Rebel FM
Rebel FM - Episode 12 - 03/23/09
Jane Pinckard and XNA Community Manager Kathleen Sanders join the regular crew to discuss games, gaming news, and read your letters.
[Music] This week's podcast is sponsored by the Godfather 2 from Electronic Arts. Godfather 2 puts you into the shoes of a New York City mobster, working with the Corleone family. Take control of crime rings around three separate cities, rub out rival gangs, and prove that you have what it takes to be in charge of a powerful mafia family. The Godfather 2, act like a mobster, think like a don. Available April 7th and for pre-order now on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows PCs. Read it "M" for mature. It is Monday, March 23rd, 2009. Welcome to episode 12 with Rebel FM. My name is Philip Kohler. Joining me this week is the staff of Eat-Sleep-Game.com. Anthony Giyegos. Hello. And Arthur Geese. Hello. Also joining us today, we have Microsoft's XNA Community Manager Kathleen Sanders. Hello. What'd you do? Many picked up a piece of poop. Oh. This is getting in. Many keep going. Some kitty roka. No, dude, go pick that up. I'm going to pick it across the room. Game face. Oh. Mini, you're gross. Game face. You guys have Listerine. At all, because I need to spray my dogs. Now for that. Also joining us this week. What better introduction could you have than that? Foundation 9 Business Development Analyst Jane Pinkard. Hello. I don't even... Where do you go from that? From dogs eating cat poop to... At least I stopped it. Mini was totally bringing that shit over here. Too, literally, too Kathleen. Look what I got. Should we start over? No. We can maybe edit that a little so that there's not quite as much awkwardness. Okay. We're going to start on this one. We're going to start on this song podcast for that. I don't edit out awkwardness. We're going to start out this week with what we've been playing. Of course, our topic this week, we're going to discuss video game news coverage, how we talk about news in our industry, and how we want to talk about it. Arthur seems displeased. I'm sure we'll have some comments. When is Arthur ever pleased? Don't you tell me what he's been playing this week? Always start with me. Let's see. Well, I'll get out of the way first. The community game that I played this week that I actually really liked called Machiavelli's Ascent. Oh, that sounds good. What's the map? Okay, so the name... It's not about Machiavelli at all, which is... Yeah. So basically, it is... You play as a jellyfish that is trying to bounce as high as it can. Well, I mean, it's a metaphor for Machiavelli. Yes. Or something. The Prince. I guess. Maybe. The jellyfish is the Prince. Like that would be the weirdest. That can't possibly be the weirdest analysis of Machiavelli that you've ever heard. So basically, you're a jellyfish that starts with one launch up into the air, and then you try to hit these nutrients to bounce higher and higher. And you can only hit things on the way up. There's no falling down and bouncing onto things the second that you start descending. You die. Or you start over, you fall the way to the bottom. And then certain nutrients are in the shape of trees or multiple arrows that bounce you up further, and they play a setting. And then are you supposed to get somewhere with this, like rule the world? No, it's just get as high as you can and get the highest score you can. High score, of course. It's very Machiavelli. It's very Machiavelli. And it seems it's very simple in concept, but in application, it's really fun. The controls are nuanced enough to where you really need to know where you want to go on your way up and figure out what you want to do on your way up. So are there like levels and stuff different? There's not levels. It's just all, or not that I've seen. I mean, maybe I just haven't gotten high enough. Maybe my ascent is not complete. Am I always saying that you haven't gotten high enough, Arthur? Story of my life. Yeah, so it seems really simple and really throw away, but the music is really interesting. The sound effects are kind of cool. They're like guitar notes that go up when you ascend. And they've changed it slightly depending on whether or not you're hitting them from the bottom or the top or whatever. But yeah, it's really good. I'll probably put up some video on the side of it, along with some more comments later. Cool. We have possible cat dog warfare going on in the corner, so don't worry. He's just smelling the toy that many was playing with and just making weird sounds because she doesn't like it. It was a toy. Yeah, it wasn't poop. You're not? No. She's done with that. This is an actual toy. And then she went and got water after she put the poo in her mouth, so I think it's okay. Yeah, I'm sure that cleaned it right out. I played a community game too. Yeah. Yeah, it's called Welcome to Mexico. Do you remember that? Oh, God. I can't believe I actually was surprised that this was on the XNA community. Why? What was the letter? The premise is that you are, I forget the guy's name, some standard typical stereotypical Mexican name. And you're trying to get to America because America has the best place for work. And so after each level, it'll be like a platform and it'll be like, oh, you can't seem to make it over the high fences on your way to America. But luckily, you can eat chili peppers, which make you hop higher. It's either brilliant satire or completely racist. Sometimes it's hard to tell. It was hard to tell. How did this not come up last week? I don't know. I forgot. I still, I actually thought it was, it's really dumb and not fun, but seeing the text part is actually kind of hilarious at time. If you have a sense of humor. So what is the actual gameplay like? Oh, it's a terrible platform. Like there isn't backgrounds or anything. It's like little yellow lines that you jump between. And it's just a little guy with like a poncho and a sombrero hopping between the things. Well, every game that's out there, I went through the same peer review and the creators oftentimes will debate whether or not a game is appropriate or inappropriate. There's, there's usually quite a bit of discussion. I like that. I mean, I wasn't, like I said, I wasn't offended or anything. I actually thought that it was kind of humorous, but hopefully most people that see it have a sense of humor. That's what I mean. Man, three people just turn their heads to me simultaneously. Because I interrupted you. Let's see. I, more Resident Evil 5, which I'm still enjoying. And I think that this kind of got lost last week in all the other talk. I have beaten Resident Evil 5, but I went back and played some more. And I think this kind of got lost in some of our discussion last week, but I mean, I really did enjoy Resident Evil 5 a lot more than I thought I would. And something that I didn't quite get to last week was playing the demo, set me up to expect not to like the game. I was mostly playing the game to see the stuff about the racial imagery and I mean, it's a big game. And so people should play it sort of have an idea of what's going on in gaming, but I enjoyed it a lot. The combat is good, not as a third-person shooter, but as an action game, just in the way that it works. And yeah. At first, I didn't really like, I wasn't really enjoying RE5, but so many people told me to stick with it. And now I'm, I just, I killed a Spider Monster. No spoilers there. You gotta believe that if you're playing a Resident Evil game, you're gonna find a Spider Monster or something. Which one is it, is it the Spider Monster on the big rotating disc? Yes, I think so. Okay. I just want to make sure we're not talking about the Batterpillar. No, no. The Batterpillar is one of the first ones. The Batterpillar. I love the Batterpillar. Well, they're all the same, right? Shoot the glowing thing. Yeah, I know. It's just, I thought that the name Batterpillar was pretty funny. I think that this engine is just designed for going to orange parts. Sorry. I had to whip out the mom voice. There's no way to get it. She's going towards the poop box again. It's very to be whipping out that voice on me. All right. It's like I'm gonna watch it myself. I don't remember. I don't, I don't think that there was a lot of glowing orange stuff in previous Resident Evil games. Was there? Not, not really. It's just like, man, our lost planet engine does glowing orange shit really well. We need more of that in our games. But yeah, I enjoy Resident Evil 5. Have you tried out Mercenaries mode at all? I've not tried out Mercenaries mode because I feel like that is going a little bit beyond my comfort level with the content at this point. And I know that that sounds ridiculous, but at least. It does sound ridiculous. I'll just, I'll say it. That in Anthony is the authority on ridiculous, but I don't, I, at least in the rest of the game proper, there's some context instead of shooting as many people as you can. The context is to get points. They're just, they're just really high polygon like models of geometry wars at that point. You're just shooting them for points. I would rather play geometry wars. I'm not saying that in true, but I'm just saying that, that the imagery isn't really like it's not about that at all and that there's no story telling or anything like that. But literally just kill things for points. See how you are on the leaderboard. When they start doing this, do you ever feel kind of like mom and dad are fighting again? A little bit. I think they sound, they sound a little bit like your parents when your parents are like sniping at each other. Like, oh, that's fine that you say that. I'll go ahead and say this. It's funny because you're an idiot. It's funny because people do point it out on the boards and most people actually point it out kind of affectionately. Yeah. Some people are like, it reminds me of me and my roommate exactly. Yeah. So. Yeah, I mean, they've been together so long. I don't want to get in the middle of something this pure. You fucking damn well, right? You don't. The salmon dynamic between you two is just the tension in here. Is that how cheers work? Mm-hmm. We're not ever going to make out. No. Maybe that would help. Maybe. Why do you have to jump to conclusions like that? Well, if I made out with Arthur, I would expect other people to make out. I would maybe do as a trade-off. Oh, okay. Now I see where this is going. Oh, I see where this is going. I'm sorry. See you. Before we move away from-- You see what you did? I'm really lonely. [laughter] Before we move away from the 205, I wanted to bring up a letter we got. Yes, do. Last week we had Andrew Fister was kept saying that there's a difference between racist and racial. That was his quote of the day. Yes, it was. Yes, it was. We got a letter from a fan named Nick who pointed out there's also a difference between fascist and facial. I just didn't know that, so I just thought I would throw that in as well. I'm not a particular fan of either. They actually-- I don't know. You had a facial? No, I can't say that I have-- Two different roots in Latin, so they have nothing to do with each other. Nerd. Whereas a racist and facial are actually-- Do they really come from different roots? Yeah. Even though they both start with FAC. Well, how should you might say FACs or something? Dude, I took Latin for six years. Jesus. Don't make fun of me. You're not even Catholic. No, I could be. Not you could. You don't know. I could speak the language if I go to Vatican. Sure. I'll totally be like, "Saw away." We shouldn't get into religion. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. Wait, so what else are people playing? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, facials. Man, I just lost my train of thought. Basically, I'm really like playing attendees. I can't talk about PEGO as well. I did play more PEGO, which is bad. I feel so bad playing games that I can't talk about again, because I feel like we covered PEGO and PEGPARTIES as much as we need to. There's not much else you can say about. No. After last week, I don't think anybody wants to hear PEGging ever again. Yeah. I did download the Mirror's Edge DLC, finally, which is weird, because I was so in love with that game last year and just had never gotten around to it. But yeah, the Mirror's Edge DLC is sort of like what I guess everyone who is playing Mirror's Edge and complaining about the combat really wanted at the game, which essentially turns it into a physical challenge/racing game. Like a double dare? Yes. Exactly. Except for less slime and no parents. So you basically just run through these courses composed of geometry that are colored a certain way, and it takes a little bit of time at the beginning to figure out exactly how to find your way through the level. Like the very first course keeps the sort of, "Oh, well, red means go to this, and red is your path." And blue is like a secondary path kind of visual, nomenclature, and it throws that away on the second course. So it takes some time to get used to that. But it's a lot of fun, and it's more addictive in a way, because it's very arcadey, and that Kathleen just picked up a Warhammer book from the coffee table and is looking at it disdainfully. Probably going to have to make fun of Anthony when he gets back. There's no disdain. I've already seen his nerd treasure chest. Yeah. Heat. No. Or what do we think? That's not a euphemism. Oh. No, it's real. That's the sixth edition rule book or fifth edition? It's the nerd treasure. I mean, don't get me wrong. I have my D&D books too. The fifth edition rules had different artwork. The fifth edition rules are actually sitting underneath the sixth edition that you grabbed it. You have a thing for dwarves. I totally have a thing for dwarves. Do you like identify with them? Yeah. That's a quote right there. Back in the day when I was in high school, and we were all trying to figure out which Warhammer armies we were going to play because- Like, you do in high school. That's like something you struggle with. Because it's just like my high school, but we did it in Latin. God. You're such a loser, you can't buy dice like everybody else. Because, of course, we weren't going to like all play. We all had to play different armies. And so my friend decided that I was like a dwarf, and he said I should read the rule book and see if I identify with it, and I thought I could work on it. Which friend was this Joe? This is my friend Dennis. Okay. Hey. And anyways, my friend Dennis, and so he had some- So what happened is I learned about Warhammer, and then I went over to Scotland, and I spent a month there. And then- Because you thought dwarves were real, and that's where you find them? No. No, it's the- No, it's the greatest facility for Warhammer training. It's actually the scholar. It's actually the game's workshop, the company that makes all the shit in Warhammer 40k, it's located in London, or in the UK, and so- The hammer nays. The thing is- So why did you go to Scotland? Why did you go to Scotland? Scotland is not in Scotland. I was Scotland for fun. But then I just happened to see like- And dwarves. And then I happened to see that they had a game's workshop store, and I went in it, and then I ended up blowing like all of my free money that I had like to spend on vacation stuff in this Warhammer store. On Warhammer books? Wow. Were you able to get home? Yeah. You have to sell- I saw my plane ticket. I saw your services as a miniature prompter. I'm not going to lie. I did remember thinking to myself- Is this your answer? I was like the last story. I was like the last story. I remember thinking to myself like, man, I could eat this lunch, or I could eat something cheaper and I could go out and buy another pack of miniatures before I go home. Where are they all, man? Oh, they were all my trunk. That's what you guys saw. Their treasure chest. I used to have a ton more, too. And then there was this- I used to have a whole second army of vampires. Sure. And then there was this girl that I was going to marry, so I sold them all on eBay, so that I could raise money to buy her, her engagement ring. But then she broke it off. But then she found out you played Warhammer? That's exactly what happened. But I never sold my dwarves because I could not bring myself to sell the door. They mean too much to me. That's a really beautiful story. So yeah, I mean- We should go to some sort of movie. I guess if you look around this room, there is like many incriminating things. There's like my Warhammer books. And then up on top of the shelf, there's like toy tanks. Those come from Shanna. They'll add. They'll sell it. Yeah. You know, I got like a rain core and stuff up on the shelf up there. With Java to scale. And then my closet is full of 12-inch Star Wars dolls, also from Shanna. I'll add- Because I told him- I told him- He's not allowed to display the 12-inch Tonton in the living room. So. I draw a line. The line is drawn at the 12-inch Tonton. Yeah. Some people are insecure. You thought that's not bad on the outside. Sorry. Let's get us on top. No, hey. So what else have you been playing? That wasn't fair. That's the wrong topic. I feel like. Yeah. Uh, Mirror's Edge DLCed Good. If you didn't like the combat stuff in Mirror's Edge before, you might try it. It is kind of expensive. I almost wish that they would put a level up from it for free, so people could get a taste for it. Because I think that it is what a lot of people who originally wanted to play Mirror's Edge wanted from the game, except without the city context, which is kind of sad. But- Come strong. Good. I know. And bully. I'm playing a lot of bully. We'll talk about that on Wednesday, which is when our first bully game club will come out. Yeah. But without Ryan. And. We'll talk about it Wednesday. It's just so easy to give Phillip shit, like even if I'm not hating bully, it's just so easy to say bully. Well, you just had it crashing a lot. That's- No. We'll talk about it Wednesday. We'll save it. Anthony. Um, I played some PlayStation Home with Kathleen. Ooh, yeah. I've played that. I know. You didn't even know it and come out. I didn't know it'd come out. And so then we were- What? And then we were playing. And then Kathleen was bowling, and she was talking to Sweet and Sassy 65. And Sweet and Sassy 65 started talking to Kathleen about Jesus. Well, be fair. I mean, I started talking to Sweet about being spanked. On home. Spanking. Or spanking. I thought you were going to spank them. I don't recall. I think I would have been up for either, really. Yeah. And so eventually when she started talking about Jesus, then I had to intervene. Yeah. Then it was like, oh, theological discussion online, "Do won't," said Anthony. So we started- So we started- Me and the person started exchanging books that we should read. Smash the keyboard away from me and started quoting Scripture back and forth. It was really fun. Anthony is like a trap for proselytizing people anywhere. I- Uh, did you ever tell you the story about when we worked at Tower, and the guy came in that was looking to preach, and Anthony was more than happy to argue with him? Appreciate him. No, eventually it was going to get uh, ugly and so Arthur called me. I could see Anthony's fist clenching. I would have called me to the back room so that I didn't end up hurting him. See, you didn't go to the trunk of your car to get your sticks. Face it sticks. [laughter] On the way here- On the way here- But the sticks, he likes to- On the way here, I pointed out the fact that I keep beat down sticks in my trunk. Next to his nerd chest. And they said that's not really what they're for, and I'm like, yes, that's- Well, you know, I think you're going to carry a nerd pressure chest like that. You need to have something to defend yourself. Because basically, you're carrying a chest of things that make people want to kick your ass and take your lunch money. Exactly. And you're kind of like a- Like a- A pretty like, a pretty like normal looking box. No, that looks like a nerd box dude. No, it doesn't look like a treasure chest. Seriously, like you need to- That box is- You need to- That box is actually a painter's case. Like for carrying all the things. You need to engrave some like, rune symbols on it. I really appreciate like the female ability here to cut through all the fucking nerd obfuscation and the justification. I actually do know how to, how to write certain dwarven runes. I remember from when I used to paint my miniatures back in the day. You should totally go and whittle some of them into the- I can get some tattooed on me. That'd be sweet. That'd be plus one strength. Okay. I don't know if that's better or worse than your current tattoo plans. Oh, what are those? I want to get some Star Wars tattoos. Oh my god. Well, it's a good thing I'm never going to try and date you. Because that wouldn't work out when I have my Star Wars tattoos. No, that was a happy- Oh my god. You can't- I was just trying to restrain the extreme attraction I know. Yeah. Oh man. She's got- She's got a little sun for her dream journal tonight. I'm going to wake up to charge our pink slime on your shoulder a little above a fat on your shoulder. Wouldn't you- No. If you wanted- It took us above a fat? She did. If he wanted- if he was going to get jarred out tattoos, you'd have to fight with Shane. No, actually I just wanted the- I just wanted the- Bubble fat. The symbols that they hold in New Republic is what I wanted. That doesn't make it better. I will- I will- I will stand right by this. Well- That's fine. Maybe most girls won't know what this symbols- I hope they do know what they are. And if they don't, he will explain. I will. He will sit them down and he will talk to them. That's a good small talk. That's some good picture. And then I'll pull out my official Jedi Knight card and be like- Yeah. In case you're wondering if I could- And then you'll pull out your lightsaber. If I could protect you tonight. Let's not- Let's not wrap up too soon. And then you'll- You'll teach her about the Force. You can be some girls for the Star Wars- It was a brown stick. Binders. She actually thought it was funny yesterday that when I was cleaning out my old car, and I handed her the backpack of all my shit from my old car that there was a lightsaber sticking out. I was like, "Yes, there is." It's adorable. He's just got it ready. No, it was because when we all went to the Halloween party- It's if the beatdown sticks don't work. No, because when we all went to the Halloween party, I just took it off as a Halloween. That's for deaf cars too. Well, it's not like the sticks are going to help if he's in a blaster battle or something. That's so true. That's when you really need the lights. Because there's no match for a good blaster at your side, kid. Yeah. Do you have a set of robes, Anthony? He does. Yeah. Don't you remember me? I was at the Halloween party. I had them made for me by my friend Jade. She was the one that I took a woman's bathrobe and had it sewed into my fucking like Jedi shawl thing. That doesn't make it better either. It looks rad. I actually- I look really good at it. I'm surprised that you don't wear it all the time. Yeah. I can't put it on right now. To the corners. We're going to see what that's not on. No. Please. Come on. Maybe during the next segment. We'll see the video. Please, can you- Would you just put it on during the podcast? We could pause for a minute and go put it on for us. Yeah. You want to? What is a Jedi wear under this robe? Under the robe. Yeah. I don't know. You know, you're Jedi. You got a card. The card. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's like more of an occurrence. As the podcast. As the podcast. As the podcast. I feel like- You need to try and pull things back. We were supposed to- Yeah. I almost still want to. Yeah. This is too good. Let's pull it back. We were supposed to do a short show this week. He's a dreamy kid. Oh, I'm not worried about any- No, I'm worried about any girl that would find out that nerdy stuff about me and not be about it. I'd kick that girl with the curb. Like that girl that you beat to death in your class? Yeah. Let's go. This is Kathleen. Kathleen on the way here said, "Well, at least I know Anthony would never hit a woman." And then I told her about the girl that is in my crowded class who kept- Then he told me about all the women he's hit. It was just the one girl in my crowded class. She kept insisting to be treated like a man. Well, that girl, yeah. I do not believe in hitting women, god damn it. Unless they ask for it. Unless they're like sith or something. Yeah. I'll kick their ass. What about like a really evil like an emperor girl? Yeah, I mean, I guess- An emperor. I guess if I had to hit her enough to like on the path of turning her, you know? Yeah. I mean, you would find her- You would find her to a stand still. Maybe I'd force punter instead so I didn't actually have to put a hand on her. Yeah, that would be better. Is that what you did to the girl that killed her? It's anger leads to domestic violence. You should tell people. You should want people to think that I'm making this up, like you said. Girls in my karate class and she said she would be like a boy and we were working with one particular strike to the face and I ended up hitting her pretty hard in the face. She didn't come to class anymore because she died. That's Kathleen's thing. As far as Anthony knows, she never left the kitchen after that. So. Yep. I don't know. I just did what she wanted me to do. It's what she asked for. She did ask for it. Sometimes? I still feel bad about it. Clearly. Okay. So. What else can we find? Have you been playing? Oh, the best part though. We didn't tell them about the best part when we were playing home. So I'm playing on your account. What's your username again? Oh, do you share that? Yeah, it's Chuff Money. Okay. You should make friends with him. I'm home. I got like 50 friend invites after. I mentioned my name on the air. Yeah, me too. I just deleted them all. I added all of them, apparently. There's not any sort of friend limit on the PSN that I've hit yet. Hmm. It's not that I just, I don't accept friends' requests without any sort of message attached to them whatsoever. I had to make that real too. So. Just because otherwise I don't know who people are. Yeah. But, and so it was, it was pretty fun. And then I decided after asking a few people to, uh, spank Anthony, oh, and we got to design your character. It's true. Um, it's very true to life. Rob the child, Melissa. We did our best to make them look as like Curtis Hanson is going to come knocking on your door any day. And, um, yeah. And then I, uh, while I was walking around, I kept giving out your phone number. My real phone number. And then, and then he, he dared me to give out Shane Bentonhausen's phone number. So I did that too. I did not dare you to give out Shane's number. No, you said, who else's number could I give out? And I said, ah-ha. It's going to be fun if you gave out Shane's not thinking you'd actually do it. Don't fucking indict me in this situation. Why would you be staring at that Kathleen would do that. I don't know, man. So yeah. I, I hope- Did you get any phone calls? I haven't yet, which is kind of said, I should give it out right now, but I wouldn't want to. Do you want me to give it out? No. Okay. No. People actually listen to this. Yeah. I think people are generally ignoring us going around trying to get into this. You know what's fucked up about home, though? Like I cannot believe it that when there's an arcade machine, if someone's on it, you can't use it. Yeah. Yeah. That's welcome to three months ago. Yeah. I don't know. I just found that out. I just thought that was so bad. You just found out that home. Well, I didn't even know it was an open beta. I knew it was a closed beta for a long time, but, you know, I don't know, I'm not that impressed with home. I don't see myself using it unless we all want to get together and watch movies together. Then we could do that. I think we should have a, yeah, like a Rebel FM movie night in Hell. With fans? As long as you don't have to like get together in person. Yeah. Can you have people come over into your house space so you could like host a party. That's where I kept inviting people to smank me. All of them. Um, well, spank, Anthony. Right. Right. Um. With various appendages. Nobody. So you were trying to turn home in his second life, basically. It is. It already is. I don't know, until you can buy like dongs and stuff like that, it's not going to be second life. Like, did I ever tell you when I was playing second life when we found this place that gave out free penises? Mm-hmm. So like me and Sean L.A. and like Matt and James and all of us, we grabbed as many as we could. Oh my gosh. Armfuls of penises. You're taking. You can attach things to yourself. So I attached it to every spot on my face. Oh my gosh. I'm running around. It was so rad. It was so disgusting. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. It was so disgusting. Oh my gosh. So are you going to put on your Jedi robe for us? Yeah, would you? All these sexy stories about second life. I think you need to put on the Jedi robe. Okay. Okay, cool. We can do that between second life. That'll be good. All right. I don't have anything else then besides home. No, I've been playing a ton of bully and then I was playing battle forge. My review for battle forge was actually supposed to go up today. But then before I could finish it, the beta close. So can you talk about it? Um, I will. Okay. We'll wait. We'll hold on then. Kathleen, how about you? Um, what have I been playing? I was playing RE5. Um, I play a lot of community games that play all of them. Uh, I, uh, let's see what else have I been playing. I actually logged into, uh, WOW last week just because I was, it had been nearly a month. And I, I couldn't remember what I had in my mailbox and I didn't want it to go away. Cause I don't know what happens to things. I just know it has a timer. For timer sender. Yeah. I knew it had a timer and I was like, oh shit. Is your, is your character in WOW hoarder lines? Hoard. You should. I play the real game. Don't do our server. Anthony and I are in a server together. Well, I have people I play with. It's just, I've had so many other games that I'm playing. You can have them come too. That's fun. Now they won't, they already belong to, uh, very important. I used to play with you. I know. And then you way became way too powerful. You left me behind. I don't know. What's your high school? Come back down to the barons for you. What's your high school? Character Jane. Jane is an alcoholic. Yeah, I've got like, I'm an alcoholic, but she's an alcoholic. Yeah. Okay. The highest level is like 52, I guess now. How many characters do you have, Jane? I have 15, I believe. But they're all like at least above, in their 20s and then there's a 52 one. And there's some that are, there's another like 46, I think. God, I haven't logged on in a long time. There's one in the 30s. Are any of them on role playing servers, Jane? Yeah, don't you remember Anthony? Oh, this game, this game, this game, because that one time when I was talking to Kathleen. She's like a shit talking ninja. When I, when I talked to Kathleen and I told her that I had a character on her role playing server. Well, I kind of, I was fucking with you. A little bit. I was like, um, oh, we can say fuck on this podcast, right? Oh, yeah, we said fuck off. We have a letter about that later. Oh, good. Yes. Fuck that. So I was, I was fucking with you, like we were talking about, wow, and I'm like, oh, do you keep that one on the role playing server? Just totally kidding. Cause who plays on role playing servers? Well, I've checked on it, like, I was like, yeah, I was disappointed by the like of actual role playing. It's the problem. So I remember a dark age of Camelot. I played on this RP server and it was awesome. I had this dwarf, Anthony, the stories for you at this dwarf warrior gentleman come up to me and kind of flirt with me. But he was talking like old and timey, dwarven talk. That was Anthony Anthony, Anthony is a dark age Camelot character reveal Anthony, do you know enough dorven to flirt with me? No, but I would never quest. They made it easy because in, in every quest, you could just hit slash dwarven and it would actually write in dwarven for you. Oh, yeah. And so people had to be proficient in dwarven to understand it. There was basic. Yeah, that was a weird thing, but I request there was basic. And then there were other language. So you would literally see like a human come up to a dwarf and then they would just be babbling at each other to work up their proficiency and the other language to each other. Yeah. Every course was hardcore. I know. Yeah. Any relationships in every quest, mind you? So that's good. Yeah, it's very good. No idea. I did go to a wedding and every quest once. That's bad. Well, at least he wasn't getting married. He saved that for Star Wars Galaxies. It was on the, it was on, it was on the cliff overlooking Kiranavai. We are still talking about every quest, right? Yeah. Okay. And it was our whole guild was there. I was in nerdy shit. Was that the happiest day of your life? No. Are you going to get married? Um, Star Wars MMO that Bioware Austin is working on? Oh god. No. No, he wants to marry it. He wants to marry the actual game. He wants to marry it. He wants to marry it. Yeah. Did you ever play Galaxies? I'm not a big MMO player. I play like some and then I play some like for like really hardcore for like a couple months and then I usually fall off the wagon. So. Did you ever play Galaxies? No, I never played Galaxies because I kept on hearing terrible things about it. I sort of want to do Galaxies as a game club game. Oh, I think that's a good idea. It's a backlog where we all just go in for fun together. Yeah. Like get a whole bunch of rubble if I'm listeners to join us and like suddenly the people at something online are like. I think like a subscriber base just jumped like I think Phil like Phil gauges his game club suggestions based on the expression on my face. Sort of. If he's happy, no. If he looks like he's going to cry, we've got a candidate. So yeah. Other than that, I play a lot of PEGL on DS and I'm 360. What's PEGPARTIES? No. No. Don't know what that is. Not going to Google it. Sounds hot. I don't think it does. I don't. PEGG. No, that's what multiplayer is called in PEGL is PEGPARTY. Remember? It is called that. Yeah. We remember. So I want to think about it. Yeah. I've been playing lots of World of Warcraft still last night I jumped on Chuff for the first time in like a year. My dwarf. That's your character. My dwarf warrior. Yeah. Okay. Good. And so I jumped on because my friend Joe got a hold of me and said that we had to go on old-time adventures. Because I've been playing with that guy Joe on that character since like day one when the game came out. But he's 80. Oh, but Joe has like 780s at this point. Yeah. Joe is not healthy. He has 780. Well, that Joe's girlfriend. Joe probably has scurve. He's also really nice and pretty and everything. She has a level 74 hunters that she plays with them with. She was hanging out with us the whole set too. Well, does she ever going to talk to them at night and game? Good point. On team speak. Mm-hmm. I do more than just talk. No, that's the one thing I'm glad about. All the people I play with with all my friends, we've never used event. We always just type to each other like I don't know. That was something that I never felt comfortable with. Why? I don't know. It was a step up nerdy and that bothered me. Although I like being in the event with Sean and all of them when we're playing, but we're never playing the same game most of the time. We're usually just invent together. But yeah, I've been playing my dwarf a lot last night. We went and did crazy adventures. We killed Anixia with four of us. I've never done that. That used to be back in the day when we were working first game event. That was the quest. Oh, that was the end of the game. Yeah. Nowadays, four people can do it. I don't know. I've seen people solo. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. That's one thing I've always had a problem with MMOs, whether it was Everquest or anything. When you release new content, making old content kind of obsolete, to the point where no one's even there and it's like, no one cares about it anymore. I feel like that's a key to wow success though, is consistently escalating. I mean, they make levels easier to get to when they-- Well, so did Everquest Everquest. Everquest was always escalating. New lands, new this, new that. I mean, they still release new expansions. And I have to say, the stuff in the latest expansion and I just-- I love all of it. I wish the rest of the game was like that. Yeah, I love that I can start at 55 now. Some of the stuff that I guess plus up into Northrend. I just wish they'd go back and redo some of the old content maybe, give it a complete facelift. I don't know. I just think that'd be a good idea. I think you'll be paying for a new MMO for that for the only final I go back. Although, I keep hearing rumbling about Blizzard maybe doing a content update pack by upgrading all the assets and stuff like that. And I wonder-- They didn't Everquest. Yeah. And it's about a complete consuming. So Barb Blizzard keeps saying that they're not going to do it just because they want the game to continue to be able to run on it. And it still looks good. Yeah. On the low end computers. I mean, doesn't Eve Online have multiple graphical clients? Like, you can-- That was the thing. Yeah, and Everquest too, when they released the new engine, you could choose to run the older, the new engine. Yeah. So-- But maybe there's just too much going on. I just think it would be-- I mean, I wouldn't be surprised that maybe instead of seeing like a WOW-2, we just see them basically release a whole new graphic client for it. They might as well. And just keep-- let me get up to level 100. I'll care. I'll do it. You'd do it anyway. Anyway, so yeah. I've been playing some WOW. And enjoying that. Last night I found that he got a real mount for my dwarf as well because he was still in the level 40 mount. That's hilarious. And my friends that got back with me, they were like, uh, because they just had to summon their old ass mounts just so we could all ride together because they're all like on flying mounts and shit like that. They were like, fuck it, man. They all gave me some money. And they're like, go get yourself a real mount. And I was like, that was pretty red. Clean yourself up. Yeah. I had just gotten my flying mount on my spirit hunter when Lich King came out. So basically it was like, oh, look, you guys got a flying mount and going to Northmen. No. And now I got a level, if anything, actually, when I was five, to be able to flying mount. So if anything was like, let's get back to Outlands, you guys. Come on. The one thing I really regret is that when I went to Blizzcon with you and stuff, well, yeah, but the one thing I regret last night was that I was like, I went to Blizzcon with you and I gave the coat away from my exclusive Blizzcon mount to a friend and it wasn't even a chick. It was a dude friend. One time you could have leveraged a video game content for sex and gave it to a guy. So here's many chances of that. I was going to say, I mean, what does it mean? What does the differences make if it's a guy or a girl, whether or not I could leverage it for sex? Because I know who you gave it to. Huh. That's true. That'd be like getting the herb. I mean, for your sake, I hope not. So anyways, yeah, so that's what I've been playing. Excellent. Jan, how about you? Um, well, I haven't had a ton of time to play games recently because GDC is this week. Because we got a job. I got a job. But I did pick up Mad World. Oh, yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Let's talk about Mad World. Did you get to play anymore? I played a little bit more. I liked it. And granted, I haven't played it very long, you know. But I like its style. I like how crazy over the top it is. I like some of the choices that they made. I think it feels pretty good to pick things up and throw them. And I don't care that it's pretty limited, you know. And I just think the team, the team is really astonishing to me. I mean, it's the same team that made Ohkami, right? And then they come out with Mad World. And there's actually a lot of correspondences, I think, between Mad World and Ohkami in interesting ways. Like they're both just, you know, the graphic style, you can tell that the engine has been really polished up and looks pretty, I think, a lot nicer than it did in Ohkami. And it looked pretty good in Ohkami. And I think in terms of, you know, some of their little clever touches, you can tell that they love the game. There's a lot of love in the game, which I felt with Ohkami too. There were just a lot of little extra touches, things like, you know, you would feed the animals and that didn't have anything to do with the game at all. It didn't give you any points or anything. It was just pleasurable and in the same way in Mad World, you can do things. I mean, it all has points, but there are all these little touches of things that you can do. You know, you can throw the tire on top of the dude and then you can like stab him with the sign and then you can throw. I don't know. I just felt like they really kind of thought through little details in a way that I appreciated. I definitely see how stabbing a dude with the sign is comparable to feeding animals. Yeah, you linking those two things and there were some pleasurable things that were like yesterday when you when you took that guy and you shoved the spike through his ass and out his mouth. Yeah. That's pretty hard. That got a big ass mouth. Yeah, it's just funny. It's funny. And I think they made a good choice going black and white because I think full color would have just been too much. Well, you know, I'll say in black and white, I was having hard time keeping track of things, honestly. Yeah. I was feeling it's too busy and a lot of spots like they didn't quite design downward enough, but I mean, it was striking if nothing else. But then the blood is red, which is fun and I was the main thing that I was frustrated by was just that there's no real save or checkpoint system, except for when you get to the end of the chapter. Yeah. Yeah, I agree, but I think that makes it seem more arcadey somehow, which I don't think I agree with you. It's not necessarily a feature, but I guess I didn't mind it because it is pretty easy to rack up the process. Oh, yeah. The levels aren't very long either. Yeah. That's a pretty short. I did. But yeah, I mean... I don't know. I liked it. It's fun. I don't generally like brawlers because I find them really boring, but this one had enough sort of funny, interesting things going on. So far, I mean, I'm only like a couple of hours into it. What did you think about the color commentary? Some Greg Prups. Yes, Greg Prups and John Demagio. Oh, you know, I guess I wasn't really paying that much attention to that. I had the choice code I heard was, "Today is opposite day," where no means yes and yes means anal. That was like what he said one time. I couldn't believe it. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. Wow. I really was... I guess I wasn't... I really tuned that out. Thank God. Yeah. You tuned Greg into that. No, that was the choice code that David Ellis actually pointed out. Wow. That's weird. That was really tuned. But I think, you know, the voice acting overall is pretty good and I don't know. It's fun over the top. The other game that's sort of the polar opposite of that that I love a lot is "Flower," that PSN game. Mm-hmm. Super gorgeous. I finished it. Wait, it's a flower yesterday. A couple weeks. I finished it like the week it came out. It's short, you know, but it's so neat just to go back into. I find it really relaxing and restful and gorgeous and it's almost like an interactive art piece. I feel like I could just leave it on and then, you know, go and pick it up and play with it for a little bit whenever I want and then... It would be especially beautiful on your TV. I'm just saying your TV is amazing. Oh, yeah. It's pretty good. Yeah, it's pretty good. 'Cause we were sitting there and we play like on the 30th and then yours it is like... I feel like I was running through fields myself. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. Well, I was thinking what I would ideally like to do is actually have it on a projector system at like a party or something and just leave a controller out and let people just come up because that game also does this... Like red. Yeah, it doesn't really have... You don't need to have a point. Like there's a way to progress the levels but you don't have to. You can just create these flower trails and just sort of, you know... I like this party. It's just... Yeah. I mean, I think it would be a great party. I want to do that. In fact, let's do that. Oh, yeah. And then someone bumps into you and throws up on your jacket. I want to party. That's a good idea. Yeah. Next weekend. Yeah, next weekend. Good call. Let's do that. Let's try and dress on there. Let's love it. I'm afraid it's a private party. Invite only. Well, technically you won't live there for a much longer after that. Oh, well, the party is not actually at my house. But yes, you're right. I will be homeless. Jane's not bad done. She's not gonna have people at her house. I don't want you people at my home. Even if there's nothing in it, no furniture or anything. There won't be when they're done. Yeah, right. Oh, actually, that's a great idea. I should just invite people over and say, "Just take everything." That would be a good way to move. Take what you want. Because I have a ton of stuff I gotta get rid of. Do you have printers insurance? Because then you could just claim it all. And then buy it. Yeah, well, you know, we're just pointing out the insurance fraud right here on the internet. So, tie a follicle cap. If you were evil. That's what I meant to finish it with. Uh-huh. I did. You know what? I did play something else and I think about it. I played Silent Hill the Escape on my iPhone. Isn't this supposed to be really bad? It is. It isn't very good. I actually only ended up buying it because I read reviews. And several people. So, I'm not... I've only played like the first two levels, but several people said that you have to get past the first couple levels and then it actually gets pretty cool. So, that's what I'm waiting for. So, it still hasn't gotten... But it looks pretty... It looks really good. How does the game play? It plays like a user finger and slide it in the direction you want to move. And so, it's just like you're sliding down a corridor. It almost feels like a... And then you touch the spot where you want to shoot. Like a... Like a... Like a game. Except for the fact that you're moving yourself. Which is kind of annoying. I would prefer that it just moved me to the end goal and I just had to do shooting because moving myself means that like I have to actually find keys for lock doors and stuff like that at a time. They still keep that part of Silent Hill there. Which is okay. I mean I guess in theory you could also run from the monsters too. Can an iPhone version of Silent Hill possible capture any of the stuff that's good about the Silent Hill games on console? From what I've seen so far, no. But like I said, a lot of the reviews seem pretty positive that the storyline actually becomes interesting by the end. So, we'll see. Is anyone played Killzone 2? That's something I've been kind of meaning to talk about. Yeah. We've talked about it. We've talked about it. We've talked about it. Phillip wrote a guide for it. And her view. So, he hates it. I, I, I, I actually, actually I'm glad you brought up because I'm, I meant to mention and had forgotten that I, I logged on to Killzone 2 last night and added a bunch of people to our clan. Oh yeah. I'm sorry if I haven't added you and I have like 50 emails I have to get to. I've done like, so popular. No, I've done. I think we're, we specifically asked people right now, we specifically, our clan is full. Because I, I kept inviting people and then I got to a point where it said the number of people in your clan plus the number of people you're waiting responses from is too many. So, we're full. So, you need to start a simple clan. We'll probably clean it out some or, or start a second. Yeah, I guess we'll, we'd out people who aren't on or something. I don't know. But yeah, we, we, it wasn't. We'd out anyone who was in our, like, specifically asked people if they wanted to join our clan. And then abandoned. A femoral phantasia. That's the name of our clan. Yes, I remember. You know what a femoral phantasia is Jane? It's not a name of your clan. Yeah, it's actually, it's a, it's a euphemism for a wet dream. As made by. Like no lead up at all as made by me because it's actually the name of a video game that someone brought up and I said, and I said actually it sounds like, it sounds like, it sounds like slang for wet dream to me. I'm sorry. And then they're not normally like this. They're not normally like this. They're not normally like this. I'm just telling everyone that the femoral phantasia is because I thought a femoral phantasia is funny. It's like Mickey Mouse. It's the sorcerer's name. It's the sorcerer's name. It's the sorcerer's name. It's the sorcerer's name. It's the sorcerer's name. It's the sorcerer's name. It's the sorcerer's name. No, no, no, no. That's what. Thank you. It changed into your jetter. So. Dance, monkey. All right. So Phil, what have you been playing? I've mostly, besides bully this week, I've been spending my week playing a dark sector for PC. How is that? Oh, yeah. How is that? Honestly, I had no idea. No, I, I played through all the way through the Xbox version so. Is dark sector. No. I think I'm thinking of alone in the dark. It's predator meets crawl. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I'm thinking of alone in the dark that has Mark McDonald is the main character. No, yeah. I mean, the main character of dark sector looks a little like Mark McDonald. I will not lie, but so basically I had no clue this is coming to PC until I was offered a review for it. I don't understand the logic behind putting it on PC. Well, what I found out is I'm pretty sure they're releasing it for like 20 bucks. So it sounds like it's like a quick port and then they'll hopefully make some cash off. It seems more. It's cheap as well. Or like retail. Um, maybe going on Steam as well, I'm not sure. Uh, but I, I played through half of the 360 version back when it came out originally. Um, my friend, like we bought it for super cheap and then my friends and I played through half of it and like one sitting and then never touched it again. Why didn't you, why didn't you go back to it? Uh, I mean, mostly it was just because my friends and I got too busy, we, like I was just finishing up college and we got too busy and we're, when we did get together again, we were like playing halo and stuff. Priorities fill. I know. I know. But you actually finished the 360 version. And I liked that even though the entire beginning part of the game ignored literally everything they ever showed a dark sector when it was announced as like the first next gen game. By the end of it, there actually were things that were from the original trailer that sort of tied it back in. Like what things? Because I don't remember the original trailer. You saw people in these specific kinds of suits, um, that you never saw in dark sector by the, I mean, I don't know if it's spoilers, but I don't, I think it's the statue limitations is up for a dark sector. But uh, by the end of dark sector, you are in a full on suit and it does resemble the suit that you saw in the trailer originally, um, and there are giant robot suits later as well. So, um, yeah, the thing I'm finding interesting is that I remembered all of that first half I'd played through and remembered thinking it was like a mediocre Gears of War ripoff, but I enjoyed it. Like it was still well done and on PC, it felt, I mean, it feels exactly the same, but then once I got past that point where we had gotten, which was like the church area if you remember that, um, the game starts getting worse, in my opinion, um, it starts bringing in more annoying enemies and uh, some enemies that can kill you very quickly and the situations become very like trial and error, having to figure out very specific strategies for taking enemies down. Um, so I've had a lot of trouble with that, just like having to redo sections over and over again and, uh, but the good news is that the port is very clean, uh, well done there. I've had like no crashes or anything. Are you mouse and keyboarding it or using a 360 controller? I'm actually using mouse and keyboard. I thought about using a 360 controller but decided I should try with mouse and keyboard and it's, it's working fine, surprisingly, um, I would probably, it would probably be a little bit easier with, uh, with, um, a controller, but, whatever, I haven't had any trouble. Yeah, I mean it would be nice to play a, uh, a good PC port of a console game since those are so rare. And definitely, if it's only, if I'm right and it is only $20, like, it's hard to say it's not worth that. I mean, it's a, it's fun. I mean, it's, it's not groundbreaking by any means, but if you have nothing else going on and you want a good quick shooter, I mean, it was extremely technically competent and the, I mean, I enjoyed the shooting aspect of it and the Glaive mechanic was fun. I mean, there is a very simple joy from throwing a Glaive and watching a guy's leg get cut off and hearing him scream and then fall to that side. Didn't he actually go to change? Yeah, I think he really has three on this game, because I'm so excited that Anthony is now like changing into a Jedi. I did not realize this was actually going on. The other thing I, the other thing I played a very small amount of is, um, in Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection for the 360, I unlocked the original fantasy star. Oh, wow. I have never played any of the fantasy star games. What? I mean, except for a little bit of fantasy star online. Which is not really a fantasy star game. Did you play it on, uh, Dreamcast? Yes. Yes. But, uh, but I've never played any of the original ones, even though I'm like an RPG fanatic. So I was like, I should go back and try out fantasy star and, uh, I've just been kind of, I don't know, I'm strangely intrigued by it, but also scared of it because it's one of these RPGs where like you start out so weak that you need to go back and rest after every single battle until you level up some. Um, so I have D&D with a really sadistic DM. Yeah. So I spent like, I spent like 20 minutes just wandering around the, the first town fighting and leveling up a little and then saved, uh, I don't know, I don't know if or when I'll actually return, but I just thought it was an interesting, like, look to the past. I mean, I'm pretty sure that for fantasy, the fantasy star series was known for its stories more than like it's any groundbreaking gameplay, but I could be mistaken on that. Yeah, I think, I think you're correct as well. And for, I mean, for a game that's as old as is, I think it was 1988 or something that it came out. The story is fairly intriguing, although sometimes, of course, the like the town dialogue is kind of laughable, but that's part of the, part of the joy of it. That's all those old. Exactly. And it's charming. Yeah. It's going back and playing like Chrono Trigger or any of those like even later on. It's not like. Don't you talk bad about Chrono Trigger? I mean, like, but some of the, the RPGs are Chrono triggers. You know, I actually like, I just totally, like, it's so adorable. I mean, I worship like the whole eternity of Super Nintendo, RPGs, like the Final Fantasy 3/6 Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana, even though Secret of Mana was broken in a lot of ways. Oh my god. Now you're heading to the Jedi. A Jedi voice. Looking at the moon songs. We do have to take like a picture of this and put it on. We have to do the, this was the, he was so ready. He was so on. He was like, what? Okay. It's hard to say. My Jedi ropes. Anthony is now podcasting in his Jedi ropes. We are no longer here podcasting when Anthony, Anthony left and this amazing Jedi night. I feel like the last time I podcasted with you, Kathleen, I was wearing my Jedi ropes. Yes. Yes. That was on. Oh my god. This is a good tradition. And this is around Halloween and Anthony was in his Jedi ropes. Again, he was the only one who was dressed up. That's true. A lot of people didn't dress up that day at work, but I like that he dressed up for me. I thought it was important. I'm going to think it's for me. Yeah. I think it is for you. So. I love it. I love it. All right. Taking a picture, putting it on Twitter now. Smile Jedi. Yes. Oh. All right. We are going to take a break and we will be back in a few moments to talk about. Thank you. She touched herself. She touched herself. I caught her on the phone. And she touched herself. I watched myself to sleep. At this rate, I'll be heading for electric chairs. I'm only human with my crustabear. Which she described her. That's true. It's true. I love it. I love it. That's true. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. It's true. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. All right. We're going to have a discussion now about news coverage in the video game industry. We're strong with you. How? What's going on? Jedi's getting hungry, too. I have to name these eating, I guess. I mean, some healthy snack mix. All right. Jedi way. Full of metacluring, which means I'm not actually holding it with my hands and floating into my mouth. Video game news coverage. So obviously, I was news editor at oneup.com and I mean, I originally didn't get into writing about video games focused on news, but that's kind of where I ended up focusing for a long time. So I've been thinking about how our industry covers news for a long time and considering if there's a better way to do it or comparing how different sites do it. I know both Kathleen and Jane, you guys have both been involved in news coverage before. Yeah. So do you want to talk a little about what kind of a position you guys took when you were news editors? Well, at the time, I think oneup was trying to transition into being a different kind of company. And one of the things that they realized they wanted to pursue was having personalities that the audience could sort of hook onto. And I think they've done a pretty good job of that now, you know, like there are one up personalities that people know and respond to whether they love them or hate them or whatever. But when I started doing it, so the model that we talked about a lot was Kotaku. Even though I think Kotaku is not necessarily, you know, I don't know, I'm not sure that you could qualify them as like a news site because they're not really straight up news. But I think what they would liked about Kotaku was the personality, it's very personality-driven, it's very, you know, very up to the minute, it's very timely, and there's a lot of content per day. It's like most every 20 minutes a day or something. Yeah. So those were the directives, but you know, the challenges I ran into were, A, there's a sort of battle between timeliness and accuracy, right? And there's a huge tension between that, and it's like, do you want to be in the blog world that's like, who's the first post? And that makes so much difference that sometimes you sacrifice waiting for people to get back to you, you know, when you're fact-checking. And that's a problem. Yeah. I know when I was at one up, I was there when we relaunched the new section in blog format, which the idea behind that was very much to become a little bit more like a Kotaku or a joystick, both in the presentation as well as the writing. And yeah, there was definitely that same, we were still having that same struggle between like, how many posts do we want to get up a day versus how many of those posts can actually be good, well researched stories. Yeah. Right. And then there's the other tension, which exists between, you know, being friends with the publishers and kind of. It's the almost famous thing where it's like, people are not your friends. And they're not your friends. You can't think of them that way. And, you know, if you piss them off, you cut off access in a very important way, and that's the lifeblood of your circulation, right? You know, if EA says, okay, we're not going to send you any more review builds, it's like, whoa, what do you do? I mean, that's a huge company. That's a huge number of games. But on the other hand, you know, fuck up shit does happen. And so how do you cover that in a way? And that's, yeah, I don't know. That's actually a good point to bring up this comment from us. He says, as 39 people pointed out before me, the issue that faces video game journalism is the same one that seems to face any niche hobby, be it comic books or magic cards or any of the movie websites, which is that it happens so rarely. Instead, we have a deluge of PR regurgitation, company lines and linkbaiting opinion pieces disguised as news. The real issue seems to be access, access to the corporations that own the games, access to the content, interviews, demos, preview builds that the gaming press needs to stay ahead. How do you manage journalistic integrity when, at the end of the day, you need to go back to electronic arts and ask them for preview builds for next week's feature? Well, that's what it comes down to, doesn't it? And the whole idea of video game journalism is kind of a joke, really. I mean, there's even these news sites that you're talking about, they're blogs, they're filled with opinions. That's not news. That's somebody's opinion. You know, they're very rarely fact-checked, you know? Gamespots, one of the only places that probably does like close to what we think of actual news. I mean, they're very factual. I think the majority of people get their news from message boards. Yeah. And that's the first place you're going to see it is probably GAF. And I know a lot of people who, well, not a lot, I've known some, who get their news from GAF and news reporters who didn't report from shit, people say, "That's your app, just last week with the BioShock 2 news," and there was supposedly details from a new issue of Game Informer on BioShock 2. A lot of places, including, you know, one-up Kotaku and Joystick and Destructoid, all these places reported on this news, that was from a forum, but then basically 2K and came out and said, "No, this is inaccurate." Mini? Right. Whoever posted this on the forum was making it up. Yeah. And none of these places, at least as far as we know, may be behind the scenes that happened, but none of these places went and got a response from 2K before they posted their story. Right. Well, yeah. One thing I want to go back to in that comment is that we've had EA as sort of the thrown out name of random company that might cut off access, but as someone who has not worked as a news editor, obviously, I feel like EA is one of those companies that's more open to receiving criticism, or as far as not cutting off access. I haven't seen any examples of EA getting hostile, at least in the last few years, as far as... Well, I just... A lot of it you don't hear about. A lot of it's behind the scenes. The only... I think the only time we've started hearing about it is more recently with the stuff that happened with EGM back in 2007, with Dan Shue. She was able to try that out of the closet. Yeah. Where he talked about Ubisoft and what were the other ones, like the Mortal Kombat team and some other ones? I wasn't calling out EA specifically, I just meant that's a huge publisher with a huge number of titles that they publish every year, and if they were hypothetically to cut off access, you know, it would be awkward. It's also... I mean, they also get to choose. I mean, we both work on kind of the other side now, and you do get to choose what you share with people and what you don't, and I've been kind of amazed from getting to the other side. One, how often we don't know, we're telling people we don't know because it hasn't been decided yet. Yeah. There's a lot that goes into decisions. There's so much and the bigger the company is, like Microsoft, the more people have to get involved in those decisions. And also, people talk about these big companies as though they're the big evil corporate entity, but when it comes down to it, it is a group of people like you and me figuring out what to do. And when it gets down to something as specific as a particular game, there are tons of people invested in that. And I mean invested not just money-wise, but like I very rarely met developers that hate the project they're working on, even if they're working on the next Darkwing Duck game, you know? Man, I don't want to do it. The next Darkwing Duck game would be amazing. The next Darkwing Duck game would be amazing. The next Darkwing Duck game would be amazing. I made that up so I didn't have to like, you know, bag on any particular game. You play as Nega Duck and co-op. I'm really looking forward to the Darkwing Duck game. Anyway, people are in this industry because they love it, you know? It's not like accounting where it's like all about the money. Well, I feel like the big wasted opportunity from my perspective was Gizmondo, do you guys remember Gizmondo? And from the very beginning, right, like every game or new, there was something really fishy about the whole thing because like, the product itself was such a piece of crap. And so if you were an actual gamer and you knew what products were supposed to feel like and play like, you knew that it was a giant scam. And I remember I was a news editor during that time and I tried really hard to figure out what the hell was going on with Gizmondo because it turned out there was a lot of like, because I smelled it was a complete, crap-tastic, you know, scam. And it was, but I failed to... And how did that all end? Like, the sweetest guy who did it, like he crashed his Ferrari, but he wasn't driving somebody mysterious mail. And then since then, the name has been buttoned and there are plans to re-release the hard way. But with awesome. Like, again. What was funny to me is that the video game press was sort of oblivious to it and that's not obviously aimed at one up because I do seem to recall actually some very hesitant one-up news coverage about the Gizmondo. But the tech blogs actually were on top of that. I mean, there was a, there's the standard, I mean, gocker format blog snarkiness to almost every tech blog now. But there was a very, there was a hesitance to accept the product as presented, but that might just be because the gadget blogs are so familiar with vaporware and things that are announced but never happen. Right. I guess, I mean, you saw a positive coverage of Gizmondo, I think mostly in areas like investment blogs and the street because on paper, Gizmondo sounded like an awesome gadget, right? It had GPS, it had a camera and this is what, like four years ago, like now it's like, well, duh. But at the time it was really remarkable and it was a, it was a gaming thing and it was going to have this whole new business model of serving up ads, right? I mean, to an investor, that sounds like pure gold, like money printing gold. And so they were all over it and Gizmondo's stock shot up and, you know, but then you're right, like the tech blogs and also in the gaming, like anyone who had actually held that thing in their hands, you know, we're like, wait a second, this is not, this can't be real. And then just hearing about some of the parties that they threw, remember where like they invited, stained to perform at their opening launch and they opened this giant store on High Street in London and it was just like, what are these guys doing? It just seems so out of, um, out of character for the way that a game company or a hardware company normally operates. So I mean, what, what kind of problems did you encounter trying to actually, mostly getting people to return my calls, you know, I want to call the founders of Gizmondo for everyone. Yeah, for every journalist, but if you are from the New York Times, I think you get a little more traction and I actually considered like, you know, making up other things because I was like, I just want to talk to the co-founder because there are two co-founders of Gizmondo and one was like the public face guy and then there's this other guy. I can't remember his name. And that was the other guy that I wanted to talk to, um, and I tried calling his office and I tried calling, you know, I just, yeah, um, so right, getting people to return the calls and I think, I think it's true that there is still, um, contempt for games journalism in some circles, not in all circles, but it's not because it's enthusiast press, right? I think there is a little, there are some places where that has a little veneer of. Oh, really? What does that mean? Right? I mean, sorry. What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? Negative. Negative. How are you going to, how are you going to have that room to be, uh, objective, you love what you're reporting on and, and like half the people, like the majority of the people want to be friends. Well, and also you're encountering in the audience, right? There's this huge, and I never understood this, but there's a real, yeah, there's a real sort of, this is my console, this is my team, don't talk shit about it. And I don't really understand where that comes from. And I don't know if you see it in security, in other industries, other than say sports fans, I suppose. Well, I think the main reason for that is because the Xbox 360 is just such a superior console. Mm. Oh, of course. Yes. That's good. I think we've talked a little bit about fanboys and like the whole console warm mentality previously, that was very well played, by the way, um, and I think a lot of it comes down to the financial realities of gaming as a hobby. It's an extremely expensive hobby. You have to choose one. Yeah. There are, I mean, there are, for a lot of people, like multiple hundreds or thousands of dollars of investment just isn't enough. Yeah. That should get a second job. You should get a job. Okay. Okay. Mister Kuduragi. Yeah. He's got a job. He's got a job. He's got a job. It doesn't pay. It pays in blessings. The force. Wait, the force has blessings now. Sorry. Off track. Back and back. I have a serious discussion. Oh. Listen to that. All right. Those are Jedi fucking boots. It's like coming off. Yeah. Well, it's like, yeah, can you imagine that like getting out of this is such a pain in the ass to you? Oh, just hold on for a second. Jedi's do it with their boots on. You know what? That's why Jedi's do it with the force. Well, you're making out just. Oh, yeah. I used the force to tear off your clothes or hers or both. That would be awesome. Wow. So awesome. So awesome. So awesome. You think somebody made Jedi porn? Oh my god. We have to find it now. We have to find it now. Where's the internet? It's only Patrick. We're here. I see. We would have to find it once again. Are we all going to watch this together? Like the lassaraptors? What? Are these outtakes from Jurassic Park? Are you right? Oh my god. I'm from Jurassic Park. Never good. There's a book. There's a book by Warren Ellis called Crooked Little Vane where there's a private detective and the first thing he finds is this group of people that watch giant monster movies from Japan intercut with porn and that's because that's what they're sexually attracted to is giant monster wizards and they're like using giant or like gloved monster hands. That's a real fetish and I don't think you should be thinking about people. We're not making fun. We're embracing it. We're not making fun. We're embracing it. No, I'll make fun of that. So yeah, you were saying more later. Seriously though. I think so console work stuff I think stems in the expensive nature of our hobby and insecurity but what? Well, my hobby is super expensive because I like to play video games on yachts. On a boat? Yeah. Like double on a boat, you know. Damn it. So. That means old. Sorry. I mean, is there is there a model in other media enthusiasts publications that they can serve as sort of a guideline? Yeah, I think there is. Like I love sports reporting because even though I hate sports mostly, I think the writing is exactly what video game writing should become which is that they're speaking to an informed audience. Like if you ever watch ESPN coverage, it's brilliant because it's like they're speaking in a language that is shared by their audience and they assume that the audience is informed. They're not going to talk down to you. They're not going to explain how football works or whatever. But there are actual real reporters in sports that cover things like, you know, corruption and drug use and things like that and I'm sure. Well, no, a lot of really big reporters have started in sports. HBO is in sports. It's an awesome show. I watch. I hate sports. Yeah. And I love sports coverage. Like Keith Olberman was a sports reporter before he did what he does now in MSNBC. There are a lot of people that start in sports reporting. And I think that's a good, I think that is a good model. I mean, I'm sure there is stuff that sports reporters know about and don't cover, you know, for one reason or another. I'm sure that's not unique to the video game industry that reporters sit on their stories because of political pressure or whatever. That happens everywhere. But I don't know. I just really admire and respect sports. But you're also talking about an entertainment medium that is way, way older than video games or even movies or music. Yeah. And movies and television and the music and books, like those are much older than video games. We're still this really young industry. And for the most part, the people in charge are still really old dudes. And they kind of have an older, a lot of them have an older mindset. So, you know, they, they're marketing to who they think is buying these games. We know people buying these games a lot of times are in their thirties. They're having kids. They're grown up. They're mature. But still, there's this, you know, drive towards the 14 to 22 year old, you know, male. Yeah. I mean, I guess the thing is that sometimes we'd write like stories that were like complex and stuff and were like more hybrid, I guess, if you want to put it that way. But a lot of podcast, a lot of the people, like a podcast is going to high brush it. But it's like, you would still see like a lot of the people that are commenting stuff are still like 14 to 16, I mean. So I guess in some way you do have to tailor it to your audience a little bit. I guess. I mean, if that's where your bread is buttered. And also, I mean, a lot of times the depressing reality, the depressing reality is that a lot of times the better, like the articles we did that were more well researched, more in depth, more complex, didn't get the traffic that the really quick hit stuff, 10 video game ring test, the progress of Olga and that brings up the fact that like the news industry in general is just dying as a model. Yeah. I mean, people just can't afford to pay journalists who are going to take six weeks to research a story and make an awesome story yet and make a great like that is gone. Like that's, that's going to go away. I mean, right now it's it's almost like there are only a few avenues for that kind of journalism and one of the sad facts is that I mean, even Rolling Stone is one of the few avenues for like a long form journalism left, you would see like Robert Ashley would put up like some really nice feature that would have like a really insightful look into some business or something like that. And then that would never do as well as like Scott Sharkey pays a freelancer to do a top five, you know, whatever, just they just would never do as well like it's in from a financial standpoint. It's like people looking at the paychecks got to be like, um, it makes me think of a you guys see idiocracy, I have not, I'm familiar with it. I haven't seen it. Yeah, I'm familiar. If anybody has seen it is basically just looking into the future. Everything's getting, um, everybody has shorter attention spans, there's, there's less time for it. But even with that, like as it moves to online, it is easier for me to find the things that I want to find why my web surfing has like expanded over the past few years. Like I can't believe how many websites I go to, but I am able to go exactly where I want to go and get exactly what I want to get, you know, all right, I'm going to read a comment here from Semit Sakhar, who is a associate editor at Destructoid. It's about sports at Destructoid. That's right. Yeah. He says what I value most in gaming websites is longer form original content, editorials, reactions, features, et cetera. To me, that's what separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the internet. It's why originally bought an IGN insider subscription way back when. And it's what first attracted me to Destructoid nearly two and a half years ago. Again, the news doesn't really change all that much from place to place. So what keeps me coming back to a particular site is its writing team. Stephen to Taylor's investigative reporting is why I was an MTV multiplayer, and I always love to see the latest Destructoid piece from Jim Sterling or Anthony Birch. As always, it comes down to the quality of the writing. So again, like this is, I guess what we were talking about, those longer form things are more interesting, but then he brings up MTV multiplayer, just a site I really respect. And I think they do a lot of the most interesting reporting in the video game industry. But then I also don't know. Then they got rid of Patrick. Yeah. Patrick, I don't know how long. I think it's pretty much just to Taylor now, right? To one other, I think. Just Tracy Jones? Tracy, yeah. Yeah, I think she still writes for them. Yeah. So, okay, I mean, are there sites that we like for gaming news? Is there other sites that you go to? I mean, I find that for more thoughtful stuff, a lot of stuff on multiplayer is good. When Wired does a long form story on something in the gaming industry. I like this stuff on Gama Sutra sometimes. Yeah, I was going to say, I pretty much read that for headlines. And as far as like just the, as far as sites that are reprinting stories from other places or from press releases, I like Giant Bomb just because they are so extremely personality focused in every new space they write, you know, they might just be reprinting something from a press release or information from another site's story. They always have like, they'll have some sort of some addition of their own. They'll have an anecdote or something that gives you a sense of who they are. And so I already know those guys. I was going to say I actually, it's in that same vein, the guys that are at GameSpy are doing the same thing now, whereas like when they write a new story, they'll have the chunk that's like very much like the here's the fact press release. And then after that, they actually have like a picture of the person with a quip from them like a one to three paragraphs, basically like of what they actually think about it. Yeah. And that sort of personality stuff is actually what I think is cool, sometimes getting the actual opinion of this person going beyond them, just regurgitating what they have to. Yeah, definitely. I honestly don't really, I mean, I go to Gamasuchai visit, there's several sites I'll go just for the headlines. But for the most part, I'm finding that like my social networks to use horrible web 2.0 cliches. Yeah. That's kind of what I look to. Somebody links me and aim or on Twitter or on Facebook. I did notice people mentioning Twitter in the comments. Yeah, I have a comment here about this. Peter Bunk says, "Although I have about 30 sites in the gaming folder in my RSS feed reader, I think by now I get a lot of news on Twitter first, at least if it's really important news, someone will link to it before either a blog has picked it up or even before my RSS reader has updated my feeds. As I use Twitter a lot while commuting, I also get a lot of links before I come home and fire up Net Newswire. This Twitter has another advantage, real people filter out the bad stuff and only the best gets to the top no matter what format. And then it's comments from people I kind of I-e-know at least. The other thing is that I get it a lot faster that way either through Facebook or Twitter or even email or I am. Like several weeks ago, there was an earthquake in Southern California. And before I ever saw a news report or anything about it, I saw a bunch of things on Twitter about it because people were like, "Holy shit, it's a fucking earthquake right now." Like in the earthquake, they're Twittering, you know, rather than seeking cover. What's his face, what's his name, Parry, the first camera, his first name? But like, you know, that guy Twittered about the new PSP. Oh, David Parry. David Parry. And that ended up making a big stink. Yeah, it's interesting to see how these social networks are now kind of being used a lot for news. I mean, is that what we're calling Twitter at this point, a social network? I would. Yeah. What would you call it? I'm asking, not telling. I also use Google Reader a lot, I have keyword, you know, I have it just basically searching for keywords and 90% of it is just stuff that I throw out. But it's a good way to get beyond, you know, you were talking earlier about how you have a, you know, you have sites that you regularly visit. And I find that I get walked into- I visit them through my reader. Oh, through your reader. Yeah. I find, to me, the biggest problem is finding new sources of information because I just have my bookmarks and, you know, and I feel sort of like, well, I already know these guys viewpoints. And I would, you know, I, I guess I'm always looking for something new or something. That's what I get out of like Twitter and Facebook. Yeah. Something, something I'm noticing on some of the blogs now is that it seems like they're getting a little stingier as far as linking to other sites and redirecting you to original sources for stories. That's just absurd. I mean, it is really tough. Like, I mean, for instance, Twitter, like nobody understands like the retweet protocol. You shouldn't retweet a retweet. You should just retweet it with the person who originally tweeted it. And don't worry too much beyond that. I think your mom voice is coming out now. Yes. I'm teaching people the Twitters. Listen, everyone. Community dominatrix voice. This is how you must- I am managing community right now. No. I, because it gets, it gets, I saw somebody the other day who retweeted something and it had- It's three RTs. Oh, God. Four different ads in it and I'm like, no, I'm not going to, what? And like, they had to truncate the, the, the actual message. Yeah. I barely got to the link. So I mean, you only have 140 characters. Yeah. But the link station is- I'm sorry. Are we bugging you? Sorry. Hang on, everybody. Good. Anthony's on a, on the phone call. Is it Ben Kenobi? Were you shut up for a second? Listen, important phone call. We need to get him a Bluetooth. Are you her only hope? Yeah. No, I missed it. You shouldn't be taking calls in the podcast. Yeah. It's supposed to be like a hologram. I wasn't taking a hologram. I hung up. That's against the phone. I was trying to, it was the person who was calling about her advertising, so that was kind of important. That is kind of important. No, that is kind of important. Should we take a break? Speaking of advertising, though, but I was, I mean- I think the jet, I angry. Anger leads to the dark side. It's going to turn into a Sith before our eyes. He's going to get into a Sith and start hitting women again. He's going to hit his third woman today. No, but he has to go all the way out to the car to get him out of his truck. I know. I don't think he'll get out of here. Yeah. I cannot run you. I know that. Dwarf. That's probably true. All right. I'm going to do this back on track with a comment here. Cole says, podcasts have revolutionized the way I view the game's press and see them as the closest we've gotten to the ideal news source. I favor certain sites for the editorial voice and podcasts offer great insight into the process behind the writing and the personalities involved. The facts are important, but personality is what sells. What do you guys think of this? Well, I mean, that's what one at Bankdon, you know, low those many years ago when I started working there. Look at them now. Look at them now. That's what they're doing great. They're doing great. But that follows suit with other media, you know, I mean, that's why I like on MSBN, which I mostly cannot stand MSBN, but um, and oh my God, that beer went straight to my head. MSMBC. Thank you. I got all mixed up with my acronyms, but you know, that's all, like all those little shows with all those personalities. It's quite Katie Kiric hosts in my new news now. Right. She has such a great personality. She's adorable. Okay. Okay. Look, they're way more vapid people that people attach to in, in gaming media and Katie Kiric. So like who? You don't want to call anyone else? I have no examples whatsoever. I'm speaking in generalities. Mm hmm. Because this is a game podcast. Okay. But I mean, I agree. I think personality does become important when you have so many sources that you could go to, um, you know, and then so how do you make your stand out? What do you guys think about the idea of podcasts as an ideal news source? I don't, I don't understand that. I don't understand that comment, actually. Uh, if, uh, if it was like a daily thing, maybe and I went to it the same way that I do NPR, I get a lot of my news from NPR. Yeah. And it used to be that like when I, when I had a commute, if I knew at five o'clock every day, I was going to listen to like the news hour with Jim layer on NPR. Mm hmm. That was like how I got my news. If I knew there was a podcast that I would have for my car ride every day, I might get it that way. I don't know. Maybe. But like the news hours, like actual news where they send reporters out into the field and like interviews and like, you know, most gaming podcasts are just sort of sitting around talking about shit. And this guy's definitely talking about it. He says personality is what, what's important for him. So he's right. He's not looking for objective news. Yeah. No, I was talking more. It would be, it would still be a podcast and that you listen to it on a portable music device. But beyond that, it would be like totally different format. I mean, I guess the closest thing I could think of would be like the hourly sports, like nightly wrap up shows that you see on like ESPN. Yeah. Just something like that. I guess it'd be totally different format. It wouldn't be like this at all. No, it would need to be something productive. The radiator says what we really need to do if game journalism is to become some sort of respectable media is stop talking so goddamn much about sales numbers and MPDs arguing over who will fail once a month does not encourage critical thinking about the games we play and provides bait for the devolved ramblings of message board morons. That's right. I'm calling you out. Garnet Lee. Fuck the NPDs. PS. PS3 rocks. That's the point. See, I disagree. I think that the sales numbers are interesting in their concrete news item. I mean, it's definitely, it's not something that I think new should ignore. I will admit here that as even as news editor, I just didn't like the NPDs. Yeah, I was about to say, was that your alt, Phil? Yeah, you're the best thing in your alt. I just really don't like dealing with numbers and never felt like I had anything interesting to say with those. Math is hard. I'm an English major, so math is hard. No, I agree. And also, I think NPD numbers are just numbers, you know, and there's no context in them. But I think there are good points to start. When you do add context. Yeah, exactly. When you do have to add the context. And that's what the report is. When you go, the problem that I always ran into though. Any copies of, are you smarter than a fifth grader on the Wii did they sell? Holy shit. That's when it gets- My world is wrong. Yeah. Like what? The problem I always ran into is just that I didn't feel, I felt sort of like a poser trying to do financial analysis of any sort because I'm not trained in that at any way. Yeah. So that always just kind of freaked me out whenever I had to deal with NPDs. Well, and also, I mean, let's face it, that's what the game industry looks at. Like bottom line, they're interested in sales. And secondly, Metacritic scores, but first sales, you know. And so I think if you are interested in games and the industry, then it, you know, the numbers, the sales numbers are a big part of that. I mean, in that situation as a reporter, when you just try to cultivate sources that you could go to for their opinions and then synthesize an article on that, I- Yeah, and I mean, I think that exists to some degree with like, you know, we see a lot of analysts getting quoted all the time from Kotaku and other sources. I see a lot of analysts quotes before NPD numbers come out because it gets people talking in anticipation of them. But I don't see a lot of analysts chatter after NPD numbers come out, maybe because so many of those analysts would have to say, "Well, I was wrong," but I would be curious to read more analysts discuss that. That's how we ended up with that scar. Our buddy Mitch Dyer says, "Many blogs apply a deliberately asshole-ish attitude to every bit of news, and that drives me nuts." So he's talking about the, I guess, the snarkiness. I'm doing the open nod right now. This is something that I found that I was, I've not never been a fan of this in Kotaku's posts. Obviously, I read Kotaku, and some of the writers are better about it than others, but a lot of times the whole snarky tone just seems very forced and unnecessary, I guess. Yeah, and as we, I think we were on a break when we talked earlier about how Gawker Media, I think the whole group is a little bit like that, like when Gawker.com first came out, I almost couldn't read it because it was just so like me, and maybe I'm just a California hippie. Whatever, but I, yeah, you're totally sarcastic, like meanness to it that I just, you've been mean to me. See, but wasn't that you repeatedly throughout this show. No way. We love you because you're a Jedi. What Kotaku calls this, and I think we're a lot of people. I see straight through to your true feelings. What a lot of people behind the scenes call this, and if you ever hear somebody talking to say this word to you, when they're talking about doing something creatively, I suggest turning around the other way and running. They call it edgy. Oh, yeah. It's edgy. I think anything in her life if you hear someone use the word edgy to describe something that's about to happen. You should just walk away. Of course, synergy. And peg party. That's underlined for truth. I thought that that was what we were doing after this. No, you're going to prove to me that you're wearing all the medichlorians under that robe. I want the force to be with me. It's going to walk around the floor at DDC and say, "You must come to the peg party night." I just winked at Anthony. It was fantastic. I didn't even see it. All right. Mitch continues. Another thing I can't stand is punchy headlines like MLB09 slides home into retail shelves or need for speed shift, shifting into stores. It's really fun. Well, dude, you know what? There's some people's jobs. Yeah. You know, in the newspaper business, in old school, there were headline writers. Yes. And their whole job was to come up with punchy headlines. You have to be very, very punny. Yeah. You have to be punny. People see that even when I'm listening to NPR, there was some story about a manufacturer of pants. And they would have all these little things in there because the company just knows how to make the right fit. Okay. And it's like-- On NPR, when you hear that shit, it's like your grandma saying it. And it's funny and cute when a 50-year-old woman says it. What's hilarious, too, is when-- these days, I'll see that when-- who was it? Jean Roddenberry's wife, Mary-El-- Mary-El? Mary-El? No, what's her name? Marilou. Marilou? Marilou. You guys are just throwing out the most old-ass-- No, no, no. I need you to think of old, and I need you to start with an "M." She was-- Margaret. It's like a maple. It was something like that. It was like marginal something. I keep wanting to say Mary-El Hemingway, and it's not Mary-El Hemingway. She's alive. Just say Mary. Chances are it was Mary's. It wasn't Jean Roddenberry's wife was-- It wasn't Jean Roddenberry's wife, Deanna Troy's mom. Yes, exactly. Deanna Troy's mom. The voice of the computer. When she passed away-- I said, can you hear that? Yeah. When she passed away-- Yeah, I'm a fucking nerd. All the headlines that were like-- Be me a Scotty! Oh my goodness. That's so fucking disrespectful. She dies, and you make a Star Trek joke. Or when-- what's his name? It's homage. It's not a joke. Bullshit. Yeah. It's just-- like, that's the dread, right? Like, if you're a famous person, it's like-- Well, I mean, I think I saw-- I'm going to say when I die. I think I saw a few last summer when it was announced that George D'K was getting married because of the whole gay marriage being legalized in California thing, and George D'K is gay, and he wanted to marry his partner, and he was there-- I thought I got all my gay marriages out of the way during that window. Good call. Gay. Gay. I don't know why they're jokes. There are quite a few boldly going jokes, and headlines, and I was like, really? Two to beam up. See? I can be a headline writer. You should be a writer. There's an art to it, and it reminds me of the captions for, um, you know, The Economist, or something like that. Or like, Lawcats. Thank you for bringing this to the source where it needed to be a Catholic. No, I'm not. And The Economist is like a super serious article, and there's a cat-- there's a photo with a caption that's hilarious. I mean, if you're a 80-year-old British. Speaking of things that are funny, Kathleen, didn't you have a pun related to the podcast that you wanted to share? No, no. I've been calling them podcasts for a while. You're the one who's the most thrilled by my podcast. I think it's genius. My podcast. Let me show you them. Podcasts. That means we have to talk. I can have podcasts. I can have podcasts. No, we will be killed. People will stop listening. Yeah. Let's not do that. Yeah. I'm sure it's bad enough to some of the people that listen to this show that are really dumb that we have girls on. Like that alone is like-- When? Where? But luckily-- I don't think dumb people listen to this show. I'm going to have more respect for our audience, and I don't think anybody will complain about us having girls on. And they better fucking not. Phil. What was that? Phil. Right here. On your nose. And there. You got the brown. Thank you. Just saying. All right. I think I took care of it. Let's go back to talking about Jane's gay marriage. I think we've derailed this. I want to take-- We'll never have space. I want to know about the plural, because I only knew about you and me. Yeah. Well, there's you and me. You promised. And then-- but then you moved away to Seattle. Yeah. That's no legal there. So what was I going to do? She has needs. It only counts when I'm in town. Okay. I see how it is. Well, you can be a bigger mist in space, actually. So-- That's true. Fantastic. And I am. Let me get a few more comments here. Shump says, if the internet has proven anything, it's that the current generation is omnivorous when it comes to consuming information, and that the best content will usually find a way to get read regardless of its originating source, the depth of its analysis, or its intended audience. I wish I believed that. Yeah, I wish I did. He says it's a pretty egalitarian medium, and I think gamers are the same way. There's really no need for an ideal gaming news site, print source or podcast or whatever, because it's so easy these days to pick and choose what you want, and so hard for one site to cover everything that's going on. Yeah. I would agree with the latter half of that comment makes sense to me. Like, you know, you can cobble together the daily--a really good daily news from all these different sites like we were talking about. But in terms of the first half of that, I don't know. Like Arthur just said, I wish that were true, that the cream rises to the top, and I don't know. I mean, how many people know about rock, paper, shotgun, or stuff like that? Not a lot, I mean-- But even that, you're still going back to your opinion on what you like reading, and it becomes so--especially with games, because, I mean, for me, for instance, I don't really care what's new on features in Madden, but if you're a gaming news site, you better cover that, because most people will. So the fact that I am able to, you know, kind of filter the news by what I want to hear and read about. Or like we had one guy who said he didn't think any gaming news site should be covering patches in World of Warcraft, but most do, because there is a large audience that cares about it. I mean, that's the same as the release. Yeah, but then also, there are other places, like I would never go to, you know, forgive me, I love you one-up.com, but I would never go there for patch news on World of Warcraft, right? I'd go to like WoW Insider or something. Or massively. Or I'd ask my friends at Blizzard, you know? Yeah. Okay. Not everyone asks friends at Blizzard. Not even friends at Blizzard, but like your friends who play WoW all the time, maybe I'd asked Phil, like, honestly, it's become, for me, news in general, like, I'm pretty much going to people who would know about that because they're paying attention to it. It's actually become more like finding out what's going on. It's part of my social network. Well, and what you said right now about going to, say, the Blizzard forums or Blizzard site to get news, I think that's- I wouldn't go to the Blizzard forums for now. I think people do, and I think that there's a danger in that, in that there is this habit in gaming news to take the press release and mix it around a little bit. But if that's all that they're doing, then more and more often, gaming companies are saying, well, we're just going to go straight to the audience and bypass any need for this kind of stuff. Well, there's more and more places that are doing that anyways, like Capcom has its own website to do, its own news and PR. Bungie kind of does that. Bungie kind of does that as well. I mean, that's the function of community managers to some extent, right? Hello. I'm looking in your direction. Yeah. I mean, that's the whole point of community managers is that they interface directly with the community. And if we accept that the journalist was a middleman of sorts, which, you know, I don't know that that's entirely true. But if they were, it feels like that's what they're trying to become in a lot of cases because it's easier to do that in post 44 times a day than it is to research a story in any way whatsoever. Mm-hmm. Yes. Swinging off of this idea of going to different sources for your stories, Devlin writes, "Honestly, I think the biggest mistake a lot of outlets make is thinking that they need to cover news. And the day of the internet and blog pages like Otaku joystick, it is impossible to keep up with their speed. So why should I read the same information a day later on one of the big sites or a month later in any magazine?" I mean, I can think of reasons, but that's perfectly valid argument. Yeah. I think that's a valid argument. It is. But that's, I think that actually begins to speak to the longer form. Like if you do want to remain relevant, what you then need to do is do that longer form because the reason I pick up Edge is for those big, thick, weighty articles that they do. Yeah, they just can't cover stuff that's like, has to break this moment, it has to just be stuff that has a more evergreen idea behind it that is just interesting no matter if I read it now or if I read it two years from now, it'll still be interesting. I think it was last week. Gama Sutra had an awesome post-mortem on Dota and defense the agents. You should, I think I sent it over to you, I'm sure I did. Anyway. It just makes me think. It was really awesome. It was really awesome. I'm sorry. Yeah, I know. I think of that every time. I can't think when you, when you edit this podcast, can you put in a little clip of that Swedish? What is it called? Base Hunter song, Dota. Dota. It's a song about playing Dota. I think I know what you're talking about. It's so cute. It's so cute. I'll put it in the break. I think it's Swedish actually. But yeah. Is it German? It's Swedish. It's Swedish. Whatever. IKEA. IKEA. IKEA. It's like watching Autistic speak in their own language in the corner of the room. Yeah. I can't speak. I can't speak. We're writing. We're writing. Something else. Something creeping. Yeah. Sleeping. It's weird to go. Keep on drinking, girls. Keep on sleeping. All right. We're hoping this works towards something else lately. Apparently so. We're going to play some fucking Dota. Fuck. Yeah. I think we're going to wrap up. Did it all night in this bitch? We're going to wrap up the segment. But before we do, do you guys have any, any last things you want to say, anything, any lessons we've learned today about a news coverage in the video game industry? I think about lessons. I think that last comment, the problem with that is that that's the least cost effective news coverage that a site can do is the more in-depth, analytical, critical stuff in it. Yeah. Until there, until someone finds a business model where that's a valid way to make, make money because- Well, they used to, right? There was. I mean, that's what print journalism was. No. It's just that there's less call for it now because that's what- Well, I also did. And newspapers. I feel like a lot of magazines depended on previews and rumors and tiny news bits and now that people can get that stuff instantly, there's no room for it in a magazine. And so- I don't, I mean, we can't even talk about magazines anymore. Magazines are over. Well, we did just mention Edge. Mm-hmm. Magazines are over. Aw. Yeah. No, they seriously are. Not just in video games, but everywhere. I think that there are some, some magazines that manage to continue and that might manage to continue, but I think largely in gaming that magazines are on their way out, which makes me sad. I just hope that- That they find a- It makes me really sad. Up in Seattle, we just closed the, uh, P.I. Yeah. Yeah. It was like the, um, Seattle is a really literate city. Yeah. I mean, that's part of what I've loved is, I think I read somewhere and there was a statistic that, uh, more people in Seattle use the library than any other city in the U.S. Yeah. And I think that- For the P.I. to close in that city, I mean, for a paper to shut down. Like all this discussion about gaming journalism is, in a way, a sort of microcosmic discussion of just journalism. Like there are a lot of problems with just general news coverage in this, in this country, but like the corporatization of news coverage has- The fact that Rupert Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal now, I mean, that's a problem. A problem. From my perspective. I didn't mean to get deep on you there at the end. We've got John Stewart out there being hilarious. John Stewart, I love him. I love him. We need the video game version of The Daily Show. That's the lesson. Fuck, I would watch that. That would be edgy. Edgy. Edgy. Edgy. Edgy. Unfortunately, we're more likely to have the fucking Colbert Report version of, or video game version of the Colbert Report, which is funny, but that's- I'm gonna close off with a suggestion here from, uh, Captain Soul Pimp on our comments. He says, if you guys do news, you should call it Fil-me-in, or the filter. The filter. Is that another one of your alts? The filter is coming to you soon. I'm pretty sure that's another one of those alts. We'll be back in a minute. [MUSIC] I'm just gonna ask if you have, uh, that Princess Leia slave costume still. I wish I had a Princess Leia slave costume. I'm never going to sleep again. [LAUGHS] Captain does kind of have Princess Leia here right now. We are going to get through letters really quick here. Uh, first off, I just want to start with a comment from a fan named Seth. Uh, they just launched a podcast called the F-list, which he doesn't provide a link for, but you can check it out. Just Google F-list, and you should be able to find an F-list podcast. Uh, it's a roundtable discussion of some of the shittier movies you can watch on the Watch It Now on Netflix instant viewing. Awesome. That's what I do all day long. There is no shortage of material for that. Exactly. Watch It Now. And, uh, they've, uh, talked about our podcast a little on there and given us accolades as their podcast of the week several times in a row, so that's cool. Go check them out. Um, Daniel T writes, "After listening to this latest episode of Game Club, I realized the word fuck was being thrown around a lot. I wondered it to myself, how much did they say fuck this episode? So I began counting every expletive news. I'm so excited right now. [LAUGHS] Give it to pure boredom," he says, "Uh, you boys sure do earn your explicit tag. By my extremely unscientific count, um, I counted 137 total expletives, or what I like to call words you can't say on television." Fun. Shocking 105 uses of the word fuck or any derivative of it. All throughout the hour and a half long show, um, that's an average of more than a fuck per minute. [LAUGHS] That's my motto. That's my motto. This is going to be shocking. The worst offenders were Arthur Geese and Anthony Gallegos. Next. Anthony. That is not-- That is not-- I actually thought that I would, uh, I would not be on the worst defending list. I'm sure I'm on the worst. You were fucking wrong. He says, "Next was Rhino, Donald, and Matt Shandernae." That's who I figured. Yeah. This is the surprising part. He says, "I only had one expletive." Apparently. Not the fuck. Surprises me, because I swear kind of a lot, but whatever. Kind of. A turn on a professional switch when I go on the edge. I don't know if you guys have found a curse bird, but it'll go in. And if you put in your Twitter alias, it'll tell you how much you swear-- it analyzes every Twitter you ever had. Wow. And it gives you a score. And it gives you a score out of everyone. That's a fun game. Yeah. The only person who scored higher than me and much higher than me was Arthur. Wow. Much higher. And if you look at it, he's at like 99%, which means only 1% of his Twitters do not have a swear. I think that means only 1% of Twitter is swearing more than I do. Your curse bird score was 99%. Daniel says, "I hope you appreciate this totally unnecessary venture. I'm not complaining at all. By the way, my ears can take it. I'm a grown up." And he says, "On a more serious note, is there any way a listener like me could get his music in between sections of the podcast?" You could do it. No. If you send it to us, then it's not bad. You could send it to me. And if I like it-- he says he's in a young New York City-based band. I don't care what he's in. I just want to hear it. I would like to get his music out on our podcast. Wow. I don't care how pretty you are. Anthony, would you get your guitar and play a song for Jane and I? No. But to the point of swearing, actually, I do have a co-worker at my job who loves things like this podcast and the one-up show and things like that. But he's also a very modest and well-brought up young man who also is Christian. And he just had-- and so his point of view-- and I'm actually sympathetic to it is, yeah, I really love the content, but, you know, is that much swearing really necessary? And I've actually been thinking about that because I fucking swear shit load. But you know, but it does actually offend some people. And sometimes I think, well, you know, there's a point to being, you know, personality-driven and let's be ourselves and let's talk the way that we normally talk to each other. Like alcoholic sailors. Especially now. Have you seen Gran Turina? But I don't know, but it is a point. And I do actually think about that. Yeah. And I mean, I think I hope that most of the listeners of the show, anyone who might be offended by swearing just realizes that, you know, this is just the way that we talk and we're just trying to be natural about it. We're not trying to defend that one. It's interesting. Like, I remember when-- We're not trying to be edgy. Yeah. You just are. No, we're kind of the opposite of edgy, actually. I mean-- I have very round parts. I was going to say, we're soft and round. I'm kind of gooey, really, especially in the middle. You're all very gooey. Yeah. Nerd. Nerd. It's interesting because, like, nobody had ever-- OK, one up show always had a lot of swearing from the get-go. Jen can speak to that. She started it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was like one of the things. But suddenly, suddenly-- We weren't-- I was on the show. It's like, you would see message board posts and I would get messages. I would get emails from people going, "Why do you swear so much? What's up? Why are you trying to be so cool?" Every other word out of your mouth is a f-bomb. What's wrong with you? Like-- Really, having a problem. And they just didn't understand that it was having a factual obligation. You signed a contract. Yes, signed a contract. They did the same thing. They did that. Where? They didn't have the amount. Yeah. I had to make that bomb. They were while your parents failed with their charm school. I had to wear things bought at urban outfitters. And what was the other one? Smoking and drinking. Yeah, smoking and drinking. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. We actually did use to smoke on the show sometimes. And I remember Ryan and I had a long discussion about how this would be bad, you know. I'm pretty sure there were later segments with people smoking and now it's like Sean or Sean here. There's also the episode where Jay was trying to quit smoking. Yeah, that one featured. Aw. Good little Jay. I support quitting smoking by the way. Which is hilarious, because you know, you support the quitting smoking, but do you still smoke? I can't trade. Yeah. That's why I-- I'm not smoking right now. All right. Oh my god. All right. We've got like six drinks. Another letter here. Matt M says, "Love the program." And he brings up the topic of racism, which we've been talking about a lot lately. Or racialism. We prefer racialism. We prefer racialism. Sorry. You're saying I was wondering what Rebel FM thought about racism in online communities or in particular online gaming communities. In my experience, I often hear racial slurs bandied about online, usually uttered with malice. And I was wondering if the Rebel FM team has also experienced this. Only when I encounter a friend or acquaintance who brings up the racism America is dead and everybody just needs to move on argument, I perform a little test with Xbox Live in order to voice my disagreement with that argument. The test goes as follows. Simply enter and matchmaking lobby for halo or call of duty when everyone is talking or at least capable of listening to you, dropping a non-sequitur such as I'm black, I'm Jewish or I'm Muslim. And after that, just sit back. I have to quit out, guys. I've got temple. Yeah. I know. It's show more fucking shadows. People are fairly racist on them because they have ambiguity. I've been drinking as well. No, you just hung on the course. No, you had right the first time. Yeah, I mean, just because they're anonymous, I mean, but I don't think that a lot of these people are genuinely super racist. That wasn't even a cat. You don't think so? I don't know. I feel like a lot of these people, if they were held accountable for it, would at least backtrack and shit like that, you know what I mean? I don't know. They have no accountability. I know. That's true that anonymity enhances the game. I'm not saying that they are inherently racist and deserve to be murdered and thrown. No, no, no. Whoa. Just re-educated. You're not listening to that. Typically, you're in a really education. Re-education. Absolutely. My people do it. Wow. I will say, welcome to the vigilante cast. Anthony, you've probably noticed this in the world of Warcraft guild that I'm a part of. We have a few people who are fairly homophobic and I know that sometimes it bothers some of the people. Oh, no. I actually haven't seen anyone type anything yet. Oh, really? No. A lot of times where they'll be like, they'll just randomly turn out like, "Oh yeah, that guy's super gay." Or just, you know. Oh man, I mean, I'll have fun with that, knowing that, having that knowledge now. I look forward to this. So. One of the great things about working for Microsoft now, there's so many. But one of the greatest companies in the world. It's awesome. Anyway, one of the things I really like is that my good friend, Stepto, he wields the ban hammer over on Xbox Live. Oh yeah. And basically, now when people are dickheads to me online, nope. Just give them a name. It doesn't last long. And all of a sudden they're like, "I can't play games." In the time it takes me to shoot an email. Yeah. But also. That person is no longer playing online. I think that's good. But then also there was the case of that woman who was booted for mentioning that she was gay on her profile. Right. There's more to that story. But basically, any kind of reference, anybody who references their sexual orientation in any regard, gay, straight, speech, reality, furries, whatever, it's not permitted. Are you serious? It's some guys like, "I love the ladies." You would actually boot them. I doubt it. They got reported. But... I'm going to report Anthony. Yeah. After this. Well, I did change Anthony's profile. I don't know what Sony's rules are, but I changed his profile. It's now, if you go to Jeff Money, it says, "I like farting." No, no one minds that. That's not a sexual preference so much. How is that not a sexual preference? I don't want to know. He really likes farting. A femoral fantasia. But I think the standard, and this is not just true in games, but it's also true elsewhere in the web. I was just at South by Southwest Interactive last week in Austin and there was a whole panel discussion about women on the web and how if you have a handle or a tag that's somewhat gender neutral, people just assume that you're a white man. Everyone, that's sort of the standard of online is white man. And if you're not. And all of a sudden, you're different, right? You become this different being if you happen to be black. I mean, that's true if you have one that's very neutral because most of the time when I play with the guys, like I remember we were playing Call of Duty one night and the guys that we were playing with that were all hardcore Mexican, all had fucking clan tags that was like, you know, like written either in Spanish. It was like very clear that these guys, and then they were all talking in Spanish. So it was like very clear. Just being a game tag. I was on everybody. And all their game tags, like their clan name was Aztec, like it was very clear that these guys were not white. So I mean, you're right. I mean, I think it's good because I think that also anonymity has been one of the. I mean, I think there are instances where anonymity is important, but it's also been one of the worst things for the internet. And I think we are actually moving away as a culture from anonymity on the internet. And I think a lot of these problems as you were bringing it before will be somewhat mitigated as people tie their real identities to their own life. I'm fine with community, like reprisal or accountability for the things that people didn't say. But when it comes to an institutional prohibition of speech is when I get a little funny feeling about that. I think that it's fine to tell that this random guy to stop being such an asshole, but when it comes to public spaces and not being able to say something, because like we have rules about what you can or can't say, I get nervous. Well, then you have to define what is the public space. Well, I don't think Xbox live counts as public space because they're pretty good to be. To protect the majority, right? And that's what it's for. And really, why should you need to put anything about your sexual orientation and your profile? Well, there are some people that largely identify via their sexual identity. And I'm not saying, I'm not judging that one way or the other. How is it different if you say, yeah, and I'm gay? How is that different from saying, yeah, and I'm black? Like why should that be more, you know, more incendiary, right? It's the reaction, I think is more, well, for some people. I mean, some people would get mad at it. I am black. Just like there's a difference in appearance between someone saying, I am black and someone saying I am white and proud on their profile information, you know, especially if they had like the Confederate flag is there. I wasn't going to take it there, but yeah. Yeah. All right, one more letter here from Michael C. He says he's following up on a question that we answered a few weeks ago where we talked about games that we didn't finish. He wants to know about games that we finish out of a feeling of obligation, not necessarily review titles or backlog games you want to play, but stuff you put down and pick up again later because you feel like you should at least get your money's worth. I did this with last year when I played Fable 2 for a week and then switched to follow three and sunk 80 hours into that. I thoroughly enjoyed my time wandering on the wasteland and didn't want to leave, but I felt bad about abandoning my other adventure. In January I popped Fable 2 back in and finished off the main quest, but my experience dragged as I didn't really feel all that enthusiastic about returning to a fantasy world that lacked a decapitated Abe Lincoln statue. Conversely, I had stopped playing the Witcher for almost a year and went back to it without much enthusiasm and discovered a fantastic game that gave me almost everything I wanted in a computer RPG. Have you guys had similar experience where you felt obligated to finish a game and approached it with an attitude of total ambivalence? Nope. Nope. Nope. I don't want to finish the game. I just leave it. Yeah, me too. I think I actually recently finished Halo Wars because I felt like I should even though it wasn't the game that I particularly... Yeah, I mean, I finished games that I didn't want to finish out of financial obligation to get paid. And how lucky you are to get paid to do what you love. I think it might change, too, when you get into the industry where you... Like, at least for me it has where I no longer feel that sense of obligation to get my monies out of something because there's always something new coming out of my monies. Give me any pay for it? Well, I do pay for most of my games, still. I never got... I wasn't at one up long enough to get used to the whole, like, "I'll just get everything for free. It's fine." You weren't like Scoop. Yeah, exactly. Poor Scoop. So, yeah, like, I mean, before that, though, I mean, before I had to deal with having to keep on track of all the new things coming out, there were definitely cases where, especially because I played a lot of RPGs where I would be like, "I mean, I need to finish this RPG even though I'm not enjoying it that much because I paid $50 for it." Well, remember back in the day, like, my mom used to let us get, like, a game, a year. Yeah, and I just played every corner of Spy Hunter because that was the game we had that year. Yeah, but that wasn't out of a sense of obligation. It was, "Hey, let's play a game." That's all we had. Yeah. I used to do that when I would rent games as a kid, too, because I knew that it was like... We lived out in the band. We didn't have that technology when I was a kid in renting games. Guys are not that much older than me. We're so... We're much older. We have so much to teach you, y'all try. But, yeah, I don't know. I guess I feel... I don't feel any sense of obligation, like, you know, I just feel like, "Well, the game, I got my amusement out of it." If I really dislike it, I often give games away, if I know that... Yeah, why do you curse people? Why? You're really nice. Even if I hate games, I'm just like, "I just wanted to set my shelf." If I hate... Like, all the books in my house, people speak to this... The books in my house are, like, the in parts of series of books, or they're terrible books, because the good books that I have, I give away. Yeah, I'm kind of the way. And... Which is why you bought a Kindle, so now you can't do that anymore. Yeah! Like, I'm sorry I would let you borrow, but it's on my Kindle. Sorry. Do you? No, I agree. I give games away all the time, if I know I'm not going to play with them. I think I'm going to play them anymore. I feel... I'm generally... I feel obligated to finish a game when I start playing it, so if I walk away from it, it's lost me pretty completely. Yeah, that's the thing. What was the last game that did that? Fable. No, I actually want to go back and play Fable. I don't know if I'll ever... Fable, too. I don't know if I'll ever go back to it, because Fable, too, came out and I got Fable, and then I think I started playing Gears, and then after Gears, it was like multiplayer Gears, and then after that it was like any number of other games. Yeah, actually I know what... I just never gone back to Fable. That is a problem for me. I will find that, like, if my friends are playing the game online, it'll keep me in it longer. Yeah. Like, the social aspect of gaming is one that will... That's like a problem. That's a great thing about games. The problem that I have with games is that I get kind of a blockbusteritis, where it's like it just came out, everyone's playing it, I'm playing it, too. If I get out of that, like, two to four-week time span when that game is, like, hot shit. You're left behind. I get left behind it, and I just still go back to it. There's still stuff coming out. And there's so much more coming out, which is a good thing, right? We're not really complaining about that, but yeah, I've noticed, as I've gotten older, I've finished fewer and fewer games. I think I have one of the lowest gamer score to games-played ratios that there is. Mine is pretty low. Mine's 1340. Okay. So you're hiding me? No. No. Wow. 1000. You weren't saying... 13. Wow. Yeah, you suck. Yeah. But I'm playing a lot of games, but I play them for, like, two, three hours. Yep. Yeah. I haven't seen it have a problem finishing certain Zelda titles, for some reason. Like, Phantom Hourglass, I just stopped playing. I did that with Phantom Hourglass. I did as well. I did as well. I did as well. It's kind of a baby game, that's why. It's not the baby game aspect of it. Like, I really love the visuals. Sorry. It's really simple. It was the- It was the- It's a great game. It's a great game. The temple part where you have to go back and go through that fucking level over and over again. I guess I just feel like game, to me- I know this is sort of controversial to say, but I don't play games for stories, really, at all. It doesn't matter to me how the story ends or anything. Instead, it's like, to me, it's like, "Oh, I'm enjoying, you know, I'm enjoying this mechanic, or I'm enjoying doing this, and then once I'm done enjoying it, I'm just done enjoying it." And I don't need to see how it ends. Like, I don't- Really, the last game that I remember really getting into the story was Knights of the Old Republic. Yeah. And that game, I finished, and I just was like, "Oh, my God, I have to play it again as a- And now I'll be either. On the Dark Force." And, you know, but other than that, I can't think of another game that really just so drew me in with its narrative, I mean, you haven't played much of that. So, Anthony. All I do is, like, run around and collect, like, little nook-a-colas and get beat up by Raiders, 'cause I'm so weak! Oh, man. You're making me- You're making me want to play it again. Anthony, in the show notes, can you put Jane, part of the problem, Pinker? No. I'll put whatever Jane wants me to put there. You can put whatever you want. Whoa. Whoa. I'm just kidding. Come on. I don't know. Oh. You punched it. Was that the liver? I don't know. Kathleen, you just punched a Jedi. I did. He didn't even see it coming. Way to go, Jedi. I was having myself- The Force is not with you. Why did Ben have feelings? I didn't use the Force to block the punch. What are you feeling? Share with us more. I don't know. I think we're done with the size. Why? Let's talk more about Anthony's feelings. Please show me. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this. Let's talk more about Anthony's feelings. Please check out ... Tell us more for DVM. I'll be at GDC on the Internet. On the Internet, you can find me at creators.xnay.com. Do you want to give out your Twitter as well? It's Ninja Harlot. Alright. Jane, how about you? Actually, I did start a public Twitter feed because I was getting to get to it. No, popular. No, it's just ... I have 41 people that are ... I don't want everybody to see all the pictures that you put in your Twitter. Yeah, exactly. Those are for me. Those are for you. And only you. So, yeah. My Twitter is Jane Pinker. It's just my name. And then I also, I guess I nominally still have a blog at Gangirl Fans, although I haven't written on it. It's an awesome site, by the way. But it's ... I haven't written on it in a long time. I liked your thing about Sex and the City. That it sucks. Yeah. It sucks. Yeah. It did. You get behind that. Twitter.com/chuffmoney, chuffmoney.blogspot.com. And ... That's your feelings blog. That's my feelings blog. But what's the difference between Chuff Money and Chuff Monkey? There's no Chuff Monkey. Chuff Monkey is what my friend, Jon, calls him. Chuff Monkey. I'm sorry. No, it's not Chuff Monkey. The whole reason it comes from is just that Chuff is a word and door-vish. Oh, so there's a Chuff Monkey. And so that's where that came from originally, just Chuff. What does Chuff mean and door-vish? It means ... God. It's a piece of cheese the dwarf miner keeps under his hat in case of emergencies. Oh my God. It's emergency cheese and gas emergency cheese. And so the reason the money got attached to it was because I was playing this super Nintendo game. How do you afford emergency cheese? You need some money. You have a fund. I was playing this game called Vegas Chucks. I'm working for Chuff Monkey. And in Vegas Stakes, you had to sign in for your hotel. And I remember when I signed in, I saw that you could put symbols, so I put Chuff Dollar sign. And so my roommate would always go, "Chuff Money." And so that's where it came from. It's interesting, Sean Baby, like, you know, Sean Baby, Sean. Yeah. His Sean Baby moniker just came from a college person he knew in college, college person he knew in college. Christ, I have had a bit to drink today. Um, with just every time they saw him, she'd go, "Sean Baby." And so how that became, like, his nickname. Mine's the same thing, just my friend would always go, "Chuff Money." Because I put a dollar sign next to my name one time. I do my tag in games. There you go. You should have gone with the name Big Dick. Money. I don't want to fall so advertised. Oh my God. Can't we? Because then people walk in the house. I'll say that. That would be much better for your social life because actually when I was at a concert here in the Bay Area, somehow my sister's friend, my sister's friend, my sister's friend, found out that I, that I, you know, have a baby's arm holding an apple. People on the internet sometimes know who I am. And so then he found out that I had this name, the term "Chuff Money" is like my tag. And so then that's all he would call me. And then he told some dude from Fat Records that I was called that. And so then that dude would not stop calling me that all night. You don't like that too. You like got mad at me. But then she signed a record deal. He told me that I needed, he needed, he needed stickers that said I'm blowing up with Chef Money because he said he wants it to be a family thing. I think this is a good segue for Anthony playing guitar for us. Yes. On the air. Anthony, would you play some songs? There's going to be no guitar playing. I don't have any songs ready. Please leave here. Just make one up. Just roll something along. Jeez. No, that's bad Twitter etiquette. You can't have a username if that's that's that long. It's supposed to be short because it eats. Just big dick then. Big dick. Dollar sign. Big dick. Dollar sign. Big dicks. Basically. Big dicks. No. That's taken. Time to go. Time to go. Time to go. Time to go. All right. Should we do that last part? Maybe. We really just need to wrap this up. All right. I'm at Twitter.com/people. I have an interview with a Pokemon Platinum director, Junichi Masuda on what they play that you can check out and also my Dark Sector PC review will be on GamePro later this week. You can subscribe to Rebel FM on iTunes and soon. You can either of those services. Please subscribe and we'll be able to do it. Thank you. Squirt off. This week's podcast is sponsored by the Godfather 2 from Electronic Arts. Godfather 2 puts you into the shoes of a New York City mobster working with the Corleone family. Take control of crime rings around three separate cities. Rub out rival gangs. Improve that you have what it takes to be in charge of a powerful mafia family. The Godfather 2. Act like a mobster. Think like a Don. Available April 7th and for pre-order now on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Microsoft Windows PCs. Read M for Matur. The Godfather 2. The Godfather 3. The Godfather 3. The Godfather 3. The Godfather 3.