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Hey guys, we've got kind of this like

NPR style segment today that I sort of made up.

And I'm wondering if maybe we could do that as sort of the intro, like some kind of NPR, national public radio, BBC radio style intro, like something a little bit more

right, yeah.

Yeah, I listen to that stuff all the time.

I know exactly what you're doing.

Awesome.

Matt, you got a good zone for us for sure.

Let's let's do that.

Okay, cool.

Cool.

All right.

All right, great.

So do you want me to start us us off?

Yeah, let's do it.

Hey, you pieces of shit.

You're on with get played.

Go, go, go, go, go, go.

Get played.

Did I get played?

You sure did.

With the wags, Nick Weiger.

Wait.

Here with Matt Appodaka.

Wait.

Okay, hold on.

I shall call him Mini.

What the fuck is this?

What is happening?

Guys,

I was.

What?

We're doing NPR.

No.

What we're doing is classic NPR.

None of what you just did.

None of what you just did

is anything like national public radio or BBC or any of these like they're they're they're they're you're like doing morning zoo here.

These are more like hushed tones and uh quiet uh conversation with an interesting guest.

Like that kind of thing.

No, I know I know what you mean.

It's like where you're you're trying to like, hey, I'm going to try to read,

you know,

Abe Lincoln's Four Score and Seven Years Ago.

I'm trying to read the Gettysburg Address

while I'm writing a gas-powered sibi.

Wait, what?

No.

No.

Wait, no, no.

Guys, guys, again.

Get played.

You're doing radio.

I understand that you're close.

You're really close.

And I'm not going to let myself get frustrated until I can convey.

I can make sure.

Matt, this is just one note.

Can we have more of these?

I think it's good, but I just feel like we need like

500% of the time.

Okay.

Imagine that you were interviewing like an author.

Got it.

Then he farts.

I can't believe that in perpetuity, this is the intro to this episode where I tried something.

I'm Donald Trump, and I approve this message.

No,

I don't want any of this.

I don't want any of this.

We talk in hushed tones and fret about the future as Heather interviews climate activist and game developer Dr.

Yost for Forch this week on Get Played.

Get Blade

Can't play

Can't play

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Get playing

get playing.

Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

That's me, Nick Weiger, and I'm here with our third host, Matt Abadaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone.

And welcome back to the Premiere Video Game Podcast, where this week

I I tried to do something different.

It's cool what you did.

I endorse it.

I think it's nice when we mix it up a little bit.

Yeah, I'm also a fan of what has happened.

Great.

It's good.

It's very good.

It sounds like we're defending Heather from allegations.

Yeah, yeah,

everything.

Everything she did was fine.

I approve of it.

They did everything right.

And I did everything right.

And they indicted me.

my only advice is never surrender

stand down and stand by

jesus

uh hey i have something i have something i do want to talk about up top oh okay wait right away oh well i don't know we could around a little bit I was just like if we're in the fuck around period we can go through the fuck around period I'm feeling loose dog let's keep it loose

I do feel now I got to know what Nick wanted to talk about well I think it's probably something that's that's on all of our,

at the top of all of our minds right now, which is that as of this recording, SAG AFTRA, the actors' union, which is already on strike against the AMPTP, heading towards the 60-day mark, if they haven't already passed that at this point, and the WGA, me and Heather's Union,

it continues on, you know, like day 130 or whatever.

I'm also in SAG AFTRA.

You're also in SAG AFTRA.

So the

so Ace, anyway, SAG AFTRA has authorized, or I'm sorry, is taking a strike authorization vote.

I want to get the language correct.

The leadership has called for a strike authorization vote against the major video game studios,

including Activision, Disney, EA, Epic, Take-Two, and what have you.

And just to read through, you know, again, if you're following gaming news at all, you've probably heard about some of this.

But the reason they are calling for a yes vote on a strike authorization

is to give themselves you know more leverage and possibly you know have the possibility possibly have the option to go on strike if the media companies or I'm sorry if the video game companies are as intransigent as the big Hollywood studios have been but it's interesting because there's some overlap in the issues but it's not one-to-one but AI obviously a big one we've already seen this in game development we've already seen like you know especially in the mod community people using AI generated voices to you know create additional dialogue for real human actors.

And it's one thing

if a modder does that as like a hobbyist.

Modder, do people say modder?

Am I a modder?

No, it's not.

No, modern.

It's mother.

Right.

Yeah, you're thinking of the German pronunciation, actually.

That's what I'm thinking of.

I'm thinking of the German pronunciation of mother.

And then...

So that, but that's a, but that's one thing if like a, if someone who makes a mod does it as a hobby and distributes it freely and, you know, whatever, big people have, have their own rights to their likenesses and voices.

so i don't want to dismiss that out of hand but it is on a different level versus you know take two saying we're going to take your voice and then make a an ai simulacrum of it and use it indefinitely uh for a one-time fee uh that's that's like a completely different level uh the other thing is that

there's the use of ai for performance capture which is another thing that could be like you know it it's it's less of a thing with live action um but certainly in video games, we see so much of that.

And again, you know, taking someone's performance and then using that to algorithmically generate additional material is another thing that should be regulated.

But it's also interesting because the, first off, and we've talked to this with some voice actors we've had on the on the the

the podcast in recent months, uh, which is that it is like an exhausting profession.

Yeah.

But also like, like not just voiceover artists, but also who are, you know, stunt performers or doing motion capture.

That's also exhausting.

And this was a thing I learned from this strike authorization vote.

There is no mandated rest period for on-camera performers in

video game production as there is in film and television production.

So they're one of the things they're looking for is a five minute per hour rest period for on and off camera performers, which is like, that seems like just a natural, like, yeah, yeah, that just makes sense.

You don't want to work people to the point of exhaustion, but it's currently not something that's in the agreement.

And the other thing is there's no regulations that call for an on-set medic, which if you're doing fucking stunt work, you should have a medical professional there in case something goes awry.

But currently, there's no regulation in place for this sort of hazardous work.

So I don't know.

It's just interesting.

I tried to keep pretty plugged in with these issues, but there's even things that I'm learning about through this.

And, you know, we'll see what happens.

But certainly hope that everyone who is behind video games on the performance side gets what they're asking for in these negotiations.

Have I ever talked to you guys about how I did voiceover for a video game?

I think you have, but tell, refresh your memory.

Yeah, um, I uh did voiceover for an indie video game uh called Sequence back in like I don't know, 2010, something like that, uh, which was a video game that you were supposed to give voice commands to the characters on screen.

So you were like a squad, a squad leader, and you would like tell them what to do.

I never actually ended up playing the game because I think it was a PC game.

And I, you know, until very recently, didn't have a PC.

But yeah,

voice recording is,

it is grueling.

It's very weird, also.

Yeah.

You know, like you, you just, you just talk and talk and talk and talk.

And,

you know, I'm not,

I feel like I know that like most actors in movies are often in scenes by themselves, right?

Because you're like acting beyond the camera and like the other person's not there and there's like a stand-in or something, which is really emotionally draining to like yell at a person who's not there over and over again.

Yeah, 100%.

I look, I get, I get exhausted doing the doing like fucking podcasting.

Yeah.

It's not even really a performance.

It's just tiring to talk for that long.

I could do this all day.

The uh the um

The other thing that this

strike authorization and like SAG's sort of SAG AFTRA's pushback against

the possible use of AI for in-perpetuity voice recording reminds me of is Susan Bennett, the original voice of Siri,

who made recordings for a company called Scansoft.

in 2005, unaware that Apple would use them as Siri later, and then she never received any compensation.

It's fucking insane.

That's Nike swoosh level shit of just like, you know, someone getting paid a one-time fee or nothing, and then that being, you know, iconic for a brand.

Wait.

For a multi-billion dollar corporation.

Wait, what happened with the Nike Swoosh?

The guy who made it, he just, he never got anything except the original payment?

I believe it was, it was a woman they paid for a nice, oh man, show.

I was a misogynist just then, and you fucking, like you you took me to task no no no no I loved it

it was it they reference it in the movie air but I but I'd heard this story before and yeah it was I'm looking at the Wikipedia for the swoosh right now Caroline Davidson who was a student at Portland State University made the logo and then they so they paid her like one time to do it and I think they paid her just like

oh they they paid her two dollars an hour for the work she completed so So, and then they took the Nike swoosh, and it's like the, you know, she got $35 total for making this design that's the emblem of this massive multi-billion dollar corporation.

That's,

that's heinous.

It's bad.

It's bad stuff.

It's really bad.

Woof.

But anyway, hey, solidarity with everyone in SAGAFTRA, everyone who's making video games on that side of things.

And yeah, and

video game workers in general.

You know, we've seen seeing more and more people organize, and that's great to see, and that's encouraging.

Heather, what was the name of the game that you voiced?

Because I feel like some listeners are going to try to find that.

Sequence.

It's called Sequence.

Because I see a game called, I'm looking at the Steam store, I see a game called The Sequence in brackets.

Do you know what year this came out?

2011.

2011.

Sequence.

It might have been.

Spelled like the word?

Yes.

Because I see a bunch of sequences on here.

I see sequence, storm, null sequence, unexpected sequence, crystal sequence, the sequence to sprite sequence, but I don't see an actual sequence, but maybe it's just not on the Seamstore.

It was called

Maybe it was Sequence by

Was it Iridium Studios?

I don't know.

It's, yeah,

I found it on, of all places, IMDb.

It is just called Sequence, as Iridium's first title sequence combines elements from both role-playing and rhythm genres.

As a result, traditionally slow RPG combat is fast and frenetic, while players can enjoy the additional benefits of character customization, inventory management, and deep and engrossing plot.

Maybe it's been delisted because the only, it doesn't, if you look at Iridium's homepage, they list a couple of other games, but they don't list that one.

Yeah.

All right, well.

If anyone can find this piece of dead media,

let us know.

Heather voices Jane, according to the credits.

I think

I was like a butch,

like

a lady general, you know, like a like a

listen to you, you, you, you, you listen to me.

Like that kind of, that kind of voice, I think, which also was rough because,

you know, I don't, I'm not, I don't do a lot of voice acting.

Like, I don't play any characters on this show that we're doing.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, that's such a stress for you.

It was a real, it it was hard because, you know, I don't know how to manage that sort of stress on my vocal cords.

Yeah.

Well, I think

you forcing me smiling.

I'm just like trying to, like, I was looking up to see if I could find the words for what I was trying to say.

Guys, I'm really excited to talk about what I'm playing.

I'm excited to talk about what I'm playing too,

but

I want to do a quick

shout-out of what we will be playing at the end of this month because the polls are closed.

The poll is closed.

Matt, you have because what we did is last week, we were like, ah, there's a few different things we could play.

I don't know.

What do you want us to play?

You want us to play Starfield?

You want us to play, you know, Sea of Stars, what have you.

And it came down to two games, and those games were God Hand and Killer Seven.

Heather's looking at a different poll.

It actually did come down to two Heather games, Armored Core 6,

but the runaway

and

perhaps a horse racing analogy is appropriate with this game because the runaway winner was, I believe, Matt Shadow of the Colossus.

That's right, with a lead of 150 votes ahead of the next closest game.

It is Shadow of the Colossus.

The options were Armored Core 6, Sia Star, Shadow of the Colossus, and Starfield.

And Shadow of the Colossus took, ran away with.

This was our poll in our Discord.

That's right.

I can't believe that

Starfield didn't win.

Well, I think the thing is that I think, first off, I think we have maybe a little bit of a different audience than a general gaming audience for our podcast.

I think there may be people who are perhaps more attuned to our three tastes and or, and, and so, and I also think the other thing is like there's so many places.

I already saw there's a Starfield 100% review that came up my YouTube algorithm.

There's so many places you can get Starfield content already.

So

my thinking is that maybe people wanted us to talk about something we'd be more excited about.

And I am excited to talk about this.

Team Eco,

artful classic, Shadow of the Colossus.

We are going to be playing that.

This month's weekly play that.

And that will be coming on Monday, September 25th.

I can't believe that this...

Here's why I'm excited about this: because Apodaka hasn't played this game.

That's right.

Yes.

Like,

that is.

I almost don't know anything about it either.

Like, that's a great way to go in.

I'm excited.

Like, it's, it's not, it's not like a Star Wars-level blind spot, but it's a bit, it's a huge game, like, in terms of what it ended up affecting in the industry.

Like, I don't know that

Breath of the Wild

can be

like there is, I think, a direct lineage from Shadow of the Colossus to Breath of the Wild.

Yeah, I think that's fair.

Yeah.

Sure.

I think that's a good thing.

And

there's an interesting window of time right now, too, where this is the only video game Adam Sandler has played and I haven't.

Like, that's probably not true across all the other games I've played, but he's got this one on me, and I think that's interesting.

Yeah.

We're going to watch Rain Over Me for the Patreon.

It's going to be on Get Animate.

Oh, boy.

Adam Sandler's 9-11 movie.

I mean, if we did, we'd have to be watching it on this episode.

Do you think that's one of those things where, like, I honestly, I honestly probably think that the

production designer of that movie knew what they were doing and was kind of like, oh, that'd be a cool, that would be an interesting thematic video game for this dude who's dealing with grief and loss to be playing, right?

Like, that's like, it's not just like a random coincidence.

No, no, it's also,

and this isn't a spoiler because the game opens this way.

Like, it's not like the opening of Shadow of the Colossus.

Well, maybe we should save it for when

it's a specific kind of grief that echoes his grief in the film.

We got to watch Rain Over Me.

That'll be part of the Weeplay Uplay.

Oh, my God.

I'll watch it.

I've never seen it either.

It's a weird Adam Sandler blind spot for me.

All right, let's watch it.

Yeah, great.

So our WeePlay you play is Shadow of the Colossus and Rain Over Me.

We're going to be talking about that on Monday, September 25th.

So two Mondays from now, final Monday of every month for people who are new to the pod, we do a long play discussion of one game.

So that'll be it.

Shadow of the Colossus.

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I cut off Heather to say my Adam Sandler thing.

You were saying that you can't get to Breath of the Wild without experiencing or without Shadow of the Colossus existing.

Well, I think it just has like an oversized influence on the industry

for the size and budget of the game.

Like,

it's not, it wasn't like

a flagship title for, you know, it's not uncharted.

It's not,

it's not God of War.

It's not like a big fucking huge game.

It's not Zelda, Mario.

It's Shadow of the Colossus.

But I feel like after it happened,

so many games were doing, like, were borrowing from this language.

that the game created.

So I'm, I'm, I'm hyped to revisit it.

And I think I'm going to be playing the remaster

because

it feel I've never played the remaster and I think that that might be nice.

Then again, I might get home this weekend and boot up that PS2, drop in my original OG copy

of Shadow of the Colossus and see how that feels.

Yeah, I thought about doing that.

And then I was also like, man, that's going to, it's just, it's, I remember it feeling like, oh, boy, this is chugged at the time, you know yeah so i wonder how it would feel how how that 15 uh fps you know frame rate would feel uh in this day and age would be might be a little tricky but hey i salute you if you do it i also have not played the remaster which came out in 2018 so that's probably the version that i'm playing but yeah if you want to play along with us the remaster is on ps4 is it still part of that it is part of the playstation plus collection so if you have playstation plus you can just download it yeah you or you had to have um oh yeah you can do that because they they they did have the the playstation collection i think when ps5s were new you can no longer access that if you're um

uh a new playstation 5 owner i believe or even a

oh

they took that off but it's routinely nine dollars like i don't think it's a full-price game anymore at this point um and it's also but it might be in one of the in one of the tiers of uh playstation plus like where you can download uh games now, still.

I know that people get frustrated with us when we play these.

Well, first off, you guys voted for it, so you can't get that frustrated.

Yeah.

But I had an opportunity to stop the steal, and you didn't.

You too could be going to prison for 18 years.

Or was it 22?

I don't know.

There's,

I understand being frustrated when we play a game that can only be played on one console, but Shadow of the Colossus is old enough that you can emulate it.

Right.

Like, you know,

not that I want to tell people to emulate a game, but like if you're somebody who's got a PC and you can't play it any other way,

there are options.

Yeah, there are options.

I'm ethically neutral on emulation and piracy in general.

I think like as, you know, whatever.

Yeah.

If you can afford something, pay for it.

but if you can't, it's fine.

A weird, a weird and philosophically inconsistent position for a man who is pro-union and residuals.

Well, here's the thing.

Like, I kind of think that this is a

First off, we're talking things like that.

We're talking about video games.

Residuals don't exist for the people who create them.

That's true.

So it's like we're just talking about money going into these in into

the studios.

And then also it's like it fucking, they will just take stuff away from you.

It's like there is no way to just,

it's still a problem with film and TV where stuff just is delisted or is just not available anymore.

But it's like it's worse with video games because things are so platform dependent and they make it so that there's just stuff that you just can't play or can't even acquire legally anymore.

I mean, we've encountered this.

Yep.

So

yeah, I don't know.

Again, I'm just, if you can't pay for it and you have it, you have the platform, great.

But if not, you know, whatever.

Do what you got to do.

I feel that way about our fucking Patreon.

How about that for consistency?

If you can't afford it,

you know, do what you got to do.

All right.

Hey, what we got to do is talk about some video games we're playing right now.

It's what are you playing?

What are you playing?

Hey, Matt, why don't I go first?

Because I don't have that long to talk about, but I am excited about what I'm going to talk about.

Go off.

Because I was going to say, hey, Matt, why don't you go first?

But then I was like, okay, you did.

I do feel sort of tricked.

Hey, Matt, listen to this.

Today, as of this record,

Baldur's Gate 3 came out for PlayStation 5.

I have meticulously recreated my lady

thief criminal, rogue criminal,

and

have

ventured forth into the world of Baldur's Gate 3.

Wow, already the game is so different.

Here's some reasons why.

One, I swear there's an entire section of the ship that's not there anymore from my early release candidate to the current release.

Um, don't know where that part of the ship went.

Maybe I just didn't go the same way.

Uh, that early that first ship in the like in the intro area.

Secondly,

I

must have missed some stuff because

I already have,

like, maybe

20 minutes to an hour and a half into the game.

I already have like a lot more party members than I did

the first time I played.

Yeah.

Where it was just me, like, wandering around with this one girl, Shadowheart.

Yeah.

For like

the huge, like,

I conquered a village with just her.

you know, like, yeah.

But now I've got, like,

two dudes I had never met at seven hours played through of the game the other day.

Who do you have?

You have, you probably have Gail, right?

Yeah, Gail.

I never met.

I never met that dude.

And then I have Asterion.

Is that his name?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I had never seen that guy either.

I mean, I've seen all his like thirst trap pictures on Twitter, but

he's not even my favorite guy.

I couldn't believe how fast,

how fast I got up a huge group of people when I played like seven hours with just that lady wandering around.

I wonder how much of that is your play style and how much of that was you were playing the early access version.

And I just, I honestly don't know.

I don't know when all those party members got, you know, implemented.

Unknown.

I missed Gail

because I had to read, I had to go back a little bit when I had first started.

And when I did, I was like, I was going to still walk around.

My new thing, I mean, I'll talk about that, but I missed Gail completely.

And I was like, oh, here's Gail.

And then

Gail's been an integral part of my party since.

He's a good guy.

Gail's one of the first guys I stumbled upon, but I think that just sort of speaks to the nature of this game.

Yeah.

It's just like, you know, whatever.

It's hard playing as like

a bad person because

you really do hurt everybody you encounter.

Oh, so you're playing, you're playing bad.

I'm playing a bad person,

and it's upsetting sometimes to choose the things where like it's like,

could you help me?

Do you think you could help me?

And I'm like, what's in it for me?

And they're like, I'm on, I'm on fire, please.

Help me.

And I'm like, come on, fork over some cash.

And it's like, ah, oh, God, hurry.

I'll give you everything I have.

And then you help them and they have like nothing.

They have like very little and you take it from them and your entire party disapproves.

It's like,

I don't know, but you gain inspiration points.

I don't know.

I don't know what the right way to play this game is, but

I am reminded of the time that

my partner in Disco Elysium

yelled at me.

Oh, okay.

And broke my heart.

It's the worst experience in a game I've ever had is emotionally.

You made me have laid that audio

yelling at me.

Oh, man.

Yeah, it's gnarly.

I didn't have that encounter, but I would defend.

I'm a defend Kim at all costs guy.

So I'm playing Boulder's Gate 3 as of today.

I'm still picking away at God of War Ragnarok.

Boy, the combat in that game is floaty.

Isn't it nice?

It would be like, it's floaty as fuck, man.

Like, you knock somebody into the air and they just are like, they're a beach ball from that point forward.

Um,

that's it.

That's what I'm playing.

Wow.

Short list.

You guys.

Matt, you've also been playing some BG3.

Yeah, Matt, why don't you listen to Nick?

Okay.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

I mean, it seemed like a natural segue for Matt to talk about Baldwin K3, but sure, I'll talk about CS Stars for a little bit.

I've, so

I'm about 10 hours into CS Stars.

This is the Throwback JRPG.

I mean,

it's just an aesthetically pristine game.

I feel like I use that turn to phrase a lot, but in terms of capturing the best version of a late, you know, 16-bit slash early

32-bit pixel art RPG, sprite-based RPG,

it's like the ideal of that.

It's like the art direction is so good.

The sound design and the music are so good, but also so era appropriate.

It is developed and published by Sabotage Studios.

And

I'm really enjoying the game.

I will say that in non-story spoiler, just to give people a sense if you're playing along about where I am exactly, I have the fourth party member and the grappling hook.

So I have, you know, another way to traverse the environment, which I think is a big part of the fun of this game.

It's got great just like walking around, great moving around.

Like I mentioned last week, the run cycle is very fast.

You can get around the map really quickly.

And then there's all sorts of

chasms to...

to jump across and little ledges to traverse.

It's just got great movement.

And then when you get into a battle, it is like in that same world.

It's like kind of chrono trigger style.

We don't go to a separate, you know, sort of random encounter scene.

It all happens on the same map.

And

one thing I like about that is that, first off, it it makes the game flow really quickly.

The thing about JRPGs, if you play

a JRPG from that era, they kind of feel kind of ponderously paced now.

And

this one is not that.

It completely just feels,

it just kind of keeps moving.

But the other thing is that it adds these tactical considerations in terms of the positioning of characters is huge.

The positioning of your enemies versus your party, if they're in like kind of like a pincer sort of position.

You have a lot of spells that affect basically or skills that affect adjacent

enemies.

And so like if they're kind of scattered all over the map, those are a little bit neutered.

And then also turn ordering is a big tactical consideration here in terms of like, all right, who do I want to, which, which, because when you're, and it's your party's turn, you can choose.

who you want to go in what order and that can affect in terms of how Thing how your your battle your combat plays out the other thing and this is a this is a core mechanic in the combat that i think is really well done is that when you physically attack something someone when you use a physical basic attack uh you get mana back that's how you regenerate mana so it kind of like incentivizes tag uh toggling between using your spells to drain your mana pool and then using um physical attacks to increase your mana pool and since different enemies have different vulnerabilities to different attacks uh again that's another tactical consideration it's just a way to make it get to keep the combat from being like, you know, press attack, like hit attack, hit attack, hit attack,

drink potion or whatever.

It just, it has a lot of variants to it and is super fun.

And speaking of the combat, Matt, I put the battle theme in the chat, which, you know, look, this is another thing I think this game does well.

You hear this over and over again.

And for me, I never get tired of it.

This is outstanding.

Yeah, great shit.

The composer is Eric W.

Brown.

But there is some additional music by Yasunori Mitsuda, which I mentioned last week.

Legendary video game composer.

But yeah,

it's a really fun score.

However, there is one bit of criticism I wanted to level at this game.

The triple triad of this game is called Wheels.

The Gwent of this game, if you will.

It's a little mini-game that you can play in taverns, and it is like a board game that involves

a spinning sort of slot machine.

mechanic that comes that brings up to a some

a bunch of random stats that you know

you have you have these care you have these statuettes these minifigs that will attack based off of what you pick from the slot machine.

What do you call those things?

The little rotaries, the little spinners?

The little spinners, I think.

The little spinners, right.

Thank you, Matt.

Rotary.

Whatever comes up from the rotaries, the little spinners, you know, it'll be like

experience or hammers or, you know, attack or whatever.

It's so unclear how to play this fucking game.

It is the most inscrutable one of these I've ever encountered.

And there's no no tutorial.

Instead, what there is is that in the pause menu, there's just like a little bit of a few pages of manual text that include a phrase, like just like they, they don't really explain things well.

They include a phrase that three oak plus, which I was like, what the fuck is three oak plus?

And I ended up searching it on, you know, Google and Bing.

And the first result was like someone asking, In Sea of Stars, what is three oak plus?

Because it does not explain what it is.

It means three of a kind plus, which I guess is some like some card shark people like use that acronym, but it doesn't explain it to the user.

And so I watched a YouTube video of this YouTube tutorial of how to play wheels.

And this guy spent 10 minutes explaining how it works.

But he clearly was unclear.

And then some of the comments were like, hey, I actually think it works this way.

And he'd respond like, oh, man, I didn't get that.

Like, it's like, even the people trying to make content to try to illuminate this to other people are unclear on how it it works.

So I think that probably the community will figure this out and write a tutorial.

I did sort of get a sense of how it worked exactly, but it is one of those things.

Totally optional.

You don't have to play it at all, but as someone who wanted to explore that side of the of the game,

I was a little bit, you know, thrown off by it.

But that's my only real negative so far.

I think it's paced really well.

I think the dungeons are really fun.

I think the art direction is just so gorgeous.

And I think the different towns and biomes feel so distinct.

And yeah, if you like this style of game, I think this is

a great modern version of it, Sea of Stars on Game Pass.

Imagine some of our listeners are playing along.

So let us know what you think.

I really want to dip my toes into that game.

There's just a lot.

There's a lot going on.

Well, that was...

That was the thing.

I was really happy that Starfield didn't win.

I was kind of pulling for a Sea of Stars to win, but I was happy that Starfield didn't win because I'm like, I'm already neglecting Baldur's Gate Gate to play Sea of Stars.

I got to get back to Baldur's Gate.

I don't want to abandon that game entirely.

If I got to play fucking Starfield, I'm just like, I just don't have time.

I don't have time for any of this shit.

I've seen some playthrough, like some clips of Starfield on Twitter that are the funniest fucking thing I've ever seen.

And that makes me want to play it so badly.

Like a person talking to you, and all of a sudden their head explodes because they got hit with a grenade from like a random thing.

Or

somebody's like

talking or like standing and talking to somebody else and you accidentally like knock a thing off a wall that bounces off off and like just assassinates them like it's yeah

the more realistic a thing looks and the more video gamey it is the funnier it is yes and starfield looks so funny i i saw a video of uh

somebody put a bunch of potatoes in like their room yeah I've seen the potatoes.

And the potatoes all have their own individual physics, and that's really funny.

Yeah, there's a lot.

It's like 20,000 potatoes in a room.

Yeah, and they just like spill out of the room when they nail the door.

That's user funny.

That's like not like on

the different from the game.

When people get a sandbox like this, and the first thing they do, we're like, oh, you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to pick up every potato I can find and put it in a room.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm going to see if I can shoot my dick off.

Yeah, yeah.

Matt,

what are you playing, Matt?

Well, okay.

I don't know why you haven't spoken till now.

Yeah, what the fuck, man?

I've just been, I've been waiting my turn.

I've been dipping my toes in quite a bit, honestly.

You know, I've been, I'm not very far into Armored Core 6, but that's...

I've been sort of picking up that game in between.

like playing Baldur's Gate for a long period of time.

Like I just want to do something else for a little bit.

And I'll do a couple missions in Armored Corps 6.

And, um,

it's,

it's so fucking good and cool and awesome.

And it's, it's just, um,

it's, it's just exactly what a video game should be.

It's, it's, I, I, I don't know.

There's, I don't have any sense of what the story is or if there is one.

I'm just,

I'm just a hired gun

going from base to base, shooting targets, and then coming back and collecting my money.

And that's it.

And i i made my mech uh

i i i painted my mech in the uh eva 01 colorway so i so i feel like i'm i i'm shinji but i'm like shinji who means it and is getting and is getting it done um

so that's been exciting i did

I did briefly play a little bit of Starfield last night, just so I'd have a little bit to say about it so far.

And I'm interested in playing it a little bit more.

I spent most of my time trying to make me

and

because there's a lot of options.

They had a lot of options in the character creator.

And so I was doing that for most of the time.

And then I played a little bit of the game so far.

And I am interested in it.

It does seem, it seems pretty cool.

I

yeah, I haven't hit, it's early.

It's still early in the game.

I haven't hit the thing in the game that's going to hook me yet.

It kind of just seems to me so far to be a

one of those.

One of those.

Exactly.

And I'm just, I'm not, so I'm not there yet, but I am excited to try it a little more.

What I played was fun and interesting, but I haven't, it hasn't hooked

its teeth into me yet.

But

what has is Baldur's Gate 3, as I've been talking about week after week since playing it.

I started playing it on my Steam Deck, right?

I've since installed it on my PC over here, and I've been playing on the PC with

a controller attached.

And I did this the other day,

and I

don't know what happened.

But five hours later, I was still playing Baldur's Gate 3.

And I was like, this is,

I haven't had this kind of day in a long time.

Yeah.

Where I was just, I was just getting in it.

I was just in the shit, you know?

And

I'm in act two now.

All my characters are level six.

And

some encounters, some encounters in this game, I just fuck people up.

They're just fucked.

Nice.

And it feels so good to not take that much damage.

Right.

And like, just to get out of an encounter and be like, okay, you're done.

You're fucking done.

Dead.

Next.

But

I'm also playing, I feel like I'm playing

how I would exist in this world, which is, I'm trying to please as many people as I can.

And that, of course,

eventually does lead to you

getting disapproval of some characters.

Because I'm not.

I backed.

I accidentally.

I told you guys this.

I like accidentally flirted too much

with one of the characters

and got to the point where I could have

relations with this character.

And I was like, well, I have to see what this is like.

I have to see.

I haven't had this in the game yet.

And I did it.

It was interesting.

I won't spoil it.

I told some people on the Discord

who it was and what happened.

Uh-huh.

But I spoiled, spoiler-tagged who it was.

Yeah.

And then after that, I was locked out of the other romance that I was pursuing and the one that I was more interested in.

Oh, boy.

And I was fucking heartbroken.

Oh, no.

I felt so sad, like, in real life, that I fucked up.

And I was like, oh, I thought we were all just sort of like, you know, I didn't think it was that serious.

Like, I thought we were all just fucking around.

I didn't think it was like that serious, but you don't want to like talk to me anymore.

And you don't want to pursue this any further because I went and, you know, fooled around with this other one.

And

I, I safe scummed and I went back and undid the sex.

Wow.

And I was just like, I can't, I can't do it.

And so then the option came up again because I had to go back to camp at a certain point.

And I was like, I'm ignoring.

I have to rebuff this

interaction.

I can't go down this road again.

I can't lose.

I can't lose it.

I can't lose what I want.

And so I feel like the person that I'm pursuing to is like kind of the basic choice, but I don't fucking give a shit.

That's that's that's it.

But yeah, that's fine.

But there's also like another person in the camp that I'm trying to pursue too just in case.

Cause like

I could go either way with these two, but the one that I went down the path with, I was like, I don't even, I'm not even excited about that.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, sure.

I was like, no, I get it.

No, no, not you.

Not you.

These other two, happy with either one.

This one, I just wanted to see what would happen.

And then it was bad.

So I reloaded my save and

fixed it.

I wish you could convince your party members to sleep with each other

oh yeah yeah well

i'd probably just never stop playing the game yeah then you're just gonna be a matchmaker that's fun that's a fun sub game uh there is there are a couple of pairings that you can have and be in a

like a poly like relationship you can't make them do stuff with each other but you can be with them separately and that's fine but

some characters and i didn't i know what you're thinking matt did you google how many relationships can you have in baldur's gate 3 no i didn't do that you're being you sound crazy

you can there are certain pairings you can have

that are fine with sharing but there are some that are just hard no

yeah

and it's like i get that

but it's the game baby let me do it with all of them um i'm sure you'll be able to find a mod that'll let you, you know, have whatever harem you want.

But yeah, I think in terms of the game, it's like

it's when you say that, when you talk about like the feelings of regret because you romanced one character and then the other option is just like forever closed to you or because you hooked up with somebody and then it's just like, oh, now this other person doesn't like me who I was actually interested in on an emotional level.

Yeah.

It's like, that's one of those things where it's like, oh, games

can simulate like the bad parts of life.

It's like, and they don't have to, but that's a thing that this medium can do in a way that, like, I think non-interactive mediums can't quite have that sort of intense emotional connection.

You know, you can feel like it's a different feeling when it's like a third party, when it's like the hero of a TV show is going through that versus your player characters experiencing that.

In a perfect world, this game would have been like, hey, I heard you fucked so-and-so.

That's really cool.

We can still fuck.

And it's like, okay, fine.

But all that to say, I'm still playing and loving the game.

It looks great on the PC.

It's sort of my preferred way to play it now.

I just don't have like a comfortable enough chair to be sitting at my desk for so long.

But

let's talk off pod.

I'll get you a fucking comfy chair.

What?

Nick wants me to sit on his lap.

Oh, ho, ho.

But.

I also, I'm at a point in Act 2 where I could keep going and get to act three pretty quickly, I believe.

But I did a little reading and somebody was like, something that I read suggested to leave where I'm at currently and go explore this other area.

So I'm sort of just in, now I'm in act two walking around mode.

I did a lot of walking around in act one and still miss stuff.

So now I'm walking around in act two and seeing what else there is where I'm at.

Cause I'm not trying to get to act three just yet.

Yeah.

I'm still in act one from whatever.

It's a big fucking game.

I played for 50 hours.

It's wild.

And

from what I've read and from what I've heard, Matt, I think

what you're doing is the right approach.

It's like, this is very much one, there's no race to the finish.

Enjoy the journey, explore everything.

I certainly have not regretted in my

more limited time with the game, just sort of like walking around and checking stuff out.

And I just talk to everybody.

I love it.

It's just so fun.

Can I ask, and if

this is spoiler territory, you know, that's that we don't have to do it, but I'll ask the question.

You can decide if you want to answer it or not.

You said Astarian is not your main guy.

Can you tell us who your main guy is?

Well,

okay,

I'll say.

I entered my cursed romance with Gail.

Okay.

And

it was beautiful.

It was great.

But I just feel like I've put in so much work with Shadowheart.

Okay.

That, and she's sort of like a closed book at certain parts, and she's a little sort of tougher nut to crack.

Gail was like, I love you, like immediately.

And I was like, I'll

never.

But then, yeah, with Shadowheart,

I was sort of like, I feel like I betrayed this sort of thing that we're building.

Right.

You know?

But so my team currently, though, is Gail, Shadowheart, myself,

and a character that I don't think Heather has met.

Okay.

But an act 1 character that you can find.

Got it.

Well,

I intend on romancing the Gif Yankee.

A lot of people do.

That's a very Heather character.

I believe she's the horniest character in the game.

Oh, really?

She's like, let's go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I want to be like,

let's kill something

and then fuck.

Like, that, I mean, if you're going to do it, I don't want something sensitive.

Yeah, that's basically her dialogue from the game.

So I think you're fine.

Yeah, yeah.

I think

there was like a speedrun.

Somebody did it before a patch.

I think this was a bug.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

You could speedrun sex with that character in eight minutes.

Oh, Jesus.

It's an all-time great.

It's a fantastic,

incredible video game.

Every time I play it, I can't believe what I'm seeing and that it works at all.

It's fantastic.

Yeah.

Right.

Despite its rough, it's one of those things where despite its rough edges, they're still just like, well, it's taken such huge swings.

It's like, it's just, it's amazing that that's a great way to put it, Matt.

It's amazing that it works at all.

And the fact that it's not online,

always online.

The fact that I could play it offline.

I played it on a fucking airplane.

I played it in a bar.

You could play it anywhere.

And you don't have to always be online to be playing it.

You have to re-sync your cloud save like when you get But

that's nothing.

I wonder if the Mac version has come out yet.

Because boy, oh boy, it would be nice to sync this new save and spend my 11 hours on a plane playing Baldur's Gate.

I honestly don't know.

I mean, the PS5 version is out.

Maybe the Mac port is out.

I don't know.

I don't know either.

But boy, it would be nice.

There's no way to find out.

Without booting it up,

I typed in Mac Baldur's Gate 3 on Google, and the first thing that comes up on Reddit from a post a day ago, I don't think the Mac release is going to be tomorrow.

By the way, I should, before we close up the Baldur's Gate 3 discussion, I should give a quick correction.

Last week, Matt, when I talked about our buddy, our mutual friend Tyler,

who saw you in the bar playing Baldur's Gate 3,

and you acted like you were caught jacking off on a park bench, apparently.

No, I didn't.

Well, you did on the pod.

Oh, yeah.

But Tyler, I said the I had his last name wrong.

I conflated him with a different Tyler whose podcast I also guested on.

So apologies to that, Tyler.

Oh, yeah.

Tyler Schnupp is who he is.

Tyler Schnepp.

Yeah, yeah.

I caught that in the end.

And then I was like, oh, that's not his last name, but I think that's fine.

Yeah, you'll just leave it in.

Make me look like a shit head, which I was.

Sorry, Tyler.

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All right, let's.

Hey, we get, this is, this is something special.

This is something that, yeah.

Look, okay.

So I did, I did

in the United States, there's a, there's a radio show called This American Life, where you do like a, like, you hear like this guy,

and I don't listen to it that much, but when you do, you hear this guy be like,

wow, I wanted to get to the bottom of what a backpack is.

So I went to Wilmington.

and learned about it.

And

I, I don't know.

So I kind of did that.

I kind of did this American Life for Us.

And it's real earnest and maybe a little bit cringy and a little embarrassing, but I did it.

So I made a segment,

I did a full interview

and I did like an intro and I recorded sounds.

I feel like I'm presenting a school project.

But

I did it for our show.

I did it for Get Played.

And I guess we could just

play play it.

Do you want to maybe tell people like what it is?

Or do you want them to experience it as it's happening?

No, it's all it's all there.

Okay.

Okay.

The whole package is right there.

You know, we've got a ongoing segment as I come to the end of my stay here in the Netherlands called The World Warrior.

And I think that it has sort of been developing to this place where I've been like investigating arcades and going to the game museum.

Like, I had to build up a network before I could make something like this

happen.

And were that I were to live in Holland for another year or two or five or life,

then this thing I think would be a more regular feature.

But yeah, to round out my time here in the Netherlands,

let's just roll the tape.

Utrecht is a city in the centre of the Netherlands that began as a Roman fortification in the year fifty CE.

By the eighth century it was a seat of power for the Catholic Church, and became a renowned trade centre by the Middle Ages, before ultimately helping found the Dutch Republic in fifteen seventy nine with the signing of the Union of Utrecht.

It is a beautiful city, with medieval canals and cobblestone streets and is home to the largest university in the Netherlands.

And it was for this reason that I traveled to Utrecht to speak with one of Utrecht University's professors, Dr.

Joost Verfoort.

The journey from Amsterdam to Utrecht is 43 kilometers, about 26 miles, a relatively fast train ride, or in my case, a very,

very,

very long bike ride.

Bike paths connect every inch of the Netherlands like a psychovascular system, and the ride from Amsterdam to Utrecht would be a pleasant two and a half hours.

Unfortunately, the temperature dropped to 10 degrees and it began to thunderstorm midway to the city.

With farmland in every direction, there was no option but to pedal forward.

Forward to Utrecht.

I arrived with wet hair and frazzled nerves to speak with Dr.

Frafort about a video game he's developing.

This is Heather Ann Campbell, World Warrior, and today's topic is the climate courthouse game, All Rise.

So, um, hi.

Hi.

Um, you're, just before I, you're Dr.

Joost Traford?

That's right, yeah.

Okay.

And what, what do you have a doctorate in?

So I got a PhD in,

I'm a biologist originally.

A biologist.

A biologist, yeah, ecologist.

And sort of an ecologist and a sustainability science person.

But my PhD is really in, and that's a long time ago, but it's really in how to get different people in society to think about what's happening and what's going on with the future and with sustainability from their different perspectives.

So, rather than communicating at people about what you think is going on, to have people come together and share different perspectives on the future.

And when I was working on that PhD, one of the things to really look at was sort of future scenario approaches, but I also got involved in games and thinking about games as a way to do this, especially sort of multiplayer games, you know, tabletop games, all this kind of stuff back then.

Yeah, so that's that's the PhD.

Have you been

a gamer before this interest?

Like, did your interest in video gaming precede your doctorate or was it something that

flowed from

your interest in ecology and how to expand that messaging?

No, I've always been...

I've always been a gamer

or player of games, I suppose.

And the thing that really, I think, put me on this path towards all this future stuff and all this sort of interactive working with people thing

was playing role-playing games in high school, especially Vampire and Masquerade.

Oh, who is your clan?

So, my clan, well, I worked, I did a lot of Giovanni stories, actually, because they're so interesting.

They're like these, you know, vampire bankers with sort of necromancy, and so lots of, and lots of crossover with Wraith, the Oblivion, you know.

So, that was a lot of the stories were Giovanni's stories.

Nice.

I used to be a Nosferatu or a Malkavian.

Oh, very nice.

Yes.

Both very challenging.

We were like, I'm going to just take the most difficult clans.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Super nice.

Yeah.

So, so, Vampire and and masquerade, you know, I, this sort of urban gothic stories,

I was really blown away by that as a kid.

I was like, it's possible to just sit around a table with a few friends and a beer and just have this super elaborate stories.

And, you know, it's action and it's politics and it's drama.

And this can just happen.

And, you know, these things can just emerge out of a group of people talking together.

I was really amazed by that.

And I think that was...

maybe in a way the most important thing that happened to me and that sort of set me on the path through my studies in biology and going into sustainability of having that interest of using the collective imagination as a way to sort of engage with the future and with a change in the world.

Cool.

And now you're a professor at Utrecht University, is that correct?

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

So I'm an associate professor in a sustainability research part of Utrecht University and a teacher.

And my focus is on transformative imagination.

That's my title now.

Made it up myself.

Very happy with it.

And yeah, and so there there I focus on,

well, I do a lot with game design

because I see games as one of the most powerful ways of engaging people

at so many different levels with imaginative experiences and expression.

I do a lot of other stuff as well.

I worked all around the world with governments working on climate change policies, using future scenarios to help break them out of their sort of like previous thinking and their more limited ideas about what's possible.

Really using those methodologies as a sort of shared sense-making about what the future could be like and how it could be different, because we're living in a time in which we're all in this crisis of the imagination and

we don't really know how things could be better for obvious reasons.

Do you think, would you say that your visions of the future are

skewing dystopian, or are you more hopeful that through messaging and through these new ways of imagining the futures that you'll be able to sort of steer society?

Yeah, I think I'm hopeful, sad, and angry at the same time.

Yeah, I think,

I mean, as someone who specializes in multiple scenarios, I feel like I'm constantly living, and lots of people around me as well, in these multiple scenarios.

So the hopeful scenarios are there, they're possible, but the really horrible ones as well.

And so I definitely don't want to say, oh, I'm just hopeful.

Oh, it's going to be, I'm just optimistic.

Not at all.

Like, I think that there are some really, real nightmare futures that could be ahead of us.

I think there's just a lot of uncertainty around it.

And I think

there's a lot more agency that we have as humans than we are maybe telling ourselves.

I think, and I have a background in complex system science and sort of complexity, but I feel like a lot of the talk about, oh, it's all so complex, it's so difficult to change anything, can also hide the fact that sometimes things are also quite simple, right?

When you go down to the level of what we want as a future society, sort of human values,

you can hide behind that complexity when things could be improved collectively in many ways.

Cool.

You just got back from Gamescom.

That's right.

Which is, for our American listeners, was in Cologne, Germany, this last week.

You want to talk a little bit about, were you there for networking or were you there specifically for the game that you're developing called Allrise?

Yeah,

so we were there to pitch this game, Allrise, which I could tell maybe a bit about.

Yes, please.

So Allrise is a game that was born out of

involvement with real climate activism, and it's a game that is about taking

fossil fuel industry giants to court, essentially.

That was the core idea.

You described it as Phoenix Right meets

Phoenix Right meets Disco Elysium.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah, basically.

So, it started really as this sort of like Phoenix Right, but about climate court cases.

That was the original idea.

But then,

as we started to develop the game, so a lot of people or a bunch of really wonderful people became involved.

So we have a producer called Niels Monshauer, who is who before this game worked on Horizon Forbidden West at Guerrilla in Amsterdam.

And

then

Magna Giant, who is a narrative designer and writer who worked on a bunch of wonderful games like Sable, 80 Days, also on Horizon Zero Dawn and other things.

And as people came came together and our artists got involved, and we have a research team that got involved,

we

decided that it would be much more interesting for the game to have a world to explore as well.

So the court case, the court sort of system would be a little bit limited

to explore this sort of like the reality of climate activism.

So now, if I would explain the game, now it would be this is a game about resonant leadership and empathetic leadership,

about what it's like to be a climate activist that does stuff that works.

And we're really drawing this game from the realities of real climate activists from all around the world.

So we're speaking a lot to these people.

A lot of sort of social research is going into the game.

We have a research team that's as big as the development team, which is really cool.

Wow.

Yeah, so

the game is set up in a bunch of different chapters.

And the first chapter is set in sort of sideways speculation of southern India.

And

this is really prompting a lot of imaginative work.

So Magna's writing is incredible.

And we have Hugo Biele on the team as our programmer.

And Morocia Aradondo, who's our UI artist and working on this.

And we have a background artist, Nora Merchet, who worked on League of Legends.

And our character artist is Kern Gregory, who is responsible for the art in Paradise Killer, the character art, which is really iconic.

And so these people all coming together, it's this really creative work that's really bringing this world to life.

So it's a bit, it's sort of a sideways speculation.

It's closer to our reality than, say, a disco Elysium.

But

it's different enough where you sort of start wondering,

you know, what's going on exactly here?

How do I make sense of this world?

But the game is really about, the game is really about, yeah.

It's about a woman named Koili, who's a climate activist and a lawyer, coming actually from sort of more mainstream law work, legal work, but coming into climate activism.

And she's a really powerful leader, very fun, kind of smart, playful.

You know, she looks at the world a little bit like it's a game, so she sees opportunities everywhere.

And

you step into her shoes, but you're not a leader in the sense where you just tell people what to do and you sort of lead the charge in that way.

It's all about sort of motivating people and supporting them in creating a movement as well as building a court case.

The court case is about a river that's been polluted completely to hell, like in many different ways.

So finding out how this river has been murdered, which is the focus, the murder of a river is sort of the subtitle of this first chapter.

There's not one murderer

in essence.

Yeah.

And so that's where it gets its inspiration from Disco Elysium, is sort of the solving of the crime of the

murder of the river?

Yeah, the Disco Elysium part of it is also in their world building a little bit.

You know, the world building in Disco Esium is very rich, and it includes these wonderful layers of sort of personal psychology, social interactions, the sociological and political layers.

And then there's this sort of like analogy to climate change in this Galesium.

In our case, it's more closely related to our world.

But

definitely that sort of detective work, the sort of role-playing adventure, interacting with characters in the world side of it,

has that sort of influence.

There's also Citizen Sleeper, which I don't know if you've played that game, but that is also an influence for this game as well.

Does the main character of your game, this woman, does she become an alcoholic after dealing with it?

That's not a path that's in the game yet.

But you know,

there's potential there.

So this is, I think, where the game is quite different from something like this Collegium, which is very beholden to its

noir detective,

dismal tone.

And what's interesting to me is that, and to all of us in the team actually, is that

sort of

a lot of these games that are resonant and sort of

are meaningful to people in a way,

they do tend to sort of stick with this sort of darkness a lot, which is wonderful and beautiful, right?

But is it possible to make games that are not entirely utopian,

that are not entirely utopian, but also not just sort of like, but I mean, at Disco Elysium, there is hope in this game, but it's mostly interpersonal, right?

The sort of structural change,

it's not so much there, right?

And in our game, we try to focus more on this because we want to speak directly to people's senses of powerlessness and hopelessness that exists around climate change.

You feel hopeless, you feel powerless, so let's talk about this.

The sort of underlying ideas behind the game have a lot to do with sort of sociological theory that talks about how, if you give people space to talk about their

difficult emotions around these issues, they feel safe, they feel seen, they feel like there's, and then a space for sort of collective critical consciousness emerges that then mobilizes people into action.

Yeah, yeah.

I feel like I'm often caught in sort of a doom spiral when I read something on Reddit or on X, formerly Twitter.

Oh, yes.

And it's like, I feel hopeless and powerless, and I'm sort of flooded with anxiety.

And it seems like what you're speaking to is a way to

not let those feelings coagulate, but rather that you can talk about them almost in a therapeutic sense, and that that allows you to feel more active

in the future.

Is that right?

That's right.

And this is really what's shown to be sort of the basis of many social movements: that you find a community where you can speak about the things that you think are maybe, you know, you feel hopeless, anxious, et cetera, about this, but you're just carrying this yourself.

In a modern society, you're supposed to sort of just carry this yourself.

But when you can sort of break through that sort of loneliness and that sort of separateness of those emotions and sort of recognize this together, the

space starts to develop for action.

This is what people really find in activist movements as well.

So as Kuyili in this game, you are doing some,

you're doing some important sort of investigative work yourself, but you also have a team to manage.

And it's really about sort of giving the space for these people to be themselves,

to be with their worries and their pain and their anger.

Anger is a great motivator for action.

But of course, if it's just anger, sadness, and anxiety, people burn out, right?

Activist burnout is real.

So, yeah, so that's there.

There's all the playfulness and fun and weird absurdity in the game as well.

We think that's really important.

And really, you know, these things don't have to bite each other.

In fact, they can strengthen each other.

Going really serious and really deep and being playful as hell.

And a really great example for me of this in modern games is the new Wolfenstein games, actually.

Oh, I haven't played the New Wolfenstein.

Oh, yeah, you should really play them.

They're so interesting in the way they walk the line, sort of like dealing with really difficult topics, you know, fascism.

And Wolfenstein, the New Colossus, especially, talks about, it's about the Germans bombing New York and taking over the US, but it's about how fascism is really sort of a fertile ground in the U.S.

already before the Germans came in this story.

And so it talks about these really deep themes, but it also has you going to Venus to go to Hitler's secret Venus base

to play as yourself in a movie he's shooting about you as a character.

It's ridiculous, you know.

But it's but it's wonderful.

It's just really, really that sort of absurdity and deep sort of attention to what's really going on.

That's just really powerful, I think.

Yeah.

So you have this whole team assembled.

Yeah.

How far along the, where are you in the process of the development of the game?

Are you still in the fundraising section of the game or are you actually putting down code or what's going on?

Yeah, maybe one thing to say about the fundraising is that we, that's really important to mention about this game, is this game is meant to raise funds.

Part of the funds raised with the game, with the sales of the game, are going to go to real climate court cases.

So we want you as a player to feel like I'm buying this game and a significant part of the money goes to real cases.

So that's maybe good to mention.

We got some funding from the Dutch Creative Industries Fund to get us started.

And now we have a little tech demo.

Let me take a step back because for American listeners, what you just said is going to sound the craziest thing so far.

Really?

Yeah.

So you got money from the Dutch government to help make your game.

Yes.

What is that like to have the support of a government?

Oh, it just feels normal.

I'm just like, oh, yes, of course.

You know,

we can also go to the European Commission, for instance, and they'd be interested in these kinds of things as well.

No, it's, I'm, yeah,

it's interesting that you'd be shocked by that, but that feels kind of like, yep, you know, that's just that, you know, there's much wrong with the Dutch government, but

they do support these things.

I'm also on a research project.

funded by the Dutch government as well for my games research.

So they're fully behind this stuff.

Cool.

So you receive that grant and you're in the...

Go ahead.

I didn't mean to.

Oh, no, no, no.

No, no, no, I did mean to interrupt you, but you know what I mean.

Yes, yes, for sure.

So,

yeah, we have a small tech demo, and we're still working on.

So, we brought that to Gamescom to show it to funders and to publishers and got some really useful feedback.

And so, we're going to be tweaking it a bit to sort of like just incorporate the feedback we got at Gamescom.

So, we'll have a slightly more developed tech demo.

And then, in the next couple of months, we'll really

be building towards a vertical slice, which means a fully playable section of the game.

It's just like a vertical cutthroat, right?

This is a common thing.

Yeah,

we're looking for funds.

Originally, actually, when I sort of came up with this idea while I was involved with

a real climate lawsuit,

I thought of raising the money through Kickstarter or something and then having part of the Kickstarter immediately go to climate court cases.

So my idea was we're going to sort of like have an impact with a game that doesn't even exist yet.

But then we were like, okay, maybe we should actually build an actual game that's going to just work much better.

And we can always fund new chapters by Kickstarter or whatever, right?

But just have the funding and just build it.

That'll be more sort of solid approach.

So yeah, so we're looking for funding.

Speaking to the publishers last week was really interesting.

People are really interested in this idea.

I think it's not something that I've ever heard about before.

I don't think there are any, especially in the commercial game space, any climate activism games that are about the emotions of climate change and sort of the struggle and the politics of that

out there at all.

Well, I feel like games like Disco Elysium are showing publishers that the more sincere your game is and the more

the voice of the author of the game can come through, the more resonant it is for the players.

Like, I feel like there's a,

and I don't think I'm just speaking from personal experience, but I do think that there is a little bit of fatigue in the industry of just always playing the exact same game over and over again.

And when these games,

when something new is done, or when there's a different sort of environment,

that it

encourages more people to play.

Because it's not like, like, if you see 50 first-person shooters, you choose one of them and you're like, do I really need to play the other 49?

But when you hear about a game like Disco Elysium, it's like, oh, this is like maybe two other games that have ever happened.

And so, yeah, I feel like that's really encouraging for the future of the industry, too.

I really agree.

And still, with this game, we are still, and this is a point that Magna has made sort of several times

as a person who has lots of experience writing for games, that we still also,

even then, don't just want to look at Disco Elysium or

Ace Attorney or something like that.

Because of course, these games also tread new ground, right?

So we also want to sort of like, for instance, that sort of like management of the team's emotions in our game and having that empathetic leadership as a thing to learn.

I mean, that's in neither of these games, really, right?

So, that so we are also trying to do more things.

So, but it's true, like to me, this coalesium feels like a utopian opening of the game world, right?

Who could have thought that a game about a failed communist revolution in a strange semi-fictional fantasy, you know, modern setting that's just about everything, that has this really complex

interpersonal psychology psychology stuff going on, would be that successful.

Yeah.

And it's just this, you know,

the it's just this sort of like really personal, expressive thing.

It's really amazing.

So yeah.

Yeah.

Same thing goes for Sids and Sleeper and a bunch of these other games as well.

So yeah.

What are your next steps with the game?

Like specifically, is it just another round of fundraising or is it like once you have that vertical slice,

what platforms are you targeting?

Are you looking specifically only at PC and or at Mac or is this going to to be a mobile game?

This is going to be all platforms.

Mobile will probably come last because it's better to be established as an actual sort of game, as a full game that's been understood to be a game rather than a little mobile game, which just has a

different vibe to it.

And then when it goes to mobile, it's a different story.

Yeah, so all platforms, we really want to make something that's quite accessible, where a part of the audience that we're interested in is sort of people who are interested in games, might not play very much.

And I think that that would be, but who come at this from the side of maybe sustainability or being interested in climate change or having some worries about this and wanting to sort of feel supported and empowered.

And the game is really about empowering people and in a way mobilizing people towards action.

Yeah, and basically

we are hoping that this game will get finished by the end of next year.

Great.

So that maybe at Gamescom next year we'll be there with a stand among all the indie games rather than only speaking to the publishers.

Yeah, so that's the plan basically.

And then the game will be several chapters.

So there will be a chapter in southern India, but also other parts of the world, including the Netherlands and

most likely Nigeria and the Dominican Republic.

And the stories will sort of loop into each other.

So Kuyili won't necessarily be the...

the main character in all these stories, but she'll be involved as an advisor in the other cases as well.

So you're targeting early 2025 for release or late 2024?

Late 2024.

So that'll give people maybe two years to play the game before the world ends?

Yeah, yeah.

So just enough time.

So obviously, this is, I mean, this is part of why I was interested originally in the model of bringing the idea of this game up and getting people to kickstart it so that they could fund it and that the money could already go to climate court cases, right?

But we'll just work very hard and get it done.

Yeah,

it's a horrible time to be.

I mean, this is one of the things I worry about a lot.

I used to work a lot on policy and all this stuff, but I feel policy around climate change, but I feel like policy is so beholden to politics that

the sort of operating space is so small in the policy circles when the politics are the way they are.

So that's prompted me to move to

sort of media and culture because there are things, the conversations are happening at a larger scale, et cetera, et cetera.

But of course, it's slow, right?

You're influencing or opening up or asking questions in the public space.

Yeah, but more direct action is also necessary.

So I'm also working on lots of research on direct action, actually.

I'm involved in it.

When you are, because it sounds like

the emotional space that you occupy is one that I'm terrified to stay in for very long, like really, really dwelling on climate change.

When you want to blow off steam, do you game or what do you do for fun?

Do you like go get drunk here in Utrecht?

Yeah, right.

Um, it's a it's an interesting question.

So, my relationship with games as a way to sort of blow off steam is a little complicated.

I noticed that I will play games when I feel when I'm playing the most games, it's when I'm doing the best psychologically.

Otherwise, I just feel like there's too much to do, which is which is interesting.

It's a bit different if they're really high-quality games.

Like, I was playing Death Stranding recently, and that is a very strange game, and I think really interesting because it's just it's so it's Hideo Hideo Kojima's

baby and it's just completely insane and it's a massive budget like it's a huge triple-A game and it and it's just like everything is just really nuts about it and that gives me hope for the world because I'm like wow this doesn't make any sense it's completely and it's it's got a very positive message it's all about connection and reconnecting with people and

and that kind of experience I feel like it's valuable you know whatever i feel like i could play that and just be like amazed and confused by it and that gives me gives me some openness, I suppose.

Well, I'm in a metal band.

So

I sing in a black metal band called Terzai de Horde.

Impossible to

pronounce if you look at it on paper, but whatever.

We're doing quite well with that.

And that's just...

sort of a raging volcano of all these emotions, but it's cathartic.

And I'm just, when we play the show, when we play a show with the band, I'm just on the ground in a puddle of sweat and just dying.

But it's a release, you know.

So that's going on.

Yeah, I mean,

lots of other things, but I feel like,

yeah, the best way to combat this anxiety.

And, well, let me put it like this.

I was recently talking to some young people who are sort of part of the young arm of a sort of moderate political party,

moderate leftist political party in the Netherlands, and they all struggle with climate depression and powerlessness.

And I told them, I'm going to try to give you a new problem, which is the anxiety of there's so much I could do and I can't choose and don't know where to start.

I think that's a better problem to have, right?

Where you're like, okay, my agency is actually quite significant, and there's so many things I could do.

I have a lot of power.

Dutch middle-class kids, you know, like, but where, so now I have to choose what to do.

And I think that's, yeah, that can be anxiety-inducing as well, but it's better than hopelessness and despair.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

So if our listeners want to hear your metal band,

where do they find it?

Did they find it on Spotify and Apple Music?

Yeah, it's on Spotify.

So the first word is t-e-r-z-i-j and that's that spell is or that's pronounced as terze but our american fans you know if they don't know how to say it they'll be like ter j

or something because i j doesn't make any sense so we're being very obscure but that's our genre so okay and then if uh if anybody wanted to follow you online uh do you have any social media presence or yeah i'm on i'm on x for the time being i'm trying i'm trying not to be but it's like ah you know it's still like i've i've made so many wonderful friends and things, you know, we're all like that, right?

So it's at Vervoort.

That's my last name, Vervort underscore Yoast.

And then I'm on Blue Sky as well.

You can find me there.

I'm on Mastodon and Instagram.

Yeah, where I post my artwork or whatever.

Yeah.

So.

Well, thank you so much for talking to Get Played.

As our first field correspondent piece, this was a really excellent conversation.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Really wonderful.

wow heather i i have a i have a pitch for that segment a name for it it's i mean you okay it's never going to happen again but okay what is it but when you do it again okay this recurring segment

oh my god are you just gonna

after all of that

like earnestness you're your immediate your first instinct, I can see from your grin, you might as well be eating shit.

You got a shit-eating grin, and you're about to, go ahead, what is it?

Look, let me put down this spoon and this bowl of shit real quick.

This American life, how about this game-American life?

I think that's the name of a book.

Is it really?

I think there is a game, this gamer life, this AmeriGame life.

I don't know.

I feel like there's a

this game American.

Game?

Game American life.

It sounds like.

Game American life.

I don't see anything.

That sounds like you're just calling me a gay American.

This gay American life.

That's sort of

how you identify first and foremost, right?

Like when you're on TV and there's a Chiron, it says Heather Ann Campbell, gay American.

Oh, God.

Yeah, I don't know what the title of it would be.

I like World Warrior.

You know,

I've liked that sort of as the headline for it, but it is.

I don't know.

So, so

that guy.

I'm stolen this game American life.

But, you know,

I don't want gay American.

I don't want gay American.

I didn't say gay American.

It's game American.

Yeah.

You can't add a syllable in between two M's.

Game American.

I just did it.

That was awesome.

Heather, it's awesome that you did that.

Thank you for going to all that.

He had such an incredible pitch and such an, it was so incredible to talk to

him.

And

the, you know, the thunderstorm and the journey was completely worth it.

I should say that

at the end of the, we did not.

Because Mary came with me and we did not bike all the way back to Amsterdam.

We got our bikes onto a train and took a train home.

Yeah, that sounds like it was for the first time.

Because otherwise it would have been one of the hardest days of my life.

As it is, my legs were shaking so badly when I opened the door to do that interview.

Yeah,

a real fun time.

And, you know, hopefully next summer, maybe I'll get an opportunity to come back to Europe and do more interviews like that.

But if you've heard, if you heard that interview and you're like, oh,

I want to do something like this.

I'd love to talk to Get Played, Then reach out to us.

And one of the and one of these boys can

bicycle for two and a half hours and do an interview.

I somehow get to talk to Hideo.

What the fuck?

What the fuck?

Uh, hey, yeah, so Heather asked some questions, but you have some questions for us.

It's time for the question block.

All right, and guess what?

Ring, ring, ring, ring.

It's all voicemails, baby.

Wow.

Oops, all voicemails.

Surprise.

Surprise.

Actually, that is a surprise to me.

I didn't know this was happening.

Yeah, I didn't know this was going to happen either.

It's a real audio forward episode of our podcast.

Yeah,

that's sort of why I went with it.

Why don't I just play one of these fuckers, huh?

What do you say?

Let's go.

Hello, Nick and Matt, and especially Heather.

I hope you're feeling bad, Heather.

I just want you to say

I traveled from Germany to the Netherlands for the get-together.

And I hope you don't feel bad anymore.

I just wanted to say it was totally worth it coming to the Netherlands.

Amsterdam is absolutely beautiful.

I'm having a ton of fun getting drunk with some Americans on their first trip to Europe.

And I hope there'll be a get-together soon or maybe a meetup at Gamescom in Cologne.

And

yeah, just hope you feel better and

don't be too sad.

And I hope you're better soon.

Bye.

That was nice.

Just a well-wished.

That was extremely sweet.

I know that nothing that happened was my fault, but I cannot express the extreme guilt that I feel about having to cancel that event and knowing the people traveled in to hang out with us.

I promise we're going to do it in the future.

And

maybe even, because I know Nick won't fucking travel, but I had this fantasy that I could convince Matt to come with.

Yeah.

No,

it would be my greatest joy.

First of all, if we all just went on a trip, it'd be the time of my fucking life.

I'd love it.

I love going on trips with France.

I'd happily let Heather show me around the Netherlands.

Absolutely.

Also, Matt, to go, the National Video Game Museum is the fucking coolest place ever.

Yeah, yeah.

It's better than, it's better.

This room is better than any single room I think I was ever in in Japan.

Wow.

Like, it's, that's cool.

It's a staggering room.

Uh, so anyway, back to that listener.

Um,

you know, uh,

I, I,

it, it, the whole, I didn't get to go to Gamescom

in Cologne, even though I was, uh, I was aiming at that.

Uh, the interview actually that I just that we just played was uh that uh Dr.

Joseph Voort

was just at Gamescom, which is kind of cool.

Uh,

but yeah, hopefully next summer, um, I'll be able to, because I know for certain that I will be back in the Netherlands next summer.

Uh,

but yeah, that's, um,

I feel so terrible about all that.

Like, I wish, I wish I could have hung out with you guys and

not yeah definitely not your fault at all um you got you got covet what are you supposed to do yeah uh sorry you were so responsible um and and doing

well also it's it's it what's weirdly frustrating is that i didn't end like mary had covet and you didn't but i didn't i didn't end up getting it and if there was some way to ensure that that was something I could know in the future.

Yeah.

So not only was I quarantined for

those couple of weeks, but there were like it didn't,

it just, it just took everything from me.

You're built different.

I'm built different.

I'm always like, you know, I've never crossed an ocean.

And as someone who's only been in North America, I'm always staggered when I look at European geography because it's like Eurofield.

It's like, oh my God, I went from Germany all the way to the Netherlands for a meetup.

And it's just like, oh yeah, it's from like going from LA to San Francisco.

It's like, you know,

it's not like this unbelievable distance that was traversed.

Not to trivialize it.

It's amazing that someone came out.

But it's like,

for any other

fellow dipshit Americans out there,

it's just, it's interesting to be oriented and hear.

and understand just like

it's how much more compact things are.

See, this show is a lot of things.

We have gay Americans.

We have dipshit Americans.

Nick, I'm pretty certain that if you ever came to the Netherlands, you would consider it your favorite country on earth.

It is

so dense with public transport.

I love that.

Like, you love public transport.

You can go anywhere

so fast

in this country.

Like, you can just like,

or you can go to the, you can go to the train station here in Amsterdam and you can take a train that's always there to London, or you can take a different train to Paris, and it's no time at all.

Like, you could just go to London or Paris, you know?

And then I don't know if you're a cyclist, but

it's fucking crazy how

you can like

the reason I went on bike to Utrecht is because you can click on Google Maps and be like, Click the bicycle thing.

And there's a bike path the entire time.

There's no space.

That's amazing.

space where you're like on a road.

And there are some places where the bike path is the road.

And if you're a car, you have to like get permission to go on the road.

And you have to go behind cars or behind bikes extremely slowly.

And that's what it's, it's an incredible country.

It's really fucking, it's paradise.

It's amazing here.

I

like, yeah, you can't get intra-city in LA on bike without and stay on a bike path the whole time.

I feel like I can go like a couple miles in any direction and then I've got to get on the road with cars going 40.

Also, they got crazy food.

Look, dude, I'm not, I'm going to pitch you hard for next summer.

You've got two podcasts that could have like a real good time

in the Netherlands covering some really good crazy food on one of them and some amazing video game stuff on the other.

I mean, I do have an upcoming court date in The Hague, so maybe we could sort of sync that up.

I'm very down to go.

And, you know, maybe

when we're all stateside, maybe we do a get played meetup over here.

Sometimes we're going to be there.

That would be pretty great.

It would be pretty great.

Why don't we play another

voicemail?

Hi.

No question here, but enough is enough.

Why haven't you played any Bethesda games?

Why haven't you played Skyrim?

Why haven't you played Fallout?

They are, and I know this is controversial, but amazing games.

So much fun, such deep lore.

Why aren't we playing these big ass AAA Bethesda games?

Thank you.

Love you guys.

You rock.

Bye.

It's a very nice voicemail.

I think the answer, you answered it in your query there, which is the phrase big ass.

Like, it's like these games are just such a fucking commitment.

I think Starfield was a candidate, but it's like hard to like go back and,

you know, have my memories of Skyrim, but I, I, I feel like if we're going to do an episode about it, I'd want to, I'd want to play some more Skyrim.

And that's like, or, or, you know, similarly with Fallout 3,

it's these, these games are big in scope.

So I think if we wanted to dedicate an episode to it.

Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe we just do a throwback we play, you play, and we do we cover one of these Bethesda big boys.

Maybe we eventually cover Starfield, or maybe we could do a one-off episode where we just kind of talk about these games that this i guess this this genre from a company holistically but i i i i think there's

i don't know i do like the fallout franchise i do like kind of like that series i've um i don't know i've only messed with fallout 4 a little bit and it didn't it didn't grab me um

like right away uh and so i kind of just put it i was kind of just overwhelmed by you know like the scope of it right like there's just so much you can do.

And

I've tried Skyrim.

I played Elder Scrolls Oblivion a little bit.

I played that more than I played Skyrim.

And

I thought that was kind of cool, but I didn't ever finish that game at all.

And

I started Skyrim.

I've started Skyrim a lot in my time.

And

I just can't, I can't do it.

There's something.

I don't know what it is.

And I know that it's great, and I know that I'm wrong,

but I just,

I don't know.

I can't do it.

I've been in on Elder Scroll.

I've been in on Fallout since Fallout 1, which was Interplay.

It was its own developer, so it was a different thing, and it was isometric.

And I've been in on Elder Scrolls since Elder Scrolls Arena and Elder Scrolls 2 Dagger Fall, which were both Bethesda, but they were much cruder iterations.

So, you know, I do have a history with these franchises,

but I think that here's the other thing.

Like, I just don't finish these games because they're so big and I'm like,

you know, the kind of the story isn't, the narrative isn't really the point.

That's the thing I feel like, like, like a larger in-scope game that I have finished, like the, you know, the, the, the Mass Effect games or, um,

or uh, you know,

I mean, Baldur's Gate 3 currently, I certainly am far from finishing it now, but I plan to.

It's like there's like a compelling mainline narrative to pull you through.

And

yeah, I don't know.

We could talk about it.

Maybe Starfield gets us into it at some point.

Maybe we do a Starfield episode in a few months.

I don't fucking know.

It's a good question.

I don't

love nor hate Bethesda games, but I have finished.

I finished Skyrim.

I finished Fallout

4.

Fallout 3, which one was it?

4 was the most recent one.

I don't know which one.

Fallout 76 is actually the most recent one.

I didn't play that one.

That's its own thing.

Yeah.

But I finished that Fallout game that came out whenever that was.

They're very, very funny, as I said earlier.

And they're really funny violence.

So I'm in.

I'm fucking in.

We'll figure out what to cover.

It is a thing.

It is a blind spot of the pod.

Big blind spot.

Let's play another voicemail.

Hi, Heather, Nick, and Matt.

My name is Taylor.

I'm from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Just wanted to thank you guys for the laughs and for inspiring me to play games like Disco Elysium and Persona 5, which I'm enjoying the hell out of right now.

Sometimes I also get burnt out on video games, and your show always hypes me up to play more.

So thanks.

The other day, we had a rainy 5 degrees Celsius, which is about 41 degrees Fahrenheit day here in Edmonton, and I was stuck at work.

It was cold and gray and dreary, and in my opinion, the perfect video game weather.

So, my question to you is, what is your perfect video game weather?

For me, I like a cold gray midweek when everyone is at cold gray day, when everyone is at work, and I'm enjoying games in the comfort of my home.

I use my vacation days sometimes to just play video games, especially when it's like minus 30 degrees Celsius, which is about minus 20 Fahrenheit, I think.

And we expect life to continue here when it's that cold, but it's nice to take a day to play games.

So, again, what is your perfect video game weather?

Thanks so much.

Hot dog, more like my dog.

See ya.

Hell yeah.

We should have put that on a shirt.

I forgot about that.

What was that?

I vaguely remember.

You were

making fun of Nick and I for

the quote style of jokes that we do.

Yes, that was your impersonation of the kind of joke we would make.

Yeah.

And it's good.

It is good.

It's good because there's a glimmer of truth to it.

And I think that's sort of the main ingredient for any good joke.

If you're holding a hot dog, I mean, the thought enters your head of hot dog, more like my dog.

It does?

Last time I was eating a hot dog, I was thinking that the whole time.

Hot is the opposite of my, so it is sort of like.

My perfect video game weather is the same.

Like

on a day, especially, okay,

here in my final week here in Amsterdam, when it rains in Amsterdam, because everybody's on a bike, you kind of have permission.

Not that I haven't gone out in rain on my bike.

And often it will suddenly shower while you're riding to somewhere and and you didn't even know it was going to rain.

But like on a day where it starts raining and ends raining and you kind of have permission to not leave your house because the only way you can get anywhere is a bike or walking to the tram in the rain.

It's fucking great.

It is great

to play a video game on a full rainy day.

So I second that.

Also,

rain means overcast and overcast means less glare on your television, no matter where it's placed, unless you're in a completely dark room.

So,

you know, bright sunny day, harder to play video games unless it's buck tie.

The sun is in your hand.

Sungles.

For me, I think it's pretty similar.

I don't really like.

I know I talk about playing a lot of games and finishing a lot of games, but I do that in the time where I'm like squeezing that in,

like in between things, like where I don't like, I don't always allow myself the

joy of what I experienced this past weekend of playing Baldur's Gate 3 for five hours.

Like, I don't really have sessions like that anymore.

But on occasion,

my

partner will leave

the house and be like, I have to go do a bunch of things or I have to go see a friend.

I know that that's not something you want to tag along with.

Do whatever you want here.

And I'm like, great.

I don't have to leave the house.

You can go do whatever you want to do and have a nice day, and I'll get to stay here.

Fantastic.

And so that's when I'll really put in my time.

But if it's raining,

ain't nothing better than that.

Honestly, like, because I don't like to go out.

If I, if it's, if my socks get wet,

my day's over.

It's done.

I can't really come back from that

mentally.

Like,

it's an instant day ruiner to me if my socks get sweat.

So, if I'm inside, I'm nice and toasty.

Maybe I got a cup of hot chocolate.

Playing some games.

It's the best.

So, I, you know, I'm I like mild weather.

Hey, that's that's that's not a unique opinion, but like, I do, I don't want anything too extreme.

And I think that that is true for when I want to play games.

Um, I, my, my environment now is that I have this home office that I do podcasting in and any sort of non-podcasting work, but also I have my consoles in here and my gaming PC.

And I invested in some,

even though it's a rental, I invested in some blackout shades that

are great because I don't have to worry about how sunny it is.

And this room can get completely dark if I need it to be.

So like that, as far as screen glare goes, I don't, that's just like not a concern where I do my gaming.

Um, and also, so I guess just like kind of mild weather if I'm gaming at home, because I don't really have to, I don't want to be too hot.

I can run the AC, but I don't really love like the feeling of being in an AC'd environment.

It's, it's like like, even though it's cooler and more climate controlled, I just like always feel kind of like stuffy and confined.

But the way I'll address this is that like I kind of like, you know, hey,

I'll tell you, I love, I love being outside.

I love going on long walks, and then I'll take my Switch somewhere if I'm playing something on the, yeah, on the Switch.

And so, like, I kind of want like the idea, like, not too sunny, a little bit overcast, a little bit of a breeze, but also, like, I don't have to put a jacket on, and I can, like, sit on a patio somewhere and just sort of play video, play, like, play Switch for a bit.

Like, that's like kind of my ideal weather.

Rain, it's snow.

I don't like any of that stuff.

I don't want any sort of, you know, just get good, like, like, get that out of the way.

Um,

because I've lived in Southern California my whole life.

I've lived in one county my entire life, and and I just like, I just like very mild, sort of a, uh, you know, beach breeze weather, I guess.

Honestly, for any scenario, like gaming, like it's just like gaming just sort of fits into, like, I just like it when the weather is nice.

Call me crazy, but if I have to be outside, I want it to be exactly how I like it.

Yes, exactly.

Why don't we just play one more and

then we'll wrap it up?

Hi, Nick, Heather, and Matt.

This is Chris.

I'm calling from Ohio.

I first want to say that I'm a big fan.

I've been listening since episode one, and I always look forward to my commutes on Mondays because I know there's going to be a new episode to get me to working back.

My question for you guys is what is your most outrageous hot take?

What opinion do you have that you're pretty sure you're right and everyone else is wrong and you will die on this hill?

I'd love to hear that from each of you.

Otherwise, I just wanted to thank you for all the great episodes and keep up the good work.

It's a bright spot every week.

Thanks.

God bless you, Chris.

It's a very, very nice thing to say.

So, are we looking for, is this a gaming hot take or is this just a hot take in general?

I think it could be either or.

If you have a gaming one, go off.

If you want to just get one out there,

I think it's open to interpretation.

I think society is going to collapse in the next 10 years.

That's good.

Yeah, that's good.

I don't know how hot of a take that is, but it's good.

But no, I mean like, I mean like

10.

No, I mean not like 50.

Not like, oh, I think we're going to we're going to hit 1.5 C in the next

six to 10 months.

And then we're going to have this rapid cascade

that like I'm I'm not even like in climate anxiety.

I'm in like a doom phase.

And I'm honestly thinking about taking survival classes so that I can extend my stay on Earth for two to three months extra.

Sure.

Post-collapse.

When society collapses, can we still do the podcast?

Yes, because I also think that social, that society's collapse is going to be very weird.

I think that people are still going to make TV shows.

I think that there is still going to be like in the same way that, like, a hyper-normalized collapse of the Soviet Union still had jobs that weren't doing shit.

I think, I think this podcast existing post-society's collapse is almost 100% guaranteed.

Sure.

So that's, that's my big, that's my hot take.

Is we got 10 years left, max.

My other, I mean, my other hot take is that video games are a

video games are a sport

for

they're an interactive sport, so puzzles don't belong in them.

It should only be combat because pong is combat.

There you go.

Your turn, Nick.

Your turn, Max.

That's really good.

That's really good.

Gaming one.

I think that

I don't.

How about this?

I don't like driving or shooting in games.

You don't like shooting?

I don't like guns or cars.

I can play a game that has shooting in it, but it's just like, and I can play a game that has driving in it, but like, I don't like these things.

There are other mechanics I like more.

I don't like, I don't think aiming is fun.

Why?

I don't think that the way that games are designed around every fucking shooter has, it's so tedious that they all have the same like headshots do more damage mechanic.

it's just like that's so to me is so boring they do uh and i but but they don't necessarily you know like it's like getting shot in the head does more damage than getting shot in the hand getting shot in the chest i think i mean like you know i think if you're actually look doing any sort of tactical shooting you want to aim for the chest because that's just as likely to be a kill shot but like no game has that as a mechanic like it's just like that to me is they have it as like a headshot is more because a head is a smaller target and so like i just don't think like things like sniping or shooting at things in the distance so you're looking at like, hey, these things are a few pixels in size and I'm just going to move my cursor over them and hit the button at the right point.

Like to me, that just is kind of like tedious.

So if you're looking for a hot take, yeah, I think guns are kind of boring in games and I think cars are similarly kind of boring.

I don't like driving in games and I don't like, as I don't like it in real life.

In terms of...

In terms of real life, in terms of non-gaming hot takes,

I've said this before, but here's my thing about gummy.

gummy ain't yummy.

I don't like gummy anything.

I don't like the fuck out of here.

I don't like gummy anything.

That's insane.

I don't need that texture.

I don't need that kind of

sweetness delivery mechanism.

So I'm anti-gummy.

I also think that.

Wait, can I ask if licorice is gummy?

I would say licorice is gummy adjacent, and also I don't need it in my life.

He doesn't need it in his life.

Heather, I also love licorice.

Yeah, have you guys ever had a salty German or salty Dutch licorice?

No.

It's fucking king.

It's salty, but licorice.

I like the idea of something of salty and sweet.

I like that combo.

I'll be like a salty cream.

Well, you'll never taste it because you got gummy.

Yeah, I probably won't.

I probably won't have it.

And you know what?

My life will be the better for it.

Better.

I also think it's a good idea.

You know what?

Maybe I'll bring it back for you guys.

I'll love it.

Maybe I'll bring you back some.

I'll totally try it.

Some salty drope.

I'll totally try it.

Let's see.

Another hot take.

I don't think people should have guests in their homes.

What?

I think your home should be where you live.

And then if you gather, that should be like a separate place, like a public space.

But I feel like your home should be like,

don't come to my house.

Get out of here.

I have no idea what that means.

Guests in your home.

But that's like

from the Paleolithic till today, that's like a common human behavior.

And in fact, multiple people living within the same shared physical space is common.

Yeah, if you're living together, I've had roommates.

I don't need like some guy coming over.

Get out of here.

What are you talking about?

I think I was pretty clear.

I don't even think this is a take.

This is like a hot nonsense.

Yeah.

Like gummy.

I'm like, okay.

Mike's trying to justify his behavior with these.

Well, he wanted a hot take.

Well, you want a what?

What?

What is it?

But what is the best?

Here's the day.

I've never had a soul over here.

Yeah,

that's what I'm saying.

I don't need people in my home.

Yeah.

You don't.

Nobody needs people.

What does that mean?

Exactly.

And I got one.

I have exactly one.

All right, Matt, your turn.

Because I've said this on the show before.

I've said.

Oh, I know what he's going to say.

He's going to say, jam belongs on corn on the cob.

That's a separate thing.

And I don't want to get into that.

I can't get into that again.

I've said on this show that space is better than old yes

and what if I told you

that I've changed my mind

I no longer stand by space is better than old Wow Wow I'm taking it back

because

I think cowboy is the best of all

and cowboy is old I'd rather see cowboy than space.

Wow, you prefer cowboy to space in videos.

Wait,

is the equation now cowboy greater than space greater than old?

Or is it that old greater than space because of cowboy?

Well, because I don't necessarily want to go back too far, right?

Like, I don't know if I want to be like

a Puritan or something, or like, or what's even, I don't want to go back to like Caveman.

Although Caveman might be interesting.

Caveman's kind of caveman video game that hasn't really been explored that much.

Fucking Viking video game is so much fun.

Yeah, Viking good, cowboy good.

Uh, there, but like, I'm not trying to, like, yeah, I don't want to see a video game about like

normal people in 1910 or something.

You know what I mean?

I want to give me a little action.

Give me a little wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, though.

1920s

action game set in Paris would be so fucking cool.

I'm look, I'll try it.

I just like, I think space, we've, we've done everything we can.

I haven't seen a new space,

like a new concept

in space in a while.

It's always the same kind of thing.

And space is done.

We did it.

Space is done.

We're done with space.

Sound like the American public in like the 1970s.

It's like, all right, we fucking did it.

Let's move.

Space is defund NASA.

Done.

Yeah.

Dusted.

Who gives a shit?

Next.

Show me the bottom of the ocean.

The food, the food in old is better than the food in space.

Yeah.

You got to eat fucking cryobites.

But that wouldn't, but that also wouldn't like follow because I feel like food is one thing that has gotten better over time.

Like, I feel like if you want to go to the 17th century, that meal is not going to be nearly as good as it is in the world.

They don't even have Doritos.

Sure.

It's true.

But food in space has a transportation problem.

So, right.

So it's like if you're going to eat a really good stew, chances are you're eating that in old more than you're eating that in space.

A fresh fish,

not in space.

Only in old.

Well, you're not going to be able to, yeah.

How would you even

eat stew in space?

The little globules of stew are going to be floating all over.

It would be like one of those Japanese protein drinks that would be jelly.

It would would be like in

the in-brand

jelly pouch.

I don't want to eat my stew that way.

Jellied beef stew?

Yeah, that sounds kind of weird.

Which I've had, I've had jellied beef stew.

At

what's that old-timey restaurant in Los Angeles?

The one that's been.

What do you mean, like the Musso and Franks?

Yeah, Musso and Franks.

Oh, yeah.

Musso and Franks in Los Angeles has a classic menu.

And on their classic menu, they have jellied beef stew.

And it is cold

and gelatin.

And it is not my ideal food at all.

Yeah, that shouldn't be allowed.

It's unsettling.

Jellied consomme?

Is that what I didn't?

I don't think so.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, that sounds interesting.

I don't know if I'd be able to do that.

Hot salad, cold soup.

This guy's crazy.

All right.

Like a normal temperature salad.

Let's not mix the canon here.

It's going to get confusing for the listeners shit.

It's funny also that

this sort of meandering conversation about hot takes and food also happened in the same episode where I did that interview.

Yes.

It is fascinating that we think about food so much.

That's just such a dominant thing in lives, in people's lives, that anytime it's like, hey, yeah, you got a hot take on anything, I think people's minds naturally go towards food.

Yeah.

Because, yeah, we eat like fucking five times a day, you know?

Thinking about it constantly.

I'm thinking about it right now.

I'm thinking about it too.

But that was this week's question block voicemail edition.

Thanks for sending those in, everybody.

And if you'd like to

send more voicemails, call us at our phone number, which is

616-275-2933.

And you can leave us a voicemail and we'll play it on a future show.

There you go.

That's this week's Get Played.

Our engineering is by Alex Gonzalez, Dead Air Alex G on Twitter and Instagram.

And also, we have Get Animate, our paywalled show.

If you want to hop on over to patreon.com/slash get played.

Heather, what are we watching on Get Animate?

We are watching early 2000s mega hit FLCL.

It's a six-episode series, also known as Fully Coolie, which premiered in 2003 on Adult Swim and came out in the year 2000 in Japan.

It's one of those big, influential shows that our listeners on Discord encouraged us to watch.

So we're watching that.

It's a brief respite from longer, larger series.

So come join us.

It's a good time to hop on at

patreon.com slash get played.

That's patreon.com slash get played for all your episodes of get animated.

Our Discord wanted us to cover Furikuri.

It wanted us to talk about Shadow of the Colossus.

It's got early 2000s on the brain.

Perhaps some nostalgia for 20 years ago or so going on right now in the old score.

20 years ago.

Tough to think about.

Time is wild, right?

Yeah.

Here's a hot take.

Time is bad.

Oh, shit.

You guys want another hot take?

Yeah.

You got played.

Ah, fuck.

Fuck.

Quick, time to choose a meal deal with McValue.

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