not know very many male people that like were opposed to the existence of video games so especially now yeah uh alex says i love the sub four stories and every time i hear it it makes me want to go out and buy the game i was thinking about buying the ds version of civilization sub rev um but i wasn't sure how close my experience would be to the ones anthony describes would be worth thirteen dollars oh fuck yes yes definitely i mean other than like the graphic fidelity that you get on the consoles and the pc it the ds version is literally one-to-one with the console version everything well is he talking about it's not a sub rev but you're not going to get quite the same thing i get out of it it's not a sub four it is a streamlined version of sub four yeah and another good suggestion would be the ds age of empires yeah i've heard that is an excellent it is an excellent it's possibly the best turn-based strategy game on the ds i love it i've had it for two years i still play it so this is uh from nate who he's going on two trips to florida and another you know one with one with his friend he says a 16-hour drive each way he just got a ds so he's looking for new games for his handheld um he realized that he needs help to narrow it down he says a little background i've never played a funnel fantasy game and would love to be introduced to some classic rpgs of the like my little brother has a ds and so we already own mario kart mario and luigi the rpg advanced war in advanced wars dual strike i was just curious what you're recommend the final fantasy remakes are going to be such a fucking rude awakening but i was thinking is maybe crown of trigger if he wants like a game that'll enter on a trigger is awesome uh zelda a link to the past yeah if you if you haven't played it then but that's a gba game if he doesn't have a dsi what's the that's what i'm saying as long as you know it's the best zelda game on the ds yeah um final fantasy tactics a2 i heard it's like is is i found it to be a lot of fun and it will just eat up hours on a long car trip to the final fantasy do the crystal chronicles game come out for yes brings up and they get really good reviews but to get the boats out of it from what i understand is you know you can need to play it with the we version so didn't they learn their lesson after the game boy advanced right after a just to throw out a little something ign did just put up at like their top 25 list of ds games that they've updated hey i'm just saying that i kid well not all of them i would agree with there are fair man on there that are actually games that i think are really excellent like pick cross but they also leave out some really like jarring like bad ones to me like like they don't have a professor latin on there puzzle quest and they puzzle quest was on there but puzzle quest is an excellent game that's what the answer is what you take with you the ds version of peggle right here is actually really good it's great yeah so there's these people just like pc man if you yeah if you just want some games that you don't peg party on the go so so god what that's what they call it peggle you want peggle you want puzzle quest and then you should check out professor latin and then my personal recommendation are any of the phoenix right ace attorney games so do you have to yell objection in the no you can tap a button that's just there just does a gimmick really no one ever actually does that all right so this is the special letter this is uh i did sometimes and you know Jason don't i'm glad that you said that because i did and i did solidarity that's awesome man if that's the only way you could do it can you imagine when you want to do a tunnel so dear rebel of him this is bruce from Vancouver i have a couple questions for you guys some game related some cat related hi bruce cat related when we want to do just because it's it's very dear to me and arthur it's no secret that you guys are all i've had cat lovers which is why i've come to you with this particular problem about two years ago my irresponsible shithead of a brother bought a second cat a bangle since this cat is more expensive and he refuses to let it go outside fearing it might get scratched up by someone snatched up by someone else my problem is that he never bothered to train the cat and that it pees wherever it pleases as a result my house geez constantly has a stench of cat urine i can't bring anyone over um it also likes to pick fights with my older cat and he usually ends up losing chunks of fur and skin it's got on the point where we pretty much have to keep my old cat outside until dark and then after dark we keep him my mom's room uh yes okay so you so basically my advice to you is that disappear that fucking thing uh you know i'm one i'm i'm curious actually if because your brother spent a bunch of money on a cat which first off you should get a cat from a rescue and not bar by a cat but i'm wondering you know a cat that pees like that uh it sounds to me like i'm wondering if he hasn't fixed he doesn't say it but if you don't have your cat fixed a male cat and there's another male cat it's ten times more likely to get into fights it's way more likely to mark territory and pee inside like that now our cats the same way if dogs are sometimes when they pee it's because of nerves and anxiety it can be i mean that's just an animal thing but i think bangles are also way more high energy so it could be that it's stressed out and not entertained enough i mean yeah because i know how important it is to keep dogs from getting bored i mean one of the reasons that cats will pee is because they're sick but if it's been doing it for two years and it's not dead chances are that's not yeah it's not a bladder infection plus it just it just sounds like to me that a big part of it is a i want you right back to me i want you telling it this cat's fixed because if it's not fixed i reevaluate but um being fixed man as for putting it outside it being stolen shouldn't be your concern stuff like feline leukemia and just being killed yeah especially for your older cat it seems to me like the older cat was there first the older cat should get preferential treatment over this i mean you're talking about cats not that if you're if i mean i don't understand why your brother isn't taking a bigger role in correcting this behavior i get the idea that his brother is kind of a sack of douche because the other thing is that you don't have to train a cat not to pee cat's instinctually like never i've had to try you just get a kitten and it'll instantly start peeing in the litter box yeah like usually when they have some sort of urine problem i never knew that about cats yeah yeah there's no training at all um there's just no one which unfortunately means that if they will know if they never want to pee in the litter box you will probably never train them to pee in the litter box yeah we had a cat that we could not train to get in the litter box well no it's not that we couldn't train him not to go in the litter box he would pee in the litter box he would just pee on fucking everything else too yeah he now lives with my parents and a couple of cats sanctuary like he he has he ruined so many sheets he ruined like a brand new blanket when i bought it um there was one time after i got my futon where he went onto the bed while i was on it and shit by my feet yep we used to keep we used to keep all refurniture covered in plastic and then he found a way to get around it yeah i don't condone giving away animals we're having a roommate who might do that to you uh yeah because well there's the idea of logic of reason i guess with people but with a cat it's just like it's so maddening i don't think i don't think giving away or anything but uh you know i i don't think it's it is probably marking territory yes if he thinks it's marking territory but yeah i mean really you need to have some words with your brother and get things straightened out oh do you want to give him any advice on getting rid of the smell yeah you should buy uh like a Bissell fabric shampooer like that's what we had to do like we tried sprays we've tried every fucking neutralizer and none of the work if the cat is like dedicated to peeing yeah you need to get like a hardcore carpet scrubbing shampooer that's the only way we made our house not if there's and if there's any of that sent left then he'll go right back to it and keep peeing speaking of cats there's this weird pussy confrontation going on behind my chair all right hey guys first off the podcast fantastic but the chemistry guys have uh what do you have a gaming question to oh yes it's easy oh he's sorry jesus christ his gaming question sorry he he graduated so i am recently graduated graduated traditional animator and on my regular blog surf i found out one of the artists that i followed jeff agala so working on an independent game called shank um it is vimeo.com/455195 it can be compared to mirrors edge flash game but with mealy in range combat a very distinct art style and amazing animation after this pleasant find i just want to know what are some games that you're looking forward to the people might not know about could be a small game with a marketing with a small marketing budget or an independent game of no budget at all um trying to think uh well one game i'm looking forward to and it's out already is trying i was about to say that actually yeah that one's out on steam and you see a very little acclaim or anything no it's actually got a lot of good buzz but not necessarily but i'm not sure how many people are playing it yet i was actually going to play it today but again i just have so much capture to do before i go to a concert this weekend yeah i don't know i'm trying to think it's myself i mean uh i don't know about games that are coming out maybe games that are already out that i don't think i've gotten the acclaim that they deserve outcast like red faction gorilla outcast the greatest pc game of all time scary girl actually is a flash game oh yeah scary girl it's just an excellent game fucking amazing the animation in that game like the gameplay is like an adventure game pretty much like a side-scrolling adventure game but if you haven't checked that out and you're into traditional animation do it is really really incredible all right so the last question that i'm gonna read is just a it's just something for you and i actually it just says hey guys people can't tell who you're reading out when you say that it's arthur well they'll know in a second so something that surprised me was your mention of davis i've been living there for a year now and it isn't particularly well known i'm still at the high school but i was wondering if any you went to high school in davis before going to uc davis it was pretty funny when you mentioned the rats but even worse are the massive cockroaches around there there are you can fucking put leashes on those things and walk around just there i'm personally that i am not afraid of like snakes spiders whatever but cockroaches like the one thing that weird mountain that was probably the single worst thing about living in davis was helping the cockroaches like during the summer they'll just be out like on the street and birds uh moving around and then when it starts to get cold like i worked at a blockbuster and one of the things and they are really bad at the blockbuster one of the things you have to do in the morning is clear out the bin where people drop off their movies at night and you will look in there and the whole time you'll be holding your breath waiting for the cockroaches you will invariably find because it is warmer than outside a friend of mine lived in davis for a couple years and i was coming to visit one day i remember she called me i was about an hour out and she was screaming because of the cockroaches that were on her patio yep anywhere you have a bush they were just swarming out of the bushes there and it's weird because i don't even know i mean are they technically cockroaches because they're not like the smaller house cockroaches these are like closer like water like bug i mean these are like i didn't ask them cockroaches could get very large yeah they were written to the south yeah i have not i it stopped short of them standing on their legs and fucking hissing at you but other than that they are pretty bad so um so that's it for letters no we didn't go to to high school and no we just i moved there for college yeah so did i um and actually i'm surprised by how many people know about davis although typically what i hear is a lot of cow is there yeah well davis is becoming you know you see davis is getting very no not only for its academic programs but it has one of the best wine programs in the country true one of the events that are right now to davis yeah that is also the intro intro to that class is one of the one of the most difficult it's also one of the most difficult to add classes um one of my best friends went to davis was an econ major and he was talking about how he had there's just one building where that economics department's located the dance star or is that sof that's sof isn't it he um was talking about how there's this ambient level of radiation and wasn't harmful but he was left over from experiments when he used to be a science building nice that doesn't surprise me at all davis does a lot of weird things so that's it for our letters um this is the part of the podcast where we tell people where they can find us on the internet so to give you a taste of what i mean we'll start with tyler um at twitter.com/drt like to drink and you can also find your super guide at at mycheats.com fight night four arthur uh eat dash sleep dash game.com i should have another review popping up a pc world pretty soon because daren found it and you can find him at twitter.com twitter.com/aegis Jason where where can the internet find you you can find me at two locations the first would be bit mob.com the second is my twitter feed twitter.com/jason_ wilson there you go and you can find me at twitter.com/jofmoney as well as my work at gamesby.com and i'm on the games by debriefing's podcast which this one was a pretty good one me ryan scott and after you pick some danishong award after you remember to edit it and put it out yeah so why ain't Anthony and dana sound like it would be a very enjoyable podcast it is it is a pretty good show so no will this week no will this week um so thank you all for listening uh remember to dig the podcast pc so see you fit and uh don't forget to watch co-op subscribe to us on youtube tv and don't interrupt our viewers on iTunes and most importantly go watch co-op on area five dot tv master area and read just read and write no passive voice i'll be like this little kid yeah like the little kid yeah like the little kid yeah like a little kid first of all worth it back first my life comes running through my system and i'll be like a baby baby like a god's favorite like a baby baby i promise i can't answer the names i don't know what to say i promise i can't answer the names but i don't know what to say i promise i can't answer the names but i promise i can't answer the names but i don't know what to say like a little kid this so it comes running through my little and i feel the kid i feel like a little kid yeah like a little kid yeah like a little kid yeah like a little kid first four words and then back what's my life comes running through my system and i feel again i feel like i'm barely made like i'm god's favorite like i'm barely made like i'm god's